That said, Apple's App Store is an absurdly tough market in the U.S. When your game goes live, it needs to be at its best, and even large gaming companies have trouble getting games out there that do well, even with significant legitimate ad spend.

Here are some ideas, based loosely off of the experience I have had:

- Start contacting other indie-devs with relatively high dau numbers and arrange for X-promo via notifications and features.

- Stage your ad-spend when your metrics are known. Ie, if you beta test your app in some country like Brazil or New Zealand and improve your metrics so you have a known LTV, you can spend accordingly when you launch in a big market like Canada or US.

- Start with Android first because it is an easier ecosystem to iterate upon and attain an niche audience.

- There is a growing body of proof that burst spending on launch day is not the best strategy. There are games that launch early and are unknown but gradually improve their grossing metrics and buy audience in batches over time. I believe Rage of Bahamut was one such game [1]

[1]. http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/rage-of-bahamut/ranking/hist...

Please see my thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5339639 i will appropriate your your input.

I have a similar problem i guess :) , although i am in the thouht that we did a very good game but the game is not climbing...maybe i am just asking too much :)

if you dont want to look at the thread i will just say that my game name is Atlantis Breaker HD, link: https://itunes.apple.com/app/atlantis-breaker-hd/id576385319...

What do you say?

And by the way, you're recommending buying fake reviews. Here's a better tactic (and one that's guaranteed not to get you kicked out of the app store): get your launch announcement to the top slot on a popular discussion site, and get the real people there to leave real reviews instead. Which, if you're reading this and want to help these guys, is probably the best thing you can do.

It's entirely possible to succeed using only honest, community focused methods. But yer competing with a huge pack of other guys who don't use those methods, and have a significant advantage because of it. This isn't hugs and puppies. This is business.

But the advice you're giving here is roughly equivalent to telling a young cyclist in their first pro race, "hey, listen buddy. If you want to succeed, you've got to dope. Everybody's doing it. There's no other way."

And yet, if he wanted to ride in the Tour De France, I think we all know he'd lose unless he did a blood transfusion every single night....

Actually, wait. No I take that back, I do not agree. A starting cyclist will compete in local, small time races. There's only one App Store, and it's Pro's take all. These guys may be just beginning, but they're already swimming with sharks.

And if that's not enough mixed metaphors, I'll edit again!

It's not optimal, but it's the status quo that tens of thousands of developers face: you can't win if you don't employ dubious means.

Okay, that made me laugh. Thanks for adding some humor into this otherwise rather downer discussion!

I used to race (although not on very high level), I know the environment and I would bet my balls that last few Tours have NOT been clean.

My opinion is this: cycling may be a bit cleaner in a sense that maybe doping is not as widespread as it used to be and maybe the effect of doping is more limited because they need to be more careful. But I don't believe cycling is clean now. There are new drugs that are undetectable and mentality has not changed. I believe this is more realistic: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/italian-judge-says-doping-is...

And about SKY team - I have no proof and it's nothing more than just my guess but I don't believe they are clean either. Remember last TdF? They totally ruled, they controlled the whole race. My cycling intuition tells me this is not natural. They certainly compete against some (I would say many) riders who are not clean (some of them even got caught, like Frank Schleck) and they were not even competing on the same level - they were superior. I don't believe it is possible without doping. The fact that they claim otherwise on every occasion means nothing to me - I have seen this too many times.

My guess - and I realize it's nothing more than guess - is that if in 2030 they use their new methods to test today's samples they will find out that there is some substance that is undetectable today.

I would love to be proven wrong on this - I love cycling.

Read more of the in-depth articles about Sky. Their training methods are hugely different, and came from the GB track cycling programme which has taken the world championships and Olympics by storm over the past decade. They're open about what it is, and unlike with others, it's only the performance which makes anyone wonder. Look at the figures, and remember, they're still 10% slower than Armstrong! What they are using is demonstrable physiological science and feedback: a manifestation of the benefits of the Quantified Self approach!

We're almost done with our slot machine game for iOS (lame, I know), but we only have 2 people, and we definitely don't need to be in the top 25 to make some real money (that can fund new, "real game" projects).

http://thegamebakers.com/money-and-the-app-store-a-few-figur...

http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/08/selling-an-iphone-game-the...

Or really, just use this link:

http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-game-revenue-...

Games are top-heavy, but there is an overlooked middle ground of devs who have a decent passive income...

90% of the games that are currently on my iPhone were a) made by dev teams with 1-3 people, b) provide a unique and polished experience, and c) became known mainly based on community outreach. None of them are currently in the top rankings, but as far as I can tell they make enough money for the teams to get by. People keep talking about "hidden gems" on the App Store that failed to succeed despite having an excellent product, but so far, the only ones I've seen were either outright clones, failed to do any outreach at all, or had a poor business model. (Freemium with very little incentive to upgrade, for instance.)

