How My Dumb Mobile Game Got 400k Downloads

Introduction and Background

The speaker introduces themselves and discusses their experience with creating a mobile game that gained popularity on the App Store. They express their intention to make a video about this experience but are unsure of the moral of the story.

Making a Dumb Mobile Game

• The speaker created a mobile game called "Frantic Architect" a few years ago.

• The game was featured on the front page of the App Store and received over 400,000 downloads.

• They contemplate whether to view this achievement as being smart or wasting time on something useless.

• In 2017, they wrote an article about their experience but felt it didn't fully explain the story.

Misconceptions and Motivation

• Some Reddit commenters misunderstood the speaker's intentions, labeling them as a sellout who made the game solely for monetary gain.

• However, the speaker clarifies that they made the game with the purpose of creating a YouTube video in later years to generate income from it.

Overview of Video Structure

The speaker outlines how they will divide the video into two sections. The first section will focus on explaining what happened during the creation and release of their mobile game. The second section will delve into broader marketing strategies applicable beyond mobile games.

Section 1: What Happened?

• The speaker will discuss how they came up with the idea for their game, built a prototype in one day, and share analytics regarding installs and revenue.

Section 2: Bigger Picture Marketing Strategy

• The speaker will explain why their marketing strategy worked and provide insights that can be applied to other projects beyond mobile games.

Rise of Hyper Casual Games

The speaker discusses the rise of hyper casual games in early 2014, following the popularity of Flappy Bird. They explain the defining features of these games and their purpose of showing ads to a wide audience.

Hyper Casual Games

• Flappy Bird's success led to the emergence of simple, repetitive, and easy-to-understand mobile games known as hyper casual games.

• These games aim to capture user attention for ad revenue by being extremely short and accessible.

• The speaker refers to themselves as one of the "brain-dead people" targeted by these games for ad consumption.

Challenges in Monetizing Hyper Casual Games

The speaker discusses the challenges they faced in monetizing hyper casual games due to intense competition and low user engagement.

Difficulties in Monetization

• Due to the ease of creating hyper casual games, there is significant competition in the market.

• User attention span is limited, resulting in low engagement with these types of games.

• As a result, monetization per user is minimal.

Researching Successful Apps and Publishers

The speaker shares their approach of researching successful apps and publishers while trying to reverse engineer their success. They also discuss working with publishers for better chances of getting featured on app stores.

Publisher Influence

• The speaker noticed that popular hyper casual games often had two companies listed on the splash screen - game developers and publishers.

• Certain publishers, such as Voodoo, have a significant presence in publishing hyper casual games with high download numbers.

• Publishers offer benefits like social media ads, cross-promotion within their network, and assistance in getting featured on Apple and Google platforms.

• While it is possible to directly submit a form for featuring your game now, back then, working with a publisher seemed advantageous due to perceived inside contacts.

Building Prototypes and Working with Publishers

The speaker explains their strategy of building game prototypes and sending them to various publishers. They also reflect on the benefits and mindset they had while working with publishers.

Prototype Strategy

• The speaker's strategy involved creating multiple game prototypes and submitting them to different publishers.

• Unity game engine was used for development, which they found easy to learn and powerful.

• The first prototype, "Hasty Enemies," did not get accepted by any publishers but inspired a better version by another publisher.

Timestamps are approximate and may vary slightly depending on the source video.

The Inspiration for Frantic Architect

The game designer came up with the idea for Frantic Architect while watching a documentary about classical architecture on a plane. He built the prototype in one day and released it in March 2016.

• The idea for Frantic Architect came to the game designer while watching a documentary about classical architecture on a plane.

• The game design is based on Square Stack and another game the designer had worked on previously.

• The prototype of Frantic Architect was built in one day, and the source code is included in the description for those interested.

• In the game, players tap anywhere on the screen to place glowing blocks and must grow their tower as big as possible without making it imbalanced. Unity handles physics, so coding mainly involved block placement and checking tower movement speed to determine if it falls down.

Working with Bulky Pix

The game designer accepted a contract from Bulky Pix, but found the terms unfavorable. They lost motivation to work on Frantic Architect due to other commitments and lack of interest in the game.

• Bulky Pix offered a contract to publish Frantic Architect, but the terms were unfavorable, offering little in exchange for 50% of revenue. They did promise to promote the game for one week after launch, but it's unclear if they fulfilled this promise.

• The designer was busy with job interviews and studying during their last year of university when they lost motivation to work on Frantic Architect. They didn't think the game was very good and only wanted to finish it to have something on their resume.

• Bulky Pix asked them to implement boring tasks like translating text, designing marketing graphics, and adding achievements and leaderboards. The designer realized this wasn't a good use of their time.

• Procrastination was a challenge, and it took six months to finish the game that was initially prototyped in one day. Frantic Architect was finally released in March 2016.

Unexpected Success and Disappointments

Frantic Architect gained unexpected success upon release, but the downloads quickly dropped off. The designer had hoped for more organic growth and higher ad revenue.

• After the release of Frantic Architect, the product manager informed the designer that the app was featured worldwide on the front page of the app store. This came as a surprise since they didn't think the game was very good. Within two weeks, it received 365,000 downloads before plateauing around 400,000 downloads.

• The designer expected some drop-off in downloads but hoped for more organic growth through increased awareness of the game. However, user attention quickly diminished after it dropped off from top charts. Ad revenue closely matched download numbers but wasn't as high as expected considering the number of players (400k).

• The disappointing performance led to concerns about ad payments from Bulky Pix, who eventually went bankrupt without paying any ad revenue to the designer or other developers they worked with.

Moving Away from Hyper Casual Games

The designer decided not to create any more hyper casual games due to various reasons including low user attention and limited monetization opportunities.

• Despite not receiving payment from Bulky Pix, this event did not significantly impact their decision to move away from hyper casual games.

• Two key advantages of hyper casual games are their quick development time and broad audience appeal. However, the low user attention and limited monetization opportunities make them less appealing for developers.

• Hyper casual games rely heavily on ads for revenue, but a significant portion of these ads are promoting other hyper casual games, resulting in minimal actual revenue generation for the industry.

Conclusion

The rise of hyper casual games in the App Store is driven by their quick development time and broad audience appeal. However, the low user attention and limited monetization opportunities pose challenges for developers.

• Hyper casual games offer a fast development cycle and allow developers to gather data quickly through frequent launches.

• The simplicity of these games makes them easy to understand but also leads to low user attention and fewer in-game purchases.

• Many ads within hyper casual games promote other similar games, reducing overall revenue generation for the industry.

The Future of Mobile Gaming

In this section, the speaker discusses the future of mobile gaming and how it may evolve to appeal to a broader audience.

The Unfulfilling Experience of Mobile Games

• Playing mobile games is becoming an unfulfilling experience.

• It is increasingly difficult to get people to download new apps.

• The standards for app quality are rising.

• Eventually, a game developer will create a game that appeals to non-gamers.

Changing the Industry

• A game that appeals to a broad audience will change the entire industry.

• Hyper casual games from recent years may be seen as unappealing in the future.

• Don't be afraid to build something just because there are big companies in the space.

Examples of Success and Failure

• Voodoo, a company that raised $200 million, releases hundreds of games every month but most are considered low-quality.

• Indie games released ten or more years ago can still be fun and relevant today.

• Revenue for Voodoo's apps in September 2019 was only $500,000, indicating potential financial struggles.

Making an Impact

• Rather than being someone who throws darts at the wall hoping for success, aim to create something impactful.

• One person creating a popular game can change the industry forever.