The People Want Coins
I know I barely have anyone reading what I very rarely post here, so I'm mentioning this stuff to write down my thoughts, not really for any kind of promotion.
And the main thought I've had for the past few weeks is that I'm really enjoying making apps. I've only been doing this for about two months, but I think I can already say that I'd be surprised if I'm ever doing anything else as a job. And so you understand how serious this is - I just ordered my first cell phone.
But back to Coin Dozer. It's doing pretty well, particularly in Asia. It somehow became the #1 free app in Hong Kong just a few hours after it was released, and then has gradually became the #1 free game app in Japan, among other places. Example translated Japanese comment:
“decent too heavy to move in the iPhone3G (Naturally!) frame rate at 50 when treated with the physical operation of large coins start falling rapidly”
(Mix that with a comment from a UK user calling it “blandly addictive” and I think you'll have a good sense for how it plays.)
So it's obviously pretty fun to watch our rankings in various countries, although it is particularly fun in Japan as we can look at the rankings for all free apps and see that we're #2, being beaten by, let's see... a picture of a chicken sandwich.
That damn that chicken sandwich! I actually thought we'd have knocked it down a couple days ago, but no, it somehow continues to hold us back. Fucking chicken sandwich.
Advertising seems to work, or at least it's fun to pretend it does. We've already launched two ad campaigns specifically targeting Singapore and Malaysia. Whose gonna be next? Kyrgyzstan? The Sarawak region in Malaysia?? Impossible to say until we crunch the numbers.
So we're just having fun with that, but the advertising model in general for apps seems wacky. Here's how it works, as best as I can figure it. We let other apps put advertisements in our apps so that we'll have money to put advertisements in their apps so that our apps end up higher in the rankings so we won't have to advertise anymore. Unless the ads they put in our apps make their apps go higher in the rankings than ours. Then we'd have to advertise more.
Who wins? Google. (But that's okay since I love Google and just bought a phone from them.)
(Seriously Google. I love you. Please don't fuck me somehow with your phone.)
Now there is bad news in all this. We released our app with a bug! It let's people easily complete the game if a certain something happens. A fix is coming. A fix is coming.
That brings up an interesting game design issue. You get a free coin every 30 seconds in the game. You need this as it's easy to run out of coins, but in our comments a lot people complain that 30 seconds is too long, or that everyone should just get infinite coins. Well, the problem with that is that it would suddenly stop being a game. There's not a whole lot of skill involved in playing Coin Dozer, but there still has to be consequences for a bad drop. Otherwise you don't care at all what happens. You tap the screen for 5 minutes straight, realize you haven't even been looking at the screen for the last 3, and then turn off the game, because it's stupid. Asking for infinite coins is like asking for ghosts not to kill you in Pac-Man.
And there's other bad news! The first app I created all by myself got rejected by Apple with the comment that it contained “minimal user functionality”.
And even more more bad news! I misspelled Massachusetts in an app I submitted last week. Embarressing.
And the main thought I've had for the past few weeks is that I'm really enjoying making apps. I've only been doing this for about two months, but I think I can already say that I'd be surprised if I'm ever doing anything else as a job. And so you understand how serious this is - I just ordered my first cell phone.
But back to Coin Dozer. It's doing pretty well, particularly in Asia. It somehow became the #1 free app in Hong Kong just a few hours after it was released, and then has gradually became the #1 free game app in Japan, among other places. Example translated Japanese comment:
“decent too heavy to move in the iPhone3G (Naturally!) frame rate at 50 when treated with the physical operation of large coins start falling rapidly”
(Mix that with a comment from a UK user calling it “blandly addictive” and I think you'll have a good sense for how it plays.)
So it's obviously pretty fun to watch our rankings in various countries, although it is particularly fun in Japan as we can look at the rankings for all free apps and see that we're #2, being beaten by, let's see... a picture of a chicken sandwich.
That damn that chicken sandwich! I actually thought we'd have knocked it down a couple days ago, but no, it somehow continues to hold us back. Fucking chicken sandwich.
Advertising seems to work, or at least it's fun to pretend it does. We've already launched two ad campaigns specifically targeting Singapore and Malaysia. Whose gonna be next? Kyrgyzstan? The Sarawak region in Malaysia?? Impossible to say until we crunch the numbers.
So we're just having fun with that, but the advertising model in general for apps seems wacky. Here's how it works, as best as I can figure it. We let other apps put advertisements in our apps so that we'll have money to put advertisements in their apps so that our apps end up higher in the rankings so we won't have to advertise anymore. Unless the ads they put in our apps make their apps go higher in the rankings than ours. Then we'd have to advertise more.
Who wins? Google. (But that's okay since I love Google and just bought a phone from them.)
(Seriously Google. I love you. Please don't fuck me somehow with your phone.)
Now there is bad news in all this. We released our app with a bug! It let's people easily complete the game if a certain something happens. A fix is coming. A fix is coming.
That brings up an interesting game design issue. You get a free coin every 30 seconds in the game. You need this as it's easy to run out of coins, but in our comments a lot people complain that 30 seconds is too long, or that everyone should just get infinite coins. Well, the problem with that is that it would suddenly stop being a game. There's not a whole lot of skill involved in playing Coin Dozer, but there still has to be consequences for a bad drop. Otherwise you don't care at all what happens. You tap the screen for 5 minutes straight, realize you haven't even been looking at the screen for the last 3, and then turn off the game, because it's stupid. Asking for infinite coins is like asking for ghosts not to kill you in Pac-Man.
And there's other bad news! The first app I created all by myself got rejected by Apple with the comment that it contained “minimal user functionality”.
And even more more bad news! I misspelled Massachusetts in an app I submitted last week. Embarressing.