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The Indie Game Developer Survival Guide
The document provides a guide for indie game developers navigating the mobile gaming environment, highlighting both advantages and challenges, such as discoverability issues and monetization strategies. Key survival tips include lowering expenses, focusing on single-player premium games, and measuring player engagement. It also emphasizes the importance of building relationships and reacting quickly to market needs while sharing case studies of past projects.
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The Indie Game Developer Survival Guide
- 2. Raul Portales @sla_shalafi raul@plattysoft.com The IndieGame Developer Survival Guide
- 4.
- 5. The Mobile Advantages Hugeamount of potential customers Simple distribution channels
- 7. The Mobile Problem Lackof dedicated, quality channels (aka Discoverability sucks)
- 8.
- 9.
- 10. Survival Tip #0 Loweryour expenses
- 11. Do not relyon overnight success stories
- 12. Advantages of beingindie Quick to react Personal touch
- 14. Competing with AAA Quickto react Personal touch
- 15. Fun Visually Appealing Works (nocrashes or freezes) Players know about it
- 16. Don't reinvent thewheel
- 17. Don't try todo everything alone
- 18. Know your Players MeasureEVERYTHING
- 19.
- 20. Objective Figure out themarket ASAP
- 22. Single Player Advantage Easierto build
- 23. Premium Advantages Easier tobuild Simpler to monetize
- 24. Chalk Ball 2-3 monthsof development Single Player Freemium 10K/200K downloads
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- 27. Success: Survival costscovered Failure: Did not got enough traction
- 28. Fact 90% of thedowloads while Featured
- 29. Objective Get more downloadsand traction
- 31. Free2Play Advantages Easier forpeople to try it out “Better” monetization
- 32. SpaceCat 4-6 months ofdevelopment Single Player Free2Play 1.5M downloads
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- 34. Less than 10Kplayers bought the DLC
- 35. The ARPU wasunder 0.01$
- 36. Success: 1.5M downloads Failure:Absurdly low income
- 37. Implementing In-App billingis difficult It is on the same level of complexity of creating a fun game
- 38. Fact Chalk Ball income> SpaceCat income
- 39. Fact We got “popular”thanks to SpaceCat
- 40. Objective Make the gameI wanted to make
- 42. Multiplayer Advantages Better wordof mouth More engaging
- 43. Codemon Almost 8 monthsof development (First version after 4-5 months) 7 people involved Almost 50K downloads Never featured by Google
- 44.
- 45. Success: Great userretention Failure: Not enough downloads
- 46. Be prepared Someone willtry to cheat
- 47. Fact Even for acompletely Free game it is hard to get downloads
- 48. Fact Codemon ARPU >>SpaceCat ARPU
- 49. Still working onimproving Codemon ARPU
- 50. Are these thefuture?
- 51. Fact I make moremoney freelancing one month than with my most successful game in one year
- 52. Apps != Games MTGTracker makes more money per day Than any of The Pill Tree games (now long tail) per month
- 53.
- 54. Survival Tip #1 Makethe game you want to make
- 55. Survival Tip #2 Smallprojects, ship early
- 56. Survival Tip #3 Builda relationship with blog editors
- 57. Survival Tip #4 Gofor Single Player, Premium games
- 58. Survival Tip #5 MeasureEVERYTHING!
- 59. Survival Tip #6 Forupdates, define objectives first
- 60.
- 61. Raul Portales @sla_shalafi raul@plattysoft.com The IndieGame Developer Survival Guide