150,000 downloads!

It has been a milestone day for me today as the total number of CastleMine Beta downloads hit 150,000 and the total number of downloads for all my games cracked 180,000! Here's a pretty graph showing my experience with the Windows Phone marketplace. 

 

 

It’s fairly easy to see when CastleMine was released. Prior to that I was happy whenever any of my games made it to 5,000 downloads. Here are the total numbers so far:

 

 

There are a couple of interesting things to note here:

CastleMine versus CastleMine Beta.

CastleMine (the paid version) is superior to the Beta in every way. It has better graphics, more levels, better performance, new features… and yet still to this day the Beta version gets downloaded at a ratio of 10 to 1. I think this just shows the strength of free apps. For a lot of people, any game with a price tag next to it is automatically dismissed regardless of its quality. In-app purchasing fixes this and it’s great to see it available in WP8.

 

 

Serenity’s Fail

I must admit it's a little sad to see Serenity not do so well. Despite it being such a simple game I’m still proud of it and wished it had made it into more people’s hands. If you’re reading this, please give it a try here. I guarantee you’ll like it or your money back!


Now what about money?

Prior to CastleMine it was pretty hard to recommend getting into WP7 development for the money. Post CastleMine it is clear there is money to be had, but I won’t be quitting my day job just yet. To date I have earned around $3,000 through pubCenter ad revenue. $3,000 doesn’t sound so bad, however my games have served almost 10,000,000 impressions which gives an average ecpm of just 30 cents. I believe the main reason for the low ecpm is not entirely pubCenter’s fault (although it does fluctuate wildly) but more to do with large number of my downloads coming from countries that ads just don’t pay well such as China.

I’ve also sold around 900 copies of the paid version of CastleMine (at 99c) which isn’t bad considering it’s only been downloaded 7,500 times.


Where to now?

With the release of Windows Phone 8, XNA and Silverlight seem to have been forgotten. So I had the choice of following Microsoft and learning WinRT or moving onto something more cross platform. I’ve decided to go with the latter and am now investigating Unity, which will run on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 8. For me, this seems like the wisest option as I try to maximise the return of time spent on this hobby.

 

 

CastleMine Complete!

After 3 long months since the release of the public beta version, CastleMine is finally ready for its full release! The public beta has been an immensely rewarding experience. The amount of constructive feedback I received from players has been incredible. Everything from bug reports to feature suggestions. There are so many things you overlook when you are working on a project for this long and it’s always amazing what a fresh pair of eyes will pick up.

Now that the full release version has now been submitted for certification it’s a good time mention what is new.

The first and most obvious change will be the visuals. I’ve updated a lot of the graphics to be more consistent with the style I was going for. Here’s a quick comparison of the old graphics versus the new.

The next most obvious change is the number of levels. The beta version featured 20 levels and the overwhelming consensus among all players was they wanted more. So the full release version will feature 45 levels and I may add more later.

I have also added a new gameplay feature in the form of land mines. These mines are bought with crystal so they present players with another interesting decision. Land mines are single-use, so using them is a trade-off for a single instant benefit versus a lasting game-long benefit in the form of support towers.

They also help to solve another gameplay problem. Land mines can be used in an emergency to stop that 1 enemy that gets past your defences that would otherwise ruin a perfect round. They can act as a sort of safety net.

There are a number of other improvements in the game (including new skills) but I’ll leave these for the players to discover. The full release version will hopefully be available the week of the 17th September.

The CastleMine Public Beta

The CastleMine public beta has been running just over a month now and so far it’s been an absolute rollercoaster ride. It has way exceeded my expectations on how I thought it would be received being only a beta. 

CastleMine in action

 

The last patch I plan to release has just pass certification so now is a good time to take a step back and reflect on what what’s happened over the last month and what I’ve learnt.

 

These are just a few of its recent achievements:

 

• Over 10,000 downloads in the first month
• Over 400 positive marketplace reviews averaging 4.6 out of 5 stars
• Its highest marketplace ranking among all free games has been in France which was a big surprise at 64th position. It was mentioned on www.monwindowsphone.com and it’s amazing to see what an impact that had on downloads.
• Received a marketplace review “This game is tight like a tiger. Its just that sweet”. When you get comments like this you know you’ve made it big time! It made me laugh anyway.

  

All this has definitely renewed my enthusiasm for the Windows Phone platform and I’m now back enjoying adding new features into the ultimate final release.

