Sivart Technology's Word Crank is Approved for Google Play for Education

We were recently notified by Google, that our word game, Word Crank, has successfully passed review and is approved for inclusion in Google Play for Education!

What is Google Play for Education?  "Google Play for Education is a destination where schools can find great, teacher-approved, educational apps and videos on Play Store. Teachers can filter content by subject matter, grade and other criteria." -- Google

We are so excited to have this opportunity and look forward to seeing what results!

Google Play Games App Overview

Last Wednesday, Google released the Google Play Games App.  According to Google:  "[it's] is the easiest way for you to discover new games, track achievements and scores, and play with friends around the world."

What I really enjoy about the app is the ability to easily see all of the games that I currently have installed that include the Game Play Services.  Previously you basically had to just look at the developer's release notes to find out if they had incorporated Game Services.

Furthermore, the release of this app is definitely an opportunity for developers who may have been sitting on the fence on whether they should give the Game Services a try.  You essentially get free exposure for your game by integrating with Google's service.  This could also really drive engagement, as each game the user plays is displayed prominently with a badge showing the current number of achievements they have won.

The interface is very simple and clean.  You have several pathways to discovering new games and new people for your Google+ circles.  Have you downloaded the new Google Play Games app yet?  What are your first impressions? Leave comments below.

[Android Tips]: Play Store 'staged rollouts' with Google Analytics

Recently the Google Play Store has added the ability for developers to release a new version of their application's apk progressively by means of staged rollouts.  According to Google this allows you to "get feedback on your new app or app update early in its development and make sure your users are happy with the results."  With the release of the latest version of Word Crank, our flagship game, we decided to take advantage of this new feature.

We released version 1.5.0 of our application to 20% of users initially and then monitored the results in Google Analytics.  In order to distinguish the engagement of the users on the latest version of the app from the others, we created two new custom segments in our primary Dashboard view.  The first segment included all users with version 1.5.0 of the application and the other segment included all other versions of the application.



 

Once these segments were created we monitored the statistics for a few days and then gradually increased the percentage of rollout to 100%.  This is an extremely useful tool in making sure your new release increases user engagement and the desired traffic goals of your application.

Have you tried staged rollouts?  Leave a comment below.

[Android Tips]: Getting users to +1 your app

In order to improve your application's ranking in the Google Play store, you should get users to +1 your app.  You can do this using GooglePlayServices and the PlusOneButton Android UI element.  Here is a simple layout file that includes the plus one button:

[code]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="horizontal"
android:padding="10dip"
android:background="@android:color/black" >

<com.google.android.gms.plus.PlusOneButton
xmlns:plus="http://schemas.android.com/apk/lib/com.google.android.gms.plus"
android:id="@+id/plus_one_button"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
plus:size="tall"
plus:annotation="inline" />

</LinearLayout>
[/code]

It creates the following User Interface Component:


 

 

Then in your MainActivity's onResume method you can check to see if the layout is visible and then initialize the button:

[code]
@Override
protected void onResume() {
super.onResume();

if (plusLayout.getVisibility() == View.VISIBLE) {
// Refresh the state of the +1 button each time the activity receives focus.
mPlusOneButton.initialize(mPlusClient, APP_URL, PLUS_ONE_REQUEST_CODE);
}

}

[/code]

 

The APP_URL is the link to your app on the Google Play Store

The PLUS_ONE_REQUEST_CODE is any integer value >= 0

Building on the AppRater code base, you can modify it to set a flag when you want to show the plus_button_layout to the user, similar to the following:

[code]

public class AppRater {
private final static int DAYS_UNTIL_PROMPT = 1;
private final static int LAUNCHES_UNTIL_PROMPT = 4;

public static void app_launched(Context mContext) {
SharedPreferences prefs = mContext.getSharedPreferences(PreferenceConstants.PREFERENCE_NAME, Activity.MODE_PRIVATE);
if (prefs.getBoolean(PreferenceConstants.PREFERENCE_SHOW_PLUS, false)) { return ; }

SharedPreferences.Editor editor = prefs.edit();

// Increment launch counter
long launch_count = prefs.getLong("launch_count", 0) + 1;
editor.putLong("launch_count", launch_count);

// Get date of first launch
Long date_firstLaunch = prefs.getLong("date_firstlaunch", 0);
if (date_firstLaunch == 0) {
date_firstLaunch = System.currentTimeMillis();
editor.putLong("date_firstlaunch", date_firstLaunch);
}

