The indie dev blog and the adventures of...Phat Games!
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
The New Burgal!
Introducing a prototype of the new Burgal! The game will also have a paper-ish retro graphic style depicted in here. Let us know what you think!
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
A brief history of... Burgal's Bounty
By now many people will have realized that the logo for Phat Games and the icon for the Burgal's Bounty have changed. Well, this is the 4th time Burgal's Bounty has been "re-imaged." Every time the game was redesigned in the past it was because it was getting re-platformed. This time, there is a combination of reasons for the redesign (including a re-platforming). But first, here is a complete timeline of Burgal's Bounty!
2001: Burgal's Bounty is released for the DOS platform (under the name Phat Professional Burglar), built entirely in QBasic. While PC's at the time could do much, much, much better than the low resolution graphics of the game, the game was built entirely in QBasic and faced a limitation of 320 x 200 for it's graphics.
2011: 10 years later, as a hobby project, Phat Professional Burglar is released on the Windows Phone 7. The game saw a number of downloads in that market space but never made any money. The graphics were redesigned for the higher resolution phones. Very little else changed. It should be noted that this is actually when the Android version of the game started development.
2015: The Android version took 4 years to be completed. Not because it took that long to code, but because Phat Games was unable to dedicate time to it. It was being treated like a hobby project for a large portion of that time leading up to the end. When the game was nearing completion, it was sent around with focus groups to get feedback. The one thing that was expressed was that the game needed new graphics. The HD facelift of the Windows Phone graphics were not going to cut it with today's standards. As a result, the game was entirely redesigned again and was put into a 3 month pre-launch on the Android.
Present: With the Android pre-launch period complete, and based on user feed back for the game, Phat Games is giving the game a final polish before the iOS launch (with a formal parallel Android launch). Also, with this revamp we are announcing a Steam launch!
That's right, we are targeting to formally have the iOS and Android relaunch available by December with the Steam release following shortly after. Also, stay tuned for our announcement this fall for Phat Games' next game!
- Blair
2001: Burgal's Bounty is released for the DOS platform (under the name Phat Professional Burglar), built entirely in QBasic. While PC's at the time could do much, much, much better than the low resolution graphics of the game, the game was built entirely in QBasic and faced a limitation of 320 x 200 for it's graphics.
2011: 10 years later, as a hobby project, Phat Professional Burglar is released on the Windows Phone 7. The game saw a number of downloads in that market space but never made any money. The graphics were redesigned for the higher resolution phones. Very little else changed. It should be noted that this is actually when the Android version of the game started development.
2015: The Android version took 4 years to be completed. Not because it took that long to code, but because Phat Games was unable to dedicate time to it. It was being treated like a hobby project for a large portion of that time leading up to the end. When the game was nearing completion, it was sent around with focus groups to get feedback. The one thing that was expressed was that the game needed new graphics. The HD facelift of the Windows Phone graphics were not going to cut it with today's standards. As a result, the game was entirely redesigned again and was put into a 3 month pre-launch on the Android.
Present: With the Android pre-launch period complete, and based on user feed back for the game, Phat Games is giving the game a final polish before the iOS launch (with a formal parallel Android launch). Also, with this revamp we are announcing a Steam launch!
That's right, we are targeting to formally have the iOS and Android relaunch available by December with the Steam release following shortly after. Also, stay tuned for our announcement this fall for Phat Games' next game!
- Blair
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
How to take a mobile game live
Hello everyone!
I apologize for the long delay in updates - but it has been a busy last few weeks. I am just going to jump right into it. On Monday of this week I attended a workshop on how to take your mobile game live. I was expecting much of what you see on the internet (all the common sense stuff like make a good game, spend a crap ton of money, get lucky, indies can't make it anymore, stop making games, etc). However the information they presented was very valuable and helpful (some of it still was common sense). I'll go into everything I learned shortly...but first... The Burgal's Bounty updates!
Total downloads: 829
Active Installs: 173
Percentage of active users after 30 days: 20% (One of the things I learned, is that this is exceedingly high. It is typically 10% for a casual game and 5% for a mid tier or hardcore game.)
