How my game achieved success without promotion

News & General Discussion
1

Abstract
This post is intended to be inspiring for beginner developers who wonder whether they can achieve success with their games, despite not having any promotion budgets, nor contacts in the gaming media, nor any other kind of helpful resource, except for their own skills, abilities, and vision.

Game

  • “Turboprop Flight Simulator 3D”;
  • Android game (iOS and PC versions planned for later in the future);
  • Free with only optional ads (no mandatory ads, and no purchases);
  • Ads provided via UnityAds, AdMob, and Chartboost (AdMob was added last but it’s now the most important of the three);
  • Released on April 19th 2017 on Google Play Store;
  • Created in a total of about 14 months (not continuous time) by solo developer;
  • Updated for an additional 7 months after release (so far);
  • Made with no budget and no external assets (except an old version of NGUI);
  • No promotion (almost, see “Brief history” below);
  • 2.8 million downloads (so far);
  • 4.6 stars rating on Google Play Store;
  • More than 10,000 dollars generated (So far. Edit: note that the game isn’t optimized for maximum revenue; for example: if it would have mandatory ads after every mission, then the revenue would almost quadruple).

Developer

  • “AXgamesoft”, but actually just “Alex”;
  • Solo developer;
  • Fits almost every extreme geek stereotype (introvert, isolated, reclusive, unsociable);
  • Perfectionist, but lazy;
  • Almost no social media presence: never active on the personal Facebook page, no Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest accounts but never used them at all, no Snapchat, not anything else…;
  • No money when started making the game;
  • Supported development with freelancing projects.

Brief history
I started working at my game in 2015, in an on-and-off fashion, in the down-time between the freelancing projects that I took to earn my living. The project suffered from scope-creep and feature-creep, to the point that I had to cut a lot of it just to be able to launch it. The released game was a severely downgraded version of what I initially intended to make, and it wasn’t in a finalized state at the release time (and it’s still not finished today either).

After I released the open beta, I tried contacting “influencers”, mainly online publications and YouTube game reviewers, but I had no success.

After production release, I tried to promote the game with Facebook ads. So, I tried an ad campaign for 5 Euros which ran for 2 days, and although it reached almost 3000 people and did cause a noticeable “bump” in the number of downloads, it didn’t lead to a sustained increase in numbers, and as soon as the campaign expired, so did that “bump”. Overall it wasn’t worth it at all, but it was just 5 Euros that I lost and not 500. After that, I gave up on the promotion attempts.

In the first month after production release, the game didn’t received much attention, and its install rates were rather pathetic, but were actually growing slowly and exponentially. On average, in the first week it would get like 12 downloads a day, then the next week 30 / day, then 90 / day, then 500 / day, so eventually it reached a sustained average of about 12,000 / day (with a one-time maximum of 30,459 / day).

The “SECRET” for success
The saying “If you build it they will come” is actually true, with one very important condition: if the thing that you build is good enough to compel the people who stumble upon it to tell others about it. The secret to release a successful product or service is to take advantage of the people’s innate impulse to share information about the things that they consider amazing. Particularized to game development, this means that you have to release games which have HIGH PRODUCTION VALUES, or that are addictive, or both. Since the “addictive” factor is an illusive hit-and-miss thing, it’s wiser to focus on high quality instead of trying to create the next “Tetris”, or the next “Flappy Bird”.

What I did right (and you should do too)

  • Made a high quality game (for a mobile game within its category);
  • Made a game that looks good in screenshots;
  • Released it after a reasonable amount of development time;
  • Made a proper store listing page on the Google Play Store (including a little ASO);
  • Updated it many times after release (and I still am);
  • Tried to keep the in-game “annoyances” to a minimum (kept ads to optional only, and improved the controls many times in the updates);
  • Always kept in mind that the success of my game depends on impressing the users sufficiently so that they feel compelled to tell others about it, effectively doing the promotion for me;
  • Aimed for as high a rating on the Google Play Store as possible. This is more important than you might think, because I noticed that when my game reached a rating of 4.6, its download rate increased immediately (the very next day) with about 25-30% more than what it was when the rating was “just” 4.5.

