“Live up to the time, the creation of non-stop, this article is participating in 2021 year-end summary essay competition”

I had a lot of experiences in this year, from leaving a game development team that had been together for 7 years to trying to make wechat mini-games on my own, to later making games, releasing them by myself, promoting them and hitting the wall by myself. I met a lot of problems, and gained a lot of insight and made a lot of friends. There are a lot of things worth recording no matter for what I have done or for my growth. Take notes on the nuggets’ mid-year review. It’s a long article, and I’ll explain it in detail.

At the beginning of this year, because of chance, know that there is a game tool called “micro channel small game production tool”, look at two eyes, feel pretty good. So in my spare time, I tried to learn to use it. After I had a certain understanding of it, I was quite surprised.

Because it’s the lowest barrier I’ve ever seen, it’s cheap to learn, and it has enough features to make a little game. With such a tool, can people who want to make games, but are too high to do so, make their own mini-games? So I started writing tutorials while learning how to use the tool, the “Anyone Can Make Games” series I wrote earlier. A lot of friends may pay attention to me and know me because of this series. I’ve had a lot of comments from people saying that this series helped them make their first game, which makes me think it’s a great thing to do.

I’ve been making mobile games for years, with a small team of three, and we spent a lot of time making a game that felt good and even got TapTap’s attention (if you’re interested, go to TapTap and search for “Light Reappear”) and signed up for an exclusive deal. However, things did not go well, because it is a paid buyout system of the game, so we have to apply for a version number in China before it can be officially put on the shelves for sale, although there are publishers to help us to apply, but the application has been delayed, counting up to now more than a year!

It’s fatal for a game development team to build something, but not be able to sell it. I couldn’t live on wind all the time, so starting around April, I decided to do some personal feelers.

I aimed at micro channel games, because it is feasible for me personally, and I can quickly make the game, quickly to verify that this road is not feasible. In fact, at this time the small game market has risen, and the major platforms have their own small games, the reason for choosing wechat small games, because the size of wechat small games is large, and wechat as a national application, small games spread is very easy.

Because the “Anyone can Make games” series I wrote before has been well received and helped a lot of people. So, I decided to continue to write, while doing the game, while the production process into another series of tutorials, which is later “micro channel game development combat series”. In this way, I wanted to spread the word about my game and build up a potential audience for a later launch (but it didn’t work out that way, but I’ll talk about that later).

While doing the game, while writing the tutorial, probably used nearly a month of time, the first version of the game online, the actual combat series of tutorials have also written.

After online is not smooth, because there’s no through applying for open beta, the feedback is the function of the game is too simple, quality does not meet the requirements of for open beta, open beta means WeChat platform will give you some seeds of users, the accumulation of help you as soon as possible to 1000 users, so as to achieve open flow conditions of the Lord, only after the opening traffic main, In order to have ads in the game, the game can make money. I used almost all my relatives and friends to accumulate more than 300 users, which is still far from 1,000 users.

At first, I didn’t think of or know that I could gain users by promoting the purchase quantity, so I chose another way. Since the feedback said that the functions of the game were too simple and could not meet the requirements of the public test, I added new functions for the game and then applied.

I started to enrich the content of the game, from adding new themes to adding new modes, and applied for open beta again after each new content was added. During this period, I gradually had a deeper understanding of a problem, that is, “I can only make games, but I don’t know how to get more people to play my games”. As a result, I started to understand and learn about game marketing.

Facts proved that although I had a late understanding of the problem, I still had this awareness and tried to learn and make up for it. During this period, I learned a lot about game buying volume, promotion and operation, so I found a way to quickly accumulate 1000 users through buying volume and open traffic master as soon as possible.

Two months after the launch of the game, I finally successfully applied for the qualification of the public test of the game, but by this time, I had already opened the traffic master through the way of buying quantity. All in all, in the two months since the launch of the game, I have basically only done three things. The first is to enrich the content of the game, the second is to write a tutorial, and the third is to learn the promotion of the game purchase volume.

【 Delicate 1010】 This small game, I use less than a month to make, and then use nearly three months for its non-stop enrichment and expansion, so far I think it is very good, at least for me quite satisfied with it, And I also think it all in the whole WeChat little game platform of “1010” type of game, both from the richness of content, from the whole experience is the best (of course this is just a feeling), the game may be over, in fact, I have a lot of thoughts and the direction of the extensible, but for now, That’s not the most important thing.

“All you know about games, not traffic” is probably the case for most game developers, but most game developers don’t take it seriously, or even don’t, including myself. My previous team had always worked with a publisher on their games, and the split was usually 8:2, with the publisher taking 80% of the profits and the game developer taking 20%. I don’t think it’s fair that we put so much time and effort into making a game that we end up with only a fraction of the profit, while the publisher gets most of the profit by taking a ready-made game and promoting it.

It was not until I tried to buy and promote this small game by myself that I realized why the seemingly unfair share ratio was actually fair.

