My experience in developing games for Android. Part two

    In this article I will end my story about developing my first Android game. For those who did not see / did not read - part one .

    Financial side


    Costs and budget. Let me give you an example of my final budget for the development of the game:
    Designer (graphics, animation) - 12,000 rubles;
    Sound - 3,000 rubles;
    Asus EEE Pad Transformer tablet - 18,500 rubles;
    Samsung Galaxy S smartphone - 16,500 rubles;
    Registration fee for Google - ~ 700 rubles ($ 25)
    Total - 50,700 rubles

    Of course, the lion's share of the budget was occupied by the purchase of devices, but this is a one-time purchase, which also coincided with a personal desire :) Otherwise, the costs are very moderate and with good promotion are quite capable of paying off. Of course, I did not take into account labor costs, but it is worth considering your time spent on development.

    Monetization.There are several popular approaches for monetizing an application on Android, and if you are not developing a free application for your pleasure, it is better to think about making a profit at the development stage. There are probably three main approaches:
    1) Direct sale. You just sell your application for a certain amount. It’s worth remembering that Google withholds a 30% tax on your price.
    2) Freemium. The application and the main functions in it are free, but additional functionality (for games - some special cool things or in-game money, sets of levels) is sold for money. Tax - the same 30% of the sale price.
    3) Advertising. You earn by showing ad units in your application, and people click on them.
    As far as I know, they now consider the freemium approach effective, but in practice, different approaches or their combinations will work better for different types of applications and games. Experiment and try - it's hard to say anything else.

    I chose a combination of advertising and direct sales - I have a free lite version of the application that displays ads and a paid version with a low price, which has no ads and has additional features. About how successfully the application is currently monetized - below, in the results.

    Psychology


    I want to say a few words about the mood during development. You should really enjoy the game development process and it will be great if you write such a game that you want to play yourself. I was pretty tired of my game while I tested it, but even now I sometimes play it with pleasure when I want to relax. More optimism - optimists do better and you’ll definitely invest some of your positiveness in your game, and people will feel it. Do not lose heart and do not give up on failure - there will be no success and failure, and each failure is a rewarding experience. Remember about Thomas Edison, who knew exactly what failure and perseverance in achieving the goal.

    In a word, more optimism, believe in success, work, experiment and positive results will not take long!

    Publication and Promotion


    Publication. A good article on developer registration and publication in Market applications is here . However, I was surprised that almost nowhere is a list of materials needed for publication, and which is better to take care of in advance. Just in case, I indicate:
    - A signed application apk-file. The easiest way to do this is through Eclipse with a plugin from Google, you need to right-click on the project and select the Export Signed Application Package sub-item in the Android Tools item in the menu. This launches a wizard that guides you through the process of creating a certificate and signing the application.
    - Screenshots of the application. You need at least 2 screenshots of your application, the size is up to 480 * 854. It is better to publish at least 4-6 screenshots of course.
    - The application icon in high resolution. Used in the market, you need a png-icon 512 * 512 in size
    - An icon for advertising. 180 * 120, used in some sections of the Market, optional.
    - An advertising banner or badge for the “Recommended” section. It has a size of 1024 * 500, it is also optional, but it is better to take care of it - will it not bother you with extra advertising?
    - Promotional video. Also must have, is posted on youtube, and only a link is inserted into the Market. Alas, I don’t have it, but I am working on this shortcoming.
    - Name, description, recent changes, promotional text. These are all text fields in which, by name, it is clear what to write. Think of good, colorful texts in advance.
    Otherwise, publication in the Market is trivial - fill out the fields, download the application file and materials, and click “Publish”. There is one feature - when the file is only downloaded, but not activated, the counter that shows the number of devices supporting your application will be 0. In order for it to work, you need to click “Activate” on the tab with the application file. I was covered in cold sweat when I downloaded the application for the first time and found that, from the point of view of Google, not one device supports my game.

    The Market also has other bugs, for example, do not pay attention if the counter of active installations will be updated asynchronously with the download counter - this happens. In general, the Market is convenient enough for work and provides the necessary minimum information and statistics for analysis.

    A few more words about the withdrawal of funds. For Russia, money can still be withdrawn only through the Checkout + Adsense bundle, so if you plan to sell applications, it is better to take care of your Adsense work account in advance. Make a blog or a small website, post ads there and save $ 10. Upon reaching this amount in the account, Google will send you a regular mail (it takes several weeks) a verification code that activates payments on your account. It’s better to do all this even at the stage of application development, because it will be very sad to sit and wait for the code when the long-awaited rivers of money flow into the account. Otherwise, withdrawing money according to the rules of Adsense is $ 100 minimum, withdrawing once a month and it is better to use Rapida is faster and easier.

    PromotionI can’t give detailed advice on promotion, because I myself am still at the beginning of this journey, but the promotion of the Android application, in general, is no different from the promotion of any other electronic product on the Internet. Write posts in thematic forums, send reviews on relevant sites, mark yourself in the catalogs of games. Attract users, interest them and try to cover the maximum of the target audience. There is only one point - do not discount promotion, the stage from development to publication is at best half the battle, the application must be untwisted, and it is better to put funds for this in the budget and time in the work plan.

    Summary


    Over 5 months of developing the game, I achieved the following:
    1) I got a lot of new experience and impressions - it's just great!
    2) Developed the game Garden Troopers







    Garden Troopers

    Garden Troopers Lite


    At the moment, the game has about 2000 downloads of the lite version and 2 sales of the full version.
    Advertising statistics from the lite version: ~ 7000 requests, ~ 6000 impressions, CTR 0.22%, revenue - $ 0.5.
    The total income from the application is purely symbolic, but I do not give up)
    3) I have a bunch of thoughts about improving and developing this game and many ideas from other games.

    Now and in the near future I plan to improve the game, expand the capabilities of the game (maybe even introduce new game modes), try to take normal positions in the Android Market and try to enter the iOS market.

    That’s probably all. Thank you very much to everyone who has overcome my work to the end and I will be very grateful for any feedback about the game in comments or drugs (I especially need advice on improving the monetization of Garden Troopers, because the conversion level is not happy).

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