utopiangames said: Thanks for the support and reviews.
Just had a mail back from a contact at a well known review site and it seems the GS engine is getting some stick.
"I got a bit nervous when I saw the Game Salad logo, but so far on my iPhone 4 I haven't really seen a performance hit."
Seems to me GS has a bad reputation after reading some topics and this means it's going to be even harder to for us to make some noise with reviewers.
Darren.
This is actually one of the main reasons I'm learning Objective C, not because I don't like GS (I love it, warts and all!)... but being a GS game automatically turns a lot of people off, whether it's paid or free. The sad thing is, most of those people don't even know what GameSalad is!
Still, with a quality title like this, I'm sure you'll be fine!
I just thought I'd "bump" this thread to see if Utopian is willing to give us any kind of update/status report on how Bumps is doing and his experience of the launch.
Ive not seen it in any of the charts, or being featured, so Im starting to fear the worst... which is a real shame as the game is extremely well crafted and really does deserve to be a success.
Its still early days...so hopefully its still got time to get noticed.
But just wanted to give some moral support to the team at UtopianGames.
Ive not seen it in any of the charts, or being featured, so Im starting to fear the worst... which is a real shame as the game is extremely well crafted and really does deserve to be a success.
I have been following it daily in my rankings list as I really want to see it do well. Sadly it has not risen above the kind of ranking you would get from just a few sales a day (about 20 or less).
I agree that is is the sort of game that could surge with a bit of publicity, lets hope. I really want to see one of these review sites turn around and admit that gamesalad can make good games, for everyone heres benefit.
Maybe Bumps would be better as an iPad game. I think the iPhone / iPod Touch market is saturated.
I think it could, it's very easy to climb the ipad ranks and become more noticeable.
I also think this game could really benefit from a lite version (maybe thats what utopian is working on now?), with 250000 applications people finding your app at all is a bonus and you need to get do everything you can to get them to download.
I think both games are great. Both are made with care and attention to detail.
Good games like these just need to gain traction. It takes time. Indie developers don't have million dollar ad budgets. It's not easy getting the word out.
My first game, Danger Cats!, sold 1 or 2 copies a day for the first month. Apple eventually featured it in New and Noteworthy and What's Hot, four weeks after it came out.
But that was nine months ago.
Now it sells about 100$ a day. Which I think is fantastic. Sales have actually been increasing, not decreasing over the past 9 months. Hopefully it keeps building up steam.
And hopefully something like this happens with Bumps, and Max Vector, and all of the other fantastic GameSalad games that keep coming out.
Hopefully everybody's games will have long lives!
I'm sure Apple will take notice of Bumps sooner or later. It's just too good.
quantumsheep said: I think both bumps and Max Vector do what they set out to do extremely well. Perhaps one market is more saturated than the other?
I'm not sure. I thought that the iPhone / iPod Touch was supposed to be cutesy and casual. Plus, Bumps has mini-games. (I actually like the mini-games more than the main game.)
I've been doing some math... it's depressing. What's an average game make... like $100? Maybe a really good game will make like $500-$1000 on average. That means for this to be a full-time gig, like a $50,000 per year salary, you'd have to make 500 mediocre games, That's like 1-2 games a day.
When I see a game like Bumps, where a lot of hard work went into the game's development -- and it only manages to peak at 209 in Puzzles -- it's like why bother?
I don't see the logic to it.
firemaplegames said: Now it sells about 100$ a day. Which I think is fantastic. Sales have actually been increasing, not decreasing over the past 9 months. Hopefully it keeps building up steam.
$100 a day is great. That's a decent salary, when combined with other games, but that seems rare to me. Maybe my estimates are off, but I don't think that many developers here see that kind of action.
victorkin11 said: I just join the express member because prove me that GS can make a good app even run on old device, if it's not selling good, I will very disappoint!
It's not GS per say that causes low sales, its the huge volume of apps already available. If it's not noticed it will fade into oblivion.
I did know about and try and fix the eye bug but couldn't find a solution and as it only happened very rarely when testing (will try and fix this in an update) we decided to release.
