Superstar developers Igor Pusenjak of Lima Sky, creator of Doodle Jump, as well as Bryan Mitchell, creator of Geared, joined in the panel discussion with Michael Powers, CEO of Mplayit, and Matthew Brown, Partner at Cooley Godward Kronish.

Collectively, they shared their thoughts and provided valuable insight to the fantastical world that is iPhone/iPad development. Igor spoke to the power of how $0.99 games can be very profitable and how increasing the price can actually hurt your game by dropping it off the top of the charts. Bryan shared his stories about how an out-of-work cameraman turned Las Vegas construction worker can turn a pet project into a very successful, full-time gig. Michael Powers enthusiastically told us how important marketing was crucial to increased discovery. Matthew Brown opened our eyes to the more important legal aspects of development including trademark protection and copy-write.

The speakers were so electric that they overloaded the power… twice! Just kidding, but power outages couldn’t stop the enthusiasm and interest of our crowd from asking questions as we neared our time limit.

GDC Panel

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Thanks for coming out! Please follow us on twitter @playhaven for updates on what we’re doing next!

Again, this even would not have been possible without our sponsors: Cooley, Godward, Kronish LLP, Indie Apps Alliance, mPlayit.

Topic of Discussion: Get ready for the battle – formulate a pre-launch strategy to make your new iPhone game a success!

Location: Cooley Godward & Kronish – 101 California Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94111

Date: January 20, 2010

Time: 6:00 – 8:30pm

Cost: FREE!

Sign up here:  http://aimd1.eventbrite.com/

The event brings together the indie mobile developer community and an acclaimed panel of experts from the video game and marketing industry.  With PlayHaven’s launch only 2 months ago, we’ve seen 100 plus mobile developers join and claim their communities.  And with this success, it became clear to us, that there is a need to bring these developers together in a much more global scale.

At the first event, we’ll be meeting with industry experts who will discuss pre-launch and launch strategies for indie mobile game developers-as part of a series of marketing panels that will lead up to the Game Developers Conference.

Some topics we’ll cover are:

• The importance of knowing your customer.
• Building a brand in the early stages of development.
• Successful strategies to create pre-release buzz.
• Starting conversations and managing pre-release communication.
• Getting your game ready to go-to-market.

The panel features Andrew Podolsky, Editor in Chief from Slide To Play and former writer and editor from 1up, Game Revolution, and Ripton; Sean Denny, Senior Consumer Insights Manager from eBay and 10 year video games industry vet who has worked at LucasArts, Gazillion, and PlayFirst; and lastly, Randall Schleuder, co-creator of the award-winning Snails for PocketPC and developer of Flickitty for the iPhone.

About Alliance of Indie Mobile Developers (AIMD):

AIMD is a community of independent mobile game developers dedicated to promote indie mobile games by exchanging tips, knowledge, and industry best practices.  We love indie mobile games and especially love the underdog.  We help developers cultivate their best work, and reach the hearts, minds, and phones of their greatest fans.

I’ve had the great opportunity to work with many talented iPhone game developers over the last few months. I’ve had a chance to see firsthand which marketing strategies work in helping build businesses by creating game “franchises” rather than just selling games.  Of all the marketing strategies I’ve seen, it seems there are three core tenants that should be a part of any iPhone marketing campaign.

1. Generate buzz before the game is released
2. Create a cross-promotion network alliance
3. Leverage your existing fan base

Before I dive into marketing strategies, I want to express how badly I think the App Store is broken.   The prolonged Apple approval process has already been documented widely. But I find the lack of information and access that developers get to their own consumers to be equally appalling and certainly far more costly to developers.

Isn’t it ironic that apps and games are what make the iPhone so successful, yet developers have absolutely no way of knowing who their customers are? They are essentially barred from interacting with the very people who are using the product they created.

Having passionate fans is the cornerstone of any successful game. This was true in the traditional gaming space, and it’s just as true in the new mobile gaming era.  But the App Store is a blackbox, and developers are flying blind in there.  They have no connection with their customers.  With Android on the rise, I really hope Apple will respond and open up their system for the benefit of developers and iPhone users.  But until then, here are the tips I’ve picked up for marketing and thriving in Apple’s opaque world.

Building anticipation before a game comes out is by no means a novel marketing strategy. In fact, it is extremely common in the traditional gaming space (some may even say certain games build too much hype… Duke Nukem Forever anyone?).  However, this concept of pre-release buzz doesn’t seem to exist when it comes to marketing for iPhone games.

