The Still of the Night Causes a Storm in the Mind

So the summer is here again (almost). It’s been a busy couple of months. My last post was about Crash for Cash getting popular and boy has it ever gotten popular. In 2 months the game has been played 2 million times. Furthermore my estimates for daily profits were accurate. The first week that advertising kicked in I started kicking myself for not adding it sooner. Beyond getting played 2 million times, Crash for Cash also took the #1 spot in the racing category for about 3-4 days in April. The day it occurred was truly magical. My wife and I were in San Francisco on her Spring Break vacation. During the day we visited Alcatraz, walked from Fisherman’s Wharf to Crissy Beach, checked out the Exploratorium, and then finally walked the entire length of the Golden Gate Bridge to and fro. After crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on the way back was the first time I noticed Crash for Cash in the #1 spot. That was a good day!

Of course Crash for Cash isn’t the only cool thing going on. I also completed the new book iPhone 3D Game Programming All in One, which is currently being printed. This great new 400 page book is published by Cengage and should hit your local Barnes and Noble sometime during the first week of July. In the book I show new iPhone developers how to create a casual flight simulator for the iPhone using Unity. A pre-release version of the game accidentally went out onto the App Store (I forgot to pull it once I uploaded it for book screen shots, that Apple wouldn’t give me permission to use anyway). Long story short though the game actually pushed the book into Amazon’s Top 100 Game Development, 3D, and Apple books in various countries (US included). I ended up leaving the rough cut of the game up for a while since it was promoting sales. I now have a slightly more user friendly version coming out to coincide with the release of the book. A big goal of mine is not to change the game much from what the book covers. Originally, I was looking for 1 : 1 parity but I’ve since decided that a few more play tests and minor minor tweaks aren’t a crime so long as I stay within the realm of the book’s lessons any user should be able to replicate my minor tweaks in a few minutes. In due time I would like to release a fully polished product using the engine from this book. The flight model is really pretty cool and allows for loops and barrel rolls using a fairly accurate and sophisticated method of force and friction applications to the body of the aircraft. It’s not a dead ringer for X-Plane but it’s pretty close in my opinion.

Still in other news I began working at L3 Communications doing some serious games work in February. The work I’m doing there has been very fulfilling. I work with a fantastic team of individuals who love this stuff as much as I do (and GASP … I didn’t have to move to the West coast to find them, although one of them is from San Francisco). Through this job I’ve gotten to attend some really great conferences I might otherwise not have gone to and I’ve gotten to polish my skills even further all while working on projects that have a real world impact (something that I often find hollow in the traditional games industry). At some point I hope I can share more about my work in serious games but for now I’m just happy for the opportunity to apply my skills and communicate with a slew of talented people in this new (to me) arena.

There will be some more game information soon. I haven’t actually released a new game for the iPhone since last year. The funny thing is that by focusing on marketing I’ve been able to increase income from the App Store tremendously without releasing anything new. I plan to reinvest all that I’ve earned through the App Store although it may not be in the traditional sense. Keep reading to find out how all of this will grow (hopefully) into part of a larger plan

I’ve always wanted to create a hit video game, something that a lot of people would experience and enjoy. This past week it finally happened. Though I’ve created many games and have experienced minor successes from time to time, I’ve never experienced something quite like the phenomenon Crash For Cash is seeing right now.

I originally released Crash For Cash as a paid app at $1.99. It experienced some success and maintained decent sales with a fair run in the Top 100 Racing titles. Around the same time I made a change to all my app store descriptions by adding “Also Try” text with a list of all my other games. I noticed an increase in sales of all my games and attributed this to the cross-promotion between all the apps’ individual descriptions. In turn I decided to do more lite versions of my titles to increase the cross promotion. It didn’t help.

I realized afterward that it was actually Crash For Cash, which was responsible for the other games’ sales increases. First of all Crash For Cash is more polished than any other title Midnight Status has produced. Second, Crash For Cash is hooked up with Twitter and a “More Games” button so it’s a great tool for promotion. I decided that it would be best to just release it for free as a flagship game and advertisement for other Midnight Status titles. Forget doing lite versions, just put my best foot forward and hope that it trickles down.

