Vigil RPG (“Premium” iPhone Game) – Lifetime Sales Stats

Sometime in mid-2013, I had a hankering to play a particular kind of RPG on my iPhone. I wanted a game with these features:

• Turn-based combat.
• Portrait orientation, and thus playable with one hand. (e.g. while eating with the other hand.)
• A single protagonist/hero. One thing I don't like about party-based RPGs is that typically, a couple of your party members need be KO’ed before you feel like the team is actually in any real danger. This doesn't tend to happen against non-boss enemies in most games, and thus those games often end up feeling uninteresting for long stretches.
• Interesting decision-making in combat -- even vs. non-boss enemies -- something beyond the typical RPG trope of "do basic attacks / target enemy elemental weaknesses / heal self when injured / repeat."
• No hard-to-use on-screen virtual D-pad for character movement. Give me a way to move my character that’s designed especially for a touchscreen, not one based on a traditional physical controller’s tactile D-pad!
• A combat system built around LOW numbers and visible enemy HP / stats, so I can calculate that if, for example, that enemy has 9 HP left, then I can perfectly finish it off by doing my 4 and 5 HP attacks respectively over the next 2 rounds.
• FAST combat. No waiting on long combat animations; no wading through multiple menus to kick off a combat round. This is my phone; let me whip it out when I’ve got 30 seconds, and actually accomplish something quickly.
• No save points. Why not just always keep my game saved automatically?  (Even mid-combat!)
• Game designed with a goal of fun, not of corporate revenue generation! Absolutely no IAPs or premium currencies or ads or stamina timers.

I couldn't find that game on the App Store.

So... I decided to write it myself!

After spending most of my evenings between 10:00pm and midnight (after my day job, spending time with my family, getting the kids into bed, and daily chores) for about 18 months designing and writing the game – learning the Objective-C programming language and the whole MacOS / iOS development ecosystem along the way – Vigil RPG was released in November 2014!

Here’s Vigil RPG’s combat screen, which illustrates the realization a lot of the points noted above that I wanted to achieve with the game.  You can check out more screen shots and info about the game at the Vigil RPG website!

 

Lifetime App Store Sales Stats

I don't really have any reason to keep them private, and I thought it might be insightful for other #indiedev folks and industry observers, so without further ado, here are the lifetime sales statistics to date for Vigil RPG (iOS)!  According to my developer account at iTunes Connect:

• Released November 2014 at a price of US $2.99
• 354 paid copies sold, almost entirely at $2.99, with a few at $1.99 in a "birthday sale" in November 2015
• Total gross sales: US $1004
• About 70% of the lifetime sales of Vigil RPG came in the first 30 days after release.
• Vigil RPG got about ten 5-out-of-5-star community reviews on the App Store (and no 0-through-4-star reviews) immediately after release; it’s gotten zero community reviews since then.  (Vigil RPG has no “review nag” prompts, which was an intentional design decision.)
• The second big spike in sales was after the 4-out-of-5-star TouchArcade review (which I was thrilled with, and found to be extremely on-point and fair – much respect to the reviewer, Shaun Musgrave). TouchArcade was the only major site to do a review.
• The little spike in November 2015 was the beginning of the $1.99 sale.  Sales dropped off again rapidly even though I left the price at $1.99 for a while.
• Outside of the initial release and $1.99 sale periods, Vigil RPG sold at a rate of roughly 1 copy per week.
• Net proceeds after Apple's cut: US $707
• 3 x $US 99 of Apple annual developer licenses to develop the game and keep it live on the App Store = $297. Net proceeds after Apple dev license fees: $410
• Other misc. operating costs -- State of Michigan incorporation fees for Aggro Magnet Games LLC, web hosting for http://aggromagnetgames.com -- of around $100 to date.  Bottom line proceeds to date: About $310
• 122 free copies redeemed (promo codes sent to review sites; a few free giveaways to try and drum up visibility and community interest)
• I didn’t bother trying to keep any stats on piracy rates, but at least one site out there (fairly readily findable via Google search) has the binary of the game posted for free download.

