This what I need to become multi million dollar flappy bird genius app maker?

Mint Aero

Happened upon this on my quest for knowledge.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1753131

Is this everything (as in the basics of flappy bird greatness) that I need to know in order to create fantastic games to be downloaded 100 millions times?

Can someone with "knowledge" give it a quick looky see and give me the thumbs if this tutorial will be enough "knowledge" for me to create multi million dollar app games and be the next kid driving Lamborghini to my pop up workshop with zany coffee downtown.

Many thanks,

salamanca22

Hundreds of games as simple as flappy birds is added to the app store each day. You have to be one lucky son of a gun though to actually become viral, it's like the lotto.

By the way flappy birds could be made in about 30-40 minutes minus the assets. Maybe even faster.

Creamy Goodness

the guide is for Android, you won't make millions there.

all joking aside, android users spend a quarter of what iOS users do, so if you're looking to get rich and you're incredibly lucky, Android may not be the way.

salamanca22

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

the guide is for Android, you won't make millions there.

all joking aside, android users spend a quarter of what iOS users do, so if you're looking to get rich and you're incredibly lucky, Android may not be the way.

I have made much more on android due to the fact I have way more downloads.

The money is not in how many apps you sell, it's in the downloads. All due to ad's.

Creamy Goodness

oh yeah, forgot that was how flappy bird made the money. still the sheer luck in getting the constant stream of players will be tough

Mint Aero

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

the guide is for Android, you won't make millions there.

all joking aside, android users spend a quarter of what iOS users do, so if you're looking to get rich and you're incredibly lucky, Android may not be the way.

No I adhere to a set of ethics & moralistic principles which precludes me from becoming multi million download flappy bird genius creator on anything but android.

Atomic Pineapple

There was no luck in flappy bird making millions , there are various articles that show the mass amount of evidence showing artificially inflated downloads and installs

The Corinthian

Mint Aero wrote: »

Can someone with "knowledge" give it a quick looky see and give me the thumbs if this tutorial will be enough "knowledge" for me to create multi million dollar app games and be the next kid driving Lamborghini to my pop up workshop with zany coffee downtown.

Do yourself a favour and buy yourself a Lotto ticket. With your attitude, you've a better chance of making your millions that way.

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

the guide is for Android, you won't make millions there.

I can assure you that that even a small dev house can make several hundred thousand per month, on advertising alone, on Android.

jester77

It really is pure pot luck. Flappy Birds is poorly coded with many issues, which ironically enough added to its appeal. You can't really plan that, you could be a super coder and make a perfectly working game, but that means nothing when it comes to sales.

DoYouEvenLift

A good means of exposure these days is just having one reasonably big YouTube gamer do a video on the game for the chances of its popularity to shoot way up. Flappy bird was played by pewdiepie and others and if you look it up you'll see it resulted in a direct spike in how big the game got.

Really wonder if they accept some payment, outside of their as revenue, to feature games knowing they have the influence to get the game to be successful.

I have an idea for a simple enough mobile game I'd like to get made, just no idea where to start since I can't code myself. Would be decent enough at marketing though and know a high subscribed YouTuber I'd pay to feature it to help out. I'd really only use the money generated by a simple app like it if it was successful as start up funds for a bigger scale game and/or business.

The Corinthian

jester77 wrote: »

It really is pure pot luck.

Not entirely.

If you don't market your game, then yes; you probably have a one in 10,000 chance (optimistically) of shooting up the ranks. Otherwise you need to invest time and money in the dark arts of app marketing to get noticed, especially in the all important first month that your app is on the market.

There are various methods of marketing your app, including incentivized installs, purchased advertising, use of social networks, in-house advertising, icon optimization and SEO. Some work better than others. Some work for certain apps and not others. And most importantly, just because it works today, doesn't mean it will tomorrow, as the rules are constantly changing.

But if done properly, it does work - not every time - but the majority of it you'll see a significant improvement on overall installs and thus revenue. The real trick, which generally requires deep pockets to achieve, is whereby your unit marketing cost falls below your unit revenue; it is at this point that you can spend indefinitely, because you'll ultimately turn a profit regardless.

As for optimizing revenue, either through advertising, sales or in-app purchases; there's another set of dark arts to know...

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

A good means of exposure these days is just having one reasonably big YouTube gamer do a video on the game for the chances of its popularity to shoot way up.

Not a very efficient way of marketing an app and I've even seen apps with videos get fewer downloads than those without.

