Fugu Talk

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.

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.

I released Fugu Maze with full-screen iPad support last month. It showed up on the App Store on June 20. A lot has happened since then. For example, the iOS4 update was released on June 21. I suppose I should have upgraded immediately, but frankly, I barely noticed the release – I just saw some disparaging remarks about it on the Unity forums a few days later.

Anyway, I paid the price. I received mostly good reviews for this app update, but a few complaints that it was crashing. One user ranted that I was terrible and irresponsible and he was never going to buy anything from me in the future (never mind that he used a promo code), but at least he mentioned that he was running iOS4, and the light bulb finally switched on. The iOS4 announcement on the Apple site only mentioned support on the iPhone 3G and 3GS so for a moment I thought I might have to buy new hardware, or, gag, an AT&T contract (they’re on my you-owe-me-money list). But googling for iOS4 brought me onto another Apple page that explained it would run on my iPod touch, so I upgraded, watched my iPod touch grind to a halt, rebooted, found relief that it ran OK again, brought up Fugu Maze and reproduced the crash, narrowing it down to mp3 playbacks, a feature newly available in the Unity 3.0 beta and a bug discovered by others in the beta testing group, but alas, after I did.

Now I’ve got another Fugu Maze update in the approval queue, with the mp3 audio replaced by uncompressed audio. And the OS upgrades are a one-way street, so now I’m considering supporting only iOS4 (and iOS3.2 for the iPad) in the future, since I’m not testing on older OS’s, anymore. But fortunately, my other apps still run fine. So I’ve got time to think…

The first Unity iPhone app that impressed me was Crazy Snowboard (it might even have been the first iPhone app of any that first impressed me). In particular, I thought the tilt control on the iPhone was really polished and felt natural. On the iPad, it still looks pretty good, but it seems to me tilt control in general is a bit more of a chore on the iPad due to its heft. Sort of feels like rotating a steering wheel that doesn’t have particularly good power assist. So, maybe for a driving game…

I finally got around to updating Fugu Maze for the iPad. At the iPad full screen resolution, I think it looks pretty good, and it’s faster than the iPhone version (although I had to turn off fog). I was concerned the two-thumb control might not translate, but seems to me it still works. The shake-to-scramble feature is more of a workout on the iPad, though.

I saw Immerz at E3 last week and gave it a try. It’s primarily designed to work with FPS games, but since it plugs into anything with an audio output jack, I whipped out my iPad and tried with HyperBowl. It worked surprisingly well – you can feel the rumbling on your chest as the ball rolls, and the 3D audio sources (including the pins!) sound great.

I wonder how well it would work with the footstep and suspense sounds in Fugu Maze. Now I’m thinking about putting in a heartbeat sound…