Chapter 12

Publishing and Updating Your Game

In This Chapter

Exporting a signed application

Setting up your Google Play developer account

Supporting your game after it’s published

Your game won’t be seen by anyone until you upload it to a market. I’ll show you how to get your game into Google Play. If you’re like me, you don’t work for a multimillion-dollar game company with a massive marketing budget. If that’s the case, then your market listing is the most valuable marketing tool you have. The first thing people will see is the name and icon for your game, but if they visit the market listing, that’s where you need to get them interested enough to download your game.

So first things first — namely, the nuts and bolts of the upload process, and then a look at all the different options you have for your listing.

Creating a developer account for Google Play

You need a regular Google Account in order to register for a Google publisher account. Odds are you already have a Google Account, but if you don’t, you can create one during the registration process for a developer account.

To start the developer registration process, go to

https://play.google.com/apps/publish

Follow these steps:

1. Enter basic contact information about yourself and your company (if you’re associated with one).

2. Read and agree to the Developer Distribution Agreement.

3. Pay a $25 fee.

This requires a Google Checkout account; if you don’t have one, you can set one up during the process.

When your account has been processed and you’ve been notified via e-mail, return to https://play.google.com/apps/publish, which takes you to your Android Developer Console.

From there, you can do lots of useful things:

Upload new apps and updates

View usage statistics and feedback

Track sales

If you want to sell your games, the first thing to do after your developer account is approved is to create a Google Checkout Merchant account. Google Play uses Google Checkout for all financial transactions.

To set up a Google Checkout Merchant account

1. Access the developer console.

2. Click the Edit Profile link at the top

3. Select Setup a Merchant Account at Google Checkout.

You’re walked through the steps for setting up a merchant account;

When that’s done, you can use the developer console to

List games for sale

View sales reports

Generating a Key with Keytool

Google Play requires that each application you upload into their market be digitally signed with a certificate associated with a private key.

The tools required to generate the key are provided in the Java Development Kit (JDK) installed in Chapter 3.

To make sure that you have the proper Keytool installed and working, you can type the following from the command line:

$ keytool -help

If the Keytool is working, you’ll see a list of possible commands. If not, you’ll need to troubleshoot your JDK installation.

The first thing to do is generate a private key to be stored somewhere on your local development machine; you use it each time you sign a game for release. An example of the command for generating a private key with Keytool is the following:

$ keytool -genkey -v -keystore my-release-key.keystore -alias alias_name -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

For reference about what each of these options and parameters do, see

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/tools/windows/keytool.html.

When you run this command, you’re prompted to enter a password that’s at least six characters long, followed by a number of questions about you and your organization.

By default, the key should be generated in the same directory where the Keytool is located, though you may specify the target directory as an input parameter. You may want to move the newly-generated key to another location (such as a password-protected directory).

Exporting a Signed Application

When you have a valid key, you can use it to sign your application at the same time you compile it into an .apk (Android Application Package) file, which is the standard file format for Android.

You could export an unsigned .apk file and sign it manually (this is what I used to do in the early days). But these days you can sign the application the same time you compile it with Eclipse.

Let’s say you want to sign and export your Whack-a-Mole game. Follow these steps:

1. Right-click the project in the Package Explorer and select Android Tools⇒Export Signed Application Package…

You should see the wizard for exporting a signed application, which should look something like Figure 12-1.

2. Click Next.

You’re prompted to enter the location of the key you just created, along with its password (Figure 12-2).

3. Enter the location of the key and its password, then click Next.

You’re prompted to select the alias and enter the password (Figure 12-3).

4. Select the alias and enter the password, then click Next.

The final screen in the wizard prompts you for the location for the exported file.

5. Enter or browse to the location where you want to store the exported game.

You’re notified on this screen that the certificate will expire in 24 years, which should be plenty of time. If you’ve already exported the file before, you’ll get a warning that you’re about to overwrite the existing version.

