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New Year Resolutions 2012

January 1, 2012 by Markus Nigrin

Since days I’m dreading the thought of writing a follow-up to last years resolutions post. Analyse the parts where I failed, try to make it a good learning and not too much whining. Or, I could focus on what worked, put all frustration aside and predict with fervor how 2012 will be my year. Or write a really complicated long piece about why I think none of the above really describes where I think I stand right now.

Then Twitter came to my rescue. So here is my

In-depth analysis of 2011 and my goals for 2012

I did some things wrong in 2011 and I had to do them wrong in order to identify them as such. I’ll do them better in 2012. I’ll keep doing some things right.

I failed some of my goals in 2011. I’ll try to achieve them in 2012. Making money, building a newsletter base are still good metrics, making a phenomenal game/app still the foundation of it all.

I’m not where I want to be, so 2012 needs to be a year of doing. With the words of Jonathan George (@jdg):

2012. Let’s do this.

Note: shortest blog post I wrote in a while. Good start. Back to Xcode.

Posted in Business & Marketing | 3 Comments »

Let’s be nice to Siri

October 24, 2011 by Markus Nigrin

Since I read Asimov’s robot stories over and over again as a teenager, I’m fascinated with human-robot interaction. Was Asimov right and do humans generally fear robots? Or will they be winning us over as easily as cute little Aibo does? Will we accept robots as caretakers, who might even be filling emotional voids? Lot’s of small and big questions coming up for this and future generations to tackle.

Here is a small and early one.

Who is serving you?

I’m a firm believer in a general politeness. I make a point in restaurants treating waiters and personnel with the respect they deserve for being human beings on an equal level. Same for employees. And yes I did take job candidates out for lunch and judged their behavior as an invisible part of the interview.

So here is the thing. The first steps in voice recognition made us sound more like robots than the recipients. With Siri, we see a first credible solution that understands natural language on a mobile device. And I hope she is good enough to understand “Siri, please send a text to my wife”, instead of “Siri, send a text to my wife”.

This is not about me feeling the need to treat Siri as a person. She is not. This is me understanding that a polite language is something that benefits from constant practice. This is me being a role model for my children, and others when I’m in public and they don’t always know who I’m talking to. And it is about using advanced technology to add a nice touch. Because I can.

Too little? Too much?

There are many definitions of politeness. I live in California and like the relaxed mix of politeness and efficiency people practice here. How about opening a task with a “please”, without the need to repeat that in every sentence afterwards (“Siri, please create a new note”, “Siri, add to that note”). I don’t know if she’d understand “Could you please…” but that’d go too far for my taste anyway.

Have you seen this video about the guy using Siri to control his beer-pouring robot? He uses command style for Siri “text xyz to beeri” but uses a polite style for his robot “could you please pour me a beer”. Random example but a good start. Most Siri demo videos use command style, but it feels more because the presenters were used to it than giving it some thought.

Summary

So yeah, you might find it laughable to even think about this, but as I said, I’m quite fascinated with where we stand. We are seeing the dawning age of spoken human-machine interaction. Slowly but surely we will have to make decisions on how to deal with robots and AI socially. Apple started with giving Siri a name and, without explicitly stating it, a gender. It will be us, the early adopters, who’ll shape the use patterns. With Siri, it feels like the first time voice recognition technology allows us to act like humans again and I think I want to put it to good use. And be nice to her.

Posted in Opinion | 3 Comments »

A simple way to create custom Rounded Rect Buttons

August 30, 2011 by Markus Nigrin

This post describes how to create rounded rect buttons with variable length using a rectangular background graphic as a basis. This method requires iOS SDK 3.0 or higher. The information presented is not new, but I had to dig somewhat into Stackoverflow to find all the bits, so I thought a summary might be in order. This post is my idevblogaday contribution.

Background

Recently I wanted to create some decent looking buttons for a small app I wanted to release without spending money for graphic assets other than the Icon. So I spent a joyful morning in Acorn to create a brushed metal background (which was easy) and custom brushed metal buttons on top (which was a nightmare, but not because of Acorn).

When you do your own rounded corners (which Acorn supports nicely), you got to adjust the corner angle differently for your retina buttons. And when you have buttons with different lengths, I found pretty much every resizing method created artifacts that made the button look dirty.

I got somewhat industrious with cutting and pasting and stretching only the middle segment, ending with a heap of button graphics, four for each length (Default, Highlighted x 2 for retina), and ultimately I wondered if there isn’t a simpler way to do it with Interface Builder.

Well. There is not. You either select the “Round Rect” type, which will not have rounded corners anymore when choosing a rectangular background graphic or you use the “Custom” type which makes the button form rectangular right away.

So I wondered if there is a programmatic way to do it and there is, like here. But it feels like implementing a ton of code for a small cosmetic thing. Looking closer, I found that pretty much all examples I found were based in the pre 3.0 SDK age. Now, I’m using 4.3 for all newer apps and I certainly don’t target anything below 3.0 anymore. If you are in the same boat, making custom rounded rect buttons is really simple.

Import

With iOS 3.0 and higher you can use UIButtons CALayer to dynamically change its style. Make sure you import

#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>

Create

In Interface Builder, select the UIButton you want to change. Choose “Custom” type and select your background graphic. For my example below, this is a simple rectangular png with a gradient metal effect.

When creating such a base graphic, I typically choose 200×74 as size for the retina version. For shorter buttons, it will be compressed horizontally which is not visible afaic.

Code

A typical approach to access a button created in Interface Builder is to connect it via IBOutlet. The code for re-shaping that rectangular custom button looks like this and can be placed in viewDidLoad

_myButton.layer.cornerRadius = 8;
_myButton.layer.borderWidth = 1;
_myButton.layer.borderColor = [UIColor grayColor].CGColor;
_myButton.clipsToBounds = YES;

And that’s all it takes.

