Hi there!
In 2015, encouraged by the huge success of simple mobile games like Flappy Bird, I decided to try making an android game by myself. In this post I will tell you why I failed, how I failed, and I will give you a handful of tips you might find helpful.
An image I made for this post
My failure as a game dev
I started creating my game in early 2015. It was my first ever contact with java and Libgdx (which by the way I recommend) so I spent long hours browsing stackoverflow looking for answers for my many questions. :D
I made almost everything (except for the rain sound in the game's main menu) by myself, so it took me a looong time before I was finally happy about everything: every image, every sound, and every snippet of code. I know that the graphics are not perfect, because I'm not a graphic designer. I could have asked a couple of my friends who are good with graphics to help me, but I really wanted to make as much as I possibly could on my own.
Before I show you the game, let me share some statistics with you.
I published the game on Google Play Store in August of 2015, and about that time I added Google Admob's ads to the game (I removed them in late 2016, though). Since then, it was downloaded 1800 times, most of which were thanks to advertising I managed to get for free (I'll talk more about it later). During that whole time I earned exactly 5.98 PLN, which is about 1.62 USD.
Yeah... that's not as much as I hoped for ._.
I think that the biggest mistake I made, was putting too much effort into such a simple game. But what does simple mean? You can check out the game here. The main and only purpose of Catch The Rain is simply catching rain drops falling from the top to the bottom of the screen, by tapping on them. If you don't catch a raindrop before it falls below the bottom of the screen, you lose a life. You can also lose a life if you tap a green (acidic) raindrop. Depending on chosen difficulty mode you have a different amount of lives and the raindrops move with a different speed. Also, the longer you play, the faster raindrops get. That's all. Simple, right?
Advertising
Without proper advertising I probably wouldn't even get 200 downloads. At first, I wrote posts about my game on every forum and every place in the internet for sharing your games with the world. I also used some of those "Review for review" services. Those two combined gave Catch The Rain a little boost, but it wasn't enough.
Right after putting my game up in the Play Store, multiple companies emailed me offering advertising. Most of them were probably bots scanning for new apps in Google Play, and I ignored them because I was short on money back then. However, about a week later, one of them sent me another email, asking if I don't need any help, because I didn't reply to their last email and my game is not attracting too much new users. Surprised that they actually seemed to care, I decided to email them back, explaining that I can't afford advertising. Then they gave me a really cool offer: they would advertise my game in their app named "Giftiz", and I would implement their SDK in my game. Basically it worked like this: Giftiz users, after completing a couple of tasks in my game, would get credits which could later be exchanged for some gadgets or gift cards. At the same time there was an ad of their app in my game.
I can't find it on Google Play anymore, so I guess it was removed, but the company still offers advertising: Adbuddiz.
To sum up, if I learned anything from game development is that sometimes you'll just fail and there is nothing you can do about it, so you just have to keep trying :)
And lastly, a couple of tips
This is a simple guide for newbies - if you're a full time dev, you probably won't need those :D
Don't expect any success at first
And I'll tell you why. Being new to game development is like being new to Steemit. Don't expect too much. If you're successful and get $500 with your first post - that's great, but you shouldn't give up if you only get $2. Think of game dev as a fun activity, to help you build up your skills. This way you won't get too upset when your game goes by unnoticed.
Don't think of it as a full-time job
It's probably not a good idea to quit your job and start making games if you have no experience at all. Also, don't spend your last money on advertising or Google Play registration fee :D
The internet is your friend
Don't be afraid to look for answers or ask the questions in the internet. If you want to make games but you think you can't do it - you're wrong. Today, there are so many tutorials and guides, that anyone can create a game from scratch (if you have no experience, it will take a bit longer, but it's still possible)
Share your game
People won't know about your game if you don't tell anyone about it. Start with your friends - share it on Facebook and Twitter. Then talk about it on the internet - Reddit, and many other websites have special places for sharing your creations. Lastly, you can use the review for review websites to boost your app's review score.
You may wonder why haven't I said anything about Apple and the App Store. That's because I never published my game there. It's too expensive for me :)