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Publishing games in the Play Store / App store - Let's share what we learn

DavidBVal

4 Dimension Games
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DavidBVal I think somewhere you mentioned making your store icon stand out and you were right--I got a new phone this week and remembered it was your game from the icon.

Glad to know. Yeah everyone else is full square with bright colors and usually a face. Which is a known marketing technique btw, as our brain has specific "circuitry" to recognize faces and they naturally catch our attention.

Getting close to 500K downloads on android, Apple has improved but very slowly after 4 months in (around 100 dls/day). I get some crazy peaks on Apple when I get linked from somewhere, but it usually lasts a few days.
IIRC you're doing this full-time now? If so, how is that working out?

Since April 1st 2016. Going great, I've never worked more hours in my life but it's very rewarding.
 

subotaiy

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Hey, I noticed in your credits section that you use assets licensed as CC-BY and CC-BY-SA.
Regarding CC-BY-SA, have you encountered any issues regarding the commercial nature of the game (from what I gathered, you are required to redistribute those assets and any of your own modifications with the same license, but this doesn't applies the game code, right ?).
I'm asking because I'm approaching the much delayed stage where I have to choose the looks of my game and is becoming painfully clear that drawing my own sprites (even small, 32*32 ones) is not a viable option.
 

gaussgunner

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Hey, I noticed in your credits section that you use assets licensed as CC-BY and CC-BY-SA.
Regarding CC-BY-SA, have you encountered any issues regarding the commercial nature of the game (from what I gathered, you are required to redistribute those assets and any of your own modifications with the same license, but this doesn't applies the game code, right ?).
I'm asking because I'm approaching the much delayed stage where I have to choose the looks of my game and is becoming painfully clear that drawing my own sprites (even small, 32*32 ones) is not a viable option.

I'm no lawyer, but the way I read it, SA only matters if you adapt (modify) the assets. Say you use a sprite pack and photoshop it slightly. If they're just PNG files in the installed game folder (not DRMed or in some weird format), just say in your readme/credits file that those sprites are SA licensed.

You definitely don't have to license your whole game CC-BY-SA, which wouldn't even make sense because CC licenses aren't even intended for software.
 

AdventureCow

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Hey everyone! After making DestinyQuest: Infinite, we wanted to experiment with a more pure interactive fiction experience. The result of that experiment, Strayed, just went up on Google Play a while ago. So far the downloads... have not exactly been encouraging. Thoughts on how we should proceed?
 

DavidBVal

4 Dimension Games
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Hey everyone! After making DestinyQuest: Infinite, we wanted to experiment with a more pure interactive fiction experience. The result of that experiment, Strayed, just went up on Google Play a while ago. So far the downloads... have not exactly been encouraging. Thoughts on how we should proceed?

I'm not sure, as I haven't been paying much attention to interactive fiction. There seem to be some publishers having success with it, though, so the user base exists. That at least is a good sign.
 

DavidBVal

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Hey, I noticed in your credits section that you use assets licensed as CC-BY and CC-BY-SA.
Regarding CC-BY-SA, have you encountered any issues regarding the commercial nature of the game (from what I gathered, you are required to redistribute those assets and any of your own modifications with the same license, but this doesn't applies the game code, right ?).
I'm asking because I'm approaching the much delayed stage where I have to choose the looks of my game and is becoming painfully clear that drawing my own sprites (even small, 32*32 ones) is not a viable option.

I'm no lawyer, but the way I read it, SA only matters if you adapt (modify) the assets. Say you use a sprite pack and photoshop it slightly. If they're just PNG files in the installed game folder (not DRMed or in some weird format), just say in your readme/credits file that those sprites are SA licensed.

You definitely don't have to license your whole game CC-BY-SA, which wouldn't even make sense because CC licenses aren't even intended for software.

This is how it works, yes.
 

DavidBVal

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Thanks, it turned out to be a fun game for lots of people and I learned much from it. Plus thanks to it I can now focus myself on a much more ambitious project.

I'm trying to publish the update with the game ending, but Google just rejected it due to "extreme graphical violence". Their algorithms at work, I guess, but due to my traumatic experience with their rejections in the past, I know it's better to be patient and appeal. Reuploading got me kicked out of the Play Store once...
 

Guy de Incognito

Ensit Media
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Thanks, it turned out to be a fun game for lots of people and I learned much from it. Plus thanks to it I can now focus myself on a much more ambitious project.

It's an amazing game for players and an inspiration to gamedevs on how much one person can do (with contributors but still). How much time, how many hours do you think you spent on it in total?

