Life, the Universe and the multiplatform mobile game programming…
05
Ok. Yesterday night Apple approved roboXcape for iOS – a week after we submitted it for review – and so now everything is fully on the move. We got this game on Google Play since March 22nd, and there, I mean on Android market, we also have a Lite version, with seven of the twentyfour levels that we prepared for the regular game. We did the whole enchilada :-)
So… well, why are we not yet RICH? I mean, why thousands of happy mobile owners around the world are not selecting our game for some of their spare time, right now – so that we can enjoy some revenue in exchange – that, I assure you, we will use to make the economy going into motion, spending most of it in futile things?
Ok, I know this is more or less the same question we asked ourselves after we published easySoccer, but this time we were sure (surer!) that we could scratch something. That we could do what it’s needed to go wild in this area: being noticed, and appreciated by a percentage of the curious-with-a-mobile large enough to justify our wives the night-hours we spent on a computer. You can understand that, can’t you? We don’t really do these things for the money per se (we’re computer programmers – old days computer programmers – we love writing code and we’re odd, you know, that’s the truth) but the money can tell *them* we’re doing something useful, you know, something that can be translated in roses, clothes, accessories and fancy stuff. And that will be good. Really.
Anyway, so far no enough roses, or clothes worth remembering as a gift, are in view. But, why? What killed (so far) our improbable dream to be gamers world rock stars? Surely we did something wrong, maybe some step we did was not right, or done at the right moment. We simply don’t know.
So, well, the idea, while we wait to see when the app sales start to be serious, is to write down a sort of reverse diary. The story of how we did a such great indie 3D arcade game – for multiple mobile operative systems – in our spare time (that means mostly at night, in case you wonder), and, well, we failed somewhere.
Yes, we do it to review our steps – to find the probably gigantic error we didn’t spot before, but, wait, if I’m not wrong, well, this way you too can follow our steps – and, in case you want to become a mobile game programmer (a wanna-be-one, but that’s exactly the point, isn’t it?) maybe you can learn something from our missteps and do A LOT better than us. I mean, if you examine our work, you can take the good things – and skip the bad ones – if you can spot them in the list, can’t you?
What do you think? Would you mind to follow us, if we write something down – and made it public?
If so leave us a note – as reply here, or using the private mail. If someone of you cares, me and Andrea Capitani are really going to bore you to death with some quick highlights, and maybe some snippet or trick too :-)
Cheers
M&A
Tip: sell the game for free with a few levels and add inApp purchase (0,79€) to buy extra levels.
Tip2: change the icon and don’t use a screenshot to make it.