Game Progress Update #82

Game Progress Update #82

Hello World! And welcome to the eighty second Dev with Dave Game Progress Update.

It’s been a funny old couple of weeks. Things have been absolutely frantic here, trying to push out an update for one of my apps which is long overdue, but has been constantly delayed by one thing and another.

I thought the troubles were over when the newest version of AGK Studio was released, addressing an SDK version issue which had caused a warning on the last few builds. But sadly this was not the case.

It turned out my Mac Mini, With which I have had a love/hate relationship with, was outdated and no longer able to run the latest version of XCode. Which meant that if I wanted to continue to publish on the App store, I was going to have to reach into my wallet.

Since my HP Windows laptop was also quite old and in need of an upgrade, I decided to pay the extra and get a Macbook Air instead of another (but newer) Mac Mini.

Anyway, when I haven’t been playing with my new toy, I have been busy working on building an audience for Flappy-vaders.

Social media leveraging

I’ve just been doing more of the same as the previous few weeks. One of the groups I joined as part of this does do Screenshot Saturday. So I will try and make a post or two about that. It is unfortunate that I can’t schedule posts in other peoples groups.

I also took a few photo’s of some older games and hardware I own, relating to the main topic of the groups.

I’ve included the mug with the branding in all of the photo’s, and I might take a few more varied ones as well. But I won’t necessarily mention DwD or the game just yet.

Paid advertising

I’m going to look into using paid ads to get visitors to the Flappy-vaders website.

My marketing plan has been somewhat scuppered is has to be said, due to some unexpected financial misfortune I suffered a few months back. Because of this I have had to scale down what I had originally planned.

Originally I was hoping to do a comparison between Google and Facebook ads to drive traffic to the.

I’m currently reading up on both platforms, and trying to decide if it’s worth splitting what little prelaunch advertising budget I have, or if it would be better to concentrate it all on a single platform.

Email Sequence

Once an advert or Social Media link has sent a potential player to the landing page, and they sign up, they will automatically start on an automatic email sequence.

Each email in the sequence will have a specific purpose with it’s own call to action.

Here are the purposes of the emails.

  • Welcome aboard! We’ll award you some free coins for being an early supported.
  • Follow Flappy-vaders on Social media
  • Won’t be long now! A bit of the history of Flappy-vaders
  • Download it today + code for free coins

I have not yet decided on which provider to be handling the emailing. I’m looking for one which can easily integrate into the WordPress website to make automation simpler. I have used Mail Chimp and Send-In-Blue before, but I need to look at what they are currently offering.

New bugs

I’m happy to say that the testers have been awfully quiet this last couple of weeks. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not, but at least there have been no more bugs which have been spotted.

I did however notice that the Flappy-vaders website does not have a privacy policy, which is obviously quite a serious oversight on my part.

I’m going to attempt to fix that next, once I have finished this post and shared it online.

And that’s all for now.

And that’s all I have had chance to do this time round.

Trying to reorganise my marketing plans around the reduced budget is proving to be a lot of work, with little to show for it. I will try and include a revised marketing plan with the next blog post. The next progress update goes live on the 10th of May.

See you in the next update. 🙂

Keeping your Audience safe

Keeping your Audience safe

There is nothing worse than spending months cultivating a relationship with your ideal game audience, only to have it taken away in seconds by hackers. This happened to a friend of mine the other day. The hacker spammed every discord server they were a member of. This caused the servers to ban my friends account. Fortunately, after regaining control of the account, they were able to explain to the Admins of the groups what had happen, and were unbanned from most if not all of the servers. Not all such stories have a happy ending however. Let me show you some effective ways of keeping your audience safe.

The best ways of keeping your audience safe online include using strong passwords and not sharing your password with people. Get to know which admin tools your chosen platforms use to help maintain your audience. Things like 2FA, Questions on joining, and moderation tools. It is also important to be careful about clicking links in emails and other messages.

Online Safety 101

It’s best to start from the basics. I know most of you will already be aware of most of these, but I am listing them for two reasons. Firstly, for the few out there who aren’t aware of these important safety tips. And secondly, because you can never be reminded too many times! 🙂

Being aware of the risks which are present while engaging in online activity, especially on social media, is a big step in keeping yourself safe. Knowing what to look out for is important.

Passwords

Whenever you create a new social media account, always remember to use a unique and strong password for it. Regardless of how easy it is to just use one password for everything, from a remembering point of view. If you your password is compromised, then you risk hackers gaining access to everything you use that email/password combination.

A three panel comic about a man choosing an obvious password

My favourite is Strong Password Generator, which I have been using for a good few years. I keep a file of the generated passwords for safe keeping, as well using the Save Username and Passwords option in my browser.

A good strong password should be between 10 to 16 characters long, and consist of a random string of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and characters.

Do not share your passwords with anyone.

Two Factor Authentication

Two Factor Authentication (Or TFA) is a system where you are asked for a second set of user verification data. This is usually a code which is sent via email or text message, or using a third party authenticator application like Facebook and Google do, or sometimes a specific hardware key like a USB stick or a Card/Pin card verifier.

I’m not sure if favourite is the right word to describe 2FA methods, but the one which feels like it balances security with ease of access is when the platform you are logging into texts a code to your mobile phone.

Two-factor Authentication – It’s a pain, but it really helps.

Admin tools for keeping your audience safe

Wherever you are trying to build your audience, there are usually some security methods you can put into place to help keep your audience safe, and to help weed out the undesirables who may try to infiltrate your audience.

