Are you a game developer who is frustrated with the Market.
If you have ever released a game to the Android Market, you will quickly become aware of how hard it is to get your game seen. After the initial launch, downloads fall off quickly. A review here or there or a new release and you get a small spike, but no long term trend. It is hard to get a game going no matter how good it is. Making the Google recommended list is impossible. Advertising is too expensive for the return. The Market is a bottomless pit. Trying to tweak up interest with Twitter links and web pages doesn't do much. How do you get your game seen. Alternative Markets have their own interests at heart and want your money to truly promote your game.
So, here is the idea. We indie developers band together and start cross promoting our games by running free ads for each other in our games. A Cross Promotion Club.
(1) We only accept games that we consider to be high enough quality to join the club.
(2) We create a web page where each member can upload an ad for their game. We can run larger ads because we control it.
(3) We each update our game to download random ads from the central web page and display them in our start screen with a Market link for that game.
(4) The web page can be simple. A file with the list of ads/links. And a single jpg file for each ad.
(4) I suggest we start with free or ad supported games only.
By doing this, each game will add to a network of small indie games of high quality that are all advertising each other. And with NO COST. Hopefully, as each game spikes so will the cross promotion and the other games in the network. Finally, if we limit this to just good games, then customers will begin to recognize that following these ads will lead to other good games and the cross promotion will become much more effective. We should attach a brand name to the cross promotion club for recognition.
My first game to enter into this Club would be "Rebound". It is a good quality little game that has very good reviews on the Market but is stagnating at about 12K downloads. I am tired of just doing releases to get on the just in list.
So, take a look at my game, see if you like it. Consider this idea. And if you are interested, post your response here. Let's get a club going!
If you have ever released a game to the Android Market, you will quickly become aware of how hard it is to get your game seen. After the initial launch, downloads fall off quickly. A review here or there or a new release and you get a small spike, but no long term trend. It is hard to get a game going no matter how good it is. Making the Google recommended list is impossible. Advertising is too expensive for the return. The Market is a bottomless pit. Trying to tweak up interest with Twitter links and web pages doesn't do much. How do you get your game seen. Alternative Markets have their own interests at heart and want your money to truly promote your game.
So, here is the idea. We indie developers band together and start cross promoting our games by running free ads for each other in our games. A Cross Promotion Club.
(1) We only accept games that we consider to be high enough quality to join the club.
(2) We create a web page where each member can upload an ad for their game. We can run larger ads because we control it.
(3) We each update our game to download random ads from the central web page and display them in our start screen with a Market link for that game.
(4) The web page can be simple. A file with the list of ads/links. And a single jpg file for each ad.
(4) I suggest we start with free or ad supported games only.
By doing this, each game will add to a network of small indie games of high quality that are all advertising each other. And with NO COST. Hopefully, as each game spikes so will the cross promotion and the other games in the network. Finally, if we limit this to just good games, then customers will begin to recognize that following these ads will lead to other good games and the cross promotion will become much more effective. We should attach a brand name to the cross promotion club for recognition.
My first game to enter into this Club would be "Rebound". It is a good quality little game that has very good reviews on the Market but is stagnating at about 12K downloads. I am tired of just doing releases to get on the just in list.
So, take a look at my game, see if you like it. Consider this idea. And if you are interested, post your response here. Let's get a club going!
