
Behind the success of Monument Valley - ingve
https://medium.com/@InVisionApp/secrets-behind-the-success-of-monument-valley-5742bed3e42b
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mmcconnell1618
I wished the article spent some time on how the game was marketed. For
example, its appearance in House of Cards surely raised awareness for some
consumers. Yes, the design is well thought out and fun to play but there are
so many apps in each store that the more interesting challenge is rising above
the crowd. Was it all organic? Did they pay for downloads? Do they know
someone at Apple who put them on a featured list? Does the game factor into
Frank Underwood's grand ambitions in the next season?

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jacalata
They got a shitload of press on the day they launched and they were on the App
Store featured games/editors choice (not sure which) list on that day or close
to (and the update was again on an App Store banner on launch day). They had a
tumblr to collect fan art, they were actively promoting on twitter, there are
quotes from people on launch day saying "I've been looking forward to this for
months" \- so I don't know what the definition of 'organic' is but they
definitely put effort into marketing well before release, although it's
possible that just involved getting it in front of people and having them all
run with it.

their 'the launch went great' blog post:
[http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2014/4/7/on-top-
of-t...](http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2014/4/7/on-top-of-the-world)

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saisi
Monument Valley was a phenomenal game for me. I'm just really sad that with
the iOS age some really great games are easily rendered inaccessible by
succeeding iOS updates, iDevice obsolescence, or developer account shutdowns.
In sharp contrast to traditional gaming, I can easily delve through my stack
for particlar cartridges, GameCube disc or comb through eBay for a particular
PlayStation One disc. The great old days of 'Published Once. Play Plenty'.

~~~
mappu
It had an Android release, so an old version of bluestacks/equivalent and a
pirated .apk should (hopefully) last forever.

I think you're right about iOS though.

~~~
saisi
Never heard of Bluestacks till now, I'll give it a spin. Thanks for the
recommendation!

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Alex3917
> "gamers aren’t just teenage boys in their basement being anti-social."

Currently reading a book that makes a compelling argument that this is part of
the process of boys turning into men/adults, so not sure this stereotype is
entirely warranted.

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ipince
What's the book?

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Alex3917
_Participatory Culture in a Networked Era_ by Henrey Jenkins, Mizuko Ito, and
Danah Boyd:

[http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-
Co...](http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-
Conversation/dp/0745660711/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448843164&sr=8-1&keywords=participatory+culture+in+a+networked+era)

It's actually pretty interesting so far. The premise is basically back in the
90s many/most early adopters of the Internet (including myself) thought it was
going to bring all sorts of beneficial changes to society. This obviously
hasn't entirely happened, so it's looking at the state of what's changed, what
hasn't, why, what's likely to happen in the future, etc. And it's written as a
conversation between the three authors on various questions, which is
interesting because each has a slightly different research speciality -- henry
is most famous for his work on participatory culture, mimi is most famous for
her ethnography of japan, and danah probably most famous for her work on
social software and subcultures/outgroups.

A lot of the book is looking at community culture vs corporate culture vs
internet culture, and specifically how the web got corporatized or whatever.
It's also looking at youth use of social software, especially in the context
of the U.S. where kids have very little in the way of autonomy, rights, or
freedom to participate in public organizations. (This is where the video
gaming stuff comes in.)

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_petronius
"Monument Valley disrupts the traditional game design paradigm in a number of
ways"

Seems like a statement by someone who doesn't really play computer games (or
only plays triple-A FPS console titles). Although cool and well-designed,
Monument Valley is hardly unique among video games for being calm and
contemplative. Cf. Journey (2012), The Endless Forest (2005), Ico (2001),
Shadow of the Colossus (2005), etc.

If you want to go down the rabbit hole of the really disruptive (to the point
of almost outright hostile) approach to making video games, I have always
loved the work of increpare[0], who is sort of the John Waters of indie video
games.

[0]: [http://www.increpare.com/](http://www.increpare.com/)

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chrisan
I rarely buy games on iOS but this one hooked me and left me wanting more and
more. Highly recommend if you haven't played this

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dunham
This is my three-year-old's favorite game. (He only gets iPad time on the
weekends.)

He currently can complete a half dozen levels or so by himself. I suspect a
lot of it is rote memorization, but I hope the game is helping to develop
problem solving skills. He's also fan of Lumino, but the puzzles in that one
are a bit beyond him at the moment (e.g. in the first sequence, he does
everything except place the lemons on the proper pegs).

And he has kids games that he enjoys (e.g. the Dr Panda ones, and some
sorting/matching games that he played when he was younger).

~~~
greggman
There are only 8 levels or did they add more?

Checking I see they list 10 levels but the first 2 are really short

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dunham
It's a lovely game, but yeah, it's short. When it originally came out, I
compensated by only allowing myself one level per night at bedtime.

The original game is 10 levels. Later, there was an in app purchase for an
additional 8 levels called "forgotten shores". And there was another IAP
during the "Project (red)" campaign called "Ida's (red) dream", I think it was
one long level. One or more of these may be included in the base game now.

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eps
8 people x 10 months, 2.2M copies, $6M in revenue

(That's from the actual talk, the article got the revenue wrong.)

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boulos
I wish this had been titled "Behind the success of the video game _Monument
Valley_ ". I thought I was about to read some cool history about how the park
has been revitalized or drawing more visitors. Oh well.