// Wait at least n days before opening
if (launch_count >= LAUNCHES_UNTIL_PROMPT) {
if (System.currentTimeMillis() >= date_firstLaunch +
(DAYS_UNTIL_PROMPT * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000)) {
editor.putBoolean(PreferenceConstants.PREFERENCE_SHOW_PLUS, true);
editor.commit();
return ;
}
}

editor.commit();
}

}

[/code]



*** Download our first game: Word Crank today for free: Available on iOS and Android***

Seems People Like Word Crank

Just a few quotes from some of our players:

[caption id="attachment_348" align="aligncenter" width="620"] User Reviews of Word Crank[/caption]

Game Development: Using Google Analytics to track user flow

Recently we have begun to take advantage of the flow visualizations available from Google Analytics for analyzing user behavior in Word Crank.



What is a Flow Report?

"Flow Reports in Google Analytics illustrate the paths visitors take through your website...In one graphic, you can see how visitors enter, engage, and exit your site. " -- Google Analytics

One aspect of these diagrams that I especially appreciate is the ability to compare two different time frames and see how the user flow differs.  I really recommend this if you include a new feature in your application and want to see what impact it has on user behavior.

How to Compare Two Dates:

1. Select Compare to Past


2. Choose a second date range


3. Choose similar time periods ( full months or weeks )

Happy flow reporting!

Being Amazon's Free App of the Day: The Results

On Monday, August 27th, 2012, Word Crank Elite was the Free App of the Day in the Amazon App Store.  We were very excited about being given the opportunity and promised to share the results (find out how this opportunity came about, here).  So overall, we feel that the promotion was a success.  We were able to increase our game's visibility in the App Store and received some valuable feedback.

 

Here are a few statistics from the past week which help highlight the impact on our traffic:

Aug. 27 - Sep. 2 Visits: 50,677 Unique Visitors: 14,201 Pageviews: 38,010 Pages / Visit: 0.75 Avg. Visit Duration: 00:11:17

Aug. 19 - Aug. 26 Visits: 1,508 Unique Visitors: 251 Pageviews: 1,169 Pages / Visit: 0.78 Avg. Visit Duration: 00:15:16

Based on the above table you can see that we had a huge influx of traffic; an increase of over 33x. We also saw an increase in the number of downloads of the free version of Word Crank, in the other app stores, Google Play and iOS.

What was unexpected to us was the number of negative comments related to the use of OpenFeint in the game.  On Google Play we have 4.4 stars, but on Amazon with so many people complaining about the use of OpenFeint we have only 2 stars.  That is unfortunate as we thought that OpenFeint was allowing users the ability to compete with friends and gain achievements.  From what we have been able to find online, there really is no basis for such negativity.  However, as OpenFeint was recently bought by GREE we were already considering alternative scoring solutions.

So what were our major takeaways?

• we should allow users the ability to choose which game level they wanted to start with, 3, 4, or 5 letter words (this will be included in version 1.3.5)


• we should start the difficulty level at "Bonkers" (this will be included in version 1.3.5)


• we should move away from use of OpenFeint (TBD)

We will share some additional statistics within the next few weeks, as the impact of these types of promotions can have lasting effects.

Becoming Amazon's Free App of the Day

Word Crank Elite is Amazon's Free App of the Day for Monday, August 27th, 2012! So how did this come about?  First, we made an awesome game;-), next we received an email from Amazon:

"We noticed your app Word Crank Elite v 1.3.0 and think it is an interesting candidate for our Free App of the Day promotion."

Ok great, so what happens next?  We agreed to the terms as stated in the email and then we waited. We eventually heard from someone on the Free App of the Day (FAOTD) Team, and were notified that our application had passed all testing; however, they wanted us to reconsider how we were integrated with OpenFeint.

Apparently, other apps had received 1-star ratings by having the OpenFeint pop-up as soon as the application was loaded.  In order to work around, this we removed the default configuration and allowed users to choose if they wanted to use OpenFeint when they click the "SCORES" button.  Once that was done, we resubmitted the new version of the application and waited again.

This past Friday we received notice that our game would be featured on Monday, August 27th.  After which I personally ran through my house and kissed everyone!  We are very excited to have been given this opportunity and will report on the results in another week. So stay tuned!

Adding a Application Rating Dialog to your Android Game

UPDATE: Also get users to recommend your app via Google+

In order to increase the number of engaged users who were rating the Android version of Word Crank, we used a small piece of code from Android Snippets that shows a dialog to the user after a number of predefined uses to rate your Application. What were the results?