After a single week as a free game Crash For Cash has risen to the #4 Top Racing spot, the #8 Top Arcade Spot, and the #34 Top Overall Game. It has been played 170,000 times and it experienced 23,000 downloads yesterday alone. Sales of the paid version have actually increased even though it is identical to the free game and sales of all other Midnight Status titles have increased as well. Now an update is waiting in the wings that introduces advertising, which should pull in anywhere from a few hundred dollars a day to an upward of a grand a day and will also offer a real incentive to purchase the paid version since the ads occlude part of the screen.

This is a great opportunity from a business perspective but the best part is just the fact that the game is being enjoyed by people. The game was literally played over 100,000 times before anyone gave it a bad review (app store reviewers are notoriously critical). People dig this game. It’s not the best game and it probably won’t even register with people enough to be remembered. None of that matters though. For the time being people are having fun with it, competing on the leaderboards (I finally got knocked off yesterday), and even tweeting about it. People are using all aspects of the game fluidly and in all likelihood I’ll be able to claim a game that’s been played over 1 million times before too long. I think anyone would consider that a bonafide hit whether it’s free or not.

Thanks for reading and most of all thanks for playing!

In 1997 I came up with a game concept. That concept was a fun and simple 2D building demolition game where players would plant charges and try to level a cityscape. I developed this concept about a year after learning some BASIC programming on my TI-85 calculator and before I entered college. At the time it’s safe to say I didn’t really have the skills to do the concept justice.

Fast forward to 2006. I sit down at my computer one evening and I finally prototype this concept now calling it Debris. I develop a working sim with blocks, bombs, and a caution tape line. The premise is simple, plant the bombs in such a way that upon detonation all the blocks fit below the caution tape line.

I work on this prototype for a few months (mainly tweaking the physics) and eventually show the concept to a company who’d published my earlier work. They write me back and tell me they don’t see any promise in this concept. They tell me they can’t suggest even a single bit of advice in order to make the concept more fun for them.

Their feedback of course stood in stark contrast with my vision as well as the feedback I’d received from several other people who I’d actually gotten to show the game in person. As with anything communication is key when unleashing a brand new game concept. I’m sure something was lost without myself involved to fill in the blanks as someone played this game for the first time. Such is the potential fate of any unfinished prototype.

In October 2007 I attempted once again to show off this concept.  This time at the Indie Games Con. Again, it’s turned down for publication by this company that had worked so closely with me in the past.  To add insult to injury, I’m told by someone I’d once considered a mentor that it “sucked”.  I went home dejected and dropped the development of Debris to work on Full Contact Debate another idea I’d had banging around my brain for years.

Of course there was one redeeming event which took place at IGC that year. The morning after I was told the game sucked I walked in an there was a group of 6 other developers standing around a computer laughing. As I walked up I realized they were playing Debris and they’d just realized you could take the helicopter out if you planted the bombs correctly. In the PC/Mac version of Debris the helicopter would go spastic and bounce around the screen taking everything out in its path. As they left a few of the guys told me it was a great game concept. Seeing their reaction to the title renewed my belief that eventually this would be a hit game.

Now we move on to October 2008. At this point I’d long given up the idea of pitching ideas to publishers with lesser vision than myself. Throughout the years I’d pitched concepts to a plethora of publishers and I was always disappointed with the results. Finally though, the iPhone and the App Store had arrived and there would no longer be a difference of creative opinions to stop the publication of any title. I jumped onto the iPhone development wagon as quickly as possible and I knew exactly what my first title would be.

Debris appeared on the App Store by December 5th 2008 and to my knowledge was the first 2D casual building demolition game created. When I originally developed the prototype I searched for other controlled demolition games and the only thing I found was an obscure PS2 game released in Europe but it was a more serious 3D simulation instead of a casual physics game. My prediction circa 2006 was that the most popular casual games were going to be physics based as opposed to the match-3 titles that dominated the early-mid part of the decade. Looking at the iPhone market today I was absolutely correct and I’m proud to say that I not only made an accurate prediction but I took part in the market with a handful of causal physics sims which I developed.

