The Justin Mac Fart Experiment: Breaking Wind To Become A Breakout Game
March 4, 2012
Following my post about the almost-success story of a truly independent iOS game developer, let me now direct your attention to a related experiment being done by a small team of game developers in Canada. The six developers behind the Quebec-based studio Molecube are in the process of testing common strategies suggested by marketing experts, using their upcoming game called Justin Mac Fart.
The experiment is aimed at verifying the effectiveness of marketing strategies typically cited within the context of mobile platform games in general and iOS games in particular, including adopting the freemium business model and reaching out to tech journalists and bloggers. The Molecube folks have put up a blog where they're currently documenting their supposedly myth-busting experiment. They have laid out their plans clearly and realistically, and for every step they take in line with the project they intend to practice transparency and authenticity by publishing all the pertinent results. So far, they have only written about the preliminary stages of the experiment, but they should be going full throttle once Justin Mac Fart, their chosen guinea pig, is launched as a freemium game in the App Store on Mar. 6. A preview video of the upcoming game is provided below.
If you can't see the embedded video above, please click here.
Justin Mac Fart is actually a rehash of Molecube's previous game, Monsieur Monsieur. In Monsieur Monsieur, the player must pull the mustache of a square dude in order to shoot him towards a certain direction. Similarly, in Justin Mac Fart, the player must pull the suspenders of the round title character to make him fart, thereby propelling him in the direction opposite that of his gas emission. After making Monsieur Monsieur available for free for a few days in January, "we were left with great feedback from all over the world but not a single penny," the developers said. "This is what triggered us to give the game a facelift, turn it freemium and back it with a novel way of marketing it."
It will be interesting to discover where this well-meaning experiment will take Molecube and which fabled strategies will prove effective in the real world. The experiment has officially begun with the selection and publication of the name of the game. Let's stay tuned to find out whether an instantly recognizable association with a famous teenage popstar, a brand of well-designed computers and a stinky but funny bodily function will have a significant bearing on the success (or failure) of Justin Mac Fart.