I have almost searched all the videos and tutorials related to wechat mini game promotion on the whole network for learning, and repeated learning, feeling that I have a clear idea of what user lifetime value, what input and output ratio how to calculate, what ROI, ECPM, retention, how to look at conversion, talking very reasonable.

With such a solid theoretical foundation, I felt I had put on solid armor and rushed into the buy market, imagining that I would be able to fight bravely and win many victories. But the reality was worse than expected. Within two days of entering, he had already lost his helmet and armor, been beaten black and blue, and fled everywhere.

What is the reality? I analyzed the game the audience of players, according to past user portrait data to find the target population, locking the high value from the target population, ready for the advertising material, set up the AD targeting, it all seems to meet the tutorial theory, according to the thought, I should be watched game data Dally rise, looking at earnings increase step by step.

However, when I invest $100 to buy something and only get $1 back, I feel bad all of a sudden. And if this happens for several days in a row, it immediately makes you a little skeptical of life.

Do not pass a few days of buy quantity experience, had been rubbed all over the body. This let me have a very, very, very deep understanding of a word: the paper come zhongjue shallow, must know this to practice.

Is that how you give up? Of course not, investment so much to make a game, is hoping to make money through it, of course, can’t give up so easily. As a result, I began to “ask high-level people to guide” road, trying to find some professional people to do promotion, want to learn some actual combat experience from them. Because for promotion, the gap between theory and practice is too big, WHAT I really need at present is some actual combat experience and guidance.

It really let me find, is a follower of the public account, later added my friend, chat a few words, is a professional promotion friend, he hopes to become a game producer in the future, so pay attention to my public account, learn to do the game tutorial.

So I turned to him and asked him questions. I’m not too embarrassed to bother so much, so I try to compensate by giving out red envelopes. Did not expect the other party said: “don’t give me a red envelope, I often before white piao your tutorial, so willing to teach you, with you say these”. I guess that’s what it’s all about. So, you see, there are benefits to writing regularly and sharing with others, and there are more important benefits, which I’ll talk about later.

In this way, I asked this friend a lot of questions, he also taught me a lot of actual combat experience, including his usual promotion of how to buy the amount of operation, how to put. Sometimes he even spent a whole night telling me about his promotion experience, for which I would like to express my thanks to him here again. Although I have never met him before, nor will I receive a red envelope, I still want to express my sincere thanks to him. Anything I can do to help in the future, please do.

Under the guidance of senior people, I have made some progress, but still far less than expected, so far, in the amount of promotion I made the best result is in the interval of a few days, to achieve more than 1 input-output ratio, that is, investment of 100 yuan, can earn back a little more than 100 yuan. But these numbers were reached only in a few days, not stable, not sustainable. That means you can’t maximize your returns by increasing the amount you buy.

Yes, the small game “Delicate 1010” has reached a bottleneck, because I still can’t find a breakthrough in the market of buy volume promotion to achieve a stable input-output ratio greater than 1. It currently maintains 400-500 daily active users (natural traffic) and daily revenue of 20-30 yuan.

This is more than four months, I made such a micro channel game experience, for me, the harvest is quite a lot, there are a lot of new cognition, but also updated their previous many wrong cognition, met a lot of nobles, but also know a lot of new friends.

This small game has come to an end so far, and some friends may ask: why don’t I continue to explore the promotion of small games. One of the biggest reason is that I learned that amount to buy to promote this industry experience and accumulated by real money to invest, to go to trial and error, I think that is why they want to take away the cause of most of the profits, developers make a is time and energy into the game, the worst result is not to make money, and promotion of investment money, have a bit inadvertent, will lose money. The greater the risk, the greater the reward.

For the promotion of the purchase volume of small games, the daily investment of several hundred or thousands should be small, but the normal investment is tens of thousands of purchases every day. Obviously, such trial and error cost is too high for me to bear. Visible, in the small game on this road at present I am a bottleneck.

The result is not quite what I thought it would be when I started the mini-game. The original idea was as follows: I wrote the tutorial while making the game, and released the tutorial through the public account, community, nuggets and other platforms to let more people know about the game, so that after a period of accumulation, after the game is finished, there may be a lot of players.

However, imagination is imagination, and the reality is that I didn’t accumulate enough followers, and all the platforms added up to less than a thousand. Even if all the people play my game, it’s still a tiny fraction of a game’s player base. I also found a more serious problem that most of the people who came to me for the tutorial wanted to make the game, not play it.

So, I ended up with something like this.

As you can see, promoting purchases and writing tutorials to get more players doesn’t work either way. So, you can’t form a complete closed loop.

A lot of people think, just make a few more games, increase the number of games to increase the overall revenue. That’s what I did before, but it didn’t work out as expected. One of the biggest reasons is that you don’t know how each game is going to do, so it’s not quantifiable, it’s more like luck, and luck doesn’t get you very far, and it’s very likely that after two more games, the results aren’t as good and you just give up.

