How Blackbox Won an Apple Design Award, twice! – Ryan McLeod

S1E4 - Ryan McLeod
===

[00:00:00] Ryan McLeod: I won the Apple design award and it was just really wild to go to WWDC for the first time to be like, recognized by people. It's really weird. Recognize you. Yeah.

[00:00:11] Antoine van der Lee: Welcome to the next episode of the going in the podcast, the podcast that dives deep into the world of independent creators and developers in this episode.

I'm joined by Ryan McLeod. The Indie developer behind the award winning game, Blackbox. We discuss his journey to going full Indie, the impact of winning two Apple Design Awards, and his creative process for building such a unique app. Ryan also shares insights on balancing development and marketing, monetization strategies, and his bold leap into developing for Apple Vision Pro.

Let's dive in. Ryan, thanks for being here. Yeah. Um, it's, uh, super amazing. You are living in Amsterdam, so that was, that was super helpful. But you're, you're super interesting person to chat with from my side. I feel like I know you for, for years. Yeah, same. Um, we have so many connections, but we never really spoke with each other.

So this is going to be a super interesting episode for me as well. Um, yeah. Thanks for being

[00:01:11] Ryan McLeod: here. Yeah. Who is Ryan? Can't wait. Yeah. It's nice to just bike 10 minutes away to be here. 10 minutes. Really easy. Been here this whole time. Who is Ryan? Yeah. My name is Ryan McLeod and I'm originally from California.

I think I've just always been a very curious, tinkering person. Been into robotics and a lot of things in nature and food and stuff like that. But, uh, went to school for computer science. So, just like, took pretty naturally to that. Always really wanted to study design. Um, wasn't really allowed to double major in that in the way I wanted to.

So, I had to pick that up on my own. And didn't expect to go this like indie route, but I think always aspired to that and was really envious of those people and wanted to try it. So, uh, yeah, that's kind of become how I'm known to a lot of people. It's just as like Black Box Ryan. I was waiting for that. I always felt like you're Ryan Black Box.

It happens. When did Black Box start? Oh, man. So, let's see. I think I graduated around, uh, 20 13, 14, and then I was working on a sort of music discovery startup with some friends and that sort of didn't take off music's hard and I wanted to switch. I was really a web developer, like a front end web developer.

Okay. Designer. And I just, iOS had always interested me. My university had like one of the first iOS classes that I took that was really intriguing and I wanted to practice that. So this was kind of my opportunity. But every job that had an iOS listing that I wanted to work for, like asked for you to list an app you had on the App Store, and I didn't really have anything.

And that was Blackbox? Kind of, yeah. That's insane. It's a bit meant to be a portfolio piece, kind of. I

[00:03:04] Antoine van der Lee: mean, I know Blackbox, but for those that don't know Blackbox.

[00:03:08] Ryan McLeod: You want me to explain? Yeah, sure. It's, Blackbox is a collection of now 81 puzzles, ever growing, that don't involve touching the screen. So, all of it requires you to think really outside the box with sensors or celestial events or, uh, It's hard not to spoil everything, but the idea is to really force you to think creatively and critically and outside the box in a way that most games don't.

You must be really creative to come up with all those ideas. People say that? I don't find that the hard part. I have a long list of ideas. Still! Oh yeah. Really? Like 50 or 70 or something.

[00:03:45] Antoine van der Lee: This is also a classic example where it feels like you were so creative, you've created that whole app with all these IDs, but it's a compound effect of.

Like, how many games did the first version have?

[00:03:56] Ryan McLeod: I think the first version had 42 or something like that. Now we're at, no, maybe more than that. But, uh, yeah, I just, I can't keep up. It takes so long to make and to really get right.

[00:04:09] Antoine van der Lee: Is that because you're a perfectionist?

[00:04:11] Ryan McLeod: Definitely. But I think, um, coming up with an idea for a Black Box Challenge really only requires, like, Something that someone can change and that you can observe the change of to kind of figure out that they figured it out I like to think of the puzzles as kind of like a Castle with a moat around it and like you can have that just an easy crossing or like lift the drawbridge Kind of like a harder approach So it's like you're trying to create an intuitive interface to something novel But you don't want it so easy that you look at it and you understand how it works immediately But that it like nudges you in the correct direction.

And so coming up with the visuals and audio for that, that are satisfying, there's often really obvious ones that people will just understand, but that would just be an interface and not a puzzle. So dialing that back and finding the balance. And there's so many subtle adjustments and things that happen that people might not notice that like, you know, might tweak tweak it to make it easier for them when they were having difficulty with it or.

Avoid kind of red herrings. Um, those are the things that make a puzzle take months.

[00:05:13] Antoine van der Lee: But this is Ryan 2024. Experienced Ryan. Yeah. How did you do that in the first version?

[00:05:20] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, fair. So, I think I started on it in 2014. And that was just a lot of playing around. And I very quickly saw that friends, I would hand them the phone and they didn't want to hand it back because they were having fun playing it, which was really cool.

And I thought, okay, maybe there's some potential here. So it's not like I just completely blindly launched it with no intention of making it kind of a business or something like that. But it really just started from innocent place of that. And then I folded in some things that I was learning online and try to give it the best chance of success when I launched it in 2016.

So you started in 2014 I think, first commit, and then I launched it in, uh, in March of, uh, About one and a half year of development. Yeah, yeah.

[00:06:07] Antoine van der Lee: Right. Yeah. So is that like a late lounge? Could you could you have launched it earlier or was it really just

[00:06:14] Ryan McLeod: I could have What I was doing at the time was I wanted to switch an iOS I still was doing some web consulting, but at some point I kind of stopped I was living pretty cheaply like post college, right?

and the idea was to just go until I ran out of savings basically at which point like I Very privileged had this benefit of like I knew I could move to the bay and like take a job But I didn't want to do that. So I thought like let's try this and see how it goes And so that was kind of the point I was running out of money and couldn't keep polishing it anymore.

Had to know, like, perfection is the enemy of good. So now it had to go out and make money. Kind of had to go out and make money,

[00:06:49] Antoine van der Lee: yeah. So 2016, March.

[00:06:51] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, 2016. You put it out. Put it out there. Um, could not sleep that night. Felt like Christmas, kind of. It was really exciting. I think, uh, yeah, I did not know what to expect.

And it was really crazy. I was using, uh, Fabric at the time. They showed, like, real time. That was amazing, the

[00:07:10] Antoine van der Lee: dashboard. I loved it.

[00:07:11] Ryan McLeod: Bring it back. Bring it back. I miss it so much. The blue dot. Yeah. Oh my god, the pulsing blue dot. So it would show you live how many, how many people you had. And forever, I mean, with the beta testers, it was like, one or two people at a time, usually zero.

But then it was like, from that evening, I don't even know how, because it wasn't featured at that point. People started finding it. Okay. And from that point on, there has never been. A second that someone hasn't been playing black box on this earth.

[00:07:39] Antoine van der Lee: Really? Yeah. Because it's often a valley of disappointment, right?

Like it feels like Christmas, you put out your app and now I'm going to make money. Now I'm going to get installs.

[00:07:48] Ryan McLeod: We can get there. Yeah, I launched it. And people were finding it and that was exciting, but I kind of knew at that point from talking to other indies, like if it wasn't on an apple featured list, I was probably kind of doomed because no one wanted to cover it.

No one knew who I was. It was kind of a weird game. There was a little bit of coverage, but I discovered later that day, uh, while I was at Chipotle with my friends celebrating, having a burrito, they, uh, It was on one of the lists. It was just like at the bottom, um, end of the folds kind of you had to like see all and it was there, but that caused the kind of YouTubers and people that cover new apps to like cover it and helped out.

And then after that first day, I kind of got the sales numbers and I was like, Whoa, okay, like I'm going to consider buying a yacht by the end of the year kind of thing if this continues like this. Yeah, because I just thought I struck it rich kind of thing. And this is like the first month. This is the first day.