There were 0.2 App Ratings/day previous to adding the App Rater Dialog, after adding the App Rater dialog we went to 0.33 App Ratings/day.  That is equivalent to a 65% increase in user app ratings by making such a small change.  We felt that this was an important change as user ratings can help increase your placement in the Android Market.  Also, we were hoping to get more positive ratings as the dialog only appears after a user has played the game at least 3 times.

So why not give it a try in your game?  Let us know your results in the comments below.

Android Market Publisher Statistics Gets an Update

Last Thursday when logging into my Publisher account on the Android Market, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Google had updated the available statistics.  Previously, the available data was very limited; focusing primarily on Active Device Installs.

The new statistics page now exposes the number of daily uninstalls, active installs, and user installs.  It also provides a comparison of your application's numbers versus other apps in your same category.  This additional information was very useful in seeing how Word Crank stacked up to other apps in the Brain and Puzzle category.



Word Crank Daily Installs



Word Crank Daily Installs by Version



Word Crank Installs Compared to Other Brain and Puzzle Apps

Have you found the new format useful?  Leave a comment below.

Adding GameFeed to your OpenFeint Enabled Cocos2d App

In order for us to add the new GameFeed feature of OpenFeint to our Word Crank app on iOS we needed to upgrade to the latest version of OpenFeint, version 2.12.5.  After a few issues with linking errors we were finally running with the latest and greatest that OpenFeint has to offer. Complete instructions for upgrading are included here.

Next we wanted to include the GameFeed component, but only on the home screen.  We used a similar approach to how we included AdMob in the free version.  Some code snippets are included below to help others.

 

[sourcecode language="objc"]
-(id) init
{
if ( (self=[super init]) ) {

CGSize s = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] winSize];

controller = [[RootViewController alloc] init];
controller.view.frame = CGRectMake(0,0,s.width,s.height);

gameFeed = [OFGameFeedView gameFeedView];

[controller.view addSubview:gameFeed];
[[[CCDirector sharedDirector] openGLView]addSubview : controller.view];
}

return self;
}

- (void) dealloc
{
[controller.view removeFromSuperview];
[controller release];

[super dealloc];
}
[/sourcecode]

Do you know a different way to do it? Leave a comment below.

Sneak Peek: Word Crank 1.3 Upcoming Release

Our upcoming release of Word Crank has a slick new home screen and logo.  It also includes the new Game Feed from OpenFeint which allows users to stay up-to-date with what other Word Crank players are doing in the game!

Check out the images below:

[gallery]

 

This Week @Sivart Tech: November 18, 2011

So this week we have been busy working on our December release of Word Crank.  This release will include some exciting new features.

First, we are implementing the Game Feed feature that is new to OpenFeint, which will allow users to find out more about what the other users of the game are doing.  This will include changing their profile pictures to conquering one of the many levels.  We hope that this will be a fun way to become more engaged with our game.

Next, we have several graphics changes that we hope will give the game more appeal and make it more polished.  And with any new build that we work on, performance improvements and bug fixes are the standard.

Also we are excited that our Android downloads are continuing at a steady rate, adding more than 1,000 new downloads over the past week!

October with HOT 99.5: How did we do?

During the month of October we ran a multifaceted campaign with HOT 99.5, a local Washington, DC radio station.  So how did we do?  Here are some of the statistics.

AdMob Revenue

During September we made ~$11 from the AdMob ads that run in the free version of our game.  For the month of October we made about ~$16, so we made about 5 more bucks.  Impressive?  Not really to us...

Word Crank Page Views

Our Word Crank page was another key aspect of our campaign, as it was the URL that we chose for the "Text Back" feature of our campaign.  We went from 28 views in September to 203 views in October.  That was over 7 times the traffic!  For us that was a huge win as it exposed people to our brand and hopefully helped us to get a few downloads and followers of the blog.

Number of People Playing

The October Google Analytics data is shown in the following graphic.  When the numbers were compared against our September data we saw a 25% increase in visits.  We are going to go ahead and give the HOT 99.5 campaign credit for that as well.

Reputation

Our reputation has been the clear winner for us.  Doing this campaign has increased our visibility and really given us tons of credibility with our friends and co-workers. Improved reputation can be a very strategic tool for any small company.  Before doing the campaign our friends and family were our biggest fans, but once they heard the commercials on the radio they began to create more buzz and do even more word-of-mouth marketing for us.  Read my post here about why word-of-mouth marketing is so powerful.

