So I just launched my new game this weekend on the Google Play Store (Pretty much my first “real” game I’ve ever published). I’ve been looking for reviewers who review mobile games, and it seems like the vast majority of them have iOS or Apple or something along those lines in the name, and specialise only in iOS games.
Digging deeper, it seems like a lot of people online say iOS is where the money is at. Now, my game is running strictly on a freemium model, so theres nothing to buy in my game anyway, but do people who play on iOS watch more ads too?
I’m just noticing that over this weekend, we haven’t exactly received nearly as many downloads as I was hoping we would…well, not even close really. and we’ve made literally no money from ads so far.
I guess what I’m wondering about is the fact that the Apple license costs 4 times more than the Google Developer license, is it worth 4 times more downloads and money and such? As it is, I’m not currently making money on Android, so I’m not sure if the game will pay for itself there, if I spend another $100 on an iOS release, am I just dumping money out the window or will I actually have a better chance of making money that way?
How many players and/or impressions (or whatever the marketing term is for # of displayed ads) do you need to make a profit? You’d have to know the answer to that before you could determine whether the $100/yr iOS cost is worth it to you. Having good analytics on your Android app would go a long way to helping you figure this out.
That said, $100/yr is nothing in the grand scheme of things with regards to game development. I think a more important question for you is to determine if the additional time investment you’ll have to make to port to iOS and comply with their stricter guidelines will be worth the potential for a larger install base.
If the game we’re talking about is Ball on a Stick, I’m not sure what you should expect. Judging only from your 1:47 long launch trailer (of which only 10 seconds is the game itself), I’d be very surprised to learn that porting to iOS caused a sudden spike in profitability.
With ads, you’re relying on the long-term exposure. You need people coming back day after day to keep cramming ads in their face. Your gameplay model might fit this well (assuming you show an ad after every failed attempt), but there needs to be an incentive to want to keep playing, and to be perfectly frank, I’m not sure this exists with Ball on a Stick. It seems to be the kind of game you play for a bit and then move on from (total assumption, mind you, not having played it).
If your game won’t need much porting/fixing/compliance adjustment to fit on iOS, and you can spare the $100, I say go for it. But if money’s tight and you need to be sure you’ll get a return on your investment, I’d think twice.
Well maybe that’s the reason your revenue is zero. People can spam apps for almost free and forget them no matter if they ever earn anything. With iOS people need at least to have income to cover the yearly free unless doing it as a hobby or for fun.
What is this game you’re talking about? Can we have a link?
I just checked out your Ball on a stick game and it surely can’t be your first real game, that you talk about, because it looks like something you throw together in a day.
Also idk what you did with it but you made it incompatible with my device, so I couldn’t try it.
Well, given the diasterously few downloads we have, we haven’t really needed sophisticated anaylitics yet to know how many people have downloaded the game, though very few of them have uninstalled it, which I feel like is probably a good thing.
I mean, maybe it’s just because the game has only been out for 3 days, but still, it feels like more people should have installed it than that. But like I said, this is the first thing I’ve ever really published
Well, given how ludicrously simple the game is, I feel like porting would be trivial, unless theres something about how iOS works that I don’t know about that would make it hard. It’s just that I’m broke and so is my friend, so spending 100 if we can’t guarentee we are gonna make it back seems like something we should think twice about. I was asking here to see what other peoples experience was with this, given the other things I’ve read online
The reason I did the trailer like that is because I just loved the old 90s style ridiculous live action trailer, and I wanted ours to be different and to stand out a little, because quite frankly that 10 seconds is pretty much all the gameplay summed up, so a trailer of just that would have been boring. I just kinda wanted to have fun with it. Theres no real way to make this kind of gameplay look exciting with just gameplay alone, so we did what they used to do with old fashioned 2D games and made the trailer exciting in a different way
Well, with everyone I tested it with, they seemed to enjoy it and played for a while. And every review we’ve gotten from people was positive. Personally I find the game relaxing. I’m not sure how well that translates to a broader audience, but I was hoping the fact that it wasn’t just another match 3 clone might help it stand out
I think maybe a little background on this project is nessessary.
Yeah, I probably could have done this project realistically in a week. But my friend wants to make games just like I do, but had never made a game in Unity before, and I wanted to teach her with the most simplistic game humanly possible. Combine that with the fact that she works a lot, and it took us a while, because she would have to relearn things, and she didn’t always have a lot of time to put work in. So thats what made it take a long time. In reality it probably only was about 7-10 days of work, but spread over like 3 months.
Like, I’m not trying to make a million dollars here, I just wanted something that could at the very least pay for itself, and maybe make us a few bucks on the side if it did OK. We clearly weren’t going for our magnum opus here, just something to learn from, to build my friend’s confidence, and I thought maybe it would have that Flappy Bird type of appeal of something deceptively simple that could be amusing
First, let me back up and congratulate you on finishing and publishing a game. That’s no small achievement.