Total revenue from ads post go live: $8.35
Total IAP revenue: $3.98
All in all, these numbers are not as bad as I thought they would be given how long the game has been available, and the standard stats on Google Play or the App Store. I was rather excited to hear that we have a 20% retention rate which is really good (this is all information I have learned at the workshop I mentioned earlier).
Next thing I need to talk about is that Phat Games will once again be at PlayCrafting showing off Burgal's Bounty, so if you are in the New York City area, please join us! Tickets are selling out quickly and can be purchased here.
How is the iOS release coming along? We are a little bit behind where I would like us to be. Unfortunately there won't be much to show at PlayCrafting, but we are not far behind on our schedule. The game is coming along really nicely and should still be on target for a fall release! :-)
Now what everyone is likely ready to read about...the workshop on how to launch a mobile game successfully. Some of what I am about to type will sound like what has been said a 1000 times before on the internet, but there is some new information available that I received that does give some of us indie some hope and optimism.
1. You need to make a good game
I am just going to gloss over this one. We all have heard it a 1000 times before and we all believe the games we make are of good quality.
2. You need analytical tools
These tools include something to track crash reports, game usage, revenue, etc. This is all necessary so the game can be improved during the soft launch phase (and earlier).
Burgal's Bounty uses the following analytics tools:
a. Splunk Mint for user retention and error reporting
b. Chartboost for advertising and video ad publishing
c. Vungle for ad publishing
d. To track how far users play in the game I have been using Google Games to tell me where engagement falls off. I will be improving this for the iOS version
The iOS version will be using TapJoy to help out with a lot of the usage tracking so I can tweak the monetization side of it and have more control over it.
3. You need testing tools (and testers)
The workshop didn't mean complicated automated testing tools. It meant ways to distribute your game onto multiple devices for testing. If you are deploying to Google Play it is exceedingly easy. Google Play allows for alpha and beta testing using Google Play and Google Groups for the distribution. Apple is not so straight forward. HockeyApp is a popular one to use for iOS. There is also TestFlight which is now owned by Apple. This one does require the app to go through Apple's certification process though.
4. You need a soft launch...and a soft launch budget
This is where some indies might start swearing. According to the Pollen VC (the group that presented at the workshop), a soft launch period can last up to 4 months and cost between 15 to 20k for user acquisition. This allows you to get a good volume to gather analytics on user behavior. The game can be tweaked to engage users more fully and make more money. It can also be used to find bugs that will inevitably pop up. It is also suggested that the soft launch be done in a small subset of countries. Pollen VC recommends Canada, Australia and New Zealand for this as they average out to mimic the behavior in users in most tier 1 countries. Other options for a soft launch and user acquisition are Facebook. Ultimately, if you don't have that kind of money (which most indies do not - including us), you will need to rely on the slow, cheap, organic / grass roots approach. It's still not easy for us, but there is hope that it is getting easier. (read on!)
5. Launch - so you actually made it to launch
Once a game launches it is not necessarily going to get featured and getting featured should not be your only approach. You will need to continue your user acquisition efforts during the soft launch - whether it is buying through advertisements, or through an organic approach (social media, an established community fanbase, etc), as that will help. Higher rated games with more downloads are more likely to get noticed. For some companies this does effectively mean "buying your way up the charts". Having an Apple of Google rep will help out significantly. How to get these? Networking. Going to meet-ups helps as you may get a connection to someone at Apple or Google, or meet someone directly there. If you have a popular game Apple and Google will reach out to you - but you first need a popular game.
Now that I have scared you, and effectively made you feel like making it as an Indie is impossible, I am going to give you some hope. It is true, the top 100 games in the store do make all the money. But Apple and Google are doing things to make it easier to get there. According to Pollen VC, recent research is showing that the distribution of game revenue is getting distributed among more and more game companies. There has been a 40% increase in the spread of who is making money in the last year. Also, Pollen VC did quote another study saying that over 2000 indie studios did gross over a million dollars each in the last year. Depending on the studio size, that could be not very good, or it could make a couple of people very happy for a little while.
