JohnnyWorks

After getting a somewhat unexpected call last night from the OpenFeint group and after a long discussion, I’ve decided to dive head-on into adding new gameplay modes to StickWars that I previously considered but had put off implementing. These new modes will use the social networks and friends managed in-game by OpenFeint. When the framework is ready at the start of July, StickWars will use push notifications powered by OpenFeint to allow players to issue near real-time challenges to one another. It’s going to be crazy fun .

Press releases are below:

finance.yahoo.com
marketwire.com
marketwatch.com

I’m really torn up over the incredibly long delay in Apple approving the 1.5 update. The bug fixes are sorely needed, yet Apple felt it necessary to first reject it over minor UI issues, and then drag their feet in getting around to look at it again. I’m really hoping it will be approved tonight or tomorrow.

In better news, I found StickWars on the 4th page of the ‘Staff Favorites’, so it appears the Apple staff at least still enjoys playing the (buggy) version . However, StickWars has dropped to the #5 paid spot as other games have had their updates roll out while StickWars stands stagnant. I’m still hopeful, though, and am really looking forward to the features that are coming out soon.

I get emails from people asking me ‘when does the game end?’ and ‘how do I beat it’ and finally I will be able to respond with something other than ‘it doesn’t’ and ‘you can’t. The social network integration along with achievements will allow you to battle out with you friends who is the ultimate StickWars master. I’ve noticed that there is actually a wide range of skill level of the different people playing StickWars, with some people getting stuck at level 25 and others reaching 100+. I can’t wait until people get the chance to compete with their friends.

I’m also working on the most-asked-about enemy that everyone seens to want: the giant stick figure featured on the icon of the game. He will be a ‘boss’ enemy, and it will be a very different experience fighting him than any of the current enemies. Look forward to the future updates to StickWars .

In case you haven’t noticed it so far, StickWars v1.4 contained some unfortunate bugs that makes the game difficult to play at certain points. This is partially due to me moving my house, moving over to a new forum system (had trouble notifying beta testers), all at the same time. Basically the released didn’t get tested as much as it should have, and this was the result. I’ve learned an important lesson here…

Version 1.5 was sent to Apple last week, but was rejected because the message that says “Submitting high score” wasn’t on a text label or something else silly. So we are still just waiting on Apple to approve the latest update.

After like 6 weeks as the #1 paid game in the US, it is now pushed down to #2 by Sims, which is okay considering Sims is a pretty cool game. I still hate the fact that StickWars was overshadowed so long by “The Moron Test”, but this is the AppStore after all.

A reporter had some questions for me about the Palm Pre, and I just spotted an article with some of the interview posted on Bloomberg.com. You can read the entire article here, or read the section about StickWars below.

18 Applications

The Pre will go on sale with about 18 applications available in its App Catalog, including programs from Pandora music player, movie ticket service Fandango and a digital version of the checker-stacking game Connect Four, Letts said.

Some popular games may not make it to the Pre at all. The creator of “StickWars,” where you defend a kingdom against invading armies of stick figures, said he’s not willing to put in the extra effort to re-design the game if it’s not going to make any money back. The game is the third-most popular paid application in Apple’s library.

“I would need a real direct incentive in order to be willing to once again commit months of my evenings and weekends behind a computer screen coding,” said Eric Hartzog, who created the game as a student at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Designing for the iPhone was easier because other developers shared resources in free online libraries, said 22- year-old Hartzog, who has since graduated and joined the U.S. Navy. He said he would only consider doing the same for the Pre if its popularity reaches the level of Apple’s phone.

I’ve been looking more at the Palm Pre and am getting more excited about it. I’d love to develop for a device that has a faster processor, but in the end it comes down to the tools available. I’m still a ‘newbie’ coder and wouldn’t be able to create a game like StickWars from scratch. We’ll see though…I’m a strong fan of competition and am really looking forward to a real competitor to the iPhone.

You can get the latest version here or read the changelog. The new version has much cleaner graphics and runs quicker.

Unfortunately, I think I introduced a bug that can sometimes disable the in-game buttons (pause, bomber, and deploy defenders). While it auto-fixes itself at the end of the round, it is rather annoying so I’ll be rushing to finish 1.5 to correct it as soon as possible.

I sent 1.4 to Apple sometime last week, it should be going live pretty soon now. Also, they finally dropped StickWars off Staff Favorites today. Looks like the Apple guys got bored with StickWars already . Let’s hope they dig the new features I’ll be rolling out next week.

On a side note, I finally got paid by Apple for the first time today, so I can finally start paying off the credit debt I built up paying for services and equipment needed to work on StickWars . I was afraid what would happen if I didn’t get paid for some reason!

