It sounds like you did everything right in terms of promotion and marketing. Sorry if everything else I'm about to say is harsh, but I'm going to be blunt. The problem is your app isn't appealing. From what I can tell, you've taken one of the many mini-games from Brain Training and given it childish graphics. Who is your target market exactly? It seems like it could either be young children, or adults who particularly enjoyed that type of mini-game. If it's young children, good luck, because I doubt many of them have iPhones. If it's adult puzzle fans who you're trying to attract, I think you should've gone with more sophisticated, less cartoony, graphics. Maybe something interesting like the geodefense retro type graphics, or just simple black and white like the Nintendo Brain Training game. If it was aimed at this audience, you also should've packed it full of features, multiple game modes, maybe even an adventure or multiplayer mode. It looks like (at least from the app store description and screenshots) that it's just a single game mode. There's a chain to a successful product. A chain that includes transferring an idea into an app successfully, of eminent marketing, and ends with a great product. It's possible to leap ahead in the chain sometimes but you can never fall short on the last link. I actually loved the number memory game in Brain Training, and I would definitely buy an app that builds upon that game into a fully featured game. But your app isn't that. Also the fact your app requires OS 3.1.2+ has probably hurt you as well.
Hi EssentialParadox and thanks for your most definite constructive criticism. I see your points, and from my complete commercial failure they are probably sound, but it seems there is a certain difference between what you think my app should be and my own vision for Fumbers. My target group for Fumbers was actually one that might be next to impossible to reach: It was targeted at non-players. It is a quick pick-me-up game that is best suited for quick bursts of play while commuting, waiting for a train to arrive etc. It was never meant as a game for hardcore players which is why I decided agains what I consider feature-bloat. I guess it might be an age thing, but I find more menu-choices is actually something of a turn-off to me personally these days. The simpler, the better. (With a few notable exceptions). Now, I certainly see that the choice for art direction could be considered odd, maybe even wrong, and it is in many ways against the grain of where I would normally go. Again though, the decision was made to go for a scrapbook-inspired "friendly" look hoping to appeal to older people as well as the ladies. In the end it basically seemed to have turned everyone off so going in a different direction would probably have been a wiser choice from a commercial point of view. (It could hardly have fared worse). But hey, you make your choices and you follow them through. I had a certain artistic vision for the project, but it seems apparent it was one no one wanted to see. It seems obvious as every single person I've got to try the game is immediately hooked, so yes, something else must have been turning them off. As for the aftermath of Fumbers crashing and burning: During the time between submitting the app and today I've found a few things I would have liked to include in an update: Global high-score is one, despite my initial target. Another is a "free play" mode, where you don't have any timer, simply the memory element. And while I would still like to make this update, for my own sake, I'm currently trying to decide whether to bother or not. So, thanks again for your, somewhat harsh, but honest feedback. I guess in the end though the truth was simply this: The game I wanted to make is not a game the audience wanted to buy.
I hear ya. It sounds like you were going for with the Nintendo Wii approach… try and open a 'blue ocean' of non-gamers to have some fun with their iPhones. I think where Nintendo succeeded, however, was in their massive, massive marketing campaign. Which you understandably don't have the ability to do. And I'd say the forum/website/internet promotion recommended for iPhone devs is really only applicable to hardcore iPhone gamers, and then hopefully the game will trickle down through them into the wider market. Flight Control could be called a game that had huge success in this blue ocean you were aiming for. I'm not honestly too sure how the game become as successful as it was, to the extent where it was mentioned by celebrities on national television, but I think it was due to hardcores picking up the game in the beginning. I guess my point is that to reach your audience, you may need to first reach the hardcore, toucharcade-type of iPhone gamers. And to get their attention, presentation is always one of the highest points on the list. You could always just switch your art assets and re-release it as a new game as part of the same brand. I would personally try searching for an artist with a futuristic art style and see if they want to be involved. Maybe even consider changing the concept of numbers to something more visual. Seems to be the easiest way to get websites to review your game, and gamers interested, is to have a highly detailed, male-orientated, art style.
