Piracy and iPhone Game Marketing
by john on Jan.05, 2010, under iPhone
So Battle for Vesta has been live in the App Store since December 28, 2009. In that time I’ve posted about it in forums, promoted it on this blog and Facebook and Twitter, given away a lot of promo codes, and posted on a lot of forums. I created www.battleforvesta.com and posted a trailer and videos of gameplay on YouTube and Vimeo. I’ve also emailed dozens of iPhone app review sites. So far one of them has been kind enough to send an automated acknowledgment of submission email, in which the site admits that it might never even look at my game and even if the game gets looked at it probably won’t get reviewed. There has been no response at all from the others.
In short, while I haven’t done a perfect job of marketing my game, I’ve done as well as I knew how to at the time and have learned some lessons. I’ve also set up Google alerts so that if the game gets mentioned anywhere I know about it and can respond appropriately.
Marketing an iPhone game is incredibly difficult right now. The market is crowded (much of it is crap) and it is very hard for casual users to discover new apps that might interest them. With this in mind I’ve priced the game at $1.99, so that it can be an impulse buy. While I think the game is worth more than that, I didn’t want the price to be a barrier to people that were merely curious about it.
So after being live on the App Store for a week I’ve sold about 30 copies and about the same number of people have turned in promo codes. I’m not ecstatic about those numbers, but I’m not surprised either. I will say that I’m a bit disappointed in the unwillingness of people to rate and/or review the game, especially if they’ve been given a promo code and agreed to.
This morning my Google alert told me that the game had started to show up on pirate sites. I had expected this and I was actually a bit surprised that it didn’t happen the day the game came out. In less than an hour one pirate site indicated that the game had been downloaded more than 30 times. No, I’m not going to link to any of them. I will note that I am amazed that they show up on the second page of a Google search for the game. Odd that pirate sites seem to have so much credibility with Google.
I’m trying to figure out exactly what it is that annoys me about this situation. I think there are a few aspects to this.
One is that $1.99 is cheap. That’s less than coffee money. If it entertains you for 30 minutes total you’ve gotten your money’s worth and then some. I’ve played it for countless hours and I fire it up just for fun every day. So I hardly think that price is an excuse.
Secondly, if $1.99 is really going to break the bank, ask me for a promo code. If you claim that you’ll post a descriptive review (I don’t even ask that it be positive) then I’ll give you one. I know full well that the chances of you actually posting that review are about 1 in 10, but that’s the way Web 2.0 works, right? If you pirate the game and love it there is no legitimate channel for you to rate the game, review it, or give feedback. So now not only am I out a sale (which I was willing to give up) but I’m also out any chance of your love of the game helping to make it go viral, or even your criticisms of the game being used to improve it.
Finally, it is immensely frustrating to put all the above mentioned effort into marketing this thing through legitimate channels and get very little response. Yet the game gets downloaded as much in an hour from a single pirate site as it did in a week legitimately. This makes me wonder if somehow the pirates know something that I do not. They’re able to make my game more popular in an hour than I am.
Finally, if this is just kids who somehow saved up $200 for an iPod touch and don’t have any pennies left to fork over for a game, I guess I can understand. Almost. ($1.99!) I’d still rather give it to you for free than have you steal it from me. But somehow I suspect that the majority of this isn’t being done by penniless kids at all but is perpetrated by people that can easily afford the game and just get some perverse joy out of cheating me.
While I’m at it, the first four people to comment on this article will get a promo code emailed to them.
January 6th, 2010 on 11:23 pm
[...] About marketing Battle for Vesta. I downloaded it this week but haven’t had time to play it yet. [...]
January 6th, 2010 on 11:25 pm
The thing to remember about pirate sites is that the people who frequent them download everything. Second, they are filled with viruses and trojans. Anyway, just remember that whatever statistics you read on a pirate site are somewhat misleading. Few of the programs are being used and most of the people never would have paid for it even if there was no piracy.
BTW – I’m trying the game right now.
January 7th, 2010 on 12:12 pm
Clark,
I’d be inclined to agree if it weren’t for recent articles by people who have made games with online leaderboards who say that the great majority of players are using pirated copies.
January 7th, 2010 on 12:33 pm
BTW – sorry I haven’t reviewed the game yet. This is my first week back part time at work. And when I get home I’m kind of exhausted. I wanted to say something good. I promise to have something up this afternoon when I get home.
January 7th, 2010 on 1:28 pm
No pressure. Anything at all is great.
January 7th, 2010 on 9:08 pm
I put up a review. (First one I’ve ever done)
Regarding pirates, one would expect the majority of users to be pirates (at least until big trojans start appearing on the iPhone — not much there yet). My point was more that you shouldn’t consider them lost sales. I’d expect at minimum a 4:1 pirate to paid user ratio.