Tags

When I have a bunch of buttons in a view that should receive that treatment, I started to arrange them in a certain tag range, like 30+. So button 1 gets tag 30, button 2 gets tag 31, and so on. Which allows a simple loop like

for (int i=30; i<_lastCustomButtonTag; i++) {

UIButton* button = (UIButton*) [self viewWithTag:i];
button.layer.cornerRadius = 8;
button.layer.borderWidth = 1;
button.layer.borderColor = [UIColor grayColor].CGColor;
button.clipsToBounds = YES;

}

And here is the main screen of my current project which I will release this week, an app where I test a bunch of AVFoundation functionality I’ve been looking into, showing pictures of cute kittens and dogs while secretly recording the viewer with the front-facing camera. Note I also created my own UISegmentedControl out of buttons just to match the style, although you cansee the highlighting is not exact, a UISegmentedControl would not show the blue bottom border line for the highlighted segment.

I hope people find this simple approach useful.

Posted in Development | Tagged | 3 Comments »

Sony gets it

July 14, 2011 by Markus Nigrin

This week was buzzing with life-changing Tech News. Netflix’ dramatic price hike triggers a debate that pales the discussion about the US debt ceiling. 10 million people now discuss Google+ on Google+. Apple punishes UK users for voting against the Euro. More devs are buying an iCade. Eli and Lydia bought a dog. And Cocos2d releases the official Version 1.0 after more than three years and 2600 debates on how to properly name CCBatchNode*.

The one post that electrified me the most got little attention though, so I wanted to take a chance and point to it one more time, as I think it opens a big door for independent game developers. This is my #idevblogaday contribution for today.

Sony embraces Indies

Sony Computer Entertainment’s Worldwide Studio President Shuhei Yoshida said in this article that there is a clear and growing recognition of independent developers at Sony and that the Vita development kit was specifically engineered with affordability in mind.

What I like about this, besides the obvious message, is that Sony finally found a way to say Apple did the right thing, without saying that Apple did the right thing. I think we are seeing the first tangible changes in positioning towards Indie developers of the “post Apple shock” era.

What is it with the “A-word”?

Sony and Nintendo time over time presented tremendous difficulties to even casually mention “Apple” in press statements or keynotes. Recognizing Apple officially as a player in their space is something they feel the need to push out as long as possible, for two simple reasons.

  1. there is no need to add any tiny bit of traction to the momentum Apple already has, like a “Nintendo admits it is afraid of Apple” headline
  2. if you work in upper management in a major corporation like Sony you don’t run around with a T-Shirt in front of your shareholders saying “Sorry! They completely blindsided us!”

I’m sure this will change over time, right now it is good to assume this is all still quite fresh and understand why those guys seem so reality distorted with their keynotes.

Strategic impact

When a newcomer hits an established players’ home turf and gains tractions, there are two basic strategies.

  1. Neglect, keep focus on classic approach, push for that segment to remain dominant. Includes a healthy dose of praying.
  2. Adopt

The second approach is much harder than it seems. Playing catch up with a new and nimble player is not something big corporations like doing nor are particularly good at. There is no glory in that fight, in fact it makes for an endless stream of “still not there” press.

Nintendo digs itself deeper and deeper into 1). They make 3D handhelds for the players that are so hardcore they don’t mind headaches, an HD console with a tablet that isn’t a tablet and hate Indies more than ever.

Sony played the Indie aspect more vaguely. And I think we are seeing first signs of a full fletched turn. Not because of Apple. But because of Nintendo.

Nintendo doesn’t get it

By adamantly holding its “we don’t want garage developers” position, Nintendo offers Sony a great excuse to start saying the opposite. Times will change, but at this point it is MUCH easier for Sony to take that position countering Nintendo than acknowledging Apple. What they are saying is “They don’t want you, we do!”.

What is in for Sony?

Creating a strong independent program will be very beneficial for Vita sales. That is something both Sony as well as their classic industry partners have a vital interest in and for the first time in history, an established player introducing a strong, bleeding edge device is not a guarantee for strong sales anymore. Embracing Indies can give Sony an additional amount of groundbreaking titles that will give the Vita additional exposure in the News. Everything counts.

What is in for me?

There is a HUGE difference between offering an independent game developer platform and making it a good one. The more of an outspoken strategy it is, the more a company needs to put real effort into it, make it less of a “pseudo marketplace” and remove more roadblocks.

Mind Nintendo has a downloadable game channel. It is the worst experience for the gamer ever and that directly results into abysmal sales for developers. Note Nintendo DOES work with independent publishers and developers, they “just’ want to cherry-pick the good ones. But frankly, these days I’m in a pretty convenient position as an independent developer, I pick my battles and I don’t need all the hostile messaging. In my experience, those trickle down in the company and a mediocre platform will remain mediocre for a long while, as nobody in Nintendo feels a passion for fixing it.

Microsoft is a great example of embracing Indies with the XBox in a more dedicated way but still puts tons of roadblocks out. From naming it “Indie channel” (read “B quality” as a consumer) to a sometimes strange curation process to a bad discoverability on the XBox. With the result that even the success of the best selling titles is paled by what is financially possible on Apple’s platform.

All good in Sonyland?

Not quite. I’d say these are very promising signals and worth following. If Sony is serious with that strategy and if they and their industry partners are realistic about the chances of the Vita and allow for a strong downloadable store that independent developers have equal access to, Sony has a chance to catapult itself up into becoming one of the top platforms for independent game developers. Especially in the console space, that door is still wide open.