This is probably my close to stage one of the largest comprehension: if you want a thing to make money by doing it, and also hope to be able to do it for a long time, so be sure to as soon as possible for a complete business closed loop, and verify its possibility, the business closed loop more clear more as simple as possible, because it means easier to verify and execution. It’s hard to do something for long if you rely on passion, love, or luck.

With that realization in mind, I began to look back at everything I had done in the past few months and see where I had gone wrong. In fact, the biggest problem is the inability to steadily acquire more players for the game, so there is no business loop, and it is difficult to have a clear goal and plan to keep the wheel turning.

A friend of mine once asked me a question: What is the minimum configuration for building a game team? I said, “You need at least one art, one technique, and at least one person in between who knows game design. This is probably the least well-matched game development team. Later I thought about it and added that if you want to make money, you’d better configure a person who knows the market and business.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been talking about how important marketing is, how important promotion is. So the game doesn’t matter? Of course not. Games are also very important, a good game, coupled with good marketing, can produce good results. Now, IT’s hard for me to say which is more important, the game or the market, except that they are equally important and neither is more important than the other.

I have to say that I failed on the road of making games temporarily. Although I have been doing this for many years, I have not been able to find a stable and sustainable development path so far. I am ashamed that I did not even have such awareness before.

However, some consciousness, when you have it, may find a completely different world.

During the development of the game, I wrote a lot of tutorials, which brought me a lot of followers who wanted to learn how to make games. I often answer these learners put forward all kinds of questions, I found this one thing: for a beginner, a tutorial is not enough, even for simple tutorial or to have a lot of not understand place, they face a previously untouched field, slightly careless, may be give up. It’s a good idea to have a professional on hand to answer questions and provide guidance that will lead them into the world of game development.

A professional game maker who is willing to answer questions, provide guidance, and help beginners learn how to make games. Ouch! I happen to have all those things. If someone has such a need, and I happen to be able to provide such a service, then, can I make this service into a product to sell?

If I were the former me, I would probably do this: first record good enough video courses, and then promote them after recording all the video courses, and see if we can sell the courses and services.

But now that I have a business sense, I can’t act so recklessly. If you spend a lot of time and energy to do a good job of the course, but ultimately can not sell, then the cost of trial and error will be too high, it will be back to the previous completely live in the imagination of the state, imagine that players will like, want to be in demand, imagine the product made can sell….. It’s all about imagination.

So, what did I do? I wrote an article about pre-selling courses, introducing my courses and the services provided. In order to verify whether there is really such a demand, I added the content of paying 10 yuan for pre-registration in the article. Don’t underestimate the 10 yuan of pre-registration fee, it is very important to test whether your products and services are really in demand, can help you judge whether this course can be opened, and then determine whether you need to spend a lot of time and energy in the future to this matter.

So far, I have recruited 14 students, which is a good start. I thought IF I could get one person hired, I would be able to do it first, but it turned out better than EXPECTED.

It’s still early days, but at least there’s a simple, clear business loop.

Attract people who want to learn how to make games by writing tutorials, recording videos, etc., and then sell services and courses based on their needs. And then you keep accumulating, and you get this loop rolling.

At present, I only provide an introductory course for beginners, but there are many followers who have already started. Do they need some advanced courses or advanced courses? Or, do novice learners want to learn more after they get started? In addition, regarding the aspects of programming, art, sound, animation, game design and so on related to making games, can I help users find some lessons worth learning based on my years of experience in game development? I think of a lot of……

All of the above can be said to be a kind of “post-mortem”, in other words, “afterthought”. After something is done, whether it is done or not, enough points can always be found to disassemble and analyze it. If I don’t get a single student, then all this business sense, closed-loop stuff is bullshit. Of course, I might be able to find other points to analyze why no one can be hired, what is the problem.

To use a more fashionable term, these are all “arts”. The following may be the Tao.

Accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, the sooner accumulate, the better.

I currently have over a thousand followers on various platforms, and I’ve enrolled 14 people in my course. If I had started writing and sharing tutorials two years ago and accumulated users, I would probably have thousands of followers by now, and more from the first session.

If I had known about accumulation years ago, by making so many games, I would have amassed a loyal audience and not have to worry about whether the next game would be played or not.

If I could go back a few years, I would tell myself that if you want to do something for a long time, start accumulating it now. It will be slow at first, but as you accumulate it, it will become easier.

The lack of sufficient accumulation in the past leads to dissatisfaction with the current situation. If you don’t want to be dissatisfied in a few years, start accumulating now.

I am a little ant, an ordinary game developer, there are a lot of people who can make games better than me, but, can make games, will also teach others to make games, but also long to share output tutorial, may not be many, this may be my advantage.

I’m still looking for a sustainable way to commercialize my personal life. Yes, to build a lasting business on your own. In this day and age, it must be possible, and many people have done it.

If I can do it, it means more people can do it.

Above, record my 2021.

Friends interested in playing games, you can pay attention to my public number [small ants teach you to play].

In addition, welcome to experience my micro channel game works, micro channel search “delicate 1010”, is a delicate and warm small game.