A year ago today, on December 1st 2008, a little game called Sneezies dropped quietly into the App Store, and our adventure began.
First off, Happy Birthday to Retro Dreamer. I ‘d honestly not heard much of this indie development company until I saw a tweet this afternoon from one of the two guys involved in running it. I saw something about one year in the App Store and clicked away to read Gavin Bowman ‘s blog post on just that subject.
It was a great read. Not full of tales of overnight success in Apple ‘s Wild West “ but not full of tales of miserable failure or ridiculous rejections by Apple either. The stories that are shared as the author reflects on that first year in the App Store are full of twists and turns “ pricing changes, momentum gained and lost, updates, new apps, mistakes made, lessons learned, and even a touch of hubris and a company name change along the way.
An action-packed and hard-working first year it sounds like “ and a very interesting one to hear about.
Here ‘s a little slice on the 64,000 question for most small indie developers:
So, can you make a living in the App Store?
That ‘s what everyone really wants to know, right? Can a small indie team make some cool iPhone games and still pay their rent?
The short answer is yes. The longer answer is, for two people, in western economies, with no kids or major health problems, with working wives, Sneezies did well enough to keep us in ramen this year.
It ‘s a fragile existence, but that ‘s what you pay to live the dream, no? If one of our wives was out of work for a while, or if one of us decided we wanted to start a family, we ‘d have to go out and find contract work or get jobs. But so far, we ‘re getting by.
I ‘ve read a good few App Store ‘stories ‘ in the past, but this one strikes me as one of the most even-handed. No major rants against Apple, or anyone or anything really. No magical, revelations that will guarantee success for others. Just a good, solid look at the ups and downs of this particular pair of indie devs “ and even a nice upbeat attitude and a thank you to users (something maybe not seen enough in the App Store just yet) at the end of the account
As I said way back at the beginning, we know we ‘ve done comparatively well from the App Store, it ‘s a market we ‘re still very enthusiastic and optimistic about. And we ‘re grateful to everyone out there who ‘s bought one of our games, we wouldn ‘t be here without you.
The full story is very well worth a look “ give it a read HERE.
Like I said, before this afternoon, I couldn ‘t have told you who Retro Dreamer were. Now I can, and now I ‘ll look out for them on Twitter and around the web and the App Store “ and I ‘ll be rooting for them to do well, to go on to greater success in Year 2. In the meantime, here ‘s a link to their home page, where you can check out their titles like Sneeezies and Eyegore ‘s Eye Blast.
And look out for another upcoming game from these guys soon called Elf Command.
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