Games 10
Play LED Baseball
About a year ago I competed in the first Rogers Digital Media Hackathon, and I won with my game LED Baseball. You can read about it in My First Hackathon. It’s been a very busy year since I worked on it, but over the last couple of weeks I took the time to finish it and release it to the App Store. As of today it’s live in the store! To complete it I added support for iPhone4, iPhone5 and iPad. It took awhile to resize all the graphics to fit the different screens, and I wasn’t sure how well it would work on a phone since it was originally developed for a tablet, but I’m rather pleased with how it turned out.
Pitch, hit and run the bases with the only electronic baseball game for your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
Computer pitches curves or fastball’s! Swing away! Run the bases. Home Run!
Beat the computer or a friend! Hit a homer!
The speed and excitement of real baseball.
It’s you against a built-in thinking computer.
A challenge for fans of all ages.
A whole new kind of fun.
• 5-Innings of Baseball
• Computerized Scoring
• Computer controls pitching and plays defence
• You control hitting and base running
• Play Two-Players Against a Friend
• Full Electronic Sounds Included
• You swing away at a fast one, hit a curve, stretch a single, even hit a home run!
Plenty of excitement awaits you, so PLAY BALL!!
Introducing Cheapo Casino
Over the past three years I have been working on a casino game called “Cheapo Casino”. It was inspired by the 1997 movie Vegas Vacation. Half way through the movie when Clark is trying to win back the money he lost, Eddie recommends a cheap casino off of the strip (Watch the Video on YouTube). It had games like Pick a Number, Spin The Wheel and War. I made a game that has many of the usual casino games but also threw in some “cheap” games for fun!
I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to finish it since I really wanted to include 13 different games. Looking back at that decision now I should have probably only focused on a couple games and release updates with new ones. In addition I was working alone, concept, design and development. I got overwhelmed many times so I would put the project on hold and worked on another app (Connect Poker) to get that gratification of releasing a new app to the store. That happened about eight more times! (Check out my apps) Finally I dedicated myself to completing Cheapo Casino. I spent 2 hours a night and took a couple vacations days to finish it. I am very happy to introduce you all to Cheapo Casino!
Play against your friends on Facebook, and see who has the best luck! Sit down, relax, have a drink & some chips – on us. We’ve got gorgeous games and lots of friendly people to play against with for FREE!
Make a fortune with HUGE Jackpots, Free Daily Chips and more! Will you play it safe and hold your cards, or double down and get a lucky ace? Tons of FREE chips given out each day!
GAMES INCLUDED:
• Pick a Number
• Guess Which Hand
• Flip a Coin
• Rock, Paper, Scissors
• Three Card Monte
• Spin The Wheel
• Horse Racing
• Slot Machine
• Video Poker
• Casino War
• Keno
• Scratch Tickets
• BlackJack
TOP FEATURES:
• Play all 13 Cheapo Casino games to test your luck!
• Bonus FREE chips every hour! You’ll always have some chips to play with!
• Play LIVE against your friends on Facebook!
• Beat the house in Blackjack or test your skills in Poker!
• Log in with Facebook, or play as a guest.
• Experience state-of-the art game design, graphics and sound
• Support for iPhone 4, iPhone 5 and iPad!
Find out more at http://www.cheapocasino.com
Twitter: @cheapocasino
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CheapoCasino
Meet Trey Smith
If you don’t know who Trey Smith is, I’d like to introduce him to you. He’s been a big inspiration to me while I continue to develop games in my spare time. He’s pretty much like Tony Robbins but for apps! He gets you pumped up to “crush it” with apps, as he teaches how to make as much money as possible with the apps and games you release.
Trey is the owner of Kayabit Games & Secret Headquarters, Inc and his new venture Game Academy. This guy doesn’t know how to program a single line of code but he has received more than 10,000,000 downloads for games he has launched in iOS and Android. He’s created the Top 25 iOS games Maze+, Jump Pack, Monster Magic, Animal Mall and Future War.
Trey Smith – How to Make Killer Games
In this live presentation, Trey breaks down his formula for creating gameplay types that are fun and monetize well. He also dives in and does some hacker research in front of the audience on big successful games.
Trey Smith – Live at App Empire 2012
This live presentation on “How to make video games that don’t suck” Trey talks about “medium games” that cost from $2,000 to $5,000 to make and he shares exact data on his hard cost, how much he made and how he monetized the games.
Start Your App Business
Learn what has made Trey successful by downloading his FREE 80+ Page Guide + 2 Hours of Videos where he explains his secret to success:
1) Picking The Right App Idea
2) Getting It Made For Cheap
3) Monetizing Your App
Another document Trey produced titled App & Game Monetization Strategy Guide is a great reference for every monetization strategy available in mobile games. If you are building a game, make sure you review this document before you release.
Check Out These Links
Monetize Your App: In-App Purchases
In this series of posts we will be investigating the reasons to use the freemium app model, how to earn money from your free apps and the obstacles you might face if you go free.