Given a very very rough estimate of about 600 hours spent creating the game, $310 in net profit works out to a wage of about $0.50/hour.  Not exactly enough to quit the ol’ day job!  (Fortunately, I already have a day job which I love!)

I am, however, honestly totally fine with that performance. I made an intentional decision up front for my goal for the Vigil RPG project to be to "make the game I wanted to play" – with no design compromises being made for the sake of monetization.  So no IAPs, no ads, no other typical "freemium" features (or “anti-features,” as the case may be) such as premium currencies or stamina timers.

 

$0.99 Sale

Consistent with my initial goal for Vigil RPG of prioritizing fun over profits, as of today, for the first time ever, the App Store price for Vigil RPG is reduced to $0.99!  I’m hopeful that this will allow more people to enjoy the game – assuming there’s a segment of folks out there who are interested in iPhone RPGs, and are unwilling or unable to buy the game at the $2.99 price point, but will go ahead and pick it up for $0.99.

The main reason I didn't just cut the price all the way down to $0.00 (free) was that admittedly there's somewhat more cachet in being able to say "The game I made is for sale on the App Store!" than "I made a game and I'm giving it away on the App Store since no one was really buying it!" 

It would also be nice if Vigil RPG’s proceeds would at least cover the annual $99 that Apple requires to keep it listed on the App Store.  To that end, I might bump the price back to the original $2.99 at some point if sales at the $0.99 price point don’t generate much increased volume relative to the 1 sale/week or so of the $2.99 price.

 

“Buy It Now!”

Hopefully this detailed peek into one game’s iOS App Store performance was helpful, or at least mildly interesting!

If you’d like read more about the gameplay of Vigil RPG, you can do so on the Vigil RPG website.  Or, you can check out the full 5-to-10-hour adventure firsthand via Vigil RPG on the App Store if you’ve got an iOS device, and can scrape together enough loose change to join the exclusive club of premium iOS game owners!

You can also hit me up with any questions you’ve got on Twitter at @AggroMagnetGame, or below in the comments!

Workaround: Mac Mini outputs no video signal with DisplayPort-DVI adapter (and some amazing customer service)

Executive Summary / tl;dr

• A Mac Mini might produce no video output when connected to a ViewSonic or Dell monitor via a DVI-DisplayPort adapter.  Try using a DVI-MiniDVI adapter instead.
• For incredible customer service, buy Mac stuff from eBay seller dvicetech.

Although I’m a longtime Windows user when it comes to desktop PCs, over the past couple of years I have developed a strong liking of Apple’s iPod Touch as my “always-in-my-pocket” device of choice (as an inexpensive smartphone alternative).  With 3 young kids in the house, my free gaming time is increasingly spent on the iPod, as that platform is conducive to 10-15 minute play sessions; however, the particular game I’d like to play is not currently on the App Store, so being a programmer, I decided to write it myself!  (Hopefully, more to come on that topic in a future post on this blog!)

Being brand new to iOS development, I did some research, and ended up with the conclusion that unfortunately, using my existing Windows PC would not be a very good idea; Apple really wants you to be using a Mac for iOS development.  Being on a fairly constrained budget for discretionary purchases – again, see “3 young kids” above! – I opted for the “Mac Mini from eBay” option, as suggested on StackOverflow.

After examining the available options, and (as always with this type of purchase) looking for a sweet spot in the trade-off between price and performance, I opted for a so-called “Early 2009” model Mac Mini, with 2.0 GHz dual-core processor, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB HD, and the as-of-now latest OS, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, from eBay seller dvicetech.  This Mac Mini cost $444.50, including shipping; using my existing keyboard, mouse, and monitor, that was the total cost for the Mac.  (Definitely a more economical option than going with a new MacBook, which seem go in the $1100 – 1700 range.)

