Make It Big In Games - Latest Comments

Re: Review of Surface Pro 3 For Game Production

Jesus Hernandez — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 18:06:09 -0000

Pretty excited to see them going strong with the surface. I've been on the fence but I think when the Surface pro 4 gets announced I might just dive in.

Re: Review of Surface Pro 3 For Game Production

Jeff Tunnell — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 15:46:56 -0000

I know I should not be the first person to comment on my own blog post, but I had to blow the cobwebs out of the Disqus comments pipeline.

Re: Announcing Contraption Maker, Spiritual Successor to The Incredible Machine

jaime giraldo — Tue, 28 May 2013 19:51:57 -0000

I this is the first game that i developed with my friends in our company Cattleya Studios.

The Last Runner: http://appworld.blackberry....

I hope you enjoy it.

Re: Nine Things That Could Make the App Stores Better

Travis Irby — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:17:47 -0000

Agree completely with every single point! Here's hoping someone at google and apple is listening...

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Jameson Quave — Mon, 13 May 2013 00:28:32 -0000

Interesting, I recently used TapJoy with about $200. I found that almost every download they reported was not a real download, but a pirated copy. I asked them about it and they ended up giving a refund. Interesting to hear your experience was actually a positive one.

Re: Nine Things That Could Make the App Stores Better

@jdhudson3 — Sat, 11 May 2013 09:50:29 -0000

really great ideas in here, Jeff.

Re: Nine Things That Could Make the App Stores Better

AbovegroundDan — Sat, 11 May 2013 08:36:24 -0000

If you're talking about analytics as far as figuring out where your traffic & purchases came from, then yes, I think those are desperately needed.

But where would these other app stores live? As separate apps? Websites (already exist, and are useless)?

Re: Nine Things That Could Make the App Stores Better

Jeff Tunnell — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:21:19 -0000

Ted has it right. The app store would still handle the back end, billing, hosting, downloading, etc. The front end is all that would change. You could imagine maybe adding some additional data for the new stores. They might make it way easier to compile reviews for instance.

Re: Nine Things That Could Make the App Stores Better

TedHoward — Fri, 10 May 2013 09:22:15 -0000

Do Amazon affiliate links confuse users like multiple app stores? That's how app stores should work. He's not talking about having multiple catalogs of apps, just exposing the one single catalog of apps in new ways - a website cataloging great rpgs as he said, a "Jeff Tunnell's Awesome Game of the Day" blog, something like thewirecutter.com for apps, ...

Real analytics would be awesome. At Breaktime, I remember how surprised I was when I found out what app makers had to do to just to buy CPI campaigns. Think of how powerful it could be to A/B test different screenshots for game apps.

Re: Nine Things That Could Make the App Stores Better

AbovegroundDan — Thu, 09 May 2013 21:54:12 -0000

I'm not sure on the analytics stuff, since some of that info you can get yourself in other ways, but you definitely hit on something with 7, rating games. But I think you can go farther and say that the ranking algorithms have to be changed, as they are constantly gamed via download bots and other methods.

I dont like the idea of more stores, though. It's causing confusion on the Android side, and developer headaches having to release to different stores with different requirements.

I'm glad to see this discussion start up again. The App Stores have been broken for a long time and they're about due a revamp. As someone who's released half a dozen apps in the last 4 years and had to take on client work to actually pay the bills, I'm near giving up on the consumer side and just focus on contract work.

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Travis Irby — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:06:19 -0000

Love hearing what developers with more experience are trying in the current climate, thank you. You are the first I've seen that proposes an Android first strategy... Very interesting. More articles please! :D

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Omar — Thu, 09 May 2013 03:33:36 -0000

Very nice, i disagree with one point though, i think designing the game around the monetization strategy is not a good thing, you end up doing stuff like The Sims on iOS, beautifully designed and lures you in but extremely greedy

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Jeff Tunnell — Wed, 08 May 2013 23:13:11 -0000

Strange. We have three Galaxy Nexus devices that were the main devices we played on during the entire development process. It is not actually a port, but was developed more on Android than iOS. I have to admit that we didn't think of the OS as having fans like OSX vs. PC. We did get reamed for overlooking the back button, but I still think using it in a game feels like a kludge. Thanks for the feedback though. We have a new game coming up and we would love to have you look at it before we release it. Simultaneous development again, but like I said launching first on Android.

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Ghryphen — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:58:55 -0000

Hi Jeff, I am using the Galaxy Nexus. The menu graphics seem like they were meant for a lower resolution, they appear to be fuzzy for me. Here is a screenshot http://imgur.com/a/8NnfX#5b... compared to Quell, Sleepwalker' Journey or Sprinkle things seems more crisp like they were designed specifically for my screen size http://imgur.com/a/8NnfX#zU... These other games may be cross platform, but they feel more like my device was the priority. There is just a feel to QS for me that almost feels like a port from another platform. Some things like the Spotkin network being webview instead of native Android and being skinned like iOS. I can't put my finger on many other particular aspects, it's just a feeling I get from the app.

The menu button, I think I'm calling it the wrong thing, it's not the actionbar overflow, as I think that is the term for the top menu on apps, but it is the 3 dot menu item in the lower right corner that showed up when they started phasing out physical menu buttons for the on-screen bottom navigation bar. It is a non-functioning button, seems to show up in apps that use code from older versions of Android. Some make use of it, it appears in Sprinkle and Minecraft, but pressing it there brings up the settings menu. In QS it does nothing when I would expect it to bring up settings.

Your right as I look through my games that a lot of the games have a styled graphical settings area, Minecraft uses standard Android interface for settings.

