mercredi 22 avril 2015

Developer Diary #11: The release on GooglePlay

So it was with great joy that I finally could release the game on the PlayStore. But my hopes were quickly crushed.

The first disappointment came with the achievements. I programmed the trophies on GooglePlay and integrated them in the game. It worked. But the game became dangerously unstable. I tried different ways to get a bit more stability but to no avail. I had to do a lot of cuts to fit the game in a tablet and it seemed that trophies were the drop that made the cup overflow (I don't know if that's the right expression...). Anyway, I had to get rid of achievements.

Second huge disappointment: the promotion from Google. Death Pirate never appeared anywhere on the Playstore frontend. It didn't even appear in the new apps section. I've never seen this before. On Steam, Desura, the Xbox live, the PSN, you always have the newest games or apps appearing on the news page of the store. I checked it many times and it only featured big apps like candy Crush Saga or Clash of Clans. Even if you searched for the exact name of the game, it would only appear on the 5th or 6th spot in the search page. It's just like throwing a book in the middle of the ocean and waiting for it to become a best-seller...

Do I have to pay to be considered as a regular developper? My game is not big enough to be qualified as a viable app? Why would we promote apps that obviously don't need any promotion since they are already all over the place??? It's something I really don't understand. And it's the same everywhere. Big medias promote stuff that don't need advertisement. When you see the reviews of the last Assassin's Creed or the online game Destiny and you compare it with the press coverage and the indirect promotion it gets, you wonder if that system is not a bit corrupted... Now, everybody is OK to say that these games were not that good... some even says they were particularly buggy. So... Isn't it time to promote new stuff instead of cash cows?

jeudi 9 avril 2015

vendredi 3 avril 2015

Official release: tomorrow!

Hi,

Just a little message to announce that Death Pirate SP will be release tomorrow, saturday april 4th 2015!

I hope you'll enjoy the game as much as I enjoyed crafting it!

The Steam version is going well and will be available very soon.