Overall, we are happy with the results.  We would have loved to get a bit more "bang for our buck", but we can always do it again.  Final words of advice to others who may be starting out and considering marketing opportunities, radio is not the best place to start out.  We were able to see comparable gains advertising via AdMob.

A Word Game That Does Not Try to Save the World

So what makes our products unique?  One of the rules of marketing is to know your product and be prepared with an elevator speech.  You know, a 30 second pitch prepared, the time of a typical elevator ride about your product and what sets it apart from all others.

So here goes:

Introspectively speaking, due to experiences in life unique solely to us, our acuity is shaped causing anything we create to be different from anyone else.  And blah…blah…blah…

So now that we’ve cleared the air and have identified on a cosmic scale what makes our product unique, looking on a more rudimentary scale, what motivated the creation of Word Crank?  Put simply, a desire to find a word game that we would actually play.

We’re not intimating that there weren’t any good word games out there, because there are.  We were simply looking for a game that combined elements of Word and Arcade style gaming that we both would be interested in.

You see although being siblings, we have two different backgrounds and stakes in our product.  Here comes the very exciting history lesson: 

Our CTO is a computer programmer by profession, and has single-handedly coded all of our projects. Her objective when creating a game centers on playability and usability.  The code has to work and memory allocation is central around enhancing the user’s experience.

The CEO’s experience with coding begins and ends with formulas for excel worksheets.  With a background in business and an avid “gamer”, for him it just has to pop and be fun.  “No chipped paint” as Walt Disney articulated around his reason for creating Disneyland.  It just has to look good!

Combine these and you get Word Crank our very first release.  A word game that’s not buggy, has a very expansive dictionary and does what it’s supposed to do (in our developer voice).  But then it does something else.  It creates an atmosphere with a beautiful UI (User Interface).  A word game with elements of grunge, hip hop, pop, and action!  (Guess whose voice added this)

You see, both voices played a major role in the creation of Word Crank.  We combined programming principles which allow our game to play smoothly and feel effortless.  We also brought arcade to our game by not just allowing you to make the word C-A-T and get 50 points, YAY *sarcastically* but we brought engaging music, cool animations, and some serious themes.

We thank all of our 5k+ downloads on the Android market and are excited that overall reception has been positive with only 6 users rating below 4 stars (send us a message on what you’d like to see to change that to a 4/5) We’re going to keep making cool apps that people like and promise to never take ourselves too seriously but remember it’s just a Word game that doesn’t try to save the world.

We're Taking Over!!!

Just wanted to do this quick post to brag about our "HOT 99.5 Home Page Take Over."  Check out HOT 99.5 to see how Word Crank has officially taken over!



 

A.A.R.F.!! Another Amazing Review Finished!!

Sorry for the dog bark but we @ Sivart Technology are so excited that another review for Word Crank has been done.  Check out the YouTube video done by macrover180:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6KcGrzcPXI

Such an awesome Camera btw!!  A complete facelift of Word Crank is coming to try to keep up with it's siblings on the way (3 more games in the works!!)

Mobile Game Marketing: The Power of Word-of-Mouth

When marketing your mobile game don't underestimate the power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing.  Well, what is Word-of-Mouth Marketing?  It has been described this way by the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association:

"The act of consumers providing information to other consumers...It is the art and science of building active, mutually beneficial consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-marketer communications."

What can that mean for you and your business?  Well, basically you need to make a great product and provide tools to make it easier for your customers to share how wonderful your game/application is with others.  You may think that this form of marketing is free, but that is not necessarily the case.  You need to provide infrastructure that makes this type of consumer-to-consumer marketing successful and it does require lots of time to keep up with the different front-facing tools that you choose to implement.

In marketing our first game, Word Crank, we have used the following tools to facilitate the Word-of-Mouth process.

Tools

• Facebook Fan Page


• Twitter Account


• Blog with sharing abilities


• YouTube Channel


• Reddit Account


• OpenFeint integration in the game


• Email

Making use of these various tools takes time, as you have to constantly make posts and send updates.  But more importantly you allow your customers the opportunity to provide feedback and then easily share the information that they have received with others.  So far we are happy with this area of our Marketing endeavors.  However, it's challenging to say for sure quantitatively what the impact has been up to this point.

Our Game Marketing Post featured on Trove.com

Recently one of our posts was featured on Trove.com.  For those of you who don't know yet, Trove is an up and coming News Aggregator that incorporates Social Media throughout.  We were proud to have our article featured under the "Facebook Advertising" topic.

Word Crank now Available on iPhone!

Just got the thumbs up from Apple, so go and check it out all you iPhone users! Word Crank on iPhone