Podcast Transcript

Welcome to the mobile app flipping podcast, this is your host Yohann Taieb. My goal is to help you to get the most out of reskinning apps. Whether you’re already a full time entrepreneur or trying to get a business going, this podcast is for you. We will be interviewing professionals that are already doing app reskinning for a living. We will also invite source code sellers to get to learn about what they have to offer and finally we will talk to industry experts to learn how to become more productive at flipping apps. Now, without further ado lets get started!

Yohann: At some point we are going to tell you how to enter the raffle and win a 150 dollar source code and book so please, listen to the entire podcast you won’t regret it. So today we have an amazing amazing guest. With me I have Brett Wash. Hello Brett!

Brett: Hi Yohann how’s it going?
Yohann: Doing excellent, how about yourself? Brett: Good.

Yohann: Brett does app reskinning and games that’s how I got to learn about him, a while ago I got to see some of his games and I’m not going to say too much about it but he’s been doing app reskinning for a while and also he is selling his own source code so go ahead Brett tell us about yourself who you are and what is your background and how you ended up in this industry.

Brett: Yeah, thanks for inviting me on. I appreciate chance to have a chat with you definitely, thanks for that. Now, I started in the app industry just coming up to 2 years ago now and I spent the first few months kind of researching everything finding out what was the best way to go putting a team together of developers and graphics guys and all that. In April 2011 we launched our first ever app. It was done from scratch that one wasn’t actually a reskin. We just tried and tested things as we went along you know. We found this reskinning way of doing things. Which kind of transformed everything because you can take a proven game style and you can just flip around the graphics and come up with a new game. Miles easier, miles faster way of doing it. So went down that road for a while. At the moment we’ve got 17 out and done about 50/50. 50 reskin and 50 scratch. I still have that kind of drawback of coming up with my own game ideas but reskin is the main focus now.

Yohann: So you’ve been doing this for 2 years, how many games do you have?

Brett: 17 games (as of December 2013)

Yohann: Thats alright. Now I’ve had previous guests that have plenty of reskinning going on at the same time, do you have a multiple reskins at once or do you just go one game at a time?

Brett: Well I’ve done it both ways. If I found a code that I like ive created it 2­3 versions of that game and then moved on to the next. At the moment I’ve stopped to focus on a large game

which is a custom game then I’ll reskin that countless times afterwards. It’s basically building the code from scratch then using my code over and over again. Sure I’ve come across codes that I have purchased and they have been great and I’ve done a handful of them in one go for sure that’s a good way of doing it. Also really it helps with outsourcing stuff because if you are going to do 3­4 with them it brings your costs right down.

Yohann: So we are going to get into details soon but right now would you mind sharing your download numbers?

Brett: Yeah right now we’re just coming up to 1.5 million downloads. It’s not as good as some people I know that are out there but I’m still impressed. You know when I started I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. It’s just come from trial and error and keep pushing at it.

Yohann: Have you mostly just tried games or have you tried some different areas?

Brett: Mostly just games but my most successful app was a prank entertainment app. You know finger print security app it’s based on that but I did it on signature recognition so you have to sign the screen if you don’t know the trick you can’t get it, it takes a picture of you and puts it on a wanted poster and you can share that on social networking. The trick to get through on other ones is you have to tap the screen in a certain place but on this one you can change the area you have to tap so no one would ever know what the trick is. That was in the top 100 paid over here. So that did really well. So that’s the only entertainment style app I’ve ever done. The rest have all been games.

Yohann: As you’re talking about that I’m thinking how the hell are you going to be reskinning this one?

Brett: Well ya haha there’s a few you could do like face recognition but basically it’s a prank app. It was actually one of the cheapest ones I did considering it was from scratch as well. Not as fun as the games. I like the games better to be sure. But it did well so it was a good learning experience.

Yohann: Ok so now we are going to focus on one of the source codes you have for sale. It’s source code that you have used yourself and you’ve put for sale or it’s something totally different from the ones you have been using?

Brett: Yes, the code that I’m mentioning to you today is one that we have built from scratch. It’s done really well and it’s one that’s quite easy to reskin. The game is called Temple Invasion.

