Discover exposure: Our experience with PiX Frogger. Good game, bad exposure

[pixjuegos]

Hi to everyone.

I'm Pablo Navarro from PiX Juegos. I've already published 5 games in the OUYA store, all of them for free, trying to get some experience to be able to create one of the best OUYA games out there.

As now, I've done a few mistakes when releasing those games. I know I did wrong with the other games (PiX Pang, PiX Bros, Ripollés' Nightmare and Garnatron)

I published them too soon, as many other people, before the players got their OUYAs, so those games went all the way down to the back of their genres section. But I don't understand why our game, PiX Frogger, went to the genres archives after just 10 days, not being featured, or trending, in any moment while having more likes than many other games.

On july 19th, Friday, we released PiX Frogger (for 4 players), 10 days ago. It appeared in the sandbox and it escaped after just one day. But it went to the end of the escaped games, so players had to scroll quite a lot to get to our game.
Tuesday, july 23rd: We got one hundred likes after our pseudo-marketing campaign: We told players, through the game's info, we would release an 8 player version if the game get 100 likes, and it did sooner than we expected.
Wednesday: We released the 8 player version. It got back to Sandbox for some reason, but after a few hours it re-escaped. No problem. But it still was at the back of the escaped games.

And since Sunday 28th (yesterday): PiX Frogger is not in the escaped games category, nor sandbox, nor featured, nor "couch games showcase", nor trending. You can find it now only searching on genres.

It has 153 likes, more than others in the Featured category, and it's already in the 146 position in the O-rank.

Why is my game being thrown to the back? What did we do wrong?

[Jake53]

I think their whole discover section needs to be remodeled. It's not fair to you developers that Towerfall is the first game in like 4-5 lists including the so called "penny arcade" list... Shouldn't this list include the best games under a dollar?

[watson387]

Yeah the Discover section is f'd up. I hate it. Only the high profile games stay up no matter how well the lower profile games do. It needs completely reworked. For the record I haven't tried PixFrogger yet because I'm waiting for my son to get back from vacation to play it, but I love R's Nightmare.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk 2

[dra6onfire]

I agree it could use a change but this is not the company targeting your game. The order of every list in the store is the order that the games appear in the o-rank list. Escaping from the sandbox seems dependant solely on getting something like 50 up-votes. O-rank is dependent on a variety of factors like play time, not just up-votes. The trending now list is literally just the top 30 ranked games. The only two lists I really don't understand is the featured and the only on OUYA lists. I have no idea what qualifications these two lists use. But they still follow the o-rank order.

My general point though is that its perfectly possible with the current store setup for your game to get enough votes to escape the sandbox, but not enough o-rank to ever be very visible before it falls into the genre sections. I don't necessarily agree with it but it is not an attack on you personally.

[pixjuegos]

@Jake53: Penny arcade is a website (originally a webcomic, now a religion)
@Watson387: Thanks I like that abbreviation, "R's Nightmare"
@dra6onfire: That's exactly what happened to PiX Frogger.

It makes me feel like they will only promote the games that paid those 600$ in Kickstarter, even if they are bad ports or screensavers...

[Reaperman]

O-rank is dependent on a variety of factors like play time, not just up-votes.

That wouldn't surprise me a bit, and would indicate a huge disadvantage for pix frogger where I'd expect generally low play times.

I pulled that one down from the sandbox when it first came out and had a nice time with it for a few minutes. It seemed like it'd be more fun in local multi-player, but I'll probably never have a 'player 2,' and I felt like I 'played out' the single player in a fairly short period of time.

More levels might well increase single-player play time, and unlockables (even if they are just something like visual frog customizations) might do even more. Stats wouldn't hurt (total jump counter, average jumps per round). Little achievements to collect based on the stats, maybe.

I had no idea about the 8-player, and may have to redownload it for another shot (probably again for just a few minutes). Is there some kind of visual indicator in the icon that it's been improved?