The first day, yeah, but then I mean like if it keeps going like this,

[00:08:48] Antoine van der Lee: but to draw the picture, was it paid up front?

[00:08:51] Ryan McLeod: It was not paid up front actually about 75 percent of it was free, and I was just charging for the last 25 percent of the games, of the puzzles. I was so naive that I was charging a 1. 99, which I thought, you know, felt kind of like a lot.

And I put it on sale for day one at 99 cents. Just like, I don't know what I was thinking. This is past me. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I, I quickly learned. I'll talk about that later. But, um, after that first day, things like dropped hard into the right. And especially that feature was gone in a week, how things worked back then.

And I quickly realized, like, this is not, not going to work kind of thing. Not sustainable. Not sustainable. And that was hard because I wanted to keep working on it. And now I had all these people, uh, pinging me online, which now is just like a part of my normal life. But at that time was brand new of just random people talking to me and asking things.

And I was trying to answer every request and work on every bit of that. But by around October, I was kind of realizing this wasn't going to work. And, uh, I was applying to jobs basically, and I like had my portfolio piece now.

[00:09:57] Antoine van der Lee: It wouldn't work financially because you did have resonating users that started using

[00:10:03] Ryan McLeod: the app and Fabric was still pulsing.

Fabric was still pulsing, but it just wasn't, it wasn't working. And I applied to some things, I interviewed places, and I thought like, my heart really wasn't in that. So I wanted to give it one last kind of hurrah. And I kind of studied what other apps were doing, decided to get rid of my very like simple, what I thought was an elegant thing where you paid 99 cents for a hint when you needed it, switched it to be like 33 cents, sold them in kind of the packs.

You could buy small, medium, large kind of thing. People asked for a way to donate and I didn't want to just do that directly. So I added a way to like buy me a California burrito or a coffee, put that in the app. More humanizing. Don't send me like angry bug reports. I'm just one guy. And then I added eight more puzzles and charged 1.

99 for those also. And I launched that and like made some promotional things and stuff. And people loved that. And another huge spike. And then it came down and it landed, but it landed twice as high as before. That's great. That's how you start to build up. Oh, okay. It's like a marathon, not an overnight gold rush kind of sprint kind of thing.

And then I kind of realized, like, this is just going to be an ongoing

[00:11:13] Antoine van der Lee: project. But this is the thing, right? The people post on social media, 10k monthly recurring revenue with just a simple tool, especially now with AI. Oh my God. You put something out and there might be a good start, but it goes down, right?

And I think it's, um, Atomic Habits, the book, Carl Sidd. The Valley of Disappointment, where people think that the line goes up in a straight line, um, but it truly isn't like that. It takes a long time to build up. Especially with Blackbox as well, if you know it today, you, you reached quite some, some big milestones and we will cover that later.

It feels like it's such a overnight success story for some. Definitely isn't. So you, you, you doubled your baseline in a way and you found out like, okay, there is still Yeah. Hope. Yeah. How, how did you use that energy to bring it forward?

[00:12:07] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, I think that just, it gave me, it was really cool to see building what people wanted and responding to that kind of worked for me as well and just realizing, okay, if I just, I kept releasing puzzles and even when I added free puzzles, people came back to the app and then people like bought more stuff and like talked about the game more.

There was just really this rewarding loop of like work on it and see. Success at that point, I guess, but, uh, there was so many other tweaks that that required and learnings that took me years, you know, for a long time, I thought if I give away so much of the game for free, people will really get into it.

And when they get to that end point where it's paid, it'll be a really obvious thing that they pay for it form the

[00:12:50] Antoine van der Lee: habit.

[00:12:50] Ryan McLeod: So it's just a natural and they clearly love it. But what I sort of discovered was a hard thing to learn is that people would get to that point and they say, I'm paying two bucks for 12 challenges.

Like, that's not really worth it. I've already gotten so many for free.

[00:13:05] Antoine van der Lee: Oh! Yeah. The psychology there is

[00:13:09] Ryan McLeod: It's so strange, and I hate having to do like this kind of psychology management sort of thing. It feels manipulative in a way to me, but I've kind of learned you just have to do that. We have that in so many things in the real world that we accept in restaurants and cafes and bars and whatnot.

So just tweaking that, I just I switched it at some point. Instead of two purchases, the whole full game is just one locked thing. And I locked way more of the game and charged more. And people paid for that way more readily than before.

[00:13:39] Antoine van der Lee: It's price anchoring, isn't it? Like If you, if you have a product that's like 99 euros.

Yeah, it's, it alone sounds really expensive. If you put like, let's take a course for example, right? Yeah. I'm in, in courses now, so that's top of mind. But a 99 euros for the course. It sounds really expensive, but, uh, if I put something like, uh, two coaching sessions with the course for 4 99. Yeah. Then the 9 99 uni sounds cheaper.

Yeah. Isn't it? Um, and it's super fascinating. 2 99 like a coffee.

[00:14:09] Ryan McLeod: Yeah.

[00:14:10] Antoine van der Lee: You buy it without thinking. 2. 99. Yeah. Even more nowadays. But in your case, like

[00:14:16] Ryan McLeod: we just don't work into it. Like people are getting things. They're getting so much for free often. And they don't think like, Oh, I'm also paying for that.

Cause obviously they don't need to pay it's there and available, but they don't think of it in that way. And so it kind of, it breaks my heart in a way. Cause I'd rather give away more of the game for free, but I learned, you know, it's important for the people playing also that I see success in this and I'm not tempted to take.

Other work on work on something else. Yeah by charging a little more or locking down more of it And that people actually feel better about their purchase and feel like they're getting more Um, even though it's kind of all the same, but how did it,

[00:14:55] Antoine van der Lee: because if you look back at the lounge, you didn't have that user base.

Yeah. And if you would then start asking money upfront, you would maybe never get where you were at that point where you made the decision. I don't think so. There's also the idea of the game that people need to learn. People need to recognize, uh, with a good game like black box, people will install it based on.

Yeah. Experience of their friends. Yeah. Or they see them playing in the bar. What is that game? Yeah. How do you do it? Yeah. You know, especially with your game where you need to do all kinds of, maybe that's the secret. So if you look back, do you, do you think that is actually true? What I'm saying? Like, because you locked up a lot of the game now.

Yeah. Or 10, I'm not sure if it's still the case. Yeah. That could also mean that new users that don't know the game yet. We'll never experience enough to make the decision to actually pay for it.

[00:15:46] Ryan McLeod: I do worry about that, but it's not like I switch to paid upfront or something like that. I don't even show a paywall at launch or something like that, you know?

[00:15:54] Antoine van der Lee: You're, you're too kind. Too kind? I

[00:15:56] Ryan McLeod: wouldn't say that. I want people to Experience the thing. It's super good.

[00:16:01] Antoine van der Lee: I just mean like everybody nowadays says like you need to put the payroll.

[00:16:04] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. I'm really sick of this. Like we do so much with like analytics where you're not actually measuring how people feel and just seeing like more people buy that must be good.

And I don't necessarily think that's true. I think there are places where we can. It's not all about money.

[00:16:21] Antoine van der Lee: I think I even mentioned it in the previous episode, that it's a good thing to do because people are in the app store. They decide your app is the app as an answer for their search query. So they're much more, their intent to buy the subscription often is higher.

I think your point is great that for analytics, it's, it's good. Like you make more sales, but it's the end user more happier than if you wouldn't show the paywall upfront.

[00:16:49] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. I think we really like, we assume we're all kind of data scientists these days and can answer these questions and we can't, so we need to be careful with that.

It's uh, yeah, I don't know. It's a tricky thing because I, it's hard when you see this reaffirming evidence, like I keep trying moving the paywall a little bit earlier with some really smart context things I can talk about, but the earlier it is, the more people buy it. And that's kind of, I can see how people just like keep pushing that forward.

Um, many mixed feelings about that, but I think a big, like learning from that was basically to not think the way I would about an app. Like I would get quite annoyed at that. I would want to try a lot kind of thing, but to know, like to a lot of people, I've seen them start playing the app and they finished the tutorial and they're like, I want all the rest of it.