The first thing I’ll be looking at is discoverability. Lure your customers into shopping downloadable games like there is no tomorrow. Weekly Features, categorized Top Ten lists, all the good stuff that is selling apps like crazy needs to be there. I feel very strongly that there can not be a separation between AAA titles and independent titles. App Stores can take a positive approach, like a “AAA category”, but not a negative approach that signals “B quality”, like an “Independent category”.

Ultimately, it all boils down to sales. Yes, we all have our fav platforms, but the community is about making great games, not platforms, more than ever. Financial success factors are very important picking a platform, sales numbers of successful titles tell me everything I need to know about how well any given platform is setup and managed. Try to hide those from us and I guarantee that

  1. We’ll find out
  2. We’ll be super suspicious until I find out
  3. We’ll find out

Invest anything you have into discovery mechanisms for games, make the top games rise to the top, get your customers to buy those games instead of creating roadblocks. In a time where the Indie community is better connected than ever before, any other strategy is illusional.

Sony seems to get it. I hope they are serious.

Let me know how you see the different platforms and their outlook in the comments!

* just to be crystal clear: I’m a huge fan of Cocos2d, use it in everything I do, have tremendous respect for Ricardo and everyone who contributed. If I make friendly fun of it, it is with the deepest respect and gratitude.

Posted in Business & Marketing | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

Designing waiting time in Freemium games

June 30, 2011 by Markus Nigrin

Every evening, after a long day at work, Reggie F.*, 50, tries to forget about stubborn controller tablets and whips out his iPod Touch to play some of the latest gaming jewels the Apple platform brings to light every day.

Today, he is excited to try Tiny Tower, developed by a classic “garage developer”, Nimblebit in San Diego. Finding and installing the game takes less time than the PS3 “System Upgrade required” dialog box to pop up and soon he has built several floors in his new Tiny Tower, on track to catch up with his friends.

But after fifteen minutes into the game, he has exhausted his virtual currency to a point where he can’t extend his building anymore and all his shops are busy with restocking or selling. So he shifts his role from Tower CEO to Elevator Attendant, bringing visitors to the different floors, waiting for VIP’s to boost his income so he can afford to build the next level. This gets tedious after a while and he puts the iPod away, just to get back into the game minutes later after receiving a notification that his Parlor ran out of Vanilla ice cream.

!(Freemium == Freemium)

A lot of the mechanics of Freemium games and IAP sales have been explored and I’m assuming my readers are familiar with the difference between consumables and extensions (level packs, ad-free play, customization features, etc). I wanted to highlight an aspect of consumables that I wasn’t giving too much thought before I had an in depth discussion with Gavin Bowman and Craig Sharpe from Retrodreamer about it:

When you look at the different approaches on the market, it is fascinating what a wide range of “waiting play” can be found. I think this is worthwhile exploring, as it has quite some impact on early game design.

Main Play vs Waiting Play

Main Play is the core gameplay component of any given Freemium game. In Farmville, Cityville, Tiny Tower it is about building up as well as cashing in on earlier investments (harvesting). In Flower Garden it is watering and fertilizing your garden. In Eliminate Pro and High Noon it is the shooter game.

When you run out of an artificial source, the way the game can be played changes. Those artificial sources either refill after a certain time or you can buy more with real cash. What the game offers the player during that waiting time I’d like to call Waiting Play.

Everything goes

What I found is a fascinating variation. Some games essentially close down the gaming experience 100%. You either pony up real money or you wait some hours before you are allowed to play again. Eliminate Pro, but also classic Farmville and its many clones typically worked that way. You run out of virtual money, you are done, there is nothing meaningful you can do anymore.

Some games drastically reduce the gameplay, but don’t throw out the players completely. In Flower Garden, you can still create bouquets and send them per email.

Nimblebit’s games are fascinating in that respect, as they not only offer a somewhat meaningful** engagement during the waiting periods, those mini games have the potential to shortcut the waiting time. When you run elevators in Tiny Tower, you can get lucky and earn a substantial amount of virtual currency when placing a visiting VIP strategically. It is not as rewarding as opening the game again after a couple of hours, when you can do all types of activity with the collected virtual money, but it is satisfying enough to keep some players actively engaged with the game for a longer time.

The other extreme I found thanks to Gavin was Mega Jump, which doesn’t limit the Main Play at all. In fact, you can keep playing and earning virtual money as long as you want. The key element there seems to be a rather large gap between the amount that you can earn by playing versus the amount you need to buy something meaningful. And if you switch the game off, your “investments” don’t work for you similar to what they do in Tiny Tower and Farmville.

Summary

Lot’s going on and devs are trying a lot of approaches. This thing is tricky to balance and probably worthwhile doing early while designing the game. Also, any decision there comes with ethical consequences you want to clear out before, like, do you really want to shut the door into your player’s face when they have done everything meaningful that is there to do.

Big thanks goes to Gavin and Craig for diving into this discussion. And to #idevblogaday collecting all sorts of posts from developers like me.

Let us know in the comments if you know freemium games/approaches that do things differently in that aspect and what you like as the perfect balance.

* name has been changed

** make no mistake. “Meaningful” as in progresses the game, not “meaningful” as in cool gameplay. I would apologize to the Nimblebits for this statement but I have hosted too many elevator rides in my Tiny Tower to really feel like I want to :)

 

Posted in Business & Marketing | Tagged | 1 Comment »

Follow like a Pro

June 16, 2011 by Markus Nigrin

Every week I see someone in my timeline tweet something like “I can’t catch up with tweets anymore, I probably need to weed out people I follow”.

There are ton’s of blog posts out there on how to use Twitter properly, but most are focused on new users and their first days of experience with the strange land of 140 characters and hashtags.