When my Mac Mini arrived, I hooked it up, connecting a USB mouse, USB keyboard, power, and my existing DVI monitor via a DisplayPort-DVI adapter included by the seller.  I turned the machine on, at which point the “power” light on the front of the Mac Mini turned on, I heard the Apple startup chime from the Mac’s built-in speakers, and… nothing at all appeared on the screen.  The monitor’s status indicator light remained yellow, as though no input source were connected.

This monitor, a ViewSonic, did work fine with my Windows PC; I had just unhooked it from that PC in order to use it with the Mac.

I checked the standard set of things that I could think of to check:

• Monitor powered on?  Yes, the yellow status indicator light was on.
• Mac powered on?  Yes, the power indicator LED was on and I heard the startup chime.  I could also toggle Caps Lock on and off via the keyboard and see the Caps Lock indicator light on the keyboard turn on and off.
• Video cables connected tightly to Mac and to monitor?  Yes.
• Monitor configured for DVI input?  Yes, verified.  I’d also been using this monitor with my Windows PC via DVI with no problems.
• DVI cable okay?  I swapped it out for a different DVI cable that I had on hand, but got the same results.

At this point, I disconnected the ViewSonic monitor, connected my other on-hand monitor (a Dell), and rebooted the Mac Mini.  This also produced the same results: Mac Mini appeared to power up okay, but no display output whatsoever.

So at this point, I concluded that the problem was either with the DisplayPort-DVI adapter, or with the Mac Mini itself.  I Googled using some general terms (“mac mini no video”), and came up with a Apple support article for this specific problem, which had several suggested solutions.  Unfortunately, when I tried the solutions, including several new-to-me troubleshooting actions like “reset the parameter RAM” and “reset the System Management Controller (SMC)”, none of them resolved the problem.  (Also, I was unable to try at least one of the listed solutions, which was to put the Mac to sleep by pressing Option+Command+Eject; the PC keyboard I was using with the Mac Mini in accordance with the Mac Mini’s advertised B.Y.O.D.K.M. feature didn’t have any of those keys!)

Having run out of troubleshooting steps to try, I contacted the eBay seller, dvicetech, through eBay’s nice dispute resolution site feature and described the problem, in hopes of being able to either get help in resolving the problem somehow (although my hopes for that were limited at this point), or else exchange the Mac Mini for another one, or get a refund. 

The seller, dvicetech, immediately suggested shipping me out a replacement DisplayPort-DVI adapter, at his own expense. This really pleased me, since combined with dvicetech taking on this extra cost, it seemed like a very reasonable next step to try – hopefully the problem would turn out to be with the adapter, not the Mac Mini itself. 

Unfortunately, when the new DisplayPort-DVI adapter arrived and I hooked it up, it didn’t resolve the issue. 

As a last-ditch troubleshooting attempt before I contacted dvicetech again with the bad news and to ask for either a replacement or a refund – I was leaning toward the latter, as at least then I’d have the option of spending an additional $200 or so on a new Mac Mini and engaging Apple Support if something were to go wrong with that – I brought the Mac Mini and the DisplayPort-DVI adapter into the office to try it with the monitors there, on the wild theory that there was some problem with both the ViewSonic and Dell monitors I had at home where those monitors worked fine with Windows 7, but didn’t work with the Mac. 

To my shock, this worked!  When I connected the Mac Mini to the Samsung DVI monitor that I had at work – using the same Mac Mini and DVI-DisplayPort adapter that had previously failed to produce any video signal on either the ViewSonic or Dell monitors that I had at home – I did get signal on the Samsung monitor.  I was able to watch the Mac Mini boot to the MacOS desktop with no issues.

I contacted dvicetech with this news.  At this point, dvicetech wowed me further with his great service by shipping out not one but two additional display adapters to try: A miniDVI-DVI adapter, and a miniDVI-VGA adapter – along with a postage-paid return envelope for whatever display adapters I didn’t end up using!  I hadn’t even realized that using something other than a DisplayPort adapter was even an option.

