Experience in creating the first mobile game. Beginner Marketing

Retrospective-analytical assessment of his first experience with a touch of irony

A post about how young teams make games and software on personal experience. Experienced - to read and remember: how it all began. Beginners - read what rake you are likely to collect in the near future. Yes, you will. Everyone does it. They read and then go and fill up the bumps.



So, you decided to do something interesting, modern and at the same time earn a lot of money? Have you read more than one success story? Do you know how many top developers earn? You probably think that you have a brilliant idea that the world is waiting for.

How was it with us

I decided that I want a business without borders, freedom, money and the pleasure of the process. At the same time, I do not know how to produce anything (programming, drawing, writing, ..). I am assembling a team of enthusiasts and those who can be paid very little: a programmer without experience on a salary, a designer-student (without experience at all) on a piecework, a game designer (without experience and time) for the idea. Such a dream-tim. At that time, only the programmer and I had a smartphone.

Idea. What to do?

The idea was born quickly. What to do and where to go, we did not know, and market research is not a royal matter. We needed to produce something soon. We decided that games are what we need. Money is just in the industry - chickens do not peck. And articles about the fabulous incomes of strange casuals only added fuel to the fire.
The idea did not come immediately, but rather quickly. Like all ingenious. We decided to “digitize” one board-intellectual game for the company. TIK-TAK-BOOM - an arbitrary timer in the form of a bomb is turned on and the company at the table names the words according to the conditions on the cards. Answer by answer, the bomb goes in a circle and explodes at some point. That's the whole game. Success is ensured.

Description

To do something, it would be nice to describe it. Team, myself, the press, designers.
Not in our case. We already know: make a bomb! All.

Lecture hall

Who were we making the game for? But whoever downloads, let him play! We did not bother with such trifles as the correspondence of tasks, design, design of the game and preferences of the potential audience.

Visual style

Design idea? Design is the same thing and flowers?
We had no style and idea, and the production of “design” itself did not obey any forecasts and wishes. “Something” was done and the best of the worst was chosen after dozens of reincarnations of the same.

Budget

The budget is for large and wealthy companies. And we just make a game, why should we consider how much the development will cost?

Monetization

This item is even more covered in mystery. Where the money comes from is not clear, but it doesn’t matter. The main game is to do, and there everything will happen by itself. In addition, why consider how much you earn if you did not count how much you spend? Whatever you earn is all yours. Profit!

Promotion

Many will not believe. You probably already think that I'm writing some kind of fiction? I am writing as is and our team is not unique in this regard.
Promotion happens like this: you make a game, write to friends and put it on the market. Then comes a miracle, fame, world fame, money. Against this background, we were much more worried about the claim of the holder of the tick-to-boom trademark than how he would find out about us.

Announcement, Release

The launch was timed to the Children's Day and wrote about it on the site. Yes, they created a site for the game, groups in social networks. They even created a studio site. How could we release such a hit from the brand’s know-how?
Is it necessary to say that the people never appeared on these resources?

Promo, press, community

There was an idea to shoot a video about the gameplay. Nobody wanted to act in film.
The press is also not for us, it is for others. They themselves will know and write about us.
Communication with players and the community was also not part of our plans. In the end, it began to look like answers to reviews and comments in google play.

Analytics

What is analytics, metrics and analysis, we also did not think. As a result, all our knowledge about the success of the product is limited to data from the "store". Accordingly, we do not know what problems players face, how long they play, how often. We do not know anything.
At the very beginning of the journey, we were not going to know this.

What happened?

A couple of months of blind development, about 60 thousand rubles of direct costs and zero rubles of return.

What happened can be evaluated in different ways.

At that time, we were happy - we created our own game! Become a part of the global system, developers! These kind of fad were great in raising spirit, and the world was already different. It seemed: now we can do everything!
Hopes for enrichment, fame and success, melted very quickly. A couple of weeks was enough to understand that something was wrong.

After 10 months, I conclude that everything was not so bad for the first time. New Year holidays became a pleasant bonus, on the threshold of which the game suddenly began to be downloaded more. Surprisingly, the download volume has not decreased. Today there was an idea to pay attention to those 5 thousand active players and make a good update for them. In addition, today from 60 to 100 people download the game daily, and in just 10 months, more than 12,000 downloads. It also motivates to improve the product.

conclusions

Only now, I have drawn conclusions at the expense of fellow travelers without experience, people “for the idea” and my own superficial attitude to my product. Today my team: already an experienced programmer, a good remote designer with great taste and portfolio, and I myself am immersed in the "industry".

The plan is simple : consistently and accurately answer all the questions from the list above (“what to do?”, “Description”, “audience”, ..), to compose a competent technical task. Release an update that our players will like and give them what they like in this game. Instead, add some paid content and advertising.

P.S. I think that the first projects, like the first pancakes, can be lumpy. This is inevitable and useful. I wish all beginners patience and faith! Over time, everything will work out.

Ps.2 My personal discovery, an invaluable storehouse of knowledge for those who are going to "make games" - a free book by Sergei Galenkin galyonkin.com/book "Marketing of games." Recomend for everybody!