This post describes how to how to resolve overload when you reach the stage where you follow >300 people and why it is a good thing to be able to follow many more. It is also my #idevblogaday contribution for this week, check this amazing site out if you want to see great blog posts from developers.

Running full

The more people you follow, the faster your timeline fills up with their tweets. When you don’t follow along for half a day, you barely have a chance to catch up anymore. You might try a few times to fight your way through, but you will feel more exhausted than informed/entertained afterwards. Next step is you stop trying to catch up, only to find that you start feeling out of sync with people that are important to you and the discussions they have.

An immediate way to mitigate this is to cut people you follow. Doing that, you violate a Twitter rule that took me the longest time to understand and ultimately embrace as a good thing.

Back in the early days, people who didn’t follow back their followers, especially those who communicated with them, were called snobs. And it turned out, for a good reason.

Why follow back?

If you get followed and you don’t follow back, you miss out, on what I found is one of the most fascinating aspects of Twitter: Building your personal window into a section of this world that you are interested in. For me, this mainly is video game development. I follow small Indie game developers, mobile devs, desktop devs and some who still work in corporate, video game legends, Triple-A hotshots, you name it. But I also follow reviewers, press, bloggers, developer advocates, self-proclaimed marketing geniuses (ok, only a few) and I follow a bunch of people who just love video games. And finally I make a point following people who live completely unrelated lives and if it is just for the thrill to see if they first tweet about Angry Birds or Farmville.

For this, I mainly re-follow whoever follows me, although I sometimes think I would spend more time to actively look for people with interesting timelines. I typically follow people who @reply to me in a meaningful way and sometimes I catch someone who people I know keep talking about. Which is a great way to effortlessly extend my personal window into that world that interests me.

So how can one keep up with such a timeline?

Answer: I don’t. Instead I use a simple mechanism to keep this manageable.

Introducing: The core-list

Lists are so much fun. When they came out, I think I made seven lists. A list of iOS devs, of Android devs, of friends. I think they are still somewhere. Completely non-maintained and forgotten.

What you need for managing a large number of followers is exactly ONE list. I call mine a “fav” list. I probably should call it my “core” list. You get the idea. It is a mix of people that I really don’t want to miss tweets of and it is a well balanced list of representatives of my area of interest plus friends.

Now all you need are Twitter clients where you default to that list and you are golden. No matter how many people you follow, this list and its output will never grow if you don’t want to. It is completely liberating. Follow back. Follow new people you find exciting.

Here is the thing. Even with defaulting to your core list for an ongoing read, there will be enough occasions where you will check your main timeline. With Tweetdeck on the desktop this is completely natural. I catch up with my core list and then I glance over to my main timeline. On the phone, I do that less often but whenever I have a few minutes of empty waiting time ahead I change from my core list in Tweetbot to my main timeline for some entertaining and often insightful reads.

And this is where everything comes together. I find it very easy and no effort to occasionally shift people around. When you are in my main timeline and consistently tweet good stuff, I’ll notice that over time and move you over. If you are in my core list and suddenly develop a passion for your home sports team, off you go. That doesn’t mean I move you out of sight, not at all. You might be still a favorite tweeter, a friend, a valuable colleague, it just means that I take a measure to keep my core timeline manageable and I will still read many of your tweets in my main timeline, as I recognize your name better than the others.

Today, with lists, I would argue there is no reason anymore to limit the number of people you follow except you don’t have a good handle on Twitter or you are indeed just trying to be arrogant.

How to start

Just create a core list. Name it however you want. Public or private? Doesn’t matter. Browse your main timeline and move as many people over as you find worthy. Do that two or three times. Then set your core list as default, change pace to that occasional weeding/tuning process I describe above and never look back.

Summary

Both my core list and my main timeline are equally important to me. I love being able to follow as many people as I want without losing focus on my core people and without fear to automatically increase the time I spend on Twitter. For a while, I didn’t actively follow people back that followed me and when I looked, I really felt I missed an opportunity to connect with some amazing people earlier (note I’m still bad with following back timely. But I try).

When you approach the point where you feel you can’t follow your timeline adequately anymore, this approach works so much better than limiting the number of people you follow.

Twitter has been a massive booster for me getting to know (and getting known in) the game industry. We are all guilty spending too little time with understanding the tools we use, so I hope you found this a valuable contribution.

 

Posted in Business & Marketing | Tagged | 5 Comments »

Going Indie, June 2011

June 2, 2011 by Markus Nigrin

“Do you think it is a good idea to go Indie with mobile apps?”

Interesting enough, I got this question a lot the last few weeks. So as my first post returning to #idevblogaday, here is the answer I currently give to that question, as a snapshot covering the current state of the different platforms from an Indie dev perspective.

Why going Indie in June 2011

If you didn’t take the plunge already, why now? I was wondering the exact same thing as this question flamed up again the last weeks. I’d say there is a bunch of factors contributing to this

  • it was not just a hype. Not only is Apple still around, they kick some serious butt. Apps just don’t disappear from the news. People don’t suddenly wake up and realize that buying 20 apps per month is ridiculous (note: it is not, so don’t feel bad). Au contraire. The whole thing is real and shifting the whole computer industry, and fast
  • most of those who dared to quit their job and start a life as independent developer in the past are… still around!
  • corporate work life out there for developers still mainly sucks. Conference calls anyone? Internal political reasons more important than doing the right thing? Feature creep/overload? Outdated architectures? <insert more>

All of this combined with the occasional shake-ups (aka strategy change, aka lay-offs) every large company goes through at times provides a constant number of people for whom this question is very relevant.

World of Confusion

Put a group of Indie devs together and ask about the potential they see in different platforms or what release strategies they find successful and you sure will trigger a lively debate. A lot of those things are in the air right now. Browse the technology blogs and you run a good chance of adding a ton of conflicting messages to that confusion.