[DoubleD]

I don't visit the discovery section anymore other then to download them, I use other meanings of finding the good games (like their own site if ordered alphabetically).
I have tried your games btw, I like them, especially the free and multiplayer part.

At the moment the discovery channel is bad, but it would be worse if there were a lot more games on it (say 10000+).
I am sure they will iron it out, we just have to have patience.

[BlackCrackerStudios]

Yea discover is just a mess, the fact their approval process is a joke doesn't help anything. Open source shouldn't mean there are no standards to follow.

It would be a big deal but new stds need to be adopted, every game should be re-reviewed and if need be rejected until corrections are made.

[arcticdog]

I'm not sure how to word this to avoid sounding like an attack on your game, so let me state up front that I wish nothing but success for anyone that publishes a game on OUYA. Including you and PixFrogger. Don't worry.. I'll balance this critique out with some advice.

Having looked at both Towerfall and PixFrogger... can you realistically expect to have the same kind of reception? Your title is a one-button knock-off of Frogger. You unceremoniously state it in the title itself.
Towerfall is a very original and highly polished game with much more complexity in the mechanics. It has nothing to do with the kind of backing the game receives, it's that your concepts are different and perhaps your own personal budgets are different. Your game feels as though it's designed primarily for phones and was created with a lower budget, Towerfall provides more of a console experience.

Should a game that has a lot of time and money invested in it's design get better reception? Generally that's the way it works, and it SHOULD work that way or we'd never see decent polished games. "Free" isn't always a selling point for games. Great graphics help, but not as much as a game that showcases a controller to a much fuller extent vs. just transferring the touch mechanic directly over. No Brakes Valet is an free original concept with Intellivision era graphics. But it's a frequent hit in my household and many others. Why? Because it plays like a console game and is ranked well above your game as a result.

It would be nice if the O-ranking algorithm was disclosed. I can understand why they wouldn't do so because they don't want developers to exploit the knowledge and artificially inflate their ranking...

Here are improvements I'd suggest...
- Given that Towerfall is the highest selling game so far, I suspect sales is a factor in the O-Ranking as well. Try adding a donation system to your game. Even if it's not a large factor, it might be a tie breaker somewhere in their algorithm that decides if you go up in ranking or down.

- Currently your game resembles the old Activision "Freeway" more than Frogger. If you're going to use the name, people are going to expect at the very least, the same experience as Frogger. Not a version that removes horizontal movement or the concept of getting the frogs home to advance to the next level. Given the amount of emulation on the OUYA, you've provided no reason for a someone to favor your game over actually emulating Frogger if that's what they expect. The 8 player idea is very cool and original, but if someone goes in thinking this is going to be Frogger, they're going to be disappointed. Your game is more or less a racing game, and therefore I think the title you've chosen for it is not working in your favor.

- You have a unique concept in terms of it's appeal to children. Give the frogs some character! Names. Different looks. Maybe you could work on the mechanics in a way to somehow make it a cooperative game as well. Perhaps team play? Or variations on the rules so the concept doesn't get stale?

- And finally, be patient. Your game is new. The engagement metric hasn't been disclosed. It could be a percentage of every game on the system, or it could be that every game has to re-prove their engagement at some set interval. There are plenty of games behind you in rank, and all of them in the vicinity of your rank have the same sorts of issues. They're clearly mobile ports with little done to make it a console experience, or they don't look like they have the budget/time spent on them in development that the higher ranking titles have. There are exceptions to this, but I think sometimes the secret to that is that the concept just has to strike a chord or the developer happens to be lucky. If you can't rely on that predictably, you have to stack the cards in your favor.

The games that are universally ranked the highest are the ones that most people are talking about. If you look at the concepts that are higher ranking, they almost universally have a "non-generic" character and look to them. They have "personality". Therefore their appeal is much wider. I'd aim for that.

[Chris Garcia]

Right now your O-Rank is #146 for PiX Frogger. So, that is 145 games that show before yours most likely in the Discover section.