Fugu Talk

HyperBowl is now on the Thousand Apps page. Here’s just a section. Can you locate HyperBowl?

Marketing isn’t rocket science, at least the way I’m doing it. For example, occasionally I try the tactic of temporarily making an app free. That definitely attracts attention, since many sites track price changes (google your app 24 hours after making it free and you’ll find a dozen sites linking to it). Yesterday the promotion garnered 8000 downloads.

But I’ve had mixed success in terms of boosting sales (in particular for the full HyperBowl app ) . My theory is that the free app crowd is largely distinct from the paying app crowd. Also, the freeloaders will drag down your ratings. For example, a couple of days ago, I made HyperBowl Rome free. Up til then, it had 3-5 star ratings and now the French are piling on with 1-star reviews. (Although there is one good French review out of the three. And by the way, Japan has also been rough on me overall on my apps, but Germany has been nice and the US is actually in the middle). Here’s the AppViz summary:

Normally, I end the promotion as soon as I get an obnoxious review that really bugs me. But I don’t actually see foreign reviews on the US App Store, and I don’t understand them until I run them through google translate, and then more often than not, it’s entertaining. Like this:

A big stew as we see often unplayable and ugly, without interest unless you like never score any points, as is the case, it is always out of time or if you love smash the screen of your device rubbing to death this game is for you, can even pad three feet below the ankle of dark nebula. TO AVOID!

So I guess I’ll let it run for a little while longer.

I’ve been an iPhone developer for about twenty months, now, and this is what it’s cost me:

• $99/year to register as an Apple developer (call it $200 total)
• $1500 for Unity iPhone plus $500 for the impending upgrade to Unity 3.0 ($2000 total)
• $100 for the Unity iPhone Enhancement Pack
• $75 to place ads on AppBoy
• $75 to commission a promo video from  SlapApp
• estimated $200 on iPhone development books (probably an underestimate – I’m a bit embarrassed about how much I spend on books)
• $240 on a 2nd-gen iPod touch
• $500 on an iPad (this blog should be called the Cost of iPhone and iPad Development)
• $50 on iPhone/iPad accessories
• $30 on AppViz to track app sales
• $200 on iPhone and iPad apps

I omitted a lot of expenses that I arguably would have incurred, anyway, for example Unity iPhone is an add-on to Unity, so I spent $2000 on Unity Pro (again, $1500 and then $500 for the upgrade). And I’m not counting my Mac hardware purchases (I’ve gone through two MacBook Pro’s, a couple of external drives, a monitor…). I am including everything iPhone and iPad related, because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have bought either one if I wasn’t developing for them (I still use a Blackberry Pearl as my phone). I haven’t bothered to calculate the sales tax – in California it’s nearly 10% (consider making all your Apple hardware purchases in Oregon). As for marketing, I’m only listing expenses on marketing specifically for my iPhone apps (specifically for HyperBowl).

The final tally is $3500-$4000, let’s say $4000 if I really have to pick a number, with the most going to Unity, second most going to Apple, and the least going to marketing. That should probably change, especially since HyperBowl seems to be at a stage where it’s getting predominantly five-star ratings from buyers, so features (or bugs) don’t seem to be the obstacle to increased sales. And I’m not in a hurry to push out the next version, which will involve a major conversion to Unity 3.0 (still in beta) and will be iPad and iOS4 only (as you can see, my hardware budget does not involve a plethora of test devices).

So far I’ve just spent marketing money on sites where I feel the people are cool and deal with you fairly. I had a developer interview on Appboy and a HyperBowl review and some promo code distributions on SlapApp before paying for their services. Contrast that to a site that recently asked me for a HyperBowl promo code so they could review it, and then after receiving a set of codes they asked me to pay for them to interview me and write a review. Yuck. And then there are many not quite so brazen that will ask you to pay for an “expedited” review. I know there are 200,000+ apps out there, but I’d like to think there aren’t that many desperate developers. I do have to admit, if Apple ever decided to auction off visibility on the App Store, they could make a mint off that. Actually, that sort of happens – if you’re on the “top grossing” list, Apple’s making out too.

Another HyperBowl concept from fan Ischa:

Some of the enjoyable responses for my games include ideas for additional content (one enthusiastic reviewer for Fugu Games had enough suggestions to turn it into Resident Evil!) A HyperBowl player even sent me some concept art for new HyperBowl lanes (thanks, Ischa!)

Wooglie has an option to embed one of the wooglie-deployed games into your own web page (including the wooglie ads, idea being that allowing others do deploy will bring in more ad-sharing revenue). Can’t do it in this blog (well, you can, but seems the iframe will take over the whole wordpress blog page), but here’s a screenshot of embedded HyperBowl on Wooglie:

SlapApp kindly provided me with an “unbranded” version of the HyperBowl promo video they made. I uploaded it to my own YouTube account. I’m thinking about providing it in-game, somehow.

I bought a camcorder with the express purpose of making promotional videos for the iPhone/iPad version of HyperBowl. I had visions of something like the Apple ads on TV, but my results were awful. So, following Dirty Harry’s advice about understanding your own limitations, I commissioned SlapApp to put something together.

Digging through the archives, found some old, really old, HyperBowl concept art. This was before my time, so I can only guess what they were thinking.