Sadly Bumps has flopped with only 200 odd sales in the 1st week with 7 yesterday and i will expect it to reach the 0-1 a day mark soon.
We did market by sending out codes/press releases etc to over 30 top sites but very few have picked it up.
We will have to seriously think about continuing with game dev as it stands because we simply cannot afford the flops/lottery of the app store.
Comments
// Red Dot Inc
// Red Dot Inc
Guess 2morro's sales will give us a better idea of how its going.
Darren.
_______________
Nesen Probe http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nesen-probe/id377766693?mt=8
Tickle Stones http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tickle-stones/id363484260?mt=8
Food Fight! (free) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/food-fight/id352646643?mt=8
Just had a mail back from a contact at a well known review site and it seems the GS engine is getting some stick.
"I got a bit nervous when I saw the Game Salad logo, but so far on my iPhone 4 I haven't really seen a performance hit."
Seems to me GS has a bad reputation after reading some topics and this means it's going to be even harder to for us to make some noise with reviewers.
Darren.
Just about to load it up on my 1G iPod Touch to test.
// Red Dot Inc
Still, with a quality title like this, I'm sure you'll be fine!
Just to let you know that it plays fine on a 1G touch, so you did good there!
My girlfriend has just been playing it on my iPhone 4, and came across this bug:
Hope that helps
// Red Dot Inc
Ive not seen it in any of the charts, or being featured, so Im starting to fear the worst... which is a real shame as the game is extremely well crafted and really does deserve to be a success.
Its still early days...so hopefully its still got time to get noticed.
But just wanted to give some moral support to the team at UtopianGames.
I agree that is is the sort of game that could surge with a bit of publicity, lets hope. I really want to see one of these review sites turn around and admit that gamesalad can make good games, for everyone heres benefit.
http://www.appannie.com/bumps/ranking/history/
http://www.appannie.com/max-vector/ranking/history/
...but the charts show otherwise.
Maybe Bumps would be better as an iPad game. I think the iPhone / iPod Touch market is saturated.
I also think this game could really benefit from a lite version (maybe thats what utopian is working on now?), with 250000 applications people finding your app at all is a bonus and you need to get do everything you can to get them to download.
@Photics:
I think both bumps and Max Vector do what they set out to do extremely well. Perhaps one market is more saturated than the other?
Cheers,
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Good games like these just need to gain traction. It takes time. Indie developers don't have million dollar ad budgets. It's not easy getting the word out.
My first game, Danger Cats!, sold 1 or 2 copies a day for the first month. Apple eventually featured it in New and Noteworthy and What's Hot, four weeks after it came out.
But that was nine months ago.
Now it sells about 100$ a day. Which I think is fantastic. Sales have actually been increasing, not decreasing over the past 9 months. Hopefully it keeps building up steam.
And hopefully something like this happens with Bumps, and Max Vector, and all of the other fantastic GameSalad games that keep coming out.
Hopefully everybody's games will have long lives!
I'm sure Apple will take notice of Bumps sooner or later. It's just too good.
I've been doing some math... it's depressing. What's an average game make... like $100? Maybe a really good game will make like $500-$1000 on average. That means for this to be a full-time gig, like a $50,000 per year salary, you'd have to make 500 mediocre games, That's like 1-2 games a day.
When I see a game like Bumps, where a lot of hard work went into the game's development -- and it only manages to peak at 209 in Puzzles -- it's like why bother?
I don't see the logic to it. $100 a day is great. That's a decent salary, when combined with other games, but that seems rare to me. Maybe my estimates are off, but I don't think that many developers here see that kind of action.
Just got back from a short 4 day holiday...
I did know about and try and fix the eye bug but couldn't find a solution and as it only happened very rarely when testing (will try and fix this in an update) we decided to release.
Sadly Bumps has flopped with only 200 odd sales in the 1st week with 7 yesterday and i will expect it to reach the 0-1 a day mark soon.
We did market by sending out codes/press releases etc to over 30 top sites but very few have picked it up.
We will have to seriously think about continuing with game dev as it stands because we simply cannot afford the flops/lottery of the app store.
Best,
Darren.