We kept in touch with Gage throughout his sale and discussed the factors and strategies that helped make SpellTower such a successful app. First, let’s take a look at some numbers.

• In Top Paid Apps, SpellTower went from 93rd to 13th.
• In Top Paid Games, the app went from 44th to 11th.
• In Top Paid iPad Apps and Top Paid iPad Games, the app reached 3rd (previously being 7th and 4th). Both ranks were right under Angry Birds Space and Draw Something.
• In Top iPhone Paid Apps, it went from 93th to 13th (the same increase as overall paid apps).

SpellTower was a huge success on the iPhone during the sale. Gage believes $0.99 is a much more competitive price point on the iPhone, while iPad users are more willing to pay $1.99. He also mentioned that the iPhone is a more accessible device and people were more likely to just download the game to whatever device they had on them when they heard of the sale.

Gage attributes more than just the sale to the recent success,

“Well, I think the sale was helpful, but the community was amazing. So many tweets went out yesterday. My iPad was beeping off the hook. It was really overwhelming for me, to have so many people help me out. I think the reddit IAmA was pretty helpful too.”

On the reddit IAmA, Gage’s page received 156 points (247 up votes and 91 down). Gage thinks the support the community gave by tweeting and helping spread the word made a huge difference. The IAmA on reddit resulted in over 200 comments between Gage and readers. One of the most interesting comments on the reddit included a quick discussion about if Zynga offered Gage over $100M,

Original question: “If Zynga offers you > 100 million dollar, would you take it?
Gage: “not if they made me work for them”
Another commenter: “Hmm. That is either bull**** or commendable integrity, sir.”
Gage: “I’m not in this for the money. I’m here to make work I think is good and enjoy being alive. No amount of money would be worth working for Zynga for 5 years and not making any side projects.”

Gage also commented on the “garbage app” atmosphere of the App Store and how he believes the App Store is actually a great place for developers right now,

“I like the App Store. It’s true theres a lot of garbage out there, but Apple’s curation is quite good, and there are a lot of people who like those superficial games. At the end of the day, that audience is out there and you have to decide if you want to cater to it or not…I think the App Store is the best place right now to make a name for yourself with really unique and interesting apps/games.”

SpellTower had a previous surge in the rankings (April 11th through the 13th) prior to the sale.

“A big update hit and Apple featured it simultaneously. Plus, kind of market saturation from being in New York Times Magazine.”

He explained the update included a great website created by a friend of his, Chris Driscoll, a new icon that better displayed that it was a word game, and screenshots that include accolades (he doesn’t believe many people actually read the descriptive text).

SpellTower has been a huge hit. Gage believes the strategy element is one of the most unique parts of his game.

“SpellTower is pretty unique for a word game. It really forefronts strategy in a way that not a lot of word games do. Theres randomness, but it’s low. Most of your ability to do well comes from a combination of knowing words, being able to see words in advance, and making the right words, in the right places, at the right times.”

Gage plans to continue making challenging apps. He believes that challenging experience is part of what made SpellTower so successful.

“The major thing I’ve discovered is that people actually really like challenging games, if you approach them the right way. Its difficult to build them like that, but it’s not something I’d ever realized. A good example is Pacman. Pacman is super hard, but it’s fun for everyone because it’s easy to grab a power pellet and chomp ghosts. It builds on an accessible strategy.”

SpellTower may not have risen above the giants, Zynga and Rovio, but it’s equally impressive for a one-man indie development studio to be in the same league as the big name developers.

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The not-for-profit developer conference has now changed its name from iPhoneDevCamp to fit with the changes in Apple’s mobile operating system. The 2010 camp is expected to be the largest in the event’s history with over 500 attendees from developers and UI designers to entrepreneurs attending and is sponsored by the PayPal X Developer Network. 100% of the $50 attendance fee goes toward event costs with organizers working on a volunteer basis.

