Monthly Archives: February 2012

Fame Trader: Now and Next

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It’s been just over 2 months since we launched Fame Trader, and after several updates it’s time for some reflection on what we have achieved, as well as what the future holds for the project.

If you don’t know the background, Fame Trader is a celebrity trading game which we believe is the first of it’s kind in the App Store. The game includes over 200 celebrities divided into various markets, from Film Stars to Sporting Heroes. Each celebrity has a trading value representing their current level of fame, as calculated by our custom social-media driven algorithm. Players can view each celebrity’s bio and historical data (in the form of hourly/daily/weekly/monthly graphs) and buy and sell ‘stock’ in each celebrity based on how their fame is set to rise or fall. The game also includes integration with Game Center to enable competition amongst friends as well as unlocking achievements.

We knew when we started on Fame Trader that we wanted it to be free to download and monetized via in-app purchases (IAP). ‘Freemium’ apps are now generating over twice as much revenue in the App Store than paid versions. But we actually got a bit too carried-away with this area and at launch the game included 5 different IAPs, albeit each with the minimum cost of 99c (69p). Whilst conversion rates were excellent, there were a few reviews suggesting the number of IAPs required to play the game to it’s full potential was too much – and we agreed! Version 1.1 went live at the beginning of February and 4 of the IAPs became 1, with the consumable in-game currency being the other available IAP. We also made 5 out of 9 markets available from the start, versus 3 out of 9 previously.

Having already submitted 6 updates since it’s launch, Fame Trader continues to evolve. Here’s a brief summary of the most significant changes:

  • Added tutorial screens
  • Added celebrity search facility
  • Changed buying/selling mechanism to allow multiple stocks at a time (previously one stock per button press).
  • Added Top 10′s (most valuable/least valuable/biggest movers).
  • Fix to significant bug that stopped the game loading for a small group of players.
  • Changes to IAPs as detailed above.
  • Improved graphs.
  • Daily bonus for playing the game.
  • and more…
The current version of Fame Trader represents a great improvement from the original, but we are continuing to learn and add features that either weren’t possible or thought of before the launch. Here’s a taste of what is yet to come:
  • Make iPad compatible (Universal app).
  • Sync game stats across multiple devices.
  • Notifications (when the price of a celebrity in your portfolio changes significantly, etc.).
  • Add more celebrities.
To date the overall stats for Fame Trader aren’t very exciting, and to a certain extent have been disappointing. We’ve not pushed the game before now as the early versions have been a process of learning and refining the product, as readers of The Lean Startup will know all about! However, there are 2 stats that we are particularly encouraged by:
  • To date, Fame Trader has an average rating of 4.17 stars. This includes some early low ratings due to the bug mentioned above. Since version 1.1, all of the ratings have been 5 stars!
  • The overall IAP conversion rate comes in at 7.38%. Since we combined 4 of the IAPs into a single IAP at 99c (69p), the conversion rate has been over 12%! Admittedly the sample set isn’t as large as we’d like, but these figures are still way above what we expected.

These stats seem to suggest we now have a product that people like and is potentially profitable. We won’t be relying on a random featuring by Apple (although obviously that would be great guys!), so the marketing begins…

If you’d like more information on Fame Trader or Boluga, please contact rob at boluga dot com.

The Game of Light

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Here in Boluga Heights, we’ve been working on a new action game of miniature proportions. Inspired by the likes of Tiny Wings, Contre Jour and Whale Trail, our goal is to combine simple one-touch controls with interesting lighting effects and solid fast-paced gameplay.

Early on in the process we decided the game would involve our character travelling through a ‘cave’, with a ceiling and a floor, that need to be avoided. Within that area there should be positive and negative objects, with the positive objects providing light, and vice-versa. The light provides the power that our character needs to progress and when it runs out, it’s Game Over!

'Light game' early development screenshot

'Light game' early development screenshot

Although we are pretty sure we’ve agreed on what to call our game,  for now we will simply refer to it as our ‘light game’.

Here you can see a very early screenshot, showing the basic idea with minimal artwork, no HUD and no frills (particle effects, animation, etc).

Now you might be thinking this sounds a little familiar. Well we all know a lot of people have the same ideas, but most never execute them. In this case however, someone with a similar idea has executed it – and really very well. You may have seen Sir Benfro’s Brilliant Balloon, but if you haven’t it’s worth checking out. It really looks great.

Whilst Sir Benfro appears to have been built on similar foundations as we started out with, we are confident that there are enough differences for us not to be discouraged by it beating us to launch. In fact, we are looking at it positively as the game has been well received and we hope it becomes a big success. We will continue to develop our theme and gameplay, but with an additional goal to provoke the response: ’If you liked that, you’ll love this!’.

We don’t expect our ‘light game’ to be ready for another couple of months, but we’ll keep you updated and provide some more screenshots and details as we go.