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Eric: Welcome to Tap Your App, I'm your host, Eric Dyck, founder of Tap
for Tap, the free exchange for mobile app promotion, where we help
independent app developers promote their apps for free.
Today we're chatting with Sam Redfern, who's an app developer who's got
several successful apps under his belt. He's using the Tap for Tap system
to its fullest right now. He's earning and spending hundreds of thousands
of credits every day. We're here to talk with him about his experience
building and marketing apps. Welcome to Tap Your App, Sam. How are you
doing today?
Sam: Good, thank you.
Eric: Yeah, great. So you've got a number of apps that your working on
our system right now. The most popular one is Let's Break Stuff.
Sam: Yeah.
Eric: What was your first app that you built?
Sam: My first mobile app was an app called Block Rockin'. Would be about
18 months ago. It's similar in a way, it's kind of quite [casual] the game.
More abstract and ultimately too hard, I think. It never really took off.
So I've learned quite a lot about apps, about mobile phone games in
general. I've been developing software for a lot longer than that and games
for a lot longer. That's my first mobile app.
Eric: Cool. And you develop for all platforms, correct?
Sam: As many as I can. I'm using a game engine which, well I specifically
chose it because it supports so many.
Eric: That's Shiva, right?
Sam: Shiva, yeah.
Eric: Shiva. Tell me a little bit about Shiva. Is that the main reason
that you decided to use it? That it ports over across multiple platforms.
Sam: Yeah, I mean with Shiva, Unity probably, but Shiva was cheaper. And
actually [inaudible 02:04] more platforms. But I assessed both of them and
I actually preferred Shiva. They really know what they're doing. They've
exposed a set of functions to the game developer which are precisely what
you need. I know that because I've been developing games for years so I was
very impressed with the overall package. Even though they're a small
company.
Eric: Very cool. So I'm curious, we deal with a lot of app developers
that use Unity and Corona and things like this. I actually haven't heard a
ton about Shiva yet. But when you integrated with Tap for Tap did you have
to create a wrapper for our STK?
Sam: To a certain extent. I mean, I've been through the process, there's
a wrapper already built into Shiva.
Eric: Oh really?
Sam: It wraps the game engine into the [Android] project. But there's a
little bit of pulling and dragging to it to get the Shiva LUA code to
ultimately talk to the Java. There's a few layers you have to go through.
It's awkward at first but once you've done it once it's okay. It's
ultimately, yeah, it's just Java that's calling your API directly.
Eric: Gotcha. Cool, it's great to know that you're using it and if we
have any other developers who are using it and are interested in
integrating, maybe we can connect you two.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, great.
Eric: So what do we have here. We have Let's Break Stuff. I was also
taking a look at Afterburn 2150.
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: And I thought that was a really cool looking game.
Sam: Yeah.
Eric: The space physics and even the space ship design and everything.
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: I was curious, where was, what sort of informs your science fiction
background there.
Sam: Are you talking about the models or…
Eric: Yeah, like the ships. It looked little bit Star Wars and a little
bit Ridley Scott maybe with a little Alien influence in there .
Sam: Okay. I'll be honest with you I'm not an artist.
Eric: Okay.
Sam: [inaudible 03:56] availability of artwork.
Eric: Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. Cool.
Sam: I have many ideas and it might seem strange but I've come to the
realization that I'm better off finding wherever I can get stuff decent and
building a game around on that. Rather than think of a game and then try to
get the artwork. It works for me that way.
Eric: That's interesting. Yeah that makes a lot of sense especially as
someone who's more interested in the guts of the game.
Sam: Yeah, well it's not just about not being interested. I'm not an
artist. It's just the way [inaudible 04:27]
Eric: Gotcha. So are you a full time app developer now?
Sam: No, no. I'm actually a university lecturer by day. My apps,
obviously I'm hoping that they'd become more than they are but their
[inaudible 04:43]
Eric: What do you lecture about?
Sam: In IT.
Eric: Okay.
Sam: [inaudible 04:49] game development, graphics.
Eric: Very cool. So let's see here. Are you part of any communities with
any other app developers at this point or are you sort of flying solo.
Sam: In terms of working on products with people or just sort of support
of community?
Eric: Just support of community sort of.
Sam: Oh yeah. The Shiva community is quite good. It's small but very,
very friendly. This is what I've always found in developer communities. I
was using [Tork] for a long time [Garett] games. Very, very nice community
there. Even though these people are potentially your rivals, they're
actually not. They're like a union or brotherhood or something. There's
others, there's a nice Facebook group of them as well called [Indie] game
developers. Again, very friendly, supportive people.
Eric: Great. I've found that as well. In every community we've run into
that people are just generally willing to help. And that's the really the
idea with this podcast as well is that we can get developers talking about
their experiences and sharing some tips and tricks and stuff. So around
that, you're not an artist as you say. Are you a marketer? Do you think
about marketing your apps pretty comprehensively or…
Sam: I've learned a lot in a short time. Particularly with Let's Break
Stuff. It's been a lot more successful than any of the other ones. It's my
fourth app. I've learned about the short-life cycle they have, which is
very different than [inaudible 06:18]. My last game was a slow burning MMO
type of thing so that's still going after 6 years. Where an app is…
Eric: And that's Dark Wind right?
Sam: Dark Wind, yeah. There's an app could be here and gone tomorrow and
lasting 3 or 4 months. So I've learned quickly. I've actually took my
laptops with me on holiday. I had to because Let's Break Stuff was just
breaking at that point. So, yeah, I've integrated platforms like Tap For
Tap and others and quickly and making use of the [inaudible 06:49] as
they're there because they don't say.
