Mobile Game Progress Thread

[coder_for_life22]

I decided to start this thread as a way to track my own progress for my new game app.

The game is currently in beta testing and i've built an audience of over 30k people all directly in the niche of my game. So I am pretty exited.

I got 20 of my followers from IG and allowed them to beta test and provide feedback. The feedback was great and some of their ideas will actually be taken into consideration.

My monetization strategy for this game in in app purchases, and rewarded video ads.

Things To Do:

• Come up with a social media strategy on IG to set the game up for its release
• Make changes to the game that are necessary from feedback
• Get advice from FLF

If anyone has any questions or advice please feel free to leave it here!

 

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[KSR]

Depending on the quality of your game (has to keep people interested) and keep retention rates high. You should consider buying some advertising space on influencer's pages.

 

[coder_for_life22]

Depending on the quality of your game (has to keep people interested) and keep retention rates high. You should consider buying some advertising space on influencer's pages.

Good suggestion. This is actually in the plan too. I'm currently compiling a document that has major influencers in the niche of the game.

Progress Update:
I completed beta testing yesterday. I received lots of great feedback about the game and majority of the testers really liked the game. They even had suggestions and ideas. Some of those ideas ill actually be using in the release version of the game.

- Complete a marketing document with all influencers in the niche of my game(On IG)

- Integrate levels into the game (this was one of the request from players). The initial way I made the game was in a "roguelike" fashion. You basically start the game and play as far as you can without dying. Once you die, you start back over and have to get back where you were. I'm not sure if this is what I should do as people will not like this and won't feel like there is any progression in the game. Once they make it kind of far and die a few times, they will become frustrated and feel hopeless.(A little game design theory there)

- Continue to add comments about the game in the caption of photos just to get the idea alive so its not a surprise when I release it. Figure out what content I would like to post about the game, such as: Screenshots, GIFs, etc.

- Think about the release marketing strategy and things I can do to trigger some viral effect, word of mouth, etc. Ideas so far: Host contests where the winner wins a prize, do giveaways for tagging a friend in a post, Maybe give some type of prize for someone simply installing the game. They would just send a screenshot of the game being installed on their device. (Not too sure about this)

If anyone has any other ideas of suggestions feel free to drop them here! I'm all ears.

 

[coder_for_life22]

Progress Update:
I haven't worked on the development of the game anymore this week. But it has been successful doing the beta test and validating the idea that people actually like the game. Its been a very busy week with school so haven't had much time to dedicate to the game development.

My instagram has grown about 2000+ followers in the last 3 days. Its been growing exponentially lately.

As some people have mentioned above, having 30,000 followers its not much in terms of getting downloads. However, the benefit of having this audience already is that it doesn't take much to trigger organic growth.

For example, lets say out of 30,000 followers on my IG, only 1,000 download the game the first day or two. Well, this already puts me in a better ranking position on the charts than half of the games being published daily(Excluding big time studios with big marketing dollars).

The average person releasing a game or app is simply relying on ASO/Organic growth and investing a few $'s in paid installs. So this puts me at an advantage.

So if I were to get 1k downloads the first day this would automatically give me a huge boost in the trending charts and top new free charts on google play(iOS is slightly different, but similar concept).

So for me, Im not really concerned how well my followers download the game. But the idea behind building the platform was to have an audience to give me that initial boost upon release because 30,000 doesn't mean much over the long run. But its a huge advantage upon release if done right.

Anyway, thats my little rant there.

The tasks I put in the last post are still the tasks I need to get done.

 

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[coder_for_life22]

Progress Update

Here is a video of some gameplay of the game!

Let me know your thoughts, comments, or suggestions!

 

[coder_for_life22]

Progress Update:

- Posted the above trailer on my instagram and got a good amount of comments, views, and likes. It was enough to make continue the project. Especially with it being pretty much done now! Just minor fixes, and bugs now. The comments were from people excited about the game and asking when/how they could download it. Great moment for me seeing they liked it.

- I've taken into consideration some of the feedback from my fans and it has definitely made the game improve!

