After this is all said and done... I'm taking a nap...

Hello everyone! sorry for the HUGE delay in updates on how things have been going over at Winter Stories Studio, LLC.  so here we go!

First off Run Frosty Run is insanely close to launching! like hopefully i'll submit it to iTunes within the next few days.  right now i'm just finishing up coding in app purchases and posting highscores and Snowman Selfies to Facebook. (See our other blog if your hungry for a more detailed update on Run Frosty Run   http://wssdeveloperdiary.blogspot.com  )


now for a quick update on date on the advertising front. i've found a couple sites that have really affordable indie game advertising prices. and i think I'm going to use those instead of chart boost. heres why.

Chartboost has a MINIMUM $100 per day advertising fee and they said expect that to go over by about 10% . this means (at $0.50 per install that 100 could get me at most 200 installs. now if this was a paid game that wouldn't be so bad but I'm assuming not everyone is going to buy any in app purchases.  maybe 10% of those people will. so for 100 bucks i predict i'd make about 20 bucks...

now these online advertising places i've found have told me that have between 50K - 80K unique IP visitors a month. and for 100 dollars i can have an add displayed on there site for a full month. thats a lot more face time and potential sells. so i think for sure I'm gonna go that route.

i've also been continuing to hit up the online forums and such. as well as Twitter. I hit 71 followers today... and then immediately dropped down to 70...twitter is a fickle fickle friend.... but still my followers are slowly growing and my game is getting a bit more attention. More attention like this!! ( http://okgamedev.com/2014/06/winter-stories-studio-releases-run-frosty-run-trailer-also-giveaway-promo-for-other-games/  ) one of my friends i met at the Oklahoma Game Developers Meetup is a guy named Zachary. Zach runs this website called Ok Game Dev. and he basically post reviews / previews for games developed in Oklahoma. (theres a lot More than you would think.) anyway he posted an article above showing of my new trailer (which is not great but I'm not a video guy... ) and we've also teamed up to give away several codes for our older games.  Other than that theres a pretty big something something coming up for us but I'm not sure i can talk about it yet. i'll post on twitter and Facebook as soon as I'm able to. (what everyone likes it when batmans all mysterious....why not me? I'm kinda like bat man...with more fat, less muscle and no crime fighting skills...)  anyway thats what i've been up to.

Fingers crossed next week i'll be able to tell you guys all about sending the game to iTunes and (hopefully) Android.'
as always thanks for stopping by and please leave me a comment below and if you haven't yet liked us on Facebook or followed us on Twitter please do so.

well...this makes things harder....

SO this blog will be part info part rant... so please forgive me in advance...

Today i read an article talking about how Apple is now rejecting apps that offer incentives for watching ads, clicking ads and /or sharing to Facebook. ALSO advertising for apps that are not your own is another no-no now.  as with most things there are good things and bad things about this. But unfortunately the bad things far out way the good, at least from a developer stand point.

THE GOOD!  :-)

•  Apps like candy crush that force you to flood both your friends and your Facebook with invites and gifts and lives and all that stuff are effectively going to die. * so your Facebook wall will once again become your own. This will also prevent apps (Again Like Candy Crush) from preventing your from progressing through the game unless you use Facebook integration. 

THE BAD!!! :-(

• As a developer one of the HARDEST things we face is getting our apps out in front of people and then convincing them to get the app(Yep thats harder than programming,modeling, concept art-ing, the whole lot of it.). Facebook integration is awesome because we don't have to pay for advertising. When your a small indie company money is ALWAYS an issue. lots of us don't have money to pay for ads, or commercials. encouraging people to invite friends to the game (when not done in a harassing way) is a GREAT way to encourage growth in a game.

• Another way outside of Facebook integration that developers can encourage growth is to cross advertise with other developers. (i'll put an ad for your game in mine if you do the same. ) This again helps with the burden of advertising by allowing developers to work together and help each other out. This is now dead.

• now for the big one Ads. when you download a free game and you see an ad pop up. thats not just for funnies or to annoy you into buying the ad free version. its how as a developer we make money off free games. every time you click on an ad we get a little bit of money (with me on chart boost i make $0.04) and when you download that app we make a little more ($0.50) granted the ads can be annoying but all in all its a good ecosystem. we (developers )still make money you(the players) don't have to spend a dime. NOW there are without a doubt games that abuse ads making them appear way to often in a desperate attempt to make more money.  I'm not entirely sure where this lands with this update.

All this being said i understand the logic behind apples decision. they don't make money off free games (unless you do micro transactions...) & obviously they want to make money.  but people don't like to pay for games (Pull Free! is at 1.63K downloads while Pull! Paid is at about 214) this puts us (developers ) in an awkward situation. we NEED to be profitable to continue making games. finding the right balance between pleasing the players and pleasing the bill collectors is difficult and as a developer i feel Apples Change in these areas is going to make it even more difficult resulting in lots of great indie studios closing their doors...