Geez, I’m really beginning to HATE the rating system on the App Store. It seems to bring out the worst in people (or attract negative people) and everyone has an opinion on how they think the app could be better. Just a bunch of whiners.
:x
First app? Our dear gentle users are so kind and forgiving. 
Which is why i’m freaking out about everything (binary footprint, performance, colors) and mostly freaking out that my graphics and assets are going to be sexy enough for the hip and chic iphone owner. Luckily one of the most popular apps is iBeer so there’s obviously a psychology to it.
Yeah, everyone’s a wannabe game designer (and even when I launched in Entertainment I still got “it’s not a game” complaints). And I think it’s worse for free apps - charging for it filters out some of the unwashed masses. I used to contribute to Epinions and I stopped writing book reviews because the commentators were so snobby and often rude (I expect they’re all aspiring/frustrated writers) - in contrast, the DVD reviewers/metareviewers were pretty cool.
But I think there’s useful information, and humor, to be gleaned if one doesn’t just knee-jerk respond to comments (which is typically what happens with focus groups for games) - with FuguMaze it seemed like everyone was demanding tilt control, but then look at comments for Cube like “this is why first person tilt control is a bad idea”. When I made the thumb navigation less glitchy, it seemed to cut down on complaints in that area. And I was amazed to find some people think they’re going through the same maze each time when it’s certainly different - I’m thinking they’re confused by the fact that the exit is always in the same place, so I’m going to randomize that next release.
And then some comments are completely useless. Like “there’s a simple algorithm to get through a maze” (so why’d you download a maze game?) Or one reviewer who keeps complaining that it doesn’t use the full power of Unity (one reason I upgraded to Pro, so I could remove the Unity screen). But then I got some high ratings for no obvious reason, so take the good with the bad!
I don’t think this is much different than some place like Amazon and on average they seem to be a bit kinder than an environment like Digg when it comes to uninformed and meaningless hate.
Make the best games you can. Take the advice for what it is and try to learn from it as much as possible, but always keep in mind that it takes months to design, develop, test and launch even a fairly basic game and only a few seconds to tear it apart.
Actually the complaints can be of benefit to you. Create a sandbox version of your concept, let them piss you with what you could do better, put two weeks into it adding that and sell it at 1.99+
chances are pretty good it might work out far better than when going out with the original one at $0.99 or higher, unless you have a horde of testers naturally or a decade of game design experience
Also, there’s a (weak) rating system on the reviews themselves, so as long as you have more than a few, the more coherent reviews will show up on your main product page. You can inflict your own payback by rating those reviews (helpful/not helpful) - it looks to me like you can rate a review multiple times, so I guess you can game the system a bit that way. I took a pass through one set of reviews and tried to be fair - rated each one once, and it pained me to rate a favorable review as not helpful since it didn’t actually say anything.
But I wouldn’t obsess too much about the content of the reviews or even the average rating - I’m more interested in the number of reviews as an indicator of popularity (I wonder if you could come up with a formula? And what does that popularity bar on iTunes actually mean?). Crazy Snowboard has only a two-and-half star rating but it has 44 reviews, which seems like a lot to me (my best one has only 19), and from other threads it sounds like it has a lot of total downloads, impressive for a game that was not launched free.
I guess this this passage from Walden sums it up best…
In This We Trust.
Ah, why can’t we all just be friends and have a nice, constructive conversation with our customers…
I guess we just have to take yoga or something, be glad to have feedback at all, and near-instantaneous too… I wonder how they managed back in the snail-mailed-shareware days??
BTW, does anyone know how to read the reviews from other countries’ stores? I can only access the french store…
I found this site yesterday, It will show you reviews from ALL countries!!
I don’t have anything in the app store yet but I am going to make a global statement here that may or may not piss you off as well. I am only bring this up because I see the majority of iPhone app as shit at the moment. Even the big ones - except for maybe Shazam, thats like magic.
I have yet to buy a game even for $7.99 like Fastlane or Asphalt 4 that would absolutely be any more than amateur hour on any other platform. It’s like a novelty right now, but it is changing fast and users expectations will continue to grow.
