Creative

Check out "The Adventures of Timmy..." (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-adventures-timmy-run-kitty/id463104059?mt=8&ls=1) in the AppStore. Not necessarily for the app itself, but for the artwork/screenshots. I love how they stitched together a larger landscape image from the five available, and added pieces that overlay across the borders.

Gives me an idea...

quadrobounce! is live

iTunes link. Nothing in the game has changed except the name, graphic assets and the icon. If you like the old stuff, don't update, otherwise grab the new version.

New version submitted

Hopefully I changed everything correctly. I changed the name of my first game to 'quadrobounce!', which doesn't quite roll off the tongue as smoothly as quadropong, but I guess I will get used to it. Unfortunately I will (probably) be waiting about a week for the review process to wrap up, but I will announce here when the game is available again.

I was going to make a whole new app id for this name change, but I was curious if I could get away with just changing all the visible references of the old name and just use the same bundle. This way, it would show up as an update for those who already have the game. I changed all the artwork too, as well as the icon, which I'm sad to say I whipped up in about five minutes. I'm not super proud of it, but honestly I'm ready to move on to other things. I feel like this game is hobbled together and barely compiling as is, mostly due to an upgrade in Xcode and cocos2d mid-project. I strongly advise AGAINST doing this. Serious headaches await if you try.

My next project is another quick simple game, but something that I haven't seen a ton of out there. It's original this time, but still pretty basic in gameplay. Something you could pick up and play for five minutes, then come back to in a few days to try and beat your score. You may have seen this enemy squid that I drew for this project on my Facebook page.

SQOID!!

He will play a big part in this game, but for now it's the only thing I've done with this project. Hopefully this game won't take as long as the last one.

Good news everyone!

I heard back from Atari today, and the response was actually pleasant. Apparently the only infringing aspect of my app quadropong was the name itself, and the inclusion of their trademark name, 'PONG'. Atari said they have no claims to the graphics assets or even the gameplay mechanics, so if I renamed my app and resubmitted it, there would be no further problems. Sweet!

This is a slight pain, and will take a few hours of work to change some graphics around, but I am worried that I will have to resubmit to Apple as a completely different app ID. I haven't poked around iTC yet to see if I can keep the same bundle ID but just change the name slightly. We'll see how big of a headache that side of this ordeal will be.

Which brings me to my next point, and an outreach to my dozens of readers; what should the new name be? I had some funny suggestions on Facebook from my friend Greg, including 'quadro-ping' and 'comparewithactiveingredientsinatarispongx4'. I kind of like the idea of a long ridiculous name like 'Happy Fun Four Sided Bouncing Ball Game', but a simple tweak like 'quadropUng' would be funny too. Any suggestions? Leave a comment or a tweet (@jonnysuave) with your ideas.

Well that was fun while it lasted (copyright infringement!)

I was notified by Apple a few minutes ago that they got a letter from Atari, demanding the removal of quadropong from their app store, stating it violated their copyright to the game/name "PONG". So of course I went through iTunes Connect and removed the app for now, but I am a little conflicted. Yes, they created this game like 40 years ago, and yes, they have a legal right to defend that name, but I can't help saying "COME ON!" A quick search for 'pong' in the app store brings up dozens, if not hundreds, of results for pong style games, some of which are designed to actually resemble the original game. Why are those still allowed in the store, for sale? Maybe they all got letters today too, I don't know.

I'm just doing this for a hobby. I'm one guy trying to make games, sorry for not being completely original on my first try. Guess I should take down my ticalc.org version too incase they see that.

So cheer me up and click on an ad or two, I'm might need some extra revenue soon. *pleaseDon'tSueMeAtari*

Now to test from the blogger app :)

No landscape support!? Instant fail. Loading blogger's "draft" page in mobile safari worked fine, though it's a little slow. At least I could type comfortably there. And why is this app SO ORANGE?

Testing posting from iPhone

I brought my laptop with me on vacation (one week in Tahoe for my brother's wedding), but I haven't had any urge to code. I just want to sit, and veg, and relax. I'm a little bummed because I was hoping a week away from my real job would give me some time to program, but all I want to do is rest by the pool. :)

Experiment failed (kind of)

I had heard some buzz about the 'upswing', or making your app free for a few days, then using that momentum to sell some copies after the free period. I made quadropong free for two days and had over 1000 downloads, which in itself is pretty cool in my eyes. After the return to $1 though I was back to zero sales for a few days. It's back to free and will stay that way. As I posted before I have some ideas that I might implement to try and capitalize on the audience I have now (at least until they delete it...), but as I've said before, I do this for fun not for the money. I'm just stoked that 1000 people are playing around with something I made.

