Caution: Deadline ahead

Two weeks ago I introduced my latest undertaking of selling software components. I have been pretty busy since then finishing some contractwork which is also why I havent any interesting news yet regarding ultramarine-ui.

What I want to write about today is the power and misery of "Deadlines". Originally I always hated Deadlines since I rather enjoy working without time pressure. A good product needs time and care. Since I work more and more on my own projects though I feel I need timelimits because otherwise projects tend to drag on or won't get done if it's not an important project.

"Deadlines - 165/365" by tranchis (via flickr)

I had two projects this year I got out of the door in almost no time because I set myself a tight deadline after I felt that my motivation to finish off the project was slipping away. The deadlines worked. With both projects I had to face a few bugs though shortly after release. The first version of our game Gem Hunt had issues with GameCenter and my new site which is hosted on my own server went offline for a few hours.

In both cases I could sort out the issues and everything was fine shortly after.
Still, it's not the best impression people get of your product is it?

Conclusion

The lesson I think I should learn here is that a tight schedule can increase productivity but comes with risks at the same time. For my next project it probably makes sense to pick a rather tight deadline only for a certain fetureset, not for the whole deal. After all features needed for release are done I shouldn't worry about taking a few days more to ensure that the product is flawless and works as planned. I also feel that after working on projects myself for weeks and weeks i'm not that motivated to do a thorough test before the release. Furthermore, there's no way I could find as many bugs as someone who is either a real QA guy or is at least not as biased as I am. Hiring someone just for a few hours of final testing might be worth investing in.

What are your experiences with deadlines and final testing before release? How do you do it?

Becoming an Entrepreneur: Change of Direction

How I got here

Almost two years ago I started my undertaking to make games for the appstore. The main reason for this was that I always wanted to make games for a living and the appstore surely made the impression that this was possible. I was also a bit frustrated with my day job back then and I had this shiny iPhone 3G in my pockets that wanted more attention. So yes, the time was right.

That's when I started working on my first to be published game ever with my friend Markus. Roughly 4 months later we launched the game.

It got some good coverage around the internet and was featured by Apple but after all it didn't really sell enough to cover the costs. Also I moved from New Zealand back to Germany which basically meant that whatever budget I had was gone. Since then I still work on games but most of the time i'm busy contracting to make a living. This brings me to the status quo where i spend about 80% of my time in contracting and 20% in making my own apps while 98% of my income still comes from contracting.

Photo by Mr__Fox: "Sailing in the Fog"

Becoming an Entrepreneur

Besides just making games cause i enjoy doing it, more generally put, i want to become an entrepreneur and use my own creativity and work on my own projects. So how do I get there?

I could just work a few months on another app and hope that this will change my time and income ratio towards my goal to become an entrepreneur.

But is that the quickest and most reliable way to reach my goal? Is that my strongest suit? While thinking about this question I realized that there are other possibilities to use my skillset that might get me quicker to my goal. The answer I came up with was:

Creating tools and components for iOS Development

Inspired by @gaminghorror with his line-drawing starter kit and Dr. Touch with his Parts Store I decided to change the direction of my business for a while and focus on creating tools and components to make a living and help other developers to accelerate their app development process.

Introducing ultramarine-ui

I spend quite a bit of time in the past weeks on my new site ultramarine-ui.com that will be the home of my components. While the main focus right now is on UIKit view components i'm also thinking about creating some tools to speedup iOS game development. There's a tool for cocos2d i have in mind but more about that in another post.

First components

The first component i'm selling is a teaser view with nice animations that is great to showcase a set of products. On top of that i built another component - a more-apps view - for iPhone apps that uses this teaser component to showcase a set of apps. I guess a few people will find that the price tags are quite high but I had a look on other sites selling source components and i didn't feel like dumping the price on my first day so please bear with me.

Free & Open Source Software

Even though i haven't got anything free for download on my site right now i will definitely look into releasing some components for free or putting something on github.

Let me know what you think about my new site and the new direction. Would be great to get some feedback.

(In case you are interested in my components you can follow me and/or @ultramarineui for occasional product updates).

Picking the right Tree

I'm currently reading 4-hour work week by Timothy Ferriss. The chapter The End of Time Management starts with a bold statement:

"Just a few words on time management: Forget all about it."