You have one chance to do it and do it right. Create a solid game idea and take your time creating it. Smooth the gameplay so that there is nothing to complain about. Polish the in game graphics until they are perfect. Make a good looking menu system. Compare your game to other successful titles. Simple as it may be… Bejeweled 2 looks great. Super shiny and cool transition effects. Does your game stand up?
Basically I see a lot of people in here releasing stuff WAY too early or producing 4 small apps instead of 1 killer app. I know is exciting to having something on the store and brag to your friends but it is not the way to be successful. You will be judged by the masses on every little app you release. Make them good people… lets see some effort! : )
I am not meaning to be offensive, just a guy who has worked on a AAA title and I see the same thing happen to huge console titles that release to early. Take your time and do it right. There is no hurry. Consumers are picky and they should be its their money.
I hope this helps someone anyway.
@se7en Thanks for giving your thoughts on it. Now, I’m not talking about the quality of the games/apps, I’m talking about how feasible it is for developers to spend time and resources creating apps for the platform. The lifespan of the apps is too short. Its the way things are displayed on iTunes; everything is a simple list with only a Name and an Icon to try to determine if the app is interesting enough to download. Its like a Google search result, people rarely look any farther than the first or second page. So, depending on the category it is listed in, your app soon drops to the third page of results and is quickly and quite literally buried by all the newer apps. This basically encourages developers to fight for position by constantly putting out, usually minor (worthless), updates that actually add to the entire problem of apps getting buried. And if your app isn’t a broadly appealing app it isn’t worth a developers time to constantly be working on upgrades. This fact is going to push out high quality small and niche apps. Because (the good) developers are going to know that if the app isn’t a “top 50” type of app it isn’t worth making and distributing on the iPhone.
I"m probably being overly negative.
I’m just trying to be a squeaky wheel, hoping that Apple will make the App Store a little easier to browse through. There has to be something better than lists of Names and small Icons.
Yeah I completely hear you. Apple does need to do some sorting. My real point is that if you really create something killer, people will find. Writers will talk about it on their blogs and users will recommend it to friends and eventually it will move up the Apple lists. Its all about quality, the great games rarely go unnoticed on any platform.
I would like to see a lot more sorting and categories. I’m sure Apple is aware of the problems and will do something about it. I highly doubt they expected this kind of response for Apps.
Just FYI I have only been to App Store 2x on my iPhone I prefer to get my info from blogs and game reviews but when I did, I went seriously deep into the lists. iTunes is a much better way to surf the Apps. I’m sure I’m not the average user though. : )
Seriously just make the best possible f___ing game you can!
One other thing that comes to mind is playtesting. How many people used your app before you uploaded it? As an interactive designer and UI guy I am still amazed watching new people use a new interface. They do everything wrong : ) All of my assumptions go right out the window. Get hardcore gamers to try it and get serious morons to try it, then get everyone in between. That will get rid of most of the bitchy-ness. These people are seriously cheap though ; )
Actually they just added categories for games in the iPhone/Touch app store, so now it’s more like iTunes.
–Eric
Yeah much easier to find stuff. I think they will fix the Updates as counting for downloads soon enough.
A good example of my point was a game called TouchGrind, I found it on a blog and had not seen it on the app store when I was surfing around. It’s really well done, right now its at number 2 or 3 in the list. Again the point is if a game is great people will hear about it.
The problem has been that devs are trying to “hack” the list to sell their crappy wares the same way people used to hack google for their shit websites. : )
I would like to see more “editorial” lists from apple in the store. Written by game reviewers - that would help. I also would be cool if they had a separate section for Indy games. They may have lower production values but innovation is much more likely.
What I find funny is that on the app-store some people seem to feel like they just bought the developer when they purchased a game… :]
And there’s some weird believe out there what every game should have…
Someone’s releases a single-player-game - no more than 3 stars, because it’s incomplete: it lacks multi-player. makes me laugh a little.