So like, not everyone else is like you. We often look at ourselves as the sort of north star for things in a good way, in a bad way. Um, but it's important to think outside of that.

[00:17:54] Antoine van der Lee: This episode is brought to you by Rocket Sim, the ultimate productivity tool for app developers. Trusted and recommended by Apple with over 30 powerful Excode simulator features like network speed control, network traffic monitoring.

and a real time user defaults editor, RocketSim helps thousands of developers double their efficiency. You can even track Xcode build times across your team and identify which MacBook setups delivers the fastest performance. Start for free today at rocketsim. app and use offer code goingindiepodcast for 30 percent off.

Rockets in pro or use the link in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. So you used fabric, right? Like you had a web development background, you know, development? Mm-hmm . User analytics metrics. Yeah. Is something new. How did you start analyzing stuff? Is that what you did from the beginning or is that something you, you'll learn along the way too?

[00:18:53] Ryan McLeod: I kind of knew from the beginning it was important and it was just interesting to me, but I don't think I've ever been really great at using it. It has helped though, like I think people really do need to find a way to do that, and if you can do that in a privacy friendly way, like I'm switching things to telemetry deck now and stuff like that, like follow the onboarding, and I can see like how many people are not making it through the first puzzle.

And that's just bad for everyone. That's the only way I would know that. Um, those sorts of things I found analytics really important for.

[00:19:26] Antoine van der Lee: It's super important. We'll, if you know the key action that results in a conversion, which for you might be finishing at least level one, it makes the chances higher.

They also go through level two and if they reach level three, like 80 percent buys the thing, which you know, is business. Yeah. Um, right. So, okay. I want to go back to the point where you said like, okay, I locked up much more. It was contrary to what I felt like was good. How did you continue from there?

[00:19:54] Ryan McLeod: I think what would have been really smart was just to create another huge pack of puzzles and expand kind of the offering and the price, but I instead just kept releasing, uh, free puzzles.

They were often unlocked for people who had already purchased the game, so I was just kind of expanding the value of that. But What I saw was every time I released something new and sent out a push notification for that, because I was very sparing with those, it just brought back a whole audience of people that suddenly were like, Oh yeah, black box.

Let me keep going. I'm like, that would, uh, that would bring in new people that would bring in new revenue and stuff like that. So from there, I still haven't added. A new pack or really change that. The only things that I've done is kind of look to other apps and understand the anchoring and the bundling and stuff like that.

So I have two price points now of like, you can just buy the base game or you can buy it with a backup pack of hints at like a huge discount kind of thing. And that has some price anchoring around that. And that's the default. And just like adding those options, it's crazy. Like if you add those options, someone will buy them kind of thing.

I didn't want to have the 20 pack of hints to me. That felt. a bit extortionary or weird or something like that. Yeah. It's, it's priced well, it's there. And so someone buys that every day and that's just, you know, like I, I can't comprehend that. So I wouldn't put it in, but I had to think outside of that.

Yeah. Yeah. And so thinking differently about that has been really beneficial, but in a way that like still feels. Tasteful to me. So even when I do that, you know, it's not like a treasure chest of gems It's like this takes a bulldozer. This is ridiculous. But if you really want it like here it is kind of thing

[00:21:36] Antoine van der Lee: Yeah today many games do everything to sell you things, right?

Like I think there was even an episode on a Dutch television last week about how a kids show put like different kids in different rooms to see how they Can hook kids more into the episode. It's, it's crazy what people do in apps. The same happens, right? Like the psychology of it. There's a balance to be made.

You also want to make a business. Yeah. Right. And it feels like you, you went through a certain transition for yourself, right? Where you had to leave behind your values. In a way, but you still found the balance in a way that felt good for you.

[00:22:16] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, I wouldn't say I left them behind. I very much like to that.

I just think we need to be really careful. I think a lot of people think they just like deserve to be successful and have like this insane monthly recurring revenue type thing just because they made an app in like a month or whatever. And that really drives me nuts. Yeah. Uh, you don't deserve anything, you know, it's, I get it when we see.

Just like other people succeeding or boasting about succeeding in that way. But there's an honest way to, to make a living with these things. I think for me, it's less about like projecting my values on everyone else. And like, I don't want to be a part of a race to the bottom race, the base of the brain stem type of thing of like hijacking psychology and stuff like that and using all these dark patterns.

But it's. You know, like I'm very against, uh, advertising for the most part in apps, but then I watch TV shows and I listen to podcasts that use advertising and that doesn't feel really icky to me, something like that. And realizing other people don't care as much about that per se. So, uh, just understanding that like my audience is not me exactly, I'm still going to, my ethics are going to be there, but I'm not going to pretend that my audience is me has been, I think, more of the shift.

[00:23:39] Antoine van der Lee: Makes sense. And it's super important with product development, right? And it's always like a mess of people that you target for because you can't make everybody happy. Um, but if you don't do it, you will never get, well, you would have never got where you were

[00:23:53] Ryan McLeod: today. Yeah. This drives me nuts with. with indies too.

It's like, I get it. And people can be very idealistic. Um, but at the end of the day, like, I think people see success and they don't see all the like things that are happening behind the scenes to make it successful. And people love to play it off online. It's just like, this just happened and it didn't just happen.

There's like a whole bunch of engineering, like there's a whole bunch of, of scheming and positioning to like make these things work. Yeah. And people love to just like bask in the limelight and take the kind of credit of like, it just happened to me. And then other people think they, Are doing the right thing and the success just isn't happening to them.

And it feels scuzzy or weird for them to like be asking people and following up on things and Exactly. Trying to get coverage and whatever.

[00:24:38] Antoine van der Lee: Yeah. This reminds me of my course. I, I, I created a course to go from side project to going in, but I could have also called it like how to turn your side project in Six Figure Revenue.

Right. , like it's a whole different, uh, angle. I purposely didn't, and I also spent, like, the whole first module is just about mindset. And one of the episodes is about Angry Birds, which back in the days felt like a really overnight success. Right. I think Flappy Bird was an overnight success that was built in like one Wednesday evening if I recall correctly.

But, um, Angry Birds, they, they were building apps for eight years, almost, uh, bankrupt. And this was game, I believe 50 or something like that. Wow. Yeah. Before it went. Successfully. I didn't know that. Yeah. And they even had like investments to make it happen. Yeah. Right? And from the outside, and this is once again the value of disappointment as well, right?

Like it feels like it's so easy to do and you just need to be lucky or, but it takes a lot of work experience. Your story is exactly like that, right? Like you almost decided to stop Black Books because, you know, um, but your passion, which I think is a big driver here as well, um, pushed you through.

[00:25:49] Ryan McLeod: Yeah.

And I'm glad I did. And we need more examples of that, less of this kind of Twitter stuff. For me, I remember being at Release Notes, a really great indie conference, and the team from Ulysses was there. They shared some of their like revenue stats from the last 10 years, and the room was kind of sworn to secrecy on this, so.

But it was just a graph of just like. this marathon thing. Right. Of like, we've just heard of them. They've been working on this for a decade, you know, and that, that was really in the back of my head for a long time.

[00:26:23] Antoine van der Lee: Which conference is this? Release

[00:26:25] Ryan McLeod: notes? I'm not sure they're still doing it. Um, but it was great.

Okay. Yeah. Back in 2016 or so. Right. Yeah. And now it's deep dish maybe. Yeah. Same thing. I think they just met up in Mexico kind of unofficially a couple of years ago. I'm not sure it's still happening. Yeah.

[00:26:44] Antoine van der Lee: We need more indie dev conferences. Definitely. As well. Definitely. And you were releasing new levels.

For free, and you, you gain new users with it, but you also gain back existing users. Do you have like a strategy to promote those news, new levels, or is it just, you know, you push out an update and people will find it automatically?

[00:27:02] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, it's not a great strategy. I really regret not having collected email addresses.

