The Relaunch

Read more of that discussion here.

Basically I have decided to try this, and make the results public. I'm only going to relaunch once though, not over and over.

I am using the game "Hidden Treasures 3", which made a whopping $43.65 the first time around despite have a 4.24 out of 5 rating.

Details:

1. The original launch date was Sept 30, 2013
2. The price was free, with ads
3. The game contained a basic story, a hints gimmick, and linear progression

For the relaunch:

1. The game is being spun "Classic", as in Classic Coka Cola
2. Ads are being removed, and a premium price set
3. Story, and linear progression are being removed
4. The hints gimmick is being removed and instead replaced with a social option that lets you get help from friends if you want it. Since the progression is no longer locked, you aren't required to find everything if you don't want too.
5. The game will be launched on Google Play, App Store, and Windows Store
6. I am fixing the single bug that showed up since 2013, and giving it a bit of a UI overhaul while I'm at it.
   
   From this:
   
   Spoiler

   
   
   To this:
   
   Spoiler

   
   
   Any suggestions or requests?
   I have all kinds of info like install charts and whatnot that I will post as I go.

 

Are these types of games popular? I know nothing about the genre, but it seems like a kids thing (thinking Where's Waldo), yet you seem to be targeting an older crowd with your themes (just based off the two that you've posted).

It probably would be too much trouble to change the levels at this point, but if you're open to that I would consider making them more interesting. I would think this type of game would have to have really quirky themes to have a chance to be a hit, but then again, like I said I know nothing about the genre.

As for the new UI, it's definitely better. Have you had anyone test it? I worry about the fact you have to scroll up an down to see all the items. That may not be an issue if the UI elements for each item are removed once you find them in the level. I do like the outlines of the items, though I'm guessing this makes the game considerably easier (which may be a good thing depending on the feedback you've received in the past, or may be a bad thing).

Anyways, congrats on releasing a game, and good luck with the re-release!

 

@gilley033
The initial target was female, and an age range of 18-49. The first two games in the series did very well.

As for your question on the UI itself, the objects are removed from the side panel as they are found. You could play without ever scrolling if you like.

Feedback showed that words alone sometimes made it impossible, due to people not being able to figure out what to look for in some situations. This was counteracted with hints, but this time around we are going "classic".

This is mostly an experiment to find if
@GarBenjamin and I (and everyone else in that thread who agreed with us), are correct in our assumptions about timing and market saturation.

 

Awesome, not my type of game but it looks like you've made some nice improvements. I wish you luck!

 

Check out the best HOG's on casual game forums, and compare and contrast with your own improvements.

The bar is very high, in quality of graphics, storylines and puzzles.

Eg. This is the No1 HOG on BigFishGames!

 

Don't the slew of changes you're making reduce its value as an experiment? In an experiment you should reduce any differences other than the one you're testing, whereas here you're deliberately introducing a bunch of changes. It's not the same game you're re-releasing - your income model is different, the UI has changed, and a bunch of other features have been modified as well.

I don't see anything against updating and re-releasing a game. It's purely in terms of being an "experiment" where I'm unsure of the value here.

 

@angrypenguin
The way I see it, the quality of this game has remained the same over the past three years while the quality of the competition has gone up.

Lets assign a number to quality, just for arguments sake.

Say in 2013 this had a quality of 30, while the rest of the games on the market had a quality of 40.
Currently, the games on the market have a quality of 80.

If I rereleased the game in the same state, it would still have a quality of 30. 30:40 in 2013 is not the same market environment as 30:80 in 2016.

Since I can't revert the market back to 2013 levels, I'm trying to adjust the games quality by a corresponding amount.
To be completely level in my example, I would need to bring the game up to a quality of 60, so as to have the same "value ratio".
30:40 in 2013 versus 60:80 in 2016

I think I make sense, but I'm not always good with these things called "words".

@Arowx is actually proving my point by showing what the HOG games are currently like.

 

Which is why you want to have a unique look that is timeless like say wind waker

 

Is it a hidden object game? Aren't there like 1000's of them on the app store already?

 

I can buy that you needed to bring the visuals up to today's par. My point is that many variables have changed, not all to do with quality. For instance, do you not feel that changing from freemium to premium will have a huge effect on your downloads on its own? How do you think that difference can be separated out from the time difference?

 

I pulled GarBen's quote from the other thread because IMO I think this is a very important point.
I agree with the point that many things can kill a game's success other than a game's quality, but I think it's important to point out - quality is the number one determining factor in the results of a game being successful or not.
We can point to a lot of games that have a high quality that didn't do well as expected, but those games have other mitigating factors that caused the game not to be 'as' successful as they were expected to be. So we can eliminate quality as the reason the game was not successful.
I'm hard pressed to find more than 2-3 examples of low quality games that were successful, beyond expectations. Flappy bird comes straight to mind, but that was an anomaly and would normally be eliminated for any logical study. And some would argue Flappy bird wasn't a low quality game - I think this is a weak argument - when compared to pretty much any other game that is not mvp.

My point is - IF the game is high quality and the game is unsuccessful - quality isn't the reason the game didn't succeed. Unreasonable expectations would be high on the list of reasons the game wasn't successful, but there are certainly others that are legitimate. Unmet promises, bad release date, price too high, targeting wrong demographic etc etc.

My other point is - IF a low quality game IS successful beyond expectation, other factors are why that game was successful, beyond quality. And each one of those games are all different and have different reasons they were successful, and those successes are difficult to replicate.

 

It's an interesting idea, but one I don't believe in myself. And I think that @theANMATOR2b's post above covers it pretty well.

While I suppose it is potentially feasible that a high-quality game could be released and go unnoticed, and that re-releasing that same game later on might have an affect on its sales, it's not something that's worth forming a business strategy around. And again, it absolutely relies on that game being really good to start with.

In my opinion, pulling your existing app from the store that has a respectable 4.24 rating, all the associated positive reviews, and a history of updates demonstrating a committed developer are a much greater asset to hang onto. Why throw those away for the extremely unlikely chance that re-releasing will cause that boost that skyrockets you to the top of the charts? Rather, I'd say keep providing good updates to that game and/or spend your time developing Hidden Treasures 4, continuing to monetize your existing fanbase and potentially attracting others.

Now if you want to compare the feature set and revenue generation from HT3 and HT4, that's totally valid and worth looking at. But trying to relaunch existing games blindly just to see if it'll take off feels like a waste of time, effort, and potentially the value of the brand you've built to date.

 

Some of the games that did well arent really that good in terms of gameplay, game-design or have bad controls but because they good looking graphics they will sell.

 

@theANMATOR2b & @Schneider21 make valid points.

I guess I really can't count this as an experiment in the way that I was thinking.

The market is extremely saturated, which is why I wanted to strip things out for a "classic" approach. In rethinking things though, I agree that too much has changed or is outside of control for a valid experiment.

I'm still going to go ahead with the relaunch though. Would anyone be interested if I went ahead and posted comparison charts of the launches "then versus now", like I was planning too?

 

@Moderators

Any chance I could get this thread moved to something (now) more appropriate like WIP?

 

Well here it starts then.

These are the "before" results of the original launch.

This is the daily installs by user, exploded out to all time because there were only a total of 4 installs in the first month. Keep in mind the game launched free with ads.



Next up we have a chart showing how well my user acquisition via Admob went during the first month.

Finally, this is how the ratings shook out over the 3 years that the game was available.


As you can see, it's pretty abysmal. This game never made enough money to even pay for the $73.37 of marketing that was pictured, let alone the follow up marketing and pretty high cost of the artwork.

Stay tuned for how the game fairs in its first month of re-launch.