

Zombie Outbreak Simulator for iOS: Sales report - mikek
http://www.binaryspacegames.com/2013/01/zombie-outbreak-simulator-for-ios-sales-report/

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burningion
Thanks for posting realistic and honest figures. As developers we can become
obsessed with building things, and inflate the potential return. I can
understand your frustration, working at such a high level, building,
marketing, debugging, drawing artwork, etc., only to have what seems like
pennies on the dollar come your way.

It takes guts to share, so thanks.

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SaxonDruce
Thanks! :)

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suhastech
I just read the 4 hour work week book. He actually talks about the 80-20 rule.
80% of returns come from 20% of work emphasising on the effectiveness of your
actions not efficiency.

Applied to this, they could have enjoyed the initial success and moved onto
better things. The later effort seems like beating a dead horse.

or maybe this is just my hindsight bias.

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pc86
I don't think this has as much to do with the Pareto principle as it does with
long tail economics. I get the distinct impression from the article that the
author and his partner are considering doing this full time as a career. They
clearly have a long way to go, but especially in the beginning, they stand to
gain a great deal by getting their apps in the $30-50/day revenue area than
letting them stay (I tried to avoid the word "languish") in the $15-20 range.

~~~
suhastech
I assumed both are closely related (I'm no economist).
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution> My original comment was to
put just enough effort to capitalise on the first few parts of the
distribution.

As an outside observer, indie game development is still doesn't seem
sustainable. I've read too many stories of people with initial success and try
to build a company around it to finally fail. There are too many variables in
play to build predictable revenue.

There are of-course exceptions, it mostly involves making as many games as
possible and praying one of them clicks (Zynga, Rovio etc). In such a market,
the competition is ruthless. Both perfect competition and complete monopoly
are not favourable[1].

[1] [http://blakemasters.com/post/20955341708/peter-thiels-
cs183-...](http://blakemasters.com/post/20955341708/peter-thiels-
cs183-startup-class-3-notes-essay) (Read from "IV. Capturing Value")

~~~
SaxonDruce
It's an interesting strategy that I've wondered about before - make lots of
games until you make a hit, or at least have lots of things bringing in a
small amount each. Even internally, it's worth prototyping lots of ideas to
find the best one to develop into a full game.

However, with over 700,000 apps on the app store, it's incredibly hard to get
noticed at all. Therefore I think there's some value in working on something
over a longer time frame, trying to build up a community around it.

Back around September of last year Jay and I were at a bit of a crossroads -
keep going with ZOS/C3O, or switch to something else. In the end we decided to
part ways, Jay left Binary Space in December and I decided to keep making
updates for ZOS and C3O. I'm buying out Jay's share of Binary Space by giving
him a share of revenue for the next several years.

Back in 2010-2012 we were trying to build Binary Space into a legitimate
business - ie something that could support us full-time. I agree that indie
game dev is incredibly hard to make a living from. I've now scaled my
ambitions back to it just being a hobby. It's a fun hobby though, and it makes
enough money to pay for itself :)

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nazka
There is nothing about marketing right? I mean real marketing not just by
cutting the price. For me it is one of the main reasons they didn't earn a
lot, specially with the video game industry. For instance, it is not
surprising to see the marketing at 60% of expenses, and it can be even more.

They should send keys to journalists, do a real marketing strategy with
trailers, put ads every time they do a big update, talk to the community, etc.
Marketing is a core of the formula to be rich and successful. In an
entertainment industry, more you can give emotions to your future players more
you increase the rate of conversion and their future value (trailer, teaser,
quality of gameplay, etc.), and at the same time if you put these ads on as
much people as you can, it directly increases your own wealth.

It reminds me this article:
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/173068/congratulations...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/173068/congratulations_your_first_indie_.php?print=1)
And for the equation you have the excelente book "The Millionaire Fastlane" by
MJ DeMarco or more quickly: <http://personalmba.com/billionaire-formula/>

~~~
SaxonDruce
We spent about $1600 on ads, resulting in about 3,000,000 impressions and
about 2,000 clicks through to the app's promo page
([http://www.class3outbreak.com/iphone-ipad-ipod-
touch/games/z...](http://www.class3outbreak.com/iphone-ipad-ipod-
touch/games/zombie-outbreak-simulator)). From there it's impossible to tell
how many of those people bought the game, but I assume it's much less than
100%.

Those clicks cost us 80c each. This is not effective for a $1 app which gives
a 70c profit after Apple's 30% cut. Even for a $2 app, it would only be
effective if about 60% of people who clicked the ad bought the app - it seems
unlikely that it would be anywhere near that high.

Most advertising seems to cost about $1 per click. Based on the cost per click
and the potential return from a sale I don't think advertising is cost-
effective for promoting apps. The only way it might work is if you spend tens
of thousands of dollars, so you're on "all" the websites and so "everyone"
becomes aware of your app. Therefore it gets talked about, and each click
results in potentially more than one sale, by spreading through word of mouth.
This also only works if the game is good enough :)

I mentioned briefly in the blog post that we got a few reviews written up. Jay
contacted dozens of review sites and sent out about 20-30 review codes. We had
a poor response.

In the end I think the only marketing that was really effective was that we
had an existing community around the web versions of our games - at the time
of ZOS's release we had about 30,000 visitors a month to our website, and
about 8,000 fans on Facebook. I think this is the main reason that we did as
well as we did :)

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huhtenberg
IAP is not meant for selling bombs. IAP is meant for selling full version of
an app from within a demo.

I would argue that this is what Apple had in mind initially, before it got re-
purposed by "inventive" marketers as an in-game milking mechanism. You can say
all you want that "it works" and "everyone's doing it", but it's a very tacky
and inherently disrespectful way to treat your users. Not too much unlike the
gym membership and telco contracts. These works too, but it's a predatory
model that _everyone_ hates. I mean... c'mon, selling bombs to nuke zombies
didn't work that well? What a surprise.

~~~
freehunter
Apple is sometimes very strict about enforcing the way things were meant to
be. With the number of apps using IAP for buying items within the game, I
would wager that Apple meant IAP to be able to buy just about anything that
exists within the app.

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huhtenberg
They wouldn't want to kill the hen that lays golden eggs, would they?

As I said in another comment - if you look back at how software licensing
worked before the AppStore time, it's a long stretch to assume that Apple
could foresee the current use of IAP, that's of purchasing small _expiring_
upgrades for the apps. It's really a new and largely unexpected development.

~~~
electromagnetic
> It's really a new and largely unexpected development.

Not really, pay to play gaming has been around for a lot longer than smart
phones and the associated apps. However, it's questionable how much Apple
tried to foresee what the future use of IAPs would be.

Before the first highways were built, I doubt people would have expected
hotels and fast food restaurants to become an almost parasitic infection
around off ramps, but they did.

It's often more about the idea than what the idea can do.

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fnayr
I liked the car-purchasing power throughout the article to give meaning to the
values. I would suggest the freemium model though.

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ttrreeww
The free version was an obvious fail. I bet it cannibalized sales as well.
Should be removed.

