Hello everybody !
A lot has been going on in my life since the latest blog post, a lot of programming, of ideas...
Anyways, I feel like posting a short article about my first experience in the video game market. It is important to know that I've never worked in a video game company before.
With two friends, I participated the Indies Vs. Pewdiepie game jam, a 72 hours gamejam with emphasis on "fun to watch and to play". We had to post it on Game Jolt.
Let's Play Tycoon made 32nd out of 752 games, which makes us quite proud !
But there was something different with Let's Play Tycoon, that not many other games didn't have;
It was being played. While the winning games had around 300 players, we had over 10.000, and we never knew why (we still don't!).
The game kept growing on its own, and people asked for improvements and bug fixes.
We saw it as our chance to make a quick game and try how the mobile market works. So we developed a new, improved version of LPT in two weeks, and released it on mobile, without any form of communication or advertisement other than letting our current players know.
The game had a glitch. A big one, a game-breaking one. It simply quits, without crashing, on some phones, and we haven't found why. It can crash on one phone, and work on a similar one, it can crash on any version...
After looking for a solution (and not finding one), we felt sorry for the people who liked the original game but couldn't play the improved version. So, we released the new version on Game Jolt.
And guess what happened ?
Our ad revenue on mobile grew, while our gamejolt revenue stays the same.
So:
We post a glitched version of our game on mobile.
People (rightfully) complain that it doesn't work.
We post a working version online.
People thank us and play the mobile version.
I'm not complaining, I just don't understand how this is happening/