Yohann: Oh yes, I’ve checked it out, it’s very easy to reskin…
Brett: Very easy and it’s a popular gameplay it’s just shooting things that are coming towards

you. You tilt your device to dodge or you can use the joystick option. Again it was based on a really popular game style. It’s based on Egyptians, you’re flying through a desert in a futuristic space craft shooting things coming towards you. It’s really easy to change this one around.

Yohann: Is it just iPhones we can deploy this one too?
Brett: Well yeah, it comes with 2 codes a custom iPad version but it’s 2 seperate codes. Yohann: Is there any sort of documentation or walkthrough provided with the source code?

Brett: Yeah I put everything with it, we have stuff in there like chartboost, revmob, nextpeer multiplayer all those kind of things are in there already. So it is pretty simple to go through on this one ya.

Yohann: Ok do you happen to know about the graphics like how many graphics have to be changed?

Brett: Yeah I was going through it before the call just to double check it looks to be around 100 images in total.

Yohann: Yeah that sounds pretty decent.

Brett: Ya it is pretty decent. Depending on the theme you go for it could be less with levels like 6 different types of enemy coming at you. You know maybe you only need 2 it doesn’t have to be that many. There’s 27 levels in the game and we have IAPs to unlock all of the levels that’s already built into the game.

Yohann: Excellent, that’s what I was about to ask you. We have different ways to monetize the game. Is there any other IAP that comes with it?

Brett: No the only IAP we have it to unlock the levels. We are working on an update to include different weapons for the main character.

Yohann: Ok so if somebody buys the source code would you give the update as well?
Brett: Yeah, certainly whoever takes the source code will get all the future updates, no problem.

Yohann: Excellent. So you have IAPs, revmob and chartboost is that right?

Brett: Yeah, revmob basically appear when you open up the game they also appear in different times of the game between levels and so on. We also have the chartboost more games page from the menu to promote games that way too.

Yohann: How about the audio…do we have to change it or can we work with what is already there?

Brett: They can use whatevers in there like the firing sounds. The theme tune that I have in there is actually one that I got from premiumbeat.com it wasn’t a custom tune but it matches the style of this game. Depending on what style you go with it might not match that but it’s not a problem to use it. Go to places like www.premiumbeat.com there’s some great free music on there.

Yohann: Ok, now lets talk about leaderboards and achievements. Do you have any gamecenter or any technology like that involved with the game?

Brett: We have Next Peer multiplayer which is my favourite basically you can play against friends or people online and you can set up mini tournaments with facebook friends and that kind of stuff which is really cool feature so like you could play the game score like 3000 points and your friend can come back and see that another time and the tournament roles through the week. That’s the one we went for so obviously when you are playing the game at the same time you can see the other persons score so it’s a really smart feature next peer, been really impressed with that.

Yohann: Yeah, what I like about this feature is it gives some multiplayer competition to the user without having all this complexity of code.

Brett: Yeah and it finds people automatically, the one thing I love is I got kids so for example we all hit play at the same time we play each other it automatically finds them.

Yohann: Now is there any social functionality such as share on facebook or share on twitter?

Brett: Only the next peer thing, you can share your scores on facebook and connect with your facebook friends thats the only social network on that one.

Yohann: Ok so if somebody creates an account with next peer they dont have to go through facebook or twitter its already integreted.

Brett: Yeah, they have there own profile in the game so they can change their little avatar put your name on there and stuff like that so basically you can search for your facebook friends and you can invite them to download the game and basically when your friends have got it there’s a list there so you know who got it and you can create tournaments.

Yohann: Yeah it’s an excellent incentive that you can send the game to your friends and basically get more downloads.

Brett: Yeah I remember one of my first games I tried to go down a force multiplayer route which wasn’t popular because I guess people don’t like to be told what to do.

Yohann: Is there any analytics implemented such as flurry or google analytics?

Brett: No in this one there isn’t but that is actually on the update list. So that is something we definitely need to do in all of ours.