Um, I think I still should be doing that and haven't. You're still not doing it? No, because in my mind it needs to be, there needs to be a whole puzzle involved with it. It has to be a whole thing and just whatever.

[00:27:17] Antoine van der Lee: Another dark pen in a way as well, right? Like, you really try to

[00:27:20] Ryan McLeod: It feels a little, not, it doesn't feel that bad to me, because I feel like I'm really not going to send a lot of emails.

I just like want to be able to reach people and it's confusing and hard with push notifications these days. Because everyone else abuses it, now Apple's, you know, shoving them into these little bundles and stuff.

[00:27:33] Antoine van der Lee: Yeah.

[00:27:34] Ryan McLeod: So. I send very few notifications. The only time I really do is if there's a sale, which is extremely rare, maybe once a year or, um, new levels.

And that's, that's basically the main strategy. Another strategy I took was, uh, changing the app icon. Which I think is a little more common these days. Okay. Maybe

[00:27:52] Antoine van der Lee: not. A strategy to, uh, to make it clear that there's new levels. Yeah. Cause I think, I mean, Yeah, okay. Yeah, maybe,

[00:27:59] Ryan McLeod: maybe I'm assuming other people are as observant as me, but I always notice when that changes.

Like, uh, Castro updated it to some, like, pumpkin thing recently, and I was like, what is this? Like, I need to switch it back. Could be annoying as well. A little annoying, yeah. But I think with BlackBox it can be expected. I do it with, like, a very standard format. It's not just the color, but I integrate a bit of the motif of the puzzle.

And I just know. We become so blind to these things on our phone that like if the icon changes, it might be like, oh, that's been on my games page and I haven't considered it for a year. But like, let's see what happened. So that's always been a strategy. Basically, I changed the icon. I sent out a push notification, say some things online and I'm not saying that's enough of a strategy for anyone.

And I used to make more like promotional videos around stuff, but I'm getting old and tired. Yeah,

[00:28:48] Antoine van der Lee: you also depend on users automatically updating their app, right? Yeah. Um, I think with iOS 18, you might need to revisit this strategy too, with app icons, without the whole branding of app icons and the tinting of app icons, isn't it?

Mm

[00:29:00] Ryan McLeod: hmm. Well, yeah, I have a whole way for people to switch icons and stuff too. They can switch it back if they want.

[00:29:05] Antoine van der Lee: Right, right. So.

[00:29:08] Ryan McLeod: Why don't you collect emails yet? Uh, because I want to make it a puzzle. I think I would want to do it in a way where like, if, why this is a thing is because I don't feel comfortable just asking for that.

I want it to be reciprocal. So if someone's giving me their email address, I want it to be to their benefit. Probably again because I'm thinking, What benefits do they get of knowing new puzzles, but like it is a benefit to them But if I do it, I want it So when you get that email confirmation that you're signed up if you're you know poking around the email Maybe you find another challenge or something like that But to do it in a creative way, and I'm really not great at backends So it kind of terrifies me, but I should get over that but this is the second

[00:29:55] Antoine van der Lee: Good reason that you share for doing this Right?

You give the users, uh, updates about levels, which is a win for them. You can also create a level of it, which is another fun way, a really black box way of doing it, which feels less bad or, and it helps both you and the user. And you don't need a backend for this, by the way, right? Like, there's many services, maybe, uh, I'm right in the middle of converting everything of my newsletter to ConvertKit, which also comes with APIs and everything.

It could be your next baseline improvement for

[00:30:33] Ryan McLeod: Blackbooks. Yeah, no, you're right. I could probably do it with, like, a universal link and not need to set up more server side stuff.

[00:30:39] Antoine van der Lee: Could it be you had a lot of coverage eventually with Apple? Mm hmm. I think I know black books through that as well. I didn't tell you, but I played it way back.

Oh cool. I loved it. I should play it again, but love it. I was one of those users that got stuck and uh, didn't buy the credits. .

[00:30:58] Ryan McLeod: It's totally fair. Half of people don't. I would love just to give them away for free. I've thought of strategies for that too. 'cause I don't want, I want, I don't want people to be

[00:31:06] Antoine van der Lee: stuck.

No. That, no, no. It's, it's a good strategy for games. But do you think things like not implementing those email, um. And collection. You didn't do that because you don't have to nowadays because your app is well known and goes pretty, you could almost say like, are you a bit lazy now because things are just going?

Yeah, I appreciate

[00:31:27] Ryan McLeod: that. I am a bit lazy now because things are just going.

[00:31:30] Antoine van der Lee: Totally true. This is the week of

[00:31:31] Ryan McLeod: Amsterdam dancing, yeah. It's also that. I've been partying. I think I, yeah, I mean, in part living here, one thing I love is I am not around just insanely overambitious like I need to make a billion dollar type folks all the time.

So I'm very much enjoying my life and I have years ago stopped working on weekends and stuff like that. And I just, I'm not a 10x engineer, whatever. So, I, I simply, yeah, I feel like I have these ideas for years and then years pass. I just don't have the time.

[00:32:06] Antoine van der Lee: Which is great, right? Like, the fact that you can do that.

That's great. Fantastic life. Perfect indie life.

[00:32:10] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. Yeah. I try to celebrate that too. It's like, the whole point of this is not to kill myself getting It's easy to stress out about I haven't done this thing and people are expecting this and whatever and just it took me a long time to get away from that like taking everyone's requests and worries and bugs like so hyper seriously like I don't make a pacemaker, you know, your game.

[00:32:34] Antoine van der Lee: Are you doing this all alone, by the way? Yeah. So support, everything is on you.

[00:32:38] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. And I've never automated any of that, so I'm like, replying to all the emails. But I also like, set the expectation of like, sometimes I don't reply to people for weeks, like, that's just how it is. Um, I try to when it's critical stuff, but it's on me.

And I don't really, I'm not, you know, I used to try to really keep up with the socials and post stuff every week and repost fan art and things like that, and it's just, uh, I don't know, it's a lot. I've definitely gotten, I've definitely gotten lazy, because I've seen People keep finding black box somehow.

[00:33:08] Antoine van der Lee: Yeah, it's also a luxury position, right? For you, things work out and things continue going well. By no means you did nothing because the Apple Vision release was amazing, right? You did a lot of things there and that paid back.

You're work life balanced. Is that different now that Blackbox is successful compared to the early days where you really still had to build up the baseline?

[00:33:35] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. Yeah, I've been through many phases of it. I think I always have seen it, like people ask when I'm going to stop with it. And I see it as every time I add to it and work on it, it's like, Punching a balloon up in the air kind of falls back down.

It's slowly. I look I like those analogies We're great I add more features to it and try to make it and better and so that people get farther into it and understand it better And then that balloon falls more slowly, too It's like I'm at a point where like I haven't really added a major I haven't added a puzzle in over a year kind of thing which it feels bad to me But things are descending so slowly that that's okay And it doesn't stress me out the same way that it used to when the numbers were lower day to day.

So what did you do then? What

[00:34:19] Antoine van der Lee: do you mean? You didn't put in new games. I just tried to understand your, your, uh, It's like my friends that are like,

[00:34:26] Ryan McLeod: yeah, so do you still work? Oh my God. You think I don't work? I didn't want to say that, but I'm just biking around and going to parties. Yeah. I have not gotten a lot of work done.

Ryan just told me what he did this week at the Amsterdam Dance Event. You should come to Amsterdam for the Amsterdam Dance Event. Send him a support email, maybe he answers. Maybe.

[00:34:48] Antoine van der Lee: No, but seriously, like, Black Books is your main thing. Yeah. It exists out of games, and you just told me that you didn't add a game for a long time.

Like, what were, so what Yeah,

[00:34:58] Ryan McLeod: there's plenty of work to do. Um, I mean, it's the kind of things that Indies know that also drive me nuts. You know, I'm like revamping how All of my panel interfaces work and they're going to be way better and it's going to be way nicer for me in the future, but no one will ever notice.