Now it’s the end of 2009 and it’s been the roughest year of my life. It hasn’t all been bad but it has been a roller coaster. As most people who read this blog know, I lost my dear mother to suicide on March 23rd. I have been depressed since then although certain events have been overwhelmingly positive this year, the loss of my mother casts a shadow over those events. To further add to my pain this year a title called Implode! landed on the App Store about a week ago and since then has risen up the charts into the top 5 best selling iPhone games. Implode! is Debris, it’s a casual 2D controlled demolition game and it arrived almost exactly 1 year after Debris on the iPhone.

Considering that I developed this concept sooo long ago I’m heart broken that I wasn’t the one to fully capitalize on the concept. When I developed it in 2006 I knew it had the potential to rise straight to the top. Unfortunately, being first isn’t always best and in fact some people would say it’s detrimental. This is one of those cases.

I rushed Debris out on the iPhone trying to take advantage of the devices unique abilities such as pinch/zoom, swipe momentum, and the accelerometer tilt. Unfortunately, using these special capabilities of the iPhone was ultimately a distraction from the core experience. Implode! for the iPhone is actually much closer to what Debris was originally for the PC/Mac. Plant bombs, detonate, and try to get the blocks below a line. The version of Debris I ended up putting out for the iPhone wasn’t received particularly well because the core was watered down in an attempt to make it iPhone-centric. Granted, some components of Debris are great fun but overall I let the core suffer in favor of design diversions such as tilt, zoom, and killing aliens with the blocks.

Still, I’m not jaded or angry (OK, just a little). Debris was after all the title that allowed me to develop my own concepts as my sole source of income. Without Debris I wouldn’t be where I am today. Furthermore, there’s no law against sequels and while Debris may not ultimately get recognized as the title that brought the casual controlled demolition genre into the limelight perhaps its sequel can utilize the success Implode! is currently enjoying to be an even bigger success.

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving!

Back in March Christian Nutt of Gamasutra posed the question “Can The Industry Make a B-game?”

I think I’ve done just that with a little stupid ass title called Kube Killer.  I initially created this game out of frustration.  I was frustrated and angry over my mother’s death (hence this being one of the few violent games I’ve made) and I was also but to a much lesser degree frustrated over the apparent lack of logic within the App Store eco system.

My last post was about making easy games.  I purposely created Kube Killer to be challenge-less and a time waster that would roll as many ads as possible on the business end.  I was analyzing some of the popular games on the iPhone that my younger cousin was playing and they all had something in common, ZERO challenge but plenty of time consumption. When I released Kube Killer I put it out at $0.99 (no ads) at my wife’s request.  In truth though the game was always supposed to be free.  I thought people might play it and actually get caught up challenging each other to see who could in fact kill the most kubes which would be optimal for an ad based title.  It was also created to be somewhat of a satirical poke at the App Store in general, dumb games getting attention they don’t deserve was part of the inspiration for Kube Killer.

At $0.99 the game was mostly ignored.  It sold a few copies but never made any real impact.  Fast forward to this past Friday when I changed the game to free.  Somehow, the game started climbing the charts regardless of the terrible graphics, poor description, and even worse reviews.  Nearly everything about this game signaled people to avoid it at all costs (the icon is even black like the plague) and yet in true App Store fashion the title started climbing the charts extending its figurative middle finger to logic the whole way.

As of right now the game has been downloaded nearly 10,000 times since Friday.  Some of the players have even taken to competing for the most kills via the online leaderboards.  The title is hovering in the Top 30 Adventure games and the Top 20 RPG games and with each iTunes update the rank climbs while the reviews get worse and yet people even started a thread to talk about this waste of time on Touch Arcade!