Eric: Got to make your hay while the sun is shining.
Sam: Yeah, I think you have to yeah.
Eric: Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. What are some of the best, you
know Tap For Tap is not a monetization platform where a platform for scale.
What are some of the best monetization platforms that you've had any
success with?
Sam: I think it depends very much on the device. I think iPhone generally
will make me more money. I presume that because advertisers are interested
in it more. I may do some money on [inaudible 07:20] actually with Let's
Break Stuff. Much poorer on the Android. I've integrated actually a bunch
of other monetization platforms into Let's Break Stuff. [More fox], [In
Mauve] there's other ones that give full screen ads I've just [inaudible
07:43] at the moment. [Red Mauve] actually integrated a few days ago and
that's very impressive results as well on my dwindling downloads.
Eric: Gotcha, yeah I've heard some good things about Red Mauve.
Sam: Yeah.
Eric: Tap, one of the things that we're hoping to roll out in the near to
short term is some interstitials so that we can actually have different
kinds of adding it's not just banners. We're finding developers like to
have slightly less intrusive ad units. I always found interstitials worked
well. I come from a display marketing background and I always found
interstitials work really well because you're getting a user who's done
something and they're sort of ready for the next thing.
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: And so I think those could work quite well. And I hear they're
working quite well for companies like [Chart Hoost] and ones like that.
Sam: Yeah, some would say actually, I think it's useful to have a number
of platforms integrated in and to actually share the adverts around between
them because they tend to be of the same style. If you are already showing
AdMob's ads they all look the same and they may well be the same ads that
you're showing to people multiple times. So that's what I'm thinking of
doing. I'm thinking of actually interweaving Red Mauve with [Ponzi Flex]
because they're quite different. There's no point showing the same full
screen to people. If they're not going to click it once they're not going
to click it the second time.
Eric: That's true. You got to keep, yeah mix it up to sort of avoid
banner blindness.
Sam: Yeah.
Eric: Which is across all marketing platforms. How do you track all of
your revenue streams? Have you created your own platform or do you use a
third party platform to track all of your different revenue streams?
Sam: Firefox.
Eric: And spreadsheets.
Sam: And spreadsheets. Text documents. It's only the last month really
this has become relevant to me. Advertising my other apps were not
particularly successful so. I hadn't worked anything to add more.
[inaudible 09:48]
Eric: So your new stuff has just had a real viral curve.
Sam: Yeah. It has yeah. It's interesting, particularly interesting to see
how the different android versus iPhone, very, very different. The iPhone
is like all these compartmentalized apps stores in each country. Whereas,
as far as I know, Android is one global app store. The other thing that
Android do is they give you a full month as a new app and you're on this
new app list. Which is great it gives you a lot of exposure. Where as
iPhone's in and you're getting buried immediately. So that was interesting.
I also, the order I released them in was interesting. I went [inaudible
10:27] first. That was a small platform. I learned things from that. And
then I moved over to the Android and then iPhone was about 2 weeks later
and there was actually, a bit of a buzz coming up from the Android,
particularly in Italy for some reason. And then I released it on the iPhone
and immediately it just went viral in Italy. It was obviously from all the
Android people showing their iPhone friends but I think that was right the
order to do it in too that helped.
Eric: I wonder if the sort of political climate in Italy and parts of
Europe made it more interesting to want to break things. I don't know.
Sam: It was also successful in Ireland, so yeah it could be something to
that.
Eric: That. Fantastic. Are you in Ireland now?
Sam: Yep.
Eric: Nice. And you're on vacation?
Sam: More or less, yeah.
Eric: In the home but on vacation. A staycation.
Sam: Sorry, we're just back from Spain about two days ago.
Eric: Oh lovely.
Sam: Yeah, it is.
Eric: That sounds nice. So what, besides your app or any of your apps,
what's an app that you use a lot.
Sam: An app that I use a lot.
Eric: Well what platform, what sort of phone do you have.
Sam: I have an Android. It's an [Experia play].
Eric: Okay.
Sam: Which I never use for playing games I just [inaudible 11:45] impress
people. But I'm too old to play games. The reason I picked Experia play is
because audio quality is really good actually. What apps do I use. My top
app would be file manager which allows me to install my [AP case].
Eric: So very utilitarian.
Sam: Yeah, I'm a developer.
Eric: Yeah, through and through. And so you've been doing it now for how
long? Developing in general.
Sam: In general. 30 years.
Eric: Wow, yeah you're a vet for sure.
Sam: Yeah well I've been indie all the time. I've never been in a company
doing it. Teaching [inaudible 12:31]
Eric: Wow. I think that pretty much does it. I have one question I
generally like to ask people, it's just a silly question. So you have Bruce
Lee on one hand. Bruce Lee, at his time, the height of human physical
prowess. You've got a grizzly bear in a sort of open environment. Who do
you give in a head to head match?
Sam: Grizzly bear.
Eric: Grizzly bear. That's the most common answer I've got to say.
Sam: Yeah they're big fellows, yeah.
Eric: They're pretty impenetrable. Even for a guy as quick as Bruce Lee.
You might have something there. But anyways, Sam, I think that does it for
my questions today.
Sam: Okay.
Eric: I want to thank you for coming by.
Sam: Great, it was nice talking to you.
Eric: All right, you too.
Sam: Okay.