Jul 24th 2013, 15:52:24
Here's the stupid thing. You don't need an iOS or Android app to play this game. Any standard browser on any mobile phone with a browser installed can open this game and play it. Right on your mobile phone...
It takes less than 2 hours to make an app that is essentially just a "UIWebView" that has the initial home page set to EE. But would you call that an iOS/Android app? I wouldn't, and it is unlikely Apple or Google Play would approve such an app.
(A UIWebView is just a standard widget that can display webpages - essentially allowing any app to embed a full fledged browser.)
Also, just because you have an app on the app store, doesn't mean it has exposure. There are 10 new apps every minute on the App Store. The last time I checked, there are over 150 new apps on the app store in the last 60 minutes. None of them will ever sell more than 100 copies at best, even for free apps. 99.9% of these apps just gets buried by the next 150 new apps in the next hour.
So how do good mobile games get known? Marketing. Social Media outlets. Exposure to media, particularly websites that cover mobile games like TouchArcade, Pocket Tactics, PocketGamer, and a few others. Advertising. Even such websites, if you can even convince the editor to give your game a review article, might bring attention to your game for 2-3 days. That's it.
Good games need to snowball by itself, and it takes nothing short of a miracle. Game has a tutorial that is longer than 2 minutes? Half the people won't even get through it and delete the app already.
It takes less than 2 hours to make an app that is essentially just a "UIWebView" that has the initial home page set to EE. But would you call that an iOS/Android app? I wouldn't, and it is unlikely Apple or Google Play would approve such an app.
(A UIWebView is just a standard widget that can display webpages - essentially allowing any app to embed a full fledged browser.)
Also, just because you have an app on the app store, doesn't mean it has exposure. There are 10 new apps every minute on the App Store. The last time I checked, there are over 150 new apps on the app store in the last 60 minutes. None of them will ever sell more than 100 copies at best, even for free apps. 99.9% of these apps just gets buried by the next 150 new apps in the next hour.
So how do good mobile games get known? Marketing. Social Media outlets. Exposure to media, particularly websites that cover mobile games like TouchArcade, Pocket Tactics, PocketGamer, and a few others. Advertising. Even such websites, if you can even convince the editor to give your game a review article, might bring attention to your game for 2-3 days. That's it.
Good games need to snowball by itself, and it takes nothing short of a miracle. Game has a tutorial that is longer than 2 minutes? Half the people won't even get through it and delete the app already.