6. Click Finish.

That’s it! You now have a signed .apk file ready for upload into Google Play. Combine it with a developer account and you’re set.

Uploading Your Game to Google Play

When your developer account is set up, you can upload your first game.

The following files and information are required:

The .apk file for the game.

At least two screenshots of your game.

Screenshots must be one of these sizes:

• 320x480

• 480x800

• 480x854

• 1280x720

• 1280x800

Your screenshots can be either portrait (tall) or landscape (wide), even though they won’t appear in landscape orientation in the developer ­console.

Include at least one screenshot of actual game play, so prospective players can get an idea of what playing the game looks like before they download. 

A high-resolution (512x512) application icon. This is the icon used by Google Play and should be the same as your application icon.

An app title and description. The title can be up to 30 characters long, while the description can be up to 4,000 characters.

I recommend adding these optional items:

A promotional graphic (180x120), kind of like a small banner for your game.

A feature graphic (1240x500). This is the large graphic seen on your game’s listing in Google Play when viewing in a browser.

A slick, appealing high-resolution graphic on your market listing is the first thing users will see, so you want to make a good impression.

A promotional video. You can produce a video and upload it to YouTube, then submit the link associated with your game in the developer console. The video will be available to users in Google Play so that they can view it before deciding whether or not to download your game.

A video can serve two main purposes:

• Showing off your game. Try not to show video clips of confusing levels or lots of things going on to the point where you can’t see what’s happening. An opening level is usually good. Try to avoid cut-scenes or cinematics if you have them. People usually want to see how the game will play. If the video is too different from the game experience, players might not be happy with you.

• Presenting a sort of tutorial. Especially if your game is novel, players may need a gentle introduction into how it works. If the game is especially difficult to understand, you’ll want in-game tips, hints, and tutorials, but the listing video is also a good place to explain the basics of the game.

Keep your video short:

• A minute or less for just a game play intro.

• Three minutes or less for a more in-depth, tutorial-like video.

Actually capturing video from a device can be difficult:

You can use an emulator and video screen capture software on your development machine. Emulator performance is often very choppy, so the quality of your video might suffer.

You can try to capture the video from a hardware device, but taking video of electronic devices is also difficult, usually resulting in poorly-lighted, grainy video.

If you have access to studio-quality production of demo videos, go for it!

A bad video may be worse than no video at all, so try to determine if you can actually produce something that’s going to showcase your game, rather than make it look shoddy.

A privacy policy can indicate how you will use any personal information that may be gathered by your game. This usually isn’t an issue unless your game is multiplayer and has a login system with usernames and passwords, or is location-based and somehow uses the player’s location or other information in game play. If you are gathering any information you will want to link to a privacy policy, as well as detailing the policy within the app itself.

Uploading the APK

Your APK should be signed and stored in a handy location when you begin the upload procedures. Follow these steps:

1. From the main page in the developer console, click the Upload Application button.

The first thing you will be prompted to do is upload your .apk file, as in Figure 12-4.

You don’t actually have to upload your .apk at this time. You can close the dialog and fill out the rest of the information and settings about your game, and upload the .apk later.

2. To upload your .apk file now, click Choose File, browse to the location where you stored the .apk, then once it’s chosen click Upload.

As the dialog states, if your .apk file exceeds Google Play’s limit of 50MB, you can upload expansion files. For a small game, it’s unlikely that you’ll exceed 50MB, which can actually encompass an awful lot of images, sound, and music. If you do have more resources than that, you’ll want to click Learn more to determine how to use additional files not integrated into your .apk.

Adding product details

When the .apk is uploaded, you’ll need to add other resources and details to your game’s listing. Some of these will display in the Google Play listing that users will see, and others will be used by Google.

