Another big one is, you can reskin an app MANY times. Yes, you can go nuts if you want and give yourself a much better chance of success. Some people reskin an app 2,3,5, 10 or more times.
Yes the same game, but with a different look and feel each time.
Now before you start thinking this sounds spammy, remember you can (and should) be identifying your target audience with each reskin. So if you are systematic about it, what is stopping you from targeting multiple demographics with different reskins?
Smart huh? By identifying your target audience you can create reskins that are totally relevant to a particular audience instead of writing a game in a very generic way to try and cater for a more general audience.
An example would be a reskin of a game with a “Barbie” theme for young girls, another for the Justin Bieber fans (wait, same audience?). 🙂 I am sure you get what I mean here.
Yes, it does means 2,3,5, or 10 sets of graphics, sounds and music, but it’s also 10 apps you have in your portfolio. Not bad huh?
Each one of those apps has its own chance to be downloaded in its own right, and also means each can be generating revenue in it’s own right, and can also be sold off in it’s own right if you choose to down the track.
I am not going to talk a lot about app flipping in this ebook (the process of selling your completed app in it’s entirety to someone for a tidy sum) but that is very much a way to benefit in this game.
Now there are some big gotcha’s here. Firstly if you think you can be the apps equivalent of an email spammer who just “pumps out” a ton of low quality re-skins of the same game, and expect to be a millionaire, then sorry to tell you, its probably not going to work.
Any app you create or reskin should be focused on quality and the user experience.
Here is a big take home for you…
“People taking short cuts often never arrive at their destination on time”.
Wow I think that should be a cool Chinese proverb.
What I mean by that, is that for reskinning apps, shortcuts at the expense of quality and user experience is for the birds. Don’t do it.
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This ebook is NOT about “gaming” the system (no pun intended), or delivering low quality apps, because that’s not building you a long term sustainable business is it?
That’s just not adding any value to the Internet (or app stores to be specific) and sooner or later that’s going to backfire on you.
Getting back to the comparison of creating a new game from scratch. What happens if ultimately the game is not fun? Or if it just sucks? There I said it. What you will often find (and almost always if you do your due diligence) is that when you buy source code, the game itself is fun, so the hard work has been done for you.
I mean lets face it, if the game is not fun, then you are not going to have people play it right? Designing a game requires specific skills. Believe it or not, but a programmer does not necessarily have the skills to design a game, even if they can develop one.
e.g. Developing a game and designing it are different skills.
It’s along the same lines as how an architect can design a building, and a builder can follow the plan and build it.
A game designer (architect) is a specialist skill, so if you are building a game from scratch yourself you are ultimately going to have to get involved in design decisions or leave them up to the programmer (builder) and hope he knows what he is doing.
I can tell you first hand you are playing with fire here. The reason I know this, is for our first three games, I was the game designer and creative director. Basically the “game play” decisions were up to me.
It was a huge learning curve and frankly I still have a lot to learn about it. And I am a geek who likes to think he is creative with over 25 years of software development experience.
Bottom line here though, is why not start out with a reskinned game first and graduate up to a complete new game after you have learned the basics of the app development industry.
(if you decide to go that way).
Click here to read another reskinning apps article
