I’m strictly following lean startup and agile development principles with Rawr! for a Reason. I decided to move forward with the naming, branding and website of the company before making our first game. I believe this will be an easier and lower risk way to test the Rawr! for a Reason business idea of giving 50% of our net profits to charity compared to spending the time and resources testing a game.
After developing the brand, I will I set my final branding up against a lineup of my competition to see if people choose my brand over others. Second, I counted the people who voluntarily signed up for game updates after taking the logo surveys. I figure these two metrics will help me understand if 1) I’ve chosen a good branding strategy and 2) There is potential to continue this project.
Choosing a Designer
Because I am an atrocious artist, I started searching for someone else to help. I decided to source from within the Reddit community since Reddit will be a crucial part of this game’s success. I posted in both r/forhire and r/gamedevclassifieds, receiving close to 100 submissions. I chose Devon from YourToyRobot because he had the most experience illustrating characters.
I had a lot of success using agile management techniques on this project. I think our success came down to two things. First, I spoke w/ Devon about releasing really rough concepts early so we were sure we were always on the same page. Second, I built a way to test the logos through friends and r/sample size before I started the project. It is easy to get off track and develop something the customer doesn’t want. We went through maybe 10 rounds of revisions until we created a logo that our customers chose over the logos of leading mobile game companies.
The Results
First Survey Results
Key Takeaways:
- People liked the blue background a lot more than the orange background.
- People were not able to read the company name. Thank you so much for this advice. I was in love with the first version of the logo and did not realize that others had issues with the font.
- People did not like the color of the dinosaur. A few people weren’t even sure if he was a dinosaur. A common word to describe him was “sickly.”
- People were very opinionated with the pastel vs. solid background color. I did some in person testing. People seemed to like the solid background color a lot more when it was full screen on a phone vs. scrolling through non-full screen images. I also tested a few other fonts with the solid background and people liked it more when the font wasn’t quite as bold.
- People were confused about the dinosaur’s eyes.
Second Survey Results
Key Takeaways:
- People overwhelmingly liked the new Navy/White font with a shadow.
- People liked the “cute” eyes a lot more than the first draft’s eyes.
Third Survey Results
Key Takeaways
- The goal of this survey was to test whether the new branding stood out among the most popular mobile game brands currently on the market. The results show that it does.
- Roughly 25% of people decided to give me their e-mail address to stay updated.
Final Thoughts
I’d consider both of my goals accomplished. The majority of people I surveyed chose Rawr! for a Reason over other leading splash screens. I was honestly a little bit shocked by the amount of people who gave me their e-mail address. I got multiple comments saying they thought what I was doing is “cool” and they “loved the idea.” Hopefully this translates into real world demand.
I’d like to thank the redditors of r/samplesize for taking the time to fill out my surveys. I appreciate all the feedback. You really helped create something better than I could have created without you. I’d highly recommend Devon from YourToyRobot as well. As you can see, he does stellar work and is easy to work with and very affordable.