'Go Chick Go Free' on iPhone - download stats of the first 2 months (the mystery of the curve)

Hi all. Great to be a part of the community. This is my first blog post here and I'm hoping you find it useful.

In summary this is about our first iPhone game 'Go Chick Go Free' (www.tinyurl.com/gochickgofree) which is now available on the app store and the user tracking and activity over the first two months. It's not meant as an in-depth analysis of the iPhone app store or user trends, but simply a personal report on our game over the first two months. I'll keep it short n sweet.



So back in February my partner and I decided to delve in to the world of mobile game development and create our first iPhone game. We spent 5 solid weeks developing the first version and released it on April 13th 2011.

We had a good idea about the iPhone market and knew it was extremely competitive, and so we were never under the illusion that our game would make us a million bucks in the first week, as many developers I talk to think.

Anyway, on to the numbers. In the first two days as 'Go Chick Go Free' was in the new releases section we obviously had a quick rise in the number of downloads. The 2nd day peaked at 156 new users (downloads) according to our tracking API 'flurry' (the actual number was slightly larger as flurry may not report details for non-wifi connected devices). Not a massive number, but great for us being new, indie developer. We hoped the trend would increase but we quickly saw a decline to 47 downloads on April 21st :s



Now we thought this may be what a lot of new developers experience as the initial release is pushed by being ranked in the new releases section of the app store. But a device which has an install base of millions and only getting 47 downloads a day was shocking. Each day we watched the number dwindle as it reached a low of 15 new users on May 25th.

However over the past 2 weeks we've seen a surge from those 15 new users to 151 new users on June 12th. I don't know why this happened, perhaps there was a review on a site which we're not aware of, or simply 'show n tell' between players - hence 'the mystery of the curve'. Either way it's been great to see this trend. We're hoping it will continue this way and we'll be giving more updates as it continues, and sharing our findings.

In the mean time we'll be happy to share more in-depth detail. We can send screenshots of our flurry tracking stats showing - active users per day, new users per day, sessions per day, and the user activity per day. If you think these would be useful please download 'Go Chick Go Free' from the app store (www.tinyurl.com/gochickgofree) and give us a star rating, send me an email at '[email protected]' with the user name that you've used to post the rating, and we'll send you detailed screenshots of our user tracking. As we're a new development studio we need all the players and feedback we can get ;)

Thanks all and catch me if you have any questions.
Martin