  • Apple is put (back) into a niche. This is what necessarily happens with a closed ecosystem and competitors are playing that well in the meantime. Not that consumers seem to really care. Or do they?
  • 500000 iOS apps? Can you really make app Nr. 500,001 and be successful with that?
  • Supposedly you can’t make any money on Android per some very recent blog posts
  • Supposedly Android is on a massive roll with market share, user numbers, etc
  • WP7 is great, even if nobody is buying it. But oh the potential?
  • HP is selling so many computers, they must sell their tablet in huge numbers, right? When it comes out.
  • The TV spot for the Playbook is really nice

So how much money are people really making on those platforms? Will you have a chance doing this for a living?

The iOS gold rush

Let me start with the Apple platform first. There are two things that are important to understand, especially when reading number posts.

1. You CAN make millions on iOS

And this has not ended, in fact, you can make more money than ever with a top app on iOS. It is much much harder to get there, but it is possible and more iPhone/iPod/iPad owners spend more on apps every day than the day before. So it certainly is “not over”, but here is the thing

2. There WAS a gold rush on iOS and it IS over

This can easily be confused with the above statement. But it is very important to understand where the difference is for anybody thinking about going Indie.

Here is my definition of the iOS gold rush, what it meant and why it is over. I’m using rough number ranges solely based on discussions with other devs and only for illustration. Note there are not two similar careers out there!

In the first year, June 2008 to June 2009, putting any quality app up on Apple’s platform meant you had a certain chance of making significant $$, let’s say >50k, and a high chance of making let’s say 10-20k with no other effort than writing the app and publishing it.

Note the usage of the word “quality”. Note that a typical Indie dev puts out several apps per year or keeps a very successful app alive with updates. Note some people made much more than that in year one.

In the second year, a quality app had a certain chance of making >100k and a high chance of making between 2-10k. And anything in-between, depending on traction and feature. You also had to start doing PR.

This third year, a quality Indie app has a slim chance of making >250k, a small chance of making 10-100k and a risk of making $200-$1000. The latter is no typo, I have seen good quality apps completely tank even on iOS these days.

That third mid-range layer, kind of a new thing this year, comes from apps that got great traction and/or got featured, shot up the charts but dropped out again equally fast because of the enormous pressure the flood of high-quality apps creates.

Now, those first two years I call gold rush. Yeah, those millions were nice, the mid-range was attractive but most important, those almost guaranteed 2-10k that most small quality apps made per year kept a lot of Indies floating. The real tricky thing to understand when you ask any Indie who had apps out there for a while is how much of that gold-rush induced success is floating him today.

Because those apps are still around. Most well maintained and updated. They block chart positions and they still provide revenue. Most of my early apps provide me with a constant stream of somewhere around 50% of the first year revenue, although that is slowly declining. I hear similar stories from all early devs.

Also, those old install bases sometimes are really large. They provide a great platform for pushing new apps of those developers into the charts, a mechanism Apple slowly started to crack down on. And rightfully so, this is one to watch carefully as it might make it virtually impossible for newcomers to get a foot in the door.

Read ANY number post VERY carefully. If you read about any lasting success these days, make sure you understand how it was triggered, how much legacy success was used as a basis and if that is something you feel you can compete with your own venture.

So as this fruit seems to have dried out a little, let’s look at greener pastures?

Android

My early revenues on Android for paid apps were always around 9% of my iOS revenues. And honestly, that never changed. Similar apps, similar update cadence (none for some). If you think iOS got less great over time, I can tell you Android never was good. There is a CRAZY amount of crap apps flooding that store every day. I know some few devs making decent advertising revenue with free apps, but I have not read any recent success story or number post from an independent developer on Android and that’s just more than telling.

When I decided to stop outsourcing and rather code myself a year ago, I had to decide for a platform, as a single (learning) developer you can’t really do two. So I went with iOS, which back then simply was stronger, and I kept my eyes wide open on what happened at Android. See, I really liked how the dev advocates communicated with us devs at Google IO 2010. Very open, in the best sense of the word. WWDC in comparison was a bit more uptight in communication.

But then, in 2010, Apple fulfilled one developer request after the next. More transparent review process? Check. Update the installed base hard and fast to >4.0? Check. Fast-path for reviews of bug fixes? Check. Ongoingly strong app monetization? Double-check. List goes on.

Google, on the other hand, released shiny Honeycomb.

There was a wishlist, a petition of things floating around in the Google Groups in Spring 2010. Pretty much nothing from that list got done. Some more promises on potential future updates potentially mitigating some stuff, nothing really tangible. The main thing that did happen was that a more sophisticated chart system was released this May. One year later. And IAP. Effect to be seen.

Right now, I’m less bullish on Android than ever. Google still has a chance to convert the huge install base into something viable and financially attractive for devs. I’m not sure it is high on their list and frankly, I’m not sure if Google is organized strong enough to harness all the brilliance their engineers clearly have into such an effort.

Go do Android if you believe Google will shift it into something financially sound soon and if you are a cross-device compatibility testing masochist. Prepare yourself for zero exposure from the market, the moment you release you will be buried by the 40k new apps per month that Google is so proud of.

WP7

I like what Microsoft does, from a big picture perspective. In fact, they show a lot of signals that they “get it”. Trying to create an ecosystem that creates enough value for participants to make a living. If those handsets gain any traction and Microsoft continues to listen to developers and improve their ecosystem accordingly, especially if they pull out the Xbox card, this would be my clear Nr. 3 platform to watch, trending towards Nr. 2.

Others

Q: What about the Playbook, the HP tablet and other great things that will come out soon?

