Going broke with success : how an app with 200 000 downloads failed to convert

Mells · August 2012

"We might need to add advertisements to supplement income, or dream up something completely different. We really want to stick to the ‘free and pay 2.99 to unlock’ model, but if only .5% of users buy our game, we’re going to have to figure something else out. It’s very malleable at this point. Perhaps we’re giving too much away for free, it’s really hard to say until we see more data.”

Read more

atilim · August 2012

It was an really interesting read. Thanks Mells.

deniz · August 2012

Interesting. I just read the story and thought maybe I should post here and saw this post.
Indie or not, financials are really important if you want to keep going.

" It took me a few minutes to figure out how to pay for the game, and I was specifically looking for the menu. There’s nothing shocking about the low amount of paid sales; the value proposition is never made explicit. There was an update available for the game, and after applying it, an “unlock the full game” message was added under the main logo."

techdojo · August 2012

Really does prove - you have to make it easy for people to give you money.

If I had produced that game I'd have made it very personal very quickly. ie. put in a series of "nag" screens at strategic points, making it very clear that this was the work of two talented, honest and ethical guys who are looking to earn their living from the sales of this game... etc"

Connect with the player on a personal level and make it easy for them to reward you - ie put a big "UNLOCK NOW" button slap bang in the middle of the front screen and then replace that with a big "THANK YOU" medal when they have completed their purchase.

I think they tried too hard to NOT be the same as all the other IAP panhandlers - It's crazy but a suspect with a few little changes to the UI the conversion figures would be an order of magnitude different.

Just my $0.02

OZApps · August 2012

@techdojo, that's a start, - $0.02

Just need a billion more of those. My Bank Details are : ....

techdojo · August 2012

@OZApp's and there's the problem - you made it too hard for me to send you $0.02 because you didn't actually post your bank details - ergo you have no "cents"!

OZApps · August 2012

Aw... that was not cent-sible, now this is 'non-cents'. However none of us are a prince from a war ridden country wanting to transfer our millions

Mells · August 2012

Another article :

Some Company in China stole my game

Short background: several people, along with myself, started a small company, Playsaurus. We spent the past ~2 years without pay working to create this game. It's called Cloudstone. It's kind of like Diablo, but with brighter colors, and in Flash. It hasn't made much money yet, and we're still working on it to try to improve things and to bring it to more audiences.
About a week ago, we discovered our game was on a Chinese network. You need an account on that site play it. But don't give those a****les any money!
Here are some screenshots to show the similarities. The images on the left are from our game, and the images on the right are from "their" game.

{ Read more }
See a comparison between the original and the copy

hgvyas123 · August 2012

@Mells

read more link is not working

Mells · August 2012

@hgvyas123 That was intentional : "pay to unlock" kind of thing

Link corrected

hgvyas123 · August 2012

@Mells

ohh than thanks for giving me the promo code

OZApps · August 2012

Isn't that similar to the issue between Zynga and Nimblebits with the TinyTower game. It is a shame when companies rip off other apps and even worse and strangely funny when they actually make more money than the original. Unfortunately that is how things are.

It does kill a lot of productivity and smaller studios/Indies that work hard on creating something.

Mells · August 2012

@ozapps
I don't think that this is totally similar.
In the case of Tiny tower it seems that Zynga copied the idea (and that's why it's a grey area) and the execution. it seems that an idea can't be protected (tetris clones).
In the case above, it seems that the people that copied the game also ripped the assets (gfx, maybe music and texts?) that are protected by intellectual property without a doubt.

techdojo · August 2012

Yeah and the reality is - good luck in going after them, you've not got a cat in hell's chance of taking some dogdy Chinese company to task and getting anything out of it.

Mells · August 2012

@techdojo in the comments of the article that I have posted some people with a legal background (well, that's what they say) give their opinion on this. the consensus -> "can't do anything, will cost an arm and you will lose."

techdojo · August 2012

Yeah the reality is often quite sobering when this happens - the important thing is not let it mess with your head too much and try and be philosophical about it

OZApps · August 2012

@techdojo in the comments of the article that I have posted some people with a legal background (well, that's what they say) give their opinion on this. the consensus -> "can't do anything, will cost an arm and you will lose."

Moral of the story : If you are a larger company or have deep pockets, rip the small ones, they cannot come after you or cannot compete for a long time.

If you dig deep there are other cases where someone got an app commissioned and near the completion, the dev company refused to give the app or the code and then ... yes.. surprise...Released the app with the assets, etc as their own. You get all sorts.

Mells · August 2012

@OZapps

Moral of the story : If you are a larger company or have deep pockets, rip the small ones, they cannot come after you or cannot compete for a long time.

Yes, but that's not new and not limited to games right?
Also, we should make a wall between what's illegal and what is not (not what we consider moral or not). Until proven wrong, Zynga wasn't judged guilty right?
So even if it's not good for my karma, I could take an unknown game from an indie with no resources, invest in marketing and distribution channels and make it available to a lot of people. Even if I didn't change the game much (but still produced my own assets), while I wouldn't add value to the game itself, the value would be in making it available to a large audience.
That's why we have so many platformers on the market that look similar (even look Super Mario Bros and Awesome Land) or endless runners, puzzle games with physics, angry birds like, etc... and this is legal.

(Still karma plays a part of the game, look the current trends around Zynga -> it has become a trend to trash it).

If you dig deep there are other cases where someone got an app commissioned and near the completion, the dev company refused to give the app or the code and then ... yes.. surprise...Released the app with the assets, etc as their own. You get all sorts.

But this case is more easily defendable (depending where the company that stoled is located) : ripping assets is illegal.
As a copyright owner, just make sure to always protect your work (there are many ways, even cheap) and make people sign a lot of papers.

techdojo · August 2012

Personally I think the best thing any one developer can do is just do the best THEY can do, have your own personal code of conduct / ethics regardless of any laws etc - just do the right thing (we all *know* what that is) and then we can start to clean up the world, one backyard at a time.

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Going broke with success : how an app with 200 000 downloads failed to convert

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Some Company in China stole my game

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Going broke with success : how an app with 200 000 downloads failed to convert

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Some Company in China stole my game