Meanwhile, today I spent a few hours working on a "promo-image" for the game. It looks pretty good if I must say so myself. Let me know your thoughts or feedback.

 

[Twopro]

Looks like a fun game to pick up and play for a while, the type that has a potential for viral success. I agree that you will need levels or difficulty progression that doesn't keep restarting once they die to keep player retention, otherwise they will uninstall after a few plays.

Having 30k followers should help a bit, but don't knock on ASO, that will be your long term success and/or organic growth so make sure to spend a good amount of time on that. I have a mobile game business and all my games rely on organic downloads, my best one getting average of 3k downloads a day with good player retention. First 1-2 months on Google Play usually seem slow but ASO starts kicking in slowly but surely and downloads start to snowball.

 

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[coder_for_life22]

Looks like a fun game to pick up and play for a while, the type that has a potential for viral success. I agree that you will need levels or difficulty progression that doesn't keep restarting once they die to keep player retention, otherwise they will uninstall after a few plays.

Having 30k followers should help a bit, but don't knock on ASO, that will be your long term success and/or organic growth so make sure to spend a good amount of time on that. I have a mobile game business and all my games rely on organic downloads, my best one getting average of 3k downloads a day with good player retention. First 1-2 months on Google Play usually seem slow but ASO starts kicking in slowly but surely and downloads start to snowball.

Thanks! and yeah you are right as far as viral success. I'm hoping to achieve that using instagram/twitter. Getting people to post their bass weights, etc.

I agree with that difficulty and level progression. I've added that, but I don't think this logic is always correct. This seems like the logical thing but most people don't think "logically" at all lol Like Flappy bird. The game was extremely pointless and did not have sort of progression except getting a higher score and beating friends. This is the same thing I am trying to achieve here.

It took me a few minutes to think about this but thats the conclusion i've came too.

And yes I agree. The instagram audience is only for initial release. To get those initial downloads and get the ball rolling, hopefully triggering word of mouth, viral, etc. But long term strategy is definitely ASO.

Do you have any tips as far as ASO? Or the process that you use to do this?

 

[Twopro]

The thing about flappy bird was that apparently the reason it went viral was cuz of pewdiepie or whatever playing it causing 10s of thousands to download it and boosting its rank to top charts. The game would have died quick if no new content or progression was added in my opinion, I could be wrong.

For ASO, what I usually do is go to AppAnnie and look at possible similar games or competitors and peek their main keywords they rank for. Make a list then search on sensortower to see the difficulty of the keywords/phrases as well as an idea of their traffic. Choose the best ones with the least conpetition and write a good game description mentioning those 10 or so keywords/phrases 1-3 times throughout.

Another way to find good keywords is start typing in google play things like "fish" "bass" "water" or any words that make sense for your game and see what google suggests to get an idea of highly searched phrases. Then do the sensor tower thing again to research.

I'll try to provide more info when I get home, working out right now

 

[coder_for_life22]

Great suggestions! Taking notes and going to start this process tonight. Not a bad response while working out btw.

Thanks for sharing, can't wait to read more.

 

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[Twopro]

Lol thanks, was during cardio.

Anyway, for both of those websites appannie.com and sensortower.com you will have to create an account to see the data I believe. I use a free account but if you want more in depth data then its a monthly fee.

On AppAnnie you search an app and then go to the keyword (ASO) tab to see the keywords. On SensorTower you choose app intelligence and then keyword research to look up each keyword/phrase you wrote down, it will ask you sometimes with a popup to invite friends or sign up for a free trial but just click anywhere to make it go away and keep searching. I'm not sure if first you have to add an app to track on ST for it to allow you to research though.

 

[coder_for_life22]

Great! Thanks a lot man. You've laid some gold here. I'll definitely be going through this process fully asap.

Any recommendations on strategies for releasing my game on IG and getting the most amount of active engagement, possible viral effect? etc. I was thinking of doing something similar to what this guy did. Minus posting the girls.

Overall not sure if is legit though and what the full strategy is.