A: In my opinion there is no serious contender in sight for the above mentioned three players.

Indie Yes or No?

Can one make a living going Indie? From all I saw over the last years, the answer depends on two factors that are not really tied to platform choice

  1. can you force yourself into doing the right things, mixing a strong work ethic with all the other aspects of an independent’s life to release stuff with a tight cadence?
  2. how much time do you have before you run out of money?

I have seen incredible things from other devs. People quitting their jobs and starting to release new games and updates with breathtaking speed. There are no real excuses in that area, your releases are highly visible. This requires a high level of seniority in programming. The refresher/learning approach I started with for myself is very risky and requires a longterm commitment/investment.

Assuming you have a high level of seniority and trust yourself to crank out stuff, the minimum answer to 2) is one year.

And the winner is…

For platform choice, as far as I am concerned, no platform right now provides a gold rush environment. That was nice for a while on iOS, never true on Android, not true on WP7 or anything else, so it is a level playing field, but ONLY for the gold rush aspect, meaning the idea that it is super easy to make money on a specific platform.

On none of those platforms can you make a living with me-too or “just decent quality” apps. On any of those platforms a good app can tank.

That said, for serious entrepreneurs, the iOS platform by far is your best and safest bet financially. The market share and device distribution is very solid, so is growth and innovation. With minimal investment you can target iPhone/iPod, iPad and Mac and alternate between three unique sub-platforms with a strong, well paying installed base. Fragmentation is under control and the customer base has proven again and again that it is willing to shell out money for apps.

I’m deeply convinced that if you want to make a living, the cake you want a share from is not the market share of any specific platform. It is the number of sales of apps, ad, iap and corresponding revenue on that platform that is the only thing interesting for you.

Granted, there is a potential in going niche. Especially when doing contract work. I’m sure there are strategies to make money on specific platforms if you do something very specific. Spam an appstore with crap apps? Not a great strategy on iOS. But if you mainly want to create cool, innovative stuff and feel you got what it takes to get your ideas to release, the reality is that iOS still is far ahead of Nr. 2 and Nr. 3 in terms of generating money for developers and in terms of odds for newcomers.

With some background knowledge, credible success or no-success stories from other Indies are your best friend in making that decision! Also, watch out where new cool stuff gets released and ask yourself why that developer chose that specific platform.

Did I do too less homework on a certain platform? Got success stories to share? Daring to place a bet on something completely different I don’t mention here? Please leave a comment!

Posted in Business & Marketing | Tagged | 4 Comments »

My United States of Technology

April 26, 2011 by Markus Nigrin

It has been 4.5 years since my wife and I decided to move from Germany into the United States. Talking to friends and peers here I often feel they overlook something I am very passionate about and feel might be worth blogging. This is also inspired by Mike Lee’s great post about the #appsterdam initiative. So here we go with the preset that this is an opinion piece and necessarily very subjective.

Open letter to my american friends

“I feel living in the United States these days comes with its own reality distortion field. It is a distortion that seems fueled by hysterical mass media (or better: the absence of critical mass media), a president that everybody I know wish they would cut open and remove that implant that makes him talk like a robot and stop disappointing those who had such high hopes and finally by Twitter and the likes.

Most of my friends and peers I talk to these days show a tendency to find some German genes inside them. Complain here, complain there, everything is going to be horrible and politics, let’s not even start. But let me set something straight here.

We live in an amazing place!

And you might not realize the full extent.

You live in a country that has a unique, almost organic infrastructure in place serving tech. How often was Silicon Valley declared dead? Nope. The system keeps renewing itself. VC’s. Angel Investors. Incubator Offices. Starbucks (I could write a blog post alone on how invaluable the Starbucks entrepreneurial support is). Low internet & cell phone costs (yes. trust me. they are low). Stock Options that are accepted and seeked out by motivated employees. And many times indeed made some of them rich. A growing “nerds are cool” culture. An educational system that embraces tech. A highly educated local and visa based workforce you can plug into. When we moved here, I knew everything about the internet. Or so I thought. But man, did a lot more suddenly fall into place. Everybody was using it! Pretty much every service is there and not just in version 1.0. Trust me that pretty much every other country I know is way behind that daily life penetration.

But much more important, you live in a country that generally embraces tech. Tech by large is not seen as a nuisance that interrupts existing lifestyle and culture. Try find a free wifi hotspot in Europe. Get thrown out of a bakery because you didn’t order for more than 30min and they don’t like laptops anyway. Read European mainstream sites reviewing tech products. Everything will fail anyway, nobody needs that stuff, nobody will buy it. Cynicism is a commonly used pesticide killing anything new showing up. If the author is just remotely right, bet on the notorious “ha, I said it” article. If the author is not right, bet on the “ok it has some useful features but those parts still suck” followup. Stand in line for a cool new product and you will be ridiculed.

Some brown spots, but pretty green grass

I can not emphasize enough what a difference that makes in life for me. I’m not doing this as a nine-to-five job, I’m doing this out of passion. The US is the only place in the world where I feel this passion has a broad cultural root and is welcomed by a broad audience. Where this passion is so engrained in people they often don’t realize how completely amazing this is if you were not exposed to it all your life.

Walk up to anybody here, a complete stranger and tell them you make apps for the iPhone. Then do the same in Europe. A) you don’t walk up to strangers in Europe, B) they won’t know what “making apps” means and C) because of all of that combined they will meet you with great suspicion.

