MochiBits

Although I’ve seen a few apps out there that seem to be innovative, most of the apps around easily fall under existing categories and are mostly improvements or recognizable twists of old reliable concepts.  Our own apps, for example, were inspired by games we enjoyed in the past.  We made a few changes to keep things original enough, but we also wanted to make sure that the game would remain mostly familiar to the market.  Too much originality borders on the artsy or on the unrecognizable.

We actually have a couple of games we want to release in the next six months.  With a very high goal of releasing at least one a week.  The target is meant to be high so that we work like crazy to meet it.  One of the challenges of being an indie developer is living up to a deadline as you are accountable to yourself for the most part.  But I digress, the point here is about checking out the competition when we design a game.

Here are some of the things we do once we have a concept:

1. We check what’s out there to see if there’s room for our app.  We pretty much have to know who we are going up against when we pitch a game design.  We have to know that we are sufficiently different that we’re not another me-too product, which is a matter of pride for us, and we have to know that a decent share of the guys who like these games will like ours, too.  If we think we can get a segment of the market with our concept, then we go to step two.

2. Knowing that we can go against some of the apps in that category means we have a good idea.  But, the idea itself is not even 50% of the app.  What matters is being able to see the idea realized in the world of the iOS device.  if we can’t get a good user interface in place, we pretty much kill the idea or put it in the back burner.  Coming up with an interface we love is what this is all about.  It has to be intuitive more than anything else.  And, again, checking the competition to see if we got this right is important.  We take time to check out the interface of the games out there.  We know which ones we love, which ones we respect, and which ones we hate.  More importantly, we know why we feel that way about them.  We get what works and make sure we avoid what doesn’t.  Almost always, the most intuitive interface wins.  And we always try to make it intuitive.  Of course we can’t expect everyone to agree with our tastes but we should at least be certain of its simplicity or else not do it at all.  It should require, if at all, a one time tutorial that no one will need to revisit.  Ever.  If you think for even a second that this isn’t true for your interface, we recommend that you revisit it.

3. Naming the game and making the icon.  Again, we have to look at the competition here.  I mentioned an app has to remain recognizable even when it is original.  You can’t have a cute face for an icon and then people open the app and find out the game has almost nothing to do with the cute face.  You can’t have a word tile and have an app that doesn’t use a word tile.  At the same time, you can’t have a mature and serious looking icon and inside you’ve got eye candy that nobody will guess you have.  The same goes for the name.  Your name has to let the potential buyer have an idea of what the game is all about.  Thankfully, because there are so many familiar big hits out there already, sometimes a game just needs to look like (in terms of the icon) or sound like (in terms of the name) a popular game.  I don’t mean an outright copy.  Let’s have some self-respect here.  But I am talking about the overall look and feel being familiar. If you’ve gone to a bookstore and seen the bestseller section or even the chick lit section or pay close attention to how movie posters are done, you’ll see that a lot of them look like the last one that was a big hit.  It’s so people will relate the good feeling they had with the last one with your new, untested product.  It works and you should respect that technique.  And it helps later on when someone sees your customer playing your game and they ask what the game is.  And it also helps for impulse purchases when someone sees your icon or reads your name.  You want a name that has great recall and says what it’s all about so it is both memorable, searchable, and identifiable when the time comes.  There are some games out there that says nothing about what the game is about.

Not everyone will agree to this approach.  There are games out there that we’ve seen hit the top ten that defy any logic we can think of.  But we feel this is the approach we want and we think this approach works when you don’t have the marketing budget that allows for the noise needed to give attention to your product.

We appreciate your thoughts on this.  Do feel free to share them at our blog.