I released Kick Flick HD, a game about football, in the summer of 2010 just as the World Cup was warming up. I had always wanted to make a football game, the sport being something I enjoy playing (badly) and watching (too much). Little did I know that what I was releasing was the Marmite of games: something, as the advertising for the yeast based extract is so ready to tell us, is loved and hated in equal measure, with little room for fence sitting. This post discusses why that happened, and what you can do as a developer to stop it happening.

Let’s get right to the App Store ratings. Reviews such as the following are not uncommon.

Conversely, very positive reviews are just as frequent.

As it stands, in the UK, here’s the overall breakdown of user ratings.

Not that great! An average of 3 stars is not what you want for an App Store release. A lot of 5 star ratings and lots of 1 star ratings - the Marmite effect. (Note: this doesn’t paint the whole picture. Later versions were rated higher than the overall average.)

The UK is well known for its love of football, generally speaking. So how do the user ratings for the US compare, a country in which whilst football (or its identical cousin, soccer) is growing in stature, when it comes to popularity, it pales in comparison to the nations top sports.

Turns out it fares better in the non-football nation. I shall leave to interpretation whether this is down to Kick Flick being unrepresentative of a good game of football, or an example of the less cynical nature of the US audience shining through. In any case, for the purposes of this article, the divisive nature of the ratings is still very much in effect.

The why

So why are reviews so polarised? 

For good or bad, Kick Flick was designed with a singular vision - to emulate the feeling of scoring a curling free kick as viscerally as possible. The control system is unlike the other flick free kick type games available on the App Store. Instead of drawing a curve that you want the ball to travel along, or kicking and applying aftertouch once the ball is in flight, Kick Flick attempts to get as close to the kicking experience as possible on a touch screen. 

Swiping through the ball kicks it in the direction of the swipe, with an amount of power related to the speed of the flick. However, just as in real life, you can slice through the side of the ball instead of striking straight through the middle to impart spin. Due to the Magnus Effect, the ball in flight will follow a curved trajectory, as the force imparted by the spin drags it from its original course. By judicious use of spin, you can curl the ball around the defensive wall of players and past the keeper.

Whilst I believe the goal was achieved of viscerally replicating the feeling of taking a free kick, it also meant Kick Flick has a steeper learning curve than the other football games. Unfortunately, in the world of 99¢ games, this is a no-no.

What this means on the App Store

The 99¢ App Store gamer has a very short attention span, with lots of games competing for their attention. If a game does not grab them in the first couple of minutes, they will be very quick to dismiss it. Games are much cheaper than their time. Kick Flick is more demanding than this, and it’s likely that for some gamers, after missing or hitting the defensive wall a few times, they will simply give up and move on. Perhaps they will even make a stop along the way to the exit to leave a 1 star review. 

For those gamers who stick with it and start to score regularly, they will benefit from the intended effect of the design vision - the visceral reproduction of the art of free kicks. And these players, who feel like they have mastered something and thus entered a club of some relative exclusivity, are far more likely to leave a 5 star review.

Which leaves Kick Flick with an average rating somewhere between the two extremes. Unfortunately, the time-starved browser won’t see a game which takes time to master and becomes more satisfying as you learn the nuances. Rather, they will see a 3 star game.

The lesson

The learning from this experience was simple. The App Store is not the right place for games which are demanding of their players. Gratification must be delivered instantly, in that first play session, in that first two minutes. As developers started to learn this, they began tuning their games accordingly. This is responsible for a lot of shallow experiences on the App Store. However, when done correctly, a shallow experience can still be a fun one. In addition, the best of these games deliver instant gratification, but then follow that up by rewarding the player with further reward down the line.

In short, to create a game which has a better overall rating on the App Store, it is important that you cater for your player over the entire span of their play, from the first minute to the 1st hour and beyond. If you can keep the attention of some of those who might have bailed early, you might be able to convert them into long term, 5 star reviewers.

The right game for the right place

This is not to say that games which are demanding of their players are a bad thing. It’s more that they need to be deployed in the right place. Whilst the App Store skews towards more casual game experiences, there are other places where such games thrive. Steam, for example, is a far more friendly platform for the more involved game. Typical players are more likely to be core gamers than the grazers of the App Store. For more artful games, the PlayStation Network has long been friendly towards games which sit left of mainstream. And Xbox Live’s Indie Games channel is, despite recent misgivings, a place where such games can thrive.

Epilogue

I am perhaps painting too negative a picture for Kick Flick. It still remains my best seller, and is selling well some 18 months after release. Judging by recommendations on Twitter, it seems that those who enjoy the game seem to communicate this to others. As well as being my most returned game, it is also the game which is gifted to others most often.

However, when all is said and done, the fact that it has been a moderate success doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have fared much better if it had either a.) catered for casual players too, or b.) been distributed on a platform more conducive to longer learning curves and deeper gameplay.

Judge for yourself

Kick Flick HD is available on the App Store. It is a universal app for iPad and iPhone. For those readers who want to give it a try, tweet me at @bookofthedev or e-mail me at “kevin at pixelsontoast dot com”. I’ll send the first ten responses a promo code for a free copy of Kick Flick. Just don’t forget to leave a nice review :)