I'm trying to publish the update with the game ending, but Google just rejected it due to "extreme graphical violence". Their algorithms at work, I guess

How could an algorithm tell that?
 

DavidBVal

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How much time, how many hours do you think you spent on it in total?

About 5100 in 39 months (stopped counting them exhaustively some time ago). For the first 2 years I still had a full time job and it was quite hard.

The thing I learned is that content creation, especially dialogues, take much more time than development itself. That's probably why so many games end up greatly delayed or cancelled after they honestly believe are at 80% completion.

How could an algorithm tell that?

All this is mere guesswork, but I think they scan all images, using algorithms to find nudity, gore, svastikas, etc. Similarly they search certain words in the text. Maybe one of the assets I recently added was incorrectly identified as that.
 

Guy de Incognito

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About 5100 in 39 months (stopped counting them exhaustively some time ago). For the first 2 years I still had a full time job and it was quite hard.

That's quite an undertaking. I know from experience (I use the pomodoro technique) that I can't focus more than 4 hours a day, so 5100 hours would take me 4 years working full time every day of the week including holidays. You have admirable work discipline.


The thing I learned is that content creation, especially dialogues, take much more time than development itself. That's probably why so many games end up greatly delayed or cancelled after they honestly believe are at 80% completion.

This has been my experience as well. Writing and testing dialogs and quests takes so much more time and effort than pretty much any game mechanic. But in the end, you should make the game you want to make. It's one of the few things small indies (and especially solo developers) have over everyone else.


All this is mere guesswork, but I think they scan all images, using algorithms to find nudity, gore, svastikas, etc.

I didn't even know they do that. Good to know. <mournfully deletes all penises and swastikas from the assets folder>
 

gaussgunner

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That's quite an undertaking. I know from experience (I use the pomodoro technique) that I can't focus more than 4 hours a day, so 5100 hours would take me 4 years working full time every day of the week including holidays. You have admirable work discipline.
The trick is to spend your best 4 hours on coding, debugging, editing, then spend another 4+ hours on easier stuff like testing, ideas, publicity, talking to people, designing your future games...
 

DavidBVal

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That's quite an undertaking. I know from experience (I use the pomodoro technique) that I can't focus more than 4 hours a day, so 5100 hours would take me 4 years working full time every day of the week including holidays. You have admirable work discipline.

Well, I sleep very little and that helps a lot.

For instance this week (finishing update, debugging, testing, etc) I feel "hyperactive" and I am working nonstop. I went to bed at 5am and at 8:30 I was up again, and have worked straight until now (17:00) except for a brief lunch. I can be like that for a week or a bit more, then fall into a lethargic week in which I will just read, spent time with family and nap, maybe play some blobber. In the end, I end up working much more than 8 hours on average but some days I work 14 hours, while others I just work a few (but I always, ALWAYS find at least a couple hours to advance the project, no matter what happened, who died, or how sick you are. Never have a "0% progress" day).

When I was in high school, I couldn't sleep at nights and even had health issues because of this. Finally managed to find a balance: skip sleeping one night in three, that made me sleepy the other two. It worked fine for a few years, but I had to give it up when university+job started.
 
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DavidBVal

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That's quite an undertaking. I know from experience (I use the pomodoro technique) that I can't focus more than 4 hours a day, so 5100 hours would take me 4 years working full time every day of the week including holidays. You have admirable work discipline.
The trick is to spend your best 4 hours on coding, debugging, editing, then spend another 4+ hours on easier stuff like testing, ideas, publicity, talking to people, designing your future games...

Also, shitposting is a great way to relax and vent, the codex is a good resource for development :)
 

DavidBVal

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Bumping this! This will be my "conclusion post" about mobile stores, I don't think I'll keep "updating" as at this point everything has been shared & learned.

Exiled Kingdoms downloads & sales remain very stable even today, 25 months after release. Sometimes sales begin to decline for a few months and I think "OK, it's over". But eventually they get back to "normal". Likewise they sometimes raise into crazy peaks, and by the time I am wearing my monocle and looking at yatch brochures they once more drop down to reality. But it's a pretty decent reality; in total, combining both stores the game has surpassed 1.05 million downloads (95% from Android). Ratings are improving, with the total average at 4.6/5 and around 40K ratings. The revenue is pretty good, but once you take into account the insane hours invested it's just "OK++". On the other hand, if it remains like this for a long time after development slows down, the return of investment will only improve over the years.

Of course it has to decline at some point. But if games like Pixel Dungeon have reached 5 million downloads, why shouldn't I reach a similar number? I might only have reached a 20% of potential downloads. Or less. Time will tell, I guess!