What I did wrong (and you should avoid)

  • Scope-creep and feature-creep;
  • Tried to promote a free game with ads. Although, if you have a paid game, then it might be worth it or even necessary to promote it with ads.

What I didn’t do (but you should if you know how)

  • Alpha and beta-testing with users that you know, trust, and who can explain in great details the bugs and the ways to reproduce them;
  • Translate the game in other languages than English (but make sure to have English);
  • Successfully contact “influencers”;
  • Create and maintain a community before and after release (unless you are as unsociable as I am, in which case just forget about it).

What you shouldn’t do

  • Don’t make a low quality game;
  • Don’t make a game which doesn’t look good in screenshots;
  • Don’t show ads before the very first level / mission, nor in the midst of a level / mission (this is guaranteed to generate rage-quitters);
  • Don’t make a game that relies on multiplayer unless you know for sure that many people will like it enough to sustain the online mode;
  • Don’t release a simplistic game and expect it to become a success, because you might get demoralized by its (predictable) failure;
  • Don’t wait until your game is perfect and fully completed, because you will never get there and you’ll spend years and decades tweaking it. Release the game as soon as it’s good enough, and don’t worry if it’s unfinished, because everyone expects more to come in the updates.

What to expect if your game becomes successful

  • Users pestering you with questions about when the update is coming;
  • Users pestering you to implement their ideas in the game;
  • A few users who actually like your game blackmailing you with 1 star ratings unless you deal with their pet-peeves;
  • A few users asking you to release a paid version or to add in-app purchases;
  • Various individuals and companies contacting you to propose partnership (refuse unless it’s Google or some other major name);
  • Various unknown companies contacting you with requests to add their “shady” plugins in your game (refuse always, especially if they promise amazing rewards);
  • If you haven’t implemented AdMob, you can expect a representative from Google to contact you and convince you to use AdMob (which I did eventually);
  • If you’re a lazy person, discover that you become even lazier once you have a comfortable passive income, and that your plans for future updates and games take longer and longer to complete. So lazy in fact, that you begin procrastinating by writing posts about how to release a successful game, instead of finalizing your game’s update which is long overdue.

[Update]
A few words about ASO (App Store Optimization)
After this post, a few users have pointed that there are games which have high production values, yet haven’t achieved success, and an example of such a game has been shown to me. That game, although being of high quality, seems to suffer from insufficent exposure on the play store. So this section contains some tips about how to make your game more visible on the stores:

  • Give the game a good name. On Google Play Store (and most likley also on the App Store and Steam) the name is very important because the keywords extracted from it are the basis of the search and discovery process. Use a name that includes references to your game’s type or category. Note: you might have to sacrifice the name’s simplicity in favor of having the right keywords in it;
  • Create a good icon for your game. The icon is the first (and possibly the last thing) that a potential user will see, so it’s worth investing some time and effort to make it right. The icon must be attractive, yet simple enough so that it’s easy for the brain to make sense of it, even if it’s exposed to the icon’s image for just a fraction of a second (as is the case when browsing through the myriad of games on the store). Don’t make overcomplicated icons, because they mght be impossible to be deciphered and analysed by a “busy brain” and will instead be interpreted as “noise” and ignored. Also, pay attention to the color pallette that you’re using in the icon (and in the game in general): some color combinations are harmonious, while other combinations are just atrocious;
  • Write a good description. On Google Play Store, the game’s description is the second most important source of keywords (after the game’s name). Make sure to have a high ratio of useful keywords relative to the total number of words in the description. By “useful keywords” I’m referring to the ones that are relevant for your game’s type. Example: if you’re making a platformer, then the keywords you might want to have are “run”, “jump”, “platform”, “platformer”, “adventure”, “quest”, “treasure”, “coins”, “gold”, “monsters”, etc… Although repeating some of those keywords in the description’s text is a good idea, the common wisdom for ASO is to not repeat any of them for more than 4 or 5 times, because the search engines might add penalties for over-repetition of the same keywords;
  • And, of course, add plenty of good looking screenshots and a trailer.
55 Likes
How to get people to install your game?
2

Thanks for this great post. :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

Excellent write up. I had a similar experience with facebook and twitter ads for a paid game on Steam. $300 down the drain.