Then he illustrates that productivity cannot be measured by the pure volume of work you do and that it's about figuring out what parts are most important to achieve your goal. Makes sense, right?

I have my problems relating to this philosophy when it comes to indie game development.
While I think it's possible to cut out a few things in a game that aren't necessary for it to be fun and profitable, there is still plenty that cutting out is risky or simply impossible. In the end there will be a lot of tasks that inevitably need to be done to make the game work and fun.

Still i believe there's a lesson to be learned there.

Looking at my last two game projects I can say that I

was working quite efficiently but I also know that I could have finished both projects in less time.

I must admit though i'm not too worried about getting my next project done in less time. I'm more worried about the outcome of the next project, since my last two games weren't really that profitable. They wouldn't have been profitable in even half the time. I would even go so far and say that even the best marketing wouldn't have made them profitable.
That's where the difference between Efficiency and Effectiveness comes in which Ferris also emphases in his book.

Let's have a look at Wikipedia's definitions for both terms:

Effectiveness means the capability of producing an effect, and is most frequently used in connection with the degree to which something is capable of producing a specific, desired effect.

Efficiency in general describes the extent to which time or effort is well used for the intended task or purpose.

In terms of capability of producing the desired effect: a fun & profitable game, I think both game ideas and resulting concepts/prototypes were only capable to produce the desired effect to some extent.

This leads me to the conclusion that with my next project I'd like to spend more time on effectiveness - the right idea and concept - before worrying about realizing it in an efficient manner.

So yes, sharpen your axe before you chop down a tree but also think twice about what tree you are picking.

This article is part of the #idevblogaday initiative. Be sure to check out the other articles on idevblogaday.com.

Tree photo courtesy by Till Krech

Postmortem: Into The Blue SD

Welcome to our first #iDevBlogADay post in which I want to revisit our first game Into The Blue SD. It is in the appstore by now for about 2 years more than one year. So it's about time to figure out what went right and wrong and what things can be learnt for the future. Let me illustrate what the process was like.

The Beginning

The idea for the game was obviously influenced - as you probably expect - by the game Flight Control. It wasn't our intention to make a clone in space, we just thought it might be cool to make an RTS/Action title that is playable on a small screen and is as easy to understand and pickup as FlightControl with a bit more to do than directing spaceships.

As newcomer indie developers we didn't know much about prototyping so we immediately started with development.

The game idea was the following: Topdown view on the surface of a planet. Base in the middle. Player has to land transporters to top up weapons. Enemies attack the base. Fight them off. Hiscore++

Sounds simple right?

Early Concept Art

Little did we know

We both soon realized that it wasn't that simple afer all. There were heaps and heaps of design decisions to make: Should the transporters crash into each other while landing? At first: yes => Frustrating. Then: don't collide within range of the base => Confusing. Finally: No collision at all=> Better.

Should you be able to draw lines or touch and shoot torpedos? Should the number of torpedos be limited and if you don't bring in transporters you can be out of ammo? Unlimited ammo?

Game over when a transporter is shot or can the base be destroyed?

You got the picture.

Crossroads

About 2 months later and lots and lots of design decisions later we had the game done. You had to land transporters at your base and blast away incoming enemies. That's it. You get hiscore++ once you shot an enemy and it was game over once a transporter was down.

We found that the game was "ok" and maybe "fun", but we weren't amazed about it[2]. Markus had ideas to add more levels (or missions as they are called within the game) with different objectives to make it more interesting. I didn't like the idea at first since I knew that those missions also meant a lot of work and yes: scope creap. Also I wasn't sure adding more would pay off and make it a better game after all. I can't remember anymore what the thought process was like but in the end we decided to give it a go and add more missions. Probably because the gameplay felt too flat and repeatitive.

Missions

We started out with about 10 missions in mind and for reasons that are unknown to me now, I decided consciously against crafting a level editor for that. Instead I had some sort of base level class that could be extended to fit different scenarios and different game over conditions. It didn't take long to bring the missions to life but it took ages to polish them and adjust the difficulty to be right. After 6 missions were finetuned, we felt that it was time to get the game out of the door. We had been working on the game for 5 months straight and just couldn't do it anymore. We didn't have a clue, if people would like the game anyway so why adding more missions? So we went ahead and added a survival endless mode and OpenFeint with hiscores and achievements to add more replay value.

