Big in South Africa and not sure why - Realm of Empires does what we can't.

dislekcia

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/GregBala/20130923/200798/Big_in_South_Africa_Not_sure_why.php

Read it.

Anyone heard of Realm of Empires? Anyone played it? Anyone got an iOS device pointed at the local App Store? Anyone know anyone else with an iOS device pointed at the local App Store?

Anyone got local iOS sales numbers for me? Information, it is king :)

Tuism

That is SUPER interesting! I suspect that most if not all of us follow the same pattern... We'll be on the US market and not local, and not playing Facebook games and haven't heard of the game. But of course we're not selling games to ourselves :)

There are possibilities that I can think of... The game somehow hit some cross-section of:

A) South Africans who play Facebook games (it used to be primarily desktop and desk-bound during the day)
B) who are on the local app store (where quality content is kinda scarce)
C) It's being propagated through company/varsity social structures
D) The ability to transition from desktop -> mobile platform ON the SA app store seems like a likely theory

But yea it's all conjecture. I've no idea. It does indeed sound amazing if our local market is ready for some game action! :D (and we needed a Canadian to tell us about it!)

WelshPixie

Might have something to do with the popularity of mobiles in SA, as per this article?

http://indiestatik.com/2013/09/13/why-microconsoles-might-thrive-in-africa/

Tuism

Being in advertising, I'm going to throw up if I hear that SA is awesome for mobile one more time :P The fact is that everyone forgets that SA is really not Africa. We don't use mobile money nearly one ten thousandths percent of Kenya (ok now I might be exaggerating in pure numbers). We are up there with mobile usage, but games as we know it are still pretty much used in maybe 1% of the entire mobile user base, because feature phones are the kings here, and even that landscape is fractured like hell.

Like @dislekcia said (in the comment to the article linked), Nigeria is a much much much bigger mobile market, both in terms of user sophistication (even in feature phones) and sophistication in mobile services delivered/offered.

Sorry this is an irritating spot for me cos year after year I keep having to listen to and throw around numbers of awesome mobile potentials in SA and year after year I feel like I'm lying/being lied to :P

WelshPixie

Tuism said:

Sorry this is an irritating spot for me cos year after year I keep having to listen to and throw around numbers of awesome mobile potentials in SA and year after year I feel like I'm lying/being lied to

Ah :D No worries. I don't get out much so I don't see these things for myself :D

EvanGreenwood

Isn't it perhaps because someone put the game in the "entertainment" category? (where there were very few games to compete with it)

https://itunes.apple.com/za/genre/ios-entertainment/id6016?mt=8

rumor

Interesting read, Thanks for the catch Danny.

dislekcia

From a couple of comments on the article, it looks like the uncluttered App Store might be a large reason.

Tuism

I think it must be a conjunction of something else with the uncluttered App Store. Like that it migrates Facebook game players into the mobile environment and is good quality among a few contestants in the app store, which could be the confluence of traits unique to SA.

LazyLizzard

There was also a rather large tribalwars community in SA. I even drew world maps for tribalwars as per my welcome post. This game looks as though it might be very similar, just a thought. I do think the entertainment category was one of the main reasons though...

Wojtek

Hey guys, Wojtek here from BDA - the studio that made Realm of Empires. Very interesting conversation - it's pretty weird for us to have South African game devs discuss our game :-) But it's very cool!!!
Anyway, just to clarify two things:
1. We've seen a few people mention that we put our game in the Entertainment category as opposed to the Games category. The only reason for that is the SA app store doesn't have a Games category so Entertainment was really the only option
2. In spite to being towards the top of the "Top Grossing" category in the SA app store, none of us are driving Ferraris just yet :-) Meaning that while there is a gaming market in SA, it's not all that big.
Let me know if you have any questions - I'd love to keep the conversation going.
Thanks!
Wojtek.

dislekcia

Hi @Wojtek!

Yeah, the Entertainment category thing makes sense - it's what a few people did when iOS first started taking off, but obviously with iOS devices only arriving here 6-8 months late and with their high price, the market didn't grow very well and everyone just had US/EU accounts set up anyway (being savvy early adopters). The Games category has just been opened for SA though, so I'd be curious to hear if that's affected sales numbers at all.

Also, I'd love to know what sort of numbers push towards the Top Grossing lists in SA. Not to back-calculate your earnings, rather just as a reference point for future decisions. We're always telling local developers that aiming for overseas markets is the better approach, I'd like to be able to test that against real world sources as often as possible :)

Wojtek

Hey @dislekcia,

I can't divulge too much detail but I can say that in the last 90 days just on iOS, just in SA app store we've been fluctuating between $300 and $750 a day. As you can see it doesn't take much to be in the top of the top grossing apps :-)

My recommendation for local SA devs would be to do the same thing that people use the Canadian app store for - soft launch. A lot of apps get released in Canada as a test market to iron-out bugs, check balancing, tweak the in-game economy etc... Maybe you guys can use your local app store for the same thing?