作者：Yann Seznec

实际上，发行一款应用是件相当轻松的事，因为没有人在乎你的举措。

你的应用只是市场上70万款应用中的一员。甚至在它跃居榜单前100时，也只是意味着它必须获得99.99%的成功机率，而这却是天方夜谭。

如果你能降低自己的期望值（相信我，你的应用不会成为热作），并认识到该应用不会令你暴富，那么你就可以放松心态。没有人在乎你的做法。

也就是说，几乎所有人在发行一款应用时，都希望它可以获得更多的关注和下载量。所以，我将根据自己在《Bad Hotel》发行过程中所学到的经验教训，列举关于应用发行的3项建议。

bad　hotel(from indie-music.com)

新闻与评论很重要也很困难

你已经有一鸣惊人的游戏创意！非常棒，你应该付诸行动。

但是，如果你在闭门造车中制作这款游戏，而且完全依赖最终产品的出色品质来取悦用户，那么你不可能获得任何关注。如果你打算将该游戏告知社交网络上的好友，并希望他们能传播这一讯息，也许游戏最多也只能实现7次的全球下载量。

在此，我打算透露获得游戏曝光率的秘密。可是，并没有什么神秘法宝。只需要你付出努力。

该答案可能出乎开发者意料——因为他们知道获取正面报道存在一定难度。实际上，这种难度在于整个行业都依赖于获得较好的宣传来提高游戏曝光率。

然而你可能会说：“但是等下！你是如何让《Bad Hotel》获得如此高的关注度？”

这是个不错的问题。毫无疑问，在《Bad Hotel》发行当天，我们从148Apps、Gamezebo、Kotaku、Touch Arcade等这类网站中收获了一些积极的评价。

你必须牢记，没有哪位自重的博主会评论一款过时的应用。你须提前考量——联系自己敬重，并且看法和兴趣点与你相似的游戏记者。

向他们讲述你的游戏，还要提供出色美术或者玩法视频。解释为何你认为该游戏具有独特性和趣味性。通过Test Flight向他们发送游戏的早期模型。

可能在很长的一段时间内，你不会收到任何回复。但你必须持之以恒——找出其它网站，以个人名义同他们联系，试图同有趣、思想开放的编辑/记者建立联系。如果你能在早期的开发进程中同他们合作，他们更可能会为你的游戏创下优异的曝光率。

忽视无意义的“提交应用”这类网站

我希望你可以忽视所有付费评论的网站。虽然不少其它网站广泛采取这种做法，但我无法理解人们为何依旧乐此不疲。

不要为任何评论支付费用。

进一步而言，你也应当忽视以匿名方式要求你“提交应用”的网站和博客。最糟的是这些网站包括推广代码。此时你应告诫自己：忽略它们。

《Bad Hotel》发行前的那段恐慌的日子里，我登陆了许多类似的网站，并向他们发送附加游戏描述、截屏等资料的应用副本。

结果，《Bad Hotel》在这些网站上所获得的总评论量为0。在这种情况下，仍有近40个较高级网站对它进行了评论，由此证明，这款游戏值得推荐。

然而，对于寻求简单快捷地获取评论的开发者而言，这种“提交应用”的方式可能需要他们每天上百次的操作行动。而结果几乎是他们的应用并未获得任何曝光，最多是浪费了他们大量时间。

最糟的情况是，它们却会让你觉得“要获得报道就需要继续努力”，而你在此耗费的时间还不如给自己欣赏的作者写封邮件。

比如，在Pocket Gamer网站中，“联系我们”的页面内列举了每位作者和他们的邮箱。

给他们发送匿名邮件只会适得其反，但是，如果你发现某个评论员的喜好确实与你的游戏题材吻合，你可以用个人名义向其发送邮件。他们会欣赏你们付出的努力。

bad_hotel(from pocketgamer.co.uk)

降低期望值

你必须认识到自己无法出售许多游戏副本，从长远上看，你会感觉更好。

我并不认为自己过多谈及《Bad Hotel》发行的成功——至少对于位居爱丁堡的三人独立工作室而言，这种做法并不为过。

《Bad Hotel》发行第一周，便位居所有付费应用榜单约100名，音乐游戏榜单第2名，总体上位居第50-70名左右。它获得了App Store首页推荐，几乎是获得了一边倒的正面评价。有此成就，我们还有何求呢？

当然，我们还看重销售。结果证实，App Store的经济模式比我们想象中的更加残酷。

在35万款付费应用中列居100名已经不赖，结果是它每天的销量近2000次。

这意味着该游戏的日收益为1316美元——低于在Lucky Frame公司一周所需的劳动力成本。

《Bad Hotel》发行一周后，其销量大幅度下降，但如果我们足够幸运，那我们的收益也仍能满足一个月的运营费用。

但我们从不寄希望于从《Bad Hotel》大赚一笔。我们只是高兴自己的游戏能得到积极关注。在我们看来，《Bad Hotel》只是让我们这家古怪、不寻常且原创工作室能够进一步为人们所知的一个步骤。

制作一款游戏，并希望能达到上百万的销量不具有任何意义。将制作游戏作为更大战略的一部分，能够让你集中精力，追求有雄心但却可以实现的目标。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

No one cares about your app and it won’t be a hit, reckons Lucky Frame’s Yann Seznec

by Guest Author

Yann Seznec is the founder and director of Lucky Frame, a three-man studio based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Lucky Frame’s latest game is Bad Hotel, which hit the App Store in August 2012.

