Making a Game. Quick.
-Part 2
This part of the Making a Game Quick write up will be about how my game has performed since it's release and what I have learned since then.
One week ago I released Traffic Jam Frenzy (TJF) on the Android Google Play Store. This was my second ever release, but my first game I would consider complete. At the time of it's release I wrote a post on Reddit about how I made the game and released it in less that 27 hours. That post got the most upvotes I've ever received on Reddit, ~90, and drove a large number of downloads. I was very impressed with the success of the post, both as a tutorial that helped others, and as a marketing strategy to drive traffic to my game.
As a Tutorial
The post I wrote on Reddit, GET IT DONE!, and later moved to this website, was very quickly enjoyed by the game development community. It ended up having about 50 comments on it, half of which were me responding to the comments of others. To me ~25 comments on my game was very exciting to see. That was valuable feedback from dozens of perspectives that provided supportive and critical responses.
tieTYT-
"Building free games to get your name out there seems very inefficient.
I believe an alternative would be, "put some effort into marketing".
I bought Spelunky because everyone was talking about it, not
because "I remember this guy, he made that game, it was pretty cool,
I'd like to check out his new game". I'd never heard of Derek Yu before."
This comment from Reddit user tieTYT ended up being the most upvoted comment on the post, which meant to me that it was not to be ignored. He was responding to a paragraph I wrote about making your first few games simple and free in order to draw users to your name and brand. Clearly some people did not agree with my method, but that's perfectly fine. Every developer needs to figure out what works for them. I expect that if your first game is of the caliber that Spelunky is you can charge for it. My game, Traffic Jam Frenzy, is not on that level and so making it free was the right decision.
celebez -
Did you setup a company/LLC to sell game on Google Play?
How do you deal with taxes?
I'd like to start selling Android games but I am afraid
of all the paperwork etc. Any advice?
I asked this on another, similar to yours post, but OP didn't respond.
I like this comment because it shows real interest in the development of my brand. It was a perfect opportunity to win over a fan who sought advice from another developer and was left hanging. I responded quickly and with plenty of information to try to win the appreciation of this user. Sure, they will probably not remember me for this but part of my personal public relations strategy is to take the time to open up dialog with every potential user. This is what I think will be a driving force behind my games.
bakstar -
I have to say, you sure know your marketing.
This article was interesting enough for me to
check out your game and i can say it was well worth it :)
It's quite fun!
An obvious contender for my favorite comment. This user found my write up helpful and interesting, enough so to follow the link to my game and give it a try. This is exactly what I was hoping for with every reader of the post. It was something informative and hopefully motivating for the many developers who struggle to finish their games, and it drove traffic to my game. I couldn't ask for a better result.
As a Marketing Tool
We'll start with some numbers.
This is the chart of DAILY DOWNLOADS, or the number of new downloads per day.
As you can see, the day after I posted my original article on Reddit my installs shot up to 58. That was a huge success for me. Of course, it's a little depressing to see the very low 1-4 new installs per day that my game is currently coasting along at, but it's better than nothing.
This chart shows the CURRENT INSTALLS of TJF, or how many devices the game is currently installed on.
This line makes me pretty happy because it means that about 64 people on average have the game on their device at any time. That means they aren't just trying it and deleting it. I hope it means that they enjoy the game and play it frequently. While neither of these charts and the numbers they contain are impressive to most established game developers, to me these get me very excited. It's a great feeling knowing people are in fact playing the game. And according to this, they enjoy it!
An average rating of 4.5 out of 15 votes! That's outstanding in my eyes. That means people are not only downloading and playing my game, but are interested in it enough to go back to the game on Google Play and leave feedback. As a developer this is the best you can hope for (tho you can hope for it in much higher numbers!)
So finally we'll get to the money. This is unfortunately the least exciting part of the results. The game shows an interstitial advertisements every 5 or 6 times you play, so that's about 18% of the times players play a round. At this rate I am getting a few cents every few days. Hardly exciting. All in all the game has made less than $1, but with any luck that will change as time goes on and more people play. Here's the graph:
While the game is getting a decent number of impressions (ads being shown) the actual revenue is quite low. This is only going to change with more players playing, so with some time, luck, and a bit more marketing I hope to bump up these numbers.
Final Thoughts
So making a game in 2 days is actually very doable. It's not likely to take off like flappy bird did, but that goes for any game. From the feedback I've gotten and the results I've seen, this game is not likely to be a huge success, but it's left my computer and moved onto a hundred or so devices so to me it's not a failure. As I stated in my initial article, finishing the game provides a huge boost to moral and helps get you onto bigger and better games. Learning how to handle the play store, marketing, leaderboards, reviews, etc, is probably best done with a simple game like TJF before you try to learn it all with your dream game. So get back to work!
