AstroSerf Post-Mortem
It’s been one month since AstroSerf was released on the App Store, and nearly one week since the first update went live. What better time to give a brief run-down of my experiences thus far?
The first point would be to say that I’ve been pretty consistently disappointed with the sales. I shouldn’t be surprised, as this seems to be the one major complaint of app developers out there. I think there are a number of factors responsible. The first and most obvious is that it’s just plain hard to get noticed on the App Store. I never came close to breaking the top 100 in any category, let alone the coveted “Top Selling” category (except in Kazakhstan, a fact of which I’m justly proud), so it’s pretty much a given that sales never took off in the way I was naively hoping for when I started this project.
A close second would have to be my approach to marketing - which is to say, my non-approach. I tried to keep threads on various forums active, and I got the best response from the Touch Arcade forums. I quickly found that publishing material on my own sites, including this blog, amounted to me, alone in a room, talking to nobody. So that’s always encouraging.
Finally, I have to admit that the app itself just might not have been that appealing to a large number of players. I certainly put full effort into all of it, but one of the consistent “meh” responses was on the fact that many perceived AstroSerf as just another line drawing game. I anticipated that, and tried to differentiate it enough to make it interesting, and although it’s gotten a good response from the select few who have tried it, it doesn’t do much to sway the rest. The other part of this is that, even though I tried to ensure every part of AstroSerf was top-notch, I do have my limits. In particular, the lack of variety in the game has been the only really negative comment anyone has had. I knew that might be a sticky point before I submitted it, but had planned on an initial run of sales to buoy myself to develop more levels and features. I still want to do some of those features, as a ‘thank you’ to players who have been really supportive, but the fact of the matter is that if I had done those in the first place I would probably have put myself in a better position.
So does that mean AstroSerf was a failure? In some sense maybe. I tend to be a little depressive by nature, so when I check the reviews and sales reports I really have to fight to stay positive about it, but at the end of the day I did make something that I’m proud of. It was no small accomplishment for me to knuckle down and make a game, considering I’ve never done anything like it before. This project just has so many ‘firsts’ involved for me that it’s kind of ridiculous that I just decided one day, almost arbitrarily, “Yeah, I could make a game”. The issues above can largely be put down to this inexperience on my part, as they seem to be the bitter fruit of a few bad decisions made along the way.
The thing is, I don’t feel like any of those decisions were legitimately bad ones, just miscalculated. For example:
1. I anticipated people getting excited about the game and riding the wave, and that’s absolutely worked for most of the success stories in the App Store. Trouble is, I don’t get to decide what people will get excited about, and I waited too long into development to try and put the word out.
2. I figured a line drawing game would be a good first project, since it’s a pretty simple single-screen game, and it’s been proven in the market. The problem? Oh good god has it EVER been proven. I had the idea and started development at probably the same time as about 50 other developers of varying sizes, and was beaten to market by MOST of them. Maybe a line drawing game might be fresh again in six months, but right now, and when AstroSerf came out? Yeah, I was screwed.
3. The lack of variety is the one that bugs me, because I could have held on to it for a few weeks longer and put the stuff in I had planned, and the complaint would have gone away. In my mind I was thinking of developers like Bolt Creative, where they added content as they went along. What I failed to account for was that this isn’t 2008, and that shit don’t fly any more. There’s just too much awesome on the App Store RIGHT NOW for anyone to spend their money on the promise of future awesome.
I’m not giving up on this whole thing just yet, though. The main lessons that I’ve taken away are all pretty self evident, but damned if they don’t mean more when I’ve experienced it first-hand instead of just reading it on someone’s blog. Yes, I suppose that is kind of meta.