Me, I’ve had some really nice reviews that made me quite happy and some evil mean ones that brought me close to tears. I want to listen to any kind of feedback, but I feel like I might need someone in between to translate the mean ones into nicer words for me…
The latest MacLife magazine profiles a couple of iPhone developers (one who worked on Tapulous and something more recent, and the other on something called iViolin, I think) - they both mentioned they got reviews that trashed them, though they didn’t sound too upset about it (getting profiled in a magazine probably helps take the sting out of it)
I found the App Store reviews of Pac Man interesting/entertaining - lots of complaints about how overpriced it is. I assume they knew what price they were paying (apparently starting at $9, now $6) and exactly what game they were buying, yet they went ahead, paid for it and complained about it. And with over 300 reviews, there must have been a lot of purchases. Even for the free version (perhaps launched in response to the complaints), there’s a review that just complains how greedy Namco and Apple are. But that has over 600 reviews, so in terms of downloads, it must have done pretty well, too.
col000r - Haha, I know. It’s like high school all over again : )
technicat - In the case of Tapulous they deserve the trashing imo. Their games look great but I would rather watch grass grow personally. Yawn : ) They clearly missed what was cool about GH and RB or they at least, didn’t pull it off. I bought the NIN version played it once and can’t seam to relaunch. It’s just so boring to play.
Most of these AAA apps are overpriced for the payoff - because you can get them free or almost free all over the web or at a yard sale. I DL’d the pacman lite and virtual thumbstick sucks balls. I usually hate accelerometer controls (overly sensitive) but in this case it would have worked great. Pole position too. Weak. It does not give the same thrill of playing it for the first time as a kid.
App store customers do need to realize what $10 is now days. A movie cost $15 and only lasts 2 hours. You can eat $10 in less than 2 minutes. But I would bet that they are basing their evaluations on XBox LIVE Arcade and similar platforms. Geometry Wars 2 is like $8 and look at how much replayabilty you get. Pick anything on Arcade really and they are good games for the money.
iPhone games, as I said earlier, are really in the novelty stage right now but that novelty is wearing off. Expectations will continuing to grow.
Public forums about various software tools brings out a touch of the same thing… :shock: :lol:
We are constantly hearing from folks that think we’re doing something wrong and how we could/should do things better. At times the frustration sets in and I ask myself “Have these folks ever created and distributed a complex authoring tool like Unity before, how would they know what it takes?” But that question/answer doesn’t matter, they are your customer and the people you’re trying (or should be trying) to serve so you do your best to truly listen and glean information from what’s being said. As has been mentioned already, the fact that feedback is coming in at all can be useful. You will learn more from those that are unhappy than those that are happy, so take the negative feedback as it comes, your skin will thicken and through it all you’ll find some serious gems of input that will help you make a better product.
One last point, those that are unhappy will almost always be louder and more vocal than those that are in fact happy. The sad result of that is that negative comments percolate to the top based on volume, happy customers are too busy playing/using the app to bother and thus their (silent) opinion isn’t always heard. Systems that allow easy ratings/comments tend to empower the vocal who are, by my theory, mostly negative.
Good points Higgy
I just tossed out a magazine, I think it was Fast Company, that had an interesting article on review-based sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon (that’s my favorite iPhone app, by the way - I only deleted it to make room for Unity apps and because half the entries in Huntington Beach are Starbucks). The article listed a couple of terms for reviewers who write noisily trashy reviews - “shrills” was one, I forget the other.
One rep pointed out a couple of bad reviews isn’t going to make a big difference to a total rating, or at least that’s what they tell unhappy vendors. But since their whole business is reviews, they do attempt to tackle the problem. If I remember correctly, Yelp has an Elite Reviewer category (I think Epinions has something like that), and one of those companies downgrades reviewers who’ve written only one or two reviews. That tackles the opposite problem where the vendor iw writing reviews to push their own product. I was actually embarassed a few years ago when I saw a five-star review of a console game I worked on that was at best passable. It was too obviously written by the studio owner.