I’m really hoping to see StickWars push back into the #1 paid spot in the AppStore. I’ve been running more exchange ads, and sales are still going strong, so I believe there is still a chance to top the charts before the inevitable decline off the top 10. It’s been the top game for over a month now in many countries, including the US. I still have hope…

First of all, the title of this post is a joke. This is by no means a secret, and it will in no way guarantee the success of your app. However, I get asked this question so much that I’m slowly going to build up this post with some tips and suggestions that may or may not be obvious, but are important enough that you can’t afford to not know them. I don’t really have time to do the full post now, but I’ll add to it over time.

The first tip which I can not emphasize strongly enough: listen to all your users, and respond to their concerns (if they are legitimate). I know this is a major shortfall of the AppStore, in that it is tough to go back and forth with your users. Developers can not add a comment to a review? Seriously? A third of the one star reviews on StickWars are people too dumb to press the giant options button before complaining about ‘not being able to turn off the music’ or some other issue I fixed long ago. A one sentence reply by me would help them, and they would raise the review of my game, helping me.

That being said, you must create your own forums for users to ask you questions and receive answers. And no, don’t you dare add in a generic ‘contact us’ form and call that your support feedback. You are not some spineless, monolithic company who can afford to treat their customers like crap because you are too big to have any real competitors. Create a forum where people can post questions and you can answer them, and other people can see those answers without having to ask themselves. For every person who asked a question, there are probably 10 more who typed the same thing into google looking for an answer but was too lazy to ask the question themselves.

Best of all, these forums can be a valuable tool to get ideas how to improve your product. I’m not exaggerating when I say that 70% of the enhancements I push out with every update started as user suggestions.It’s not that I do what every user asks, but I consider every suggestion even if I initially considered the issue and decided against it. For many of the features in StickWars, there were features I really did not want to add, but many people asked for them, and after I took the trouble to add them in, the response was overwhelmingly positive. If you didn’t get the important point so far, I’ll keep it simple…listen to your customers. Separate the stupid input (example: ‘hey can you plz ad zombies, ufos, monkies, nukes, rifles, cows….’) from legitimate feedback and suggestions and weigh all of it carefully when deciding what to add to your application.

I’ve read every single review posted on the AppStore about StickWars and StickWars Lite, for all versions. In case you don’t realize how many there are, right now the number stands at about 2000+ combined. I’ve found that iTunes does some really bizarre caching of them, so I use my iPhone to read reviews each day until I read one I recognize. It’s not the best system, but it works. I don’t know whether or not most developers already do this, but either way, you should. Oftentimes I’d read 100 retarded reviews to find one guy who had a truly original and easy-to-add idea to add to StickWars. Twenty-five minutes later, I finish adding this feature that I later get hundreds of ‘awesome idea!’ reviews for. Seriously, this type of stuff happens, and with all these people offering feedback (even if 95% is ridiculous), you need to read all of it.

I’ve started using a fantastic service from www.appfigures.com that allows you to read reviews of your application from every worldwide app store. I went through and read every non-US review that was in english, and found for some bizzare reason, like 30 people all outside of the US asked where to find a link to my forums. Nobody in the US had ever asked this question, but I realized it might be a good idea to manually throw it in there (as the generic iTunes “StickWars Support” link isn’t really informative to the user).

That’s it for now…later on I’ll be adding some more comments about some of my App Store lessons learned.

For the first time (that I know of) Apple has paid some individual attention to StickWars! It is currently on the first page of ‘Staff Favorites’ on the App Store landing page. That means when you land on the App Store homepage, StickWars is in three separate locations . Yay visibility!

As far as StickWars itself is progressing, the next update is about ready, I was able to optimize the code so I could change the graphics back from those new ‘fuzzy’ graphics that annoy some people, and I undid some of the factors which caused a little more lag for some people in version 1.3. I added in a new enemy which is a lot of fun, and fix various bugs and minor gameplay issues.

It’s hard to believe, but StickWars is really coming together and is starting to have all the features I had envisioned for it months ago. Now I just have to get on adding in the one enemy everyone keeps asking about–the giant stickman featured on the icon for the game .

Screenshot of the triple-feature:

Although you might not see it in the US store yet, 1.3 is rolling out across iTunes. You can checkout the changelog and get ready to battle the new dragons using your awesome new wizard fireball spell.

On another note, StickWars and StickWars Lite are both sitting at the #2 spot, and I’m hoping they can jump up to #1. Filling both #1 spots would be amazing! In addition, StickWars (paid and lite version combined) currently has 1 million unique players. Thanks to all the fans and players!

You can read more information about the update on the forums. After a long and painful night, it’s time to get some sleep and wait for Apple to approve it.