Secrets to the Success of Temple Run on the iPhone
Temple Run has quick turned into the must play game for the beginning of 2012. Anyone who has spent a few minutes with the game will become very addicted very quickly. The game is free but has risen to be the top grossing game in the App Store which has earned the three person development team millions of dollars.
Most App Store developers that I have talked to are very surprised how a simple game like Temple Run can garner so many downloads and profit. I have studied the game and the reactions of users very closely and have discovered quite a few secrets that will help other game developers copy the success of Temple Run. You will be able to model your current projects or future projects to take advantage of the lessons learned from the Temple Runs success.
Secret #1 - Keep the Game Play Simple
Temple Run is a very simple game and has only a few moves that the user needs to master. These moves include swiping right or left, swiping up or down, and tilting the iPhone from side to side. That is it. There are no complicated controls to learn or complex moves to master. You simply swipe up to jump or swipe right to go right.
Secret #2 - Keep the Free Game Free
Releasing a game for free is very difficult for most developers who have spent a lot of time and money in developing a game, but as Temple Run has shown, if done right, it can pay off more than if the game was released paid. Temple Run was actually released as paid in August of 2011, but didn't garner enough sales so it was given away for free and then its sale took off.
The best way to make money off of a free game is to STAY AWAY FROM ADS and monetize In-App Sales. Not everyone is going to make in-app purchases but there are enough people that will so you can make a hefty profit. The most important part of in-app purchases is don't make them a requirement to do well in the game. Too many games almost require in-app purchases in order to beat a game or make any real progress. Most people will feel like the game is really just a paid game but instead of paying to download, you have to pay to play. Temple Run mastered this by allowing the purchased of coins to get power-ups and other extras, but it also allows the free users to obtain a reasonable amount of coins through normal game play. You don't feel like you are missing anything by not buy coins, but also buying coins doesn't give you a tremendous advantage in the game. You will still need to practice like everyone else.
Secret #3 - Competition with oneself and others
Secret #4 - Make it different everytime
Secret #5 - Don't make it hard, but don't make it easy
Secret #6 - Have multiple goals to achieve
Secret #7 - Everything has to work perfectly
Secret #8 - Make it fun to play
Why no one will buy your iPhone App idea
You have a great iPhone idea, and you know it will make millions! All you need is for someone to take your idea and develop it, while you sit back and wait for the end result. Then you can sell your app and make some easy money, right?
Forget that right now, it's not going to happen.
No one is going to write an app with you if all you have to contribute is an idea!
Pretend for a moment that you have a great idea for a book, not an app. How would you go about getting it written and published? Would you go to a forum and advertise looking for an author to write it for you? No, you would have to get off your butt and write it yourself. I have heard that a friend of Frank Herbert (author of Dune) asked Herbert to author the friend's idea and split the profits 50/50. Herbert refused, even though the guy was a good friend -- Herbert's reply was basically that ideas are easy; the writing is the hard part. Think about it for a minute -- would YOU want to have a friend come up to you, tell you a few sentences, then have you spend months hunched over a keyboard turning his few sentences into the Great American Novel? I doubt it. If you /did/ spend months writing that book, would you want to give half of the money to that guy? I don't think so.
Now pretend for a moment that you have a great idea for a movie, not a game. How would you go about getting it made into a movie? You would have to begin by becoming a movie industry professional, get several movies under your belt, become a producer or studio executive, and off you go! That's the "Do It From The Inside". There's also the "Do It Yourself" route: spend a lot of money (tens of thousands at the cheapest), write and direct it yourself, with the help of actors and technicians you hire. The end result may never get into theaters everywhere but could well prove your worth to a real studio. Either way, by the time you're done, you're in the movie biz. And you earned it by hard work, not by waving your arms for a few minutes in front of a cigar smoker who then throws wads of cash at you -- it doesn't work that way.
Okay, enough pretending. Your idea is not for a novel or a movie -- it's for a app. How do you go about getting it made?
First step: write the app design yourself.
Second Step: Develop the app yourself or pay someone else to develop the app for you.
That is all it takes!
Find iPhone App & Game Developers
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