Final Game Screenshot

Outcome

Since the release end of December 2009 the game was featured multiple times by Apple and was reviewed by many youtubers and game sites. We got a lot of good feedback on the game design, graphics, sound and unique gameplay.

The main issues people have with the game is the limited number of missions (8+2 extra modes by now), repeatitive gameplay, the way difficulty progresses (first missions too easy, later too hard) and controls (line-drawing AND touch-to-shoot).

Despite some sales peaks the game seems to have a strong tendency covering dust and sinking towards rock bottom.

Until now our efforts to make this a viable project (going free, more content, additional features, LITE version and advertisement) have more or less failed. To give you a rough idea, we have a plus of around $1500 since release which we both have to share.

So what went wrong?

1. Lack of Prototyping

Due to missing prototyping and game conception prior to the start of development, we sacrificed a lot of valuable time on coding and graphics that we later had to cut out or rebuild from scratch. I think there's only so much you can find out with prototyping and game concepts before you have a game in your hand that you can work with. However there was definitely potential to get answers cheaper than the way we did.

2. Missions: Decision too late, No Tool Support

When we decided that the game should have multiple missions the main development on the game was already done and the game code wasn't really built to support various missions. Also the decision to not make a level editor wasn't wise, since handmade mission creation turned out to take too long.

3. Difficult Balancing

The way the game was designed it was very cumbersome to adjust difficulty and to get the missions balanced. One enemy less and it's too boring. One too many it's too hard. Maybe there's the perfect one-line-formula out there to make this happen. We, however, never found it.

4. Unholy Marriage

The decision to control one part of the game by drawing lines (transporters) and to control the other part by touch (weapons) is surely interesting but despite our efforts it never felt 100% right and I think that this combination in case of ITB was doomed to suffer. It often occured to users, playing the game for the first time, that transporters where moved when they meant to shoot and vice-versa.

5. Into The Blue

In fact we also picked this title because it described the way we rushed into this project and didn't really know where we are going. We didn't have alternative game ideas in mind before we picked this one. We just went with the first idea and that witout prototyping.

What went right?

1. Unique Game Concept

After all the game has an interesting and unique game concept with a lot of challenges which gave us the opportunity to learn a hell of a lot about game design and development. Also the game concept and particular look&feel(&listen) got us a lot of reviews and let the game stand out.

2. First Game ever, shipped, plenty of reviews and featured by Apple!

Even though the game neither got us rich nor was able to top up our budget, we still consider it a huge success because we got it done & working and made the game concept work after all.

3. Pickup & Play right away

Our efforts to make this an RTS/Action mashup that is easy to pickup and play worked out. I watched a lot of people that don't own a touch device or played a mobile game in their life before and were able to understand the game right away.

4. Challenging & Fun

A lot of people told me that the missions were well balanced and challenging so that it was hard to put the game down. Whilst not everyone shares this experience my hunch is that we did more right than wrong making the game balanced and fun to play.

Conclusion

1. Prototyping vs. Content Creation & Balancing

As already stated a lot of game design questions could have been answered with less efforts.

If we had realized early that the game only works with plenty of different levels, we would have either dismissed the project or designed the game in a way that more content can be created with less effort.

2. Alternative Game Conepts

If we had put more time into evaluating different game ideas we might have come up with another game that is more fun and simpler to create or picking this game would have been a more conscious decision.

3. First Game? Keep it simple!

After all I think the game was too complex for a first game. Spending 5 months and probably more time with updates and promotions on your first game is a risky undertaking. In this time it might have been possible to make two games where the 2nd one could have already profited from lessons learned while doing the first. If you take up running you don't start with a marathon, do you?

Future Development

Although we heard a lot of voices saying "an iPad version would be so cool", we have been quite reluctant to spend more time on the game in the past . We would actually love an iPad version and/or sequel but are still unsure if it's a good idea. My hunch is that there are more viable game concepts to pursue.

What are your thoughts on our game and first #iDevBlogADay post? Any more lessons we should learn?

Thanks!

We would like to thank everyone who supported us to get this game out of the door, tested and known across the internet. Thanks to everyone who wrote reviews, made youtube videos, rated the game on iTunes and emailed us with ideas and feedback. Thanks to OpenFeint to put the game on their spotlight back in the days. Thanks to Apple and the review team. Thanks to the cocos2d community for helping us bringing the game to life. Thanks to PlayHaven for supporting us getting their SDK implemented and last but not least thanks to the creator (@mysterycoconut) of #iDevBlogADay and everyone who is reading and writing under this tag.

