How the hell got "Burn the Rope" to top 2 within a few days?

Hunnenkoenig

http://www.appannie.com/burn-the-rope/ranking/history/

It is beyond my mind.
Anybody knows, what they did?

GamersRejoice

Aren't they on New and Noteworthy? Does that not normally do that?

quantumsheep

Hunnenkoenig said:
http://www.appannie.com/burn-the-rope/ranking/history/

It is beyond my mind.
Anybody knows, what they did?

They rode off the success of 'Cut the Rope' maybe?

Hunnenkoenig

Right.
They are on the main page in N&N

But Assault Commando was also there and we didn't reach the top 25 with it.

@Quantum:
Ok, maybe ROPE and N&N = instant success :-P

BackUpAndDown

It's a fun and creative game with a unique look. How could it not climb the ranks that fast?

BackUpAndDown

Hunnenkoenig said:
Right.
They are on the main page in N&N

But Assault Commando was also there and we didn't reach the top 25 with it.

@Quantum:
Ok, maybe ROPE and N&N = instant success :-P

"When you see an app with a similar name to an existing, and very successful, one, it can set the alarm bells ringing. For example, if Pessimistic Birds arrived in New and Noteworthy, it would be easy to brush it aside as being an Angry Birds clone. However, just as Pessimistic Birds may be entirely unique – and with a name like that, it probably would be – you shouldn’t pass Burn the Rope by, just because you’ve already played Cut the Rope."

http://www.iphonefreak.com/2010/12/burn-the-rope-iphone-app-review-hot-stuff.html

Hunnenkoenig

That's what I mean.

Why is Pessimistic Birds a nono and Burn the Rope a gogo?

They both try to swim on the wake of an already successful game.

quantumsheep

BackUpAndDown said:
"When you see an app with a similar name to an existing, and very successful, one, it can set the alarm bells ringing. For example, if Pessimistic Birds arrived in New and Noteworthy, it would be easy to brush it aside as being an Angry Birds clone. However, just as Pessimistic Birds may be entirely unique – and with a name like that, it probably would be – you shouldn’t pass Burn the Rope by, just because you’ve already played Cut the Rope."

http://www.iphonefreak.com/2010/12/burn-the-rope-iphone-app-review-hot-stuff.html

Actually, that's fair enough. But I think most people will think 'Oh, a knock off, or they're trying to ride the coat tails of Angry Birds/Cut the Rope' etc

My mate Jake came up with a game called 'Something' Birds. (as in, 'something' is something else, I just don't want to give away the title!).

When I told my brother about it, he instantly assumed that we'd made a copy of Angry Birds.

We haven't! The game's nothing like Angry Birds, and the title actually describes the gameplay.

QS

Chunkypixels

I believe it could have something to do with the Developer having committed in the region of $10,000 marketting spend so far...including buying TapJoy installs.

Not sure how good the game actually is, as I havent played it... but it shows that the devs are serious about making it a hit.

From what I understand, the devs are a fully fledged cross platform gaming studio, with around 50 staff...so the marketting spend wouldnt even equal 2-3 peoples salaries for a month... so for a company like that, who probably spent 50k to 100k developing the game, the marketting budget would seem like a reasonable expense.

Im not sure exactly what the Tapjoy installs are...but from checking their website it sounds like its buying sales of the game through an agency, to help boost sales figures.

Hunnenkoenig

Tapjoy is something, where you bid for installs, like in any advertising.

If somebody installs your game through them, you pay your bid and the user, who installed it gets paid.

They use some ingame-currency-like thingy to motivate the users to install games.

I was emailing with one of the guys a few months back, but when I asked, how it works and had some deeper questions, he just didn't answer my email further.

I didn't really understood the system and it seems, they don't really can explaine it in a reasonable manner, so I think, something is foul with them.

Chunkypixels

@Hunnenkoenig

Talking of advertising....Im seeing quite a lot of Alpine Crawler Wild ads during my daily browsing, so it looks like youve gone for a pretty intensive campaign yourselves.

Youve already built up a popular brand with previous Alpine Crawler games, so it would be interesting to hear from a developer in your position how well you think the adverts on various sites help to drive sales.

Oh... and congrats on the Games:New & Noteworthy slot for the game

magic101hi

Because it got features.

and it is a good game.

-Josh

Hunnenkoenig

@Chunkypixels:

Thanks.

The situation is a bit more complicated, than that.
My company was only the publisher for the original Alpine Crawler games.

After the success of World the guys decided to go their own ways and they publishhed Wild themselves. They were the ones, who organised the AD campaign too.

But we still share data.