Hopefully that stuff, you know, it's taking me weeks cause I'm slow. Uh, beyond that, it's like iOS 18 comes out and like one of my API points gets kind of broken because Blackbox touches every single API and this is a huge pain. But of course, yeah, or like the way voicemail works changes in the U. S. and I have to completely rethink a thing.

Never thought about that. But yeah, of course. Yeah, no, this is a giant pain. Yeah. I've done a pretty good job of like avoiding things. That I think Apple might break like forever ago. I wanted to add a challenge and now I can talk about it Which is great because I was keeping the secret for a while But it would show kind of the internals of the phone with the SIM card tray Then you need to pop your SIM card out basically and I could do that through like watching the carrier and watching some accelerometer stuff and things like that, but I was It's fearful forever that one, Apple would get rid of the SIM card slot.

That seems like they love just getting rid of holes and slots and things on the device. That's unlikely. And, uh, two, like a lot of people have, uh, locked SIMs, especially like more in the EU, I think. And a lot of people don't know their puck codes or their SIM pins. And I already get emails from people that, you know, that like put their phone underwater and like put it in the freezer and do really dumb, fun things.

So I didn't want to deal with all of that. Um, so by avoiding that, you know, I didn't have to deal with them getting rid of the SIM card slot in the U. S., which would just be, like, a hard puzzle to change. But there's been other ones, like, I used to rely on the, the silent switch through, like, a really hacky way.

Uh, and I was able to kind of roll that into a different puzzle without getting rid of it on the device. But I'm constantly kind of doing upkeep like that. How

[00:36:50] Antoine van der Lee: do you manage this? Like, how many games do we have? 81. 81? Yeah. Do you have like a way to, there's a new iOS release, run all the games automatically, know where games are still possible to do?

Or is, is it Ryan

[00:37:04] Ryan McLeod: playing

[00:37:05] Antoine van der Lee: all

[00:37:06] Ryan McLeod: 81 games? It is a mix of watching the keynote and going like, oh. And then also, uh. I want to sit next to you next time. It's, I get a lot of like people poking me and texting me like, is that going to be a problem? Or like, that's really cool for you. Uh, also getting the new device or downloading beta or whatever.

Uh, and, and sometimes I do completely miss things and people email me because it's a really subtle thing and it's a regional thing or whatever, but I can, I can, I can kind of know my API surfaces and go and poke around those things.

[00:37:37] Antoine van der Lee: You get good at it, isn't it?

[00:37:38] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, I've gotten good at making it more stable.

I think I used to do. I still do some hacky things that like. Not hacking a bad way, but just like, I want this to look perfect on every device and it's different on every device kind of thing. I've gotten a little bit better at like, generifying some of that, which is not my favorite thing in the world, but allows me to like, have more time to like, work on the game, which is more important than someone on an iPhone 5S like, seeing exactly the right thing.

But those details

[00:38:10] Antoine van der Lee: also make black books what it is today. Definitely. Right? Yeah. Before we dive back into this episode, I want to quickly share something that could change your journey. If you're dreaming of turning your side project into full independence, my Going Indie course is designed to guide you every step of the way.

Visit goingindie. com and let's make your indie dreams a reality. That's going indie. com. Enjoy the rest of the episode. So, there are a few other things that I find interesting. Now I need to pick my, pick my belt. First, but to stay in this line, right? Yeah. Testing all these things is one thing, but how do you set up your project in such a way that, you know, like, do you have, like, several separate modules or, or Oh God, I wish.

Can you teach me? Yeah, I was, I was expecting this. It's pretty monolithic. But, but, I mean, your project could definitely benefit from, from a good structure, isn't it? Yeah. Um, having a way to launch the app directly at level 81 instead of having to go through all Obviously, this is an obvious one, like, but are there strategies that you deployed over time?

[00:39:18] Ryan McLeod: I Maybe not as much as you think. Some people are always kind of surprised and I think like my admin god panel kind of thing that I have on my build of the app. So that allows me to like switch like is this a device with a headphone jack or not and see those sort of deals. Ah, nice. Be able to like scrub through something that takes a whole bunch of time so I can make sure the audio interface is correct and stuff like that.

I have yet in iOS Blackbox to implement what you're talking about with like launch flags to go directly into a challenge but on Vision We definitely have a lot of those flags. So, but I never really built out into modules and, and things like that. That's really not perfect. And I cannot work in the simulator for many reasons.

So, my deploys are slower and interacting with the view hierarchy is slower and stuff like that.

[00:40:04] Antoine van der Lee: Maybe we should talk about rocket sim features that help you out specifically. But that, that is annoying. But those, those, that God mode, you know, creating those animations is such a Game changer, if you think about it, you're working on Blackbox since 2014, right?

So, um, if you had to manually do all these things, and now it sounds really obvious, right? Like, of course, you're not going to do 81 levels, but you will be surprised how many apps do a lot of repetitive things, if only to just get to a certain page that you're working on during development to see how it looks, right?

Like, if you can bring that up right away. That will, that, that effect will comb out, right? So that's why I wanted to ask that, because it's, it's

[00:40:48] Ryan McLeod: pretty interesting. I have a suite of little tools now that are fun, you know, little deep link URLs I can hit to trigger things and stuff like that, even on other people's devices when I want to like help and troubleshoot stuff.

Uh, so. That,

[00:40:59] Antoine van der Lee: that's, that's amazing stuff. So. If I go back to the storyline, we had 2016 where you got that new baseline where your levels were removed and eventually Apple picked up black books more seriously. When, when did that happen and how did it change you and black book?

[00:41:21] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. Uh, yeah. I mean, life changing is not an understatement.

I think I knew that from the start that that was really, really necessary. You start. Learning when you dig in and realize there are, I think, over a thousand, maybe two thousand apps added to the app store every day and just, yeah, so like, how are you going to stand out from that?

[00:41:45] Antoine van der Lee: You, you really think every indie developer that builds an app needs Apple support to become successful?

Is that what you're saying? Cause this was in 2016. It's even worse nowadays. Yeah. Worse in the sense that more competition, more apps, it's easier to build apps.

[00:42:01] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. I think it's, it's easier to maybe get featured these days. I'm not sure, but I think it is, uh, I think there are other ways, but you have to be really creative outside of just like making an app, maybe I think if you're like more engineer design focused and not like one of those really clever viral marketing type folks, um, I wouldn't say it's key, but it is like a really great way to stand out, especially when it aligns with your own values were like, I love with.

Apple's sort of ethos on design and stuff. I really wanted black box to almost feel like if Apple made a game, you know, kind of native. And so for them, like, they're never really going to make a game except for solitaire on the iPod, but it's easy for them to, to celebrate. I think, and I knew that a bit, like I have to admit.

That's like, it makes them look good. It makes people that use Apple products feel good about their Apple products. You're talking their language. It's talking their language. Yeah.

[00:43:04] Antoine van der Lee: It's an easier decision to decide, like, okay, we will put that forward.

[00:43:08] Ryan McLeod: It benefits them. They're not just doing something for me.

[00:43:10] Antoine van der Lee: But it sounds easier than it is, right? I can use all Apple's APIs and make it look like they're apps.

[00:43:15] Ryan McLeod: Yeah.

[00:43:16] Antoine van der Lee: And it's not done yet, right? Like,

[00:43:18] Ryan McLeod: yeah, I think it's more unique than that. I think kind of from this angle of like, they don't make a game, like I said. Um, But it's a difficult, uh, yeah, difficult thing.

I don't quite know what I would advise these days. I feel like people using the APIs is like an obvious one. Like make those things shine. We get new ones every year. Like contact those teams kind of things. Let them know. People smaller. How do you contact those teams? I don't know. Their names are in dub dub videos and stuff like that.

Like.

[00:43:46] Antoine van der Lee: And you look them up on LinkedIn or. Sure. Yeah. Send them a message. Yeah.

