Rise Above the Crowd: Mobile App Publishing & Marketing Pro Tips | Online

About this class

The mobile game market is a crowded space. Consumers have hundreds of apps to browse across the Apple iTunes and Google Play store. How does someone with a clever idea, great graphics, and satisfying app design go about publishing and promoting their product?

• Learn pro tips about how to organize and implement a game producing plan, as well as the basics of a marketing and social media plan for an independent app design.
• Learn a brief history of the iTunes App Store and Google Play Store, and what early techniques for design, coding, and marketing an app were valid from the beginning and in some cases are valid to this day!
• Participate in a fun, in-class exercise to design the first few mock-up screens for an app or game. Storyboard supplies will be provided.
• Deliver a short ‘elevator pitch’ about your app or game idea and get some immediate feedback from the instructor and their classmates about the idea for what works well and what could use some additional thought. (optional)

Takeaways

• You’ll learn the basics of the step-by-step process of publishing on both the iTunes App Store and Google Play Store
• We will discuss techniques for the ‘monetization’ of games and other apps, and how other small and large publishers are attempting to make money from the buying public
• You’ll gain an historical perspective of how the App Store has evolved, as-well-as some game industry-specific history that goes back as far as the introduction of the Commodore 64 back in 1983
We will discuss the basic economics of what it costs to conceive of, design, and code various types of apps
• We will cover some predictions of the direction that apps (specifically through the lens of ‘games’) in the near and mid-range future
• You’ll learn some of the successes, and the potential major failures, of producing and publishing a game in today’s economy

Prereqs & Preparation

• Bring one app or game idea with you that you would feel comfortable pitching to the class in one or two sentences (elevator pitch)
• Bring pen and paper, computer, or tablet for notes

Note: We will provide some blank ‘blueline’ graph paper for an in-class app design exercise as well