Here's the link: Download Now (@spinnycircle) • Instagram photos and videos

The engagement is crazy. It definitely seems legit. Thoughts?

 

[Twopro]

That would be great sure. Get low cost influencers with a good amount of following/interactions to make videos about your game challenging their followers for a prize could definitely get you a nice boost of downloads and in turn ranking.

Just keep in mind the budget and also consider what the ROI would be. It seems about 1% or less of players will buy IAP, so try not to over estimate, be conservative with your initial numbers.

Ad revenue you can expect around $2.60-3.50 per 1k impressions for interstitials, way lower for banner ads $0.10-0.30

 

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[Peteee72]

At first I thought this would just be another rip off of flappy bird, but you've definitely put some thought into this game, and it looks awesome!

Have no experience with games etc, but just an idea, take it or leave it...
Why not, once the player dies, give them an incentive to share their score on social media.
As you would reward a player with in-game currency for watching a video ad - do similar, but with a smaller (or bigger) reward for sharing.
Hopefully this would kickstart growth / word of mouth.

Keen to see the progression of this!

 

[coder_for_life22]

That would be great sure. Get low cost influencers with a good amount of following/interactions to make videos about your game challenging their followers for a prize could definitely get you a nice boost of downloads and in turn ranking.

Just keep in mind the budget and also consider what the ROI would be. It seems about 1% or less of players will buy IAP, so try not to over estimate, be conservative with your initial numbers.

Ad revenue you can expect around $2.60-3.50 per 1k impressions for interstitials, way lower for banner ads $0.10-0.30

Yeah ill be going through and making a list of all influencers and doing the "Challenge" offer. That's a good idea. Having them post a video about the game or what have you, and challenging their followers for a prize. Good idea. I think i'll try and utilize this strategy!

Yeah I plan to use "Rewared video ads" to allow players to revive their fish a few times. No banner ads as they are simply not worth it and annoying. I will have interstitials periodically throughout the game. The game has an IAP to revive your fish, and also for power-ups to be able to use throughout gameplay. Such as extra life shield, speed boost that lets you make contact with predator fish, etc.

At first I thought this would just be another rip off of flappy bird, but you've definitely put some thought into this game, and it looks awesome!

Have no experience with games etc, but just an idea, take it or leave it...
Why not, once the player dies, give them an incentive to share their score on social media.
As you would reward a player with in-game currency for watching a video ad - do similar, but with a smaller (or bigger) reward for sharing.
Hopefully this would kickstart growth / word of mouth.

Keen to see the progression of this!

Lol yeah I definitely understand that. This is why i'm choosing to not associate the name of the game with "Flappy" Floppy" etc. And yeah I definitely did lots of thinking with the game. I published another fishing game a few months back and it completely flopped. Mainly because the game design concept was flawed from the get-go and I didn't see it. And this has lead me to this point. But yes, some good thought went into it.

Yeah as I mentioned above, when the player dies, they get an opportunity to revive their bass. They can do this by 1). Watching a rewarded video ad 2). using "gems" 3). By actually paying for it IAP.

So the plan is to do this as well for sharing. When the player ends the run, they will be able to share a image of the size of their bass, the weight and share it to social media. I will offer a reward for this(Like 10+ gems) or something. Plus, as I stated above, if I choose to do the "Challenge" social media campaign, this will play a huge roll. Importantly the user can take a screenshot by simply clicking a button on the screen and it takes them straight to choosing what social media they want to post on. Making it extremely hassle free.

Thanks for your feedback!

 

[coder_for_life22]

Progress Update

- I've successfully found about 10-15 influencers in the niche of my game who all have pretty large audiences. I'll be reaching out to them and getting prices in the next few days. The day my game is released I plan to have about 5 or 6 of them promote the game as well. I am considering doing some sort of "Challenge" where the influencer plays the game, gets their highest score, and then posts to their IG page challenging their followers to download and the game and beat their score. I'll also consider giving the influencer a prize to give away to the winner. Such as a gift card to a popular store where people in this niche typically shop.

- Worked out some of the bugs that were in the game that beta testers brought to my attention and some I noticed myself.