 

It did have a low point where after my very first update (version 1.1) I broke the game for anyone who had upgraded from version 1.0… whoops! That was a harsh lesson in testing! The bug stopped players from gaining skill points, which is a fundamental element of the game. Thankfully I don’t think I put too many people off and was able to rush a patch through certification in less than a week. It was interesting to hear feedback from players who had managed to beat the game with no skill points, so when they finally got them back the game felt too easy! Level difficulty is definitely something I’ll be focused on next release.

 

It's difficult without skill points...

 

Other great bugs included a feedback form that only recorded a tiny portion of the message and a tutorial that was invisible to anyone using the Windows Phone white theme. Again, this is all great learning experience and should make for a much more stable final release!

 

As far as ad revenue goes, it’s up around the $500 mark so far. This is purely using Microsoft’s PubCenter. The eCPM is much lower on this game compared to Apple Squash, but it makes up for it by volume of impressions since the average play session is over 20 minutes! The only disappointing thing is that there are still a number of countries that have an eCPM of practically 0. For example over the last week I’ve had 86,000 impressions in China but only made 30 cents. The same number of impressions in the United States would be $90.

 

Before releasing the game I made a last minute decision to delay the submission and add in Google Analytics. It turns out this was a great investment of time because the data I’ve been able to capture has been invaluable. It helped me identify a couple of bugs and tweak an few aspects of the game. To implement analytics I followed this link:

 

http://mark.mymonster.nl/2012/05/16/google-analytics-on-your-windows-phone-app-in-1-minute

 

Amazingly, it really was that easy. An interesting fact from the data I collected is that Nokia seems to be dominating the Windows Phone markets. A vast majority of players are using Nokia 800s and 710s. This was a little surprising to me. I know Nokia’s are selling well but they were also later to the market. It’s good to see they caught up so quickly!

 

You can download the CastleMine Beta here:

 

http://windowsphone.com/s?appid=61ae1cfe-d2f1-4ac9-9de6-751d29f00ae3

 

 

CastleMine Enters Private Beta

CastleMine has just entered private beta and since it doesn’t yet contain a tutorial or help menu I’ve created this quick overview of the game and how to play. If you like to join the private beta please email the LiveID you use on your Windows Phone to diffractionstudios@gmail.com. Please note that the Beta is limited to a maximum of 100 people.

Overview

CastleMine is a tower defence game where the goal is to dig deep into the earth to release and destroy the evil spirits that live below.

Building Towers

To build a tower first tap the place you want to build. This can be any dirt, rock or tower square. Once selected a pop up tower selector will appear. Tap the tower you want to build and will appear on the square you selected. Each time you build a tower the cost of building that same tower type goes up by 20.

Tip: If you hold down any tower button you will get more information about it.
Defence towers are bought with gold. You begin each level with a set amount of gold and you earn more by killing enemies and digging up gold deposits.

Defence towers attack enemies. Each time a defence tower fires at an enemy it gains XP. When a tower receives enough XP it can be upgraded. When upgrading a level 3 it can be upgraded to a new type of tower. For example a level 3 Ice Tower can be upgraded to either a Long Bolt Tower or a Frost Bolt Tower.

Support towers are bought with crystal. You can only get crystal by digging up crystal deposits. When support towers are placed next to defence towers (vertical and horizontal only, not diagonal) that tower will become stronger. Support towers will either improve a defence tower’s attack damage, range or XP.

Digging

To start digging tap the dig circle icon. You can never dig into rock or lava squares and you can also not dig while enemies are spawning. When digging you can only dig left, right or down and form 1 continuous path to the bottom. This means you can’t create branching paths.

Each time you dig downwards you will be digging into enemy territory. This will open a portal in which enemies will spawn from. Enemies that spawn will follow the path that you have created to the top and it is up to your defence towers to destroy them before they get there. 

At the end of your path are the summoning stones. Each time an enemy reaches the end a stone will be destroyed. If all stones are destroyed or you dig yourself into a dead end it will be game over.

Level Stars

At the end of the level you will be given a star rating. Stars are used to unlock more levels.

0 Stars: Level failed
1 Star: Level complete
2 Stars: Level complete and no summoning stones were lost
3 Stars: Level complete, no summoning stones were lost and all skulls were collected.

Skulls and Relics

Hidden underground you will find skulls and relics. Collecting all the skulls will give you an extra star and the end of the level and is the only way to 100% complete a level. However each time you collect a skull the enemies will get harder either by gaining more health, moving faster or spawning in greater numbers.

Tip: You don’t need to collect skulls to complete the level. If it’s too difficult come back and play the level later once you have levelled up some more skills.
Collecting relics will grant you a 10% bonus to XP at the end of the level.

Levelling Up

At the end of each level you will gain XP. Each time you level up you will gain 3 skill points you can use to spend on many different upgrades that will help you on your quest to destroy what lurks beneath.