As your audience grows, as does the risk of bots or spammers gaining access and using your platform to spread their message. This could expose your audience to links to malware or unrelated content. As well as tarnish you or your brands reputation.

If you are growing your audience as members on a WordPress site or Forum or something similar, then you can usually implement some form of Two Factor Authentication and email verification as well.

You can ensure new members to a Facebook Group answer a set of questions before being allowed to join. And Facebook has a reasonable suite of tools to allow you to block unwanted users and delete comments.

Some platforms offer Post moderation. Which is where users posts have to be cleared by an administrator. This allows you to keep an eye on what new members particularly are posting.

A set of community rules is an often overlooked but surprisingly useful tool. The rules should be clearly posted for all to read, and they should be enforced.

Phishing

Possibly the single biggest risk to your passwords and social media accounts these days.

For those who don’t know, phishing is the practice of sending emails or messages which claim to be from an official or reputable company in order to extract information from a person which can be used to compromise the security of online accounts.

Sometimes these phishing emails are obviously fake. Littered with spelling mistakes, or using an older logo or that sort of thing. But occasionally, the quality is much better.

The best way I have found to check the validity of emails is to check any links included in the text.

On a phone (Both Android and Apple) long pressing on a link will open up a dialogue which shows you where the link goes.

On a PC, you can hover the mouse over a link. This will display the actual destination on screen.

If this is different to the where the button or link suggests this is a huge red flag.

If in doubt – DO NOT CLICK!

Other tips for keeping safe

More than one admin/moderator

It’s usually a good idea to find at least one other trusted person to be a moderator for your audience. Especially if you tend to fall foul of the rules, and end up serving 30 days in FB jail.

But be wary, a rogue moderator can be as damaging as a hacker or spammer.

A while back now, one of the groups I am a member of on Facebook had an admin have a bit of a break down. They went and deleted over half of the groups members before someone else on the admin team noticed.

Check your email address!

All the work you have put in keeping your audience safe could be in vain if the email address you are using has been already compromised by hackers. It’s always a good idea to check any email addresses associated with the project. You can do this for free at https://haveIbeenPwned.com.

Conclusion

Hopefully that covers just about everything. Creating an audience is a labour of love. To lose it in seconds thanks to a hacker does not bear thinking about.

I’ve covered all the main areas dealing with audience security

That is just about everything I can think of for now. It should give you a thorough grounding in how to keep your audience safe. If you have any further questions then feel free to get in touch.

Game Progress Update #81

Game Progress Update #81

Hello world! And welcome to the eighty first Dev with Dave Game Progress Update!

It hardly seems five minutes since I was writing the last one of these. I guess it’s true what they say about time flying when your having fun. 🙂

Carrying on from the last update, this update feels

That’s not to say there haven’t been the usual distractions. I had a dentist appointment this week, and a tooth taken out.😞 This left me feeling a bit meh (And a lot like I’d had a stroke) for the rest of the day and I just vegged in front of the TV instead of working on the game as I had planned.

Dave after having a tooth out.  I am not having a stroke, honest.

The next day I also took a day away from the PC to watch Amazon’s amazing new Fallout TV show. I am a huge fan of dystopia in general, but Fallout has a special place in my heart. The Show is very true to the look and feel of the game. If you haven’t already watched it, you should!

Anyway, let me tell you about what I have managed to get done this time round.

Social Media Leveraging

I think I’m currently on week 3 of the small scale social media leveraging plan for promoting Flappy-vaders organically on social media.

So far I have just been interacting with other peoples posts. Things like liking and commenting on posts. The first of my posts are planned for next week.

Email list capturing

With thoughts turning towards starting to getting prospective players emails onto the list. It was time I had a refresher on using Facebook ads to direct people to the website. I downloaded a copy of the Meta traffic playbook. This is a step-by-step guide for when you create a new traffic campaign in Ads Manager

It’s more than likely I will probably use the same promotional video that I have used previously for these ads, as well as a few carefully chosen words of copy.

I have also given some thought to the email sequence which will be run once a user signs up.

Once a user signs up, a welcome aboard email is sent out. This will provide a brief rundown over what will happen over the next few months. Also mention free coin pack.

Once I have a content plan in place for the Flappy-vaders Facebook page, I will send out another email asking people to follow us on Facebook.

It’s been a while since I created an HTML email, but I am hoping that emails sent by this sequence will have the same appearence and style as the Flappy-vaders website.

I still need to decide which provider I will use for sending out the email sequences.

Security Blog

I’ve not forgotten about the blog I promised a while back about keeping your audience safe. I am trying to get it finished, but every time I think I have a few minutes to work on it, something unexpected pops up.

I just wanted to reassure anyone who might be waiting for it! Thank you for your patience.

As soon as it’s finished I will share a link to it on social media.

In App Purchase Bug

I also had a quick look at the in app purchase code. If you remember, I noticed a pretty serious bug with the purchasing of coin packs the other week.

I was hoping it was something obvious, but sadly I couldn’t see anything.

I have a few ideas however as to how to approach this, and I will be uploading some new test builds over the next few weeks to try and address this.

That’s all for now.

It’s officially late. In an ideal world, I get the Progress update finished and shared on social media by 4:30pm on Friday afternoon. It’s currently 10pm on Friday Evening, and I still have to finish the blog, let alone write the social media posts for it.

I was hoping to be playing with Fortnite on the PlayStation with my buddy by this time. Oh well, lol.

I will be back as always in two weeks with the next thrilling instalment of the Flappy-vaders Game Progress Update!

See you all then 🙂