

How a hobbyist game dev broke into the App Store's top 25 - Impossible
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AdamHunt/20130715/196307/From_Idea_to_App_Store_An_Adventure_in_Game_Dev.php

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pkfrank
>I released the game at £1.49 / $1.99. My rationale behind the pricing was
that it was a niche game, and therefore anyone who wanted to play it wouldn't
mind paying the slightly higher (but let's be honest, still very low) cost,
and I wanted to make back the money I spent on art (around £400/$600).
Secondly I think even the modest increase from £0.69/$.99 rules out a lot of
impulse purchases, which would have no doubt increased the number of "it's too
hard!" and "I don't understand!" reviews no end - this was a game made for
BMXers after all.

This makes total sense, and I hadn't previously considered the effect of
pricing on potential reviews. He was able to focus his audience (by raising
the price), knowing that it would encourage more motivated gamers that were
less likely to get frustrated by the mechanics. Thus avoiding the annoying
1-star reviews that can tank a rating.

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soup10
It doesn't, App Store is all about impulse purchases. Anything remotely casual
should be .99c or free, use ingame purchases to capture extra value. If the
game plays half decent and is shiny(has non-amateur art), it should have a pop
up sometime ingame reminding players to review and it will have no problem
getting a 4-5 star rating. All of which doesn't actually matter if you get
right because you still need a hook or angles that gets people playing YOUR
game instead of the 1000s of other similairly polished and entertaining
games(many of which are going to be better known, by virtue of branding/bigger
marketing budget/connections/whatever)

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coldtea
> _It doesn 't, App Store is all about impulse purchases._

Lots of quality apps with normal prices have proven otherwise. So anybody
should take your advice with a sack of salt.

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soup10
It is what it is. I've had an app in the top 100 paid for the past couple
years and that's how I interpret the market. The vast majority of money spent
on the App Store is impulse buys, not researched decisions.

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simantel
I think saying that he broke the Top 25 list is a bit misleading. Here's what
actually happened:

"I ended the first day at no. 27 in the UK charts, no. 21 in Australia and no.
20 in Latvia (the winners of the Olympic BMX racing)."

That's still quite an accomplishment, but not quite the same thing.

~~~
trentmb
Mean ranking of ~22.6, I think I'll allow it.

~~~
ryandrake
[http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/27/how-do-you-break-into-
iphon...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/27/how-do-you-break-into-iphone-app-
store-top-50-try-23k-free-daily-downloads-950-paid-or-12k-in-daily-revenue/)

To reach #25 in the U.K. AppStore, it takes only 21% of the of downloads that
it takes to hit #25 in the U.S. AppStore.

Still, very impressive for an amateur developer in such an overcrowded
channel.

~~~
beagle3
Well, the UK has about 20% of the population of the US, so it is proportional

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JacobAldridge
I'll be sharing this article with every person who comes to me with a "great
app idea" because "that's where the money is".

This is a great tale of the hard work and perseverance required to launch a
game as a solo dev - and I would call it a success. "New car money", though,
is not the success so many devs (and would be devs) seem to think comes
easily.

~~~
tunesmith
That was my first thought... if the motivation is monetary upside, "new car
money" in exchange for someone's eight-month bootstrap is not quite enough for
a lot of professional programmers. Fine if it's for the love and enjoyment of
it, though.

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ap22213
I know a person who has several games consistently in the top 10. And, him and
his team also started out as 'hobbist' game devs. To me, it seemed like they
took several years of taking risks, perseverance, dedication, creativity,
trial and error, and of course luck to make it big. But, eventually, a
blockbuster emerged.

~~~
sillysaurus
Which? How? Did they do a writeup about their experiences?

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adamthats
I'm a bit of a long time lurker, but I just have to say that I'm genuinely
incredibly proud for there to be a discussion about my game on hacker news -
I'm not sure it's really the right place for it (I'm no startup), but I've
screen-capped it nevertheless.

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peterkelly
The most important thing to note in that article is the revenue graph near the
end.

You might make a few $K in on the first day, but if it's all downhill from
there, you don't have a sustainable business.

That's not to say this guy hasn't made an impressive accomplishment (which
getting _any_ game in the top 25 is) - just be wary of the stories of
"overnight success" that we hear now and then on the app store.

~~~
adamthats
I think 'all downhill from there' is pushing it a bit far - I certainly don't
want my story to put off any potential developers! If I wasn't such a sensible
/ boring fellow I could still (a year later) be comfortably living off my
monthly income.

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tagabek
These successes are always great to read about!

I recently broke top 50 in the Productivity category with my first app, which
brought in over 5,000 downloads and counting. I didn't receive "new car"
money, but I have already received a few freelancing clients because of it,
which surpassed my goals.

Fantastic execution, and good luck with all of your future projects!

~~~
rfctr
Working for a year almost full time and get "new car" revenue is not a
financial success. Sorry.

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diziet
Said app in question:
[https://sensortower.com/ios/us/yeah_us/app/pumped_bmx/527173...](https://sensortower.com/ios/us/yeah_us/app/pumped_bmx/527173191)

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krelian
These things are always motivation boosters. I've had a gaming idea for a long
time now but I feel that I know close to nothing about graphics programming to
make it work.

~~~
reedlaw
It's motivating from a hacker/programmer perspective, not so much from a
business one. 8 months full-time effort for new car money? Unless he means a
new Tesla Model S, it's not very encouraging, especially considering so few
reach this level of success.

~~~
chii
yep. what i want to read is an article about failure, or stats about rate of
failures, where failure is not earning above average wage over the time it
took to make the app.

~~~
wnewman
Well, even he probably has only an imprecise idea how many hundreds of hours
he spent on it, but I'll speculate it's comparable to how many hours he'd
spend getting a master's degree in CS (at night, while working full time
during the day). I don't know how the job market works in his specialty in his
country, but in some job markets in the US, I estimate that being able to list
that game and its sales performance on a resume is worth rather more than a
master's degree. So from that side effect alone, this sounds at least as good
as him taking a generous fellowship to get an exceedingly good master's
degree. It's not vast wealth in one fell swoop, but it doesn't seem like a
failure. And if he wants never to send out another resume in his life, instead
writing and selling his own software, it's harder to quantify the benefits of
business and tech experience on a first app, but ramen profitability on one's
first less-than-a-year-in-development app sounds OK to me. The title oversells
the achievement (top 25 ... in some smaller countries) but your term "failure"
undersells it even more.

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bluekite2000
How does a game end up on top 25 for this country and that country upon
launch? Is it luck? Are there things I can do to prep?

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so898
I think there was one game which is similar to this one on Plam. And there are
some similar flash games on web.

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mynameisamir
...why was he afraid of XCode?

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adamthats
Because it was a huge black box before I started - I'd never touched an IDE
before.