Releasing an app is actually rather relaxing, because no one cares.

Your app is one of 700,000 on the market. Even reaching the top 100 means your app has to approach the 99.99th percentile, which is fairly unlikely.

Once you’ve tempered your expectations (trust me, you won’t have a hit) and realised that your app won’t make you rich, you can relax. No one cares.

That said, no one releases an app without hoping that it will get some attention and downloads. So, here are three tips for releasing an app, based on the lessons we learned from our experience with Bad Hotel.

Press and reviews are important and hard

You’ve got an idea for an amazing game! That’s awesome, you should make it.

But if you make it in a dark cave, relying solely on the magnificence of the final product to get people excited, you’re unlikely to get any attention. And if your plan is to tell your social networking pals about the game and hope that word will spread, you should probably expect a worldwide sales tally of about seven downloads.

This is where I’m supposed to give you the secret to getting lots of coverage. Well, sorry – that doesn’t exist. It’s just hard work.

This always seems to come as a surprise to creative people – as it turns out, getting good press is difficult. So difficult, in fact, that there is an entire industry built around getting good press for games (and music, and theatre, and horse breeding, and model trainset building).

“But wait!” I hear you say, “How did you get so much attention from Bad Hotel?”

Well, that’s a good question. Sure enough, we managed to get brilliant reviews for Bad Hotel on launch day from 148Apps, Gamezebo, Kotaku, Touch Arcade, and more.

The main thing to remember is that no self-respecting blogger wants to review an app that’s already out. Think ahead – contact games writers that you respect, whose reviews and interests you agree with.

Tell them about your game, and include some gorgeous art or gameplay videos. Explain why you think it’s unique and fun. Offer to send them early builds via Test Flight.

In all likelihood, you will get ignored for a long time. But keep at it – find other sites, contact them personally, try to build relationships with interesting and open-minded writers. If you can get them on board early in your development process, they are much more likely to give your game good coverage.

Ignore the pointless ‘submit your app’ sites

I hope that by now it goes without saying that you should ignore any pay-for-review sites. This has been covered extensively by many other sites, but it boggles my mind that people still do it.

Don’t ever pay for a review. End of story.

But I’m going to go one step further – you should also ignore websites and blogs that ask you to ‘submit your app’ through an anonymous form. Worst of all are the sites that include a field for a promo code. Do yourself a favour: ignore them.

In a fit of panic in the days before the release of Bad Hotel I went to a number of these sites and sent them a copy of the app, along with a description, screenshots, etc.

The total number of these sites that ended up reviewing Bad Hotel: 0. In context, we were reviewed by nearly 40 high-quality sites, which I think proves that the game is worth covering.

But these ‘submit your app’ forms are probably filled out hundreds of times a day by developers looking for a quick and easy way to get reviews. They almost never result in any coverage, and at best are a waste of time.

At worst, they give you the impression of ‘working on getting press’ when your time (and valuable promo codes) would be much better placed writing a personal email to a writer whose work you admire.

To take Pocket Gamer as an example, their ‘contact us’ page lists every writer, along with their email addresses.

Writing an anonymous email to all of them will be counterproductive, but if you find a single reviewer whose interests really seem to align with your game, write them personally. They will appreciate the effort.

Temper your expectations

You won’t sell many copies of your game. Admit that to yourself, you’ll feel better in the long run.

I don’t think it would be too much for me to say that Bad Hotel had a very successful launch – at least for a three-person independent studio operating out of a single room in Edinburgh.

In our first week we ranked around #100 in overall paid apps, #2 in music games, around #50-70 in games overall. We were featured on the front page of the App Store, and our reviews were almost unanimously positive. What else could we ask for?

Well, sales. It turns out that the App Store economy is even more brutal than you could possibly imagine.

Ranking 100th out of 350,000 paid apps puts us comfortably within the 99.9th percentile of paid apps, but it resulted in just under 2,000 sales a day (for full numbers, check out my blog post about it).

At 99c that means a daily revenue of $1,316 – less than one week of labour costs for Lucky Frame.

Sales dropped considerably after the first week, so if we’re really lucky we will cover one month of running costs. Result!

But we never expected to make lots of money from Bad Hotel. In reality, we are simply pleased that our game got so much positive attention. For us, Bad Hotel is one more step in a longer journey towards making a name for ourselves as a quirky, unusual, and original creative studio.

Making a single game and hoping for millions of sales is pointless. Making a game as part of a bigger strategy will focus your energy, and allow you to aim for ambitious but achievable goals.(source:pocketgamer)