- Added the screenshot-n-share feature. So players can now click a button to have a screenshot of their score, and the size of their bass captured and then has the option to share it to some social media.

- Added fish and one new enemy to the game

- As the player progresses the game now reacts and makes the player feel they are progressing

- Game Icon has been made. I made it myself sort of by mistake. I just made it as a placeholder but people really like the simplistic design of it, how elegant it is, and how it fully portrays the game.

To-Do

- Finish up final touches on the game
- Do ASO homework as described in the threads above
- Reach out to social media influencers and get prices
- Do Q/A and go through art of game design lenses to make sure the game aligns with them in someway or another.
- Write down marketing strategy/plan step by step for launch day

 

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[coder_for_life22]

Progress Update
- Reached out to social media influencers and made a spreadsheet with the ones who have replied and agreed. So far I have 4 influencers on board with audience sizes ranging from 10k-100k followers. These are all influencers within the niche of the game as well. I am paying each influencer $10-$20 a piece.

So my strategy for using instagram to promote the game is going to be centered around real content versus game screenshots etc. I noticed in my last release that people did not respond well to game screenshots etc. as a means of me promoting the game.

My strategy now is to use REAL content to promote the game. For example, my IG page is centered around user generated content. Followers send in their photos in order to have a chance to get featured on my page. So I have decided to use this content to promote the game by:

1). Branding the images promoting the game(Sometimes)
2). Using instagrams ability to post multiple photos in one post. So I will use this to post the first photo being some content i've decided to feature and the second photo will be an image promoting my game and sharing some information about it, such as a screenshot, video, etc. I will also use the caption to give information about the game as well. Having this real photo first gets people to engage more and the promo image is a sort of "Hey, by the way..." type of thing.

Any thoughts or ideas to add? Feel free to reply with them! Looking every way to seamlessly promote the game.

Next thing, once the game is released ill be using the influencers to not post a screenshot or post a promo image of the game, but instead i'll be using the influencers to post real photos of them playing the game. The image can be of them lounging playing the game, a short video snippet of them playing, anything. But since instagram is basically a personal photo diary, I think this will help their followers resonate more with the post versus just seeing some paid ad basically. In the caption the influencer will be talking telling their high score and challenging their followers to beat their score to enter to win a prize(the prize will be a $5-$10 gift card) and will tag the games IG page in the photo. The page will basically serve as a landing page where their will be a link with a call to action and some screenshots of the game along with some gameplay. The page will only have a few pieces of content in order to keep it short and sweet and avoid the user becoming to distracted and not actually downloading the game.

I got this idea from Bejewled. Bejewled ran a campaign on IG like this where they paid influencers to do this very thing and it worked very successfully for them.

- The game is basically finished now. I've integrated facebook leaderboards fully and adding more enemies and some other cool things to the game.

Feel free to drop a reply if you have any tips/ideas.

 

[GameOver]

Nice. You doing the code?

 

[Peteee72]

I'd be interested to know how many active users you'd need to make a game a viable source of revenue, and what numbers you are expecting off of this?

 

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[coder_for_life22]

Nice. You doing the code?

Yep! Its written in C# and Unity.

I'd be interested to know how many active users you'd need to make a game a viable source of revenue, and what numbers you are expecting off of this?

This is a good question. I'm honestly not sure. I think it really depends on the the retention of the game. If I only have 10,000 users but 50% of they play every day, thats not bad numbers and you could expect to make decent revenue. Its very hard to get this type of retention though, especially on mobile. So most people tend to try and get as many downloads as possible to make up for the lack of retention on mobile platforms. OR they just make the app paid which in this case its a lot harder to sell people on the idea.

Good question. Maybe someone else has something to add to this. After I release the game I think ill be able to give more insight on this.

 

[coder_for_life22]

Progress Update

Lately i've been a little worried about if the game will be a flop or not. Its tough not to worry about this type of thing but to just trust the process and know that even if the game does not succeed, i've learned tons from the experience.