And that’s it for now! But there’s plenty more to discover in CastleMine so good luck and have fun!

Apple Squash – Realistic Ad Revenue (part 2)

Observations and Recommendations

First off, let’s get straight to the numbers. I’ve only included PubCenter revenue this time around because its fill rate has been fairly high and MobFox hasn’t been serving much of the leftovers. Ad Duplex has been picking up roughly an additional 200 impressions a day. On the 29th of Feb (highlighted below) I released a content update that appeared to have a minimal impact on impressions.

If you’d like to try the game these revenue numbers come from you can download Apple Squash from the Windows Phone marketplace here.

So what are my observations based on these numbers and the numbers from my previous 2 games?

Impressions not filled by your primary network are unlikely to be filled by any network
In this experiment my secondary network (MobFox) filled around 5% of the impressions PubCenter didn’t take. I’ve seen similar results with other combinations of providers. My assumption is that these unfilled ad requests are likely to be coming from a country that no provider cares much about. This is why Ad Duplex is the perfect secondary network since it doesn’t care about region at all.

1 (paid) ad provider is enough
If your app is extremely popular then maybe the small percentage a secondary network will give you will be worthwhile, but for most I don’t think it would generate the minimum $50 most networks require before paying you. So just pick your favourite since they’re all very similar. I have personally tried MobFox, PubCenter and AdMob and for me the best was PubCenter.

Use Ad Duplex as your fall-back
It’s silly to waste impressions your paid network can’t fill, but chances are other paid networks can’t fill them either. Ad Duplex fills almost all requests and will convert them into free advertising for you.

Ad networks need volume
This one might just be my experience but it would seem that to get a decent ecpm (and therefore decent revenue) your app needs to be generating enough volume for your ad provider to care. Without volume you will likely get a poor ecpm and this is one of the reasons I recommend 1 ad network is enough. The 2nd ad network is unlikely to get enough volume to make the impressions worth anything.

ECPM is crazy volatile
My ecpm started at 0.12c and reached as high as $4.37. That’s 36 times higher than my starting point! This makes it very hard to predict revenue with an ecpm that can fluctuate so wildly and is really just something you’ll have to accept. If your ecpm stays consistently low it might be time to consider switching networks. I actually think the recent ecpm numbers I’ve been getting with PubCenter are abnormally high and I’m just waiting for the bubble to burst…

Keeping users engaged is the key to Ad-based revenue
Apps that keep users coming back for more are the ones that make money. Games like Apple Squash that are don’t have a lot of lasting content will eventually fade away into obscurity. The numbers above show this is already starting to happen. So if you don’t plan to follow the path of lots of new content and updates, then the only way to prevent the inevitable decline is through good marketing and getting your app featured in enough places to keep a steady stream of new users coming in… If anyone has tips for me on this I’d love to hear them!

Apple Squash - Realistic Ad Revenue Expectations

Last week I released a new game to the Windows Phone marketplace. It’s a simple action game that took around 2 weeks to create in my spare time. The game is called “Apple Squash” and you can find it on the Windows Phone marketplace here.

For this game I built a custom ad rotator that displays ads from PubCenter, MobFox and AdDuplex in that order. If ads were not available in the first network it would try the next and so on. PubCenter is Microsoft’s own advertising network and is regarded as one of the best for Windows Phone, particularly for ads served in the US. MobFox seems to perform better in Europe while AdDuplex generates no revenue but instead generates impressions to advertise your app in other apps that have the same control. 

Apple Squash has been on the marketplace for just over a week and I’d estimate has had around 2,000 downloads so far. In my opinion this is a fairly typical example of your average performing app. Below are the results of its first week live.

Take from these numbers what you will but the purpose of this blog post is not to dissuade you from building apps or from using the ad-based model, it’s purely just to share one developer’s experience so that you can add it to the experiences of others to come up with your own measure of success. There are plenty of examples of success stories out there for Windows Phone (see Taptitude or Krashlander), but for me this is the more realistic example of what you can and should expect.

Stay tuned for more blog posts on how Apple Squash performs after the "honeymoon" period.

Where to from here?

Now that the Nokia challenge is done and dusted it’s back to my original project that I’ve been working on here and there for the last six months. It’s a spin on the Tower Defence genre where instead of having your enemies follow a set path you actually need to dig deep into the ground to release them and they will follow the path that you created. I honestly underestimated the amount of work involved, particularly in the graphics area. I’m only now starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe in another month I’ll have something good enough to release as a public Beta? 

Yeah I’ve been saying that for a while…

Here’s a couple of screenshots of what it looks like now. Maybe releasing these will spur me on to finally finish?