In any industry, the ability for companies to learn from their mistakes is crucial to their long term survival. It's a lesson even more important for indie studios, where a couple of missteps can threaten their existence.

In Spilt Milk Studios MD Andrew Smith's view, however, many start ups refuse to acknowledge one key area in which they're lacking: PR.

New to the publicity business himself, Smith believes many developers don't realise the power of self promotion, or underestimate the legwork involved.

We caught up with Smith to find out how his PR efforts have fared following the launch of debut iOS game Hard Lines.

PocketGamer: It's a few weeks since you launched Hard Lines. How is it performing?

Andrew Smith: We've been on market for 13 days now and suffice to say we're very pleased. Thousands of sales, over 40 5-star reviews, and a press average of nine out of 10 over more than 15 reviews - it's amazing.

Being featured on Apple's New and Noteworthy on the front page of the App Store certainly didn't hurt either. We're constantly troubling the top 50 in the US games charts, and the top 20 in the UK. It's been amazing, and we can only hope for more of the same.

You made a big thing of submitting the game, live tweeting on the night in question. How did you find the whole approval process?

I think we were just frustrated and panicky, so Twitter provided us with a security blanket of sorts on the big night. To be honest, the approval process is fine - it's the submission.

As a man brought up on PC and only recently investing in a Mac - to aid the iPhone dev process - I found some of the terminology, tips and general usability of the system a bit alien.

The main issue was a lack of positive confirmation of actions. That said, we got through it, resolved all the issues so we won't hit them again, and as soon as an app or game is uploaded, it's all roses and champagne.

If I was being super-picky I'd like a little more transparency once the game is waiting for review - like an estimated time until review - but seriously it's pretty painless. Once you get used to it, you realise it's fine.

Other developers have recently claimed that smaller studios have a hard time getting noticed on iOS. How have you found it?

I've got to be the smallest studio out there, or at least joint-smallest. Honestly, I've really enjoyed my time learning PR in the deep end. Maybe I missed my calling.

I've generally tried to be very positive, not only in attitude towards customers, fans and friends, but also in terms of the work I'm doing; I assume everything I do in my office is of some interest to someone out there.

I've made a logo of my cake and made it into a 'Caking Of…' feature on Spilt Milk's Facebook page. I take the piss out of' 'unboxing' videos too - with my Mac and my 3DS so far. That's the fun end, and of course there is more serious and interesting stuff going on.

I'll tweet about the concepts I'm working on, ask advice on what colour a certain word conjures up and just generally share anything that's not secret.

Add to that the days I spent getting together a massive list of email addresses, writing dev diaries and all the emails I send and reply to every day and I think the result has been a pretty constant presence on the internet, and from the reach my game is getting - Pocker Gamer, Slide To Play, TouchArcade, 148Apps and even some national paper reviews in the works - not to mention being featured by Apple. I think it has paid off.

It's been hard work, but I've enjoyed it and know I'll do even better as time goes on. Just goes to show you don't need a publisher and a PR department to get your game out there.

Do you think some studios launch their titles on the App Store, and expect them to sell by merit?

Most definitely. It's a crying shame, but a lot of the people who make good games - especially the smaller teams – seem to either massively underestimate the work they need to do in PR-ing their game, or they just think a good game will sell regardless.

It's simply not the case, and I do wonder if it's genetic – whether a creative/technical personality is naturally averse to selling themselves or their work.

Luckily I'm a bit loud and confident in my work, so I have no trouble pimping myself or my games. The fact is games need to be sold to a series of gatekeepers - publishers, platform holders, reviewers, reporters and users - for there to be any visibility. There are just so many titles coming out every week, it's too easy to get lost in the crush.

A small part of me is glad most indies seem a little out of touch in terms of PR and marketing as it means less competition. That said, I do wish this wasn't the case as we'd all be enjoying some real hidden gems right now.

What have you learned from your experiences so far?

iOS has been dreamy. Very quick to get things done, small variation in target platforms, and all around fewer headaches than the majority of other platforms out there. Anything that gets between me and making a game more fun really gets my goat, and so far there have been very few sighting of goats during my time with iOS.

The biggest tip I could give – other than 'sort your PR out right now' – would be to make sure you know your processes before jumping into development. That goes for any platform really. Just make sure that your tools and pipelines are all smooth and bug-free to save yourself a lifetime of hurt down the line.

A third tip would be to make sure your game as one thing that is fresh, new, original or astoundingly polished compared to the market. Hard Lines has the quips – it's a small thing and not everyone loves it, but it's the single biggest differentiator between us and the other Snake/Tron-style games... Well, other than Hard Lines being a really good, solid and fun game. That's pretty important too.

What's next? Do you plan to update Hard Lines, take it to new formats, or launch a fresh title?

We've got some plans for Hard Lines that will take us very far into the future. Big plans. Plans that have words like 'world', 'modes', 'Game Center', 'iPad' and 'domination' in them.

In all seriousness, we plan to support it for as long as it makes sense to, and with updates driven by community feedback. We've already got an update with over 100 quips and 3.1.3 support in review, and are working away on the Retina update too. We reckon we should release stuff as we get a few bits done, rather than artificially saving it up over weeks and weeks. Regular, small, but important content.

We're looking at the success Hard Lines is seeing now and thinking other platforms would be silly to ignore, and I believe Android comes first, then WP7 – purely in terms of ease of porting and our expertise.

We've definitely hit on a popular game so it'd be a shame if we didn't get to port it across. But we won't compromise on quality, so it might be a while.

Other than Hard Lines, I'm actively looking at what our next game will be. Chances are it'll be very different in terms of style and content, but that's no bad thing. I'm very keen to make sure all our games are of a very high quality, and are full of personality and charm - and humour where appropriate - but other than that, my imagination is my only limit. And frankly, it's been running a bit wild recently.
Thanks to Andrew for his time.

You can find out more about Spilt Milk Studios on the firm's website.