Splash screen can be disabled in latest daily builds for free.
As I’ve said before this is what I’ve experienced too. If the brand is known at all it’s among indie devs, and not always a positive association either. Whatever message they were trying to get across in the past about Corona’s capabilities, they failed dismally.
I just did a google search for “top 2d game engine sdk” and “best 2d sdk”, etc, etc… and Corona always shows up and often in the Top 3. So, I don’t know if pixec was trolling or what. I have no idea how anyone can call Löve better than Corona. There are about 15 failed attempts at implementing a GUI in their user “library”.
IMO, Corona is the complete package. If anything, it has not had sufficient marketing or social media backing it, but technically, there is absolutely nothing to complain about. Yes, the name is unfortunate for this time in human history, but I am willing to bet people will start drinking Corona beer again once the coronavirus is under control.
AND, as mentioned, they just removed the Corona splash screen, at startup, so no-one should be afraid of anything.
That’s because you know to use the sdk keyword which helps bump Corona nearer the top. Realistically no-one is going to type that. Use ‘2d game engine’ and Corona appears on page 3 for me. ‘2d game engine’, ‘free game engine’, ‘game framework 2d’, none get Corona on page one or in the carousel of logos at the top, despite it being around for 11 years. And when you do find it, ‘last stable release - 19 months ago’ is not going to inspire confidence in a newbie…
Thats actually something i’ve seen too. Searching for stuff like ”corona touch” yields a lot of Covid19 stuff, but entering ”corona sdk touch” it gets better results. Funny thing is that based on what ive read, corona hasnt been corona sdk in years. The only case where you find search results is if you add terms to the search that dont exist anymore. I’m sure if search for ”corona sdk ansca mobile corona labs 2d game engine” then you have good search results :DD
Actually like sherman said, i searched for ”2d game engine”. You know the little box that google shows for good direct results? They were in order of: game maker studio, cocos, lingdx (wtf is this?), love, monogame, phaser, box2d (i thought this was just physic lib?), orx (again, wtf is this? :D), renpy (a visual novel engine for web? Come on!), flixel (never heard of this either…)
Corona isnt there but theres all sorts of random scrub
Anyone who thinks that corona has good seo doesnt understand that new users dont search for sdks - they want game engines. Also google, bing and such are surely going to devalue all non-covid19 corona pages, so the downhill is just getting started. Change the name! Also - sorry for triple post spam
I think your observation points to how changing the name from Corona SDK can be a really bad idea…
Right now, people can still find Corona stuff by searching under Corona SDK. If the game is changed to something completely different. It wouldn’t even how up on google search. Plus, all the domains should be changed. Partners who already have Corona integrations (eg. https://github.com/adjust/corona_sdk) would need to rename their stuff. And if they don’t (which is likely) Then that can actually create even more confusion.
A rebrand is expensive, even for a small brand. And if we just change the name without going through the effort of re-educating the entire ecosystem and getting them to adopt to the new brand, then it can create utter chaos and confusion.
I rather we save all that time and effort actually improving the engine…
For a point of historical reference, the splash screen on it’s initial release did have the “with Love” as part of the language. You, the community complained about it and it was quickly abolished (the with love part). So if you’re seeing that, you probably have a version of Corona from 2016.
If you have suggestions on SEO, please feel free to do a View Page source, look at our titles and descriptions tags and offer us better keywords that we need to include.
Just keep in mind, Google 100% ignores the <meta keywords> tag. For news sites, they can use the News Keywords tag as long as they don’t abuse it, and it’s still the next-to-last thing considered. Bing, Yahoo and a couple of other search engines only pay minor attention to meta keywords.
Changing the name to “Corona 2D Game Engine” would probably help with SEO, those are probably the words people are searching that would like Corona. We’d continue to just call it ‘Corona’ commonly. Even calling it “Corona 2D” could help differentiate it from the negative connotations somewhat
There is no easy answer to this conundrum. Yeah sure 301’ing a domain is an easy win but 3rd party plugins, git repos, etc will be a pain.
@Rob what century are you in? SEO is not about meta tags (which all get ignored by Googlebot) at best meta description is merely a hint for SERPS (and often ignored completely). That’s as bad as promoting 320x480 as a default canvas size!
If I Google my game name, every hit on page one is my game - be this Google Play/Images, Apple, Amazon, Pinterest, FB, Insta, etc. you get the point.
SEO Is SO much more than meta tags… SMH. Active offsite links and social media is much more important and something Corona has sucked at for so long.
(FYI this was my business prior to game dev and I already extended help on this but you guys were not overly interested… and look where we are)
I respect your opinion, but you can’t improve a mechanism that doesn’t have new followers, we’ll always be in a minority and worried about the framework not dying for lack of people engaged in making it grow, even changing its name to "Corona something ", there will still be results about the virus, as this is already marked in history and has more relevance in searches than a 2D game engine, it is like trying to search Google about 2D Holocaust to look for a engine and think that it will appear earlier than the Nazi-era Holocaust.
Sorry for the example.
So many good and interesting points - it’s only a matter of time before people start calling Corona the killer game engine. Sorry for the point, but we’re stuck with the association to the virus no matter what. Therefore, I would recommend changing it from “Corona” to “Corona Game Engine” or “Corona 2D Game Engine” or “Corona Open Source 2D Game Engine”. If you do this, the search engines will learn the difference between the game engine and virus over time. The sooner you make sure the word “Game” follows every instance where we use it, the sooner the search engines will learn the difference.
As for being a money thing - I wouldn’t spend a dime on it. Just clarify the rebranding with Game when referring to it in the future, as its not realistic it will ever become a favorite biz app engine.
