Slightly Social To Publish MediaSoft Mobile Games in 2013

Good things happen when you get out of your comfort zone.

Recently Slightly Social had the chance to fly to China and visit with MediaSoft (Malaysia) and it’s parent company (Hong Kong).

At first I was hoping we could just do some phone calls or a video skype chat, but then I realized that the best things happen when you are out of your comfort zone, so I decided I should pop some gravol and take the flight =)

As a nervous traveller (with a 2 year old and a wife needing you at home) who’s never traveled more than 5 hours on a plane before, the 19 hour flight to Hong Kong on 1 weeks notice was a bit of a mental barrier for me to leap over. But I’m so glad I did!

We were there to talk about mobile game marketing (getting users) and monetization, as they are just ramping up their mobile game operation to deliver some quality mobile games, but needed some consulting.

Official Press Release

“MediaSoft and Slightly Social’s partnership comes as the mobile app market is growing explosively on the heels of record sales of mobile devices. Last year 364 million computers were sold vs 531 million smartphones and tablets.”

Brad Mills “working” in Asia, watching a 5D movie that MediaSoft made (yeah 5D, 3D PLUS TWO D’s)

The trip went so well, and we enjoyed working together so much, that we decided to create a more formal partnership.

I’m so impressed by MediaSoft’s team and ability to create high quality mobile games that I couldn’t help but want to focus more of Slightly Social’s efforts on publishing and marketing their great games.

So today we are super happy to announce our official partnership for 2013. Slightly Social will be publishing up to 100 of MediaSoft’s games, and directing the company’s mobile marketing and monetization strategies.

We plan to have 4-5 Top 10 games in 2013, if you want to read more here’s an official press release.

Slightly Social is excited and motivated to be working with this great team and I’m personally excited to introduce millions of people to MediaSoft’s fun games.

Brad

Lightspeed Getaway App Store Optimization Experiments

I’m Brad Mills, I raised $4400 on AppBackr to launch an indie iOS game, Lightspeed Getaway. The game is live as of August 2012, yay! Unfortunately the launch week left a lot to be desired in terms of user downloads, even after a MonsterFreeApps.com promotion, which I was super disappointed with:

But fear not, I’m sending an update into the appstore this week!

Watch this video, it’s only a couple of minutes and it tells you what is happening with Lightspeed Getaway during the first week after launch, why it possible didn’t do so well, and what we are doing to make sure the game has the best shot at success!

Not mentioned in the video are the App Store Optimization experiments we will be doing with the game!

The first update will see a new App Icon
We will focus on new keywords.
We will be able to buy about 30,000 users through Tapjoy and Revmob advertising, to help us boost up the ranks.

With apps, the secret is ranking high for well-searched keywords to get free and natural organic downloads to put you higher in the charts.

As you rank higher in the charts, you get more and more natural downloads. The keywords we tried to rank for on V1 launch didn’t bring us much more traffic, so we are shifting focus to new keywords by:

Changing the App Name
Changing the App’s Keywords in Itunes Connect.
Changing the App’s Description.

As I mentioned before, we will be adding a new app Icon, here’s a look at the old one vs the new one.

Keep following along for these experiments, and I’ll report back on the success or failure of the experiments that we’ll be performing on our games.

Follow Brad Mills on twitter:
www.twitter.com/bradmillscan

Connect with Brad Mills elsewhere:
www.about.me/bradmills

Slightly Social, Inc Gaming Company Based in London, Ontario, is Hiring

Are you interested in developing casual games on Facebook that all your friends will play?

Are you passionate about building fun features on sweet flash games?

Do you know what ‘all ur base r belong to us’ means?

Slightly Social is accepting guild applications.

Help, FAQ & Wiki

———————

1) What class does the guild need?

We need more Talented Programmers with high Intelligence & Charisma attributes. (Dexterity & Strength not required.)

2) What race do you need?

The preferred character for this First Person position is Human with the ability Natural Coding.

3) Is there a skill tree I should be specialized in?

Not exactly. Any Guild applicants who can quicly level up their New Language skills will have the best chance of being approved. You must have a desire to spend the majority of your skillpoints in actionscript 3.0.

4) Are you guys hardcore?

The hours are flexible, but you will be gold farming full time. Since we’re a new Guild trying to Pwn the Marketplace, we’re not looking for someone who’s AFK a lot.