BTW regarding the game. You might consider using regular fonts for the writing rather than doing them as retro 80′s. It makes it a little easier to read – unless you are totally committed to a full retro look. I’d also like a regular help page with controls and explanation of the heads up rather than just the training level. (Although I’m really glad you put the training level in – a lot of games forget and that’s a no-no)
January 7th, 2010 on 10:49 pm
Clark,
Thanks for the review. I agree that the font is difficult. It is ok for a word or two but not so great for prose. Of course the prose is horrible, so maybe the font is a plus? The cool thing with the vector font is that if I need to put text into the 3D world but have it square to the viewer I can do that easily. I just have to give the command the up vector and the cross product of the up and the direction you are headed. I guess I could do that with a more normal font library, but it is nice to have it already in place.
I am not sure how to explain the heads up better than in the tutorial. The problem is that there are two things going on, the radar and the bracketing of the ships and asteroids. There is a sense in which the radar is all that really matters, and I think that the tutorial explains that adequately.
I’ve been adding textures to the ships to help them show up better from a distance and to help differentiate them better. That might make the heads up less relevant. What do you think?
January 9th, 2010 on 3:21 pm
The thing that was confusing for me about the radar was knowing when someone was behind me that I had to worry about. It’s been a long, long time since I played the old Atari 800 game that was similar to this. So I’m not a good source to figure out how to explain it.
January 9th, 2010 on 5:18 pm
So back when I started out there was a dot on the radar for each enemy ship and it was a bigger dot if they were in front of you and a smaller dot if they were behind you. There was a ton of information but not easy way to know how close any of those ships were. After a lot of testing I settled on the current scheme as the most useful and easiest to understand. So the best way off your tail is to keep moving and go after what is on the radar.
January 13th, 2010 on 3:25 pm
Not sure that I’ve anything to say about the piracy issue, but I’m happy to participate in your marketing experiment
January 13th, 2010 on 3:35 pm
Andrew,
I’ve emailed you a promo code! Hope you enjoy the game.
January 13th, 2010 on 4:08 pm
I completely agree with you on this one, pirating not only hurts in total sales volume, but in ratings as well. I hope your game does well, though I will admit I haven’t tried it yet…
January 13th, 2010 on 4:24 pm
Nick gets a promo code as well!
January 13th, 2010 on 4:57 pm
I’d be willing to write a review for your game if it helps you out! I just can’t promise I’d rate it positively if I don’t like the game =\
January 13th, 2010 on 5:06 pm
Achal got a promo code too.
January 13th, 2010 on 9:27 pm
I’ve just read your blog entry and made some really valid points with regards to app development and marketing as an indie. The question is, is it still worth building apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch given the amount of crap apps in the legit marketplace that makes it very hard for you to get visibility while the pirate sites just gobble up whatever comes out that is new. Perhaps other forms of monetization will work? I think that’s probably one reason why other big players like ngmoco are changing their model.
January 14th, 2010 on 12:29 am
JSG,
There are a large number of crap apps. Frustratingly some of them seem to be incredibly popular. I would like to think that eventually a mechanism will evolve that will allow the cream to rise to the top, but I think that for the moment that doesn’t seem to be happening for smaller players.
I’d rather not go to an ad-based model, or a pay to upgrade model. Pirates have ways to defeat those as well. I think that $1.99 isn’t too much to ask for a decent game. As of now I haven’t made anywhere near enough money to justify the amount of time that I’ve put into the game and can’t see it ever generating enough money to make it a profitable business for me. I’m already at work on my next game though. I’m making one collaboratively with the local boy scouts. We’ll see how that does.
Did I mention that you get a promo code?
January 14th, 2010 on 4:38 am
Hiya,
I strongly suspect that the app store has turned into a drought or flood type scenario — you either get very little downloads if the app doesn’t manage to stand out, or you get literally thousands/millions of downloads if somehow it makes it to the top of one of the appstore lists. So, it’s never going to support the type of middle scenario you are looking for where you are paid a reasonable amount for a reasonable effort and game. BTW — it’s easy to fall into the drought scenario: one of my friends funded a fairly complex GPS history app in his company and at the time of writing they have sold something like 10 copies in the last few months.
So, maybe it requires more lateral thinking to get an app noticed. Rather than fighting the characteristics of the app store system, you need to work with them and use them to your advantage. (As an aside, I must say I have looked at your video of the game but haven’t tried it yet so some of what I say may be incorrect. Anyway, here are a few ideas for what it’s worth)
1. make it fully free
- have the courage to do this, it isn’t as crazy as it sounds. people will download it onto their phones and try it if it is free, and then it’s sitting there on their phones such that you can push upgrades to them — this gives you a very valuable channel, sort of like a captive audience. you can then see the traffic and assess whether you could add features in a paid version etc. you could put ads for the paid version then inside the free version. this has happened with things like tap-tap revenge etc, and that has made the author a fortune. If you are in that drought-like scenario, it’s not like you have too much to lose in terms of revenue anyway.
