With so many good quality apps available but experiencing a rather thin long tail, what better way to resurrect them than a seasonally themed all-in 99c collection?

That's the thinking behind the Appy Entertainment curated and published All-In-1 ZombieBox.

We caught up with Appy's brand director Paul O'Connor to find out more about how the collection came about.

Pocket Gamer: What was the inspiration behind All-In-1 ZombieBox?

Paul O'Connor: We saw the success of other bundle apps on the App Store and wondered how we could add value. This dovetailed with our desire to have a holiday themed product in the market for Halloween, given that it is the birthday month for Appy, and that we had success with Zombie Pizza last year during this season.

We kind of connected the dots and thought it would be worth trying a zombie themed compilation app for Halloween, anchored by our own Zombie Pizza. We started the wheels turning in mid summer with an eye toward debuting mid October. Thanks to the efforts of our developers, we came in a full two weeks earlier than anticipated.

How did you decide which apps/games would be included?

We searched out apps by hand via the App Store. Note to developers - if your zombie app doesn't turn up when searching for "zombie," then you are missing out. Likewise, if your support web page treats your contact information like a state secret, then you may be missing out on business opportunities.

From our large initial list we threw out very low quality titles (1 or 2 star average reviews), along with games from larger publishers, as they would be unlikely to participate and we didn't want to tip what we were doing to a competitor.

We approached our lineup like we were putting together a late night zombie movie marathon. For the most part we were looking for traditional zombie apps but we also wanted to include a few novelties (like Zombie Saw and Zombie Apocalypse Manual), and at least one total wild card (Zombie Whale Hole).

What was the reaction of the developers you approached?

For the most part response was immediate and positive. I literally had one developer call me while I was still sending out the initial email solicitation. The App Store has a long tail but that tail can be thin for apps that have passed their new release window. The opportunity to realise new revenue from catalog titles is attractive to any independent developer.

Did anyone not want to get involved, and if so, why not?

Oh, sure, we had one developer who didn't like our contract, and several others who kind of faded away during the submission process. We asked a lot of our devs, in terms of answering questions for us and eventually putting in the work to integrate their apps into our framework.

Looking back at my records, I can see thirteen different devs that started the process of joining ZombieBox but didn't make it for one reason or another.

There was one crew that was keen to join but lost their programmer and basically went out of business, another that had a marketing person who wanted to do it, but couldn't convince their programming partner to do the work, and several that we excluded for various reasons during the process.

How important is it that you can get multiple developers to promote the release through their PR channels?

All-In-1 ZombieBox is the first release under our Appy Spotlight publishing imprint, so we are assuming all PR responsibilities for the launch. Part of the deal is that our developers don't have to work PR if they don't want to.

That being said, we've invited all our devs to promote the game through their own channels if they are so inclined, and most of the guys have done so, to various degrees.

What's the business model?

Appy takes a publishing fee, and the developers have an equal revenue share. The majority of revenue goes back to the devs.

Surely, if it works, the App Store will just be overwhelmed with ever larger collections of apps?

If it was easy to do I think we would have been overwhelmed well before now. It's not like the App Store has been resistant to fads.

No, I think we will have this niche to ourselves, at least for a little while, owing to a couple factors.

First off, the technical challenge of getting all these apps to play together inside the same executable was considerable. There are all sorts of conflicts and resource issues to resolve. Second, there are the relationships to consider. Appy Entertainment has a little bit of indie credibility, given that we've been in this market on our own dime for two years making original titles, so we understand what other indies are about and can speak to their needs in ways that might elude larger publishers.

Finally, Appy Entertainment is still small enough that we can move fast. We can pick a target, line up developers, push through contracts, and get a bundle on the market in the time it would take a large publisher to arrange a greenlight meeting and a sales forecast.

If we are successful then of course there will be those that try to copy our success, but we would regard that as a happy problem to have.

Do you think you can generate significant revenues?

All the developers make less per app as part of the ZombieBox than they do on their own, of course (and I include our own Zombie Pizza in this), but the hope is we can be greater than the sum of our parts, and break out into larger markets than these individual apps presently enjoy. Lower per unit return is (hopefully) offset by higher volume.

The spectacle of getting all these apps together for a dollar is unique and compelling and a no brainer purchase for people looking to treat themselves, particularly in the Halloween season.

And several of our apps have already enjoyed good success on the App Store. Speaking just for Zombie Pizza, we were several times featured by Apple last Halloween and enjoyed excellent sales as a result. I think we're still featured on Apple's corporate iPhone page someplace or another, and Zombie Pizza is a good earner for us to this date.

An unanticipated side effect of being included in ZombieBox was that sales of Zombie Pizza actually went up during our launch weekend. I really have no explanation for why this should be so, unless fans are viewing ZombieBox as a kind of sampler, and then buying individual apps at full price because they want them on a standalone basis.

It wasn't just us, either. Cascadia Games reported a 15 percent sales bump for Zombie Karts after ZombieBox hit the market.

What are the technical issues involved with releasing a collection like this?

Developers had to answer a questionnaire disclosing the inner workings of their app, which helped us appraise how difficult it would be to integrate their app into our framework.

We did run into a couple show stoppers during development, having to exclude a couple of Unity apps, for example, because we just couldn't make them work for us (we have a fix in the works, but it wasn't going to be ready in time for launch). We also put every app through a full Appy QA loop, and asked our devs to fix problems when we uncovered memory leaks, etc.

Do you have any future plans for more collections?

Absolutely. We're contacting developers right now regarding future All-In-1 themed bundles. Interested indies know where to find us.

Thanks to Paul for his time.

You can find All-In-1 ZombieBox here [iTunes link].