Don’t get me wrong. In Europe, there are amazing people, great spirits, great minds. But starting a high-tech company there, I felt I was fighting an uphill battle with my (few) like-minded peers. I felt the society was generally weighing down on me and my entrepreneurial aspirations. You might feel that politics here is bad and paying lip services to small businesses, but trust me, it can be way worse! Like not finding yourself on a political agenda at all. Or way way below Unions and social benefits. Or having openly racist extreme-right parties. Or making a call home to learn about a very distant relative who decided ten years ago that he “worked enough in his life at age 50″ and since then rots in his paid off house living of government aid (aka from taxes those who work pay).

Minds that move the world

So yeah, infrastructure is important. Taxes are important (yes, you need to scroll down the list if you want to find where the US really stands. yes, you need to scroll down FAR below Germany and please read this list before you complain again about high taxes here). Political environment is important.

But as long as those parameters are in a certain range, to me, the general mindset towards technology is what seems to make all the difference in our field.

Do you think it is a coincidence that the only new car company evolving out of the fuel consumption mess so far is… Tesla? Do you think “Lost” or “The Walking Dead” could come out of Europe? Do you think it is random that most successful app companies are, again, US based? Every recent new trend still started here? And no change in sight. Social Networks? Foursquare? Zynga? Quora? Stackoverflow? Games that are pushing the limits, like Sword & Sworcery**? Super Meat Boy? Angry Birds*? Minecraft?*

Our world is getting pretty open. Millions of smart and very driven Chinese have access to computers, free compilers and all kinds of technical documentation online since years. Europeans for decades. Where is the mind-blowing stuff?!

Tech happens

From all I have seen in the world, it is actually pretty straightforward. Right now, there is exactly ONE country where High-Tech happens on a large scale and new trends in our field get started. And the proof points this will change very soon are pretty slim, although it certainly makes for the “great” stories the mass media is so eager to pick up and terrify all of us.

Make no mistake. Challenges? Tons! New frontiers out there? Many! Will the US keep its lead position? Who knows!

As an individual in the High-Tech space, this is a time full of great opportunity. All over the world. I’d encourage everyone to use the personal freedom most of us enjoy and explore those, try out places. But if you wonder why going to Silicon Valley, many places in California and the United States feels so welcoming, so “at home” when you are serious with tech: Maybe give that mindset, that spirit a little credit.

And it is that spirit I am hard pressed to believe will disappear on such short notice as some media wants us to believe. Created centuries ago by those who were daring enough to embark on a one-way risky boat ride over the Atlantic and later on a long journey to the West. Constantly rejuvenated by immigrants going through years of struggles, learning for foreign SAT tests or crossing an armed border JUST to be where you all are right now. Being here, coming from Europe, I find this underlying entrepreneurial spirit rooting incredibly deep and very noticeable in my daily life.

Compare it to centuries of suppression weighing on today’s generation in Asia and the crusted structures in Europe (which show some interesting signs of breaking up in recent years) I do indeed believe that we are facing some pretty dramatic changes. But also that it will not happen overnight and it is by far not clear who will come out of it better or worse.

That leaves us with

So my dear non-american friends: You rock! Keep making it happen even if you are in a turbulent or stagnant environment. You deserve extra credit for anything disruptive you can come up with.

And my dear american friends: if you feel there is any truth hidden in this post, maybe you take some of the things you have here, you are so used to that you barely notice them anymore a little less for granted. Re-discover the notorious american optimism that makes our industry tick!”

Disclaimer

It is obvious that to every anecdotal example I list here there are numerous counter-examples. From a republican trying to proof that the iPad/Apple costs workplaces to coffee places all over Europe that are happy to provide shelter for the temporary laptop worker. I’m trying to paint a very broad picture here and I use tiny bits & pieces to illustrate my point, not to make it. I am describing a subjective impression that I have, one I’m passionate about, one that made me and my wife expatriate into a different system, different language, leaving parents and family behind. And feeling it was the right choice, every day.

Also, I want to note I’m a huge fan of Mike’s initiative. Mike is very aware of the challenge and what it takes to succeed and he is pretty much the only guy I know who has a chance of pulling something like that off. Almost ironic, doing something so gutsy and out-of-the-box and just going for it is the ultimate American trait. I really hope this gets some traction, while I’m highlighting the one aspect I like about moving to the US and I don’t want people to forget, there are a lot of things going mighty wrong and such movements can spark more change than any local acts.

Finally, this entire post was written in my local Starbucks, San Diego, California. Any thoughts, as always, highly welcome in the comments.

*ok. damn scandinavian guys ruin my rant! ;)

**Trainyard creator @MattRix rightfully pointed out that S&S was created in Canada. As everybody knows how much I blame adore Canada, that hopefully can be booked as unintentional mistake!

Posted in Opinion | 4 Comments »

Apps with iPad iAds

March 18, 2011 by Markus Nigrin

When I released my Mini-Game Solar Spirals HD last week, I included support for iPad iAds. In fact, besides a full screen with banners of friends’ apps, this was the only real ad network I implemented, after getting very frustrated with the adwhirl documentation and subsequently dropping adwhirl for version 1.0. I wasn’t aware that back then the inventory for iPad ads didn’t exist, but that changed just two days ago, with Apple rolling out the first iAds for iPad.

So that makes my game a good candidate if you want to spot the new big screen iAds in the wild.

You can find Solar Spirals HD on iTunes here.

Note that the fill rates are currently very low and unreliable, to my knowledge there is only one iPad iAd out there right now. In Solar Spirals, ads show on top of the main screen, if an ad request goes through.

If you have an app that also supports the 4.2 iPad iAds, please feel free to put a description and a link into the comments.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Six questions to ask a mobile publisher

February 3, 2011 by Markus Nigrin

This post is triggered by a Twitter conversation with Miguel (@mysterycoconut), when he mentioned that he got contacted by three publishers already in regards of their new upcoming hit game “Casey’s Contraptions”.

Publishers?

