Rami Ismail talks sense, how to pull 2 million downloads, and top 13 Apple TV games

The top five stories of last week

• 5 Games that spend more than one month in soft launch can increase retention by 20% says deltaDNA

  

  Dr. Isaac Roseboom heads up deltaDNA’s Insight Team.

  He says that today, a good idea and competent development will only take you so far.

  Instead, the most important part of the process is how and when you introduce your game to its potential audience - above all, the soft launch.

  "What used to be a quick 'month in Canada' to bug check, has now in some cases become a year-long iterative process in half a dozen countries, including in Asia and the Middle East, to carve out the game that players actually want from the designers' initial concept.

  "One company that provides both the tools and best practice advice on how to handle the soft launch process is deltaDNA.

  "It offers its game analytics and player marketing tools free for developers up to the level of 10,000 monthly active users to ensure even the smallest outfits can build their games into profitable businesses."

  Click on the title above to read his tips for a successful soft launch in full

  
  

• 4 F2P doesn't work for small indies now, says Flick Fishing dev Strange Flavour as it reverts to paid

  

  Fewer and fewer developers from the early days of the iPhone remain active.

  But one such is UK indie Strange Flavour.

  Working with US publisher Freeverse, it put out some of the then most successful iPhone games, notably the 99c Flick Fishing, which sold millions of copies.

  Since then it's experimented with free-to-play games, including its novel 'Play Nice' initiative, which capped the amount of IAPs players would spend to unlock all the content in their games.

  However, with latest release Tiny TrackZ, Strange Flavour has reverted to its original paid game model.

  The firm's co-founder Aaron Forthergill told Jon Jordan that now, "players expect all games to be free but don't want to see ads or the word IAP anywhere and they've grown to expect triple-A level production and content size for that.

  "We're really struggling (essentially we're still living on our savings from Flick Fishing while we try and score a new indie hit that might pay the rent)."

  Consequently, they're going back to a paid model.

  "We wanted to go back to writing games where we could focus more on the actual game itself without the payment system affecting how the gameplay worked. Plus for the smaller sort of numbers we were seeing, it looks like paid is our only real option to make a living.

  "We just want to write great games, keep expanding them and not be looking at spreadsheets and server reports every day to determine what to change in them."

  
  

• 3 Indie game Nom Cat pulls 2M downloads in 2 months with no UA spend but famous feline approval

  

  After suffering a heart attack mid-work out, Herdjie Zhou did what most young men would do. He sat at his computer, and made a mobile game about cats gulping airborne fish.

  Two months after it launched, Nom Cat had racked up two million downloads – all without a penny spent on user acquisition.

  Instead, Zhou focused on leveraging brands - more specifically, tapping into the audiences that famous internet cats had amassed.

  “We asked famous cat owners online to join our game,” recounts Zhou, referencing social media sensations like Nala and Grumpy Cat.

  “We started by approaching the most famous cat owners, but of course they said no because no one knew who we were. Then we managed to get in touch with Venus the Two Face Cat who signed with us.

  "Once that was done, it was easier to sign others."

  Despite organisational difficulties, the work paid off. Having secured the backing of a eight of feline titans with a social media reach of over 5 million, Zhou found out that Apple would feature the game once it launched in May.

  The result was that in the first week, Nom Cat scored 800,000 downloads from the feature alone. Now with the help of Nylan and Keyboard Cat that figure’s been boosted to 2.5 million, and Zhou promises an update is on the way.

  
  

• 2 65 top games for Apple TV: From Beat Sports and Afterpulse to Galaxy on Fire 3 and Guitar Hero Live

  

  With the line in the sand drawn as 'late October', we know the new Apple TV will be hooked up to millions of HD screens before the year's end.

  But what games will be available for Apple's new game-playing box?

  Many developers have clearly been working away in secret, with the first wave of announced games following Apple's announcement.

  So Pocket Gamer.biz editor Jon Jordan has put together a short list of some of the best games available, from Asphalt 8: Airborne, to Gamevile's third person shooter Afterpulse.

  Click the title above to read the full list.

  
  

• 1 The grass is not always greener on PC and console, warns Rami Ismail

  

  Rami Ismail took to the stage at PGC Helsinki like an old friend blowing steam off a cup of coffee.

  “How are you all doing,” he said fondly, “it’s been a while... We’ve been working on Nuclear Throne on Steam and Console for the past two years, so this really feels like coming back and catching up.”

  Having taken a break from mobile, Ismail had some fresh new perspective on the industry.

  “Mobile’s grown up hasn’t it? When we first started mobile was so new it was talked about as disruption, and now everyone is talking about disrupting the mobile industry."

  Indeed, the problem is that each platform thinks the grass is greener on the other side. Growing numbers of developers are seeking to jump platform, or at the very least make a cross-platform game.

  “It’s hard on mobile, but the reality is it’s hard on handheld, PC and Steam,” warns Ismail

  “On handheld it’s a lot less saturated than mobile, but it’s also a closed market. It’s a lot smaller, and harder to get your game published. PC feels open but really it isn’t – you have Steam, and that’s it. They’re all really hard spaces to fit in.

  “A lot of mobile companies say they’re going to put their mobile games on PC, but PC manufacturers are saying ‘PC is really hard at the moment, so we’re heading to console’ and console guys are saying ‘console is too expensive, we’re heading to mobile’. The worst thing about that is it costs. You can’t just take mobile developers and drop them in a pc world and it works. Just bringing your mobile game to PC doesn’t work.”