StickWars - Top 10 paid app for about 3 months, build with cocos2d

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StickWars - Top 10 paid app for about 3 months, build with cocos2d

(75 posts) (20 voices)

Started 1 year ago by LongJohnnyE
Latest reply from Scoobadood

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LongJohnnyE
Member

@jptsetung oh right, I forgot to announce here. Yea, StickWars Ultimate Challenge is live. You can read some about the funny story about the drama I went through here http://johnehartzog.com/forums/showthread.php?t=605.

Basically it sat in queue for about 2 months as an update with in-app purchase, but it turns out any app that runs on OS 2.x can't include in-app purchases, even if it gracefully degrades.

At this point, I'm a bit jaded from the whole experience, but I'm getting back into it and will start pumping out some fun updates soon :).

Posted 9 months ago #
jd
Member

Oh wow. So that's how this came about. I haven't played the game in months and I had assumed your in-app purchase update went through in August. Making it into it's own app I guess was the best way to do it at this point. That sucks that you lost all that time. Good luck. The challenges look fun.

I'm not doing in-app purchases until more people upgrade to 3.x+ - which I think is why Apple is pushing it to begin with. They want everybody to upgrade.

Posted 9 months ago #
zombie
Member

Waiting one month to get a rejection for a reason you could not know is bad. I feel sorry for you.

And I think its a really bad decision to require 3.0 for all apps that have in-app purchases. Especially when now also free apps can have this.

Looking forward for you challenge mode.

- zombie

Posted 9 months ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

They never actually rejected it. It just sat there in queue with no feedback for about 1.5 months, until I learned from an outside source that they have an unspoken policy of neither rejecting nor accepting apps which do that.

I just rejected the binary myself and sent them a new game instead :).

Posted 9 months ago #
jptsetung
Member

That's really strange they didn't give any feedback.

I read your forum post and i have a side question. How do you know that 40% of our players are on OS2.x ?

Posted 9 months ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

@jptsetung I run the pinch media analytics, which lets me see non-indetenifying stats like that. I actually caught a bit of attention because of that (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dear_iphone_users_your_apps_are_spying_on_you.php) but my response was "I can't see anything personal, and without this data I would have to guess at how to structure my updates. I'm keeping it...".

I found that data extremely value not only for deciding how to add updates to my app, but when it came time to negotiate with companies who wanted to work with me, I could prove how valueable my app is by saying things like "the average user who loads my game once in a day plays it for 40 minutes that day". Those kind of facts are powerful bargaining chips, but only if you are aware of them and can back them up.

And it's not exactly 40% of users are on OS 2.x. It's kinda complicated, but as far as new users purchasing the game OS 2.x users are closer to like 20% or something. But there are a large number of OS 2.x devices who continue to install the updates I send out, so I had to keep them in mind.

Posted 9 months ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

"I found that data extremely value not only for deciding how to add updates to my app, but when it came time to negotiate with companies who wanted to work with me"

@LJE, were you able to get some sort of deal with OpenFeint?

Posted 9 months ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

What deal would I negotiate? OpenFeint is free for users and developers :).

Posted 9 months ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

Well bc your game is so popular, maybe they would throw some cash your way to get you to use OF over a competitor so they could get a bigger userbase. Or give you free advertising.

Posted 9 months ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

"Basically it sat in queue for about 2 months as an update with in-app purchase, but it turns out any app that runs on OS 2.x can't include in-app purchases"

Do you know if thats for any 3.x feature that you degrade if the user is running 2.x. So if you add p2p bluetooth networking if the user is running 3.x, but the game runs fine in 2.x just not with the p2p feature. Do you think that would get in to limbo too?

Posted 9 months ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

I have been told that in ONLY applies to in-app purchases, due to the way it works on the back end. I realized this was true when I tried to re-submit StickWars with in-app purchase when compiled for OS 3.0 minimum...a different screen popped up right after I uploaded it in iTunes Connect. There is some magic going on there that Apple doesn't disclose that apparently requires any application with in-app purchases included to be compiled for OS 3.0 at minimum.

So go ahead and include bluetooth p2p and compile for 2.x and gracefully degrade. You should be fine...I'm doing the same thing in my next game, and I'll let you know if I run into any problems.

Posted 9 months ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

About the OpenFeint stuff, even if I did get some deal out of it, it'd probably be under NDA, right?

That being said, I did not accept any money or similar 'bonus' when deciding which social network to use. I guess it was kind of lucky, since I made enough money from the sales of StickWars, I felt free in making the decision that was 'best for the game' in my opinion rather than that which may have been more profitable in the short term.

Posted 9 months ago #
LongJohnnyE
Member

@jd I just politely asked the dev of walkthrough publications to remove 'stickwars' from his keywords, and he said he would in the next update :).

Posted 9 months ago #
jd
Member

You should have offered to let him leave them there for $50 lol.

Posted 9 months ago #
Scoobadood
Member

@LongJohnnyE intersting that Apple would release a game to the store that includes you games' name in the keywords. A friend of mine had an update (not the original mind you) rejected because he used the word 'breakout' which is pretty generic in his keywords.

Inconsistency in the review process continues to be a real pain!

Posted 9 months ago #

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