So do you think is still a viable method to make money, how is been your experiences with your Apps revenue etc... I don't ask the amount you make just a general it is good worth it, you know all that to have a general view.
Also congrats for your game I have it on my iPhone and is really fun to play
Yes I can tell you that it's definitely possible to make money publishing to mobile with C2 games. When I published Cluckles I had a single ad plugin (Cranberry's Chartboost plugin) in both the iOS and Andorid versions of the game. By pure dumb luck the game got featured on iTunes and the amount of money that single plugin generated in a matter of weeks made me realise that yes, there is definitely money to be made on mobile. Based on that small taste of success I am persevering with mobile game dev for the moment. The problem is the revenue is so inconsistent! As soon as the game stopped being featured the revenue dropped to a tiny trickle. If Cluckes had not been featured at all, Id be seriously considering whether game dev was worth the effort (if you are serious about making an income from it that is).
So... how to make income consistently and not be reliant on dumb luck? Here follows random, somewhat related thoughts in no particular order:
-I think your game has to be at least half-way decent to stand any chance of success. It has to be somehow unique and interesting. Clones, crappy artwork, crappy gameplay wont help you. A good game can be simple, it doesnt have to be massively complex but Id argue it needs to be polished to stand a chance. But even if u do make a great game, thats no guarantee of success.
-Equally as important is getting eyes on your game... somehow... anyway you can. Getting featured is the ultimate but you can't rely on it obviously. How then? Free games are more likely to get downloaded. Having quality sites like TouchArcade mention your game could help? If you're a social media junky I guess thats to your advantage: getting as much awareness of your game out there as possible I think will help. I think the idea that you should share your game during all stages of development so that people are aware of it and looking forward to it's release is a good idea. I can see the value in doing that, but I find it hard to practice myself as Im not much of a social media junky.
-An approach I am trying to follow is to leverage traffic I already have. I was super lucky that Cluckles got featured, and now that I have a decent number of people playing that game, I plan to try to direct those users to my new game when I release it. Ill do this by updating Cluckles and putting a link to my new game and also by having my own ad on rotation within Cluckles, for example: every forth ad shown will be an ad to my new game.
-Following from the previous point, having a large portfolio of games will help because you can cross advertise all you games within each game. That way if one of your games is successful, you can try to leverage that success by directing traffic to the rest of your portfolio. Each game should have a 'more games from this developer' link prominently displayed. And you can have ads rotating that link to your games on the market. I think this method can be v helpful, but obviously relies on you developing a portfolio of decent games.
-I read around the place that one important thing we should all do is create an email subscription list (this apparently is a thing not just for game devs but for a range of digital creatives no matter what you're trying to sell). The idea being that if you can get people signed up to an email list, you can email your list when you are releasing a new game and they will all rush to download it I found that getting people to sign up to an email list is v hard. Maybe I didnt implement it well in Cluckles, but so far I have <100 email subscribers in total. So if 100 people rush out to download my next game thats not really going to line my pockets with gold. I think that an email list could be helpful if you manage to acquire a sizeable email list of people interested to hear about your games. Building your list will take ages I guess, so start early and just persevere with it? I need to find a better way of persuading people to sign up.
Interesting related observation: I also included a link in Cluckles to report bugs. So far I have probably 5 - 6 times as many emails from 'bug reports' than from people signing up to the email list. And 99% of those bug report emails have no text... ie. People press the bug report button, it launches the default email app on device with a prefilled email and the user presumably cant be bothered entering any text and just presses send. Ethical dilemna: to 'accidentally' merge bug report email list with 'marketing' email signups and run the risk of having my games booted for vialoting terms about collecting users email addresses ? Obviously I cant do that. Rules exist about collecting people's details for marketing etc which would be breached by doing that, so you cant get away with it (and I would never consider such a dastardly act... just saying). But what it shows is that more users found it easy to hit a send button on an email, than to go through the process of signing up to a email subscription system. I guess that seems obvious, but how can I use this to inform how I get people to sign up to a marketing list etc etc?
-One thing I really noticed with Cluckles was that the 'remove ads' iAP I made in the game was a waste of effort. Hardly anyone pays to remove ads, and the amount of revenue generated by the remove ads iAP is minuscule. 99.99% of income comes from ads. And yet, building and testing the iAP and getting it working was time consuming (especially on iOS). So it was wasted effort and if I had my time over I wouldnt bother.
-In my next game I am planning to try the lite version / full version model. So Ill make a free lite version that has ads and provides a sample of say 10% of the levels. Then there'll be a full paid version with no ads and all levels. This option is appealing to me because it kind of has the best of both worlds, first you can try to hook users with the free version, it costs them nothing to try it. Then if the game is good enough you can hopefully persuade them to pay for the full version. I dont think I have enough users to release my next game as paid only (premium). But in future I aim to do that. I think once I have 3 - 4 games released I could have a user base who know what to expect from my games, who like my style of game etc and would therefore be prepared to 'risk' $1.99 on a new release without seeing a free version to first. But at this stage Im still building that user base and I wouldn't feel confident of success releasing a new game as paid only. I doubt there'd be enough people willing to 'risk' the purchase price at this point. Thats how I'm viewing it atm anyway.
-As a general rule of thumb, everything is harder when publishing on iOS. The pipeline has more steps, the approval process is a nightmare etc. BUT as a mobile dev you absolutely MUST target iOS. Its a non-negotiable. I would go so far as to say that you should make iOS your priority 1. It's where the money is. iOS represents the high end, wealthy part of the market. iDouches are more likely to be cashed up and willing to spend the allowance mummy gave them. Also, it does actually work to developer's advantage that iTunes is better curated: ie, less crap games are allowed on. So its not quite so awash with cloned turd-ware like GooglePlay is. The competion is less. So the higher barrier to entry, while a real prick when you're trying to publish, actually ends up being and advantage. This could be becoming less relevant maybe as time goes on idk. I also read that iTunes has a better system for giving exposure to a wider number of devs. ie you're more likely for your game to be featured in some small way on iTunes than on GooglePlay. I dont know if thats true, but it seems to be reflected by my experience. But having said that, some C2 game devs have had their games featured on Android... so who knows really.
Sorry for the wall of text. I got on a roll.
...So all these problems that you guys have had happened only when you export with C2 exporters or will happen the same with C3 exporters swell?? basically is the c3 exporters any better and what are the differences between (c2 & c3) exporters or they are both the same
I'm very curious on this
I think that's what we are waiting to see? If Scirra gets the C3 build service working nicely, so that its easy to use and stable, it works with C2 and all related plugins (iAP, Ads, GooglePlay, GameCenter) are updated to work with C2 and are maintained, then Ill sign up and use it. I dont think everything has been released yet has it? I saw some tutorials and things were released, I need to go look. Im not ready yet tho Im still focused on building a new game, not tuning the export / build pipe-line.