Overall, my advice, (which has changed over the last few months) is still to follow your dreams. Try and try hard, because it will eventually pay off. Making it in this industry is now like any other artistic pursuit whether it is music, art, fashion, or film. It involves skill. It involves luck. Most importantly it involves passion. So, to my fellow indies out there, don't stop pursuing the dream...but also, don't quit your day job.
- Blair
I apologize for the long delay in updates - but it has been a busy last few weeks. I am just going to jump right into it. On Monday of this week I attended a workshop on how to take your mobile game live. I was expecting much of what you see on the internet (all the common sense stuff like make a good game, spend a crap ton of money, get lucky, indies can't make it anymore, stop making games, etc). However the information they presented was very valuable and helpful (some of it still was common sense). I'll go into everything I learned shortly...but first... The Burgal's Bounty updates!
Total downloads: 829
Active Installs: 173
Percentage of active users after 30 days: 20% (One of the things I learned, is that this is exceedingly high. It is typically 10% for a casual game and 5% for a mid tier or hardcore game.)
Total revenue from ads post go live: $8.35
Total IAP revenue: $3.98
All in all, these numbers are not as bad as I thought they would be given how long the game has been available, and the standard stats on Google Play or the App Store. I was rather excited to hear that we have a 20% retention rate which is really good (this is all information I have learned at the workshop I mentioned earlier).
Next thing I need to talk about is that Phat Games will once again be at PlayCrafting showing off Burgal's Bounty, so if you are in the New York City area, please join us! Tickets are selling out quickly and can be purchased here.
How is the iOS release coming along? We are a little bit behind where I would like us to be. Unfortunately there won't be much to show at PlayCrafting, but we are not far behind on our schedule. The game is coming along really nicely and should still be on target for a fall release! :-)
Now what everyone is likely ready to read about...the workshop on how to launch a mobile game successfully. Some of what I am about to type will sound like what has been said a 1000 times before on the internet, but there is some new information available that I received that does give some of us indie some hope and optimism.
1. You need to make a good game
I am just going to gloss over this one. We all have heard it a 1000 times before and we all believe the games we make are of good quality.
2. You need analytical tools
These tools include something to track crash reports, game usage, revenue, etc. This is all necessary so the game can be improved during the soft launch phase (and earlier).
Burgal's Bounty uses the following analytics tools:
a. Splunk Mint for user retention and error reporting
b. Chartboost for advertising and video ad publishing
c. Vungle for ad publishing
d. To track how far users play in the game I have been using Google Games to tell me where engagement falls off. I will be improving this for the iOS version
The iOS version will be using TapJoy to help out with a lot of the usage tracking so I can tweak the monetization side of it and have more control over it.
3. You need testing tools (and testers)
The workshop didn't mean complicated automated testing tools. It meant ways to distribute your game onto multiple devices for testing. If you are deploying to Google Play it is exceedingly easy. Google Play allows for alpha and beta testing using Google Play and Google Groups for the distribution. Apple is not so straight forward. HockeyApp is a popular one to use for iOS. There is also TestFlight which is now owned by Apple. This one does require the app to go through Apple's certification process though.
4. You need a soft launch...and a soft launch budget
This is where some indies might start swearing. According to the Pollen VC (the group that presented at the workshop), a soft launch period can last up to 4 months and cost between 15 to 20k for user acquisition. This allows you to get a good volume to gather analytics on user behavior. The game can be tweaked to engage users more fully and make more money. It can also be used to find bugs that will inevitably pop up. It is also suggested that the soft launch be done in a small subset of countries. Pollen VC recommends Canada, Australia and New Zealand for this as they average out to mimic the behavior in users in most tier 1 countries. Other options for a soft launch and user acquisition are Facebook. Ultimately, if you don't have that kind of money (which most indies do not - including us), you will need to rely on the slow, cheap, organic / grass roots approach. It's still not easy for us, but there is hope that it is getting easier. (read on!)