I have about 30.2k followers on my instagram but i've noticed that when I post about my game I only get about 1/4 of the engagement as I do when I post content like a picture of a bass or something. So i'm not sure if this is normal when it comes to promoting your projects to your audience. The people who have engaged love the game and often comment about how can they start playing. The beta testers loved the game as well. So I don't think the game design is flawed or doomed to fail.

This might just be a normal thing.

The game is basically complete now and I plan to release in two weeks. I'm going to wait two weeks to test the game more and and let some other people play it just to see if there are any last minute changes or bugs that need to be worked out. But the development is pretty much complete now.

I haven't been as motivated to work on the project lately because I am worried it will fail. But I guess thats with most things in business, there isn't 100% guarantees with success.

Anyway, I am pressing on.

To-Do
- Create a spreadsheet of influencer marketers who will promote the game when its released and add the prices as well
- Play test more
- Make sure the games leaderboards are working properly.
- Write ASO description
- Finish keyword research
- Post more updates to the games tumblr page: Hungry Bass Pro
- Find influencers on twitter

I've also started another business with a colleague but ill probably start a new thread about this at some point.

 

[GameOver]

Yep! Its written in C# and Unity.



This is a good question. I'm honestly not sure. I think it really depends on the the retention of the game. If I only have 10,000 users but 50% of they play every day, thats not bad numbers and you could expect to make decent revenue. Its very hard to get this type of retention though, especially on mobile. So most people tend to try and get as many downloads as possible to make up for the lack of retention on mobile platforms. OR they just make the app paid which in this case its a lot harder to sell people on the idea.

Good question. Maybe someone else has something to add to this. After I release the game I think ill be able to give more insight on this.

I suspected either Unity or GMS. Were you a programmer before?

They say the average game sells about 30,000 units on the App Store or Steam.

 

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[coder_for_life22]

I suspected either Unity or GMS. Were you a programmer before?

They say the average game sells about 30,000 units on the App Store or Steam.

Yes. I went to university for computer science.

 

[splok]

Lately i've been a little worried about if the game will be a flop or not.
...
The beta testers loved the game as well..
...
I haven't been as motivated to work on the project lately because I am worried it will fail.

It's your first game. Just assume that it's going to fail (if you succeed then great! but don't expect it). As you said, you learned a ton that will make your next game better. Just consider your first few games practice for developing the process. Considering that, I'd say you should release it asap and get to work on the next one. Waiting weeks in hopes of getting more people on instagram interested is time that you could have used to build another game. Not to discount the need for marketing... but:

I think it really depends on the the retention of the game. ... After I release the game I think ill be able to give more insight on this.

If you've had beta testers, you should have some idea of how often people are going to return to your game (assuming that you've implemented tracking). Marketing effort is mostly worthless (other than as practice) if your game doesn't retain players. How do you know your players love the game? Did they tell you? or did you see them coming back to play 5 times per day, every day for a month? Don't listen to what players say, watch what they do.

If you've tracked enough testers to have a solid idea of your churn rate, session frequency/length, and conversion rates, then you can get a pretty good idea of a player's typical lifetime value. If you know that, then you know how much you can spend on customer acquisition and still be profitable.

The game was extremely pointless and did not have sort of progression except getting a higher score and beating friends. This is the same thing I am trying to achieve here.

For your next game, consider how to get people to log in repeatedly and to keep coming back. Progression mechanics have evolved in games over the decades for a reason. People keep doing what works. Flappy Bird managed to make money, but how many of its clones did?

 

[coder_for_life22]

@splok Dude thanks for that! You definitely laid some gold there.

This is actually my....12th? game. Or something like that. I started building games back in 2012. But not seriously. I just dabbled in it as a way of learning. I publised a few of them and one actually made me about $500-$1k a month until it got removed due to King.com saying I infringed upon their IP.

And you are right about that. The beta testers have all said how much they love the game but I did not put analytics in the initial beta version so I did not track the retention from the beta testing.(Maybe a mistake here).

And yes, I am going to release ASAP. I agree that waiting a few more weeks won't make a dramatic difference. So I plan to release in the next two weeks because I still have a few more minor things to complete in the game.