Why is this?  Certainly, Apple is to blame to a great degree. The company directly intimidates developers by banning any communication about an app or game until it is live in the store. What is the reason for this? Only Apple knows, but it seems to be a process rooted more in their long-standing “control freak” roots.

Or perhaps developers are too blame. Some simply believe naively that if you build a game and put it on the App Store, then magically everyone will buy it. These developers daydream of lathered and excited users burning up social networks and texts with invitations to play.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could actually just release the game on the App Store, earn millions of dollars and live happily ever?

But expecting such rampant viral adoption is delusional of course.  At the end of the day, selling games on the App Store is a business.   And like any other business — you have to rise above the noise and build demand!

And all this is especially important on the iPhone.  The App Store is extremely binary in the sense that it’s all about making the “top lists.”   We all know that Apple runs an algorithm to determine how “hot” an app is. And the best time to be considered “hot” is when a game is first released.  So by building the initial buzz around a game appropriately, you can boost the flood of your initial downloads and drive algorithm calculations that vastly increase the chance of breaking into the “top” lists.

Some of our most successful partners at PlayHaven have done a fantastic job in building buzz for their games before the game was even released.  Let me give you a few examples:

Minigore built a tremendous amount of buzz by releasing sexy screenshots and game play videos on various iPhone gaming forums weeks before the game’s actual release.  This built up hype for the game so successfully, that the initial download volume shot Minigore up to the top games list for the month:

Consider also the success of Geared, the number one ranked game in August and September.  Bryan Mitchell, the mastermind behind the game, didn’t just build hype for his game by posting on forums.  Bryan piled on well-placed advertisements.  He purchased ads on SomethingAwful.com and TouchArcade, whose audiences love puzzle and iPhone games. This paid campaign appeared to drive the success of Geared considerably.

Advertising works well when you target the right audience, but this is truly a case where “your actual miles may vary. “  Making a mistake in choosing where to advertise can be costly.  Make your choices about advertising platforms wisely.

One of the most interesting strategies I’ve learned from our developer partners is the notion of a cross-promotional network.  Because most iPhone game developers are small teams of no more than four folks, traditional PR efforts are typically limited due to budget and resource constraints.

In order to maximize the exposure of their games, some developers have created alliances with other iPhone game developers to cross-promote each other’s games.  This is typically done through a “More Games” link via a game’s main menu.  See an example below:

At PlayHaven, we are building out a cross-promotional network of our own to save our partners’ time on business development.  We categorize every game by its unique characteristics, analyze fans’ preferences, and “recommend” games that they may also like:

If you use PlayHaven Community Platform, we automatically enroll you in our cross-promotional network unless you opt out.  However, if you’d prefer to find your own alliance network, here are some channels I recommend to find potential partners:

Having passionate fans is the cornerstone of any successful game because passionate fans will spread word-of-mouth and drive buzz.  A recent survey from AdMob found that 46 percent of all iPhone users discover new applications based on word-of-mouth recommendations.  Yet the Apple App Store currently doesn’t offer iPhone game developers a single means for reaching their fans directly to encourage word-of-mouth. iPhone developers can’t even reach out to existing game fans to announce their next title.

This is really where the concept of our PlayHaven Community Platform comes in.  We want to empower iPhone developers to establish a relationship with their fans as a critical step towards turning their games into a lasting franchise.  I’m not going to sell you on the benefits of our platform here. You can read about them on Pocket Gamer, Slide to Play, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and bub.blicio.us.

What I want to show you is the importance of creating a community (whether you use our platform or not), and how to leverage your fans’ emotional attachment to drive sales of your game.

Step 1: Who are your customers?  Get to know them!

It really blows my mind that the App Store doesn’t provide any customer data to developers besides number of downloads by region.   In any business, it’s critical to build a relationship with your customers.  Knowing who your customers are helps you iterate your game quickly to suit your customers’ likes, and most importantly, to up-sell your future games.

Geared has been downloaded nearly 350,000 times since its initial release.  These gamers can be critical to Geared’s future success. Bryan wants to launch Geared 2 next year, But he currently has no way of telling these thousands of existing Geared fans about his new title.

So, in preparation for Geared 2’s launch, Bryan decided to build a community of his existing fans by using PlayHaven’s Community Platform.  In less than two weeks, he built a fan following of over 4,500 (now well over 6,000 since that post was written) and the community is still growing strong.  Now, when Bryan releases Geared 2 next year, he can directly tell all of them about it (and recruit them to help spread the word).

