Number downloads for you app ?

[Diablohead]

Cool to hear that it still makes some income, how much do you sell the app for right now? I can't see as I already own it (and will admit a little lazy to go price hunting :P)

I have no game on sale right now but so far my main game Generations has cost me £1240 to get to where I am, this is counting everything I needed such as MMF2dev, iOS exporter, a mac, some artwork and music tracks made especially for the game and so on, I think that it will be at about £1500 by the time I release.

If I don't make that money all back at least I have a game that i've always wanted to make out in the public, on sale, for anyone to play and to stick in my portfolio.

[DistantJ]

I still sell it for £1.49 ($1.99). I dropped it to 69p (99c) a few times but I found that while sales increase at the lower price, the revenue is still less. As much as more people playing my game = better, I gotta put food on the table.

Yeah, it's worth the expenses just to get our dream projects made and on commercial release on 'consoles' but the dream for me is to turn this into a career too. I already had a Mac and MMF2 Standard, and I was already an Apple developer (my insult generator app was done completely in Obj-C before the exporter came out) so my costs were just the upgrade to MMF2 Developer and the iOS exporter, I'm a graphic designer so I didn't need to hire any artists, and the music for AL was public domain (though I'm also a musician as a hobby and I have audio tracks ready for games I've been designing over the years); I didn't have much of a startup cost.

I don't know if this helps to put it into perspective but AWESOME Land has made me a total of £2,275 ($3,546) at the time of this post. I'm hoping that its mild success wasn't due to the recognition of the Mario similarity, but to be honest the majority of people who love Mario actually took offense to the homage, calling it a ripoff, and avoided it, so it would seem it landed on the exact people I aimed it at: nostalgic platform gamers. Most MMF2 users are releasing pretty basic stuff, when you build fully-fledged, detailed games, they'll sell. Look at jregork's Clash Force (for a newbie to MMF2, that is one hell of a game he made there), it might not have made his career just yet but it's gotten him a little mini cult following (Think about it though, 5 downloads a day on a bad day? That's £60 a month you didn't have before!). If you make a good game, it'll get good reviews. If you can get the reviews and word of mouth out there, you'll make sales.

And to be honest, it's worth every penny of the startup cost when you see a review of your game in a gaming magazine. I finally feel like a real game developer, and I can't wait to get all my characters I've designed over the years out there in the real world!

[DTownTony]

So has anyone seen a rise or change in sales/downloads from doing anything? or had some luck on their side for another boost of sales?

For me it was when I switched a Fremium model (April 24th, best move I ever did). I unwittingly put an end date and forgot about it tho, which knocked my game from its rankings but it was downloaded enough and has enough reviews to keep its sales strong. After Apple takes their share it has brought me over 20k, with about 80% of that being from IAPs. I have a pretty big update coming in the next 3-4 weeks at which point I'll put it back to free for good, and hope to see its downloads repeat *fingers crossed* My future games will probably follow this model as I've learned a ton about it and can now plan ahead during the development.

[DistantJ]

Never realised IAPs could be so lucrative. What features are you selling as IAP?

[DTownTony]

I sell in game currency so people can unlock items, weapons, and levels faster. Everything in Pocket Ninjas can be unlocked if you play long enough, but if they don't want to wait they can just buy the in game currency to unlock it.

[Diablohead]

Amazing DtownTony, I hope your future games do just as well for you.

[DTownTony]

My biggest tip if you go the "Freemium" route is to make sure players can have the a full experience even if they don't spend any $, but to also give them so much stuff to get that they are enticed to forgo the standard method to unlock things. If I could do it over again, I would probably have had at least double the amount of upgrades and levels for users to unlock.

[DistantJ]

When you're selling in-game currency what's the deal with the 'restore purchases' button? Cause surely players could restore purchases and buy a bunch more stuff...

I always worry that allowing users to essentially get the entire game for free if they wish feels like such a risk. I guess the proof of the pudding is in the eating though, since it worked for you! It's what the creators of the likes of Mega Run do as well. Get freebie-hunters addicted and make them spend their money I guess. I hadn't tried this method because when I put my games up for free they tended to get downloaded by the kids who don't have credit cards.

My aim with IAPs was always to add IAPs into existing apps and drop them to free temporarily (or permanently) once the IAPs are in there. I know I have a game planned for next year which is episodic, where following episodes are bought through IAP.

[Aasland]

I think things like coins etc. is set up in ITC as "consumable" iAPs

[Diablohead]

I always think about what my game could have if it was a freemium but it's hard to do so and to keep it balanced in a metroid style game, I can't have the user buying stronger bullets or more health vitals, if I add in too many cosmetic items it's a lot more work for me to make but the biggest problem is balancing memory and performance, I am already pushing limits and still want to add in more.

I'm not exactly sure what freemium stuff you could add to Awesome land, maybe the ability to unlock a level select or a new character skin, adding in more hit points would break the game I think.