It's not how you get knocked down, but how you get back up which is important. Every app can't be a winner in your customers eyes. Get up and try again. I'm sure you'll get a new idea that could be a potential breakthrough. At the very least I bet you learned an incredible amount having gone through this process. Thanks for sharing. Good luck and stay motivated.
It might have been preferable to put your app in "Educational" not in "Games" - less competition could have given you more exposure, and the bar seems to be lower for educational games. I believe you can still add "Educational" as a second category.
LOL!!Same boat here. I sold 2 copies of my first game - Arkaneum Merchant And after 2 days, it just went to 0 sales per day until now. I guess game is pretty darn hard to compete since there are other games which are just mindblowing, but priced at USD1.99. Im surrenderring in making game.
the instant success days are over. but, honestly - if you can sell one copy here and one copy there - as long as you are making $99 USD per year (and, manage to get paid) then your on the up side unless you had to invest money in the first place for art/coding etc. this is one of the great benefits of working on things like this as a hobby - keep your costs low and be happy if you sell anything. worst case you can tell your friends you have developed something for the iphone.. our games are not there to make money - they are portfolio items for us to secure larger, paid deals doing work-for-hire type scenarios where there are budgets and typically the games are released for free for marketing purposes. think of the larger picture instead of trying to make your money in the short term.
I can understand you finding this funny. personally, i find it hilarious, in that strange sort of way, that people can put so much effort into something and put it out there and no one bites. It's a strange game we play. however, good luck to you (and all the other devs who are working to make a go of it). We are not trying to do the super success thing, but get a number of quality apps out there where hopefully one or two gets noticed. what was that old chumbawumba song? I get knocked down, but i get up again...?
@OP, you have to hear this: I was out of town visiting my little brother last night, and we started talking about iPhone apps like we usually do. He started going off about this app his friend bought that you have to hit 1 through 25 as fast as you can but he couldn't remember the name, though he said it was a lot of fun and that I could never beat his high score. I was like "...........................................................fumbers?" He was like "yeah! thats it!" I got a good laugh out of that, I think I found your one customer.
Right, you just sold a second copy here in Italy... I liked the art style in your other apps but they seemed far too useless to be bought, so I decided to give fumbers a shot. I must say it's fun... it's a simple concept but well executed, and difficulty ramps up nicely. I'd like to be able to compete online with the other user... openfeint would be nice.
Hey, thanks for sharing your lack-of-success story: I'm sure it parallels thousands of others out there! It's always nice to know that I'm not the only one struggling to pay off that $99 Apple developer fee... But really: why do we do it? We continue to develop because we love it. Developing, drawing, coding, and creating -- the process can be unbelievably frustrating, and yet it's still a heck of a lot of fun! And of course, getting paid for it is always nice... Anyways, best of luck to ya!
I feel your pain, the planets just weren't aligned. When we released How Am I Feeling? we paid the $18 for a fire and forget prmac.com press release. It got us a ton of sales all over the world and we were quite happy. When The Advice Generator was getting ready to come out I got it in my head to do a nationwide press release, so we ponied up the money to become members of PRNewswire for $200 - then I wrote up some press release like a new article, we paid our $700 (here it is: http://bit.ly/6JbjQs) and were written up in all sorts of places that day (here's one: http://bit.ly/6alHk7). I was so excited, I knew we were finally going to hit the big time. The next morning I logged in to iTunes Connect to pat myself on the back and we had a total sales number of... 3 As of now we're still at -$740; so looking at your situation at least it's not THAT bad on one particular app! The other day it did get a nice review from Simple Reviews: http://bit.ly/92M5vm ... so we got that going for us. No sales because of it, but we at least got that going for us My advice: don't worry about it. We learned our lesson and decided to curb the humor apps for awhile and focus on delivering some core quality game play. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep working at it!
That's ok. I only had two sales on the first day. Imagine when the app gets push out of the new release list, it's going to be nothing. Maybe the benefits of your advertisements on different sites will slowly kick in soon.
