After a few unsuccessful games, I‘ve decided go back to the drones and create a good quality game this time. The most important things in the game were good looking drones, speed and fun. The game took about half a year to build, but game improvements took much longer as I added a new map, improved gameplay, added more options. The first version of the game appeared in January 2018 and a few months later the game entered the Google Play indie corner. The game received a lot of criticism and rating wasn’t so good, but the Indie corner was a big win and recognition for me. I paid a lot of attention for advertising: I bought Google Ads and contacted small Youtube channel owners directly. Indie corner attracted a few players, so I had about 2k installs in March.
July 2018 Playmageddon begins, most game developers are complaining installs have dropped by 60%. These are huge numbers, but at the same time, Amazing Drones installs number is rising. It reached over 30 thousand in August and more than 30 thousand in September at its peak! It looked absolutely incredible, I’ve started to make money from games! However, when the peak was reached, the numbers fell so quickly as they rised and in December 2018 there were about 500 installations per month only. I even wrote a request to the Google Play store and asked what happened, but I got banal answer that it could have happened due to game updates. I was very disappointed because at one time I was already thinking that maybe I could turn a hobby into a job. Through this so-called Playmageddon I got a lot of valuable reviews and improved the game again. Over time, I managed to raise the number of stable game installs, which allowed to buy a Unity Pro license. True is that Amazing Drones at current state rating is quite good and I get a lot of good reviews. My important advice would be to pay attention to player reviews and try to make improvements based on them. After making improvements, contact them no matter how old their review is, so you might discover a follower who will benefit you with other games in the future.
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Some time has passed since Drone Lander release, I was basically disappointed because I was sure this game will reach its heights, but it didn't happen. This time I decided to create a similar game to the Subway Surfers arcade genre game. The development of the game took several months. In the original version of this game, I had major problems with performance due to overcomplicated logic and other stuff, so as I gained more experience it needed to be significantly optimized. I plan to write a separate article about game optimization after game reviews are done. This game didn’t work out exactly as the first, with only about 20 users installing per month. Only after much effort and localization was it possible to reach about 200 new users per month. As I mentioned in the first article, it is very important to evaluate as early as possible whether the game is successful and only then pay more attention to it. It is also important to say that the localization of the game is important and the number of users can be increased.
As I mentioned in the first blog post, my first game was not successful, but it was more experimental to figure out the process of game being created and uploaded to the Google Play store. After a while, the idea arose to create a game with drones. This time I paid more attention to details. I created 4 different maps from scratch with Blender. This time it looked like the game would be a success story. The game took about 4 months to develop. After some investigation, I realized to make at least some money from my game, I need to create limited resource. I came up with the idea that flying with a drone would require batteries, one division - one flight. Batteries charge in 30 minutes or player watches ads to get batteries instanly. This method also did not work, because players are basically annoyed by ads, and if there is a limited resource they cannot fly – players just simply unintall the game. In summary, such a model is not very appropriate, as the playing time should not be limited. It is a better way to offer players some additional resources by watching ads, in my case as an example would be different drone. True is that the quality of the initial Drone Lander version was pretty poor and it had to be significantly improved over the years in terms of UI, graphics, and gameplay. For the clarity, I provide a few illustrations of what the original and improved versions looked like. It is important to mention that time required for game improvements paid off and were well worth the time compared to my first game. Now lets take a look at Google Play key indicators. One of most important key indicators is conversion rate. Drone Lander conversion rate is at about 14%, at the lower end of the median, with the upper limit at 25%. Good conversion rate is about 20% near the upper median limit. The conversion rate mostly depends on the icon, rating and reviews; less dependent on screenshots and description. If your game conversion rate is less than 10% I would recommend to improve the icon, screenshots and description. If the rating of the game is low then you should improve the game itself. Another particularly important indicator is user loss, if it is high then it means there is a problem with the game and game needs to be improved.
It all started in 2016, a friend of mine showed Unity and then I was amazed at how easy is to create a game, so I started creating my first game. For the first game, it seemed like I was going to create “anything”, and everyone will play it, but that kind of thinking was a mistake - I only realized after a while that there were tons of much better and more interesting games on the market, but I had to start with something. The game was created spontaneously, but the essentials at the start of development are usually the same: player (camera), environment (scene), enemy, and goal. In this game, balls run towards player and player blast them by tapping touchscreen. If player touches the ball game over occurs, otherwise player goes to the next level. Game is primitive, but for start it was OK. It is important to mention that all game models I have been creating from scratch with Blender. Blender is free and has many good features. If you struggle with modelling, there is always an option to buy models or just find some free in Unity store. When the game is ready next step is uploading to Google Play. Basic skills with GIMP are enough for uploading. It requires multiple screenshots, icon and description. If the game is arcade genre and its goal is to score as many points as possible then it would be more interesting to create a leader board. All of these elements are particularly important and therefore require special attention. The icons must be clear and distinctive because the user first sees the icon. For description, it’s important to find as many relevant keywords as possible, which can simply be found in similar games on Google Play or using Google Ads Keyword Planner. Screenshots should also be clear and show the most important episodes and features of the game.
Uploading a game to Google Play can be frustrating as there won’t be many installations at the beginning. A good saying is how anyone can play your game if no one have even seen it. The Google Play store is very crowded, so another important element is marketing. A free way to attract players is to write directly to the developers of small Youtube channels and ask them to share the game or do a gameplay video. Another way is to buy Google Ads, but it's paid. In other articles, I plan to describe in more detail the specific results as far as I was able to earn and share some game statistics. So in summary, creating the first game requires Unity, Blender, GIMP, and some basic programming knowledge. Starting from scratch you can learn from Youtube, which is full of different levels of educational material. If you like games and think you can create then do it! Don't expect very much at first, but over time, if you work hard and create a fun and quality game, you will succeed. It took a lot of time over the years to optimize the first game, but it wasn’t worth the time, so my advice is - if you failed with the game and players are not playing it as you expected then don’t waste time and move on. |
AuthorSysreb Games - Indie developer sharing experience on Unity game development. ArchivesCategories |