[00:43:50] Ryan McLeod: I think people worry too much about just like going to the top and like. You know, through people playing black box, I've heard from all sorts of people all across Apple down to like genius bars and stuff like that and out retail.

So often those are your like champions that are creating buzz internally. It's definitely not coming from like Tim Cook or Craig or something like they don't have time to play your thing. I think hopefully maybe they did for a minute. It's scheduled into their day. You know,

[00:44:15] Antoine van der Lee: you need to start collecting emails.

So, you know, what do you mean? Tim at apple. com. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:21] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. I mean, sure. Go for it. But, uh.

[00:44:23] Antoine van der Lee: That would be insane if that happened.

[00:44:25] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, I do, it does feel a bit necessary and I tried to engineer for that. Like I love to, I'd love to tell the story of like it just kind of happened and they found me, but I, um, I tried to, I tried to email some people and of course I think that helped.

Yeah.

[00:44:40] Antoine van der Lee: And also your app is fantastic. It looks great. And you did a lot of things for accessibility as well. Yeah. Um, it looks good. It works with, well, you support all APIs, so you can.

[00:44:51] Ryan McLeod: Do all those check marks, that helps. It's exclusive. I think like, you, it's so much work. Something I would want to stress for people is like it's so easy to get exhausted by the finish line and think you're done But this classic like the last 10 percent is 90 percent of the work kind of thing Like I like to think of it as like you're going into battle a bit and like you've made yourself Really good armor and a really good weapon kind of thing.

Like now you need to to use it So like I've made this great thing that they can like and now they need to to like it so I think Once I got it in front of some people through emailing them, maybe, you know, it was kind of easy for someone to be like, we're looking for things to throw on this like new and great list every week, like let's throw it on there, but maybe we don't fully trust it.

So it's kind of at the end of the list. But, uh, when things rolled around to October, it's like, oh, they've already seen, like, this is successful and people kind of like it. Like, it was easier to reach out and be like, hey, I'm doing all this more, adding all this stuff, and then when they featured it, it was like a front page feature.

So You build up on Those things compound, for sure.

[00:45:53] Antoine van der Lee: Yeah. Because a regular feature, right? I was at Swift leads and I did one on ones with, with those that have in the apps. And I, um, I, I kind of like give, gave them a bit of coaching. And one of them, uh, approached me and asked me like, Hey, I got featured for the iOS 18 lounge, which is amazing, but it's a one time shot, right?

Like it's the same, like nine to five Meg doing a coverage for your app. It's great for that moment. But how do you make the most out of it? That was basically, basically his, uh, his question. And I, I think you're already started answering this, but because you follow it up. But what is the best strategy, right?

Like, we might have a listener now that has an app that was featured during iOS

[00:46:37] Ryan McLeod: 18. Yeah. How to go from there? It's a great question. I would just say like, you're on the radar now. Um, like it's not like someone at Apple is like thinking of you every day, but you're a name somewhere kind of thing. And I think that can help a lot.

Just like realize there's so much noise. Like when you're contacting people, keep that signal to noise ratio really nice. Don't reach out all the time. Definitely like don't ask for a feature kind of thing, you know. I think about how things benefit Apple, I think, and keep it casual, like, I'm doing this, you might be interested, just wanted to let you know, um, and I wouldn't get too discouraged of that, like, not landing all the time, like, it doesn't for black box and no one sees that.

[00:47:27] Antoine van der Lee: And is there like a regular cadence? Do you do it every eight weeks or do you only do it when you have a big

[00:47:33] Ryan McLeod: feature coming up? It's probably different for all sorts of people, but I only maybe a couple times a year. Yeah. And uh, I'm not relying on that entirely. I think that's an easy like bridge to sort of burn to.

I think really not coming at it from like this, I need something perspective. If you do that, that's going to come across in how you're talking about it. But just like, I want to share and think like, find the things that are actually beneficial to other people or like it's with talking to reporters too, like they.

Not seeing it as like, I want them to cover my app, but like, they are looking for cool stuff to cover, like what angle and cool thing can you give them to make their life and work easier?

[00:48:14] Antoine van der Lee: You want to give them something to write about, right? Like, an exciting article

[00:48:17] Ryan McLeod: or And the fact that you're featured for the iOS 18 launch or whatever, these things all add and kind of build credibility and make it easier.

Um, if you, if you come from this standpoint of thinking like, I'm this like tiny person with this little thing and why would they care? And like, I just, I need this from them. Like that's all going to come across in how you write your email or how you pitch someone. If you instead feel like I'm making this thing that is helping them do their job and I'm not attached to.

Anything coming out of it. Like you're gonna come from a place of confidence. Yeah.

[00:48:46] Antoine van der Lee: And you, you can create a little bit of credibility, right? Like, hey. Mm-hmm . I got this app, it was featured for iOS 18 labs. Exactly. I'm now adding this and this and this. Maybe Yeah. Something you can use for your article.

Yeah. Um, here are some screenshots that you can use. Yeah. Really make their job easy and also definitely create authority

[00:49:02] Ryan McLeod: in

[00:49:03] Antoine van der Lee: a way. Yeah.

[00:49:03] Ryan McLeod: Right? Don't expect them to have time to go through your stuff either. You know, like explain it really simply, like embed a video or GIF or something if you can.

[00:49:10] Antoine van der Lee: Would you embed it in the email itself that you send to them?

Or would you, because there is also tools like ImpressKit or something where you have like an online.

[00:49:18] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, it depends on your audience. I just think like, as someone who used to not be busy and is now really busy, like, I often don't, like, I try to respond to all emails and stuff. I don't always have the time.

I'm running between a lot of things. I have busy days. It's RAA week. Yeah. Like, keep it really, really dead simple.

[00:49:36] Antoine van der Lee: Um, but I mean more like if you send an email to, to journalists. And you include a video in the email might potentially be much more effective because they will definitely see it compared to saying like, Hey, I got this press kit.

You can see it here online.

[00:49:50] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. Also add the press kit, but like, keep in mind, like this is the first point someone's going to see these things again, compound. So. like get the attention, keep it short, don't tell your whole life story immediately. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, yeah. Keep it friendly.

[00:50:05] Antoine van der Lee: Yeah. Good points.

So you, you, do you still remember your first feature?

[00:50:11] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. I think it was just, um, like new and great. This week kind of thing. Did it feel like that as well? It was one of those horizontal lists. But still, it felt pretty great, isn't it? Felt huge, yeah. I see your app icon on the front page of the app store.

Yeah, crazy.

[00:50:25] Antoine van der Lee: And then your journey started to leverage that featuring and

[00:50:28] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, yeah. I think all of that just works on the algorithm kind of too. When they switched to the algorithmic today feed, that was also really beneficial. Because every story that they do on your app has a chance of like, algorithmically showing up later for other people.

Okay. So there is just like, constant exposure. Most of Blackbox's traffic comes from App Store. Browse, which I think is that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm very lucky. I don't fully understand where everyone is coming from.

[00:50:55] Antoine van der Lee: Sounds risky, isn't it?

[00:50:57] Ryan McLeod: How

[00:50:57] Antoine van der Lee: so? Well, aren't you afraid that suddenly Apple starts to not feature you anymore?

Yeah, that's terrifying. Right? You don't have a backup channel.

[00:51:04] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. Yeah. That, that is a worry. Um, I don't know quite how much of it. Is viral, but yeah, these, these lists compound. So like being featured in like great puzzlers or things to play an airplane mode or whatever, like these things all show up in search.

They all kind of boost ranking. I don't think people are finding me from searching a puzzle game, but these features come up from time to time. Yeah. I remember, I remember. Yeah. Now. Yeah. I hate to sound like haughty or privileged in this way sort of thing, but I used to really notice when there was a feature and like go look it up and like app figures, you know, tracks those and stuff.

Yeah. Now black box is like pretty consistently just like in lists and that, that's huge. Yeah.

[00:51:47] Antoine van der Lee: That can be risky there as well, right? Like you start to make Sure,

[00:51:50] Ryan McLeod: they turn them off sometimes.

