Social Session is Seeing Some Action in Saudi Arabia, Romania, and the UK

So, it's been an interesting month watching Social Sessions' activity.

All of a sudden, I got a huge spike in Romania, Saudi Arabia, and the UK. I went from averaging about 5 users per day (mostly in the USA), to averaging closer to 20, with most of that due to those three countries. And for whatever reason, the new users have been almost exclusively on Android.

I took the opportunity to localize into Arabic for the audience in Saudi Arabia (just the Play Store, not the game itself).

Unfortunately, I haven't been successful in holding onto players, and I definitely haven't managed to monetize much. Players drop off quick after the first level of the game, with only about 10% of players continuing after that.

So, of course, a very small percentage of players are even getting to the point where the game asks for an upgrade (in the last month, only 3 have reached it, and none have purchased).

Social Sessions also gives you the opportunity to watch an ad in exchange for a free hint on how to beat a level. This feature has not been widely used either.

So, as I said, it's been interesting. I seem to have tapped into a fountain of downloaders who don't really end up liking the game, almost immediate. I had a much more gradual dropoff of users, relatively, when I was only getting 5 or so downloads a day.

It's possible that there's something off-putting about the first level. Maybe it's so easy that players don't think the game is going to be challenging. Maybe they see the suggestion to watch an ad and flee. Maybe the pace is too slow. Or maybe because the tutorial that appears on level 1 isn't localized into anything but English, and so users just exit (although I tried to make it as self-explanatory as possible).

I'm not sure, so I'm putting some extra thought into it right now. If you've got any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.

New Art

I hope you've been challenged by Social Session's puzzles. For most people who have played it, their response is quite positive. But here's the problem: the number of people who judge the book by its cover and never download the game is staggering. Only about 15% of people who view the game's app store page actually download the game. This is pretty low. And also, the number one critique I've gotten from people (that aren't my friends) is that it just looks bad.

Now, I'm not offended by this at all. I know I'm not an artist. I kind of thought the art would be okay because it's "simple", but in this case, simple just translated into "amateur" or "rushed" or "incomplete". And I'm understanding now, more and more, how important good art is for a game to be successful. It's like the sign on the front of your store. No one's gonna come into see what you offer if it looks bad on the outside, even if what's inside is great.

And I can't hold it against anyone, because, each of us is faced with a decision of which games to play, and when you have thousands of options at any given time, you have to judge a book by its cover. You just can't play them all and give a fair judgement. Unfortunately.

So, if you've played, thanks for looking past the "simple" art. But for all the others, I'm going to be looking into either purchasing some stock art, or getting someone to freelance some art for me.

Of course, the problem is that I don't really have a budget for it. I've spent several hundred dollars just getting the game done, and haven't made more than about 10 bucks on the game so far (it's a freemium game). It's hard to justify spending anything more on it. But I'll see if I can find something that's a lot of bang for buck.

Thanks for reading! #SocialSessionsGame

Marketing Social Sessions

Well, Social Sessions is now officially published. I'm no longer a game developer, I'm a marketer. ...nope nope nope, that's not true at all. I hate marketing. It goes back to the summer I tried to sell Kirby vacuum cleaners. TRIED. Never again. But for now, I don't want my development efforts to be wasted and not shared with the world, so alas, I will market however I can.

I started posting about my game to the community on Reddit. Some forums are hostile toward people "self-promoting" their own apps, and others are welcoming to it. Either way, that avenue quickly becomes exhausted. I sent about 150 emails in the last few days (no bulk email tools, just copy/pasting and changing names and email addresses by hand) to sites that review mobile games.

Wouldn't it be fun if there was a market for "local" indie games, the way there's a market for "local" music? Just go down and hang out at your local Cafe or bar and set up your game and let people walk up and play it with their friends. That would be cool. Someone needs to make that happen. Especially in a city like mine, Austin, where there are enough indie developers to warrant it.

Anyway, I've also been trying to use Twitter to spread the word. It's all a little disheartening. I really just want to make fun games, and let people discover them on their own... but I know that there are probably thousands of games out there that I WOULD like if I only KNEW about them... so that lets me know that I need to try as hard as possible to let people know about my game. The goal is to be "loud" enough to get the word to those who will actually enjoy my game, while not being so loud that I annoy everyone else.

Anyway, if you're reading this and you're one of those people that I'm trying to target (lovers of puzzle games, indie games, challenging games), go download Social Sessions on your phone today!

iOS is nearly ready to publish!

I've gotten Social Sessions working on iOS, including the iPad! I was stoaked the first time I saw it running on an iPad because it looked great! I just had to up-res one texture so it would look better. It mostly just worked! Yay!