Part 1 – Monetize Your App – Free
Part 2 – Monetize Your App: Ad Supported
Part 3 – Monetize Your App: Sponsorships
Part 4 – Monetize Your App: Affiliate Sales
Part 5 – Monetize Your App – In-App Purchases
So you’ve picked your strategy, you’re going Freemium! The trick is to give people a robust enough free app to get them to download it in the first place – but still find a way to convince enough of those downloaders to part with their hard earned dollars? Do it wrong and you’ve just given away something for nothing. Do it right and it can be a lot more lucrative than charging everyone $.99 upfront.
There are three main strategies to using In-App Purchases in your app.
In-App Purchase Upgrades
You could offer the basic version free with the possibility of upgrading to a paid version with additional features. This might induce more customers to download and try the app, thereby earning a larger fan base and increasing its prospects of earning revenue. However, this strategy is more likely to work with social apps where word of mouth within friends circles result in single users upgrading to the paid group version. “Words with Friends”, is a good example of an app, which had a free version that sustained itself with ad revenue, while the paid version (where players compete with each other online) resulted in additional revenue from app sales.In-App Purchase Consumables
IAP can also be used to provide in app virtual (consumable) goods such as coins or gems, bullets, special powers, additional costumes and customizations for your characters etc. Games such as The Simpsons Tapped Out and Jetpack Joyride are common examples of this. This works really really well if it is acceptable for your app’s genre. While becoming more common in games, the use of IAP consumables has been limited in business and utility apps.In-App Purchase Subscriptions
Auto-Renewable subscriptions are mainly used in Newsstand applications. They represent a product that grants the user access to dynamic content for a given period of time, which is configured in iTunes Connect (set periods ranging from 7 days to 1 year). Subscriptions renew automatically, charging the users Apple ID at the end of each subscription period, unless the user opts-out. This product type works well for magazine or news subscriptions, where the user gets access to each issue published while their subscription is valid
Flurry has released statistics that confirm in-app purchasers spend on average $14 per transaction, which is why freemium has become the dominant means of monetizing apps. That’s 14x the revenue that most developers get with a Lite + Premium strategy, and is based on an analysis of how 3.5 million consumers spend their money in games.
Monetize Your App: Affiliate Sales
In this five part series of posts we will be investigating the reasons to use the freemium app model, how to earn money from your free apps and the obstacles you might face if you go free.
Part 1 – Monetize Your App – Free
Part 2 – Monetize Your App: Ad Supported
Part 3 – Monetize Your App: Sponsorships
Part 4 – Monetize Your App: Affiliate Sales
Part 5 – Monetize Your App – In-App Purchases
Another great approach to making money in your app is an affiliate sales relationship where a third party pays the developer each time they bring a user to the third party product or service. The most popular affiliate for iOS is leveraging LinkShare. Rakuten LinkShare is a leading provider of full-service online marketing solutions specializing in the areas of Affiliate Marketing, Search Marketing, and Lead Generation.
LinkShare manages affiliate programs for just about all of the major brands, but the one that we want to focus on is the “Apple US iTunes, App Store, iBookstore, and Mac App Store” program. This affiliate program offers a 72-hour window and a 5 percent commission on the largest catalog of digital products in the world. Songs, albums, TV shows and episodes, movies, music videos, ebooks, iOS apps, and Mac apps from the U.S. stores are all commission-able. The affiliate program works with both desktop and laptop computers as well as iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch) and from websites, mobile websites, and from within apps.
Here’s what you need to do to get started:
1. Signup as a Publisher for LinkShare.
2. Create an HTML redirect that includes your affiliate link and host it on your web server.
[syntax_prettify linenums=””]
<html>
<head>
<title>App Name – App Store Redirect</title>
<meta http-equiv=”REFRESH” content=”0;url=YOUR LINKSHARE LINK GOES HERE”>
</head>
<body>
You are being redirected to the App Store…
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src='” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“YOUR GOOGLE ANALYTICS ACCOUNT #”);
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>
</body>
</html>
[/syntax_prettify]
3. Create a bit.ly link for your redirect page above. You don’t want users to see the link that you’re sending them too.
4. Every time you link your app to the App Store (i.e. banners, twitter & facebook posts, emails, etc..) include your new bit.ly link.
This redirect link will tell LinkShare that you are sending this user to the App Store. It will leave a cookie on the users iOS device for the next 3 days. Every purchase that the user makes in the App Store or iTunes you will receive a 5% commission for referring them. This is a good idea because you are directing users to the App Store anyway to buy your app so why not get an additional 5% back and for any other apps they buy!
This is a surefire way to make some easy money. This is a proven tactic that worked for Temple Run. Imagine the number of links they have back to the App Store, each one is making them even more money. If you want poof, check out their bit.ly link here: http://bit.ly/TempleRunGame
