This piece is brought to you by Maddie, whose hair puts mine to shame.
Paul! We are friends, in real life, and I have gotten to see you develop your game Fat Cat In A Top Hat IN REAL TIME, as if we were on an episode of Silicon Valley. Can you tell me a little bit about how you first came up with the idea for it?
Mallory! I came up with the idea for the game in the fall of 2011 when my parents were starting the process of moving someplace more affordable. I wanted to help them financially with the move, so I figured what better way to make some quick money than by designing a game for the iPhone. The initial idea came to me pretty much fully formed: there’s this giant fat cat in a top hat destroying the houses in a caul-de-sac neighborhood, and the player frantically pokes the cat to slow him down but there’s no way to truly stop him. That happens to be oddly representative of my state of mind back then. I hadn’t coded or done much computer art before I started this, so in the process of learning how to make that first idea I ended up with this other viable game, Fat Cat in a Top Hat, which I polished up enough to release.
Silicon Valley, really? It’d be more like a show of you, Maddie, and me drinking tea and watching Adventure Time. Actually that sounds like a great show.
Okay, this is great because it brings me to my biggest question: How do you monetize a game like this? You would think, as someone who started a business (that I believe makes money) I would have a more ROBUST SENSE OF THE MARKETPLACE, but I am made of whimsy and teakettles. How much money/labor would you estimate went into building the product? Did you have a goal of how much money you were hoping to raise? Can you tell me how you’ve measured sales/success?
At this point, it’s more of a hobby with a product than a business. I didn’t have a business strategy or expectations going into it – I figured if the game blew up, that’d be great, and if it didn’t, I could at least use it as resume experience. My only goals were to get it done quickly, release, and see what happens. Without a business strategy, though, I also didn’t have a rigid timetable to guide my labor, which meant that when work picked up or life events happened I let the project sink into doldrums. I completely missed the mark of getting it done before my parents moved, but I kept up with it because I wanted to learn how to do this and see it through to the end. My girlfriend is really the reason Fat Cat got released when it did. She works in tech and pushed me using her project management skills, and I love her for it. So far sales have been slow because I’ve been relying on word of mouth for marketing, but it’s still great to have my product finished and available.
For monetization, I designed Fat Cat with the 99c price point model in mind (keeping a low bar for customer acquisition while still seeing some profit from each download), but I’m actually in the process of updating to make it freeware with in-app purchases. I really disliked in-app purchases until I saw how Nimblebit did them for their game Nimble Quest: game features are upgraded through currency you collect as you play, and if you want, you can pay to unlock higher-denomination currency so you can upgrade faster. Otherwise, the game is completely playable and enjoyable for free. That way players aren’t penalized for not spending money, and spending money doesn’t take the place of gameplay, which I think are both good ways to treat a customer. I also like the free+ model because it lets customers try out the game first and give the developer a kickback after to show appreciation.
As a misandrist, I am deeply interested in hearing a bit more about how your girlfriend is the true cause of your success.
I’m also curious in talking a bit about how you develop a project when it’s not your day job and all the deadlines are self-imposed. I find it really difficult to make myself set and actually achieve goals when it’s all up to me, because a part of me realizes it’s all fairly arbitrary. What strategies worked for you?
Maddie is very organized and very goal oriented. When she worked for a start-up, she was that grab-bag non-engineer person who made sure that EVERYTHING got handled, from office upkeep to executive schedules to HR paperwork for the entire company. They referred to her job as being a Maddie. She knows how to get shit done and she doesn’t stop until she does.
I am not that way. I’d like to think of myself as being that way, but I’d be lying if I did. I am the kind of person who can get caught up in tweaking pictures of clouds for two hours. I lose sight of the big picture because I have a lot of fun in the details and I want to make sure they’re perfect. I don’t know if I do that because I’m a man. Feel free to say that it is.
Maddie didn’t constantly encourage me, since as I’ve made clear, she doesn’t waste time, [Ed. note – GOD I LOVE MADDIE] but she did give me really helpful needling when I was getting too much into detail work. She would ask me if the overall success of the product depended on what I was doing right then. She would remind me to think about what was necessary to get to the next step of a prototype. She snapped me out of funks when I didn’t know what to do. And above all, she would remind me that what I was doing would only matter once I actually shipped the product. “Ship at all costs” was the mantra that finally got Fat Cat out the door.