So for clarification, don’t change the name other than adding an adjective to describe it as a 2D game engine. And certainly, keep any money you have for those of you working to kee it relevant.
May I suggest an email marketing campaign to college professors and students? I have some expertise in that area and would be happy to lend and spend to promote this new direction once you guys have it ready for launch. Of course, we’ll help any other way we can!
So many good and interesting points - it’s only a matter of time before people start calling Corona the killer game engine. Sorry for the point, but we’re stuck with the association to the virus no matter what. Therefore, I would recommend changing it from “Corona” to “Corona Game Engine” or “Corona 2D Game Engine” or “Corona Open Source 2D Game Engine”. If you do this, the search engines will learn the difference between the game engine and virus over time. The sooner you make sure the word “Game” follows every instance where we use it, the sooner the search engines will learn the difference.
As for being a money thing - I wouldn’t spend a dime on it. Just clarify the rebranding with Game when referring to it in the future, as its not realistic it will ever become a favorite biz app engine.
So for clarification, don’t change the name other than adding an adjective to describe it as a 2D game engine. And certainly, keep any money you have for those of you working to kee it relevant.
May I suggest an email marketing campaign to college professors and students? I have some expertise in that area and would be happy to lend and spend to promote this new direction once you guys have it ready for launch. Of course, we’ll help any other way we can!
One more thing - I’ve made over 50 video games and a few AAA. Nothing has been as easy as Corona to develop games that require dynamic placement and control of objects via code. Nothing comes close, actually.
I don’t know why the Composer UI was dropped by CoronaLabs, but I believe the smartest thing for someone to do would be to create a compiler for Adobe XD, since Adobe seems dead set on keeping it as a prototyping vehicle. There is already huge pent-up demand and frustration from Adobe XD users that it lacks a publishing element. Some others have tried but they stink. I suggest this because Adobe XD has been built with a great UI. Maybe not so much for games, but it’s an idea worth kicking around - it would undoubtably extend the life of Corona Game engine. Or then again, maybe just Corona 2.5D Engine.
If Corona was as popular as Unity, re-branding would not only be unnecessary (regardless of the COVID-19 hysteria) but would also be a bad idea. For anyone who is against re-branding, let me ask this: If Corona SDK is still well known and relevant out in the world, why is Corona Labs shutting down? The simple answer is most people using Corona don’t have serious enough businesses that would compel them to pay $99 a year (let alone a month) to not have the splash screen in their apps. Vlad, Rob and all the people who were actively involved in Corona’s development in the past have done a stellar job so far forging Corona into a formidable product, but that message has obviously not been effectively relayed to the world over time. If marketing was aggressive and efficient (which would need a serious budget), we would have a bigger community that would translate to more paying developers which would further development and marketing efforts and so on (like the chicken-egg problem). It’s the same challenge we game developers face (user acquisition and retention). The reality of the situation is that our community dwindled to a size that could no longer sustain Corona Labs as a whole. Why are we still clinging on to the name Corona, especially when that branding is not being beneficial to us today? If the effort required to re-brand (especially in the documentation area) is daunting, that’s something we as a community can get together and work on.
A minor change like ‘Corona Game Engine’ can still be ambiguous to the uninitiated (is it a pandemic simulator?). If re-branding is given the green signal, I firmly believe we need to pick a unique name like Defold or Godot that cannot be confused with any other product or brand out there. The likes of @SGS can then use their experience to tweak the SEO. We could also reach out to channels like Ask Gamedev, Gamefromscratch etc. to give the SDK a fair evaluation and present it to their viewers. We don’t really have much to lose other than that it will take a bit of effort to get there.
Really well said Murthy.
We’ve followed this thread all the way through and it’s made for very interesting reading.
We’ve worked with several different platforms / languages over the last 10 years, but without a shadow of a doubt, for simple 2d multi-platform game development, Corona SDK is the best we’ve found (in our opinion). By a mile.
We don’t use it for everything we do, but we’ve used it a fair amount and quite simply, for certain projects, it’s absolutely perfect.
I struggle to understand why it isn’t used by more people. What’s not to like - seriously? It ticks every box for us. What is “better” for straightforward 2d multi-platform game development? If you asked me what I wanted from the product we use to create our apps, the features I gave you would be pretty much bang on what Corona offers, with a few tweaks.
As an aside - if you search for “multi platform 2d game engine” or “cross platform 2d game engine” then Corona comes up second. Remove the “2d” and it still hits the first page. Those are exactly the sorts of phrases we would use to search for what we use Corona for - multi platform 2d game development…
A massive thank you from all of us here to Rob and Vlad (and any others involved behind the scenes) for all your hard work over the years. Whatever happens with Corona (and I really hope you are able to make it successful and continue to stay involved), you created something that has enabled a lot of people to make their living from the games and apps they created in Corona and you developed a product that, in our eyes anyway, is the absolute best we’ve worked with. Well done and thank you.
SAME HERE!!! Exactly what I wanted to write! 
And we are still believing and betting on Corona in the future! And of course will support it!
Dani (and Chris)
I started using Corona in late 2010, and for at least the next couple years this place was booming and Corona was being promoted at conferences, etc. I don’t have inside information on what the numbers look like at that point, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that after Carlos died the numbers started trending down. If not before that.
Corona has been promoted and it didn’t go anywhere – – I have no clue why because it is so awesome. But anyone who thinks a name change will turn that around now, it’s probably very wrong.
The big difference between then and now is that that Corona is open source, but that’s a two-edged sword.
Why aren’t we the Godot of 2D game development? I have no clue. But it’s not like effort wasn’t put into it.