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WordPop! for iPad – Coming Soon

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We have been having a great time working on WordPop! for the iPad. During March the team will be blogging about their thoughts and tasks as we race to finish WordPop! in time for the iPad release (which is still TBD but we are all watching Apple closely).

After the iPad was announced we had a exciting meeting and answered several key questions.

Q: What did we think of the iPad?
A: We loved it and thought it was going to fill an important niche market.

Q: Could we offer our players a great gaming experience?
A: Yes, the extra real estate will be used to add even more engagement to the game.

Q: Should we create a new game from scratch or redesign one of our current games?
A: We decided to redesign one of our current games and felt either Farkle Dice or WordPop! would be the best candidates. We sent a poll to our registered users and WordPop! was the clear leader receiving over 40% of the votes.

Q: What next steps should be taken?
A. All team members to read the new Human Interface Guidelines for the iPad and to install the SDK to gain access to the simulator.

Check back as I will be writing regularly about our development efforts and I will be posting more images as we get closer to the final look. Above is a screen shot taken from the simulator.

Please comment and let me know what you are interested to hear about in regards to iPad, gaming, WordPop!, etc.

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February Contest – Win a Free Smart Box Design Game

heart_sbd_logo.jpgPost a comment or suggest a feature about any of our games on our blog and 5 winners will chosen at random. Contest ends 2/14. Make sure to post your email so we can contact you if you won. Adding a comment is a quick and easy. Only one comment per day per person.

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My Wife Thinks the iPad is Perfect For Her

My wife does not embrace technology. Her loving husband, me, does. I create web sites, I listen to music on my iPod, I create games for the iPhone. While she will use the internet and reluctantly email, she still uses CDs. She is educated, with a Ph.D. and very creative.

I showed her the iPad video and I honestly think I saw little iPad hearts floating around her like you see in cartoons. I have been trying to get her to try a laptop or an iPod Touch to enhance her life and all met with rejection, until now.  But why the change? After a bit of Q&A (I played both good and bad cop) the following reasons appeared:

– Weight matters, a lot! With the weight only 1.5 pounds this was finally a number she felt she could carry around with her. Weight was a bigger concern than size.

– Size is important! When I described the thickness, width, and height she was even more sold as the compact size seemed to hit the sweet spot for slipping it into a purse. She felt that this would easily fit in her lap or she could rest it on a small picture or plate stand. I was imagining her at a cafe, reaching into her purse and pulling out a little artist easel and then the iPad.

– Endurance is a must. 10 hours of battery life really mattered to her. Why? It goes back to the weight. She does not want to lug a charger with her. This is like my iPod. I never bring a charger for it but I always do for my laptop.

– It’s attractive.  Both is its looks and the display. If you are going to be carrying a computer around it should look good and she liked how it looked and how the internet looked. Plus, with the resolution 1024 by 768 this was going to be perfect for her #1 activity, using the internet to research.

All in all, she concluded the iPad is a very sexy device (um, is it getting warm in here or is it just me) and since my wife agrees I bet there will be millions of others who do too.

Apple iPad

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Free iPhone App Costs Developers

ratings.pngMy team and I created WordPop! for iPhone. Like many developers we decided to create a “free” version of our game so potential players could try it before they purchased. Over the last six months I noticed ratings for our free version was lower than our paid version. I wondered if other developers were having the same experience. I did an analysis of the top 20 best selling games in November in the Games: Word category.

I compared the ratings from the Paid version to the Free Version. If the paid version had an average 3.5 rating and the free version had a 3.0 rating, then there was a .5 negative change.

N/A     45%
No Change    10%
.5  Neg Change    35%
1.0 Neg Change    5%
1.5 Neg Change     5%
Total         100%

Not one application had a better rating for the free version and 45% had worse ratings.

Then I was curious if ratings determine if an application will be a best seller.

5       5%
4.5   5%
4    25%
3.5 35%
3     25%
2.5    5%
Total 100%

I was surprised that 65% had 3.5 or worse rating.

Although a small sample and taken from the Word Games category I came to the following conclusions.

1.  Creating a free version was once thought of as an important strategy to getting noticed and to be a top seller. Since almost half (45%) of the top selling word games do not have a free version I no longer think this is true.

2. Either players of free versions are much more critical of apps in general or the free version is missing a feature that makes it higher rated

3.  You can be a best seller without having a free version

4. You can be a best seller with lower than average ratings

All in all, as a developer I no longer believe it is critical for my team to create a fee version to drive sales or to become a best seller. And I think the costs to make the free version may not justify the return on investment (ROI).

You can read more about our game WordPop! here and the free version, Diet WordPop! here.

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999 Rounds in WordPop! Unreal!

This image was sent to me as proof of a very high score. This is the highest score I have seen but unfortunately do to an error it did not get posted to the High Score page on our server.

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