Introduction
Tis the season for retrospection, and NimbleBit will not go quietly into 2010. In our first “Numbers” article we tried to explain that in our experience, success on the App Store wasn’t strictly rags or riches. Seven months later I can still safely argue that there exists a comfortable and sustainable grey area between million dollar jackpots and ramen noodle dinners. As before we’re releasing the numbers for our games in the hopes that their analysis will be helpful to other indie developers. This numbers article will focus more on what worked in 2009, what mistakes we can learn from, and how we intend to keep the ball rolling in 2010. A quick primer on the makeup of NimbleBit (mobile): iPhone development has been a one man show for the most part, with most games being developed myself (Ian). Dave took a few breaks from developing Zero Gear for PC with Brian to collaborate with me on two of our games.
The NimbleBit Strategy
We’ve launched a dozen iPhone apps in our time on the App Store including some failed “lite” versions no longer available. We’ve learned from each one, and at this point I think our strategy on the App Store is pretty clear cut. Our broadest goal isn’t to cross our fingers for a top ten app, but to create NimbleFans. The NimbleFans are people who own multiple NimbleBit games, generally believe them to be worth more than $0.99, and most importantly, enjoy our games enough to show and tell others about them. The goal is to build a brand known for simple, fun, and polished games which are profitable as a group. With our integrated NimbleStore, every Scoops sale is a potential future Sky Burger, Textropolis, or Moon Drop sale. Every Freebie Friday download is a NimbleFan waiting to be born. With the right amount of quality games, cross-promotion, and exposure, a sustainable life away from the bustling top iTunes charts seems possible.
With the right amount of quality games, cross-promotion, and exposure, a sustainable life away from the bustling top iTunes charts seems possible.
The strategy for developing the actual games has also become clearer. We tend to stick to the following guidelines when developing a new game:
- Sharp & Simple: The game should look great and the goal and controls should be instantly obvious.
- Small Teams, Short Dev Times: Limiting a game to 1 or 2 developers and a month or less of dev time reduces risk while increasing relative profitability at the same time.
- Mass Appeal: The game should have a reasonably wide audience. Who doesn’t like ice cream or burgers?
The NimbleStore
Our NimbleStore is the glue binding the pieces of our strategy together. Since its humble beginning in April 2009, the NimbleStore has seen:
- 1,685,841 Pageviews
- 1,206,766 Unique Visitors
- 13,170 Game Sales
- $2,372 in LinkShare revenue
We’re always trying to improve the usability of the NimbleStore and find new ways to drive traffic to it, both inside and outside our games. Most recently we’ve been using it to grow our new “NimbleList” mailing list, a newcomer to our marketing strategy. Lets take a closer look now at how our individual games performed in 2009. Included for each game are development resources and revenue (to date) per development man hour. This return per man hour is a function of a game’s revenue to date, and should only go up over time with the game’s total revenue barring any large updates requiring development hours.
Scoops
2008 may have been the year of “Hanoi” for NimbleBit, but 2009 was unquestionably the year of “Scoops”. I can’t thank my wife Gina enough for suggesting this game idea when I was trying to figure out what to make for my first “real” iPhone game. Scoops is certainly the main breadwinner, and while NimbleBit would still be profitable without it, I think we would only be hovering just above solvency. Over the last year I’ve had a lot of time to ponder the reasons why Scoops might have enjoyed such success. While some might be quick to assert that we just got lucky with Scoops, I think there is more to it. Scoops was jump-started to life when it was featured in the “What’s New” section of the App Store immediately following a 2 day free giveaway to revive slumping initial sales. While it only peaked at around the top #35 paid app, Scoops enjoyed stays in the top 100 games for months at a time. It has managed to stay in the top 3 Kids games for nearly its entire lifetime without any paid advertising. Whether its the playful tilt controls or the colorful graphics, there is something about Scoops that resonates with nearly everyone. Scoops spreads incredibly well by word of mouth. There are thousands of reviews on iTunes explaining how a friend showed them Scoops or they always pass it around to all their friends. At face value, I guess stacking ice cream or burgers up into the sky sounds like more fun to more people than spelling words, or landing lunar pods.
Textropolis
Being a word game, Textropolis is somewhat of a niche game. Even without its mass appeal, Textropolis has been well received and has become somewhat of a cult classic. Not many word games offer persistent stress free gameplay that you can easily pick up and play for any length of time. Enough people have enjoyed Textropolis and asked for more that I just recently released Fishtropolis a matter of days ago.
Sky Burger
The sequel to Scoops in Spirit, Sky Burger is our 2nd most popular game but falls far from the profitability of Scoops due to its longer development time and having more than one developer. Sky Burger is certainly a more complex game than Scoops which is why it took more manpower to develop. In the end we ended up with many requests for a simple “Scoops” mode in Sky Burger, so perhaps we violated our own “Keep it simple” rule.
Bluebird
Bluebird was an experiment in rapid development times. From design to submission Bluebird took 4 days to make. Given enough time Bluebird ends up being profitable, but at the expense of overall quality and finish. Although it was a fun exercise, I think games of this caliber detract from the overall image of the NimbleBit brand.
Moon Drop
Moon Drop fell way short of our expectations. With sharp graphics and cute little astronauts we thought we really had something special. All started well after launch, getting featured by Apple and climbing well into the top 100 paid apps. After a week or so however, sales plummeted back to earth, below most of our other games. In retrospect I think Moon Drop’s controls weren’t intuitive enough and the gameplay itself was too difficult. These issues combined with the narrower appeal of space might have been Moon Drop’s downfall.
Looking Forward
I may be biased, but I think NimbleBit has a bright future ahead it! We will continue hone our App Store strategy and create new NimbleFans by releasing new iPhone games as our total number of app downloads hits 2 million. Fitting the all but announced Apple Tablet into our development plans will be especially exciting, and the release of our PC game Zero Gear on Jan 12 could end up changing the bigger picture for NimbleBit in some way. All in all, I think every iPhone developer has an exciting year ahead of them!