2 Likes
4

this.

9 Likes
5

Please don’t take this as knocking your achievement. It looks like you’re heading in a great direction and you’ve already achieved a bunch of stuff that many don’t, plus you’re sharing what you’ve learned from it which is awesome.

Without further context, the income figure and duration you’ve quoted aren’t what would be considered “comfortable” in my part of the world. You’d still want at least part time work or some other kind of income or support. And depending on your perspective and goals, you might also need to consider the 14 months of dev time you put in.

Obviously this is highly context sensitive, though. There are places where you can probably live quite comfortably off that figure, there are plenty of reasons you might be inclined to discount the 14 development months, and “success” doesn’t have to be measured in dollars alone.

The reason I raise it is that I’ve heard many stories of people getting into games to make money based on success stories without realising the realities behind the numbers. Something which is a true success for one person might not be workable for another.

8 Likes
6

Nice text and motivational indeed :slight_smile: Pair promotion does not guarantee that your app will get traction even if its a bad app. What works, is that the app must be good in order to work, which is achievable (you as example) even without paid promotion.
I’ll just add that forum showcase, youtube videos, youtube “lets play” videos, is mostly free, but it could be a powerful promotion.

Anyway, nice to see a good game getting a good way throughout the dense mobile market. Keep it up!

2 Likes
7

Regarding income:

It doesn’t actually matter because people can’t actually use any of the data the OP provided unless also doing a flight sim. It’s a great story and the findings hold true with my own experiences (make something half decent and they will come) but the income side doesn’t make sense unless also making a flight sim for niche flight sim buffs on mobile. It’s pretty specific and different niches have wildly different income potential.

Regarding promotion and exposure:

Still, the advice given is excellent for any niche, but bear in mind flight sims are a very strong niche and people DO actively seek them out - it doesn’t have any real competition vs for example, the FPS or platformer genres.

Making a platform or FPS (again, just a popular example), people would not be actively seeking out your game with any real desperation because they have an endless variety of platformers and FPS games placed in front of them. This is where promotion will help, and I don’t mean advertising.

I would say that the advice is pretty specific to the kind of game that was made, and people need to understand what that means.

The take away though? Make something good.

12 Likes
8

You actually make some good points which I will address below.

Currently, 7 months after release, the monthly passive income from my game would put me in the lower middle-class in the US (also keep in mind that I haven’t yet released the iOS version, which I expect it to almost double the revenue). As I’m from Eastern Europe, the current income is quite comfortable for me. But the only thing that a person from North America (for example) would have to do more than I did, so as to reach higher middle-class levels of passive income with a game like mine, would be to release the game for Android and iOS simultaneously. Because of this, I think that the advices from my original post are mostly valid even for developers from countries with high costs of living (maybe except Monaco, Emirates, and such).

As for the initial 14 months of development (+ updates time), the cost for those will likely be fully covered in time by the total revenue generated with the current game and the next ones which will be built based on the same engine / framework created in that development period.

1 Like
9

2.8 million downloads that is very impressive! I was thinking at that many downloads you would have way more than $10000 dollars.

10

The main reason is because I set ads to be optional only (all ads are rewarding in-game currency), and no in-app purchases. For example, yesterday (according to analytics) my game was started for a total of almost 160,000 times, but only had 51,000 ad impressions. So, you can imagine that if I had one ad impression after every mission, then the number would be somewhere around 200,000 impressions at least, and the revenue proportionally higher. In future games I’ll have to rethink this and find a better solution that produces a higher revenue, but at the same time I don’t wish to degrade the quality of my game(s) by bombarding the users with unsolicitated ads.

