(Almost) A Year in the App Store: A 20 minute Case Study
Julian Farrior, CEO / Founder
Snapshot:
• Casual games for a new breed of mobile gamers
• Founded 04/01/09
• Products have been live for 9.5 months
• 21,000,000+ installs to date
• 4 products peaked in the top 5 overall
• 1 product never touched the top 100
• $2,300,000 in net revenue
• $1,300,000 app store sales (net)
• $1,000,000 mobile ad sales (net)
• Raised $145,000 in initial startup capital
• 7 full time employees (+8 contractors)
• Boulder, CO based
#3 Paid #1 Free
#3 Free #4 Paid
#26 Strategy
Ragdoll Blaster
Paper Toss
RDB Lite PT: World Tour
Harbor Havoc 3D
#41 Strategy
? Free
? Paid
? Free
#12 Simulation
HH3D Lite
PT: Ad FreeRagdoll Blaster 2
Strike Knight Physics-Ball
? Free
? Paid
? Free ? Free
NinJump
PT: Time Traveler
Dr. Shocker
Caverns
? Free
Harbor Havoc 3D
? Free
Dynamite Surfing
? Free
Cat & Mouse
? Free
RDB2 Lite
• Assembled a talented (and experienced) team
• Focused on distribution
• Gave away something of value for free, leveraged heavily
• Diversified revenue streams
• App store sales (enormous downward pricing pressure)
• Mobile advertising
• In-app purchases
• Kept production cycles short
• Designed for the medium
• Designed for the audience
• Created economies
• Met the press
• Worked with Apple
• Listened to users
What we did right:
Paper Toss – Monthly Impressions/Levers:
December 2009 January 2010
Total Impressions 402,000,000 411,000,000
House 21,000,000 224,000,000
Advertiser 381,000,000 187,000,000
Total Revenue (net) $468,000 $336,000
App Store Sales $89,000 $217,000
Ad Sales $379,000 $119,000
Monthly Sessions 46,500,000 50,000,000
Monthly Uniques 6,800,000 7,300,000
Ragdoll Blaster Daily Downloads: Catalysts
Featured by Apple in: “What We’re Playing”
RDB Lite Goes Live
RDB House Ads in “Paper Toss”
Featured by Apple in: “What’s Hot”RDB Lite House Ads in “Paper Toss”
Price Dropped from $1.99 to $.99
Holiday Lift
Heavy house ad rotation in Jan.
• Harbor Havoc 3D
• Launched in an overly saturated market (line drawing games)
• Flight Control and 15+ others
• Pushed for press coverage too soon
• App rejected by Apple - delayed launch, press efforts wasted
• Development cycle ran upwards of 3 months
• Did not beta test enough
• Gameplay was not quite ready (FF button, saving game, etc.)
• Botched lite version with wrong free level
• Cannibalized sales
• Overly reliant on potential PT lift
• Designed to be a paid app not a free app
• Would have been better as the latter
• Have not yet diversified into in-app purchases
• Need to scale quicker – window is small
What we did wrong:
What we want to do now:
• Blow out distribution, 2010 focus
• 5-10 free apps per quarter
• Keep the pipe wide and impressions high
• Expand mobile advertising capacity
• Explore in-app purchases
• Continue to build/expand franchises
• Aggressively grow team/output
• Scale revenue curve
• Push free products to other platforms?
• Build our own backend tools?
• Explore turn based gaming
• License content
• Increase social elements in games
• Continue to build a brand
• Free with $.99 buyouts
• Narrow window to truly scale distribution
• Power of free is starting to catch on
• Zynga / CrowdStar / Playfish / Playdom / DeNA will become serious about the iPhone
• What does the Quattro acquisition by Apple mean for developers / advertisers / users?
• Why hasn’t the blueprint for virtual goods yet exploded on mobile?
• Time to move is now on turn based games
• Waiting for Android (or any other comp. platform) to become meaningful
• How do I best communicate directly with users? How important is this?
Concerns:
• Brand will matter (more)
• Distribution will matter (more)
• Data will matter (more)
• Mobile Advertising will change the game
• 2010 will be exciting, fallout/rollup has begun
• Non-gaming audience will continue to expand
• Mitigating volatility in the business is crucial
• Applying portfolio theory
• Maintaining our footprint is critical
• Have fun, it beats working for a living
Final Thoughts (Predictions)
Q&A