During the weekend, attendees will work together on joint projects with demos and awards held on the event’s final day and international developers will also be present via satellite.

The event is a great way for developers, designers, testers and investors to meet up and share their development experience although the organizers do stress that the event is for developers and designers with previous iOS experience, not for end users or those expecting training.

The event promises some exciting new elements this year with more information coming soon and spaces are filling up fast. To register for the event or to find out about sponsorship opportunities, check out the iOSDevCamp website.

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Discover which Scoreloop games your friends are playing

Scoreloop Community provides the following features both on the web and in the dedicated iPhone application to any game developer/publisher by simply implementing the free Scoreloop SDK:

• Discover & Browse – All Scoreloop-enabled games, their high score lists and challenges are now more visible to players. Scoreloop Community for the iPhone also acts as a central gaming launch pad. It allows for launching Scoreloop enabled games and switching back and forth between the community and games.
• Scoreloop Promote – Now players can view the games that are played by others and access them directly on the App Store.
• Friends Activities – Scoreloop keeps players up to date with what and how their friends are playing.
• Scoreloop Avatar Editor – Players create and save custom avatars changing them as frequently as they wish.
• Web Widgets – With a single click, developers and publishers add customizable online high score lists to their own web sites, extending the community reach even further.

Scoreloop Community on the iPhone fully implements iPhone push notifications for Scoreloop challenges. Whenever players are challenged or when their challenges are accepted they will be directly notified through text like messages, badges and/or sound. This brings the social interaction in gaming even closer to the players and makes playing a Scoreloop enabled game even more addictive.

“After pioneering player challenges, Scoreloop is again raising the level of play for game developers with its cross platform community,” said Scoreloop’s CEO, Marc Gumpinger. “We’re providing the most sophisticated and complete mobile social gaming platform making gaming more fun and allowing our developer ‘partners’ to increase their user base virally through friend invitations and more. Scoreloop doesn’t create games, but instead we partner with game developers to move the market forward together.”

With its free, easy to implement and highly customizable SDK, Scoreloop is the only platform offering online high scores and player challenges available today for any game on the iPhone and iPod touch from OS 2.0 to 3.x. At the core of its mobile social gaming approach, Scoreloop’s challenges allow players to interact with each other on an entertaining and thrilling level. Players instantly see their high score ranking and can challenge anyone, including buddies in their address book or on Facebook. Scoreloop’s comparison algorithm makes sure players compete against someone at a similar skill level. If the player performs well, they win medals and Coins that show their skills to opponents. These features increase the game’s value, virally spread games and increase user loyalty.

Scoreloop generates revenues from its micro-transaction infrastructure that is shared with game developers and publishers. Scoreloop offers its technology free of charge and even allows for monetizing free games.

With hundreds of developers already registered, Scoreloop-enabled games continue to proliferate at the Apple App Store including: Aeio, Bug Landing, Flying, GeoRain, Monster Mash, Orb, Sorty, Submarine, Zombie Pub Crawl and 50 more game commitments from third party developers – more coming in day-by-day.

“We definitely will be integrating Scoreloop into all of our upcoming games,” said Bruce Johnson of Orange Crane Games who implemented Scoreloop in Zombie Pub Crawl. “Our staff is addicted to Scoreloop challenges,” added Stephen Northcott from Ginetix, who implemented Scoreloop in Orb.

With its new community platform on the Web, on Facebook and on the iPhone, Scoreloop extends its unparalleled online high score and player challenge features to reach even more players and generate even more visibility for Scoreloop enabled games.

About Scoreloop

Scoreloop is the technology leader in mobile social gaming bringing online high scores, player challenges and viral distribution to game developers and publishers.

As a neutral-platform, Scoreloop focuses on partnering with game developers to build the mobile social gaming community rather than developing its own games. Scoreloop is venture funded by Europe’s Target Partners.

To find out more about Scoreloop Community go to www.scoreloop.com/community and to download the free SDK go to www.scoreloop.com

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