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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperBusinessAB market testing: Crayon Ball vs. ScribBall
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Author Topic: AB market testing: Crayon Ball vs. ScribBall  (Read 3652 times)
tylerjhutchison
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« on: March 20, 2009, 08:48:31 AM »

Hi everyone,
For the past few weeks my friends and I (Howling Moon Software) have been struggling with the iTunes App Store and trying to sell copies of our game ScribBall.  Not surprisingly, we are all complete morons when it comes to marketing.  So we tried to learn a little something about the seedy underbelly of the marketing world.  It seems that many companies release similar products that have been repackaged and given a new name: Mercury Sable vs. Ford Taurus.

So on a whim, and with really nothing to lose... we ripped off our own game and created a clone of it called Crayon Ball.  We did not make any press releases, nor did we advertise Crayon Ball in anyway.  We completely neglected it.  Yet somehow... it outsold ScribBall and did significantly better. WTF

(the ScribBall spike is due to an update, that actually made it way better than Crayon Ball... yet still Crayon Ball out performs it.)

I guess I attribute this mostly to the fact that Crayon Ball has a way less confusing name, and a prettier icon.  It might also be that since it is a physics based puzzle game with Crayon in the title that people found it while searching for Crayon Physics (I don't really think this is the main reason, but who knows.)

Any thoughts or ideas on this?

Here is what one of my partners had to say about it in Howling Moon Softwares blog:
http://howlingmoonsoftware.com/wordpress/?p=131


===A Problem as a result of AB testing:
Recently Crayon Ball was featured in the App Store as a Staff Favorite, and as a result is climbing up the charts.  Today we just broke into the Top 100 paid Games.  So we are now faced with a problem, what do we do for all those fans who bought ScribBall and are maybe accidently buying Crayon Ball??  We do not want to seem devious and sneaky,  we are trying to be as public as possible about it, that Crayon Ball and ScribBall are really pretty much the same.  Any thoughts or ideas?
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Lynx
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« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2009, 08:58:17 AM »

Interesting!

...  out of curiousity, is the iTune store alphabetically organized?
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #2 on: March 20, 2009, 09:07:11 AM »

(the ScribBall spike is due to an update, that actually made it way better than Crayon Ball... yet still Crayon Ball out performs it.)

...

We do not want to seem devious and sneaky,  we are trying to be as public as possible about it, that Crayon Ball and ScribBall are really pretty much the same.

So...is ScribBall way better than Crayon Ball, or is it really pretty much the same?  Droop
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tylerjhutchison
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« Reply #3 on: March 20, 2009, 09:09:09 AM »

Interesting!

...  out of curiousity, is the iTune store alphabetically organized?

Hehe, well I think at some point they must have things alphabetically organized.  But the majority of lists seen by used are organized by:
•100 Top Selling Apps in specific Category (for instance Games, or Games->Action, Games->Family)
•Most Recently Released/Updated
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tylerjhutchison
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« Reply #4 on: March 20, 2009, 09:14:22 AM »

(the ScribBall spike is due to an update, that actually made it way better than Crayon Ball... yet still Crayon Ball out performs it.)

...

We do not want to seem devious and sneaky,  we are trying to be as public as possible about it, that Crayon Ball and ScribBall are really pretty much the same.

So...is ScribBall way better than Crayon Ball, or is it really pretty much the same?  Droop

Currently ScribBall is "better" than Crayon Ball, due to the fact that ScribBall has selectable themes and improved sound code and performance. But game play wise they are still the same.  However, since Crayon Ball has managed to sneak into the Staff Favorites, we just submitted an updated to Crayon Ball to give it the same features as ScribBall, plus a little extra (More themes and prettier explosions).

So from the developer directly: If you are thinking of buying one or the other, DO NOT BUY SCRIBBALL FOR THE iPHONE!!  It is currently more expensive, and eventually will not be any better than Crayon Ball.  However our current plans are to continually update both of them, so that people who bought one or the other do not feel left out.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2009, 09:17:40 AM by tylerjhutchison » Logged

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Craig Stern
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« Reply #5 on: March 20, 2009, 09:21:18 AM »

Gotcha. Well, I think your instinct about the title having a lot to do with it is probably right. "Scrib" means nothing to me, whereas "Crayon" suggests something fun, light-hearted, and accessible. If I knew nothing about the differences in the actual games, I would probably be far more inclined to buy a game called Crayon Ball simply because I would have a better sense of what the game must be like from the title.
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tylerjhutchison
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« Reply #6 on: March 20, 2009, 09:33:20 AM »

Gotcha. Well, I think your instinct about the title having a lot to do with it is probably right. "Scrib" means nothing to me, whereas "Crayon" suggests something fun, light-hearted, and accessible. If I knew nothing about the differences in the actual games, I would probably be far more inclined to buy a game called Crayon Ball simply because I would have a better sense of what the game must be like from the title.

Yeah I really think the title is what was killing us... and this is hopefully a good lesson to other developers:  When picking a title for  your game K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid).  ScribBall is just a "clever" pun that is actually just more confusing than clever.
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« Reply #7 on: March 20, 2009, 07:59:42 PM »

Yes. Naming is definitely an important element of a game, if you are planning on getting money for it.

Thanks for sharing the data, it is a very interesting experiment!
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ChevyRay
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« Reply #8 on: March 20, 2009, 11:54:39 PM »

Wow, that's amazing. Goes to show how much is in a name Shocked

Thanks for sharing this!
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Snakey
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« Reply #9 on: March 21, 2009, 01:26:48 PM »

Thank you for sharing the data.
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« Reply #10 on: March 21, 2009, 01:42:43 PM »

Often marketing can come down to small things like this, but this is pretty dramatic, yeah.

Another thing may be search engine stuff. Your game is now likely to come up in search results for "crayon" and "ball" whereas your old name was unlikely to come up in search results for either. Generally creating a title out of searched terms is a good idea, as opposed to joining or inventing new words which nobody will remember or randomly search for.
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« Reply #11 on: March 21, 2009, 02:19:06 PM »

It also looks like Crayon Ball costs $2 less than ScribBall right now in the iTunes store.  Were the prices of the games equal when you did the study?

Also, ScribBall sounds like it could be mistaken for a drawing app.
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tylerjhutchison
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« Reply #12 on: March 21, 2009, 04:34:58 PM »

It also looks like Crayon Ball costs $2 less than ScribBall right now in the iTunes store.  Were the prices of the games equal when you did the study?

Also, ScribBall sounds like it could be mistaken for a drawing app.

We recently dropped the price of Crayon Ball since it became featured as a Staff Favorite.  Prior to that the prices were fluctuating on both apps between 2.99 and 0.99...
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« Reply #13 on: April 14, 2009, 09:29:44 AM »

I think Crayon Ball definitely got a boost from Crayon Physics...
More importantly, anyone who searched for Crayon Physics is already interested in physics puzzle games, so if they see an app named crayon ball during their search, they'll be more inclined to like that type of game.
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