Developing the ideas happened pretty easily in my spare time. Doing the work happened in bursts, like spending two weeks coding over my lunch break, but I wasn’t good at scheduling those out. I’d switch between spending weeks coding and spending weeks doing the artwork, kind of flip-flopping when I got frustrated with one or the other. In the future I think having a schedule would be helpful for the work flow.
The two best progress strategies I used were making a task list and giving myself set increments of time in which to get those tasks done. Like, a Saturday morning where I’d need to finish figuring out how the encouragement text works before noon. If I didn’t make it, I’d put a hard stop on myself anyway to keep from building bad work habits. Then once I had a few items done off the list, or two weeks had gone by, I’d revise the list to prioritize or change items. Or sometimes I’d revise the list instead of doing other work. Having a malleable list was helpful for staying out of the details, and metering time gave my work a sense of urgency.
Working outside of my apartment is also proving to be a good way to achieve goals. My time feels more precious when I’m not sitting on the couch, so I want to make sure I spend it on important tasks. Noon turns into sunset without too much care when I’m at home.
Oh God, now I’m panicked thinking about how close we are to sunset right now. It’s not enough time!
That’s the idea.
Tags: cats, interviews, video games
While on the surface this seems to be about Paul and his game, the careful reader can discover than my true intentions for sponsoring an article on the toast are to make my two best friends say nice things about me on the internet. Money well spent!
… OK, I’m buying myself this for my birthday.
Maddie, we sound like soul sisters. What is your job title if I may ask? I would love to do what you do for a living but “project management” sounds so vague and corporate.
Well my job title when I “did all the things” was Assistant to the Founders, and then I was a Product Manager, and now I am an Executive Assistant. Really though, all the jobs are the same thing. You’re put in charge of [an office, a product, a person] and told to make it work, and then make it better, and then make it work, then make it better again in an endless cycle.
Also this is the game https://itunes.apple.com/app/fat-cat-in-a-top-hat…
I downloaded the game. The art is very cute and I like how many ways you came up with to say “good poking.”
Unfortunately, it is not fun. Once the novelty and the cuteness wears off (about as long as it takes to microwave an Amy’s wrap for lunch) I was done with it. I should have known that from reading the description in this article, though, so I guess it’s my fault I bought it. I just thought there would be more to it but there’s not. You poke a cat for infinity while it compliments you on your cat poking skills.
Congrats on learning to build a game. I hope your next game includes something for the user to do.
ETA: am I to understand that this was a sponsored post? Like “brought to you by” means “Maddie paid us to post this”? Why doesn’t it have the same indications of that as the other sponsored posts on the front page?
ETA again: Not that I didn’t enjoy reading the article. The article is fun, like any Mallory Ortberg piece. It just feels a little weird.
The posts on the front page that are clearly marked as sponsored are, as far as I can tell, basically advertisements (or ads within articles) paid for by companies. However the Toast also has a feature whereby individual readers can choose to sponsor specific articles by paying a certain amount of money, and those posts generally aren’t labelled in the same way on the front page that the company-sponsored posts are. Previous articles sponsored by individual readers have had similar notes at the top of the article as this one. It’s basically a person paying to sponsor an article on something that interests them vs. a company paying to sponsor an article to advertise whatever they’re selling.
That makes sense. The only thing about it is that this article seemed like it was endorsing this product, the game, which turns out to be more like a learning exercise for the developer (a very cute one!) than anything most people would actually enjoy playing. Because I love this website so much, I uncritically accepted this article as Mallory saying “this is an awesome thing you should have” and so I immediately went to buy it and now I feel a little like Ralphie in A Christmas Story after he decoded the Ovaltine commercial. And I also feel bad for criticizing my favorite website. Sorry Toast.
