Tag: gamemaker

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.

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

 

Day 2

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So I’m one day out from the accidental release. The problem I’m having is visibility. The only way to get the page seen seems to  be by linking the game directly to people or typing the exact name in. I think if I would have done more advertising and I was established this wouldn’t be as much of a problem. As it stands the game doesn’t show up at all in the play store search. No one can play it if they don’t know about it. My ultimate goal is to have it be the top result when searched. Being on the front page would be huge. I’m learning SEO and marketing on the fly and I’m throwing out tags left and right.

I’m trying to get people playing it to get reviews in. Even bad reviews would be nice so I could get feedback. I got one of my friends to play it so I’m going to go over with pen and paper to take notes.

The screen recording app I used left stuttering in the video which looks terrible in the trailer. It makes it look like the game isn’t optimized well. My phone is “old” so maybe if i record in 720p it will perform better.

Play here now

Minigames Universe released!

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So I released my first game today(on accident). I’m both excited and nervous. After 8 months It’s finally out to for the world to see. I’m hopeful but I don’t expect too much because everyone always says that the your first game is never successful.

It took about 8 months to start and release but a couple months of that I was just sitting on it and making tiny changes and working on the company itself. I had a game before this one that took about a year to make and I didn’t even finish. It’s just collecting dust. I’m thinking I can drastically reduce the time it takes to pump out games, maybe bring it down to a month or 2.

I didn’t even plan on releasing Minigames Universe now but I accidentally took it out of beta and put it into production.(whoops)

Some things I’ve learned are:

1.Start the game with barebones features and add them in later. If you get bored down the line and don’t want to work on it anymore it’s easier to release it with a couple features than it is to try and mush together a bunch of unfinished features.

2.Start advertising right away.  Tweet everything, make gameplay videos. Do anything to get your game/brand out. My mistake was waiting until the very last minute.

3. Backup EVERYTHING. I had everything backed up and I reinstalled my OS. Lo and behold I missed one thing.. the keystore file. Without the keystore It’s impossible to update the app on the playstore so I had to create a new playstore listing and delete the old one. Luckily It was only in beta so I didn’t lose too much.

4. If you have a good idea, prototype it first. It’s much easier spend a little time protyping  to see if an idea sucks than it is to spend months working on it just to find out you wasted all those manhours

5.Pre-plan ad placement. Instead of making the game first then putting ads in at the end, plan to make ads part of the game so their not thrown in to make them feel more natural and organic

 

Get it here!