TBH, the idea that videos are so important to marketing an app appears to be a bit of a myth that's been promoted by companies that spam people offering to create professional videos to promote their apps... for a fee, of course.

DoYouEvenLift

The Corinthian wrote: »

Not entirely.

If you don't market your game, then yes; you probably have a one in 10,000 chance (optimistically) of shooting up the ranks. Otherwise you need to invest time and money in the dark arts of app marketing to get noticed, especially in the all important first month that your app is on the market.

There are various methods of marketing your app, including incentivized installs, purchased advertising, use of social networks, in-house advertising, icon optimization and SEO. Some work better than others. Some work for certain apps and not others. And most importantly, just because it works today, doesn't mean it will tomorrow, as the rules are constantly changing.

But if done properly, it does work - not every time - but the majority of it you'll see a significant improvement on overall installs and thus revenue. The real trick, which generally requires deep pockets to achieve, is whereby your unit marketing cost falls below your unit revenue; it is at this point that you can spend indefinitely, because you'll ultimately turn a profit regardless.

As for optimizing revenue, either through advertising, sales or in-app purchases; there's another set of dark arts to know...

Not a very efficient way of marketing an app and I've even seen apps with videos get fewer downloads than those without.

TBH, the idea that videos are so important to marketing an app appears to be a bit of a myth that's been promoted by companies that spam people offering to create professional videos to promote their apps... for a fee, of course.

But what about the demand for Skate 2 after Pewdipie did a few videos on it being so high that EA actually ordered reprints? And after he uploaded his video on flappy bird there was also a spike in downloads?

Anyway, what would be better, efficient ways of marketing these kind of things?

The Corinthian

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

But what about the demand for Skate 2 after Pewdipie did a few videos on it being so high that EA actually ordered reprints? And after he uploaded his video on flappy bird there was also a spike in downloads?

Can't say. I do know that videos can work, but I've also seen them do the opposite. And while they might improve your search rankings a little, of far greater importance is what a user will see first - the icon (and increasingly for Android the feature graphic). And more important than that is appearing in a search in the first place. No one will even know you exist, let alone have a video until you can tackle those.

Anyway, what would be better, efficient ways of marketing these kind of things?

There's no one answer fits all, I'm afraid. Depends on the app. And even if there were, by the time someone reads through this thread in six months, it would be out of date already.

onemorechance

The Corinthian wrote: »

Can't say. I do know that videos can work, but I've also seen them do the opposite. And while they might improve your search rankings a little, of far greater importance is what a user will see first - the icon (and increasingly for Android the feature graphic). And more important than that is appearing in a search in the first place. No one will even know you exist, let alone have a video until you can tackle those.

There's no one answer fits all, I'm afraid. Depends on the app. And even if there were, by the time someone reads through this thread in six months, it would be out of date already.

I think ye are talking about different things here; he seems to be referring to a YouTube channel / user who has a huge following making a video reviewing or otherwise drawing attention to an app, while you are referring to the app owner making a video to promote their app in the app store.

With regard to the OP and their million dollar app; the course is likely all you need to know to create a game app, but not all game apps (obviously?). The Android API is huge and Android devices come with so many features and components; there are many opportunities for the innovative to create totally new concepts for games.

However, it's somewhere between a million and a billion to one chance that it contains all you need to know to make a game app that will be downloaded 100's of millions of times or make millions of dollars, or even the cost of insuring a Lamborghini, let alone buying one!

As Corinthian points out, marketing will likely be the key factor in determining the success of your game app(s), or any type of app.

The Corinthian

onemorechance wrote: »

I think ye are talking about different things here; he seems to be referring to a YouTube channel / user who has a huge following making a video reviewing or otherwise drawing attention to an app, while you are referring to the app owner making a video to promote their app in the app store.

Yes, you're right, I misunderstood what he meant. I don't think of such scenarios in terms of video but automatically I think on them as use of social media / reviews; my mistake. Yes, reviews by popular sites can help downloads immensely, but they are by no means the only way to do this.

Mint Aero

The Corinthian wrote: »

Do yourself a favour and buy yourself a Lotto ticket. With your attitude, you've a better chance of making your millions that way.

Thanks for the tip. I won 1.6 million pounds in the Euromillions last night.

KoolKid

Mint Aero, do not post in this thread again unless you have something worthwhile to say.
If you want to stir it up head off to After Hours.