As I watched this all unfold I was initially ashamed.  If any game was supposed to do well this weekend it was supposed to be my new title Ragduck Hunt which was logically created to appeal to the App Store crowd while actually being a pretty good game with solid production values.  Kube Killer, the red headed step child of my portfolio though is now the most “popular” iPhone game I’ve made.  This game is terrible both purposefully and accidentally (simultaneously) and for some reason people are downloading the crap out of it … stranger still some people are playing the crap out of it.  I think that constitutes a legitimate B-game.

It may sound elementary but making easy games is one way to guarantee yourself a little success when it comes to game development.  I’ve had people compare the gameplay experience some of my games present to earning a master’s degree.  The good thing about that is the good reviews my games receive are well written (thank you educated folks).  The bad thing is that most people cannot enjoy these games.

I started thinking about this topic because a game (Kube Killer) I released and sorta wish I hadn’t has received the same star rating on iTunes as games like Skyline Blade and Disco Pool even though it’s a terrible game.  The game has gotten better reviews than my first title Debris and it’s so much worse.  Debris however has gotten more complaints about being to difficult than any other title I created and also has the lowest star rating.  Literally, this is the worst game I’ve produced for the iPhone in my opinion.  Now, do I enjoy the game at all?  Actually, truth be told I do enjoy playing it.  It’s a very simple shooting game which can be played from a top down, over the shoulder, or first person perspective.  The shooting aspect of the game is kind of addicting.  Everything else about the title is totally lacking save for one thing.  It’s the easiest game to play of all the titles I’ve put out for the iPhone (the enemies don’t fight back and in fact you literally cannot lose). Because it’s easy to play people can get into it without being rejected too quickly.

So like I said, it sounds elementary but truth be told this is something I personally have struggled with.  The games I typically think about playing myself aren’t immediately intuitive for many people.  The bottom line is make an easy game first and then fill the rest in with good graphics and production values and more than likely you’ll find a bit of success.

10 years ago yesterday I was a college student enrolled in a computer science program.  I spent most of my time programming games on my TI-85 calculator during class but still managed to take something away from the experience.  I was also a gamer and September 9th, 1999 was a big day.  Anticipation grew throughout the day as I waited for classes to end.  The afternoon and evening couldn’t fly by quick enough. The moment I was waiting for was midnight, when I could finally wrap my arms around my very own Dreamcast at the local EB.

Finally, the night was getting long in the tooth.  At around 10PM a friend and I headed out to Lynnhaven Mall stopping at Wendy’s for some late night spicy chicken sandwiches (a favorite during the college years). Then we finally landed in line for the hotly anticipated Dreamcast.  The line was long but people were stoked.  Everyone and their brother wanted to support Sega after the dismal failure of the Saturn.  There was a hint of nostalgia in the air.  Older gamers didn’t want Sony to put Sega out of commission even if they liked the Playstation.  Thus, the calvary lined up at the stroke of midnight to put Sega back on the map.

The line was exciting initially but it was nothing in comparison to the first time they pulled out a working Dreamcast running Soul Calibur for everyone to try.  The next thing you knew there was a line embedded within the first line as people tried their hand at this new game with the most amazing graphics ever witnessed on a home console.  Remarkably, Soul Calibur played as good as it looked.

The crew at EB was extremely cool and efficient that night.  Dreamcast systems, games and accessories had all been bundled up according to customer pre-orders prior to the big launch.  As such we really didn’t have to wait too long.  After finally getting our systems we returned to my place and continued playing all our new games into the wee hours of the morning.  It’s hard to believe it was a decade ago!

Last night I had to do it, I had to pull the Dreamcast and co out of their bin and hook it up alongside my 360 and PS3.  Much to my surprise Soul Calibur has held up really well.  It’s still graphically impressive and the control and collision is super tight.  I never understood why Sega gave up. In my idealists eyes the Dreamcast could be a competitor today.  After reading the Gamasutra article with interviews of all the major executives involved I think the demise of the Dreamcast was pretty fishy.  But what’s done is done.  At least we got to enjoy the system for a while.