When this third round of display adapters arrived, I connected the Mac Mini to my home office ViewSonic monitor via the new miniDVI-DVI adapter, and bam! – instant video signal!  The Mac Mini booted up and worked just fine at that point. 

So I put sent the three remaining, unused display display adapters back to dvicetech using the envelope that he had provided.  I was seriously blown away by the customer service dvicetech provided – excellent, prompt, polite communication; smart troubleshooting suggestions; and multiple packages shipped back and forth at his own expense – which I daresay beat out even what I would have gotten from Apple directly, had I purchased a new Mac Mini.  At a minimum, I would have been spending $5+ in gas money per round trip to the nearest Apple store, which is about 30 minutes from my home.  My advice is when shopping for parts on eBay, buy from dvicetech if possible – I certainly intend to do so in the future!

I’m somewhat less happy with Apple, with all of the time and hassle it took me to get the new Mac Mini working.  When I use some more specific Google search terms like mac mini viewsonic no video, there are lots of other similar problem reports.  This wasn’t exactly an “it just works!” experience.  My takeaways are:

• For Mac video adapters, MiniDVI-DVI is a more reliable option than DisplayPort-DVI, although limited sample size is certainly a caveat here;
• Don’t assume everything will be instant sunshine and roses with Apple hardware, especially when interoperating between Apple hardware and standard-but-non-Apple hardware (although again, sample size caveats apply).

Still, in the end, the Mac Mini is now up and running, and I’m well along in coding up my new game in Xcode, Apple’s IDE for iOS.  It’s turning out to be a big project, so I’m several months away from even being ready to beta the app (particularly since I’m almost exclusively working in 90-minute-per-day chunks at the end of the evening after my kids are all in bed and other chores are all done), but I’ll certainly make an announcement here when I have something ready to show!

Mac Impressions - The First 60 Minutes

What follows is something a little bit different: For your amusement, a somewhat steam-of-conciousness recounting of my first 60 minutes with a Mac Mini (purchased for the purpose of doing some on-the-side iOS development), from my background as a guy with 25+ years of DOS/Windows experience (dating back to doing BASIC development on an IBM PC my Dad brought home from work when I was 6 years old!) and some limited Unix/Linux experience, but no real Mac experience at all. Enjoy!

8:01 - Successfully booted up! Logitech mouse and "brand X" USB Windows keyboard (in use temporarily until next reboot, when I'll try my PS/2 IBM Model M keyboard with an adapter) appear to be working!

8:03 - Using Safari... the mouse scroll direction is backwards! I can't cope with that, Googling for a fix... okay, fixed it in System Preferences | Mouse.

8:06 - Some keyboard shortcuts use Win (Command)! Some still use Ctrl (Ctrl+Tab to switch browser tabs!) Confusing! A lot to learn!

8:11 - Keyboard document navigation is different!
- “Move one word at a time” now uses Alt (Option), not Ctrl!
- What’s the shortcut to jump to the beginning or end of a document?

8:14 - Middle-click doesn’t close tabs in Safari!
- Maybe I’ll switch to Firefox later. But going to stick out the “native experience” for now.
- Also, where are the favicons on the tabs? Hard to tell them apart.

8:17 - Ctrl+Tab doesn’t use MRU order in Safari!
- To be fair, no other browser gets this right either by default except Opera. Will be a deal-breaker though if it turns out that there’s no workaround, just like Chrome.

8:23 - Woah - Ctrl+LeftArrow takes me to some other desktop that shows a calendar and a calculator and some other stuff! (Hit that by accident trying to navigate within some text in an editor!)

8:27 - Looking through system preferences, Ctrl+UpArrow = Mission Control apparently! Seems like an interesting Alt+Tab (er, Cmd+Tab) alternative?

8:30 - Mouse button 4 (thumb button) doesn’t go Back in Safari! Is there a way to make that work?

