iOS Game design Awareness enhancement methods and free gaming profitability

Article Description: to make iOS games, what should you know before you start working? We released two iOS games in 2011: "Garage Inc" (January) and "KULA BLOX" (September). In the near future, we spend a lot of time thinking about these experiences and looking for lessons to learn from them so that we can do better next time. Here is the experience we have summed up.

If you've decided to make an iOS game, what should you know before you start working? We released two iOS games in 2011: "Garage Inc" (January) and "KULA BLOX" (September). In the near future, we spend a lot of time thinking about these experiences and looking for lessons to learn from them so that we can do better next time. Here is the experience we have summed up.

First, what you need is cognitive , which includes people's perception of your game or the studio. Need to let people know you exist, know your game exists, so as to pay attention to the existence of your game. This seems to be a matter of well-deserved. However, while many people know this, few people really implement it in game design, profitability and marketing decisions. I will explain this in detail in the following paragraphs.

let's start with the game design first . Unless you are a well-known developer, or have a large amount of money available in marketing, or have a popular brand that ensures a level of understanding, the most likely thing you can achieve is to make your game popular through your tongue.

Consider how most games on your own iOS device come from. If you don't have iOS devices yourself, you may need to reconsider whether you should be in the market. If you're like us, most purchase decisions are made by playing games on a buddy's device. Friends will say: "I like this game, you try it." "You said:" OK. "So, try this game." After a period of time, perhaps 10 seconds, 15 seconds or more, you decide to buy the game.

Your potential users will have the same approach. So the design requirements are: For those of you who have just come in contact with the game, these people may not have seen your tutorials and screenshots or read your marketing materials to make sure they are able to enjoy the game in the first 10 seconds or 15 seconds of contact. If they don't like it, then they won't buy your game. Your sales will be affected.

How do you get the game to capture players quickly? We are also in the process of exploring this, so it is not possible to provide a common solution here. When you are designing and testing games, you need to consider this aspect.

By the way, you know, even positive comments on the mainstream iOS site won't give you too much knowledge and downloads. Although being recommended by Apple is more valuable in most cases than getting professional reviews, it does not ensure that the game is successful. Also, you should not recommend Apple as the top goal of your marketing strategy. We're lucky that two games are recommended by app stores as noteworthy new apps, but you probably haven't heard of them at all. This is not to say that you should not let the game get commented or should not try to get the itunes App Store recommended, which is the goal you should strive for. What I want to say is that achieving these goals is far from enough for marketing.

If you are making a game now, you have designed it to attract users in a short time. This is really a good start. So, is that enough? Of course not. Even if you are sure that you have achieved these goals, you should not stop here.

Your next step is to think about improving your service and earning services as much as possible, to see which services are right for you and to help your game. Here, I do not recommend any service, I will objectively summarize the existing services and how they operate.

Free games for profit

There are many services and methods available that will allow you to set the application to download for free. If you want to know how to get a profit from a free game, I'll explain that in the next article.

The most obvious way is to add a built-in billing feature (hereinafter referred to as "IAP"). Although users do not have to pay for the application itself, you can sell upgrades and additional products to them.

If you don't set up IAP in the game, the advantages of free games are less obvious. In this case, the goal of setting up applications for free is to build awareness so that when you start charging for apps, more people will buy your game. Those who download games for free may mention your game in a conversation with a friend, who has become a disseminator of the game. When you start charging users again, the hype between players will bring in additional sales. The amount of extra sales depends on the number of people who download the game when the game is free and how willing they are to recommend it to friends. In the latter, the above 10-15-second game play demand has a pivotal role.

Enhance your cognitive level

Hey Zap: with this service, you can get a high degree of exposure without spending a lot of money on the game. It's similar to Foursquare, except that you sign up for a game rather than a location. The person who pays attention to you can see which game you are playing. You can get a badge when you sign in for a certain number of times. There is an SDK that allows you to integrate the Hey Zap button into the game so that people can sign in to your game. Hey Zap's web site shows that the total number of subscribers to the service is now more than 10 million.

Game Center: Apple's gaming social network has a significant upgrade in iOS 5, adding 3 key Features: Buddy referrals, game referrals, and buying games from Game Center apps. Prior to the release of iOS 5, Game Center was a great place for its rankings and achievements. However, the new update significantly increases the exposure of friends to the game, and has become a more powerful cognitive building service than ever before.

