One of the problems I’ve been struggling with recently is a lack of exposure for my apps, Solar Explorer and Exoplanet Explorer. This has caused them to lose rank positions in the Education category in Android Market and I believe it was the result of changes I’d made to the apps in late December, which although improving them, also caused them to be shared less.
I made some adjustments a few weeks ago, and it has had a positive effect, resulting in a doubling of the rate at which my apps are shared. This has significantly boosted downloads of the free versions on SlideMe and AppsLib markets, but hasn’t translated into increased sales. Sharing on Android Market increased from such a low level that it’s only really stopped the decline, and has yet to turn into measurable growth.
Because of this, I’ve decided to branch out and produce a series of free apps to stake out a presence in other categories besides Education, which will hopefully draw more attention to my work from people who don’t frequent the education category. As Shiva3D is really designed for producing game and multi-media applications, I’m going to write some simple games, but I’m going to make them as awesome as possible.
Simple and awesome. What could possibly go wrong?!
Transmutation
After two weeks of development, the first app is ready, and it’s called Transmutation, available now on Android Market and SlideMe and later on various other smaller markets.
The player controls a microbe located at the corner of the game board, and has the ability to change it’s colour using buttons arranged along the bottom of the screen. The colour changes will spread across the board to other microbes that are the same colour as the player’s, but only if they are touching it, or another that is the same colour. The player only has a limited number of colour changes for each level, and a level is only complete once all the microbes are the same colour.
Much of the last fortnight was actually spent constructing the menu system that you see in the game. I’ve written it in such a way that it’s easy to configure is reusable, so that I can take the menu system, apply a coat of paint, and use it again in the next app. The framework will be shared between all the apps I write, so that if I upgrade the framework for one, I’ll only need to recompile the others for them all to inherit the improvements.
It’s actually been a fascinating project so far, especially now that it’s been uploaded and I can see how people are playing it. There’s only been a handful of downloads so far (damn you Android Market’s lack-of-discoverability!), but it’s nice to see that most of the users who have tried it have actually kept it installed and played it a few times.
This is actually the second game I’ve written, the first being a shoot-em-up called “Scumble” written way back in 1991 on my Commodore Amiga, which was released to Aminet and is probably out there on the Internet somewhere. I’ve long since lost the source code, so I’ll have to track it down one day and relive the olden days with an Amiga emulator.
Why such a large gap? I, like many programmers, was afflicted with the chronic inability to finish a project because I’d get bored after the fun bit was done and think of something more interesting to write. I’ve since learned secret of how to deal with that phase of a project: I start to lose interest, I write up a list of everything that’s left to do and then make myself complete each item, one at a time.
It’s a painful process, but it gets the job done.
That’s the first game out of the way, so it’s time to start on number two. I expect this one will feature monkeys and bicycles, and should be complete with less than 14 days of development time.
But you never know, it could turn into something completely different.
Playbook update
RIM have finally confirmed that I’ve scored a free Playbook, and that it’s going to ship shortly. Exoplanet Explorer will appear on App World soon after the tablet falls into my hands.
Saying goodbye to Google
Over the last four months I’ve turned from a naive Google fan-boy buying into the well known “Do no evil” motto, to a jaded app developer who thinks he’s seen it all (but probably hasn’t) on the front lines of the Android market.
It’s been a wild ride, and it’s certainly not been fun.
That’s not to say that I think Google is darkest, purest form of evil that ever stalked the Earth.
Far from it.
What I’ve learned is that Google is a business that is trying and succeeding in making a profit, and whether I succeed or fail as an app developer is irrelevant to the company.
Google’s core market is advertising, which is why they purchased the Android OS back in 2005. At the time, the directors must have looked further ahead than the next quarterly statement, unlike most companies these days, and what they must have seen was a world that was moving towards a mobile future. It also must have been obvious to them that if they wanted to remain relevant after this transition, they would needed to make sure the Apple, Nokia and Microsoft didn’t control the browsers on all mobile devices, or they’d be sure to block Google’s access to eyeballs, which would be very bad for business.
The key to Android’s success was a decent supply of applications for the newly launched devices. Google must have realised that it was going to be hard to convince established iPhone developers to invest resources to port apps (it’s still difficult today), so rather than pay them to come, they simply made it cheap to become an Android developer and limited paid app sales to a few regions. This forced developers with limited resources to produce lots of lovely free apps to try to emulate the boom that was occurring on Apple’s iOS platform.
Fast forward to the present, and we have a situation where Google has probably achieved far more than it thought it would with Android. The future is secure, at least for a few more years.
And that’s the problem.
App developers were a means to an end, and that end has been achieved.
That’s why Google provides such miserable support to developers. We’ve done our bit, and for every developer that walks away in frustration, there’s a dozen more who dream of the hitting the big-time.
Google aren’t being evil, they just don’t care.
It’s also why developers were recently banned from the Android support forums. Some of us had kicked up too much of a fuss when we went to the media because we couldn’t contact Google about payment issues that had been going on for weeks.
Rather than fix the problem, Google shot the messengers. It’s cheaper than implementing a proper support service, after all.
Developers are now are left with an email system which largely isn’t monitored by humans. I should know; out of numerous problems I’ve tried to report over the last couple of months, I’ve rarely had contact with a human, and even when I do get someone, nothing is achieved and they usually stop responding to my emails. Sure, the problem might eventually get fixed through other means, but it’s not because of email support.
No, it’s not time to move on and I’m not dropping Android. I love Android and no matter what anyone says, I’ll be sticking with it, while it remains popular.
What I am going to do is cut as many Google products out of my life as I can and start using other services. No more “G” anything, unless it’s absolutely necessary.
As a first step, I’m going to start providing Solar Explorer on alternate stores, beginning with Slideme. I came to this decision earlier today after reading an interesting article that compared different app store performance and showed, quite possibly, that Google’s market isn’t the only viable app store anymore.
I’ll know soon enough, and I’ll report back here how things are going.
Android is all grown up now and may no longer need the financial support of Google to make it in the world.
Google had better think carefully about how it continues to treat the developers that are largely responsible for the platform’s success, or they may find that the developers don’t need Google either.