I know questions belong in the Q&A, but this has to do with apps & large developers. I have been doing a little research into Gameloft & EA. I have found a few trends that I find disturbing, but I am looking for more information for background before publishing any of my findings. SO, please humor me.
My pleading question to all of you tech & Android lovers out there is a simple three part question & it will really help me to see if I can truly identify a trend that is hurting consumers.
1. Do you own any any app titles by either of the above developers?
2. Have you found that any purchased titles from the above developers cannot be utilized due to firmware updates?
3. Have you had any interaction with the customer service departments of either developer? How did you find the experience?
I am working on a piece & have found some very interesting facts, but I am looking for some experiences from other users. Please post & let me know your answers to the above questions & feel free to add any other commentary you feel relevant. If you prefer anonymity, you can PM me here at XDA..
If requested, I will respect you request for anonymity, but would like to be able to use your stories as anonymous source material, or for background purposes.
I had purchased The Sims 3 on my HTC Rezound.
After the initial purchase, the app would not download the secondary files.
EA does not have an email tied to the app listing, so after navigating their page for 30-45 minutes, setting up an account, typing my problems, and then retyping them due to server errors, having to try and guess several times before I could create a password that fit the unlisted requirements, the final submit button for submitting a ticket for tech support completely server errored and made me have to start over.
I had honestly forgotten about it till now, will see about trying again today.
I purchased Madden 12 when the Play Store had their 25 cent sale a few months ago. It ran fine on my Xoom, but as soon as I upgraded to my N10 and 4.2, it would not download any of the files to play the game. It seems to be a common complaint in the reviews of the game.
Related
svetius said:
XDA to Go Dark on Jan 18th at 8AM; You Can Help Bring Us Back Online
XDA is a community built on openness and sharing. It has flourished because of our ability to freely exchange information, ideas, and development. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the Senate and Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the House give copyright holders the ability to more easily shut down sites (with mere accusations and without due process) that *might* be in violation of copyright laws.*It was because of GoDaddy’s initial support for this legislation that we moved to another registrar. If you are unfamiliar with the particulars of the bills, read up on them on Wikipedia.
We had a long debate among admins and moderators about the best way XDA can combat this legislation. Several sites (most notably, Reddit) have decided to go dark on January 18th from 8AM to 8PM. A blackout of XDA, a site with users likely already educated on the legislation, seemed a bit like preaching to the choir.
Quite frankly, we don't think a blackout is enough. We need to motivate XDA members to get involved and help us fight the fight. So-- beginning at 8AM ET on January 18th, the xda-developers.com domain WILL go dark. When you come to the site, you will see links to information about SOPA and the damaging impact it will have on the free Internet. Visitors from the United States will also see a link to an online pledge. Users who choose to sign their name to the pledge are agreeing simply to contact their local Senator or Representative (via phone or email) and politely voice their opposition to the bills. Once 50,000 people have made the pledge, XDA will go back up. We will provide links to help you find the contact information for the appropriate member of Congress. We hope we hit 50,000 pledges quickly. If not, we'll match Reddit (and hopefully many other sites) and return online at 8PM ET.
If you want to get involved (before our "pledge" goes live on the 18th), Reddit has a fantastic list of ways that you can make an impact. We hope that XDA going dark will help spread awareness and action against SOPA / PIPA.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not a USA user, so i can't help really much.
I just want to share and discuss about this in our phone's dedicated thread and propose my personal Peaceful Protest for Freedom.
So if you're not a not USA user, and you want to say web is free knowledge and sharing, just use this image as avatar.
It will not do much, but for who is whatching us, this can be a signal of union.
Unity is strength.
So. They may take our sites but they'll never take away our freedom!
We all know -- getting the user feedback is essential, but it's hard. At least I find it so.
For example, judging from data gathered from random Android app and game samples, on average:
about 10-20% of all users that have downloaded the app, have actually reviewed the app,
about 10% of those that reviewed the app also leave a comment (making the number of comments approximately 1-2% of all downloads),
about 1% of users communicate via in-app channels,
about 1% of users respond to social posts.
As I mentioned already, this is based on a random sample and the rather small sample size (10) may be biased by statistical error. Nevertheless, it "feels" right
Now, let's say that your user base is wide enough to get the accurate feedback about your product, but only if you could motivate more users to respond to Rate and Leave Feedback requests... but let's leave that for a separate discussion.
What I wanted to ask you all is:
Which questions would you ask your users if you knew they will answer truthfully?
Think survey!
Think user satisfaction!
Think best loved feature!
Don't think girl's/boy's phone numbers!
In the end, I'll try to compile the result in a single survey separated in categories (and based on the popularity of suggested questions) for the community to use.
Let's start asking
<placeholder>
Starter
To get us going, here're some example questions (courtesy of zoomearng.com):
What Features Can You Not Live Without? – Asking people what features they must have on your upcoming product is a great way to find out what is in the highest demand. In short, this online survey question shows you, overall, what features you cannot leave out.
What Is the Most You Would Pay? – Understanding your potential customer’s price range can help you better understand what you can realistically afford to include, and exclude, to hit those price points.
What Did You Like Best About Our Old Product? – If you had an older version of a product and are updating it, finding out what features your customers liked best. Use this online survey question to find out what you should not change in future versions of your product.
What Other Brands Would You Consider? – This online survey question helps you quickly locate and understand your possible competition. Knowing what you’re up against will help you better gauge where your energies should be focused for your product.
What Else Should We Know? – Let your online survey respondents have the floor. This question gives them the opportunity to sound off about things maybe your online survey questions missed. Find out all you forgot to ask about with this question.