OpenFeint: The service is similar to Apple's Game center, but it's a bigger area. OpenFeint exists longer, but the service does not support the ipad, it only supports the iphone and ipod Touch. It contains achievements, rankings and friends. It also has an iOS app called "Game Channel". The main function of this application is "recommend free game daily".

Integrating OpenFeint into the game is free, and the benefits you get are similar to those of Game Center: Your friends can see your scores on the charts and what you've achieved. However, unlike Game Center, OpenFeint allows you to pay for the user to see your game. The "Daily free game" service arises.

Your game can be recommended to the "Daily free game" of OpenFeint's "Game Channel" by paying fees (game Bang Note: can be a fixed fee or a profit gain). The resulting perception may turn into sales. If your game is not free, don't worry, you can still launch a "Daily free game" promotion, as long as you set some things in the game for free, which is still a good deal for your new users.

OpenFeint also has 3 other services. Fire Sale is a discount item for group deals, and the OpenFeint player community can vote on what they want to see at discounted rates of application and discount. The 2nd is Gamefeed, a relatively new built-in social behavior news service that you may not have seen in the game. It's like a stock ticker, scrolling through the bottom of the menu screen to show you the Games your friends are playing and their performance. The 3rd is OFX, a OpenFeint App store that allows you to modify the product price of your game's built-in store without having to submit a binary code to Apple.

Free App a day: This is a openfeint-like "Daily game" service, but it does not contain social networking features. Strictly speaking, it is a paid service, with applications, websites and a large number of users who can see the recommended games.

Profit

Tapjoy Both enhance the cognitive and profitability characteristics. The company's main service is Offerwall, a method that allows developers to pay users to download their games. Players can use the virtual currency to play the game to download new games. New game developers to pay for such downloads, Tapjoy will part of the profit to download the source of the game developers. In the early 2011, Apple began restricting applications that included this type of service.

Tapjoy also has other services, including traditional game-built banner ads, video promotions and full page spots. They work in a very similar way, and you pay for your content to be present in other games (raising the awareness of the game) or when users click on ads in your game or watch video to gain a profit. From a player's point of view, they can interact with these ads and videos to give them some game rewards.

AdColony: The service uses virtual currency to reward gamers watching video, similar to the Tapjoy video. If you display video in your game, the full view of the user will bring you a certain amount of revenue. If you want your game video to be displayed in other games, then you must pay for each full viewing of the user.

Flurry: Although the well-known Flurry is a home analytics company, they also have Appcircle, a crossover network for iOS that uses their recommendation engine to recommend games to players. Similar to other such services, you pay for the player to see your game in other apps, and you show other developers ' games in your app to make a profit.

Flurry also has a new service called appcircle clips that pays the virtual currency to the full watch video (game Bang Note: usually a game trailer). As with the above, developers who advertise for a fee and play video ads are profitable.

KIIP: This is a new company that is currently operating only in the US market. KIIP link Real world rewards to achievement. Unlike other services, the service is fully profit-targeted.

Here's how the service works: you get an achievement when you play the game. Everyone will be delighted with the achievement, but now you can still receive 1 messages, you get a reward from KIIP. The rewards could be 1 bags of potato chips, 1 cups of discounted drinks or 1 lipstick. As a developer, you just need to integrate their SDK, and the rest are left to the company to complete. When users click to collect their rewards, you can get a profit.

But here are a few things to keep in mind:

1 You don't need to integrate all the services, because it's equivalent to a lot of work for you, and it's likely to confuse your players.

2 When you release a new game, try to get a strong start, because the ranking in the application store is the most important factor to maintain sales, and the long marketing duration will affect the effect. Get strong momentum as quickly as possible and then try to keep it.

3 Raise awareness first and then focus on profitability. You need to have a sufficient number of players to be able to make a profit through them. In other words, if you don't have a user, all the ways to make a profit are not valid.

4 but to grasp the opportunity to launch profitable action, to use different strategies to maintain the user's interest in the game. If you can't attract or retain players, you have no way to make a profit.

5 There is also a last reminder: Do not play a game of no value. There are many good games in the App Store, and worthless games have no living space at all.