My conclusion to fellow RPG developers that may read this thread: don't write off the mobile market because of the shitty games already there. The low quality in the stores is actually a plus: a minority of players is hungry for decent games without microtransactions, and you'll likely have much less competition than on PC. Sure, 90% of the Play Store users will not like an old school game, but the other 10% is a lot of people. For years due to work I could not play games on my PC, and the scarcity of decent games on the Play Store opened my eyes. Many modern engines allow you to target mobile platforms, so give it some thought; if your game is good it'll probably be worth the effort to release. If anything, it'll be good marketing for your PC game. Hell, a game like M&M would play fantastic on a touchscreen, the only crawler in the Store is "the Quest", and I purchased it at 9 bucks.

Aside from the thread main topic: From now on I'll focus all my efforts on PC development for the next years. I just completed the PC version of EK, which is already "coming soon" on Steam and will be released next week; it's getting a lot of wishlisting so I hope it sells well. Then comes my next RPG which I think I can develop without pressure, crowdfunding or anything of the sort (or so I hope!). However, EK will still take some of my time in the next months (or more) as I want to add a little more content and features; it is the least I can do for the incredible community that supported the game, tested it professionally, wrote a full wiki, and even fully translated it to several languages. More EK development is not something I look forward to after 4 years of looking at the same code, heh. But I can't just abandon the playerbase while it's so crazily active. This is especially true if the Steam launch works well, it'd be good to give the new players a few updates as well. Still, the next game should have 60-70% of my time, and I hope to be writing about it soon.
 
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Ninjerk

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Bumping this! This will be my "conclusion post" about mobile stores, I don't think I'll keep "updating" as at this point everything has been shared & learned.

Exiled Kingdoms downloads & sales remain very stable even today, 25 months after release. Sometimes sales begin to decline for a few months and I think "OK, it's over". But eventually they get back to "normal". Likewise they sometimes raise into crazy peaks, and by the time I am wearing my monocle and looking at yatch brochures they once more drop down to reality. But it's a pretty decent reality; in total, combining both stores the game has surpassed 1.05 million downloads (95% from Android). Ratings are improving, with the total average at 4.6/5 and around 40K ratings. The revenue is pretty good, but once you take into account the insane hours invested it's just "OK++". On the other hand, if it remains like this for a long time after development slows down, the return of investment will only improve over the years.

Of course it has to decline at some point. But if games like Pixel Dungeon have reached 5 million downloads, why shouldn't I reach a similar number? I might only have reached a 20% of potential downloads. Or less. Time will tell, I guess!

My conclusion to fellow RPG developers that may read this thread: don't write off the mobile market because of the shitty games already there. The low quality in the stores is actually a plus: a minority of players is hungry for decent games without microtransactions, and you'll likely have much less competition than on PC. Sure, 90% of the Play Store users will not like an old school game, but the other 10% is a lot of people. For years due to work I could not play games on my PC, and the scarcity of decent games on the Play Store opened my eyes. Many modern engines allow you to target mobile platforms, so give it some thought; if your game is good it'll probably be worth the effort to release. If anything, it'll be good marketing for your PC game. Hell, a game like M&M would play fantastic on a touchscreen, the only crawler in the Store is "the Quest", and I purchased it at 9 bucks.

Aside from the thread main topic: From now on I'll focus all my efforts on PC development for the next years. I just completed the PC version of EK, which is already "coming soon" on Steam and will be released next week; it's getting a lot of wishlisting so I hope it sells well. Then comes my next RPG which I think I can develop without pressure, crowdfunding or anything of the sort (or so I hope!). However, EK will still take some of my time in the next months (or more) as I want to add a little more content and features; it is the least I can do for the incredible community that supported the game, tested it professionally, wrote a full wiki, and even fully translated it to several languages. More EK development is not something I look forward to after 4 years of looking at the same code, heh. But I can't just abandon the playerbase while it's so crazily active. This is especially true if the Steam launch works well, it'd be good to give the new players a few updates as well. Still, the next game should have 60-70% of my time, and I hope to be writing about it soon.
Sequel?
 

DavidBVal

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The new game will take place in the Exiled Kingdoms setting, even if it will be a 3D PC game, party based & turn based, so very different. It's going to be incline to the bone.

A pure sequel similar to EK (actionRPG, 2D, single character) is not something I am considering.
 
