Amir Rajan
Pastafarian. Coder: Ruby, JavaScript, C#, ObjectiveC, F#. OSS: NSpec, Oak Mvc, Canopy F#. Creator of A Dark Room for iOS.
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.
Making it to the #1 Spot in the App Store - Fast
By Amir Rajan
