...and other clickbait titles.

I've been doing Ludum Dare and Global Game Jam and had my finger in several other game development things for years, but never had actually released a game.  My remote contract worked suddenly stopped right when I made a major move - very poor timing, but I found myself in a new land, with no job.  My wife encouraged me to make games rather than seek out a new job, and so I did.  With her help, suggestions, art, and translations, Wisdom Collector was born.  Originally a iPhone/Android app written in Unity, I also released it on itch.io and Newgrounds.

Why you should use analytics

Wisdom Collector was released to the roaring masses of...  well almost no downloads.  Unity Analytics tells me there are roughly 1 to 3 users per day, Android and iOS statistics tell me less, and itch.io statistics...  well I don't think itch.io counts unique users, and I think it ridiculously overcounts me alone when I try to test it.  So, what to do?  After I had almost no users on mobile, I then put it on itch.io to see if I could get more users there.  This didn't really get me more.  The version on itch.io also has no advertising capability, but considering that I made 37 cents one month after release, that isn't what is hurting my wallet.

Looking for other places to put this game, I put it on Newgrounds.  Newgrounds has a nifty feature where before your game is fully added to their system, it is marked "new", and due to their gamification features, all the players rate new games to get extra points. (I'm not terribly familiar with Newgrounds, so I don't know the exact terminology.)  Over three days I got 200 new players!  Far more in three days than I got in total from iOS, Android, and itch.io!

Once the three days wore off, Newgrounds went to supplying me as many new players as the other platforms.  But, 200 players gave me some data that I could actually analyze.

I had originally set my advertisements to show every five minutes.  One thing I learned from 200 players, is that the average play time is...  4 minutes and 30 seconds.  On Newgrounds, there are no advertisements (except what Newgrounds shows, none from my game), so it's not like they played my game and quit because it was too much advertising.

The other thing I learned is how much progress the average player made in the game.  The game is split in to six "pages" of levels. The games starts getting interesting on page 2. However, 90% of the players never made it past page 1.  

Is my game is boring?

I can tell that there is some percentage of people who like this game.  (At least my wife.  There is at least one person.)  However, the average of 1-3 users per day out of approximately 300 people who have ever played it tells me that if there is a niche audience, that audience is about 1% of the population that has seen my game. If I go crazy on ads, that means I have to assume that out of 100 installs, 1 person will keep playing. This tells me that spending money to advertise this game will not be worthwhile, because I will have to get at large number of installs before I will have a large enough audience to make money from it.

Not only that, with those statistics, I can't see a reason to add features to the game.  We had planned we would add a feline fortune teller to the game, who would offer you helpful suggestions such as "if it's on the table, knock it off!" and "the red dot may have eluded you before, but with practice and determination, I'm sure you will get it next time".  Now that I know fortunes have been seen approximately 100 times by approximately 50 people (out of 300), I have to ask myself how many people would even see it if I added more levels and another sage?

If you build it, no one will come

I didn't really know much about marketing before making this, and I can't say that I know much now.  But, I can say much of the advice is correct - start marketing now, even if the game isn't finished (or started yet), start spamming everything you can, and do every evil trick in the book.

The problem is, I'm good at programming, I'm not so good at marketing.  And I'm just hesitant enough that I don't want to be a full time spammer - I post updates about my game on facebook and twitter, but I'm not going to post every day.  The further problem is that it puts making the game secondary and making marketing primary - at this point, why don't I become a marketer and stop making games?  (Hey!  I need a new job!  Anyone want to hire me to do their marketing?)

So what is next?

My plan had been to start on a new game after this.  It would be set in a river, and the basic story is that you ran away from the world and set down the river on a raft, to look for adventure and camp out and never join the world again.  It was to be a puzzle/adventure/Oregon Trail-ish game (and also similar to Oregon Trail, it would end at Oregon City). I have two versions started, one is a 3D version which we basically decided that it would be impossible to look good (hey! Are you a 3D artist?  wanna try?), and one is a 2D version that could be done much easier (and then I had the stupid idea to make puzzle games in substitution of paddling) .  My plan would be to put the game on itch.io, see if there is any interest, and after the game is complete, put it on Newgrounds, tweak it with anything I learn from them, and then to Google Play and the Apple app stores.

My suspicion, unfortunately, is that this would be about as popular and profitable as Wisdom Collector is.  And while the cost of living here is low, and I have some savings, the sad truth is that I have to make some money, lest I starve to death.

So what is really next is I'll be offering myself up to the highest bidder.  I can do Python, Perl, Matlab, C, and I've done a whole lot of other things. I'm good at wrangling data and cleaning up the edge cases and making pretty plots.  I can also do Unity with C#, as evidenced by this and a few other games.  Unfortunately, unless it's very compelling (and I can bring my wife), I pretty much need to be remote (and my wife likes her job a lot, so much so that I am here instead of the other way around).

Until I find my next job, though, I'll try making a mobile app for learning Turkish.  I'll take the characters from Wisdom Collector (and possibly the cat too) and make it a bit more gamified than the average learning game.  I won't be trying to compete with DuoLingo, but as anyone learning a language knows, one app alone will not teach you a language.  You can follow me to get updated when that is off the ground, and if the river game ever actually happens.  (My suspicion is that this will not be profitable either.)

Some thoughts and suggestions for you.

Start your game on itch as early as you can.  Do analytics, and find all the default variables your analytics package supports - if there is a "level start" and "level end", don't do what I did and use "scene start" and "scene end". Add anything that seems interesting to the analytics.  Is there a bonus level?  Hidden item?  Want to see how many people scroll to the bottom of the credits?

Don't get addicted to analytics and statistics.  It's very addicting to hit "refresh" on admob every day, even if it only tells you five cents.  This has become more addicting to me than facebook ever was.

Translations might be worth it - most of the money from Wisdom Collector comes from the Turkish version.  However, considering that I have to get $100 before Admob pays out, I'm not sure that's worth it at all.

Itch.io is excellent for hosting prototypes and getting a little feedback.  Newgrounds is excellent for getting a lot of players and getting a 1-5 star rating, and enough players to give you some analytics.

Don't spend a lot of time until you know you have something that will make money.  I spent about two months on Wisdom Collector, and it's been a bit over a month since the release.  Since release I've done quite a bit of "marketing" and chasing things around and updates. This hasn't been a painful lesson for me, but I know people who have spent years on a project with similar results.

I would say you have a hit if your wife won't stop playing the game, but now I'm not so sure that is accurate.

 If you are doing this to make money, you are in for a very rough time.

Ending statement

They say that art is never finished, only abandoned.  I find it very hard to stop working on Wisdom Collector - this post coincides with a new version where I made a lot of performance improvements.  I keep telling myself I'll go back and add more music, and I will add more levels.  Yet when it comes down to actually doing the work, I ask myself if I am only doing this for a dozen people, and I'll make ten cents from my efforts, I have to pull myself away and focus on something more profitable.  I'm sure I'll keep making updates to this game, even if I start new projects, but at some point I'll have to tear myself away.  With game jams (99% of my past game dev experience) this is easy; the weekend is over, and I'm never looking at this project again.  With Wisdom Collector this is not so easy, all I see when I look at it is the potential for more.

Do you want to play?  Go over and play a bit https://polypogon.itch.io/wisdom-collector