next »

[DanFessler]

One of the major problems with indie games on iOS is visibility - especially for those who don't make it into apple's featured list.  Big companies solve this by cross-promoting between their own games.  Since most indies don't have a whole lot of games to help leverage themselves, my business partner and I have been developing a cross promotion platform for iOS to help combat this issue.  I'm trying to gauge interest.

To prevent it from over-polution there would be two measures in place. 1. It's an invite-only closed system and you only have a certain number of invites available (you can request more if you run out).  2. Tit for Tat game downloads. if you send a download to a specific game, then that game will continue to show your ad until that download is returned.  Each developer would be able to select their preferred 5 games they'd like to support in the cross promotion page, with one slot being variable to repay the traffic sent to you from elsewhere.

The cost of membership would be only high enough to pay the server costs or whatnot.  It would not be a means to make a profit.

My question is how many iOS game developers out there would be interested in this service?

[Mittens]

Sounds like a really great idea Dan,
I am someone who only has one game published to iOS at the moment and it's finding it hard to get attention.
I think indies really do need to group together if we wan't to compete with the big money out there on iOS and this idea sounds like a great way to do just that!

[_discovery]

David Edery (Spry Fox, Triple Town) mentions cross promotion on iOS, and facebook, and how little it helps (surprisingly).
http://www.edery.org/2012/08/your-first-f2p-game-where-you-will-go-wrong/

Thought this might be worth looking at either way, though doing more to cross promote can't hurt anyone.

[Destral]

I had planned something like this for Sword Surfer, by including characters from other peoples' games as playable characters (have 2 so far), with possibly a way to link to those people's games in the App Store in-game. Still have to actually finish Sword Surfer, but that's the plan, anyway.

[DanFessler]

David Edery (Spry Fox, Triple Town) mentions cross promotion on iOS, and facebook, and how little it helps (surprisingly).
http://www.edery.org/2012/08/your-first-f2p-game-where-you-will-go-wrong/

Thought this might be worth looking at either way, though doing more to cross promote can't hurt anyone.

Awesome talk, thanks for that link!  By no means am I claiming that this is a solution to everything, but it certainly is one contributing factor that we as a community can solve.  It's up to you to go out and beyond just cross-promotion to make your game a success.

[DanFessler]

I had really anticipated there would be more of a response to this.  Interesting result.  Thanks guys.

[True Valhalla]

I'd probably be satisfied with cross-promotion between my own apps, or "house ads".

[HernanZh]

I'm late to this, but I'd be interested.

[alts]

There have been a number of attempts to do something similar, and they've all fizzled.

One example that I could recall: http://indieappsalliance.org/

The main problem is that cross promotion really only works in volume, and most of the members in these networks do not have the audience to provide much of a benefit to the network. Conversion rates on these things, even between games with very similar audiences, is pretty minimal. What works much better is providing an incentive in game A for downloading game B. Those work, but require a deeper level of integration than is possible with a distributed network.

[Destral]

There have been a number of attempts to do something similar, and they've all fizzled.

One example that I could recall: http://indieappsalliance.org/

The main problem is that cross promotion really only works in volume, and most of the members in these networks do not have the audience to provide much of a benefit to the network. Conversion rates on these things, even between games with very similar audiences, is pretty minimal. What works much better is providing an incentive in game A for downloading game B. Those work, but require a deeper level of integration than is possible with a distributed network.

I don't think you can even do that on iOS - isn't it against Apple's TOS or somesuch to have apps interact with each other like that?

[alts]

I don't think you can even do that on iOS - isn't it against Apple's TOS or somesuch to have apps interact with each other like that?

I haven't read it in a while, but the TOS did forbid offering an incentive for app installations. While Apple's language in the TOS was broad, enforcement was specifically targeted at things like Tapjoy, where companies were paying for installs within other apps. They weren't pleased that their top rankings were effectively being bought. In my experience, these more direct promotions have been alright.

[bluescrn]

I like the Pickford Bros. idea of 'Games We Like':

http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/gameswelike.php

Now it's been a web-based initiative so far, but I'm adding a Games We Like screen to my current project, with a little bit of info and direct links to the App Store.