When you work in software, even if you do very vertical products, you are probably familiar with the idea of a publisher. Their role is pretty much the same everywhere, and the perception that many developers seem to have typically goes like: They are taking an amazingly big junk of revenue share in return for some vague and questionable promises.

In gaming, publishers are very strong and for a good reason. Classic games required a strong marketing and in theory it makes quite some sense to “outsource” that part from the actual development, which requires a hell lot of specialized expertise on its own.

While I have quite some experience with publishers from my previous industry, so far I didn’t get approached from a publisher for my games, simply because kids games are not on their radar and I’m just starting with making games that would qualify for a publishing deal. And while I don’t expect to get approached for “Solar Spirals”, which is my first rather small project to test if I can actually release a game I made 100% by myself, I fully expect this to happen for my next game, where I intend to shake things up quite a bit.

Is/Is not

So what is the role that mobile publishers take these days? Is the classic marketing approach valuable enough to go into such a partnership? That’s a question that every game developer at one point has to answer, assuming his or her games get good enough to qualify.

I don’t plan to talk about developer-publisher relationships that went south for whatever reason. Chillingo and Rovio parted ways in not such a great way, however I know Indies that did go with a publisher and are quite ok with how that panned out. With any partnership I engage in I evaluate what the partner brings to the table and I evaluate how the worst case scenarios look like. The latter is not part of this post. This does NOT mean that it is not an important aspect, but it is simply too much to talk about here.

Show me what you got

Actually, I think publishers can bring quite a bit to the table these days. Here is what I care about, in the form of a questionnaire that at a minimum can be used to shape the discussion.

1. Newsletter

1.a) How many endusers can you inform via newsletter about our game release?

1.b) Provide a pie chart that shows the target group distribution of your newsletter (100k email addresses of Moms with kids is different than 100k email addresses of 14-16yr old male gamers)

1.c) can I assume that you will send an exclusive newsletter promoting the game in the 48h after the release?

2. Press

2.a) will you create a press release?

2.b) what is your track record with the major gaming sites to get games you publish reviewed?

2.c) what is your track record with Apple to get games featured?

Note: this is rather high-level and really means: “do you have a track record of releasing such a high-quality line-up so that you have the eyeballs from major review sites and Apple on new releases. Do you have personal relationships with the review sites and Apple that you can trigger and will you do that?”.

At this point it is fair to mention that I would never expect a guarantee, as I know that is simply not possible. I love how this industry remains neutral and how the major review sites and Apple pretty much only feature high quality games. However, a good publisher has those eyeballs and relationships to at least point to a new game, it is their core competence and those two questions are trying to quantify that. A publisher imho increases your chance of getting discovered, especially if you are a newcomer. That’s how it works and that’s just fine, so I deem those questions to be fair.

3. Website

3. a) how many visitors does your site get?

3.b) will you prominently feature our new game on the front page, if so, how long and how close to the release?

4. Youtube

4.a) do you have a youtube channel?

4.b) how many views do your clips get in average?

4.c) will you make the trailer and/or help with it, will you post it through your channel?

(this is a great place to ask if they want to reserve the right to make a trailer, if you can also use your own channel, etc, but again, this is not the scope of this post)

5. Cross promotions (my favorite!!)

5.a) Do you have methods to cross-promote our game within your existing portfolio?

5.b) For each method (I’m thinking: newslines, popups, if-you-download-our-new-game-you-get-a-zombie-fertilizer-for-free promotions), describe how many DAU’s (daily active users) will see those and what conversion you typically see

5.c) which methods do you offer to trigger for our game

6. Other

6.a) do you offer an advertisement budget for our game release and if so, how high and where will it be invested?

(superbowl ad vs. iad)

6.b) any other promotions you offer to do?

6.c) where do new games you publish typically land in the charts?

(this is very tricky but can give you an idea what influences the publisher deems important and what their own expectation is. Also, this is public information so you can see if they do a decent job of tracking their portfolio. Or simply ask them if they use majicrank)

I’m sure I forgot something, so “other” is a great category to have.

I would also ask to segment the answers for all the above into pre-launch, launch and ongoing promotions.

Note I was not always very consistent with tying a general question to the proposed joint project. This is something to make sure in a later, more specific stage. It doesn’t help you if the publisher has a great newsletter outreach if they are not intending to send one for your specific game.

Edit: I did not mention other publisher services here, as I find those harder to quantify and very case specific. But for completeness they should definitely be listed: Post production support. Customer support. And something I find very intriguing these days: Cross-platform porting capabilities.

Summary

As you can see, the brand name does play an important role with some of those questions. So it is fair game from the publishers side to point out how strong their brand is and it is actually something the developer needs to pay attention to.

And I guess it is clear now that I feel publishers can bring quite a lot to the table and different to what I sometimes hear, I don’t think that what publishers do is just blowing a lot of air around. They definitely can give your game the attention it deserves and if you follow my blog, you know how strong I feel about how important that is to get it up the charts, which in return gives your game the attention of a very broad audience and at that point, it really comes down to how good your game is and not much more.

And the way publishers work, is not magical either, ideally, it is hard, tedious work and very quantifiable. It is worth noting that some of this might be sensitive data to ask for, so I’d assume you will be asked to sign an NDA, which is generally fine and justifiable. It can also mean you will be denied an answer, which in itself can be telling especially if you have a chance to talk to more than one publishers and they react differently on a specific question.

With that, I hope developers getting approached by publishers have some material to not only go back to them but to actually judge and make an informed decision if what they bring to the table is worth the revenue share and the potential(!) problem areas of a joint partnership, neither one is covered here.

Let me know if I forgot something in my list. And good luck with whatever approach you take!

Posted in Business & Marketing | 3 Comments »

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