[1] = 2D Rockers are Markus, the guy for gfx+sfx and me doing the coding.

[2] = It's so hard to tell if your game is good after you played it a zillion times during development.

Gem Hunt for iPhone now available on the AppStore

We are happy to announce that Gem Hunt has finally hit the appstore.

Gem Hunt for iPhone approved and available on December 14th

Good News Everyone!
Our new freemium color match game "Gem Hunt" is approved by Apple and will be available for iPhone and iPod touch next Tuesday, December 14th.

On December 15th (CET) Gem Hunt will be featured on DailyAppDream [1]

In Gem Hunt usually ads are shown which can be disabled via IAP. For everyone who downloads and runs Gem Hunt while being featured on DailyAppDream, ads will be disabled automatically.

PressKit

More Info about Gem Hunt as well as screenshots for press usage can be found in our new PressKit now available for download.

[1] For those of you who don't know DailyAppDream yet, it is a new program for free apps that allows free of charge promotion for developers. Their iphone app can be found here.

Going FREE while featured on the AppStore

Our game Into The Blue SD was surprisingly featured about two weeks ago. I couldn't believe my eyes when i opened up iTunes and saw the icon on the front page of the AppStore. A few hours later we decided to drop the price to $0.99 in order to get a maximum of sales and reach the highest rank possible.

One day before the feature in New and Noteworthy was about to run out, we decided to take a risk and make it FREE before the weekend.

Why oh why would you do that?

The game had been featured before. The last time our ranks and sales dropped to almost zero in a couple of weeks after the feature ran out. [We think this is due to the fact that Into The Blue is a quite "special" game that doesn't appeal to a wide range of users].

This time we didn't want to say goodbye to the upper ranks so easy. At least not without a fight. If the ranks/sales will drop soon anyway, why not getting the app more known and get some more buzz before going down?!

What we didn't know...

...was that after last Thursday we were still in the last slots of New and Noteworthy AND What's Hot. So the timing for going FREE was not that great after all.

The Positive Effects

• Going FREE while being featured last Thursday & Friday brought us around 30k free downloads and a way larger user base than we had before (~2k)
• Our customers who bought the former release could grab the new release for FREE (we want our customers to be happy)
• Media Buzz: lots of twitter messages, news posts, a review and few more covers and youtube videos
• Increased visibility due to reasonably high free app ranks (#58 free games, #6 free strategy games in U.S)

The Negative Effects

• Lost sales (since the game was still featured the next days)
• Ranks dropped quite a bit
• Bad ratings due to users who don't like the game/genre anyway

Lesson learned

it's hard to say what would have happened without going FREE. Most likely though we would have been able to keep our rank a bit longer and have a few more days with higher sales.

I conclude that going FREE either makes sense if the ranks are down anyway or if the app gets enough coverage (100k+) by being featured in one of the free-app programs. The latter would definitely increase the chance to get the ranks up again more easily after switching to paid.

But this is probably something that really depends on the game.

I looked up the ranks of about 10 games lately that were featured before by one of the major free app programs. The result was that only one of these games could increase sales/ranking after the free period. So it's probably more about getting a game known than getting more people to buy it.

Pricing

after reading the great post from Matt about pricing today i wanted to say a few words about our recent price changes as well.

Going on SALE for $0.99 definitely helped with the number of sales but i would estimate that it only increased by 15-20%. Making it $1.99 (the introduction price) would have been the more viable revenue option while being featured.

Going on SALE is possibly a question of going to the top or not. And by now we know that ITB is not a game that appeals to everyone - thus we probably could have stayed with the regular price tag ($2.99) and just enjoyed the ride while it lasts ;-)

In the last days we changed from $0.99 to $1.99 again and whilst we have about 25% less sales the revenue is higher.

Lite Version

we also released a lite version for Into The Blue SD a few days ago. Actually i'm not sure if having a LITE version out there does us any good. But more about this in a future post...

Suggested Reading

• Struct.ca - How to price your game
• Four Door Lemon - 99c problems
• Parade of Rain - Decoupling Ranking from Revenue
• Mundue - Pricing and Ranking, [part two]