Amazon Appstore Lessons: Instructions for Android Developers
Developer Ernest Woo talked about the advantages and difficulties associated with creating games for Amazon.
If you are a mobile app developer, then the struggle to be noticed is your constant state. You’re sure there’s an audience out there for your game, but how do you get to it? One of the opportunities for Android developers is to distribute their games through the Amazon Appstore. At the moment I have two games — FRG and ErnCon — both I have uploaded to Google Play and Amazon Appstore. I would like to share my experience on how to prepare games for posting on the Amazon Appstore. I tried to pay special attention to the advantages and obstacles I encountered on my way.
Why Amazon Appstore?
Android developers had to put up with splitting into different OS versions for a long time, with devices with different characteristics, numerous app stores, and all this was both a curse and a grace for them. In the past, there have been many attempts to create something worthwhile from third-party app stores, such as SlideMe and AndAppStore, but none of them has gained enough momentum to be worth the time spent by developers on hosting the game and then supporting it in the store through updates.… Until Amazon opened its own Appstore. Amazon Appstore is the first third—party Android app store that is really gaining momentum in the face of Google Play.
Here are a few reasons why I believe in the Amazon Appstore:
1. It is managed by Amazon. Amazon is the world’s largest online retail store. They have extensive experience in sales and customer interaction. They have created reliable and successful digital user services based on their core offerings, such as Amazon Prime (streaming video viewing), Amazon MP3 and Kindle. They also have reliable and successful developer tools like Amazon Web Services. Amazon is always serious about its own initiatives regarding new types of services, one of which is the Amazon Appstore.
2. Application review process. Theoretically, the application review process should guarantee a quality standard for the end user. Faced with a large number of substandard games and applications, I now know how useful this process is when it comes to getting rid of spammers and other low-quality applications.
3. KIndle Fire. Kindle Fire is the first Android device from Amazon, which, according to Flurry, has a good share in the Android tablet market. If you want to capture this fast-growing segment of Amazon tablets, then using the Amazon Appstore is a prerequisite to achieve this goal.
4. Free app of the day. The Free App of the Day is an exceptional opportunity for small developers like me to shine in front of potential buyers. To participate in the program, you just need to send an e-mail and then follow the simple instructions.
5. Developer support. Amazon Appstore Support is always open for any questions. Support always answered questions about the status of my application before adding it to the store during the day. Despite the fact that it took Google Play years to create a database of all the information needed by the developer, their support looks sluggish against the background of Amazon support, whose employees are trying to pay attention to each individual issue.
Game layout, review and approval
During the preparation of FRG and ErnCon for posting on the Amazon Appstore and during the entire approval process, there were some difficulties that had to be overcome:
1. Removing market links that are not related to the Amazon Appstore. If your game leads to Google Play in any way, it will be rejected. These requirements may affect you at the most unexpected moment, for example, if you use third-party libraries such as Heyzap and TapJoy. By the way, FRG passed the review, despite the presence of Heyzap links leading to Google Play, but when I applied for participation in the Free App of The Day program, I was asked to remove these links. Amazon Appstore support is available for TapJoy Offer Wall, but for this you need to dig into the settings.
2. In-App Purchases (IAP). ErnCon is a freemium game monetized through in—game purchases. Only recently it became possible to release ErnCon on Amazon Apsstore, when in April they announced the launch of their own IAP system. With Amazon IAP, in—game purchases are now easier to integrate into your application in technical terms – Amazon has replaced the painful installation of communication between the Receiver / Service of the application and Google Play with a simplified PurchaseManager that manages current transactions for you. If your game has a server component, you can easily manage transactions through your server (via server-to-server).
3. Conditionally valid functionality. At some points, ErnCon functioned differently, depending on whether the game was downloaded through the Amazon Appstore or through Google Play. This was controlled by adding two string resources, which you can see in the image below:
This allows you to enable and disable Receivers and Services that are specific to each store.
For example, pay attention to the use of the string resource “AmazonMode”:
Various parts of the code are checked for the question of the mode in which the application is currently located — either “GoogleMode” or “AmazonMode” — in order to switch to a suitable in-game payment system.
4. Simple builds on Ant. ErnCon were rejected several times for various reasons, but, I note, this was due not so much to the approval process on the Amazon Appstore, as to the fact that I did not pay enough attention to QA (quality assurance). I noticed a bug in Eclipse that caused the APK to crash and the ClassNotFoundError error to appear during file startup. Probably, certain sequences of events in Eclipse provoked a bug in the built-in APK creator. Because of this bug, as well as because of the need to test unsigned builds and code at 2 a.m., my application was rejected many times by Amazon. This caused numerous delays. At first I didn’t want to use Ant to create ErnCon, thinking that I could shorten the development time a little, but I had to grit my teeth and write an Ant script after I lost a whole week, because they didn’t want to accept my game because of my own sloppiness.
5. Issues with the Kindle Fire UI. Although the developer documentation on the Amazon website contains answers to basic questions about the features of the Kindle Fire UI (user interface), still pay attention to the following points:
– Galaxy Tab 7 is NOT suitable for testing the Kindle Fire UI: Galaxy Tab 7 defines itself as an HDPI (high) device, while Kindle Fire (and more recently all tablets of the same size) defines itself as an MDPI (medium) device.