2. make it into a competition
- some crazy ideas: place faces of high scorers onto asteroids which give a lot of points, and only allow high scores to be registered for paid customers. allow people/companies to advertise on the asteroids of the free version, make them pay to get rid of the adverts.
- make some of this enigmatic. i.e. have a set of hidden things that people can get if they get to certain points of the game and publicise this.
- make it so that people who own a paid-for copy of the game can register their high scores and win actual physical prizes.
3. find a way to incentivise positive reviews
- i.e. place lots of easter eggs in the program so that, say, after completing a tough level people get a new feature and tell them to register for the code via a +ve review on the app store. i don’t know if this is against the rules…
- tie it into facebook or twitter some other social site. if people get over a certain score, it could tweet this out.
4. build on the base to make things like multi-player teams as a paid-for option. find a way to make it so that people using the free version somehow see what they are missing out on as they play the game.
anyway, just some off the wall ideas. as an aside, i guessed the market was pretty much saturated when i watched a guy create a game on the train the other day on his laptop. robot sentry i think it was called. he make one of the levels while i watched and it looked good… almost made me want to get a mac laptop and have a try myself, the tools looked slick.
January 14th, 2010 on 3:09 pm
Andrew,
Thanks for your comment. I’m considering doing several of the things you mentioned.
I think it is unfortunate that someone can’t simply make a fun, easy to play but hard to win arcade game, sell it for four quarters, and make some decent money. Clearly I’m going to have to try the sort of things you’ve mentioned if this is ever going to take off.
btw, you got a promo code too!
-John
January 14th, 2010 on 5:35 pm
A few other marketing suggestions.
1. Have a “lite” version for free where people can try it out but only play a level or two.
2. Put up some YouTube video showing play.
3. Try and get some of the main blogs mention it.
But the fact is once a market reaches a certain saturation it will always be hard to make a profit. Those who rise to the top will often arise purely by chance. There will be exceptions if you can find a narrow market niche. But at this stage the narrower the niche the less sales you’ll probably have.
With games it’s hard as they tend to be an impulse buy and there’s so much subjectivity for what the audience wants and chance in terms of when people hear about it.
January 14th, 2010 on 6:06 pm
Clark,
I am considering a lite version. At some point there is nothing to lose. That said, many devs think that they hurt more than help. I have several videos up on YouTube and Vimeo. I am not sure if they have done anything
Over the past two days I’ve gotten nearly 2,000 hits on this blog on entries that link to the game at the App Store. This has resulted in about $10 in revenue. I’m trying to write things around the exeperience of developing the game to draw attention to it. But getting attention is tough and doesn’t seem to drive sales.
January 14th, 2010 on 11:08 pm
Well, I don’t have any broad data. I know I’ve bought at least six programs purely because of lite versions. However versions that seem unfinished or unpolished are definitely hurt by lite versions. There have been numerous programs I was thinking of buying but didn’t after trying the lite version.
So I’d polish your app up a bit before doing the lite version. (Say the font issue)
Also one should just accept that sometimes programs we think are great just don’t connect with your audience. I remember spending 8 months programming this fantastic program that I’m still justifiably proud of. I think we only sold 2 copies that maybe covered two weeks of work.
February 14th, 2010 on 4:14 pm
No offense man but your marketing really isn’t very good. The game might be awesome but you’ve done nothing for the games image. Furthermore, based on your marketing and more importantly, how it appears, both in and out of the game, I wouldn’t download it for free, let alone $2.
You’re killing yourself man.
Stop spinning your wheels, stop worrying about the inevitable pirates. Market the game with marketing that makes your game look interesting. Your app store screenshots are horrible. The third one is a fractal color pattern looking explosion thing.. what the heck. Seriously. Go talk to some people you know that are artists and buy the guy (or gal if you’re lucky) dinner and have them help you out.
You REALLY need to redesign your icon, redesign your website, resubmit some screenshots to the app store and relaunch the game.
Know this. How your game appears outwardly is VITAL to the success of your game. Think about that before you worry about the pirates.
The game is fun btw. Thanks!
February 16th, 2010 on 10:51 am
Mark,
I appreciate your feedback. Rest assured that I am not staying up at night worrying about piracy. Since hammering out the above rant the only time I really think about it is when a google alert for a download of the game comes through and I simply delete those.
As for the marketing, yes I am an amateur.
There is a icon redesign in the works, and I’m going to update the YouTube trailer with the new graphics. What screenshots would you suggest for the App Store? I think it is difficult to capture the essence of the game in screenshots, and the video does a better job of it, but that said, what screenshots would be best? Most games seem to include shots of menu screens which strikes me as pretty boring, but perhaps that highlights features?
Finally, if you do think the game is fun, a positive, descriptive review on the App Store would be appreciated.
Thanks!