Infographic: The Brainsss behind an App Store 'success' that was probably 'a mistake'
The App Store ecosystem works wonderfully for Apple and the people who purchase and play games on their iPads, iPhones and iPods; the same can't be said for all app developers, Lonely Few's Rod Green told us today. Green and his partner, Yeong-Hao Han, are out thousands of dollars and at least two years of development time on their iOS debut, Brainsss.
It did well, by Apple's standards. By Yeong-Hao's standards, however, the two years he and Green put into making Brainsss an intricate, highly stylized, top-down zombie title was a poor business move.
"From a business point of view, that was probably a mistake, but we really wanted our first iOS game to turn out exactly how we wanted it to be," Yeong-Hao told CBS.
Green and Yeong-Hao are now focused on creating titles with quick turnaround and less complexity, a method the App Store seems to support, if the flood of single-swipe hits is anything to measure by.
Piracy also played a part in the dissemination of Brainsss, but Green said he doesn't see that as a negative: "In short we feel that most of the time these pirates aren't actually lost revenue at all, but more a chance to get the awareness of the game out there. It's the nature of the digital age and something we felt we needed to just accept rather than waste time trying to prevent."
Below: find an infographic breaking down the sales of Brainsss over its first month, along with some more information about user behavior and piracy trends around the world.
