Mole – Quest for the Terracore gem!

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An Analysis of the first month in the app store.

I started a few months to individuals in my local industry that I would post up sales data for Mole, regardless of how good or bad it was. This article is me keeping that promise in the interests of exchanging information.

Using the same tech that posts player scores to Leaderboards from Mole to the Esc Factory website. We at Roo Games have been able to collect a series of daily metrics to help us analyse Mole on the app store.

We’ve recorded a number of statistics including:

• Number of total game launches per day.
• Number of total unique devices launching Mole per day.
• Total number of devices with Mole installed.

With these statistics I’ve made a number of tables and evaluations.

Sales:
The most important question for many people reading this post will probably be. “How much money did you make?” Which is a totally reasonable question. Especially to those looking into iPhone development in Australia.

As it stands right now: After one month of being on the app store:  Nothing.

I don’t have a graph for my sales data. That’s because the game hasn’t sold enough units for apple to produce monthly sales overview. [You need to earn at least $150USD in a region if that's any indication.]

Counting up the daily sales from itunes connect I would say we’ve made around 250 sales. The issue even with that number is that it’s dispersed over a dozen worldwide regions. Making any collective payment impossible until those regions individually earn the equivalent of $150USD.

This all being said: It’s sold better then a “complete failure” app. 250 sales while small, bodes much better then if we released the same and did nothing to support it.

The next few figures of data does get a bit interesting though.

Number of “Moles” out there:

The graph speaks for itself. As stated above we’ve made about 250 sales. As the start of March there are 1400 devices with some version of Mole installed.
To be clear and to define what a “device” is:

• iPhone or iPod Touch
• 1 Purchase can be propagated over multiple owned devices if the account holder owns them.

What this means is at the end of the day we made 250 sales and there’s now 1400 people who have installed Mole onto a apple mobile device. That’s is a piracy rate of about 560%. Or 5 1/2 games downloaded illegally for every 1 sold. This doesn’t factor multi device users though.
I wont waffle on piracy to much because pirates aren’t really potential customers to a game like Mole so if they do effect sales it’s an effect we can’t control directly. Still it’s disheartening to search my game on google and have a few of the first links be pirate download sites.

Although 1400 have played mole. Not to bad.

Unique App launches:

This graph shows the number of unique app launches per day. This means when Mole is accessed but doesn’t cover the app being opened multiple times. [That number ranges from 3000 a day to 200 a day.]

At the highest point we where getting Mole played on 350 devices in one day. Low point rests around 50 unique devices in one day.

On an average day we’ll sell 4-6 copies of Mole over multiple regions. On a bad day we’ll probably sell 1 in england or the USA.

The big spike in the graph:
At this point you’re probably wondering what created the drastic spike of popularity on the 8th of February.

That was the day our game was reviewed on gamesuncovered.com There review alone pushed the game out of the category of complete failure. While to the time of this post we’ve had a total of 8 reviews. 5 of them being online English. 2 in different languages and 1 in a newspaper article, none of the other reviews have drastically boosted sales or popularity and have only contributed to a handful of sales and minor increase of unique device downloads.

Reviews and their impact:
We’ve gotten around 8 reviews on Mole so far. All of them positive and ranking the game from 4 out of 5 to 5 out of 5 stars. Safe to say anyone who plays Mole enjoys it.

Critically Mole has done well for itself. But taking the stats above onboard I would argue that critical success has only a minor part to do with sales and popularity. There’s much more going on to the apps consumer placement and promotion.

The most saddening thing for me is just how little in effect most review sites have to your game. Most iPhone game/review sites just don’t carry a big enough online traffic population to make that review transfer into sales. Not individually at any means. While every positive review helps to sell the product and the companies skill competence. It seems that unless your game has a review on the small handful very, very popular review sites like Touch-Arcade or Games Uncovered. Most reviews doesn’t transfer to money. Not in our case at least.

Why did we fail?
I think most importantly we failed to promote the game before it’s release. Review requests where sent out the day we got our promo codes and that was on the release date. Giving the promotional machine no time or warning for Mole. We have gotten requests for reviews from sites once the game was out. So the possible interest isn’t imaginary.

The game was also unplayable for the first 24 hours in store. We had to take if off market. Update and fix it. That took 5 days. I can’t determine what effect this had on our game.

The most important element: As in THE factor that makes or brakes a game on this platform is to get it featured by Apple in some capacity. Whether in the “What’s hot” or any other section on the itunes/app store.

Unfortunately there’s no proven step by step way to do that. Obviously Apple wont feature poor quality apps but your game needs to be just what they want advertised on the App store. There is a key to success to be found in that and I have a few ideas but nothing conclusive or quotable.

The game itself is a solid experience. Weaknesses include artwork that while good is not to the level of quality seen in publisher backed games. [We couldn't pay an artist though. So that's a losing battle.] Mole is also a short game coming in at 2 hours of average playtime.

What will we do now?
Mole isn’t a bad game. We stand by that the gameplay is solid and the game as a package is well worth it’s cost. [And reviewers both professional and on the app store agree.] What we now plan to do is improve upon it. Update and continue to promote it.

Over the next few months we plan to:

• “We <3 GDC” promotion. From March: Friday the 5th to Sunday the 14th we’ll be showing off Mole at the Unity Booth at GDC and more importantly be letting people download the game for free during that period.
• Reviews: We’ll continue to work to get some solid reviews for Mole.
• Lite version: After GDC we’ll be releasing a lite version. Letting the player experience the game up until a point.
• Update: After GDC we’ll be spending some time into updating Mole to give our existing and potential player base new features and more content to bring Mole up as a stronger game and more entertaining experience.
• Facebook: We’ll be releasing a free version of Mole on Facebook to promote the iPhone version.

My conclusion:

It’s always easy to blame the small sales of Mole on factors like market over-saturation and piracy. But the fact of the matter is that while we made a solid game for the iPhone it didn’t reach the expectation of those who guard the gates to mass promotion. That being Apple and popular review sites like Touch Arcade. Although the review at Games Uncovered was a fantastic buzz.

Fortunately. We’re an indie studio and our product is digital. Updating the game to bring it up to the expectations of those gatekeepers is a viable option. We’ve found that the public love playing Mole. It’s now a case of letting them know about it through promotion.

Thanks for reading.

Chris Watts
Roo Games