Brian exposed his Geared community right in the game itself, and it took him just a few minutes to set up.  You can read all about it here.  Because of the in-game exposure, Bryan’s community blossomed to a vibrant base of 4,500 fans in a couple of weeks. By comparison, Geared’s Facebook fan page has attracted only about 100 fans in the six months since the game was introduced.

Step 2:  Leverage your fans for your future releases

The Quest, one of the most popular RPGs on the iPhone, is also a PlayHaven partner.  The Quest developer, Reshift, built a vibrant community of fans as well.  And just recently, they were able to take full advantage of these fans when they launched a new expansion for The Quest:

Redshift sent an announcement to the entire community of The Quest informing fans of the imminent release of “Hero of Lukomorye II – Tainted Blood”.  Because these fans were already diehard Quest players, Redshift was able to drive up initial sales of their new expansion with minimal marketing effort or dollars

Of course, the most important thing you should focus on as a developer is still building a high-quality game.  Without a fun and quality game, all the marketing tips and tricks in the world won’t help you.  These tips are meant for those fantastic games on the App Store that might sadly get buried under the noise.  I hope these tips will help some of you break through the App Store blackbox this holiday season and in 2010.

Step 1. Build an awesome game.  I gotta give Bryan (the mastermind behind Geared) all the credit here.  Geared is super fun, casual, and fits the iPhone controls perfectly.  You can read some of the player reviews here and here.

Step 2. Bryan claimed Geared’s fan community on PlayHaven to lay the foundation of his new community.  Bryan used to receive a ton of Emails from his fans. Whether they were requests for help or  simple suggestions, hundreds of Emails a day overwhelmed him.

Bryan then begin redirect all his fans to Geared’s community page so they could help each other, and also provide himself a central location to gather feedback from all of his fans.

How Bryan encourages his fans to join his community from his blog

Step 3: Bryan gives his fans super easy access to the community… right from the game!  One of the greatest benefits of PlayHaven’s Community Platform is how simple it is to bring your entire community into the game itself.  There’s no SDK integration required at all.  Our in-game community is essentially a web application that runs inside the app itself by utilizing Apple SDK’s UIWebView class.  Using UIWebView, you can also make the in-game community feel just like part of the game itself, check out how Bryan implemented it in just a few minutes:

With the in-game community implemented, Geared’s fans have instant access to the full blown community.  They can receive news directly from Bryan, ask & answer questions, and access all the strategy guides straight from the game.  And most importantly, the community is becoming more and more vibrant on a daily basis.

At the time of this post, Geared’s fan community has 4,446 fans, and it all happened in two weeks.  Who will be lucky number 4,500??

]]> http://blog.playhaven.com/2009/11/how-geared-built-a-community-of-4500-fans-in-two-weeks/feed/ 5 http://blog.playhaven.com/2009/10/playhaven-launches-community-platform-for-iphone-game-developers/ http://blog.playhaven.com/2009/10/playhaven-launches-community-platform-for-iphone-game-developers/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:05:44 +0000 Ray http://blog.playhaven.com/?p=314 It’s ironic that even though apps are the reason why the iPhone has been so successful, yet the developers have no way of knowing who their customers really are.  As developers ourselves, we find connecting with our users to be one of the most important things that propel us forward.

This is why we are happy to announce today that we are launching the “PlayHaven Community Platform” for iPhone game developers.

For the first time, iPhone game developers have the opportunity to directly communicate with their fans and establish a passionate fan base.  Having passionate fans is the cornerstone of any successful game, and we want to be a true partner to game developers who are looking to establish a connection with their fans and form the base of a lasting franchise.

We have already pre-populated our database with over 15,000 iPhone games.  If you are an iPhone game developer, all you have to do is “claim” your community, it will only take you 30 seconds:  http://www.playhaven.com/about/developers/

Once we receive your claim request, we will process it within 24 hours.  Some of the biggest iPhone titles have already been using our platform, including Geared, Minigore, I Dig It, The Quest, Mouse House 2, SnowFerno, iSamurai, Bobble Surfer, ZombieSmash!, Transylvania, Genius Defense Force, Gang Street Wars, Tipoli, Influence, Above and Cell War, to name just a few.   Check out how fast the Geared Fan Community and The Quest Fan Community are already growing.

The most exciting part… you can bring your entire community INTO the game within seconds!  There’s absolutely no SDK required. Our in-game app is basically a web application that runs inside the game itself, utilizing the power of “UIWebView”.  Check out some of them in action:

Let me know if you have any questions!  If you are an iPhone game developer, please come claim your community   I look forward to working with you all.