– The back button is hidden when the device is in fullscreen mode. Unlike other Android devices, the “back” button in the Kindle Fire is defined by the operating system as a function key. The back button will be hidden in all games that run in fullscreen mode. If the user interface of your game involves using the “back” button to perform those functions that the instructions for the interface of Android applications recommend, do not forget that the user will need to make an additional tap to use the “back” button. Fortunately, Amazon did not reject ErnCon for the fact that only with the “back” button you can exit the menu of a particular screen.
– The upper system menu causes the application to Stop/Start if you use the descending top menu to change system settings such as sound, brightness, Wi-Fi, etc.; remember that this may cause your application to stop/start. There is a bug in FRG when the game completely restarts when the top menu appears — I was too lazy to fix this bug, so FRG is not available on Kindle Fire.
6. Approval for KIndle Fire is a separate process. Note that in order for your app to be available to Kindle Fire users, you need to go through a separate approval process. You can upload the game to the Amazon Appstore and settle all the formalities, but it will not be available for Kindle Fire until you complete the additional approval process. Fortunately, it lasts no more than a day, and if something goes wrong, Amazon will simply ask you to upload a new version of the game without deleting the previous version from the store.
Results on Amazon Appstore
FRG and ErnCon indicators differed on the Amazon Appstore for a number of reasons:
1. FRG. I started my acquaintance with the Amazon Appstore when it first appeared, and only a few developers have dealt with it. FRG has two monetization options: the free version and the paid-deluxe version. For the Amazon Appstore, I decided to choose FRG Deluxe. The performance of FRG Deluxe on the Amazon App Store was not very good, except for the time when it was chosen Free App of The Day. During the promo campaign, FRG Deluxe was downloaded 88,000 times and received a rating of 3.2 stars. The next day, sales of FRG Deluxe continued by inertia, and this brought me an income of $ 400. But soon sales dropped. Although the Free App of The Day promotion helps the app to rise to first place in the top paid apps, sales drop quickly when you go down 10 points. Here are some more interesting things that happened with FRG:
– Amazon went ahead and rewrote the entire description of my game. To be honest, their description was much better than mine. They also had nothing against the fact that I copied their description to the FRG description on Google Play. I wonder why they didn’t rewrite the description of ErnCon.
– Users provide a wonderful feedback. All comments on FRG on the Amazon Appstore were received during the Free App of The Day promotion — many users wrote extremely inspiring and sincere reviews about the game. They took their own time to sort out what they think are the pros and cons of FRG. Such in-depth reviews are IMPOSSIBLE to see on Google Play. If you have your own Amazon account, you can even comment on other users’ comments. A lot of information obtained in this way served as inspiration for me when developing ErnCon.
2. ErnCon. In general, ErnCon is made better than FRG: better graphics, a more holistic multi-user component and a more solid marketing budget (at least by the standards of an indie developer). Here are some observations about its performance on the Amazon Appstore:
– Failure of the announcement. Louis Levy from Novy PR helped me with the announcement of ErnCon for the Amazon Appstore. However, this time even fewer Android sites wanted to publish my announcement, which is why very few people downloaded the game. I noticed one feature of Android sites — they are more interested in Read-Only-Memory, new phones and Android updates.
– Freemium of trouble. Freemium apps cannot count on participating in the Free App of The Day promotion. Although I contacted Amazon and told them that I was ready to give up the in-game currency, I was told that the Free App of The Day is ONLY available for paid applications. EnrCon will also not be included in the list of applications for which discounts apply, and most likely will not be in the list of new releases, since these lists are probably only available for paid applications.
– Gradual growth. Despite the app’s announcement, which was far from perfect, daily downloads on the Amazon Appstore were gradually approaching the figures on Google Play. At the moment, ErnCon is downloaded daily by 60-70 people on each of the markets. Amazon Appstore users accounted for 33% of the players in the period from May 22 to June 29. Apart from the announcement of the app on the Amazon Appstore, I’m not doing anything to promote ErnCon (all my efforts are focused on developing the iOS version of ErnCon). With the exception of in-game purchases and external links to markets, the iOS and Android versions of ErnCon are no different.
– Big monetization. Amazon Appstore users are more likely to make in-game purchases than the Google Play audience. In the period from May 22 to June 29, Amazon Appstore users spent 9 times more money than Google Play users. In general, this is not a large amount of money, but such a significant difference speaks volumes.
– The best categorization. There are a large number of different categories for games on the Amazon Appstore, including Multiplayer, which is perfect for ErnCon. Since there were only 67 games in this category at the time of writing, it was not difficult for me to bring my game to sixth place in the Multiplayer category. Most likely, this is what caused the growth I mentioned earlier.
Overall, the experience of working with the Amazon Appstore was interesting for me. The large monetization and gradual growth of ErnCon make me think about what could happen if I could direct all the marketing efforts of Woo Games to the release of applications in the Amazon Appstore. I’m even thinking about releasing our next game first on the Amazon Appstore or making a release exclusively for this store.
For the information provided, we thank the Casual Universe resource
