5 Star Reviews Help!

[Tony]

If you can write a 5 star rating a write a good review for Kingdom Island, that would help a lot! Good reviews keep the staff motivated to keep making awesome updates!

Click here to review the game:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kingdom-island/id486264976?ls=1&mt=8

[alexronay]

Perhaps putting a rating option upon login, or even when going out of the app, would be effective for getting more people to rate the game.

[Eathan]

Hello. I know I'm quite new to the game and forums, but I think that if you included a bonus, such as in-game currency as a reward. I'll write my review right now!
Have a good day.

[alexronay]

we need more reviews!

we want more people to come and play everyday, and the only way to do that is to give the game great reviews.

Great reviews = downloads = more people online = better game!

If you enjoy playing, please rate us 5 stars!

[Stephen]

I know that having good reviews is helpful, but having artificially high reviews will not do much. From those who are originally outside the community, their reviews all seem fairly damning. This post isn't intended to be critical.

It's hard to produce a game with a lot of features with not a lot of resources, but the average user will not care about that. You can debate whether that position is right or justified, but that's the way it is. Not sure what the current development state is (can't find the mentioned colours and item in the game description on the website), but those features need to happen before you have any chance of getting better reviews from that type of user. Perhaps see whether there is some way you could reasonably speed up the rate of development.

I know a lot of people weren't particuarly impressed by the multiplayer game I produced. One thing that helped me was to try to see my own game through the eyes of a new user, do they know what to do and how to access the most fun bits of the game. I put some code to find some stats and found less than 2% of gameplays involved the user playing any of the mini-games. Though a lot of the unfavourable comments aren't good, understanding why they are giving them to you is important. Dismissing what the average user thinks is a bad idea, I remember thinking that they were missing the point, when it was my fault they were missing the point.

[Tony]

Dismissing what the average user thinks is a bad idea, I remember thinking that they were missing the point, when it was my fault they were missing the point.

That's the problem right there- we have people who rate because there aren't people online, not because of what the app actually is. They completely disregard the fact that they are on a mobile device playing an MMO. They compare our app to established, million dollar Flash PC games. These aren't artificial, plenty of apps ask for 5 star ratings as it brings people to the game and check it out. We have THOUSANDS of downloads, and only a small group comments and rates the app, usually to just complain. It's not fair that 50 of the thousands of people who have accounts criticize the game. So we ask, if you actually do like the game, rate it and help us out!

[Stephen]

I agree it's annoying that users do that, however these guys will rate it on their experiences of the game. There is no point it being a multiplayer game if there aren't other players there (making players be there is another matter). The comparison is justified to some extent, as those games are the ones this is most similar to. Having things to do when people aren't online could probably prove key. Though of course you'd have a tough task to make it so polished, with so many updates (though still possible, Club Penguin started with 3 people)

I think I should clarify my earlier post, I didn't mean that you shouldn't be asking for 5 stars, just that the game in its current form is nowhere near that level and that having those reviews won't in the end make much difference (as bringing people to the game most who won't get it or like it will add only a small amount of income I expect). If my experience is anything to go by large numbers of plays quickly go down to a tiny amount of 'meaningful actions'. My game somehow got 1000's of accounts, about half played, 15 percent played more than twice etc. Negative reviews aren't nice, but that won't stop people who find out about it from word of mouth, which is a good (and cheap) source of marketing for the right game.

[Tony]

I think I should clarify my earlier post, I didn't mean that you shouldn't be asking for 5 stars, just that the game in its current form is nowhere near that level and that having those reviews won't in the end make much difference (as bringing people to the game most who won't get it or like it will add only a small amount of income I expect).

Not necessarily, we've had a large amount of negative reviews (especially in the US) solely because there aren't people online. Not because of the game or app itself. Not only that, but for the last two weeks in a row, we've broken our own records in downloads... which is unexpected because we had a strong launch.

It goes for anything in marketing, those with good, quality reviews give a positive impression. User downloads, makes their own decision, and usually only comments if they had a negative experience.... which is unfortunate, but that's how it is.