5. Launch - so you actually made it to launch
Once a game launches it is not necessarily going to get featured and getting featured should not be your only approach. You will need to continue your user acquisition efforts during the soft launch - whether it is buying through advertisements, or through an organic approach (social media, an established community fanbase, etc), as that will help. Higher rated games with more downloads are more likely to get noticed. For some companies this does effectively mean "buying your way up the charts". Having an Apple of Google rep will help out significantly. How to get these? Networking. Going to meet-ups helps as you may get a connection to someone at Apple or Google, or meet someone directly there. If you have a popular game Apple and Google will reach out to you - but you first need a popular game.
Now that I have scared you, and effectively made you feel like making it as an Indie is impossible, I am going to give you some hope. It is true, the top 100 games in the store do make all the money. But Apple and Google are doing things to make it easier to get there. According to Pollen VC, recent research is showing that the distribution of game revenue is getting distributed among more and more game companies. There has been a 40% increase in the spread of who is making money in the last year. Also, Pollen VC did quote another study saying that over 2000 indie studios did gross over a million dollars each in the last year. Depending on the studio size, that could be not very good, or it could make a couple of people very happy for a little while.
Overall, my advice, (which has changed over the last few months) is still to follow your dreams. Try and try hard, because it will eventually pay off. Making it in this industry is now like any other artistic pursuit whether it is music, art, fashion, or film. It involves skill. It involves luck. Most importantly it involves passion. So, to my fellow indies out there, don't stop pursuing the dream...but also, don't quit your day job.
- Blair
Friday, July 3, 2015
Burgal's Bounty is on itch.io - and other updates
Hey guys,
These updates are starting to get slightly depressing. This week, again without any organic growth or paid advertising our download statistics are as follows:
Total Downloads: 688
Current installs: 207
Total Ad Revenue since Go Live: $5.98
Total IAP Revenue: $0
Burgal's Bounty is now available on itch.io! Check it out!
I am going to be setting up a Phat Games page on IndieDB as well to see how much that helps!
Who would also like to see interviews with the Burgal's Bounty development team? I am planning on doing these soon, so stay tuned! These interviews will hopefully include some from the original Phat Games team members: The "Phat Phour" as I have cleverly started calling them. :-)
Here are some new features that will be coming with the new Burgal's Bounty iOS release(which will also be included in the Android version as well):
1. Improved targeted monetization.
2. All levels in the game will be free. No in app purchases to buy more.
3. An additional 11 levels for the iOS release making a total of 77 free levels.
4. Additional graphics!
5. Improved tutorials (again) to help people get into the game.
I apologize if I have repeated myself on some of those, but I am excited for the iOS release and progress is really coming along. In the next couple of weeks, the game should be entirely playable in a early state.
What are you doing on July 29th? Come join Phat Games at PlayCrafting again as we show off Burgal's Bounty on the iOS!
Blair
These updates are starting to get slightly depressing. This week, again without any organic growth or paid advertising our download statistics are as follows:
Total Downloads: 688
Current installs: 207
Total Ad Revenue since Go Live: $5.98
Total IAP Revenue: $0
Burgal's Bounty is now available on itch.io! Check it out!
I am going to be setting up a Phat Games page on IndieDB as well to see how much that helps!
Who would also like to see interviews with the Burgal's Bounty development team? I am planning on doing these soon, so stay tuned! These interviews will hopefully include some from the original Phat Games team members: The "Phat Phour" as I have cleverly started calling them. :-)
Here are some new features that will be coming with the new Burgal's Bounty iOS release(which will also be included in the Android version as well):
1. Improved targeted monetization.
2. All levels in the game will be free. No in app purchases to buy more.
3. An additional 11 levels for the iOS release making a total of 77 free levels.
4. Additional graphics!
5. Improved tutorials (again) to help people get into the game.
I apologize if I have repeated myself on some of those, but I am excited for the iOS release and progress is really coming along. In the next couple of weeks, the game should be entirely playable in a early state.
What are you doing on July 29th? Come join Phat Games at PlayCrafting again as we show off Burgal's Bounty on the iOS!
Blair
File IO in Unity C# for iOS
Hi all,
This is going to be a pretty technical oriented blog post for me. I rarely do these, but the more I work with Unity, the more I feel that I want to share as much about my experience in hopes to limit the hardship of others who use it in the future.