Creating and uploading screenshots

The Android tools for Eclipse make it easy to take quality screenshots. You should see a button in the upper-right corner of your Eclipse window that opens the DDMS (Dalvik Debug Monitor Service) perspective. The DDMS actually includes a suite of tools that allows you to monitor the performance of your game as well as spoofing certain features available on hardware devices. Those uses are too big a topic to cover here, but another handy feature of the DDMS is screen capture. Follow these steps:

1. Click the DDMS button in Eclipse.

The perspective should show

• A window named Devices

• Tabs in the main window that display other information about the current device.

All devices you have attached to your development machine or emulators you have running will display here.

2. Select the device you want to capture a screen shot from by clicking the device icon and serial number in the Devices window.

When a device is selected, the screen capture icon, which looks like a camera, should be active (Figure 12-5).

3. To take a screenshot, click the screen capture icon.

Whatever is currently displaying on your device will be captured and displayed in a new window (Figure 12-6).

To rotate the image into landscape, click Rotate. The screen capture may produce artifacts, especially if your animation is fast and the emulator is running slowly, so you may need to try a number of times before getting a shot you like. When you click Refresh, the screen capture updates with whatever is currently on the screen. I find it useful to start a game and click the Refresh button until I find a shot I like.

4. When you have a shot you like, click Save and browse to the location where you would like to save the shot and click the Save button in the dialog.

Again, you need a minimum of two screenshots. I usually like to include three to five, but you’ll likely want at least one of your play screen out of your two shots.

Uploading icons and other graphics

Figure 12-7 shows the Upload assets section of the developer console when uploading an .apk file.

There are buttons for each set of assets that allow you to browse your local machine to where you stored them, select them, then upload them. For the hi-res icon (512x512) it’s a good idea to design your icon first using this size, then scale it down to as low as 32x32 to make sure it still looks good.

Browse around both the web and device versions of Google Play to look at other games’ promotional graphics, to see what works and what doesn’t. Try to look at a wide variety of listings to give yourself ideas about what you think does and doesn’t work.

Writing your game’s description

The graphics in a listing are the first things that will catch someone’s eye, but the description is another crucial aspect to marketing your game. You want to get people interested in downloading and trying your game out. As long as the game is fun, the hardest part is often getting them to click that Install button.

Follow these guidelines for writing a great, alluring description for your game:

Sound enthusiastic, but not too cheesy. Watch those exclamation points!

Keep it succinct. In the early days of the market, the description length was appallingly small. These days, 4,000 characters are quite a lot, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it all. In fact, a lot of potential downloaders might be turned off by a wall of text. You want to hook them, not give them eyestrain.

Be descriptive. Don’t think you’re going to get people to download your app by being vague and mysterious.

Let’s try to write some hypothetical descriptions for Whack-a-Mole and see what might or might not work:

This is an awesome game that people of all ages will want to play! Do you like fun!?! This addictive game will keep you or your kids entertained for hours on end. Go ahead and download it now…you won’t be disappointed!

You shouldn’t have too many problems figuring out what’s wrong with a description like this. About the only thing going for it is its brevity. The description sounds like a carnival barker, but its biggest sin is that it doesn’t tell you anything substantive about the game itself, or what it’s like to play.

Moles have invaded your back yard! Whack them on the head to knock them back underground. Whack-a-Mole updates the classic carnival game with a fully touch-screen interface that looks and plays great on any Android device. The more moles you whack, the faster they come. Fast-paced fun for players of all ages!

This is pretty good, though admittedly not perfect. You are doing some things right here, though: introducing the theme of the game, describing the actual game play, and describing the interface and compatibility across a wide range of devices. The description gives a good sense of what playing the game is like, and does so in a brief, solid paragraph.

If you just don’t feel comfortable with words, or you’re distributing the app in a market in which you don’t speak the native language, get some help. Just as with other resources, you can hire someone, or find a friend or family member who can help you out. If you butcher the description, it’s going to result in fewer downloads, so take the time to do it right.

