Doing a pilot launch

General (non-technical) Marketing and Monetization
#1

My game is just about ready for prime time. I’ve gotten it as good as I think I can by playing it myself and with input from my friends. However I’m nervous that if I publish it on Google Play and people don’t like it, it will get bad ratings before I have a chance to fix the issues that people complain about. 

How have you guys handled the v1.0 release of your games? How do you make sure you get ample, honest, real-world feedback before pushing that APK to production? 

I’ve considered launching in a small country with similar demographics to the US (like Ireland), but I think the ratings probably carry over to the US, right?

No one is probably going to download my game organically as soon as I publish it; I’ll need to rely on advertising to acquire users, so I can control the download volume (or if the game is a huge viral hit I will be okay with that too). But those users can still rate the game and sink the ship if they don’t like the game.

#2

You could do a beta campaign by asking other developers and gameplayers to help you evaluate the game. There are a couple Corona groups on Facebook that you could leverage. You could also make a post in the New Apps/Work In Progress forum here, to see if anyone can do some beta-testing for you. My thinking is that, assuming you get a few Corona developers, they would be able to report a bug accurately, and give you some additional insight into how to resolve it.

The above suggestions are based on the fact that, from the tone and tenor of your post, you feel like there might be showstopper bugs and you’d like more eyes on it. If that’s not the case, then I apologize for misconstruing your post. If it’s accurate, then polling the larger community could help you quite a bit. 

#3

Thanks Alex! Good tips. In general I’m looking for feedback, not just bug reports. I’ll start with the forums here. 

#4

You could do a beta campaign by asking other developers and gameplayers to help you evaluate the game. There are a couple Corona groups on Facebook that you could leverage. You could also make a post in the New Apps/Work In Progress forum here, to see if anyone can do some beta-testing for you. My thinking is that, assuming you get a few Corona developers, they would be able to report a bug accurately, and give you some additional insight into how to resolve it.

The above suggestions are based on the fact that, from the tone and tenor of your post, you feel like there might be showstopper bugs and you’d like more eyes on it. If that’s not the case, then I apologize for misconstruing your post. If it’s accurate, then polling the larger community could help you quite a bit. 

#5

Thanks Alex! Good tips. In general I’m looking for feedback, not just bug reports. I’ll start with the forums here.