If you may recall, the Android version of Burgal's Bounty uses SQLite for game save information. I chose SQLite largely because SQL in general is really easy to use. There was native support in Android for it. And it took me very little time to implement it and get everything up and running. I also know that iOS supports SQLite natively as well. I assumed that a lot of the code would be portable, because if both Android and iOS supported SQLite, Unity must have some support for it too...right...right?
Well... Unity actually does support SQLite. However, I ran into a ton of issues when compiling it to Xcode. It also took me forever to get Unity to support SQLite (I had to download a few extra DLLs and import them into my Assets\Plugins folder among a few other things). I found that much of the Unity community forums lacked complete information. All I was able to find was tidbits here and there. Unfortunately, I will not be talking about implementing SQLite in Unity for iOS today. I decided that it was going to take too long to do, so I abandoned that. As a result I needed a new approach for data saving for the iOS version of Burgal's Bounty. I chose simple file streams. Not even binary files - straight up textual file streams. Easy enough.
I have never made an iOS app or game before. I did not know much about the iOS file system structure and where the iOS lets you save data (in hindsight, I also do not know much about Android, but perhaps more than I do iOS). Anyway, you can only save data to your application specific Documents folder. The Unity documentation seems fairly sparse on this. You can find it in Apple documentation, but not necessarily how to "browse" to the appropriate folder using Unity. In short, to cut through the chatter on Unity's forums and find exactly where you can save your files to with low effort - simply set your file read and write path to this location:
Application.persistentDataPath.
You will be able to read and write files to this location on iOS. I do not know if this will work for Android. I hope this saves you some time during your development. I know it would have saved me some time if I could find consistent information in one place with Unity development. :)
Blair
This is going to be a pretty technical oriented blog post for me. I rarely do these, but the more I work with Unity, the more I feel that I want to share as much about my experience in hopes to limit the hardship of others who use it in the future.
If you may recall, the Android version of Burgal's Bounty uses SQLite for game save information. I chose SQLite largely because SQL in general is really easy to use. There was native support in Android for it. And it took me very little time to implement it and get everything up and running. I also know that iOS supports SQLite natively as well. I assumed that a lot of the code would be portable, because if both Android and iOS supported SQLite, Unity must have some support for it too...right...right?
Well... Unity actually does support SQLite. However, I ran into a ton of issues when compiling it to Xcode. It also took me forever to get Unity to support SQLite (I had to download a few extra DLLs and import them into my Assets\Plugins folder among a few other things). I found that much of the Unity community forums lacked complete information. All I was able to find was tidbits here and there. Unfortunately, I will not be talking about implementing SQLite in Unity for iOS today. I decided that it was going to take too long to do, so I abandoned that. As a result I needed a new approach for data saving for the iOS version of Burgal's Bounty. I chose simple file streams. Not even binary files - straight up textual file streams. Easy enough.
I have never made an iOS app or game before. I did not know much about the iOS file system structure and where the iOS lets you save data (in hindsight, I also do not know much about Android, but perhaps more than I do iOS). Anyway, you can only save data to your application specific Documents folder. The Unity documentation seems fairly sparse on this. You can find it in Apple documentation, but not necessarily how to "browse" to the appropriate folder using Unity. In short, to cut through the chatter on Unity's forums and find exactly where you can save your files to with low effort - simply set your file read and write path to this location:
Application.persistentDataPath.
You will be able to read and write files to this location on iOS. I do not know if this will work for Android. I hope this saves you some time during your development. I know it would have saved me some time if I could find consistent information in one place with Unity development. :)
Blair
Friday, June 26, 2015
Indie Ranting
Greetings all,
I am going to make an active effort to keep this blog up to date. I am going to include download updates of the game on Google Play, reviews and feedback, and progress on the iOS release and new things coming for the Android version:
Install update on Burgal's Bounty:
Total Installs as of 6/24: 663
Total Current Installs as of 6/24: 254
Daily Active Users ~ 20 to 30
Total Production Revenue to Date since June 5th (Ads only): $5.59
Plans for new features and enhancements for iOS release and Android version:
1. Better tutorials and reorganizing of level
- This is to help new users stay engaged
2. Social Media - You will be able to share your scores on Facebook and Twitter!
3. Certain UX changes to improve the experience for the Android and iOS versions.
Progress on iOS version (It has been a little slow):
1. All code that related to updating game save data has been ported from Java successfully.
2. Screen will scale to appropriate resolution and you can interact with the UI components on the title screen so far.
3. All Android Assets have been imported and set up to be used in Unity (XML, pngs, etc).
Other random stuff:
I attended an event put on by Playcrafting about User Acquisition. Unfortunately it did not help a lot with advice for indie developers without a UA budget. The best advice we received was to organically get downloads without a budget. So far, Phat Games has spent approximately $600 on UA which is peanuts compared to industry studios. Advertising with the game trailer on Chartboost has provided us with about 400 downloads, but low retention. Organic is slowest, but has the highest retention. Paid UA has very low retention rates. After about a month, 70% of your users have uninstalled your app if your app is freemium. It sounds daunting, but it is what it is. Ultimately, as an Indie developer if you want to make it, you simply need to keep trying to find dynamics that work, and keep plugging away. It is exceedingly difficult, but also very rewarding. The indie game community is also getting very large. There is a lot of saturation in the market space, but there is there is huge projected growth in the mobile space and game space overall. Quality of the game is important. If you do not have a good game in the app store, then making it at all is pretty much impossible. Wish Phat Games luck as we keep plugging away!
Blair
Install update on Burgal's Bounty:
Total Installs as of 6/24: 663
Total Current Installs as of 6/24: 254
Daily Active Users ~ 20 to 30
Total Production Revenue to Date since June 5th (Ads only): $5.59
Plans for new features and enhancements for iOS release and Android version:
1. Better tutorials and reorganizing of level
- This is to help new users stay engaged
2. Social Media - You will be able to share your scores on Facebook and Twitter!
3. Certain UX changes to improve the experience for the Android and iOS versions.
Progress on iOS version (It has been a little slow):
1. All code that related to updating game save data has been ported from Java successfully.
2. Screen will scale to appropriate resolution and you can interact with the UI components on the title screen so far.
3. All Android Assets have been imported and set up to be used in Unity (XML, pngs, etc).
Other random stuff:
I attended an event put on by Playcrafting about User Acquisition. Unfortunately it did not help a lot with advice for indie developers without a UA budget. The best advice we received was to organically get downloads without a budget. So far, Phat Games has spent approximately $600 on UA which is peanuts compared to industry studios. Advertising with the game trailer on Chartboost has provided us with about 400 downloads, but low retention. Organic is slowest, but has the highest retention. Paid UA has very low retention rates. After about a month, 70% of your users have uninstalled your app if your app is freemium. It sounds daunting, but it is what it is. Ultimately, as an Indie developer if you want to make it, you simply need to keep trying to find dynamics that work, and keep plugging away. It is exceedingly difficult, but also very rewarding. The indie game community is also getting very large. There is a lot of saturation in the market space, but there is there is huge projected growth in the mobile space and game space overall. Quality of the game is important. If you do not have a good game in the app store, then making it at all is pretty much impossible. Wish Phat Games luck as we keep plugging away!
Blair
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Burgal's Bounty is now Live on Google Play!
Hey everyone!
Burgal's Bounty is now live on Google Play! Please go and download it and support Phat Games so we can get the iOS release done and make plenty of other games for you in the future!
Here are some post go-live statistics and info that may help others in the future. The game launched on June 5th. That day through our own organic social networks we got approximately 50 downloads. We also launched Facebook advertising. We spent approximately $120 USD on this to see how successful it would be changing up the target markets.
Brazil and Taiwan were our most engaged audiences. Over 38,000 people around the world watched the trailer attached with the download link. 200,000 people worldwide saw the post. We got approximately 10 downloads from Brazil and France. The facebook page actually did the best. We received 15 more page likes as a result of this small campaign.