Yohann: The reason that I’m asking is that we have different types of audiences we have some people just starting you know and some people that are advanced and people that are advanced want to tweak their levels if they are too hard or too easy so that people keep playing.

Brett: This was actually something when I first started out one of the important things was that I was lazy to admit were stats and as the months have gone on I’ve realised they are majorly important aren’t they so it is something we are going through at the moment and making sure that it’s fully implemented in that.

Yohann: Just one tip, make sure that we can turn it off. The beginners that are just trying to get their first app, they don’t want to deal with those things they want the app to get into the app store with the least amount of work. Lets talk about price. How much is it and what type of license do we get?

Brett: Single license offer is 197 dollars, that gets you the code. The unlimited licence is 497 dollars. You can reskin it as many times as you like with that.

Yohann: If I ask you what is the main advantage of going with your code over any other code?

Brett: Personally with this one it is a really proven popular game style. Anyone can pick it up and play it’s simple. My young one is 5 and she plays it and it’s kind of annoyingly addictive. You want to keep beating people. It’s an easy one to reskin for sure but you don’t want to reskin for the sake of it. It is a popular style of game you know.

Yohann: Do you think for somebody that is starting would they need help from somebody?

Brett: Well again all the SDK’s are in there for the adverts so it is pretty simple as far as
swapping the graphics out, personally I outsource pretty much everything because it’s very quick and I know decent people that can do it so it’s one of things where if you got time you can do it yourself for sure but if it’s your first app and you’re taking your time then yeah have a go you can’t mess it up. If you’re more experienced and you’re developing lots and lots of games then you
can easily give this to a developer and in a day or so they can swap everything in and out for you.

Yohann: Is there any book that you would recommend in the app industry especially the flipping industry I know there isn’t many resources out there book wise but is there anything?

Brett: Yeah, what I’ve done I’ve recently put a book out documenting my journey through the app store on my site www.awesomeapplab.com which lists all our games and they’ll find a link on

there to check out the book. They can get a FREE copy of it and that’s basically documenting my journey to now and I recently just updated it a couple of weeks ago so it is up to date. I love the industry and the book is done pretty well I’m proud of it. It’s very popular.

Yohann: Ok, definitely I put the link in the show notes, is there any other internet resources you’d like to share with us?

Brett: Another blog I like is www.bluecloudsolutions.com they also put out good stuff. A magazine that I always keep my eye on is the AppClover magazine that’s given me loads of tips. The book I have has a resources list to everything that is in there. I know blue cloud is in there.

Yohann: I make sure to put all those links in the show notes. How do you plan to move to the next level? What is your vision?

Brett: Well, we’re working on a big game it’s like Ramen Run it’s done from scratch. This will be the biggest one I’ve done.

Yohann: I personally would be one of your customers.

Brett: Haha, I love that game. The plan is that it should do really well and then it can be reskinned after that. It’s the first of many really. Then I’m looking at developing something that can speed up the whole reskinning process where it’s easy for me to drag and drop graphics around and stuff like that but I want to get back to getting that custom game done first of all then start ramping up the output.

Yohann: I actually had the exact same idea you know like for some source codes I would have some sort of a website where you just drag and drop images and sounds and click on compile and done!

Brett: Exactly, make it a lot quicker for sure.

Yohann: It’s in my to do list. My never ending to do list. If you go first go for it. Oh right so how do we get in touch with you?

Brett: www.brettwash.com or www.awesomeapplab.com check out all of the stuff I’m up to. Yohann: Thanks for everything! Is there anything you’d like to say before leaving?

Brett: Thanks again for the opportunity I appreciate it and hopefully something Is said is useful to somebody listening.

Yohann: For sure you did. So whenever you got some new stuff we about it for you.

Brett: Definitely some surprise along the way. Thank you. Yohann: Thank you for everything .

Thanks for listening to the mobile app flipping podcast. If you find this podcast interesting please subscribe on itunes and leave us a review and sharing is caring so spread the word. You can follow me on Twitter @Yohann305. Also come to appsfresh.com you’ll find all the episodes show notes and resources to make you more productive. See you at the next episode.