Don’t clog descriptions with release notes, bug fix comments, or replies to your users. Google Play now allows dedicated places for each of these. When you do post version changes or bug fixes, be succinct and descriptive. Users don’t care about the technical details, only that you fixed the bug that wouldn’t let them save their high scores. Use your game description space for its intended use: describing and getting people interested in downloading your game.

In the same section where you enter the game description and recent changes text, there is a space for promo text, limited to 80 characters. This is typically used when a game happens to be featured as a top app in a given category. Hopefully that will happen for you, since it’s a great form of exposure. Just to be prepared for such an eventuality, you should also have content for the promo text. Eighty characters isn’t much, so this is almost like the tag line for a movie, a briefer version of your game description. For Whack-a-Mole you might try something like this:

Whack the moles! Try this fast-paced carnival action game for Android.

This is 70 characters. As you can see, there’s not much room, but you’ll want enough to describe the game very briefly and make someone click the link to the market listing.

Setting other market listing options

When you’ve entered the text for the descriptions, you’ll need to select the application type and category. The app type you select should be Game. The Game application type has these subcategories. You’ll want to choose the subcategory that best fits your game:

Arcade & Action

Brain & Puzzle

Cards & Casino

Casual

Live Wallpaper

Racing

Sports Games

Widgets

The market doesn’t currently support multiple categories, so even if your game overlaps categories, you can choose only one. You might want to choose the category with less competition, and thus more visibility. And you are able to change this setting at any time, so you can experiment a little.

Next you’ll need to set the Copy Protection, Content Rating, and Pricing. Figure 12-8 shows these publishing options in the developer console.

Copy Protection

Copy Protection was Google’s first pass at keeping apps from being pirated. It increases the size of your uploaded app and doesn’t actually provide very much in the way of protection. Besides, as the console notes, it’s being done away with. Google currently recommends that you use their licensing service (see http://developer.android.com/guide/google/play/licensing/index.html). Remember, these options are for paid apps. While the licensing option might provide marginally more protection than the previous incarnation, the bottom line is that if people want to pirate your game, they will. You have to ask yourself whether any kind of copy protection or DRM (digital rights management) is worth the time and effort required to implement it. I’d argue that for your first game, or even first few games, the answer is no.

You’re probably just not going to get enough exposure, and when you’re just starting out (realistically speaking), it’s unlikely that your first game will be enough of a hit to make piracy a real issue. If you’re really worried about it, go ahead and implement licensing or your own anti-piracy measures. Just remember that the time you invest could be spent polishing or marketing your game.

Content Rating

Content Rating deals with the age-level appropriateness of the content in your game.

Be careful here. If your game is rated too broadly and users complain to Google, that might be an issue for you.

The main areas of concern for a game (just as for movies and other media) are the usual suspects:

Violence. Per Google’s guidelines, if your game contains cartoon or fantasy violence (such as whacking a mole on the head), the maturity level should at least be set to Low Maturity. Of course, if you’ve got zombies eating brains and entrails, or other gratuitous depictions, you likely need to go up to High Maturity. Get feedback from beta testers across a wide range of demographics. In other words, try to get your mom to play it and see what she says. Moms’ reactions are a good baseline for determining what the baseline maturity level should be. 

Profanity or crude humor. If your game requires shooting boogers from a giant nose to kill enemies, or contains any words that are considered taboo or possibly offensive, rate it at least Medium Maturity.

Sexual content. It will usually be obvious if your game has a sexual theme (which I would generally advise against overdoing). But if the elves in your RPG have substantial cleavage or the dialog in your game is a little suggestive, you might not offend most folks. Default on the side of safety and rate your app for more mature audiences if there’s any kind of question.

Of course, these areas are all subjective, which is why it’s important to get a lot of input from other people.

Steer clear of more mature themes for your first couple of games. You’ll avoid any potential controversy, but the big upside is that your available audience will be much larger.

Another aspect of maturity levels to note is location. If you happen to be developing a location-based game (such as a scavenger hunt that uses the GPS), the game cannot be rated Everyone. It must be rated at least Low Maturity. This is presumably because of issues related to tracking the location of minors.

