Flooded Channels and Frigid Tears: Getting Discovered in a Saturated, Mobile World | SoCon13

Flooded Channels and Frigid Tears

Discoverability on the App Store

Carlos Quiñones

Nick Ralabate

One year as Secret Library

Two games on the App Store

Secret Library

Centrifeud (April ’12)

Wall Street Journal: “Games to Play”

COOL PIZZA (Sept. ’12)

Touch Arcade: Top Arcade Games of 2012

Paste: Top 20 Mobile Games of 2012

The Problem at Hand

App Store 2008 - 2013

$99 to be start distributing your games

641+ releases per day!

19,000+ new apps per month!

775,000+ apps!

Very lightly curated

About 25% are games (real numbers hard)

A Harsh Mistress

Why we picked Apple

Large install base: half a billion iOS devices

Expectations commensurate to small games

No time to port to 80 different Androids

Medium game production time 4-12 mo.

Medium game cost between $20k to $200k

Games supposedly have a harsher curve than utility apps

An obvious way to stand out is via brand

Techniques depend a lot on how you intend to sell your game (paid vs. F2P vs. ads)

Caveats

More Caveats

Our first year as marketers! Uh-oh!

Didn’t think too deeply about target audience, so most tactics were tailored to “people like us”

Last Caveat

It would help if you have a good game

It better look fantastic, this is HUGE

“Too many games are dead from the outset because they simply do not choose a setting or character which is appealing to the market. “ -Ben Cousins

Game Review Sites

Timing is key; try to synchronize with launch

TONS of game review sites

Emailing all of them is time intensive

Target most popular sites first

Can hire a PR firm to badger people

Could give a whole talk on this...

WSJ vs. Kotaku

In Game Tweets(done well)

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Email your friends!

• Sword & Sworcery

• Tweet in game dialogue

In Game Tweets (done pretty ok)

Top of the charts -->

New releases list --^

- People browsing won’t dig too deep...

+ First day + first week sales are key!

Cross Promotion

+ Why not!

- Kick out to store

+ Just you or a ring

- Only intra-platform

Viral Design

Hi-tech word of mouth

Farmville style, from the land of Facebook

+ Very powerful way to get new customers

+ Part of the design of the game

- Spammy :(

+ Whoa! Front page! Maybe even the TV!

- Unpredictable without a contact...

There are things that make a feature more likely:

Use new hardware or iOS features

Be popular

Get a publisher

Paid Installs?

+100% guaranteed

- $$$

IAP only: more than $1.00 per install

Price Drops

Free App blogs may syndicate the price change

+ Crazy Tweetbots from Russia

+ Huge payoff in installs

- Only 5% conversion rate

- Makes more sense for IAP games

Spongiform Metafount 2

Search!

Memorable names are important

Keywords!

Examples:

Centerfeud :(

Cool Pizza :|

App Store Copy

Under your control

Great screenshots and copy

Used by journalists when talking about your games

Icon should stand out

Categories

Type of game

How competitive is your genre?

Arcade?

Local multiplayer?

Game Center

See what your friends are playing!

+ Free

+ Easy to integrate

- No way to measure effectiveness

About 50% for COOL PIZZA

Updates!

Reach out to the press... again

Hopefully your original reviewers + new ones

App Store ReviewsMore a matter of things to avoid than things to do:

N is for Networking

Trade Shows:

GDC, SEIGE, PAX

Festivals:

IGF, IndieCade, XOXO

+ Almost free!

- But, mostly insiders

Game Forums

+/- Enthusiasts

+ Free!

- Not active member of forum = 0 views

Three days spent on promotion

First attempt at releasing a game on the App Store

Priced at $1.99

Hoped to stand out as local multiplayer iPad game

FREE

Ten days spent on promotion

Arcade Games category

Hoping to stand out with unique art style and music

Tchotchkies

Reading List

www.secret-library.com

http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2011/09/28/results-ios-game-revenue-survey/

http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/library/studies/understanding-the-modern-gamer/

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/178516/

http://gamesfromwithin.com/making-a-living-barely-on-the-iphone-app-store

http://www.pentadact.com/2012-03-17-gdc-talk-how-to-explain-your-game-to-an-asshole/

Check out our games

Centrifeud

Cool Pizza

Meet us in the hallway!

Atlantans Ahoy!

There’s lots of hot iOS gaming action in ATL...

Ask us anything. ANYTHING.