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Some quick stats of Android RPGs--


The Quest: 10k downloads / 3.99

Exiled Kingdoms RPG: 1 million downloads

Dungeons of Chaos: 10k downloads / 5.99
Dungeons of Chaos DEMO: 500 downloads

The Shadow Sun: 10k downloads / 0.99

Ananias Mobile Roguelike: 50k downloads
Ananias Fellowship Edition: 1k downloads / 4.99

Lowlander: 500 downloads / 1.99
Lowlander II: Lowerlander: 100 downloads / 2.99

Heroes of Steel RPG Elite: 10k downloads / 3.99
Heroes of Steel RPG: 100k downloads
Templar Battleforce RPG: 10k downloads / 9.99
Star Traders RPG Elite: 100k downloads / 2.99
Star Traders RPG: 500k downloads
Age of Pirates RPG: 100k downloads / 2.99
Age of Pirates RPG Elite: 10k downloads
Cyber Knights RPG Elite: 10k downloads / 2.99
Cyber Knights RPG: 100k downloads


Seems there are some takeaways here--

1. Include keywords in your title like 'RPG'. It seems like generic/descriptive titles with guessable/searchable words fare better.
For example, people would stumble upon Exiled Kingdoms while searching for Path of Exile, which is also a Diablo-style game.
It seems that "Hearts of Balduron: Fantasy RPG" would probably fare better than something like "Spires of Elysia".

2. Most of them have some kind of demo or "free with ads" option.

Lowlander has no searchable keywords in its name and no free demo. I also bought the game and didn't like it so that's probably also a factor in its 500 downloads!

Shadow Sun also seems to have fared badly. Maybe it was priced higher at some point. But it looks like they spent a fair amount of money developing it. Maybe they should have named it Hot Desert RPG: Aladdin's Journey?
 

Merlkir

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I fucking hate Android app naming so much.
BRB, going to download a demo for Battle Royale Monster Dungeoning Adventure.
 

DavidBVal

4 Dimension Games
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On Jun 21st, Google decided to make some changes in their visibility algorithms. The result is most indie games have seen drops in downloads in a range between 70 - 90%. The ones reporting a increase in downloads are very rare.

There has been a lot of noise about it, of course. Just a few examples:

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Vla..._store_changes_visibility_algorithm_rules.php

https://www.xda-developers.com/developers-huge-drop-new-installs-play-store-algorithm-changes/

https://forum.unity.com/threads/sudden-drop-in-number-of-daily-installs-on-google-play-store.537467/

https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/8tgzhj/drastic_drop_in_downloads_in_all_of_my_apps/

I count among the "lucky", with a drop of about 50%. As I had very nice number of downloads, I can still survive. The big question is, assuming Google would never accept a global drop in their store downloads, who has gained the downloads lost by all the indies? My educated guess would be: big publisher, with apps that enforce "engagement", a.k.a skinner box antics. But who knows, maybe it just has been a disaster and it profitted no one, in that case it might still be reverted. Or maybe new apps are getting better positioning now, which even if it harms my interests now, wouldn't be a bad thing. Time will tell, I guess.
 
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:bro:

That tip may turn out to be an absolute lifesaver.

I'm now considering switching over to iOS as my main target, but I have no Apple devices and have done no market research so it's a bit daunting.

I imagine the competition is stiffer on iOS and it's less starved for quality, non-shitware games.
 

Nathaniel3W

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zwanzig_zwoelf I don't know man. Mobile gaming is a big market with a lot of potential customers, but because I'm not developing for mobile it's something I just haven't put much thought into.

Congrats DavidBVal on the Exiled Kingdoms release and much-deserved success. Sorry to hear that Google is screwing with the discovery algorithms. I'm sure they wouldn't do anything that wasn't profitable. I wonder if a simple look at the sales of the current top apps would tell us who is benefiting most.
 

DavidBVal

4 Dimension Games
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I'm now considering switching over to iOS as my main target, but I have no Apple devices and have done no market research so it's a bit daunting.

To put things in perspective for you, App Store has been giving me daily less than 10% of the total mobile downloads, and around 15% of the mobile sales. Now with the decrease on Android downloads, it becomes more relevant but still not comparable to Android. In my case discoverability on iOS is nonexistant, you're found only if someone looks for you or you get lucky with the "similar" games. Or, as I believe is often my case, because an iOS user sees your game on someone's Android and then looks it up. But who knows, that's just my case, very likely I got algorithm-lucky on Play Store somewhere in 2016 but it could have happened on App Store, or on neither.

At least in my experience you can't afford to ignore any of the mobile platforms, nor you really have a reason for it with the development options that you have nowadays.
 

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