In any case, the title reflects my concerns. I’m especially unhappy with the search results. I’m nearly finished with my first app and I’m disheartened to see what little support there is for “under-marketed” games. Flipping through my iphone 4, the app market is severely limited. I’m typically disinterested with the top grossing apps and often find myself trifling through the search bar.
I feel as though, apps for gaming deserve separate categories for separate genres. So a tab should be made like this;
Free Game or Paid Game.
2D or 3D.
Array of Genres. (Platformer, RTS, RPG, Shooter, ETC.).
Top 25 or Search.
This filtering system, I think would greatly benefit our views and the general ecosystem of the App Market. Idk about you, but I’m tired of seeing 3 - 4 Angry birds on the top charts at all times. Perhaps we should start a petition?
Funny… you are tired of seeing Angry Birds on the top charts… but why are you looking at the top charts? That’s no place to discover new stuff. The App Store provides you with a weekly editorialized feature section (categories are inside it) and a Genius section that uses your purchase history to recommend other apps.
As long as you keep looking at the Top 25 sections, you will only be looking at the same stuff that is always selling.
I’m not saying the App Store is perfect, but it’s still darn good compared to the alternative (cough Google Play cough.)
If you are worried about your launch, well… you should be. Don’t expect Apple to sell y our game. IF they consider your game to be high quality enough to feature you, you will get a burst on sales thanks to them but it should be your job to market your app. Without some marketing, even if you got featured you will eventually fade away the following week.
BTW: Marketing does not mean banner ads only, doing some leg work, posting on popular forums (Toucharcade), perhaps going to conventions, etc. Picking a title people are likely to search for may also help a lot.
I agree with you Starsman that we ought to work for what we could potentially earn. I’m not opposed to working, although I fear my game will fall into oblivion. As we all know, app creating takes real work in itself, we all want to earn an income at the end of it.
Although genius helps a little bit, I find it at times to still be irrelevant. Atleast on my iphone, you only get 4 options at a time, which I find to be rather limited.
As far as the featured categories, (What’s hot, new and noteworthy, amazing on iphone 5), They’re good and belong, although I have a problem with them too, as I feel they’re too unspecific. I would like to see games categorized by genre. That way when I search for key terms, I know exactly what I’m getting into. This would also provide a Top charts for every category, alongside an already existing Top Charts. (Which then would serve as an overall).
True, categories do exist, although I find it hard to argue with specification. I think that would be a step forward.
(Thanks for your input though, I’ll be sure to take your marketing steps).
The good news is that word of mouth makes up for more then 50% of discoverability, so I think if you game is good enough to get featured and good enough to make people “love it” then you are set. Meaning make your game as good as it can be.
Thank you AiursRage. I found that article insightful and the graph below interesting.
Upon further investigation, I did find a categories list under featured, (Roleplaying, Puzzle, Racing, Sports, Strategy) are all good steps. I’m sorry I wasn’t informed of this before I posted Starsman. It would be very nice to see this drop down list in the search tab. I think it would have been more obvious to me then. Perhaps “Shooters, MORPG, 2D, 3D, Fighting” will make the list later.
Given the randomness of new releases it’s not really viable to have a Featured section for every single game or app category. Think of the Featured section as a weekly newsletter people can opt to look at.
Inside Featured, at the upper left there is a category button. Games have an extensive list of sub-categories (Action, Adventure, Arcade, Board, Card, Casino, Dice, Educational, Family, Kids, Music, Puzzle, Racing, Role Playing, Simulation, Sports, Strategy, Trivia and Word.*) You pick what category your app falls under, not apple.
That is one thing I agree Apple should make more visible. Maybe if they took away the Updates button and somehow moved App Updates to the notification center…
*I’ll heavily agree I would love to see a few extra cats like Top-Down Shooter and First Person Shooters, both are well enough represented to deserve their own cats
I think the new and noteworthy section should be refreshed more often. Some games are there for almost 3 weeks or so. So there is no space left for my game
Most of what you are asking for is already there. Every category has top paid/free games and new releases. You can filter then sort or sort then filter. And the search is generally pretty effective, if you want to search for a category, just add that category name your query. It won’t limit to just that category, but ones that match both will be higher on the list.
2D/3D is really a valueless distinction. It isn’t a category of games or apps. And it says nothing of any importance about the game and it is not a clear descriptor. It is too vague, many games are both. Does 2d/3d refer to visual style? Or game play? Or engine? What is a side scroller that is rendered using 3d models? Or a flying game that plays in a 3d world but uses cartoon style flat graphics? They are just too non-specific to be a valuable filter.
Genres suffer from the same problem as then can be overly vague and a single game can have multiple ones. What exactly is a “Shooter”? many games have shooting of some sort. FPS? Shooting deer? Target shooting? Shooting cannons from a ship? The same with Platformer/MMO/RTS/etc, these are descriptions of mechanics or features of a game not a type of game. (RPG does describe general type of game, and it is a category on the app store).
The problem is that if you get to specific and try to categorize every aspect of games, you run into the problem of many games fit into several categories. And then if you allow for multiple categories, it loses value as it doesn’t serve the purpose of actually narrowing the results. Categories should be broad and ideally formed in a way that any game/app will fall primarily into only one.
Though really the solution is very simple. If you are looking for a 3D Shooter for example, just type it in the search bar. As a developer, ensure your keywords/description has all the relevant terms that a player may be looking for.
I realize that as a developer, we all want our games to be found, but remember that there are tens of thousands of other developers that want exactly the same. Thousands of categories or many nested sub-categories doesn’t solve the problem, it just shifts the problem to a different place. The structure isn’t designed for developers to have their games discovered, it is built for players to find the games they want. Players are the important part here, and they aren’t looking for your game, they are looking for their game.
You have to understand that the AppStore is designed for the common user, not the common developer. When people go to the store, they’re typically looking for games like Angry Birds (because that’s the one they’ve heard all about). The AppStore makes it very easy to find exactly what they’re most likely looking for.
While, as an indie developer, I would love to see my game on the front page of the store, there’s no reason for it and, to most users, it would be unintuitive and annoying if it was. “I just want to find Star Wars Angry Birds, dammit!” (awesome game, btw)
That is pretty much what I was trying to say, but you said it much more clear and concise,
Really if you want to to have your game on the front page it is easy, just make an amazing, polished, incredible game that people will love. Thats all there is to it.
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Yea, must say I was skeptical about SW angry birds, till I played it. Who would guess that lightsabers would be so much fun in AB.
On a personal level, I am really looking forward to the future of SW gaming.
I was concerned that Rovio just got lucky with Angry Birds, and that they would be a one-hit-wonder. I mean really, Amazing Alex was amazingly awful. But after Bad Piggies, all the Angry Birds spinoffs, and now Star Wars, they really deserve their success.
They do seem to have categories in the featured such as “secret agent” or “retro”. Which I guess would be invite only (because you cant put it under retro category). Maybe if they had sub-categories for each genre. So instead of just having sports have sports->golf, sports->soccer, sports->football etc. When you only have 10 or so categories with over 700k apps its no good.