Downloads ranged from 2 to 5 organically a day without doing anything. We made a number of tweaks to the game description on Google Play using our main keywords up to five times in the description. You may also notice Burgal's Bounty on Google Play is called Burgal's Bounty (Puzzle Mazes). This is all to hep with our App Store Optimization (AOS).
We experienced an uninstall rate of approximately 12% in our first week which is about average. We encountered some issues with older phones where the game ran out of memory and we quickly deployed fixes to address this but that primarily did drive our uninstalls.
Our biggest download day since go live was then our showing at FlameCon. This got us approximately 20 downloads. There were also a lot of uninstalls afterwards. It did expose Phat Games to numerous people, and we established a mailing list which we will use to inform users about the launch party and the iOS release.
On Tuesday of this last week we launched video ad campaign on ChartBoost that last two days and cost approximately $220 dollars (we could have made it higher, but we capped it at $100 a day with a chance of slight overage in our budget). This campaign was seen by over 20,000 people on their phones while playing other games. We received approximately 200 downloads and kept engagement at it's highest rate since go live at least so far. It is only the first day since the campaign ended. A couple minor enhancements to the game will be made to keep user engagement and a new release will be deployed.
Here are our stats as of 13 days post go live:
Total downloads (due to delays on Google Play right now we do not have a precise number reported from Google - this number is coming from one of our ad networks, Vungle): 330
Total uninstalls (only an estimate): 80. This is high. I am not sure why as the crashes did not impact this many users.
Total revenue so far since go live: $2.49 (ad revenue only. No in app purchases have been made).
Honestly. I do not know if this is good. If anyone reads this blog who has industry experience with taking a free indie mobile game live, I would love to hear feedback.
Thanks,
Blair
Burgal's Bounty is now live on Google Play! Please go and download it and support Phat Games so we can get the iOS release done and make plenty of other games for you in the future!
Here are some post go-live statistics and info that may help others in the future. The game launched on June 5th. That day through our own organic social networks we got approximately 50 downloads. We also launched Facebook advertising. We spent approximately $120 USD on this to see how successful it would be changing up the target markets.
Brazil and Taiwan were our most engaged audiences. Over 38,000 people around the world watched the trailer attached with the download link. 200,000 people worldwide saw the post. We got approximately 10 downloads from Brazil and France. The facebook page actually did the best. We received 15 more page likes as a result of this small campaign.
Downloads ranged from 2 to 5 organically a day without doing anything. We made a number of tweaks to the game description on Google Play using our main keywords up to five times in the description. You may also notice Burgal's Bounty on Google Play is called Burgal's Bounty (Puzzle Mazes). This is all to hep with our App Store Optimization (AOS).
We experienced an uninstall rate of approximately 12% in our first week which is about average. We encountered some issues with older phones where the game ran out of memory and we quickly deployed fixes to address this but that primarily did drive our uninstalls.
Our biggest download day since go live was then our showing at FlameCon. This got us approximately 20 downloads. There were also a lot of uninstalls afterwards. It did expose Phat Games to numerous people, and we established a mailing list which we will use to inform users about the launch party and the iOS release.
On Tuesday of this last week we launched video ad campaign on ChartBoost that last two days and cost approximately $220 dollars (we could have made it higher, but we capped it at $100 a day with a chance of slight overage in our budget). This campaign was seen by over 20,000 people on their phones while playing other games. We received approximately 200 downloads and kept engagement at it's highest rate since go live at least so far. It is only the first day since the campaign ended. A couple minor enhancements to the game will be made to keep user engagement and a new release will be deployed.
Here are our stats as of 13 days post go live:
Total downloads (due to delays on Google Play right now we do not have a precise number reported from Google - this number is coming from one of our ad networks, Vungle): 330
Total uninstalls (only an estimate): 80. This is high. I am not sure why as the crashes did not impact this many users.
Total revenue so far since go live: $2.49 (ad revenue only. No in app purchases have been made).
Honestly. I do not know if this is good. If anyone reads this blog who has industry experience with taking a free indie mobile game live, I would love to hear feedback.
Thanks,
Blair
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