I guess my point to my feedback here as a consumer is to let devs know that I like to feel like I am getting an Android experience, that my platform is being utilized to it's full potential, either from simply using the menu button to open settings, graphics that fit my screen or on/off switches that don't look like iOS light switches. No matter how cool the app, it likely won't get my purchase if it feels like half my money went to iOS dev instead of a better Android app.

Thanks for listening :)

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Jeff Tunnell — Wed, 08 May 2013 19:19:28 -0000

I answered this above, but to repeat, AdMob and TapJoy. Like I explained in the article, TapJoy users are pretty fleeting, basically coming into your game long enough to collect hard cash for their latest Bahamut, Puzzle and Dragons, or whatever. However, they can still be used to get your game far enough up the charts to get organic installs. When we launch our next game on Android, we will use TapJoy again.

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Jeff Tunnell — Wed, 08 May 2013 19:16:50 -0000

AdMob and TapJoy. TJ was what got us into the New Trending Android games that resulted in organic installs. On iOS we used Flurry, Playhaven, and others.

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Jameson Quave — Wed, 08 May 2013 17:27:17 -0000

What kind of advertising network did you use the $1.1k for?

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Sl — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:48:47 -0000

I'm a Unity developer, and I have to say these are pretty sound reasons.
The Pro version fixes the 8MB initial size thing you mentioned, but yeah, the pro is expensive. I've been lucky enough to get the Pro version via student licensing, but for the full suite, with Pro licenses on all platforms, the cost is immense for an indie.

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

JD Conley — Wed, 08 May 2013 14:35:07 -0000

I have a feeling that the Windows app stores are in this early adopter stage right now where there are going to be some Indies that do well there and establish a strong network. It's obviously a big risk in that we have no idea if Microsoft will actually bring enough users there to get the big player numbers we see on iOS and Android. Then again, if the players are cheaper to acquire, one might end up with a more profitable game on Windows than iOS/Android. If I were doing indie games right now I would very strongly consider starting there, especially if I were building on cross platform tech such like Ben's new stuff.

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Jeff Tunnell — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:54:33 -0000

Unity is an awesome technology, and it is taking over the world. I thought it would be a no-brainer for us to use it, but it ended up not being so. Here are the main drawbacks in our opinion. I don't want debate, so please don't hate on me.

1. No source code. This is important. I have seen too many developers get to the end of their game, and are begging four source code. Having access to all source code allows us to control our own destiny. There are commercial solutions out there that include source code.

2. Executable is 8M in size before you write a line of code. When we started, downloadable size was much more important than it is now.

3. It is expensive. By the time you purchase all of the version and upgrade to pro it becomes a significant expense. We did not want to send $5,000 Unity licenses to our programming partners half way around the world.

4. It is overkill. We wanted to do simple games for cell phones, so we did not need terrain, 3D animation systems, etc.

There are more reasons, but those are the main ones that I have time to cover right now.

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Jeff Tunnell — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:46:30 -0000

Hi Ryan. What phone are you using now? We had a bunch of native resolutions supported, I wonder if we missed yours. We are using 3D graphics and they should scale for what ever resolution you have. Maybe there is a bug.

I may be naive, but I don't recall seeing native Android menu items in many games. Can you point me to some? What is an action overflow button? I live on Android as well, and have been on it since G1, but I am not aware of lot of things you are talking about.

Again, I am not saying our game was great. In fact, we didn't believe in it and that is why we dropped it. I hope the main point of my article was about different things that we tried that worked and didn't work for others as they put their games in the app stores. Bottom line is, if we had made a great game, none of the issues I wrote about would matter, and we would have had better results.

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Jeff Tunnell — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:38:46 -0000

JD, I didn't realize it was you on HN until I clicked on your name. I don't think we have met in person, but you used to talk to Ben Garney (my partner at PushButton Labs) quite a bit, and we also have being acquired by Playdom in common :)

Being an Indie has always been difficult. For a brief time, the early adopters putting their games on iOS had a nice situation where they got free users, and it caused some out sized success stories. I am afraid you are right that we are going to end up back in a situation where publishers with a lot of money will control large chunks of the app stores because they will be able to move their users around to prop up their titles.

Thanks for posting.

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Arowx — Wed, 08 May 2013 08:30:12 -0000

Nice article as a unity developer I am fascinated to know why you did not choose it as a technology, could you provide brief bullet points or hurry up with your next article please? ;0)

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Ghryphen — Wed, 08 May 2013 00:36:45 -0000

As a consumer and a user of Android since the G1, QS did feel cross platform to me. There are little signs that kind of bug me about apps that are cross platform. No use of any native Android interface elements like menus or long press features etc, and the 2d graphics didn't seem like they were crisp or meant for my screen. There is also the actionbar overflow button that doesn't do anything.

I'm not a f2p fan myself, I generally don't pay for anything that has micro transactions. I prefer to just buy the game outright or possibly if it only had one or two unlocks.

I agree with the developer network discovery, I do usually check for a developers other apps if I like one of them. One in particular I bought all their apps.

As far as app store noise and being drowned out, I still look for high caliber games should be getting exposure on the news blogs. I think of this whenever the Xbox indie devs complain about their section getting buried in the menus, I still won't know or care if it doesn't catch the eye or get pushed to the news sites for coverage. Like Gamewoof getting me to check out things I never would have just by browsing the store or seeing an ad.

Re: Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store

Jessica Darko — Wed, 08 May 2013 00:14:43 -0000

(My question was answered below... nevermind.)