Sure, if you're a hundred-person company, you might need to resort to shady means to be profitable. But I don't think that's at all necessary to make money on the App Store.

Asymmetry is a real problem in the App store.

This equation also works, sadly, when you replace "uniqueness/novelty factor" with "boobs." Look at the top apps and see that this is true.

Simogo has made a couple of very unique and artful games, including last year's Mobile Game IGF winner Beat Sneak Bandit. It's notable that their games are premium priced ($3), but still have hundreds of reviews.

Mika Mobile is a husband & wife team with a number of fantastic brawlers under their belts, including Battleheart and Zombieville USA 2.

Tiger Style is (in their own words) a "distributed collective of independent game developers" that have most recently developed the award-winning exploration/space-gardening game Waking Mars.

Jeff Minter releases a new iOS game what seems like every other week. (Though he once characterized it as "run[ning] frantically on the iOS treadmill".)

Zach Gage has made a number of small, fairly popular games, including SpellTower and Bit Pilot. ("Net Gross for me is probably around ~110k for 3 years of work. but the profits would probably be quite a bit lower than that")

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Notable recent failures include Punch Quest (F2P model didn't yield any income, so they switched to paid) and Gasketball (again, the F2P model they were using was too permissive).

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So, not a perfect ecosystem, but not an abysmal wasteland either. Enough for the kooky hobbyists to get by as long as their products are top-notch and their business model makes sense. (At least that's how I see it.)

Could you explain this logic?

(And that's true regardless of whether it's effective -- it clearly is, though I think mostly in the short term).

Edit: Since I'm being fairly negative here, I want to add that VonGuard's comments on gameplay and adding unique elements seem well-informed and well-intentioned.

My comments on the app store are strictly from the cynical perspective of seeing what works. It has to be said. If you go in not knowing the table stakes, yer at a disadvantage. This is just like search engine optimization: fluid, ever changing, highly competitive, extremely scummy, but EVERYONE does it.

The alternative from the perspective of say, EA or a GluMobile, is to play completely by the rules, but produce 500 games per year. As a smalltime developer, cheating is immeasurably helpful when competing with the giants that can launch 2 new games every week.

I can't help but feel your desire for me not to talk about it this loud amounts to you plugging your ears and saying "LALALALALALA NOT LISTENING!" This stuff happens every day. Ignoring it means losing to it.

Your advice sounds cynical because it is. People don't want to cheat to win - and you're telling them that they have to. Well, who are you to say that? Why should people listen to you? You may be an IGF judge, but that doesn't mean you've ever sold a game (well scratch that, I actually don't know the qualifications required to become an IGF judge, but you catch my drift).

I say this not to be critical of you personally - but if you're saying 'you need to cheat', and then brandishing your status as a judge in a relevant body, then people are going to listen to you. If you're wrong, you've given people bad advice - and this means that you should lose credibility. If you're right, then you'll gain credibility. Simply 'opting out' of the credibility problem makes it very easy for supposedly credible people to give bad advice - which doesn't help anyone in the long run - and in fact can damage a lot of people's businesses and livelihoods.

It's advice, you can take it or leave it.

You're more than welcome to be the guy/team who says, "we're going to do this the right way!". But so do a lot of other indie gaming teams, and they go under. I lived in the social gaming space for a while (Facebook). The biggest discouragement is that the quality of games made little difference to getting noticed and making money. I am no longer in the space.

You can do it the "honorable" way, and that's great, and may work. If you want to make a business of the business, you have to get your hands dirty. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Seriously? You don't understand why not?

I'm assuming this is against the TOS of pretty much any app store and could get whatever apps he is associated with pulled.

It's very simple, which I suppose is way the parent asked the question: I don't want to attach my name to anything I do on the internet, really.

Also you may want to look up "rhetorical question" when you have a spare moment.

But you are right when you say that this discussion is way off topic, so I'll probably leave it at this. Nice seeing ya.

> You have to game the app stores to succeed.

What the hell?

Edit: As antoko points out, this doesn't really add anything to the discussion, which I was aware of. I just felt the need to express disgust at what I feel to be blatant and inexcusable dishonesty. Never mind the risk of getting caught or some other backlash, what if you value honesty and pride in your work as much as the money?

Do you believe the quoted statements from the GP are false?

Or do you not care if they are true, and rather believe that that kind of advice is always wrong?

And, as for Super Hexagon, I'll play anything Terry Cavanagh makes. He is a fucking god. 4-Letter-Word melted my brain.

