How to Create a Hit iPhone Game - Torsten Reil
Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion, spoke at HackFwd’s Build 0.8 event on how to create a hit iPhone game.
NaturalMotion Games started out as a game technology company, and their Euphoria-technology has been used from Grand Theft Auto IV to Pepsi TV ads (check out the Pepsi ad 3:00 into the talk). With the introduction of the iPhone, Natural Motion moved into creating new types of mobile games and among them, have created multiple big hits for the iOS. NaturalMotion’s five paid games have had over 12 million downloads. In this talk, Torsten shared his 15 tips for creating a homerun. Watch the video for a discussion on all of them, with some great examples and numbers.
Game idea
1. Be unique. There are lots of games out there, and you need to differentiate with your game. Torsten’s example is My Horse, a free-to-play virtual pet-type game that’s seen over 5 million downloads.
2. Let them snack. Cater for players who play for a few minutes at a time. Many mobile users play for short amounts at a time.
3. Play together. Also cater for social, asynchronous gaming, even where the device is passed around or the gameplay is shared online.
4. Know your audience. There are huge amounts of ideas, but you have to understand how your (potentially very large) audience relates to the game idea.
Design and gameplay
5. Simplify. Don’t make people think. Things you think are obvious may well not be. See Torsten’s examples starting at 10:20 from Natural Motion’s Backbreaker (5.5 million downloads) and how they iterated the design, and, how introducing a tutorial to My Horse increased first-day retention from 38.5% to 44%.
6. Make them feel good. People don’t like to suck. Especially the iPhone audience likes to play to succeed in the game. Especially the casual gamer needs a “success event” early on in the game to convert into users.
7. Click! There’s a magic point where you realize that it just works - but it’s hardly linear, says Torsten. With the hard work, it will come.
8. Polish! Once the core gameplay is there, you will spend enormous effort in polishing it. Don’t ship it until it is ready. This is especially important in games.
9. Polish more! Once you’ve polished it, do it more. You are not hitting diminishing returns doing this, says Torsten, but you are creating the experience, the flow that will make the users stay.
10. Optimize. Use analytics to test and improve everything in the game and around it.
Distribution
11. Get featured. The hard work is done. The key to getting featured is doing the hard work described before, Torsten says. Apple and other distribution channels will want to feature the highest quality
12. You name it. The name of the game is incredibly important. But you can let people name it instead to ensure you use a name that gets people interested in downloading and playing it. Torsten shows how Natural Motion names their games, using My Horse as an example (from 20:00 in the video).
14. Icon = packaging. The icon drives the downloads from the App Stores. You want to have an icon that stops people and stands out on the store shelf.
15. Go viral. The best way for a game to go viral is the old-fashioned way, where people show the device and the game to their friends. Try to create a “word of mouth moment” in the game that the player wants to show other people, Torsten says.
16. Be ready to adapt. Keep an eye on the market, see where the business models are shifting and be ready to move based on that.
You can follow Torsten on Twitter here, and watch more great talks on Passion Meets Momentum.
