Month: October 2016

Game a Week game 1, week 1

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I decided to make a game a week. The rules are:

No how far along the game is I have to move on after the week is over.
No matter how far along it is I will at least release it as beta to the public when the week is over.
I can still go back and improve it as long as I’m also working on a new one during the week.
The timer restarts on Monday.
Try and make a a variety of games instead of doing the same thing over and over.
Must release on at least android and html5

I’m thinking making a game a week will force me to get better at all aspects of game making, especially if it means people seeing my terrible games. It will force me to get better and not be as embarrassed by them.

My first game is Sooap Drop. It’s a typo but I thought it was kind of funny to not fix it.

Minigames Universe post release

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The Good:

I like the gameplay diversity and use of vibration and accelerometers. I think most games don’t utilize those things nearly enough. Using the accelerometers add a lot to the gameplay, it allows much more variety to the usual swipe and poke.

Though subtle, I think the vibration adds a little to the game.  I actually can’t think of any mobile games that use vibration. Consoles use it and it can add a lot. The only reason I can think of to keep it out is users might think it a notification and not know it is part of the game. Some cheap tablets don’t even have vibration.

Each “minigame” is different from the next and has different gameplay mechanics. With that said, I could of made a separate game with almost each minigame. Every game required compartmentalized gameplay and graphics.

I did everything myself and didn’t buy anything or reuse someones assets  with very rare exceptions. I think  that makes the game much more unique.

The bad:
I  got a digital tablet about half way through and I already wasn’t a very good artist before. So some of the artwork isn’t very consistent. At  times there is  low quality pixel art and other times it’s higher quality stuff I did by hand.

It took about a year to get it to the form it’s in now. While it’s not completely terrible I feel if I were to start making the same game now it would be much better and done in less time. Of course over that year I gathered all the skills it took to make it.

I had to take a bunch of stuff out because it wouldn’t work with some devices. Some cheap/old tablets would have the sensors reversed or they wouldn’t work at all.

The ugly

Got suspended from adMob

I lost my keystore file and had to make a new game listing. it wasn’t a total travesty because it was only in beta, but it was still a bummer.The game wasn’t ready and I accidentally pushed it live from beta It turned out to be a good thing because it had me scrambling to get it fixed. Who knows how long I would of taken trying to get it “perfect”.

The game doesn’t show up at all on the play store unless you search for it exactly, and what’s the point of that? I paid for a service from Fiverr that researches keywords and writes/rewrites your description for the play store to boost the ranking. The service itself was $25 and it takes up to 5 days for the service and up to another 8 weeks for results to show. So who knows if it will actually work.

Things I’ve learned update

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Making original content that is also interesting/fun is really hard. Everything has already been done, only better than what you have.

The bigger the game, the more stupid little details you have to deal with. The more parts there are the harder it is to make everything work cohesively. It’s a never ending cycle of fixing things then fixing things you broke from other fixes.

I’ve gotten better at recognizing errors and how to fix them. After getting the same ones you start to get a sort of”muscle memory”. I can actually read them and figure out where they came from instead of having to constantly google them

Find unbiased feedback. For example, I have a friend that hates mobile games and I had him play mine to have him point out everything bad about it(which was a lot). Most other people close to me would just say ( iTS sO fUN!)

Watch people play. If different people are getting stuck at the same place where they don’t know what to do, it’s not intuitive enough.

 

Suspended from Admob

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So I got a 30 day suspension from Admob..

Here’s the wall of text email I got:

Hello,

We recently detected invalid activity in your AdMob account. As a result, we’ve temporarily suspended your account for 30 days. During this time, no ads will be served on your mobile applications.

Why was my account suspended?

We found that you have clicked on your own AdMob ads in a non test-mode setting, which is prohibited by the AdMob Program Policies.

We understand that you may want to know more about the invalid activity we’ve detected. Because this information could be used to circumvent our proprietary detection system, we’re unable to provide our publishers with information about specific account activity, including any apps or users that may have been involved.

This is a one-time, non-appealable suspension. After 30 days, we’ll automatically re-enable ad-serving on your account.

If you need more time to identify and stop the invalid activity, please remove your AdMob ad code from your apps to prevent ads from being displayed.

Please note that if any additional issues are found in your AdMob account in the interim period of suspension, your account may be permanently disabled even before the suspension period ends. Please review our list of top reasons for account closure to help you understand the possible reasons that publishers may have their accounts disabled.

If your account is found to have invalid activity in the future, it will be subject to additional penalties, and may be permanently disabled.

How does the suspension affect my payments?

You will be eligible to begin receiving payments again once your account generates sufficient valid traffic.

As a result of the suspension, we are withholding the unpaid revenue in your account and refunding the balance, along with Google’s share, to affected advertisers. In addition, once ad-serving resumes on your apps, we will hold any future payments for 30 days—you will earn revenue during this time, and, provided your account remains in good standing, that revenue will be paid in the next payment period.

 

Fair enough, I guess I did click on them a few times while testing and I’m only losing out on about $20. I didn’t get any warning though and the email is saying I can get BANNED at any time with absolutely no warning. I’ve read horror stories from people saying they lost their account with much more money than I had. I think what I should of done would  have been to have test ads enabled. I think I had them disabled because I thought that it would enable test ads on every device, but I think you can put in your device ID and it will show test ads only on that device. I switched from AdMob to AdColony which was easy enough. It’s not like I was putting in thousands of clicks a day and making thousands of dollars. It’s was only a couple clicks while testing. It seems harsh.

I think even having someone play on the same network as you on their device  count against you because it’s on the same IP.

I switched to  AdColony because it was the first ad network I found besides AdMob that Gamemaker has an extension for heh. I haven’t seen anything about people getting suspended from AdColony. They seem less closed off compared to AdMob( from the tiny amount of experience I have with  them) I probably won’t hit the threshold($100) for getting a payout for a while anyway.

 

So what I learned is:

Don’t click your own ads
Read the terms of service
Set up test devices with test ads
Don’t even have friends click on ads