Now I'm on to setting up my app submission... which is a bigger task than I'd anticipated. Last night I went to upload my screenshots... only to find out how particular Apple is about their screenshots. You have to have your screenshots in exactly the dimensions of whichever particular devices you are supporting. I can't just have a single set of screenshots... I have to have a set of iPad screenshots taken from an iPad, etc. It's a little frustrating because the same is true for the promo video, and the one I created won't work at all. Boo.

Well, I'm excited to be close to submitting. I did a Unity Cloud Build of my final iOS version, but then I found out that I can't just submit that. I have to build and submit from a Mac. So hopefully I'll be able to do that tonight.

Anxious to get it on the App Store so I can really start promoting the game. I'm excited to be able to stop hearing people say "Oh you released your app? Oh well, let me know when it's on the App Store".

Social Sessions Promo Video

Monetization! Yay!

I just wanted to be up-front about the monetization in my first mobile game, Social Sessions, and explain why I went with the method that I did.

Social Sessions is a free-to-download game which allows players to play until they reach "Day 9" (out of 30 days) before they're asked to upgrade (for $1.99) to continue. The first 8 days will probably afford a player several days of occasional play.

I decided against using advertisements because, well, that's basically just going with the annoy-players-until-they-pay-you model. I don't want to annoy my players. I realize that for many developers this is the best option, and it's possible some very understanding players even appreciate this model and understand why it's necessary in many cases, but it wasn't right for my game.

I also didn't want to fill the game with micro-transactions. There are no extras or cheats or premium currencies in the game to purchase. You just pay to unlock the game once, and all 120 puzzles are yours!

The other decision was, okay, I'm going with the "Freemium" model (upgrade to play full game), but when exactly should I ask players to Upgrade? Some suggested that you do it early, as soon as the player is interested in the puzzles. But in my own experience, I always appreciated when Freemium games allowed you a bit more time to enjoy the game. It allows you to really get into it and play it over a few days so that when you get to the Upgrade point, you really feel like you've played a game already, and upgrading for more levels is just icing on the cake (granted, the icing on the cake is 5 times as many levels as the cake in this metaphor). But then, even if you don't upgrade, and you put the game down there, you feel like you were able to play and enjoy a full game, so you are more willing to go tell your friends to go download and try this game, because it's free, and you can actually enjoy the game for a little while totally for free! And who knows, maybe one of your friends will like it enough to want to upgrade? So everyone wins!

And to those who say that games should all just be offered to players for free, well... I'm not even gonna start...

;)

Game Play sneak peek!

Hester Games... The Beginning!

Horray! Hester Games, LLC, exists, and is a real and legally verifiable entity! :D

This is exciting to me, but maybe not to you. What should be exciting to you is that I'm going to be making games you will hopefully find creative, compelling, and awesome!

Social Sessions (Hester Games' first game that will be released in the coming weeks on the Google Play Store, and soon after that on Apple's App Store) started a few years ago when I started to teach myself Unity game development and C# programming. Suddenly, my imagination came alive with ideas of what I could make! Social Sessions took form slowly, and went through several iterations. At first it was just an idea that I found intriguing, and surprisingly, hadn't seen anything else quite like it.

The puzzles were challenging, for sure. That was what I liked, but that was the main hurdle: getting people to grok the puzzles right away. Playing that balancing game between challenging and fun. Lots of people threw up their hands and said "I just don't get it!" So, with that in mind, I worked hard to give useful tips to the player along the way, and chose a progression of levels that would slowly introduce players to the more difficult concepts. Eventually I began to see that spark of determination in people's eyes when they really got it and were self-motivated enough to buckle down and solve the puzzles (and even try to get a 3-star rating on all the puzzles!).

I've spent the last 2 years developing this mostly in solitude, but I hope to connect with the community of gamers who might be interested in this or my future games, from now on.

I'll post more about Social Sessions more specifically (video soon!), and also keep you updated during and after launch, but for now, here's a rough draft of the Play Store description:

Be the therapist you always knew you could be and try to make all your patients happy by manipulating their feelings and relationships!
Social Sessions is a group-therapy-themed game that will seriously challenge your puzzle-solving abilities. Make your way through the calendar as you right the wrongs in each group of dysfunctional relationships. Push yourself to perfection by figuring out how to solve each session in the most efficient way.
Then, just when you start finding your groove, you'll be challenged by four new special level types, introduced each new week in your therapist's calendar.

 Leave a comment if this sounds like something you'd like to play!