Several years ago (after taking some time off after the Flash bubble burst…and then died!) I started working on my “swan song” app. Yep, the last app that I would ever code for public consumption. I decided to work on this project anonymously due to my experience with previous games I’ve coded. Having your game(s) played by literally millions of people sounds like a great thing, and for the most part it is.. but let’s just say it comes with a bit of complication behind the scenes. So I decided to keep the development of this app private and any future public release of the app would not contain any reference to myself.
“Swan Song” (not the real name of course) has been released on several platforms over the years in various formats. Since this project is always in a perpetual state of development (it won’t ever be done until I officially retire from programming) I decided to not invest any money in promoting the app, if the app was going to grow at all, it was going to grow organically. I actually became a bit bummed out and discouraged about continuing the project because the app world was about to change dramatically for the indie based game developer.
At one point, indie devs could compete on the various search engines and app stores. If you had a decent app, knew a few clever marketing tricks, you could easily get 1000s (upon 1000s!!) of free downloads. But almost over night it seemed, and pretty much right after I released the first public version of my swan song, good bye free downloads. Yep… all it took was a few big financially backed companies to invest a ton of money into “buying up all the ad space” which had a trickle down effect of causing a lot (if not all) indie devs to experience a dramatic loss in organic user acquisition. Goodbye organic discovery, if you want eyeballs on your app, you’re going to have to pay for it one way or the other.
So being bummed out, I decided to take a break from programming. I always loved photography (and still do!) so I took some time off to pursue some photography, do some fishing, and explore working on a few YouTube channels. (More on that at a much later date..lol..)
But then something interesting happened….
I found out about a new platform being released which I thought my app would be perfect for. So I spent a few months upgrading the app and customizing it to work on this new platform. Long story short… it’s not a happy ending…yet. The app took off pretty good, it was selling well, again…all from organic discovery, not going to feed the ad machine. lol.. But things slowed down, I was contacted from the platform ad team and they wanted me to ante up some real money to promote the app, I declined nicely and said I’d rather the app live or die organically. Over the next year or so the app slowly fizzed out and I was once again a bit discouraged with long term development. I decided to try an experiment. I kept the app as a paid app on one platform, released it on another platform as a free app and decided to do some fishing for a while. So I again decided to take some time off from this Swan Song of mine.
But then something really interesting happened…
I was totally oblivious to what was going on with the free version of the app. I was still getting monthly checks from the paid version of the app, so I knew what was going on there and I just assumed the free version of the app was dead due to no organic discovery. But to my surprise I found out (about 9 months later) the free app had a 6 figure install base! Wait…what….how the hell did this happen? lol..
So now I’m checking out all of the comments, reviews of both the paid and free versions and wow.. I’m shocked… the app has a rating of near 5 stars with easily 95% of the comments being positive. So now I’m re-evaluating my life goals right? lol…
So now this is what… mid to late 2023 and I’m trying to decide what I want to do with this frickin Swan Song app of mine. For better or worse, due to the fact that it’s obvious if I can expose this app to the right demographic there is a user base out there waiting for me to reach, I decide to give this app one final make over, and decide to take 2024 fairly serious and see where this Swan Song app of mine can take me. While I’m always grateful for any monetary gain my apps can bring in, as any game developer will tell you, there’s just this incredible feeling of satisfaction knowing there are people out there playing your game. Nothing better…. well… maybe fishing… nah… maybe… the thrill of catching a big fish… sorry… will save that for another post. lol..
So here we are well into 2024. My goal in 2024 is to release project Swan Song on 5 different platforms. I’ve already released Swan Song on one of those platforms and the initial response has been…. for lack of a better word… rewarding. 🙂
Will I ever promote Swan Song on my site? Oh for sure.. but I just need a bit more anonymity for a while. I’m sure my developer buds totally understand. Well.. that and in my old age I’ve become a bit more of an introvert. lol..
May 17, 2024