Alternative ideas for monetization

While it would be great to be profitable from selling your software outright, it seems that many iOS developers are exploring alternative ways to make money from their apps. With the In App Purchase system it is possible to give a base app/game away for free, reach a much larger audience, and offer ways to pay for extra content or 'shortcut' purchases. When the barrier for entry is lower (or non-existant), customers are much MUCH more likely to try out an app, and with the right persuasion, will feel good about dropping a buck or two to the developer.

While my numbers are small, they still paint a pretty picture of this situation. In my first month in the App Store with quadropong at $0.99, I had roughly 30 sales and 40 promo codes used. The leaderboard on Game Center had 39 players listed, so assume that about half of the people use and sign into their game center account. Last night I dropped the price to free and posted about it on reddit, facebook, twitter and here. At the moment, there are 223 players listed on the leaderboard! I can't wait for the morning update to see how many actual downloads this translates to, but assuming from the numbers above it could be around 400. Now, this is exciting to me for two reasons. 1) More people are playing my game. I've never had an audience like this before with any programming projects I've done, and it's fun to watch the downloads climb, even if they are free ones. Which brings me to... 2) I have the opportunity to try some new pricing strategies. Now, I really want to be careful here, because there are some people who have paid for this app, and I don't want them to feel cheated. I don't want to just slap some ads on there and call it a day. So I've decided to design some kind of In App Purchase that will reward people who like the game, but won't cause any unfair advantages.

One idea was to have some powerups in the game, like slowing the ball down or making the paddles bigger for a short amount of time. These could be purchased and used during the game, sort of like the eagle in Angry Birds. The problem with this is that it would give an unfair advantage to those players who decided to pay, which would cause some skewed results on the leaderboards. Yes, I want to have integrity in scoring even in my small game. So this idea is off the table. So, how can I have something that isn't essential to the game but still gives the player incentive to buy? And how can I give payers and non-payers access to this content?

My idea is to design multiple graphical themes that can be purchased with real money or points accrued by playing the game. This adds a fun element to the game without drastically altering gameplay or giving any advantage to certain players. My idea is to keep an overall tally of the points earned during the game, and letting the player 'purchase' themes through some sort of theme browser, say at one theme for 1000 points. They also have the option to purchase a 'theme pack' for $0.99, which would include five themes at once. This way the player has the option to unlock the content quickly and support the developer, or play to unlock and enjoy the game for free.

This is a new venture for me, and an experiment as well. I will be hard at work on making these changes so my new project will have to be shelved for a bit. Oh, and in the last 2.5 paragraphs, 10 more players have showed up on the leaderboard, making the total 233 now. CRAZY!

Wow...

In just a few hours since that last blog post, the site got over 100 hits. Small potatoes, I know, but if each of those people had clicked an ad, it probably would have paid for my developer license for a year. How can I actually improve click-through rates without bombarding my page with ads?

quadropong is free!

I've decided to make quadropong free for a limited time. So far sales have been pretty lack-luster, and what I really want is for people to play my games. Financial overflow would be lovely, but it isn't why I started this project. I started pursuing game development because I love games. I've been playing video games for as long as I can remember (Final Fantasy on the NES is my first game btw), and I've wanted to make them for more than half of my life. I finally have a medium that, in my opinion, fully balances the homebrew / garage developer spirit with a chance to make some money, and have the time spent not feel 'wasted'. quadropong was my first venture into the AppStore market, a notoriously competitive and brutal place to try and make a buck. I had a lot of support from my friends and family, and I really appreciate everyone who threw a buck my way. It was a fun first week watching those numbers roll in, but at this point I'd rather have more people play and possibly leave reviews. Or come to this site and click some ads. :)

So, check out the iTunes AppStore page, send this link around, and check out my game if you haven't already. And stay tuned to this page, or my twitter stream, because there will be more coming soon.

Waiting for review...

I'm wondering if there is some secret I'm missing as far as when to submit an application or an update for review. All I changed in my first update, which I submitted almost a week ago, was the graphics and one line of code. I assumed that for updates the process would be faster, but I guess this is how things go. I've read plenty about how frustrating this process is, but now I see it first hand.

But I get it. I understand that this review process keeps (some of) the junk apps out of the app store, and provides a higher caliber of content for consumers. It makes a developer think before spending time working on a project, or making clones of all the popular games just to make a quick buck. I just wish it didn't take over a week to approve a bug fix.