6 Likes
11

Congratulations! Making 10k USD in around 2 months is definitely a good result for a solo developer.

It seem to me that you don’t know why you are successful. “Make a high quality game” is not an advice. It’s common sense. It looks to me that you got lucky with a very niche, unique game. You made a mobile flight-sim. I’ve never heard about many such games. Hell, even on Steam there are almost no flight-sims, and for a good reason: they don’t sell and are hard to make.

12

Thank you. It is very motivating and a excellent write up as all the above points I fall into and can relate having no links and not into social media etc lol hence no one knows if i create something.

1 Like
13

Interesting post-mortem, thanks for taking the time to write the post.

1 Like
14

This is survivor bias: Your game made it past the ‘selection process’ and you attribute that to factors such as production quality without looking at data of the entire pool (i.e. the games that didn’t ‘survive’).

The author of flappy birds could just as easily say that the secret to success is a frustrating game with low production value.

Just because you happened to build something successful without promoting it does not mean its a general strategy for success. The stores are littered with unsuccessful games with high production values.

All that aside, congrats on making something that people like and thanks for sharing your story.

7 Likes
15

A very frank observation, but useful, I think.

When somebody succeeds at something, us onlookers tend to think, we’ll they knew what they were doing.

Clearly OP knows how to make a good game, and clearly from this write up he is very intelligent and good at self-analyzing. And this doesn’t mean that any of his conclusions are in fact wrong – but as always, there is such a myriad of factors contributing to his success it is really almost impossible to boil it down to just a few key points.

Nonetheless, excellent thread, both as a source of inspiration and good, useful takeaways.

3 Likes
16

It’s possible that my analysis is not entirely accurate since the sample data only includes my own game and my own experience. I wish I could have all the data, so as to be able to extract the exact factors which contribute to success (or failure).

Can you please show me an example of such a game on Google Play Store: free game, with high production values, which was released at least 6 months ago, and didn’t achieved at least 500,000 downloads yet. Further restrictions: that game must not be one that crashes a lot, nor one that has atrocious controls, nor one that overwhelms the player with ads, nor one that is essentially just a short free demo requiring in-app purchases to continue playing, because all of these make the players unwilling to recommend such a game to others, thus almost ensuring failure. I’m really curios to see a free game that has all what is needed to succeed, and yet it failed, because in my browsing on Google Play I have yet to encounter such a game, although I found many that had 1M+ downloads while being kinda meh.

1 Like
17

If that’s the case then you must have generated considerably more than $10,000. I live in a rural part of Virginia and the rent here can easily approach $1,000 per month and in the nearby cities the rent will always be above that mark unless you manage to qualify for low income housing.

Of course there are some exceptionally cheap places to live but of the ones I’m familiar with none of them have Internet.

4 Likes
18

It’s more but not a lot more.
Also I should make it clearer: out of the 7 months since release, just the past 3 months account for the most of the total earnings, as the monthly income has been increasing steadily as my game’s user base increases. So, don’t think that in all the months since release, the earnings have been at the level I mentioned in that quote. In the first month the earnings were almost zero, in the next three months they were so-so, then it begun pulling strongly.

Yeah, those costs make things much harder for an independent developer. I don’t know if I could have sustained my game’s development with freelancer projects if I had such high expenses.

19

Firstly your game is a critical success in terms of its downloads/ratings but commercial success only based on your very low threshold.

A good definition of commercial success is one of the criteria that Indie Fund use as part of their investment thesis: “Do we think the game will make enough money so we can recoup our investment and the developer can make their next game without any outside funding?”

14 months + another 14 months to make the next game. For me with a family of 6 in Melbourne thats 250k minimum (and that would involve changing my lifestyle significantly e.g. moving the kids out of private schools, etc ).

Now I think with the high ratings and number of downloads a good monetisation strategy that doesn’t sacrifice your ratings could easily make you 250k+. So I think your game WILL be a commercial success, but at this stage by many peoples criteria it is not.

