Making it to the #1 Spot in the App Store

@amirrajan

Binge Coding on Mac for 3 months

Meaningful Work

Teh Email

Me: "I <3 ADR, but it kinda sucks. Let me port your game and make it not suck so bad."

 

Michael: "Go for it -_-"

Don't do it. What I experienced is synonymous to getting a lottery ticket.

TL;DR;

But if you must, make sure you believe in what you're building.

First Week of Downloads

57 downloads...

Obsession With Twitter

30 dl's...

less than 10 downloads per 1000 followers

Notable interactions (but, don't just target the people with the most followers).

First Unsolicited Review

Forum Entry by the TouchArcade Bot

Turkey Day!

All this happend in the same week!

Here are the download numbers

203 downloads...

December 27th, the day my life changed

The results...

56 downloads...

Now what?

I posted more stuff....

Promotions and Engagement

Give aways for a month...

Now what?

And the results...

Now what...

Then...

And the results...

The results after being free two days...

15,000 downloads

I "happily" gave up.

November: $  555
December: $  943
January:  $1,300
February: $1,760
March:    $2,500

Added a well placed review button.

Did an iPad release.

Did a postmortem on /r/GameDev. Presented about it at a local user group.

Then...

I got bombarded by 1 star reviews.

Fraudsters!! - This game is awful. All the reviews are fake. The people behind this have broken the law as this is clearly fraudulent activity designed to get you to part with your money for false promises. Absolute disgrace. Pure theft. Pure criminality.

To summarise, I would actually rather be in a dark room, with nothing else is in it, until my untimely death before playing this app again. The endless time that is spent tapping could be spent building a time machine that would take you back to the time you pressed 'install' just so you can slap yourself in the face. Take your 70p and go purchase a lettuce and tap that, it would be more productive... And at the end you have a lettuce.

Then...

A Dark Room started to climb in the US.

#1 RPG. #5 Game. #10 App.

Then...

Eventually A Dark Room was forgotten.

The interview we did for the New Yorker published. 

MAKE IT FREE!

Made ADR free again.

Day 1: 36,831

Day 2: 111,209

Day 3: 203,882

Day 4: 223,006

Day 5: 213,379

Day 6: 187,014

Day 7: 43,307

Total: 1,018,628

45 days after 1 Million Free Downloads

45 day average before: 907

45 day average after: 1,022

45 day average after (including free days): 901 

Low point after 60 days later: 200 

After all was said and done....

Total Paid Downloads: 715,000

Revenue: $707,850

After Apple's 30% cut: $495,495

After 50/50 split on profits: $247,748

After taxes of 45% (income + self employment): $136,261

Income: $9,732 a month (with a falling average)

Time to actualize profits: 14 months

$60.83 (net) per hour working full time, which is $111 per hour (before taxes)

YTD 2015

Income (Before Taxes)

$140,000

 

$57,000 Net

$44.00 an hour (net)

$80 an hour (gross)

... but three games

Would I do it again?

Yep.

"I was inspired by your game, I would like to create my own game using javascript. I am 14 years old which also makes it difficult (or maybe easier as I have a lot of time) to do this. How do I get started?"

Reached the world with tech.

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