It was not as successful as expected. Since release it brought about $50.000

The advertisement campaign is also not really visible.
There is a raising tendency, but we don't know if it is the AD or the reviews (http://www.148apps.com/reviews/alpine-crawler-wild-review/) or the N&N.

The funny thing is, we have found out that there are even Alpine Crawler "Conventions" in the US :-D

The sad thing is, the release of Wild had absolutely no impact on the sales of World or Assault Commando, although there is cross advertising in them.

butterbean

@QS: Can't wait to see what game it is you're working on ! Any screenshots coming soon?

@Hunn: Congrats on AC: Wild getting featured, sure you'll see a huge boost there, do you plan on keeping pricing the same or increasing?

Hunnenkoenig

We decided long ago not to go over the $0.99 price tag on the iPhone, so it will remain.

We have learned now, that we will never ever release a game on Christmas :-P

quantumsheep

Hunnenkoenig said:
We have learned now, that we will never ever release a game on Christmas :-P

Amen to that! I'd go as far as saying 'never release around *any* holiday'

butterbean said:
@QS: Can't wait to see what game it is you're working on ! Any screenshots coming soon?

Unfortunately not!

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but with GS being very quick to develop for, I worry about that 1% of the community taking an idea/visual style and running with it before I've finished!

For that reason, I'll never show anything till it's pretty much done

This year we have about 12 games in the pipeline. We'll see which ones get made and which don't! First up is Disco Farm, which should be out by the end of Jan, with 'Project Air' out by the end of Feb. We'll see where we stand after that with regard to the rest!

QS

butterbean

@QS & Hunn: Yes, Xmas was VERY sad, there were way too many apps, and they would get buried before it ever had a chance!

@QS: I hear ya' on that. I usually don't post previews unless it's been submitted
12 games! Wowzers, can't wait to see what's in store!

Scharlo

Hi guys,

We are the developers of BTR. There is really no big secret behind the this. As someone mentioned, we used Tapjoy and this brought us about 2000 installs, but all this was before Christmas where we were barely hanging in top #100. Even review didn't help that much. After being featured on Thursday, sales just took off like crazy. We had 8 titles featured so far but none of them did so well.
I can't see being anything else than the game itself, it is really one of the most original games in years. If you look at the top right now, nothing is very original; Angry Birds is another version of crash the castle, Cut the Rope took most of the mechanics from The Incredible Machine, etc.

Hunnenkoenig

Hey! Cool that you registered and posted!

Congratz on the app!
Keep up the good work!

If you come back and don't mind to share, can you tell us, what did the tapjoy campaign cost and if you are satisfied with the service?

FanStudioUK

Can you use TapJoy with GS games? I see that you need to install a library to Xcode in order to activate your app and this is not possible with GS...

Scharlo

Hunnenkoenig said:
Hey! Cool that you registered and posted!

Congratz on the app!
Keep up the good work!

If you come back and don't mind to share, can you tell us, what did the tapjoy campaign cost and if you are satisfied with the service?

Cost of the Tapjoy is up to you. You can determine how much you want to pay per install, but if you pay less than you get from Apple per copy it is unlikely you will get many installs. As for the service overall, I think TapJoy is ok. It also help you to track the piracy rate (that was 96% first few or so, now dropped to below 15%).

ericdg123

@hunn
I didn't know you were behind alpine crawler. Thats a great game. I started playing that game long before I started developing. Everyone of my friends loved it too, it's no wonder to me it has been doing well.

What is the concern with releasing on christmas? I didn't release a game on christmas but had a couple up already and my sales went from $150 the few days before to $700 on christmas day. I did submit a game before christmas but it wasn't approved until a few days ago because of the itunes connect shutdown.

@scharlo
Congrats on BTR. I bet it was an amazing surprise to see your game at the top like that.

I wish you both continued success on the appstore. I hope to be up there near the top one day as well.

VoidedSky

@scharlo great app! I just bought it! It's fun, an has unique gameplay, perfect combination.
Best of luck!
~CTM

Hunnenkoenig

@ericdg123:
Thanks! I am happy to hear that you liked it :-)

For some people Christmas did bring a spike, but for us it was not, what we were expecting.

Alpine Crawler Wild was released before christmas, but EA killed it with their 99 cents campaign pretty much.

Without EA and without the lockdown we were doing way better, we believe.

ericdg123

Yeah, I can definitely see how EA would have hogged up much of the sales. That was a huge promotion. My most popular app is Moto Mania. I was up around Alpine Crawler World for a while but now I'm been hovering around 40 -50 in the racing category in the US. My rank never really improved, but the amount of sales from christmas on have been much higher for me.

THRSTN

EA + Christmas = App death for almost everyone it seems