Need some help form experienced game developers

Games
#1

Finally, my first game is almost ready :slight_smile:

There are some questions borders me since the first day when I start to learn Corona. I always want to find the answers, but for months I still can’t find any topics about them. So I just ask the questions here and hope those who has experiences to explain them to me.

It will be great help. Thank you.

  1. About the rating system in apps store:

I have a lot of friends in Vancouver, if I tell them the news about my first app, as my app is free and small, they will probably download it and most of them will vote 5 stars even before they play the games. I am not saying that I force them to do so, but they will as they know how long time I spent on it.
So what will happen to my app is it will be voted as 5-star within few days and 99% of the votes come from Vancouver.

Will it be considered as cheating by apps store? If so, do I have to keep it secret when I publish it?
2. It seems the rating of the apps will not show until it reaching a certain number of votes or downloads. Is it true? How many do we need to show the rating?
3. I used to see some games pop-up a window, asking you “Do you want to vote for us? You will receive some items or in game cash if you do so.”
Is it legal?
4. I read some topics about inmobi ads in free games. Most of people say they make $0.50 per day. Is there anyone who has made some real money form Ads? Otherwise, I think it does not worth to bother the guys who play my game with Ads.
5. Where do you get the sound effects and background music? Could you please suggest some sound effect/background music website friendly for apps developer? I mean the copy right protected and not too expensive.

Thanks for your help.

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#2

I’ll give some of these a shot…

  1. Ratings… Apple is constantly changing the rules to keep people from gaming the system. How many people are you expecting to download the game and rate it? You should probably promote it out to twitter and facebook and then some reviews will be out of market and it won’t look like you’re stacking it. Unless you’re getting hundreds or thousands of reviews, I doubt Apple is going to notice. Also don’t over estimate the number of reviews you will get. I only got my friends to lift a hand for about a dozen ratings.

  2. There is some threshold, but its pretty low. I don’t know the exact amount, but it was in the 3-5 range I think.

  3. Many apps do a popup asking the player to rate them. But I’ve never seen one bribe me to. I’m sure Apple would not like that very much. Again, you’re trying to game the system.

  4. For me inMobi was a total fail. Very low fill rates and no click throughs. They put Zero effort into trying to make us successful. I bolted for inneractive as soon as Ansca announced us. I started making money right away, and I was hitting $0.50 to $1.00 a day when the apps were fresh. My volume of apps is too low to really do much. Now I’m getting about a penny a day. But once I get through some work for 3rd parties, I’m going to go back and apply some of inneractive’s suggestions and add some new features to try and get the game’s another set of downloads. I will give inneractive credit… They are active with your account and in the forums offering personal suggestions. I just need bigger numbers.

  5. Google for free game sound effects. There are a ton of sites out there. Also, search these forums for game sounds. There are a couple of message threads with several good links for finding music and sound effects.

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