5) What kind of connection do I need?

We have guildmates in Asia, Europe & North America – so if you don’t live near London, Ontario, you must be able to work in a multiplayer environment over a LAN connection.

6) So what do I get if I’m accepted?

-New Recruits will earn competitive guild pay, depending on what Level you are.

-When you earn enough XP, you will be upgraded with health benefits.

-Applicants who have maxed the AS3 skill will unlock a bi-monthly currency bonus.

Walkthrough of Common Missions that you will be grinding to earn credits

———————

* Craft casual/social games using Flash and the Facebook API.

* Craft frontend web interfaces using XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

* Squad up with Writers & Designers to tank code while you receive content & art buffs.

* Group with Backend Coders to defeat scaling monsters & defend the flag from players using exploits.

* Spy on player behavior with backend data stat tracking & report findings back to home base.

Mission Skill Requirements

———————

* PHP (if you have Python or PERL we can upgrade you to PHP)

* MySQL (at least some xp in SQL)

* Web Technologies (XHTML, XML, JavaScript, CSS)

* Actionscript 3.0 (if you have Java or C++ we can upgrade you to AS3)

How To Apply

———————

You don’t need to be max level to apply, but applicants with XP from another guild or a B.S./M.S. in Computer Science will receive priority.

1) Send a tell to george@slightlysocial.com letting us know you’re interested in joining.

2) Include anything you’ve crafted for another clan, or something you’ve crafted while playing solo.

General Requirements

———————

Humans only.

No n00bs.

Slightly Social’s First Facebook Game Kung Fu Cookie Now In Open Beta

Kung Fu Cookie, Slightly Social‘s first Facebook application, is now in Open Beta!

We’ve been developing the casual fortune cookie themed Facebook game for the past 9 months with a group of 20 or so closed beta testers, and now we’re ready to let more would-be cookie warriors into the world of Handan.

The whole development team is very excited to get some more feedback and fresh input from fresh faces. For most of the guys, this will be their first Facebook application! Even though the game is not 100% ready yet, we’re going to launch into Open Beta, partly so we can shake the rust off!

The team as a whole need to get our collective feet wet – we’ve had a To Do list a mile long since Day 1, so before this turns into Duke Nukem Forever, we are going to take the plunge!

Also, from a managing standpoint, there’s nothing better to motivate an all night code-a-thon than 10,000 fans begging for an update!

Developing a complicated Social game on Facebook is hard enough, but when all of your developers work from home, things can get slightly more challenging.

Over the last 9 months while we’ve been working on Kung Fu Cookie, we’ve primarily used Skype to communicate, Basecamp & Dropbox to organize the project, and Pizza to motivate.

It’s been a learning experience for all of us, in fact we are now facing a very frustrating issue that requires some creative thinking to overcome. Unfortunately, this sort of thing comes with the territory of developing on the Facebook Platform.

We developed a streamlined Character Select & Tutorial, which is very complex on the backend, but has been formatted to give people an awesome first impression of Kung Fu Cookie. It is also designed to walk them through the basics of playing the game in an easy to follow & entertaining way.

It took us at least a month to develop this system alone!

Well Facebook has a little thing called an FBJS bridge that we use at the core of our game to communicate between the flash parts of the game and the non-flash parts of the game.

Recently we’ve discovered that this bridge is about as stable as a tight rope, and it seems to be guarded by nasty mean Trolls that prevent us from using the bridge when we need to. Thanks to the Facebook FBJS Bridge Trolls, players are getting eaten before they even make it through the Tutorial!

When this happens, they get frustrated with the errors, don’t know what to do, and just leave! We’re at the whim of Facebook here, and there’s nothing we can do to fix the FBJS errors, we just have to wait until Facebook fixes it.

Obviously that’s not a solution that we can afford to accept, sometimes it’s 2 weeks before Facebook gets around to fixing an issue like this, and that kind of intermittent downtime could devastate a growing game.

So we’ve devised a plan to retool the entire Introduction, Character Select & Tutorial to make it all flash. Doing this will delay our official launch by at least a week, but it’s the only option.

As long as we are learning lessons from issues like these, Slightly Social is coming out one step ahead, a stronger Company.

We look forward to the day when we can remove the Beta tag and turn on the traffic, but until then, we will keep taking steps…maybe the Facebook Development Kit should come a pedometer.