Of course I can’t just recap that launch night without explaining how it had some profound effect on me. Back then I was a college student who had programmed a few games on his calculator.  Now it’s a decade later and I’ve become the game developer I had dreamed of.  The largest effect that night had on me was a new found love for midnight launches and the excitement involved.  The studio title Midnight Status is a direct result of that launch night (which as far as I can remember was the first midnight video game launch I took part in).  Midnight Status is the excitement people feel for their entertainment.  It’s what happens when people wait in line in the middle of the night with strangers who share a passion.  It’s what runs through your mind when you didn’t pre-order an XBox and you’re running from store to store in the middle of the night trying to find a location with a short enough line to guarantee you a system.  Midnight Status came from a seed that was planted in my mind 10 years ago when the Dreamcast arrived.  It seems the name was quite suitable now doesn’t it?

A big dream of mine has always been to appear on late night TV with a host like Jay Leno because I created the next great video game. To me, this sort of accomplishment would signify the real rise of video games as a cultural phenomenon. Writers, actors, musicians, and animal trainers appear on these type of shows all the time, but you never see anyone promoting a video game unless they’re Tiger Woods which just doesn’t count. I wanted to see an actual game developer on late night TV, not someone else who just happened to have a video game made after them because they were good at something else.

Last night we finally hit the big time as Kudo Tsunoda took the stage to showcase Project Natal on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. I had some mixed feelings about Project Natal as a gamer but I do think it will revolutionize gaming with regard to the mass market. The Wii showed everyone the door but I think Natal has the potential to really welcome everyone through it. However you feel about Natal though it was totally rad to see an actual game developer up on late night TV with Hollywood and all the rockers.

The funny thing was that I made a joke to my friend 2 days ago that Kudo looked like a Bono wannabe during his E3 presentation. What the heck though, if that’s what it takes to legitimize game development as an art form so be it. People like interesting people and Kudo definitely had that going for him at E3 and on Jimmy last night.

Of course I also think this breakthrough has a lot to do with the type of games we’re getting into these days. E3 was quite a bit different this year with all the human performances to go along with the games. Between the Wii and Rock Band we finally have games that appeal to people not just nerds. Before now the best the industry could muster was to mimmic Hollywood and make epic looking pre-rendered trailers.

At E3 this year the most boring presentations were old school gamer gamers like Modern Warfare 2 and God of War III … I almost fell asleep watching people play them. Second up was the epic trailers, which needless to say were also pretty boring. The best presentations were the Wii, Beatles Rock Band, Playstation Eye/Motion, and Natal demos where real live people were performing in sync with fine cinematic sequences in the backdrop along with real gameplay that the players were interacting with but in a way that was also entertaining for a crowd. By comparison the old school way of playing games seemed really archaic.

That’s not to say that I don’t like old school gameplay. I think it’s fine for 1-4 people to sit down and play together. However, it was never going to be an all consuming force like music or movies until you could simultaneously enjoy other people playing. The human element that music and movies contain was simply missing.

Anyway, congratulations Kudo and I hope to see many more game developers appear side by side with actors and rockers in the future!

A while back when I first jumped into iPhone development I told Jeff Tunnell I’d give him a heads up on the sales figures. Anyone who actually reads this blog might have noticed Jeff’s comment under the Disco Pool release post about revealing some iPhone sales statistics whether they be good, bad, or ugly.

Something I want to preface this post with is that my sales numbers are a little better than average for the app store. I’ve hinted several times over the past 4 months or so that I’m able to scoot by on what I’m making but not much more. I’ve recently been reading the comments to this Gamasutra Article and I’m glad someone else spoke up about what constitutes a livable income.

From Dave Stein:

I thought this quote was very disturbing, mostly because I’ve been seeing these kinds of quotes all over the place lately:

“Mark Johnson recently published sales data for his game Hit Tennis, which has netted around $10k since its release six months ago. Not bad, but not an income either. ”

Not an income? Tell that to real indie developers in the trenches. I’m one of the folks referenced above, who quit his day job to write iPhone/Mac software. I would be all smiles today if I was pulling in $20k a year. But I’m not, and now I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my cat if I can’t make rent.