But thanks a lot for your reply! Definitely some good advice!

 

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[splok]

This is actually my....12th? game.

Oh nice! Grats on all the releases then, and sorry for making a jackass assumption! I thought I'd remembered you mentioning something about learning to make games for this project, but apparently I'm getting threads confused.

But seriously go drop in an analytics package! You need some visibility on what the players are actually doing in game, otherwise you won't even know if any changes you make are helping or hurting.

 

[coder_for_life22]

Oh nice! Grats on all the releases then, and sorry for making a jackass assumption! I thought I'd remembered you mentioning something about learning to make games for this project, but apparently I'm getting threads confused.

But seriously go drop in an analytics package! You need some visibility on what the players are actually doing in game, otherwise you won't even know if any changes you make are helping or hurting.

Lol Thanks! And it was correct to assume this was my first game. My language definitely portrayed that.

And yeah i'm working on getting the analytics package in there today. I do agree this is a must.

Progress Update:
- Reached out to some influencers on twitter and actually had a pro baseball player who loves to fish respond to me and loved the game. He even took a screenshot of my page and shared it with his friends. And then made a tweet about the game on his twitter! The tweet has gained lots of attention. He is also willing to post about the game once it is released as well. Hopefully this type of influencer marketing keeps up. I think it all starts out with the influencers actually liking and believing in the idea.

To-Do
- Continue to reach out to more influencers
- Make notes from my playtesting
- Make a few changes and fixes from bugs that I noticed while playing last night.
- Prepare the game for release next weekend

 

[coder_for_life22]

Today my twitter account was seen by a pro baseball player who is a fan and fisher. He saw the game by me reaching out to influencers in the niche and he automatically took a screenshot of the game and set it to his immediate network of fishers. He even shouted out my games twitter account promoting the game. And he also agree to help promote the game once it is released because of how much he liked it. He has a twitter audience of 100k+ followers.

So I guess that is a good sign.

I also spoke with a influencer today who gave me a good idea. The influencer has a business that sells fish attractant for bait and he also have over 5 instagram accounts totaling 1.3+ million followers.

I suggested that we form a partnership. I will give him and his product, product placement in my game. I will make the fish attractant product a part of the game as a power-up, or some type of bonus score mechanism. He loved the idea and is interested in forming a partnership.

There end of the deal will be to promote the game to their 1.3 million followers on their various IG accounts. The owner seemed excited about the idea and loved it. So tonight I am going to put together an email with everything and send it to him.

Hopefully the deal falls through. If it does, I think this could be a huge deal in terms of marketing.

So in essence, he will be a sponsor. This gave me the idea to reach out to more influencers and offer them a sponsor position and to be placed in the sponsors list in the game once its released. I will put there names in the game and also their IG or twitter, etc. So I will reach out to more fishing brands and influencers with this offer. I will reach out to brands with large audiences, offering them product placement in my game(If their product fits somewhere), and for regular influencers they will get a sponsor position in the game and be listed.

 

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[GameOver]

I personally think you're on the right track... I think trying to get influential folks to tweet about it organically is a great idea. If you have some cash saved up you might even consider offering people some significant cash to essentially advertise for you. I also think you should draft up your own press article and send it to various websites that might consider posting it... a lot of times editors simply pluck content directly from a press release. Maybe someone out there is against a deadline and needs to release an article? Help them out with that.

 

[Twopro]

So in essence, he will be a sponsor. This gave me the idea to reach out to more influencers and offer them a sponsor position and to be placed in the sponsors list in the game once its released. I will put there names in the game and also their IG or twitter, etc. So I will reach out to more fishing brands and influencers with this offer. I will reach out to brands with large audiences, offering them product placement in my game(If their product fits somewhere), and for regular influencers they will get a sponsor position in the game and be listed.

That's actually a genius idea, just make sure to have some written consent to use their logo/brand or whatever otherwise Google/Apple might take it down thinking you're infringing. Good luck, looking forward to seeing how the release goes