Good/Bad News

[Nicolas Gramlich]

Hello Community,

depending on the perspective I have good or bad news

The only news actually is that (as you might have seen through the last couple of weeks) my game FarmTower ( https://market.android.com/details?id=org.anddev.farmtower.eco ) is going quite well. Quite well means that it would be frikkin stupid not to spend my full time/power on it. (No, I won't give numbers here.) So, having started to get down with Android is finally back in November 2007 is finally starting to pay of.

So keep your heads up, even if you have a couple of apps/games that are (currently) running way below your expectations (i.e. my first AndEngine game GravityCollector: https://market.android.com/details?id=org.anddev.gravitycollector, I'm earning about $0.10/day), either make another (better) app/game, or think what you have might have done wrong ('marketing' might be answer here). The next one will be better, trust me

To work against my absence I'll be naming a couple of moderators the next days that I'm sure of will do a great job pushing this community even further. (You can apply here: http://www.andengine.org/forums/announcements/moderators-wanted-t2066.html )

So I'm really sorry for being less around here (especially compared to the early days), but I really have to take this chance. I hope you understand. You are awesome

Best Regards,
Nicolas

[Duiker101]

I'm really happy for you Nicolas, we are all developers and everyone would like to have an application that have success. Abviusly we hope to have you with us whenever is possible

[bhecox65]

Oh good! Glad to see it's all finally paying off! So, speaking of Gravity Collector.... I believe you said when you were announcing it that you might release some code from it after a few months of it being on market??

Seeing the code from a full app would be really amazing to help us understand some of the best practices etc. that small examples can never teach us. Well, good luck with your new app!

[Radzell]

i'm just happy you made your big break finally i am working on a game to get me their hopefully you can give some numbers soon so everyone can see what we are working towards.

[blandonfrank]

I'm really happy for you Nicolas. Personally, I enjoyed this game while BETA testing it, so I'm not surprised it became successful.
Gravity Collector was a pretty cool idea too, thus, I'm surprised it didn't pick up as fast as Farm Tower.
As far as not been able to spend as much time in the forums is understandable, and I hope it gives you more time for more features for your game.
Good luck!

[Br0ken]

>100,000 downloads, pretty sweet for sure. Not interested in specifics or how much you're earning as thats private but if you have any general advice about promoting games, spreading the word etc I'm sure everyone would appreciate the insight. Thanks.

[Radzell]

You should start a actual business it would be great i know appmunki and having a brand name has made me a lot of clients and it makes you easily recognizable. With so many andengine developers finding people who could help you make games would be easy and you might get more success.

[Ted Hughes]

Nice job Nicolas. Hope the best. You do very good work. Thanks!

[Nicolas Gramlich]

It's actually 325.000 Downloads already, but more importantly its over 180.000 active installs. With 6000-9000 new Downloads per day.

Things that (might) have a good effect are:

• Kindly ask users to rate your app, once they have started it more than X times. (That would be users that like your app)
• Get people to tweet about your game. Someone with 10k followers tweeting, has a similar or better effect than releasing an update
• Get blogs (not limited to Android Game Blogs, like droidgamers.com) to write about your game. If you kindly ask and have a fun game, they usually do it for free. Eventually even a paid review is worth it in the long run.
• Have people young/old male/female test your app, especially people that never used a smart/touch-phone before
  
  • Pick the most untalented (never-used-a) smartphone user you know and make him/her have fun
  • Never underestimate the power of female gamers ("Looks so cute!")
• Make it look good
  
  • Programmers tend to be shitty designers. If you cannot do it yourself, buy it (The ~$250 spent for the FarmTower animals will probably be the best spent money in my life)
  • "good looking" is is not necessarily super fancy effect overloaded!
  • Draw your stuff in vectors (i.e. Inkscape) (Kind of gives you a one-click "HD" version of your game)

That's all that came to my mind.

Regarding the : well,... all that I'm hoping for, is that the current status keeps steady (or rising) for as long as possible

Best Regards,
Nicolas

[Br0ken]

Thanks for the tips. I agree with a lot of the points you've made. I downloaded your Farm Tower game this morning and it's pretty decent.

I saw you rated my game, so thanks for that, I will return the favour of course!

6,000 - 9,000 a day is amazing, it makes me think people are "seeing" your game somewhere. I know that when I released my iPhone app a few forum posts and blog posts, mentions on Podcasts also made the sales rocket.

I've got about 14 downloads to go to break that 1,000 barrier. My game has 62% active installs, and I've earned just over $6 dollars since releasing it 1 week ago lol I'm rolling it in haha Still, the game was never about the money, it's just interesting to see how the metrics go.

I take exception to the we're bad designers though, I'm not too bad