1. write crap game. 2. buy reviews. 3. profit.

However, if your app is awesome, that initial burst of cheating allowed your game to push through the crowds of 50,000 other apps to get the eyeballs it needs. If it's a great app, those initial users who were suckered in by cheating the system, are now happy, satisfied customers telling their friends about your app. You don't need to game the system anymore: you've broken through the brick wall that is the first 10,000 or so sales. After that, you can rely on the quality of your game to win people over, but when you're naked, alone and review-less, the app store can be a terrifying and unfriendly place.

The way you are describing it basically makes it sound like a hidden listing cost to be on the app store.

Eventually though people are simply going to stop believing reviews at which point Apple/Google will have to start taking some action against this.

I played 10 levels of this game on the web site, though, and it never even encouraged me to brag to anyone else about how quick I solved a puzzle, and had no replay value, e.g. I can't solve a puzzle better or worse really. The game has nothing to get each user to draw in more users, so it would be a waste to do the ad spend at all...

A crap game doesn't get good reviews, so boosting the app rating by buying fake reviews is just throwing good money after bad.

Anyway, I wonder how long will it take before this tactic becomes too widespread so that only huge players will have enough cash to game the system like this.

I don't want to sound cynical, but why do you think it hasn't already spread so wide that only huge players can game the system enough to gain the top spots? There was an article on HN this month about how book publishers even game the NYT book rankings.

If you are "going indie" you have to think about your real motivations -- are you building games to make a profit, or are you building games that you want to play but do not exist? The most successful games seem to fall in the latter category (successful indie games, that is). I do not say this to be snide or critical, just my honest, well-intentioned advice.

This. The latter, indeed, always make the best games. But if yer making this game because you want to make a living making games, push ads, track phone calls, pull down people's address books and sell that shit, after pumping fake downloads and such. If you want the money to fund the game you really want to make, just go full on evil, no half measures. You can be nice on the game you really wanted to make, when gameplay can float it on its own.

As a developer you are already at the total mercy of these app stores. That doesn't seem to be a problem apparently for many people here because of the belief that the pride of the work should be completely secondary to monetary gain.

The owners of these app stores don't seem to care much either. The more people who make apps regardless of revenue expectations, the more they improve the quality of these app stores and add value to the owners, not the developers. The Apples, and Googles don't have any incentive to make the marketplace any more fair it would seem.

Additionally, if you are going to cheat, get that monetization play in order first.

There's of course Facebook mobile app installs, but a lot of other ways to get installs also that might be more cost effective. Some others: http://www.appoday.com/#developers http://www.curios.me/

Best of luck!

For example, have a random time-based trigger that will unlock a DLC item in the middle of regular play. Tell them they got it, make it shine and sparkle, and then--maybe not right away, but after a minute or so, after they've gotten back to the game and might be playing around with their new toy--ask them for a rating.

Another way to put it is: if Nintendo, as some unknown up-and-comer, had released SMB3 on the App Store, a ratings dialogue would almost certainly appear approximately two minutes into the Kuribo-shoe level.

Here's a particularly shameless example: http://imgur.com/8UGRals

But yeah, you'd probably get better results if you're like "hey, here's this free thing, want it?" (tap YES) "Here you go!" ... "Please go rate us thanks it really helps" because of people's sense of reciprocity.

In any case, my point is to use your fans and your customers to boost your rank, rather than shady services and botnets.

Ask for a review after the user gets 5 stars in a level? :p

I expect that's due to sending infinite data back home. Plus it has permissions to read all sortsa data, like every free game.

With nearly 600 upvotes, 250+ comments, and the front page of Hacker News, he shouldn't have trouble finding press coverage.

Observing that a lot of corruption is taking place is different from actively suggesting someone to do it. You can do the first, but the second is bad!

You are not a game dev. You don't know our pains. If you are honest, I suggest you reveal the evidence anonymously. I hope all such scums get outed. This is morally bankrupt.

Gaming app stores isn't morally bankrupt, it's about circumventing an arbitrary set of rules set out by Apple or Google. It's not breaking the law, it's not raping and pillaging. It's capitalism. The other games in the app store that have this gameplay are dialing home, selling ads, etc...

Yes, you can make a good living making awesome games and selling them in the app store. If yer a game dev, you should know that just expecting every game dev to make an awesome game is ludicrous. Gameplay design is about iteration, refinement, testing, and iteration, refinement and testing. Just like software dev. It's really tough to get right, too, because gameplay doesn't "compile" in the same sense as regular logic. You have to test subjective "fun" levels. Making an awesomely fun game with a unique gameplay hook is the hardest possible thing to do in making a game.