As to your challenge, this was easy, took me 30 seconds to find this:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.FrozenBots.Maxim

  • 4+ star rating
  • Under 500k Downloads
  • No complaints of crashing.
  • Over a year old.
  • Free with No ads (or at least so few that I didn’t see one in ten minutes of play).
  • Higher production quality (graphics/UI at least) than Turboprop.
  • Heaps of content.
  • Controls feel really good which is quite hard for platformer on mobile.

But there are literally hundreds. Type in any generic name/genre/etc, set threshold to 4 stars, and scroll down a few pages. Click games that have names and icons that look like the publisher cares. About 1 in 5 will be games quality indie games, with no reports of crashes, few ads, low downloads, etc.

And don’t forget the long tail, there are hundreds of thousands of games with under a thousand downloads. They aren’t all bad.

EDIT:

Production quality is one factor which can help in building a successful game. However it’s also a factor that has a significant cost (it can take a lot more money and/or time to build a high quality game), and thus needs to be treated with some caution. On the other hand there’s more to life than money, and producing a high quality game is typically more satisfying in the long run.

In the end I dispute your premise that high production quality is either mandatory or sufficient to achieving commercial success. Its not mandatory because obviously there are lot of crappy games making money, and not sufficient because as per above there are a lot of quality games not making money.

But its pointless to keep arguing. I’ve made my point, you are welcome to promote your own :slight_smile:

3 Likes
20

Yeah, when I meant successful, I was referring primarily at downloads and ratings.
As for commercial success, as I mentioned in other replies and as you point out, some tweaks to the monetisation strategy would easily make it a commercial success too, according to higher standards.

Yeah, I looked at that game, and indeed it seems to be high quality, yet not successful enough, which is a bit strange for me, and seems to question my assumptions.
I did found a few things wrong with the game you exemplified, and while I don’t know if they completely explain its lack of success, they almost certainly contribute to it:

  • The game’s name “Maxim the robot” doesn’t include any reference to the type of game that it is, which harms its search ranking and organic discovery on the stores. Better names would have been: “Maxim the jumping robot”, or “Maxim the Robot: Run & Jump”, or something similar which includes references to the game’s type. And the greatest name would have been “MARIO the Robot: Run & Jump”;

  • The game’s icon is not good. To be clear, it looks great, its color palette is very attractive, but its problem is that is indecipherable for a “busy” brain. When one scrolls through the huge listing of platformer games, the brain is innundated with imagery which have to be quickly analysed and categorized. Images that are unclear get treated as noise and ignored. The icon for “Maxim the robot” is essentially just a colorful noise for a “busy” brain and this harms its organic discovery also;

  • The game has a “Family Friendly” badge. This is a bonus for a parent looking for a safe game for their child, but it’s a malus for a 12 year old kid, to whom the “Family Friendly” thing just means “BOOORING”. And not only that badge is the problem, but I played the game for a bit and it oozes “Family Friendly” in the graphics style and especially the music. I’m not sure what the target demographic for the platformer genre is, but a “too safe” style might be more repellent than attractive;

  • The game’s store listing isn’t properly optimized for keywords. The ratio between useful keywords and total word count seems small. By “useful keywords” I’m refering to the ones assciated with platformer games: “run”, “jump”, “explore”, “discover”, “adventure”, “treasure”, “monsters”, “challenges”, etc…;

  • The game doens’t rank at all when searching for “Mario-like games”. Other games from the same category manage to rank for that by including in their title or description the “Super” keyword, which in the search engine links to “Super-Mario”;

  • The game is a bit large at 78 MB package and 145 MB installed. This is probably a small factor (which is why I placed it last on this list), but it is a factor. My own game is half that size and yet I keep getting users who tell me that they had to uninstall my game to make room on their devices and then they reinstall it at a later date (FYI: they tend to mention this in the context of losing their progress because my game doesn’t have cloud saving).

So, yes there are other factors than quality at play and I did mentioned the ones related to store listing in the original post, but I should have probably emphasized them more.

3 Likes