It’s a little different from our usual “donated” posts inasmuch as it’s an interview with Paul rather than just a post of my choosing with a “donated” blurb on top, but it’s not an endorsement inasmuch as there’s 1) no link to the game in the article or call to purchase it, 2) no recommendation from me (I’ve never played it), and 3) no endorsement. Just talking about what it’s like to build something and try to make money if you’re not a professional game developer!
Mallory hasn’t played it because she uses off-brand smart phones.
Since you are IRL friends, maybe you could let her borrow your phone for 3 minutes to try it.
Once you get a high score in the 6,000-7,000 range (For the competitors out there, mine’s 9,863) besting it becomes the new fun challenge. Maybe it’s not to much fun as feeling VERY strongly that I MUST. REACH. NEW. GOAL. BUT. FINGER. AND. WRIST. ARE. DYING. Maybe adding a wall sit for a greater challenge!
And I agree 100% that Paul can and should do better!
It was 99 cents well spent, imo. I learned 3 new words.
THIS IS COLLUSION MALLORY DON’T YOU KNOW HOW BAD COLLUSION IS YOU WILL LITERALLY GO TO HELL, GET EATEN BY A DRAGON, THEN GET POOPED OUT OF THE DRAGON AND POOPED ON UNTIL YOU SUFFOCATE FOR AN ETERNITY IT IS THE ULTIMATE EVIL*
*please note I am 1000% joking.
THIS IS COLLUSION MALLORY DON'T YOU KNOW HOW BAD COLLUSION IS YOU WILL LITERALLY GO TO HELL, GET EATEN BY A DRAGON, THEN GET POOPED OUT OF THE DRAGON AND POOPED ON UNTIL YOU SUFFOCATE FOR AN ETERNITY IT IS THE ULTIMATE EVIL*
*please note I am 1000% joking.
Paul (or Maddie answering for Paul) — You mentioned you hadn't coded before building this game. Are there resources you used that you would recommend for learning to code or building a simple game? I'm intrigued by all of this (and like the idea of a hobby with a product) but no idea where to start.
I used Ray Wenderlich’s tutorials (http://www.raywenderlich.com/) to get started. They have a ton of projects, and a good amount of them are written specifically for beginners. I started on their Cocos2D projects since I knew from the start I’d be using that framework (http://www.cocos2d-swift.org/). They also have tutorials on Unity, the newer Cocos2D with SpriteBuilder, SpriteKit, you name it. Following Ray’s tutorials gets you a solid project, but I had more fun grabbing their code and trying to use it in my own way. I recommend doing whatever is necessary to keep things interesting.
As I got more experience I realized I needed to have a stronger grasp on Objective-C, so also I did the free Objective-C codeschool tutorial (https://www.codeschool.com/courses/try-objective-c). I like their stuff, and liked it better because it was free.
Cocos2D now comes with a graphic interface called SpriteBuilder, which seems a bit less intimidating than Xcode was at the beginning. I haven’t used it yet, but I know they have tutorials on their site (http://www.spritebuilder.com/).
I used to work in marketing for mobile games. Good on you for making a game! It’s a fun creative pursuit and it’s cool you finished it. As a moneymaking exercise though, I’d caution that you’re working in a field with some stiff competition. The top of the app charts are mostly dominated by a handful of companies who can afford to spend A LOT of money on user acquisition, as they know they’ll get it back in spades from serious users. Supercell, for example, was making more than 2 million dollars a day already in 2013, so you can imagine their marketing budget. A mega-hit game from an independent creator, like Flappy Bird, is a bit like someone’s self-published novel becoming a bestseller – it’s certainly possible, but I wouldn’t write a novel planning on making a million. 🙂 Even the company I used to work for, which used to bestride the narrow app world like a Titan, has been laid low recently as they did not do well transitioning from premium to free games. Anyway good luck and hope it does well, looks really cute!
I just downloaded the game and
omg
algebraic
Okay my high score is 9049 I officially need to stop
I just downloaded the game and
omg
algebraic
It was 99 cents well spent, imo. I learned 3 new words.
Okay my high score is 9049 I officially need to stop
OK, I’m buying myself this for my birthday.
This is fantastic. What a great post thanks for exploring.
I love it!
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