One thing that I was not sure how to proceed is the personall, demographic questions. How deep to go and what are the limits?
I believe that the answer to this is in type of survey, but also in giving the user the possibility to opt-out or to make those questions non-mandatory.
What's the safe zone with demographic questions?
I think you can safely ask for:
Country
Age
Occupation
Service Provider(if any, or if necessary)
Another question that can be considered is "Do you primarily use this app for business or personal use?" Obviously only certain apps would use this.
Just a suggestion, but since a lot of questions could vary between apps(like between recreational or utility apps) maybe if you made a tool that allowed app developers to customize and then compile a survey which can then be added to their app with minimal effort it would be awesome. That way developers could ask more app specific questions alongside the more general ones you mentioned above. The hardest thing about that would probably be making it compile into a universal format that can be copy pasted into any apps code, but I'm sure it's not too hard. If the tool automatically created the proper classes along with each survey then it literally could be copy pasted into whatever part of the app the dev wants it in.
Just my 2 cents.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA
Good suggestions, AlanB412.
The Country and Service provider are quite well covered by Play Store statistics (though, should be considered in case app is not published on Google).
Other "personal" stuff, I compiled into one (multiple choice) question for the survey I'm creating for m-parking:
Please tell us something about yourself. Check all that apply.
• Female
• Male
• Younger than 30 years
• 30 years or older
• In school
• Employed
• Unemployed
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The details of occupation, like industry and field of work, deserve a dedicated question, if needed, of course.
Ideally, the availability of questions should be dependent on previously made choices (e.g. occupation industry should be asked only if employment status "employed" or "self-employed" were previously selected). That kind of branching should make the survey more engaging as opposed to presenting the user with irrelevant questions.
The idea about the "tool" for developers sounds interesting.
How I'm looking at is a library project that has many out-of-the-box available questions, but that allows also for customizations and works dynamically with any question specified in standard strings dedicated resources.
The tricky part is actually not the inclusion of such Survey-library in apps or its dynamic handling of question-answer configuration. It's in (collecting) the reports part. For that to work seamlessly out-of-the-box, a third party "cloud" reporting service should be available -- to collect and provide access to reports.
Hello everybody!
Moderators, sorry if I didn`t choose the right place to post this post, if it is wrong place please move it to the right one. THANK YOU!
I won`t take much of your time and I will be very pleased if you take a minute to read this thread to the end. Thank you for your attention!
My name is Konstantin Fortuna and I am publisher of android apps and games (I do not have any programming skills, I outsource all parts of app development - programming and design). I have experience in app creating, promoting and monetization. At the moment I have 7 active apps on Play Google, which are generating me around $200 - $700 each in month. So I feel that I have information what to share and right now I am working on ebook about Android app creation, promotion and monetization for beginners. This book is for those who want to start android app business or who just started it and need to know the right direction where to make next steps in promotion or monetization.
How can you help me? I would really appreciate your help, if you could tell me which problems are you facing in app creation, promotion and monetization. And I will include detailed answers on these questions in this ebook.
Access to the book will be for everyone on my blog. However, to those who will FULLY participate in the completion of this book will get a SPECIAL bonus from me. I deliberately emphasized the word fully, because the idlers, who will sit on the fence and watch the process, are not included in the count number of fully-dedicated participants. “Oh, yes! Great idea! Write what you know!”
By the way, if you are already successful in this niche, it would be great if you share your experience in this ebook. I wish to have interviews with guys who are making much money with apps. Future readers would appreciate your participation in this ebook writing!
Anyone is welcome!
Sincerely,
Konstantin Fortuna
P.S.
I know the rules, that new user can`t post a link in this forum. All I want you to know, that if you want to know more information about me, my blog and future ebook, you can find me on my blog - konstantin-fortuna.com There you also will find a post about this ebook.
(MODERATORS PLEASE DON`T BAN ME! I AM NOT TRYING TO SELL ANYTHING, I ONLY WISH TO HELP EVERYONE WHO NEEDS HELP! THANK YOU!!!)
Hey, So I have created the official "Games" thread for the Nook.
Rules are simple.
1. There will be no discussion about trading, swapping, posting link, or other talk about giving PAID or Avoiding Server Fees talk. Or else the thread may be closed.
And please don't try talking about it in a "roundabout" way. Us Mods didn't fall off the "tuna boat yesterday".
This is to allow people to discuss games, gameplay, and cheatcodes. Yes, cheatcodes are allowed as the Devs put them in there.
Have fun folks!
MD
A real awesome game (heh) is Team Awesome, which comes as a free app with advertising or a paid one with none. The premise and controls are really simple, but the game is extremely addictive. It's also simple enough to play that my 3 year old really enjoys it too.
Hello everyone. I thought I'd bring this up here. I'm trying to get some exposure and feedback on this issue.
It's explained in detail on a reddit thread (I can't post the link) titled "My app is getting 1-star ratings from another dev". The TLDR version:
An unscrupulous developer can do the following to a) inflate his own ratings and b) destroy the ratings of competition. This is happening to me right now (I authored the reddit thread). This is the process:
1. Buy app.
2. Rate app.
3. Sign into another Google account.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 as many times as you have fake accounts.
5. (Optional) request a refund within 15 minutes. The ratings stay even though a refund was issued.
Has anyone else experienced this? It's incredibly frustrating. Google is unresponsive to support submissions. Some helpful Redditers are giving me good feedback and helping offset the 1-star reviews but honestly - it's hard to recover from 1-star reviews. Much more when there are 20 of them.
Thanks for any feedback. And apologies if this is in the wrong forum.