8:32 - Some things are somewhat familiar from iPod Touch, e.g. Notifications Center and FaceTime.

8:35 - Safari seems bad at suppressing popup windows? Or maybe I’m just wandering into more “grey” parts of the Internet as I’m trying to look up things like keyboard shortcuts and haven’t learned yet which sites have good Mac info? But I've seen at least 2 spammy-looking popup windows show up in front of me so far.

8:37 - Thinking about security as I'm having to type in a couple of my passwords... How do I know that this Mac isn’t running a keylogger? What’s the equivalent of Ctrl+Shift+Esc on this thing? (Just tried that; it didn’t do anything, nor did Cmd+Shift+Esc, not that I really expected it to. Maybe a good old command-line ps -ef is the answer, like in Linux... will need to learn what's "normal" on this system and what's not.)

8:38 - Ok, so how do I open a Terminal window? Searching Google... Aha, Cmd+Space is kind of an analog to Win+R (or just the Win key as of Windows 7) on Windows. Then I can just type “terminal” and hit Enter.

8:41 - Where’s the filesystem explorer? I remember that it’s called “Finder” on Mac. Poking around... Ah, I see, it’s activated from the smiley mac face at the far left of the “applications bar” thingy at the bottom of the screen.

8:42 - The Close button is in the top-left of each window, not top-right. Is there an Alt+F4 (universal “close window” shortcut key) on this?

8:45 - Talking to my wife on her iPhone via “Messages!” Man, this thing works flawlessly, unlike any solution that I’ve tried on a PC to chat with her on her iPhone. User experience is just like my iPod Touch. Impressed, but at the same time disappointed at that lack of a good PC solution for me to use at work; real keys (PC) blow away virtual ones (iOS device) every time.

8:48 - The Home and End keys don’t work in the Messages message entry field, but they do work in other places like Google Docs running in Safari -- what’s that about? They don’t seem to work in the Safari address bar either?

8:50 - Thinking ahead to writing up all this as a blog post. Is there an equivalent to LiveWriter on Mac? I'll probably just use the Blogger web UI for starters.

8:52 - Oh, found by accident that Cmd+UpArrow/DownArrow is like Ctrl+Home/Ctrl+End. Was trying to do that Ctrl+UpArrow thing to activate Mission Control to find out where my terminal window went. Don’t see it... I must have closed it. But now I also see that Cmd+LeftArrow/RightArrow act like Home and End.

8:56 - What’s Launchpad do... ah, seems reminiscent of the iOS desktop. *All* of the icons!

8:58 - No Menu key? Is there a “right-click” key on Mac to bring up spelling fixes when the caret is on a misspelled word, without reaching for the mouse?

9:00 - Typing in a Safari textarea field and typoed in “cusotmer” and Safari is showing a little popup with the suggested corrected spelling “customer” -- great! But how do I accept that correction without reaching for the mouse and clicking on it? Just pressing space bar like on iOS doesn’t seem to do the trick? I can’t seem to use the tab key to get to the little popup either? ... Ah, I need to hit DownArrow and then enter, ok.

...And there you have it, the highlights of my first 60 minutes as a Mac user! Maybe I'll come back to this topic and do a "Mac Impressions - The First 60 Days" and give some more in-depth impressions once I've gotten to spend some significant time with this new machine.

Finally, here's one bonus thought to leave you with:

10:40 - I must have hit "Home" and/or "End" at least 15-20 times as I was editing this post, and in the process discovered that those keys on a Mac apparently serve to scroll the viewport (but not the insertion point, thankfully) to the beginning or end of a long editable text area, respectively! The muscle memory from all those years of DOS and Windows is baked in pretty hard. It will be interesting to see how difficult it is to overcome that as I continue using this new Mac... at least *some* of the time already I'm remembering to use Cmd+Left/Right instead of Home/End, but it's far from 100% at this early stage!