ZDay + 9 or how I learned to stop worrying and love the release.

Well it’s been more than a week since Zogma went live on the iStore and I thought I’d chuck a blog in to let you know how we are going. Honestly, it’s been a bit of a roller-coaster. Mostly a good one though!

As Rex touched on in his blog, piracy has been a real head and heartache. While we knew from other dev’s reports piracy was pretty rampant across the store; seeing the metrics for ourselves, and watching them happening to our release was still a real kick in the guts. We are a small dev house and those numbers really hurt. Rex has gone through the numbers in some detail, so if you are interested in piracy and the iStore be sure to read over his blog.

Other than that things have been pretty good. We have tracked pretty well and are really moving up all over the world. In fact as I write this now we have just pushed into the top 100 games in Finland!

Reviews have also been very kind, which is honestly a massive relief. We have worked and slaved and slaved and worked to get Zogma as polished as it is now and while we knew we loved it and our families and friends loved it – seeing complete strangers give Zogma 4 and 5 star reviews never stops being a blast! It is a great feeling to have people we have never met play and enjoy something we are so proud of.

Just to be selfish and vain (my hero is Nelson!) it has also been superb to see people like the little parts of the game I worked on!

So if you are reading this, thanks very much for all the support. And please don’t stop here, if you have suggestions or recommendations for ways to improve or change Zogma, please flick them our way. Jumbo exists to make things for our fans and genuinely want to hear what you all think!! You might just see your idea in our next game or update

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Argh, Zombie Pirates

Well Zogma has been out for just over a week now we can say the launch has been quite successful. With over 80,000 games played to date, millions of zombies with holes in their heads and thousands of registered survivors on Plus+, we can attest that Zogma is quite popular.

With the pro’s however, come the cons.

Zogma has been beset by a horde of “zombie pirates”, I.e. those who appropriate Zogma illegally. Whilst piracy is nothing new to anyone (with a number of industries being devastated by it daily), it’s a bit of a blow for an Indie company to be pirated so quickly and so extensively over something which, at the end of the day, cost less then a cup of coffee. Some interesting stats:

• Had 4,500 unique players for Zogma within the first 24 hours, of those less then 5% were legit copies. 95% piracy rate in <24hrs! That’s better then MW2 and Crysis!
• On average these pirates are playing 3 – 5 games a day (good to see they’re enjoying it!)
• Most of these pirates are still very active participants in our Plus+ community. With almost none converting over to legit.

I’ll elaborate more on the statistics in a following post.

In a perverted fashion the above is nothing short of a complement. To see the illegal underground pick something up so enthusiastically is a testament to the strength of our product. Disappointing that after the “try before you buy” (cheaper then coffee, you don’t try that first) argument a number use, they haven’t actually purchased it. For a small Indie house that’s spent the last 6 months in Dev these sales are quite crucial and this is the type of thing that can send people out backwards.

To our faithful followers and legitimate consumers, our many thanks for your continued support. Keep loving the game and we’ll keep the updates coming!

To our cohort of pirate followers (you know who you are!), for shame my good man, for shame.

Sunday, February 7th, 2010