I might be going a little offtopic here, but I can’t help but commenting on this obsession with money in our culture that has deluded people into thinking they’re poor if they can’t afford a new $300 phone every few months. People who think $20k/yr is not an income are delusional and out of touch with reality, and the rest of the planet. We’re in a global recession right now. Want to see just how little you can live off of? Take a look at people living outside your own borders… or just outside your local Starbucks or Apple store, for god’s sake.

$20k a year _is_ a livable income, even in America for a software developer. I have the expense sheet to prove it.

In short I think an income like that is pretty good when you’re doing what you love and you don’t have to answer to anyone. I also posted a comment on Gamasutra asserting that I thought the revenue numbers cited in the article were low. This was first of all based on a different application of the basic math used in response to the statistics provided from Ian’s links but also because I felt that I probably represented the average developer developing fairly average games for the platform.

I won’t be revealing specific numbers just yet but every month that I’ve been developing iPhone games my monthly income has been increasing by an average of ~120%. If I extrapolate out using my average growth rate then my income for the month of December alone should be around 7k. This could be a pipe dream of course but I don’t see why since my numbers have steadily increased so far. In fact I’m willing to bet that my increase is probably representative of the App Store’s total average monthly sales increase since I began … just a hunch.

There are some interesting bits which affected my sales numbers.

-The average price point for the Apps I’ve released is $2.28.
-I doubled my income from December to January by “working” the App Store’s various Top 100 lists to maintain visibility.
-My 2nd game Cosmosis tanked as a paid App and now makes more money as a freebie via an AdMob revenue stream.
-I’m approximately representative of the average iPhone developer/publisher not only in sales but in the fact that I have exactly 3.5 Apps out currently (Cosmosis counts as a half). Though it should be noted that the sales numbers I based my above statistics on were primarily from 2 games. My 4th App was just released and has no bearing on my stats yet, although it’s currently selling better than Debris.
-I made more money in the first 4 months of 2009 as an iPhone develper then I did in the first 4 months of 2008 with my old business.
-Debris made more money in its first 2 months than Aerial Antics made in 5 years and Aerial Antics required ~20X the number of man hours to develop.

Simply put I’ve been living “indie” since 2002. I’ve worked odd jobs while developing games and run my own contracting business while developing games. It was cool to see Aerial Antics get nods like a Sim Game of The Year Nomination from Game Tunnel, a Top 5 Physics Download spot from Computer Gaming World, and even a cable network slot on Cinematech via G4 but when all was said and done there was no cash profit and a huge amount of time was spent developing it compared to iPhone games. Between Aerial Antics and now I developed dozens of prototypes, several shareware titles, and even some grandiose pipe dream concepts like Full Contact Debate but none of them panned out.

If the goal is to independently do what you love AND make a living doing it then I think the App Store provides the best opportunity around. Before iPhone development I had been chasing the dream for 7 years, now I live it … albeit somewhat modestly at the moment.

Disco Pool is live on the App Store! This was the last game my mother played and I hope that people like it.

Here’s an early YouTube video:

Jeff Tunnell over at MakeItBigInGames.com just posted a blog dealing with the various marketing complaints against the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPod games. It’s a good read as are all of his articles so check it out.

I personally am heavily invested in iPlatform (iPhone / iPod Touch) development and marketing. Earlier today I was thinking of doing a blog on this very subject because I had to do a hardcore turn around from developer to marketing strategist to get the most out of my last 2 months worth of development time. Last week I was working 20 hour days to get the game done and this week I’m constantly watching the game’s iTunes popularity, cross referencing other titles with similar keywords, and then choosing new categories which will allow my game to maintain some visibility while I work on an update to bring it back to the top of the New Release list.

With over 25,000 Apps available it’s obvious that any single developer is merely a needle in a very large haystack. The first step to getting recognized as a “special” needle is to make contact with players. I personally love TouchArcade.com. This is the largest website dedicated to games on the iPlatform and the founder ( Arnold Kim ) is actually a local to my region which is super cool.

My first 2 games barely registered with the TouchArcade crowd but I kept posting and attempting to communicate with players. Finally, on my third attempt I registered a small blip on the players’ radar. My first communique was a post with an alpha video on YouTube showing off a city with the basic flight mechanics. The response was OK, some people were intrigued others communicated concern over the graphics.