[00:51:51] Antoine van der Lee: Yeah, but also like it feels so normal that you start, well, I don't want to mention lazy again, but I mean, you need to keep yourself sharp, right?

Like,

[00:51:59] Ryan McLeod: and If you don't update your app, like, they like freshness. They're not going to keep in a six year old app or something that hasn't been updated. Yeah.

[00:52:07] Antoine van der Lee: Which also makes sense because you didn't implement your APIs for six years then as well, right? So you're not there where they want you to be anymore.

[00:52:15] Ryan McLeod: I think it's important, like, staying top of mind too. So often these updates, it's like, hey, I'm supporting all the new stuff. You know, here's the thing. Letting people know, like, it looks great on this device. It does this. Um, this thing is alive and well and I actively care about it. You can assume that I'm doing a whole bunch more.

Yeah. And

[00:52:33] Antoine van der Lee: then Clayman told us in the previous episode that he's suddenly gone and uh, Almost like a spammy email with a phone number. Can you call this number? And then it was from, it seemed to be Apple. Okay. And that eventually turned out to be his, uh, well, his, his Apple Design Award. Oh. Yeah, I, I looked you in, but, uh, you, you won the Apple Design Award.

Yeah. Have you been a finalist before that as well? No. This, you, you just been one finalist and then won it.

[00:53:06] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, finalist is kind of a newer thing. All right. Yeah.

[00:53:10] Antoine van der Lee: But we're on a nice journey now. You started with a featuring and you know that leveled up, leveled up. Can you take us through that journey of then eventually winning an Apple design award?

How did that go and how did that impact you other than you got a pretty nice Apple device I think? Well, we can talk

[00:53:26] Ryan McLeod: about

[00:53:27] Antoine van der Lee: that.

[00:53:28] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. There, let's see, Apple launched in 2016, got more and more featuring, um, it wasn't until 2017 that I won the Apple design award. And it was just really wild to go to WWDC for the first time.

I actually went in 2016, too, to be like recognized by people. It's really weird. Oh, really? They recognize you? Yeah, not that much, um, but it happened a couple times. But your face is not in the app, right? Like No, no, no, just from like Twitter and stuff. Okay. Yeah, like met a great friend through it. Yeah, 2017 though That was a trip winning the design award.

Um, I had been really hard at work on the accessibility features of the app, which I'd love to talk about, but people had been murmuring like this should win an Apple design award, or this is going to win an Apple design award. And I always watched the Apple design awards. I had never fully considered a black box could win.

An apple design award and hearing people say that I started to be like maybe like I'm not can't get my hopes up like that's not happening. I don't dare to dream about it. I don't dare to dream about that. Yeah. It's insane. Yeah. It's insane. And then, uh, I mean, I'll never forget. Yeah. Hearing that I had one.

Um, but did you know it beforehand that you were nominated and no, this was done very differently. Like, I don't know how much to talk about it, but that year was kind of weird because we found out a bit. Ahead of time backstage kind of thing and then uh, yeah, so there was no hardware that year, which is a fun fact So I did not get a Mac But it's okay we made up for it this year That's yeah.

I was just really really really wild. I think I had a feeling when the app launched that like my life was Changing it's hard for me to go back in my mind to that time Um, it's very strange because it's like, I am semi nano famous in this very small niche thing. But like, before that, like I was not known as a person and that really changed things and the design award changed things further.

I think for myself and that, like, I never had a formal design background, I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about that and like being able to call myself a designer. This was like good affirmation, felt kind of like an honorary degree or something that I could. So that was really lovely. But then also the, the recognition it gave me with other people felt like a real, a big unlock, um, especially people that like didn't know my work or hadn't played it, but recognized that.

Design award really opened up a lot of doors for me, made it easier to, to talk to people and not need to explain and prove myself, which has just been, yeah,

[00:56:05] Antoine van der Lee: huge, huge gift. And then this year made up for the hardware.

[00:56:10] Ryan McLeod: Yes.

[00:56:11] Antoine van der Lee: Tell us what happened this year.

[00:56:13] Ryan McLeod: So yeah, this year in February with the Apple Vision Pro launch launched kind of the evolution of black box for Apple Vision Pro.

Um, and again. Like, had not considered that, of course, there would be Apple Design Awards, and they would want to feature some of them. You did it? No, really? It's like, so heads down with this, like, so hardcore for so long.

[00:56:34] Antoine van der Lee: I saw you working on those features, and I was like, oh, damn, this is, you know, like, it makes so sense for, for Blackbox to be there.

Yeah. And you, the way you did it is amazing, too. Thanks. And the fact that you're still a one man team is, is. Well,

[00:56:47] Ryan McLeod: for, for vision, for vision, there's a bit of a team now, but, um, I think, yeah, I'm not working like we were not working on black box to win a design award. It's just like my insanity of like, I'm going to be embarrassed if it looks and works like this, because I have an idea of how it should be.

Let's get as close as possible to that. And it's still not what I want it to be, but I'm so worried that. It's going to stand out and people are going to see it and think it looks dumb or glitchy in this way or whatnot. And with the AVP, it was so weird because you don't really know what everyone else is working on.

So there's a bit of a stress of like, there's going to be this big expectation, like it's black box, like whatever. And that, that's really difficult now, but, uh, worked really hard on that and then got it out. And I really, really proud of where that landed. And then, yeah, it was crazy to win another Apple design award that hasn't happened.

Too many times. And, uh, if I ever thought the first one was a bit of a fluke, this was a real, like, slap in the face of, like, get rid of the imposter syndrome. Like, you're good at what you do.

[00:57:51] Antoine van der Lee: Yeah, you do amazing. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and why, why did you decide to go for Apple Vision Pro? Was that really, like, the device and you wanted to build something for it?

[00:58:01] Ryan McLeod: Mmm, not, not exactly. I think we all knew Apple was doing something, right? And I, I, I was not like an early adopter, I had a friend, um, who actually, someone who joined me to work on this later, who exposed me to the early vibe and things like that, and I had like a quest, but I just like never had any deep desire to like work on this, I didn't really want to learn Unity, it just takes so much 3D modeling, I really like to do things that are like, I can do everything in house, you have to build an entire world to work with VR.

But I kind of knew when Apple does it, I will do it too, you know, so I was, I was waiting for that moment. Why?

[00:58:43] Antoine van der Lee: I mean, why, why would you only do it when Apple does it? Because the APIs are easier or, or?

[00:58:48] Ryan McLeod: Uh, yeah, I think because I knew it would be much more approachable and just Apple would do it in a way that I liked.

Like, I don't want to interact with Facebook and stuff like that, but really. It's twofold. So one, it's easier to work with Apple's APIs and I knew however they did it, I would kind of respect and feel kinship with more, I think, but, uh, to the sense that like there were Mac developers and the iPhone came out and a lot of them became iOS developers.

And a lot of them didn't, and that's fine, but like things move on and platforms change and technology changes, and this is going to happen again. And I don't want to, you know, be old about it and like miss the boat. I've watched, uh, my professors in university be like that. I'm kind of like that now. I'm like, I don't want to learn Swift UI and all this stuff.

It's fine what I'm doing. So I'm trying to resist that. And uh, I think in the next 10 years, we're probably not going to all have phones in our pockets. So like, It's really good not to just like be there first, but to just start thinking in this way. I felt with the iPhone, I missed the boat a bit on this.

[00:59:56] Antoine van der Lee: Right. But I mean, this is the first year of Apple Vision Pro and you, you are there in an amazing way, right? Like it feels like you did more than that than just preparing for the future in a way. Thanks.

[01:00:07] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. I mean, it just feels like the way that feels like the easiest way to do it, just making something and.

Really making something thoughtfully in a way that I'm, uh, familiar with, but is appropriate for it. So I think what interests me is not that it's like Apple's product and what they're doing and stuff like that, but just this, this whole paradigm of like, we condensed so much of the world into this rectangle, glass slab kind of thing, and we've like really changed how we interact with the world and technology around The constraints of that device.