Edit:
We just got covered on TechCrunch:  http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/29/playhaven-lets-iphone-developers-create-in-app-and-online-communities/

PlayHaven Editor 2.0

New Features include an enhanced table block based off suggestions from our guide writers, enhanced notice blocks, and other revisions to existing blocks. One important thing to note is this version was completely re-written from the ground up to be portable enough to apply it to other types of documents than guides/FAQs. This includes the new Reviews feature, and many more down the line. We’d love feedback on this new editor – post in our forums letting us know how we can make it better!

Reviews

Guides are extremely useful – but that’s only after you have bought the game. What about if you want to know whether or not it’s a good game to buy? We have applied the new editor to allowing everyone now to publish reviews based off their favorite games. Scores will be submitted and averaged on a scale of 5 and later down the line, you guys will also have the option to quick review the games initially and write the full review later.

Forums and Discussion

Our forums has received a significant upgrade as well. While before it was a barebones system, it is now evolving to include many features you might expect in a typical forum. This includes sticky posts, locked posts, moderation, edits, and others. We will be continually adding more features down the line to make it the best gaming forum out there.

I’d like to mention that in order to consolidate all the discussion going around in the site into one place, we have migrated all comments in guides into the forums. We feel that this will not only give you guide more exposure, but more feedback as well from your readers. When someone leaves a comment on your guide, our friendly PlayHaven Bot will create a new topic for you about your guide – you may then at any time ‘claim’ this topic as your own by clicking a link in the thread.

Games and Profile

We have enhanced your individual dashboard pages to more easily manage your guides, reviews, etc. Also, we have semi-revamped the game and platform pages to provide a much better UI experience. If you have any suggestions or feedback, please let me know.

The Future

There are MANY more things to come in the coming weeks. We encourage ya’ll to try out as many of the features as possible and help us though feedback and bug reports. If there’s anything you would like to see, we’d love to hear it as well!

Kurtiss, Stephen, and Erik wearing the rooster hat

PlayHaven’s development will also be on a temporary halt for the next week as the entire team is addicted to the new game.

Ok, fine… just kidding.  But at least no updates will be out tonight

Expect many Scribblenauts guides from us!  And of course, if you want to talk anything Scribblenauts, talk to us on the forum!

eyao's office space. Gotta have some gaming posters and action figures at a gaming startup!

There many exciting new features coming out in the next week or so (including Guide Editor 2.0!), and we are working hard to get them ready for you.  I hope you guys are enjoying the rest of your long weekend, and stay tuned!

Today my friends at PlayHaven flew from SFO to SNA and hopped over to BlizzCon 2009. I picked them up at 8AM and we waited in line at 8:30AM for nearly an hour along with thousands of people.

I got to speak to the lead designer of Starcraft 2, Dustin Browder:

Dustin Browder of Starcraft fame

One of the main questions that I really wanted to know, being an avid Starcraft Player for over 10 years, was, “When is Starcraft 2 being released?”

According to Dustin, they’re actually trying very hard to release the Starcraft 2 Beta by the end of the year. However, he said that there are no guarantees and it will be done when it is done. Well, that’s Blizzard for ya!

Here are some pictures from the Starcraft II demos they had on display. This game is totally going to kick ass.

Infested Kerrigan

Here is the “Queen of Blades” herself – pretty freaky.

There were a ton of people playing Starcraft II. Just look at how many computers were set up.

Starcraft II Battle Scene

We just launched our discussion forum system tonight, so come mingle with the community! The primary purpose of the discussion system is to give the PlayHaven community a medium to communicate with each other.  While the topics may widely vary, we encourage discussions to:

1. Stay on topic
2. Q&A on questions our guide system cannot provide
3. Collaborate on guide writing

Most of the designs should be fairly familiar to you as we mimic a lot of the traditional forum designs.  However, we also took it to the next level and tried to enhance on all the little things that bug us from time-to-time.  For instance, some of the new features from traditional forums are:

• Threaded conversation – no more quoting and everything is kept chronological!
• In-line reply – this should make replying to a thread much easier
• Rating on posts – we are hoping this will eliminate trolls and inappropriate comments

I hope you enjoy our new discussion forum system.  Of course, we know not all new things are better than the old ones, so if you find any of our new features annoying or less useful than traditional forums.  Please don’t hesitate to voice your view!  Now, please come check it out!