We recently released our second game, DragonBox Elements.
http://vimeo.com/96069122
Our goal is to convey the 5 big ideas in mathematics in less than 20 hours of game play.
Our guiding principle is to design games that are inherently based on mathematics, as opposed to math simply tacked on to generic gameplay.
Would be more than happy to chat with anyone who has tried one of our games with their kid(s)!
Thanks Thomas!
These are interesting times for premium games. Barry Meade from Fireproof games wrote a very interesting article about it. So now we have to figure out if we stay the course and keep making premium games over longer development cycles or switch to a "Minimum Viable Product" approach for instance.
As an educational game we have some extra limitations though. For instance, we couldn't even implement an "ethically sound" version of in-app payments if we wanted to (e.g. $20 will net you everything the game has to offer) because IAP-games are excluded from the Education category on the Appstore.
This looks very well produced. Congrats on your launch!
Game publishing as an indie is still new waters for me but I am doubly unfamiliar with the education market. I don't know if it is harder/easier to get your game in front of the decision makers for schools or to build awareness among parents. What's your take on this?
As someone who is not an educator or parents, I am still interested in utilizing mathematics in fun ways. Premium games on iOS can be a very tough sell and can get easily drowned in the tide of F2P releases. I found the $5.99 price tag to be high enough to give me pause and made me - absent a demo- go searching for some reviews first.
I don't know if it is harder/easier to get your game in front of the decision makers for schools or to build awareness among parents. What's your take on this?
Our experience is that it's ultimately easier to target the parents. Going through schools and municipalities you can sometimes strike gold and get one of those huge sales, but it's a long and tiring process with a lot of red tape. It's especially funny to see how many educational institutions see us in a negative light because we're a "commercial company", while at the same time they get all their books from big multi-million publishers who drop off the "corporation radar" simply because they've been dealing with them for decades.
The people buying our game (parents) are not the same as the people playing them (kids)! This presents a very interesting challenge. We rely heavily on our product being good enough to be spread by word of mouth and high quality media, like this recent Forbes article. We don't have a big marketing machine, so the game simply has to deliver on what it promises so it's shared organically.
I found the $5.99 price tag to be high enough to give me pause and made me - absent a demo- go searching for some reviews first.
I wholeheartedly believe the game is well worth the price. As for having a demo, that's something we're debating daily.
Two main concerns with regards to having a free demo:
Thanks for the insight, Erlend.
Yes with educational games it seems like you design for the kids but appeal to the parents. It's a delicate path to walk.
I hope you guys do a post-mortem on this project and publish it somewhere.
Always happy to spew some words out. Bring on any questions you'd like ;)
Would love to do a public post mortem, hopefully we can set aside the time needed for that. Still got a few more weeks of marketing to do though, as that's a crucial part of any indie game development cycle.