A month later I posted some new screen shots which demonstrated the work Ori Cohen and I put into better graphics. Now we actually turned a few heads. Mind you this was nothing compared to the attention the top sellers get, but at least some people were getting legitimately interested in playing the game. My third post showed off the final graphics (which are great by current iPhone standards) and a video. This time people were really almost impressed. The reaction was actually somewhat the opposite of my first communique. Instead of people expressing concern over the crappy graphics some expressed concern that the game was a mere tech demo.

Finally, the game launched and people began asking each other if the game was any good. The first response was something like:

“The screen shots look interesting, but it sucks”.

Afterward, a host of other players debunked this first response by saying something like:

“Whoever the hell said it’s bad is lying!”

A whole group of players were apparently really having fun with it and they rescued me, the developer, from drowning. This was awesome! The best part is that this had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with me being honest with players about what the game entailed and them having some faith that the game would be better than the first commenter suggested.

There’s only so much you can directly connect with players though. After that you need some strategy to get move exposure for your App. On day 3 my strategy was to abandon the New Release list which currently had my App listed under the Action and Simulation categories. Instead I wanted to target two lower competition categories like Adventure and Racing which are both perfectly applicable for SkylineBlade. The goal of the switch was of course to get on one or more Top Sellers lists.

Fortunately, I had changed the game from Action to Adventure first. This resulted in a boost in sales which actually took me from a ranking of ~127 in the Simulation category to a rank of about 53. Thus I did not actually need to dive into the lower competition Racing category. Now my App is listed as a top seller in both the Adventure and Simulation categories. It might be beneficial to be in the racing category since I’d mostly like be ranked a lot higher (like 27th perhaps) but I feel pretty comfortable with a rank of 53 in the higher competition simulation category for now.

At the end of the day there is a strategy to selling well in the App Store. You start out with only the New Release list and a few Internet forums to help you get noticed. Then by carefully examining the competition you can tell what games are selling by using similar keywords for search and then by cross referencing those other games with various other categories to see where your game would rank in some of the Top Sellers lists. It’s important that your game be somewhat dynamic in genre to take full advantage of the category system. Players have at times called certain games out for not being a specific genre. Overall though if you’ve made something that’s slightly imaginative then you can squeeze into more than 2 categories.

Speaking of categories, it’s really important to note that you can only be featured in 2 categories simultaneously except when your game is in transition from one to another. For example I switched SkylineBlade from Action to Adventure today which actually resulted in the title being listed in both for a while. This is because iTunes relies on multiple servers and server persistence for it’s listings. I wasn’t in both categories on every server but the combination seemed just right that I was somehow on the right servers at the right time to be listed in 3 categories instead of 2. This means that it pays to switch categories. It’s possible that to be listed in 4 categories although the technical limit is 2 because of the server persistence loop hole.

It’s difficult to accurately measure the loop hole’s effect on sales. To be honest it’s possible that it might be better to be in 2 solid categories constantly because there can be some down time involved in category switches where your App isn’t listed in either of the 2 transition categories. I will say this, it pays to experiment with category switches at the very least. Whatever you do though do not switch both of your original categories simultaneously. You want to make sure that you have a constant presence in at least one category.

There’s so much more involved but this post forms the basis for App Store sales strategy.

- Connect directly with players via iPhone/iPod gaming forums
- Release new apps in relevant high competition categories
- Once the app has dropped down on the New Release list, switch to relevant lower competition categories where the app will be listed as high as possible in a Top Seller list
- Experiment with various relevant categories but don’t switch both of your category options at the same time
- Finally, don’t ever switch prices in between updates, whenever you switch prices your app experiences some downtime. This not only subtracts hours of sales time but it will decrease the app’s rank which will result in a multiplied decrease in sales (whether you raise or lower the price). It’s best to change prices when your app gets an update to get a smooth transition without downtime.

By following this strategy I’ve been able to triple sales.

More to come …