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Only if I had known better. My choice of app title may kill my game

10 points by neha_t ↗ HN
I am a non techie girl (more woman actually), just starting to fish in the tech world. I created a simple word game, and right now it is being featured by Apple in the iOS app stores "New Games We Love" category. And last night the game went live on the Google Play store.

All going too good, but now the realization is dawning on me that my choice of title - "Word Hookup" - may kill my game. It was intended as a fun title for a game to connect letters and of course the domain wordhookup.com was available. But it seems using the word "Hookup" was a big mistake. On iOS, I got feedback from a few users that they are seeing inappropriate ads - casinos, busty women, etc. The ads are being shown through Admob, Chartboost and Unity. I do not know enough but is the presence of the word "hookup" driving these raunchy ads. Can anyone with experience in serving ads weigh in on this please.

On Google Play, while downloads haven't even started yet, its even worse. If I search Word Hookup on the store, next to my apps icon are no word games. The titles are like hot hookups, bang chat, one night stand and worse. And this game can be played by kids as well.

If the game had already not been featured by Apple I could have just killed it, and relaunched with a different title. I am at loss now how to fix this. I should have been more thoughtful when choosing the title. Being a noob I didn't know better. My choice of title may kill my game. Any advise?

12 comments

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gus_massa
Why not just renaming and relaunching the app?
neha_t
I would loose the big boost the app received with the Apple homepage featuring
new_guy
That's the 'sunk cost' fallacy. Anyway you know better for next time now.
peteradio
I'm not sure this is a good example of sunk cost fallacy... They've got what sounds like a good thing going and for all we know the name could be part of that. I would be careful in anything I changed at this point.
al2o3cr
What's the age rating of your game? Have you communicated that to the ad networks? I'd hope they wouldn't serve casino + pr0n ads into "3 and Up" games o_O
neha_t
Age rating is 4+. I am trying to figure out if I can add some restrictions on what type of ads are served.
veeti
I don't know about Chartboost or Unity, but use the blocking centre in AdMob to disable ads from these categories entirely.
neha_t
Thanks, yes I have been able to limit the categories in all 3 ad providers. So things look much better now!
olegious
As others have mentioned, each service that you use for ads typically has category and advertiser blacklists that allow you to configure exactly the type of ads you want to allow in your app. Believe me, those advertisers also don't want to be wasting money advertising to the wrong user groups.
neha_t
Thanks for the tip! I was able to go into Admob, Chartboost and Unity and block the specific categories!
seanwilson
You can't rename a submitted iOS app? There's a lot of hits on Google implying you can. You can rename Android apps as far as I know.
speedyapoc
You only can with a new update to the app, to ensure that the title is reviewed by App Review.