Thanks all!

Yeah, we're learning that the App Store alone is not enough marketing -- I'm amazed at how many games are released every day.

We've reached out to app review sites (avoiding sites that charge $$ for reviews), which seem to be the lowest hanging fruit (if your game gets good reviews!). Facebook and Twitter are all the rage these days, and we're trying these as well.

However, by far, the most important thing that we did was release a free "Lite" version. Our best single-day sales had been about 75 copies, until our demo version was released yesterday and had over 1300 downloads in a single day, and drove up our sales. I highly recommend this approach.

Funny story about trial versions -- don't call your free version a "DEMO" -- we were rejected by the Apple store last week ("DEMO" phrase is bad, "Lite/Free" is good), and had to wait 7 days for our renamed "Lite" version to be approved and put up for sale.

Good luck, games are fun, but it's a very tough business since it's so hit-based. I'd recommend working on your marketing strategy, particularly if you're working on iPhone games.

Repeat after me: The App store is NOT a marketing strategy.

Create a webpage, do advertisements, etc. Good luck, and keep us informed!

I presume you're asking about quitting your day job in order to become an indie game developer. As it is, making videogames is my day job, as it is with a number of other people who post here, but in my case, I'm currently not working for a small independent company.

Having not done the indie game entrepreneurship thing myself, I can't speak with any certainty, but I know enough about the business to know that some of what works for web startups won't work for game companies, and yet this industry has a lot to learn from the cutting edge of how software gets made in other sectors. I'd be interested to hear if you've got any thoughts about all this that might be interesting to the HN crowd.

I'm happy to say I've heard of Kids vs. Zombies, though I don't remember in what context (I don't own an iPhone, so I don't keep up much with games there). Given that indie games seem to be a growing segment of the industry (or at least an increasingly coherent cultural force and identifiable subsection within the industry), I hope you're doing your best to get indie and casual game press on your side. A lot of free publicity can be gained that way, and can really help word-of-mouth advertising.

Best of luck!

I'm also interested in doing that, but with windows/mac/linux & possibly browser games.

The problem is that people seem to be somewhat averse to paying for a browser based game (like a Java applet or webstart app), even when they'd have no problem paying for the same game as a standalone program (literally simply using a JPanel instead of a JApplet, or providing an installer to a local version instead of a webstart link).

Of course browser games still get a lot more hits than locally installed ones.

I run a moderately popular browser game. We have over 175k registered users and get millions of requests a day.

Our conversion rates are low, but we've managed to get enough people playing to sustain itself, one full time employee (me!) and a few contract employees.

It's been a lot of fun. If you are passionate about games I highly recommend it since it can definitely be sustainable. Having said that, I'm not sure it's necessary a lucrative path for most people.

I'll understand if you don't want to answer this question: do you manage to live off your game? i.e. make enough profit to not have to have a day job?

I'm asking because I run a webgame myself, of much smaller scale and niche purpose, and I'm wondering if I should invest the effort it takes to scale it up.

Cool! Care to provide a link?

Oh I thought the HN standard way was to provide a link in your profile instead of spamming up comments.

The site is http://www.forumwarz.com

When I saw that Mafia Wars was one of the most popular games on Facebook, I went to check it out, and before long thought "Wow, this is just like forumwarz except with mafia." Apparently html rpgs are now a viable genre.

Have you ever considered making more games that are essentially gameplay clones of forumwarz but with different themes? That seems to be a lot of what Zynga has done with their facebook games - Mafia Wars, Vampire Wars, Zombie Wars, etc. Also have you considered social network integration yourself. I hate to suggest such un-innovative strategies but it might work.

Zynga has one trick, that they don't always do well. I would suggest NOT emulating them.

Yeah, I noticed that as well. Originally I was working on a Flash game, but decided that it was almost impossible to make any money (unless you are Desktop Tower Defense).

How about Android? Seems to be a less saturated market than the iPhone.

I'd be curious as what people thought about this. From what I've read, Android's market share is still very low. However, I suppose that means there are less games/competition.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/132665-mobile-ad-market-shar...

I'm not sure the Android market is any less saturated. The rough numbers I found show fewer apps per device and a higher attach rate for iPod / iTouch:

iPhone + iPod touch sales: 37,000,000

iTunes Apps: 25,000-35,000

Apps downloaded: 1,000,000,000

Device to App ratio 1,480:1 - 1,057:1

Attach rate: 27

G1 sales: 1,000,000

Android Apps: 2,300

Device to App ratio 434:1

Attach rate: 10-15? (hard to find good data)

http://www.leaderpost.com/Technology/store+BlackBerry+Google...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/163671/ipod_touch_iphone_sale...

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/24/most-g1-owners-love-app...

The thing is, Android is a platform that many companies are currently developing hardware for.

In less than a year's time a ton of android handsets are planned to enter circulation. The iPhone is just Apple.

So I'm guessing we have yet to see Androids peak of popularity.

I hope you're right -- I'd be happy to be developing for a more open system.

I left my day job at a major search engine company a few months back. I was wondering if we are colleagues? :) Drop me a mail?

Good luck!

Just downloaded your lite version. Well done.