So what is an indie dev to do? Monetize the lesser games to fund the big, awesome ones. Is gaming the app store any more scummy than downloading a user's phone book? Tracking their phone call regions? Reading their cookies?

See this from a user's perspective-> I spend $200 getting a fancy phone. I go to the app store. I see an app which is highly rated. I believe that the reviews and ratings are real. (The reviews are fake, I don't know that.) I spend $0.99 or more getting it. The app is horrible. This repeats a few times. I eventually stop downloading apps. I have been robbed off my money through lies. This is not just bad marketing. I slowly stop trusting app stores. I don't want to download anything from the open Internet either.

Don't you see how this hurts the whole ecosystem?

Apple's rules are not arbitrary. I could then claim that the laws of a country are arbitrary. I could denounce democracy. I could hire someone to kill my enemies. This is how mafias are formed. App store scamming is nothing but a modern mafia which doesn't kill directly.

You seem to be a person in power. I kindly beg you to use that power for good in a bolder manner. Reveal these scumbags anonymously.

If you equate selling ads with scamming, then someone else can equate scamming with murder. I bet a lot of frustrated devs are in the position.

This pattern has repeated time and time again in the history of software. See the videogame industry in 1984, or the Wii, now: crappware hurts the whole ecosystem. I totally agree. Please go browse through the Android App Store and then explain to me how the ecosystem is in anyway un-besmirched now. There will be a flush out. The decision of these guys doesn't make a difference. Get while the getting's good.

>Apple's rules are not arbitrary. I could then claim that the laws of a country are arbitrary.

Yeah, you could. But in this case, we are talking about the rules of a marketplace versus the rule of law. The rules of marketplaces, historically, are gamed over and fucking over again. See any Ponzi scheme/Mortgage crisis/stock swindle. It happens all the time. The rule of law sometimes overlaps with the rules of the marketplace.... I dunno where I'm going with this...

It's just that your statement equivocates the rules of a private, corporate entity with the rules of a democratically elected body of government, checked and balanced with the judicial system. Say what you will about the process of our Republic/democaracy, but I'd say it's anything but arbitrary.

For some reason, when you say arbitrary, I think "spontaneous," and... wow... the federal government as spontaneous. It may be completely non-sensical, but the government tends to move in very premeditated, well explained fashions. OMG, the extent to which they go to explain things.... Jebus.... 10,000 page research studies and... this is another argument.

Point being, Apple's rules change when Apple wants them to. Our laws change when ( and this is another argument waiting to happen) the people decide.

Here's the problem: in the app store graph of revenue, the top 10 apps are on Mount Everest, the next 15 to 25 are at sea level, and the next 75 out to 100 are in the Marianas Trench. Everyone else is somewhere in the molten core of the planet. I was offering blunt advice on how to succeed. The sad fact is, gaming the app stores is a whole line of business. App stores suck. As a game dev, you should know this. Xbox Live Arcade? How's that for patch management? Apple? Holy gods! Why are you so protective of their TOS? I mean, yeah you should abide by all rules of your marketplace. But people don't. And people get rich that way. I sure as fuck don't get rich. On anything. Maybe that's why I am so bitter. Or maybe it's SimCity V's BS...

I am sort of arguing from a post conventional stage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_de...

Don't think I am arguing from a religious perspective or from a moronic "rules are holy" perspective.

Fuck religion and fuck the rules and laws.

There is a universal moral core which is the only thing I am arguing from.

I would say that money is the guiding light of many here, perhaps only out-shined by the dictums of clean, recursive code. I just felt obligated to tell these guys how they could best support themselves with this game, as is, barring another 6 months of reworking it. Having quit his/their jobs and such, I'm sure money is very important.

Making money on games, and making awesome games are kinda two different things. The lines around advertising, Terms of Service, and the general expectations of a free versus paid user, this is all some very shaky ground on which to stand. But when I'm giving advice on a game in this market, I just calls 'em like I sees 'em. It's a terrible reality inside the app stores. Their terms of service change monthly, they can throw you out in the street for a lot less than gaming their systems. It's a marketplace, and these paid install services are growing, just like search engine optimization sites did. It's one of those icky business decisions, and lines that you pay a suit to worry about. Given money from this app, these guys can go and make a great game that can stand on its own merits.

I recommend contacting local newspapers, they are usually very willing to write stories like "local programmer quits day job to pursie his dream of creating games etc".

Feel free to email me [email protected], would really love to have you write a piece for us!

What's more surprising is that this is a top comment! People who upvoted this are not any better than you are!

It's always better to be honest and take pride in your work. Hacking is about making something great and interesting, not making a cheap buck.