Hi I’ll try to keep this (relatively) short. I’ve been working on iOS development the past couple months, and when I heard about the halo api I figured it’d be a good opportunity to put my learnin's to work. So I came up with this little app idea that keeps track of players’ stats. I thought it might be interesting to have it centered around players' arena win/loss streaks, with a leaderboard sorting players by highest win streak. But obviously there should be some kind of incentive for checking the leaderboards regularly (otherwise, what’s even the point of this leaderboard in the first place, right?). So I was thinking I could make a competition out of it, more or less, where the “goal” is to get a certain amount of consecutive wins. And it could reset each month, so whoever gets the highest streak for the month wins some sort of prize. The next issue, though, is a matter of getting well-known sponsors to donate prizes, and for those prizes to actually be incentive enough to retain interest and gain popularity. But obviously the sponsor thing is dependent on the app's popularity, so this issue is more something to worry about closer towards release. So yea, that pretty much explains the idea. I came to you guys because y'all are generally smart and whatnot, so I wanted to listen to any and all feedback you guys might have. Here’s a WIP video showing my progress so far. When players’ info is displayed in that video, that top third of the screen (that section with the “All Time Stats” title) is currently functioning and will display players’ overall stats. The bottom 2/3rds (the scroll-y part with the circle-y thing) will display monthly stats, however that part isn’t quite set up yet, hence why in the video, the same monthly stats are shown for every player. Getting that set up will take some back end server-side work, which I’m hoping to get some help with. Anyways, yea. Everything is still up in the air I guess. If you feel so inclined, I’m looking for feedback in the following areas: general UI / layout / aesthetic feedback having the app centered around a win/loss streak leaderboard other stats to include, besides those shown in the video too similar to halotracker? If so, what could set it apart anything else, basically Thanks for reading guys.
That's pretty awesome, Dax. Like an alternative to Halotracker. Maybe take a look at Halo tracker if you're looking to include more information in the app. I don't know about programming or any of that, but it looks pretty nice to me. What monetization model are you going to have?
Thanks man. About the monetization thing, I haven't fully decided on that yet. Right now I'm leaning towards a free app with the traditional banner ads at the bottom of the screen, but I know how annoying those can be. But I also know how much of a turn off paid apps are, even if it's just 99 cents. What's your opinion?
Love you're initiative Dax and I can't wait to see where this goes. I'll fire up some questions to help solidify your design if you haven't considered them already. Is there any incentive for those of us who will not get anywhere near the highest consecutive win count for the month? What keeps a player like me interested in checking out the app regularly? If you know how to handle push notifications, notifications on when you've "lost the lead" would probably be good. Will this be on a per playlist setup? Are you concerned that this may create a situation where people stop playing matchmaking with certain people to ensure that they maximize their consecutive win streaks (since actual prizes would be involved)? Are you concerned that a month may be too long of a time for a reward? Mobile apps can typically be forgotten in someones apps folder without ever being touched again. The amount of interaction with the App is very little at this point, essentially put in your gamertag and babysit. Are you concerned about any potential fallout from having little to do in the App? What are your strategies to prevent players from forgetting the App exists? If external sponsorship falls through what are your backup plans? As for monetization it is fairly common to have an ads based app that you can pay to take off the ads, that should be a relatively simple enough model for the app you are going for. And personally I think a weekly will really help the turn around, but if you plan on relying on external sponsorships that could be a hard model to support. If you can figure out that problem then awesome, cuz you could potentially tie the remembering into when people get their Warzone packs. If they get their packs they will remember to check the App to see the results of the leaderboard. Playing off an already timed event will help with that retention. Best of luck going forward and I hope this helps. Welcome back!
Definitely go with free with adds, and give them the option to remove adds for 0.99. It's the least invasive free to download model I've encountered. Just be careful of how you choose to implement the app. Pop-up ads and ads that are frequently accidentally selected might cause people to delete it.
****. I just butchered copy-paste. brb --- Double Post Merged, Nov 30, 2015 --- Thanks Spin Indeed it’s been awhile huh? It feels good coming back around these parts. Ahh GP, thank you for this post. This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping to see. I just got a chance to sit down, read through your questions, and really think some stuff over. You are 100% correct that with the current setup, there isn’t much to actually “do” in the app besides 1) look at stats, and 2) check to see how you’re fairing in the leaderboard; both of which are passive acts. It’s highly likely that most users will very quickly forget about the app since there’s no interaction between the user and the app. So, I’ve done some thinking and have come up with something a little bit different. Here’s what I threw together really quick. Keep in mind it’s a very rough draft, but I just wanted to get the idea across. So, instead of basing this whole thing on wins and losses, it could focus on players betting on their match outcomes. That way, users are actively working towards a goal on the app itself, not simply by playing Halo and then checking the leaderboard. How it would work: users bet on the outcome of their next match. The “primary bet”, or basic bet, or whatever it could be called, is simply that a user wins the match (this could just be worth one point). Users can build on that one point by selecting options pertaining to the outcome of said match, supposing they win the match of course. If they win the match/bet, those points get added to the user’s overall score or “streak”. If the match/bet is lost however, their overall score resets back to zero. At the end of each month, the user with the highest streak of points wins. However, this route would be quite an undertaking in a whooole lot of ways. (I could get into that more, but it’s kinda late ) But if this idea were to end up being the route I take for the app, I’d say it’d add another month or so to the development process. I was aiming to get this out before January but this might push that back further. So, thoughts on this? It’s quite a deviation, and I’m unsure if I want to essentially turn this into a betting-style app, but at the same time it does seem like a pretty novel idea if it were to catch on. Oh also yea, I’m definitely planning to implement push notifications for this. Another plus side to my idea above - the whole “I’m at the top of the leaderboards so I don’t want to play matchmaking with my friends right now because I might lose” thing is no longer an issue. Users can bet on their games whenever they choose, i.e. if a player doesn’t make a bet on his upcoming game, and he ends up losing that game, it doesn’t affect his points streak. That match was never bet on so it has no affect to his streak. Yea, completely agree about the pop up ads. If I do use ads, it’ll be the banner ads at the bottom of the screen. Mainly because Apple is quite restrictive on where ads can be placed (top, bottom, or pop-up are the only 3 options I believe). But yea, definitely no pop ups
While I'm not against trying to implement a 'return incentive', I'd make sure it's separate from the whole idea of simply being a stats app. Halotracker shows nothing but stats, and it's still going strong. Maybe go deeper with stats, like overall playtime for matchmaking, custom games, and forge. Maybe how many kills you've gotten with each weapon.
Dax, it's been a while! How are things? I've had a look at the WIP video you linked and I think the app definitely has legs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole thing is based around leaderboards? In that case, have leaderboards for LOADS of things, not just Win/Loss streaks - things like: Number of Perfection medals Number of Flags capped Times committed suicide Number of Rocket kills Percentage of games you ranked in top 50% etc. So you could add your Gamertag, the app would import all your friends, then you can cycle through all these filters to see how your buddies play the game. I'd definitely use that app. Plus, you'd have the advantage over HaloTracker because I don't think it compares stats between players, only records your own. P.S. 'troll pollock' is one of the funniest autocorrect attempts I've seen.