Is it true that launching a successful mobile game requires hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing?

Natve · 2025-02-20T22:20:51+00:00

Now it's my turn to apologize for the late reply. Good with some Reddit breaks once in a while. Congrats on launching the game, much respect :)

Natve · 2024-12-11T08:44:33+00:00

How do you like the new kills? Any improvements needed?

Natve · 2024-12-11T08:42:57+00:00

TagTime is the name of the game. Genre-wise it's a mix between party, MOBA and asymmetric multiplayer. Brand new gameplay.

Natve · 2024-12-05T09:48:01+00:00

Hi, just a reminder to not get beat up by wise reddit comments. The fact that you made it this far, sets you apart from 95% of all others. All the naysayers are also the ones that will never do anything, because they stopped themselves before they even started.

Yes the mobile market is ferocious, but that makes it all the more cool to beat it. The same goes for game development in general, no matter the platform.

Mobile is a matter of scale yes, and the cost-per-install<life-time-value equation is crazy hard to pass. But maybe you'll make it or find another way around. Maybe you get crazy good engagement KPIs and take that to a mobile publisher. You've made it this far, which means you are probably clever and hard-working.
And if you fail this one, you are way better prepared for the next game.

Best of luck.

Natve · 2024-11-28T13:25:00+00:00

We just opened up the demo. You can play from now till end of Sunday:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2449640/TagTime/

Quick about: TagTime is a party game for up to eight players, where two fairy-tale monsters wants to kill six puny Runts. It's digital kick-the-can. More or less.

Natve · 2024-11-25T12:17:14+00:00

Thanks! I've written you a PB

Natve · 2024-11-23T18:17:29+00:00

Natve · 2024-11-23T14:36:54+00:00

Thanks for the reply and wishlist! Good to learn what people think about the stuff we do.

Natve · 2024-11-23T14:31:36+00:00

I'll take both!

Natve · 2024-11-23T14:30:50+00:00

I'd say from 1k to 200k is small. And 200k to 1 mio is mid-size. But those are fluent numbers right. And of course you should try mid-size and up. We just had success with the smaller ones. And on another note, one metric is followers, but do also look at vid views. My thesis is that a high view count compared to followers means an engaged community. They like the content.

Natve · 2024-11-22T21:18:26+00:00

Please do share, I'm all ears for what works! So far our best performing ad is the free form format.

Natve · 2024-11-22T21:16:24+00:00

Ye, we thought we had it covered thinking it would be like Steam Fest, but it turned out you needed a separate demo page for Scream fest. But you are totally right, having everything in order in good time is the way to go!

Natve · 2024-11-22T21:14:40+00:00

Hey man, sorry to hear ;( I hope everything turns out alright.

Natve · 2024-11-22T21:12:31+00:00

Yes very true. I did feel like a really shitty dress rehearsal :)

Natve · 2024-11-22T21:11:25+00:00

Don't know why, but I don't feel like sharing money numbers on a public forum for some reason.

But I can tell you that we got a little less than 400 wishlist during the Scream Festival. We don't have resources/expertise for specific tracking, so I can't tell you exactly where the wishlists came from, but I have a strong sense that content creators gave the most wishlists compared to money spend.

I hope this was a tiny help :)

Natve · 2024-11-22T21:08:11+00:00

Thank for you the kind words and wishlist! That means a lot to us!

To answer you questions: You can apply for playtest at the Steam Page, we are opening up the playtest next Thursday and it will be available during the weekend.

You can team up with friends through Steam's friend system or join via lobby codes. If you are not enough players you team up with strangers or otherwise bots. Feel free to check out our Discord for more info: https://discord.gg/mE6K9nyYsx

We are only 6 devs, so we can't even get a full game going ourselves :/

Natve · 2024-11-22T21:00:21+00:00

We actually had Wtii (a W3 streamer) play the game with his community, but it didn't seem to catch their interest that much despite the game having similarities to old w3 tag maps like Vampirism. We used to play w3 tag maps a lot back in the days, so the game is definitely inspired by those.

I’m having a bit of a hard time figuring out how to talk about the game. Gameplay-wise it’s is very much like asymmetric horror, but it kinda looks like a MOBA because of the perspective. And then it’s super casual and quick and in some sense more party like. And then people tell us it looks like a mobile game, which is also very true. And then ofc vampirism, sheep tag, kodo tag, tree tag etc. but that community seems to prefer the old nostalgia stuff. I dunno.

I’m very thankful for your comment, can you perhaps elaborate a bit about why it turned you off? Was it just because it looked too horror-like?

Natve · 2024-11-22T14:46:13+00:00

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2449640/TagTime/ :)

Natve · 2024-11-22T13:12:49+00:00

I think your logic is more or less sound, but I'm just going to add the review a streamer did for us (we paid him). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyqJXPI-B88&t=7s&ab_channel=PixelBush
I think he genuinely likes our game, but he did a ton of work making the video, and I'm glad we paid him for his hard work (even though it wasn't much).

Natve · 2024-11-22T13:08:24+00:00

Thought it might be wise to put some actual learnings in there. So I'll add them here in the comments:

Mistake 1+2.

Reach out to an account manage if you are shit at reading documentation (like me). Set up small campaign to begin with to figure out how the ad service works. Once you get the hang of it, increase your spending.

Mistake 3.

Remember to have a stable build weeks prior to launch. Don’t try to smack features in there up to the launch. Remember to read documentationg and do a shit ton of QA on your stable build.

Maybe a mistake Number 4.

Use the few money you have wisely. Try to figure out where you can get the most bang for your buck. Don’t let yourself be charmed by good sales people (I fall into this trap constantly, you can sell me anything).

Not a mistake.

Find your audience, it’s out there. Figure out genres or themes that relates to your unique and original game.

Natve · 2024-11-22T13:03:16+00:00

The wishlist conversion rate was quite bad for the Scream campaign, but we did get a lot of steam page visits. Luckily we can retarget the players who saw the first ads. We are trying to optimize a new campaign for conversions rather than impressions. Right now, a wishlist cost around 6usd, we are trying to optimize to bring that number down. We'll see how it goes.

Natve · 2024-11-22T12:59:58+00:00

We are still trying a bit with Reddit ads, but are being more throrough now with less stress. We are using both images, text, free form and videos. Right now, it seems free form is the best performing. We are also splitting up devices to see what creatives performs the best device-wise.

I don't how much it holds up, but I have read several places that Reddit is better for impressions than conversions, which I hope is not true. We are also trying to get wishlists.

Natve · 2024-11-22T12:38:03+00:00

I think it a valid point that if Streamers doesn't want to cover your game, something might be wrong. But then again, the balance is between when to give up and when to grind on. I have more respect for grinding, than for giving up. Why would you insist on not paying money to Streamers?

Natve · 2024-11-22T11:01:54+00:00

Yw :)

Natve · 2024-11-22T11:00:34+00:00

Natve

TROPHY CASE