On August 25, I submitted Adversary to Apple App Review. I liked the date. I was born on the 25th. My wife and I first met on the 25th. Our wedding was originally planned for the 25th. So, naturally, August 25 felt like a good day to submit the game I had spent the first half of Shipaton building.
Apple was apparently less sentimental about it. I waited. And waited. About a week later, with the app still not released, I cancelled the submission and sent it through again. That wasn’t really part of the plan.
The plan was much cleaner: Get the game on the App Store. Then switch gears and find out whether anyone actually wants to play it. That last part is the important one.
Because after spending the first half of Shipaton wondering what Adversary should be, I’ve reached a slightly more uncomfortable question:
Does it matter what I built if nobody downloads it?
How Did We Arrive at This Point?
I started with a memory game and one Danger card. I let people challenge how that game should work and look. Then, for reasons that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, I made the whole thing out of foam and Velcro.
That got me here. Adversary is now an actual app that I feel comfortable putting in front of people. But once the app is sitting in App Review, adding another feature doesn’t answer the question I care about anymore.
I need people.
10 Downloads and 1,000 Downloads Are Very Different Problems
Obviously, I want Adversary to make money. But revenue isn’t actually the first signal I’m interested in. Downloads are.
Not because a download means somebody loves the game. It doesn’t. But it tells me something happened before that point. They saw Adversary somewhere. Something about it made them curious. They looked at the App Store page. And then they decided it was worth giving the game some space on their phone.
That matters.
Because imagine I release Adversary and two months later it has ten downloads. I’m not going to learn much by obsessing over my purchase conversion. Maybe the paid levels are incredible. Maybe they’re terrible. There aren’t enough people reaching them to know.
My problem is earlier. Discovery. Positioning. Marketing. Maybe I’m explaining the game badly. Maybe nobody is seeing it. Maybe people are seeing it, and the idea simply isn’t interesting enough to make them tap Download.
Now imagine a very different scenario. 1,000 people download the game. Ten buy the lifetime unlock. That’s not exactly yacht-shopping money either. But now I have a much more useful problem. People were interested enough to try it. They just weren’t convinced there was enough value to pay for the rest.
That’s something I can work with. Maybe one free level gives them everything they need. Maybe the additional levels don’t feel different enough. Maybe the price is wrong. Maybe the game is fun for five minutes, and that’s enough.
I don’t know. But at least I’d know where to look.
Right now, I don’t even know which problem I have. That’s what I want the second half of Shipaton to tell me.
Build in Public Has Mostly Been Me Asking People Questions
This is also where something I’ve learned during the first half starts becoming relevant in a different way. The most useful part of building Adversary publicly has been feedback. Not votes. Actual feedback.
I learned that lesson pretty clearly when I asked whether Adversary should have a Simple or Themed identity. The people choosing Simple explained that it was clearer, easier on the eyes, and made the cards easier to understand. That explanation mattered more than the final poll count.
The problem is that useful feedback is annoyingly difficult to get. Posting a question is easy. Getting someone to stop scrolling and press a poll button is harder. Getting them to explain why they chose something is harder again.
I’ve had posts where liking the post seemed considerably more popular than actually answering the question inside it. Which is fair. But when somebody does take the time to explain their reasoning, it can change what I build.
Now I Need Feedback I Don’t Have to Ask For
Once Adversary is actually on the App Store, the feedback changes. I can still ask people what they think. But I’ll also get answers from what they do.
Do they download it? Do they play more than once? Do they care enough about their score to try again? Do they think the other levels are worth paying for?
Those answers are harder to misinterpret than a poll. And they’ll help decide what happens next.
I’m already exploring things like Game Center and leaderboards. But I’m trying not to add things just because they sound like features a game should have. A leaderboard is only useful if competition makes people want another attempt.
The question is becoming less:
What else can I add?
And more:
What would actually make somebody want to keep playing?
I’m Not Waiting for Apple to Start Learning
The App Store delay also messed up another plan. I wanted to take the physical Adversary board out, let people play it, and then point them straight to the app. Without the app on the store, that last part is difficult.
But I’ve decided to start anyway. There are things I can learn before anyone downloads anything.
Can I explain Adversary to a stranger in a few seconds? Do they understand Danger immediately? Does physically flipping the cards make the idea click faster than seeing the same thing on a phone?
I suspect having something people can actually touch might help. But that’s another assumption. So I might as well test it.
And if standing outside with a foam memory game teaches me anything useful, that will probably be a story for another article.
The Second Half Is the Uncomfortable Part
The first half of Shipaton gave me a lot of control. If something didn’t work, I could redesign it. If I wasn’t sure about something, I could ask people. If I wanted another feature, I could build it.
Now I’m getting closer to the part I can’t control. I can put Adversary on the App Store. I can show it to people. I can try to explain why a memory game with one dangerous card is worth their time. But I can’t make them care.
That’s what I want the second half of Shipaton to tell me. Not whether I can keep adding things to Adversary. Whether I built something people actually want.
At this point, that feels like a much more interesting problem than anything else I could add before the deadline.