The issue I see you running into on iOS is less about the actual difficulty of porting and more about getting through Apple’s review process. I had no trouble with releasing my game (other than the long wait times between submission and when I’d hear back), but the one thing that jumps out at me (and I mean no offense!) is what could be perceived as a lack of quality. Apple tends to be pretty inconsistent with this guideline, but I see there being a strong chance they’d reject it for either the basic style graphics or even the gameplay.
If it’s graphics, no big deal. Just update the art to be a bit fancier and you’re good to go. But if they feel the gameplay itself is not representative of a quality iOS title, you’re kinda screwed. One way you can try to demonstrate high quality is by integrating Game Center achievements and leaderboards and stuff (which is, of course, an additional time consideration).
I released my game for free with zero monetization, so I can’t give you any numbers to compare to. Based on what I see, though, even if I was making a few pennies every time someone downloaded and played the game, I wouldn’t have even come close to breaking even.
I recommend you call this a win and move on to your next game. With that one, consider charging 99 cents or something, and if it seems to be selling, port to iOS.
Thanks, I think I understand what everyone talks about when they talk about the difference between making a game and shipping a game.
Well, I looked at their guidelines while we were working on the game, and strictly speaking the game does comply with pretty much every example they give of something good to do. Yeah, it doesn’t look like every other game on the store, but at least it’s consistant within it’s own aesthetic. The code is also pretty solid and bug free, granted thats because it’s built like an old army jeep, just simple enough to be functional.
We actually did try to bring in Google Play Game Services, but we couldn’t get it to work and it ended up breaking the game for a while. I brought in one of my friends who is a genius programmer to look at it and he couldn’t figure out the problem either, and I’ve never seen a problem stump him before. That process made the game take twice as long to finish. And it’s a shame, because I really did want a leaderboard for the game.
Well, we tried to build the game on the Crossy Road model of reward ads, because to me that feels like the best way to do ads. In general I don’t even really like the ad model, I just thought it would be insane to sell a game that was this simple. I figured if those guys could make like 10 million in 3 months, we could at the very least make 25
Oh man, this was my last mobile game. I fell for the perception that mobile games were easier to make than regular PC games. I don’t even own a smartphone or tablet. I think I’m just gonna go back to making the kind of games I actually like after this one.
I learned a ton from this project though, and I still hope maybe one day someone will stumble across my game and it could become an accidental sensation or something. Though if thats the only strategy I have left, I might have been better off spending that $25 on lotto tickets. But now I do have a published title under my belt for my resume.
What I wonder then is why is it so much more expensive? Is it just Apple being Apple?
And it begs the question of if you are getting about the same amount of money from Android and iOS, why would anyone publish on iOS if it costs significantly more to publish for and you are more heavily vetted compared to Android, where my game was up in under an hour?
I mean yeah, it is reletively insignificant, but strictly speaking, you’re still paying >4 times more for pretty much the same thing. It seems like you’re paying extra for what feels like minimal benefit, especially on a freemium game where people’s willingness to pay is mostly irrelevant
I guess I’ve just gotten too good at being a starving artist and shopping for a deal everywhere I can
Apple has a more in-depth evaluation process. The yearly fee is likely to reduce the number of shovelware titles they have to evaluate. Or it may just be Apple being Apple. Doesn’t matter in the end though. Either aim to make at least the $100/year for your titles or choose a different platform/career.
Interesting. But is that revenue premium revenue or ad revenue? I’m genuinely curious, because if thats just premium revenue, than maybe the freemium model would be more effective on Android?
Yeah, I guess I never really thought about one being tied to the other
My aim is definitely to make more, obviously, but my concern is that maybe my aim and reality don’t line up.
A concern I have is that my title is made up of all common words, so it’s pretty much impossible to find via search on the store…
I am a long time indie now with over a dozen games on both IOS and Android stores and I can tell you first hand that you have a 99.9% chance on Android of your game getting less than 10 download per week, on IOS you might get 50 per week. 4 years ago when I started, each game I released would get 1000 to 3000 downloads per day, now no-one is downloading anything I create thats new. I would argue that my later stuff is much better than my 1st efforts too. It’s nothing to do with how good your game is either as if the players don’t download it in the first place how can they know if its good or not?
I have now resorted to paying to advertise each new game at about $10 per day for Admob interstitial ads, which result in about 12,000 advert impressions per day which result in about 220 clicks on the advert which in tern translates into about 40-50 actual downloads per day. Without advertising I get 15-20 downloads per day on my latest game.
So I spend $70+ per week which so far results in $4 in in app sales and about $7 in advertising revenue so I’m out about $60 per week. (All these numbers are IOS only, Android with the equivalent spend make zero income)
To sum up if you want your game to be played and you are in the 99% majority of developers you will have to pay for the privilege now. The billions you see people making is only to the select few with huge advertising budgets and the 1 in a million that goes viral.
Now I’ve depressed myself I shall go and find a rope and hang myself!