Archive for the ‘Lessons Learned’ Category

Starting out in mobile games – Triolith Entertainment

January 31, 2012

Someone once said to me that learning new things takes time, but sharing that knowledge won’t take long. In this post I will talk about our first year in existence, sharing what we learned about marketing mobile games and making your way in the world as a new indie developer.

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Posted in: Guest Post, Lessons Learned

Tagged with: android, app store, charts, iOS, marketplace, megatroid, startup, thunder bang, triolith entertainment, wisp

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Spilt Milk Studios Development Diary 18: Christmas Roundup

December 21, 2011

I thought it’d be nice (and a bit of a reassuring cliché) to do a roundup of the Hard Lines story so far, and take a look at some of the interesting facts and figures that have come to light since we launched Hard Lines in June of this year.

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Posted in: Guest Post, Lessons Learned, Marketing, Sales

Tagged with: andrew smith, digital distribution, downloads, guest post, hard lines, iaps, spilt milk studios

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No Blog is an Island

November 30, 2011

Going through the process of turning over 750 blog posts on GAMESbrief into three volumes of edited thoughts has taught me a lot about the difference between the printed word and the online word. Anyone thinking about the transition from physical to digital would do well to understand the differences.

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Posted in: Lessons Learned, Opinion

Tagged with: blog, books, futurebook, gamesbrief, gamesbrief unplugged

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Frozen Synapse – A Business Mini-Postmortem!

November 29, 2011

Premium can Work: People are willing to pay for something that delivers on a very specific promise and fills a specific need; higher-priced games can work in the indie space, especially as the majority of units are sold during discount periods. Our attempt at a “high price; minimal bullshit” play with Frozen Synapse was largely successful; I feel like we under-delivered on both our server provision and our speed of updating post launch, but all-in-all we still brought players a huge amount of content for the price they paid.

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Posted in: Guest Post, Lessons Learned, Marketing, Sales

Tagged with: frozen synapse, mode 7, paul taylor, premium

28 Comments
Zombie Ball: Rise of the Free

October 25, 2011

It’s been a while since the first article about Zombie Ball (Launching an iPhone game: what we got wrong) on GamesBrief, and the team has decided to continue sharing our story. I’m grateful to Nicholas for both opportunities.

As noted in the first article, we did a few things wrong with the marketing. Since then, our strategy has changed, we have released a free version supported by in-app purchases, and we are still certain that things would go much better if we did what we are doing now right at the launch of Zombie Ball.

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Posted in: Guest Post, Lessons Learned, Sales

Tagged with: free, free games, iaps, revenue, sales, zombie ball

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Spilt Milk Studios Development Diary 15 – Freedom Part 2

October 21, 2011

Lots to talk about today! The introduction of In-App Purchases to Hard Lines, Android sales and usage figures are in, plus the second free promotion – this time with OpenFeint.

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Posted in: Guest Post, Lessons Learned, Marketing

Tagged with: andrew smith, guest post, hard lines, in app purchases, spilt milk studios

6 Comments
Spilt Milk Studios Development Diary 14 – Part Man, Part Machine

October 7, 2011

It’s been a mad 3 weeks since last time! Last week’s update got delayed because of all of the catching up that I needed to do after spending 4 days at the Indie Games Arcade stand in the Eurogamer Expo. We got Hard Lines in there to demo on iPads and accompanied by free (self-decorated and Hard Lines-branded) cake and a looping trailer amongst other things. It was great fun, we showed the game to quite literally hundreds of passionate gamers and even made quite a few on-the-spot sales!

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Posted in: Featured, Guest Post, Lessons Learned, Marketing

Tagged with: android, eurogamer expo, hard lines, iOS, spilt milk studios

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