Pricing

The Pricing section is your option to set the price.

If the game is free, it must always be free.

If you are selling the game, follow these steps: enter a default price in US dollars in the price field. Below that is a list of other countries where you can make the game available for sale. By default, all locations are checked. After entering a price in US dollars, you can click the Auto Fill button to convert the price into values for local currencies in other locations.

As of this writing, the Auto Fill feature didn’t quite work right for 99 cents, rounding certain currencies down below the minimum price so that you had to edit them manually.

The price excludes tax. You can set up automatic tax allocation through Google Checkout. Just be sure you consult your accountant or attorney about collecting taxes in your state or region. Google’s not going to do it for you.

Contact information

When you’ve set these options, you’ll need to enter contact information for you or your company, for support purposes. You don’t need to enter a telephone number unless you want to provide telephone support. There are the standard acknowledgements that the game meets the proper content guidelines at the very bottom of the page. When you check those, return to the top of the page and click Publish.

Congratulations! Your app will be live on Google Play almost immediately. However, if there are any issues with your submission, the console will indicate them with warnings to fix them. Otherwise your game is out there for the whole Android ecosystem to download and play.

When you publish and the listing is visible, you’ll want to check it via both the web and device versions of Google Play to see how it looks. You’ll also want to test downloading your game to see what the process is like from a user’s perspective.

When you’ve published a game, it will stay in your developer console forever. You can’t delete listings. You can unpublish games (by clicking the Unpublish button for a listing), but the actual listing will always stay in Google’s system for reference and support.

Supporting and Updating Your Game After Publication

If your game gets any significant amount of downloads, you’ll get e-mails. Some will be praising you and your game and thanking you for making it. These will be in the minority, probably about 5 percent. The rest will either be criticism of varying levels of specificity and helpfulness, or requests for help. You should try to respond to every e-mail you get, and unless you’re getting millions of downloads, this should be very doable. You represent your game and to a lesser extent the Android platform, so when you reply to your users in a professional manner, it reflects well on everyone and can help boost your reputation and sometimes your game’s user rating.

Some users might be rude. Resist the urge to be rude back. The more professional you act, the more professional you’ll be, and you don’t want comments on your app that say you insulted someone (even if that someone might have deserved it).

If there’s a feature request or someone suggests a change to the UI or other functionality, make sure to listen. They probably care enough about the game to want to see it better, and if they took the time to write you then their suggestion warrants some consideration. You can’t please everyone, but if the suggestion is sound and doable, you probably want to spend the time making the change. If it’s a bug, you definitely want to spend the time hunting down the problem and making the change.

I’ve seen a fair amount of discussion among mobile game developers regarding whether it’s worth the effort to update your game on a regular basis, or concentrate on that next game you’re working on. A number of developers have data to indicate that updates don’t affect the bottom line all that much, in terms of retaining old customers and gaining new ones. It’s certainly a tradeoff. In general I’d advise that you update significant bugs and functionality that won’t take that long to implement, but I wouldn’t prioritize updating an old game at the expense of working on a new one.

When you do have a new version, you’ll need to increment both the version code and version name in the manifest file of your project. For example, if your previous version code was 1, you should increment it to 2. If your version name was 1.0, you should update to 1.1, and so on. Follow these steps:

1. You’ll need to export your signed application each time you have a new updated .apk.

2. When you visit the application listing for your app in the developer console, click the APK files tab.

Figure 12-9 shows this view for my game Golf Solitaire.

You’ll see the current active version along with all previously active ­versions.

3. Click the Upload APK button to browse to the location where your new .apk file is stored to upload it.

When uploaded, you can set the new version to the active version, ­deactivating the old one.

4. Click Save when you’re done.

The new version will become active almost immediately.

If you need to revert to a previous version, just use the same interface to ­deactivate the new version and activate an old one.