Reading the Market
Sean and I visited our local Small Business Development Center and talked to a gal there regarding starting a business, and something she mentioned was researching your industry and market. We are all avid phone game players and traipse around the interwebs on a regular basis, reading forums and the like, so we’ve felt pretty secure in our understanding of the android market and it’s ebb and flow. Until now.
You see, in the beginning we were reading developer blogs, checking the market every day, reading android news sites. We figured we had this thing down, we knew full well what we were getting into and how we were going to do. Now, sitting one day from release of our lite version, we’re all nervous.
It’s not that we think people will rate us poorly or anything, but this is it, we’re finally releasing our first title, and it’s nerve racking simply because none of us have any idea how it will do. We know that the people we’ve had play testing it say they really like it a lot, and have even had people get sucked into it, but we’re left to wonder if the rest of the world will react similarly. Will we get 1,000 downloads in one month or 100,000? Will word of mouth and advertising speed it’s growth or do nothing? Will it work on devices other than the Aria and Captivate?
Even with those questions in our mind we have little doubt that we have a fun little game that people will truly enjoy, and we know our dedication to our customers and how much effort we will put in to keeping the experience as enjoyable as possible.
So perhaps, more than anything, we’re excited, I won’t be surprised if the three of us have our Google Developer page open 24hrs a day for the first few days, counting downloads. It really does give you butterflies, being this close to release, and I have several homework assignments I’m really hoping I can finish, but I don’t see myself doing much these next couple weeks that isn’t related to Refraction :).
-Brandon