And in a way, a lot of black boxes to get people thinking like outside of that screen, like back in the world, like use all these sensors and. Moving to like spatial computing, whatever you want to call it, is like just exploding that back out into the world. But you're no longer constrained by hardware.

And so that's just really exciting from like an interface design. Yeah, it's fun. It's new like with I was always jealous of the people that were designing all these interaction paradigms on iOS And it felt a bit like wealth of Ideas at the like opportunity had dried up by the time I got to it So it's very fun to realize you might get to do some like formative new things uh for the platform and just to realize like we will look back on this as like a Early mac kind of xeroxy Park thing.

I mean not exactly but It's, it's fun to start getting to think about these opportunities early and to try to port something in a thoughtful way, which, uh, yeah, can talk about more, but it's an interesting challenge.

[01:01:41] Antoine van der Lee: Yeah. Yeah. So working on an Apple Vision Pro app, is that also kind of an answer to not build like, don't you never have a temptation to start a new app?

Because it's since 2014. It's pretty insane that I've had Jordy here. Which is like, he wants to start a new app in a week and you're like since 2014 working on a single app and it's much closer to how I like to build things. But it's also super challenging in a way to, you know, stay away from the tension of that new app.

I guess your app solves that with all the new challenges every time. But have you ever had the idea of starting a new app?

[01:02:21] Ryan McLeod: I have had the idea and I have lots of ideas. It's for me. It's like it's not a temptation It's kind of scary to start a new app, I think um for many reasons Like one is just like I feel a huge responsibility with whatever I put out there to kind of Keep it up to date and make sure it like really does everything correctly and just having more things to manage, I think stresses me out.

There's a little bit of another shadow side of like, there's so much expectation with Blackbox now. There's a bit of like a, what is Ryan working on next kind of thing. If I do something like really goofy, like, or it's not good, um, that's a problem, but I have tried to do that and I've done some side things.

I just really love polishing my little rock. That's how I think about it too. That just comes really naturally to me. I just want to continue to polish off all the little edges and corners until it's perfect, so to speak, but with Apple constantly changing things, uh, you know, it's never going to fully get there.

But, uh, yeah, it just feels obvious to me and I'm able to because it, uh, it is successful on its own like that. And it keeps me entertained, you know, I think unlike a lot of apps where maybe it becomes a bit of drudgery and old. And it's all about maintaining things or people find the features to get excited about.

But like, I do not get to play Black Box and enjoy it, you know, the puzzles for me are how to build the puzzles. Right. So like, that is my enjoyment and how to solve these problems generally. So it's a, it's a bit of a game that I get to play and it's very. entertaining to me.

[01:03:58] Antoine van der Lee: How many games did you think about sitting in this room?

[01:04:02] Ryan McLeod: They usually come to me when I'm doing, uh, less mental things, like running or biking or something, but.

[01:04:07] Antoine van der Lee: Well, people can watch this episode and look a level.

[01:04:10] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. Just, uh, visit. I'm happy

[01:04:13] Antoine van der Lee: to collaborate.

[01:04:14] Ryan McLeod: Blackbox. com slash slash.

[01:04:16] Antoine van der Lee: No, but I, I get it right. Like your, your attention will distribute about new projects and you need to work on a different audience, which means you need to market there as well, unless you have the same audience and that potential Blackbox 2 kind of game helps.

Promote black books as well, then it can kind of like resonate and you stay within your own niche and you can reuse the knowledge that you already gained. But otherwise, yeah, especially with, with, you really open up my eyes at least that you have all those APIs to maintain that already takes a lot of work.

So if you then also start a new project. That can be quite challenging. Yeah.

[01:04:54] Ryan McLeod: It's hard. I'm trying to make it easier for myself. And at some point you have to understand that it's just like, you know, the thing is going to start to rust. Yeah. As you leave it. But I do have a dream of kind of, I would love to get to 100 puzzles.

I would love to like. That's a nice milestone. Yeah. Reach that. And kind of. Maybe close it off. Yeah. And let it, uh, go a bit more into maintenance mode. And I'm, I'm trying to evaluate for myself right now, like what I want to be doing. And if it's even apps, you know, I don't want to be like pigeonholed into that because it's been successful and I know how to do it.

Yeah. So to me, it's trying to find the artistic direction of it more and where I want to go with that next.

[01:05:35] Antoine van der Lee: Makes sense. Yeah. I mean, if you do it for so long, people change as well. You start to like new things or you start to want to like other things. That makes sense. One final thing I wanted to cover is the fact that you are working pretty much alone while you told us just that you have a small team for VisionPro.

Have you never thought about like expanding team or how do you go about hiring experts or maybe you do that. I just wanted to shed a light on that.

[01:06:04] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, not a ton. I have a I feel like quite early on people kept, you know, approaching me for like they wanted to invest or give funding kind of thing or encourage me to build a team.

And I, I looked into that. I've like tried to hire people to help with support. There was someone that really wanted to join with engineering. I talked to for a while, but it all, uh, just like made me kind of anxious that then I would have to, this person would depend on me for their livelihood when things were like really for a while.

And So much, uh, such a big benefit of being indie is like getting to work in my own chaotic style. I have never really worked on a large engineering team. I've had actually interned at Apple and Airbnb a long time ago for a couple months stint sort of thing. But like, I feel like a pretty feral animal at this point.

Like I don't know how to play well with others and I'm, I'm learning, but I don't have roadmaps and things like that. You know, I just kind of work on what interests me and I'm bad at sticking to timelines. I work well under pressure when I do have them. But to have to do that with someone else just like never was really an attractive option.

Yeah, so i've largely avoided it um, but I I have people in my life that you know, they have their own small businesses and really Helped me through that and convinced me of that with um with apple vision pro So,

[01:07:28] Antoine van der Lee: yeah, it's, it's different, right? Like you still really might need to do pull requests. Stupid example, but now you can just push to main, right?

Like, uh, not saying that you do that, but I recognize that. I do. No force pushing. No, but I, I get it. And that's also the nice thing about being indie, right? You make your own planning. If you decide to work on something else, well, you plan to work on something different. That, that is all fine. That makes a lot of sense.

Do you? It's a weird question to ask, because Black Box is doing great, but do you think the fact that you never worked at a full time job or anything like that, other than internships, have, uh, put you back or slowed you down in a way? Because you don't have the experience of working at a large company or something, or within teams.

[01:08:16] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, interesting. Maybe in some ways, but I have enough friends to, like, kind of tell me what the Latest coolest tooling is, you know, sometimes people I occasionally open up what I'm doing to friends and they look they're like Why are you still using this app kind of thing? Like we all do this now. I'm like, oh, you know I I miss some of that.

I think some of the process and things would be good And sometimes I miss working on a team like I I realize some of the bigger dreams I have would take other people and I've limited myself in a way to like what I'm capable of Which like I love good constraints. I think that can help a lot. Uh, but with with apple vision pro, For example, like bringing in people that had process like I brought on a really good friend robert long That's done a lot of like vr.

Uh sort of work and he Just like, okay, we're going to use notion to manage all this stuff and we're going to update this flow of things. And, you know, suddenly my stupid task list and like things in a notes document is more regimented because it has to be, yes, that's been good. And now I have systems and I'm documenting like dear Ryan, a year in the future, here's how to run a sale.

So you don't like screw it up this time kind of thing. And, uh, bringing on, yeah, Robert and I were working on it for a long time before realizing like my, Dreams and ideas were too big for us and we really needed a technical artist. That's when we brought on Dan Fountain He's just an incredible artist and game developer himself has worked on Lumi and cami box and inks and some other design award winners and from there it was like so often I was giving him briefs and ideas of things to do that were within the realm of possibility I knew yeah, he's insane And can do anything and so then, you know, it's really opened up my toolbox of kind of ideas and colors to paint with and it's been really nice to like realize I don't really care about programming that much like I'm not one of those people that nerds out on that.

It's a means to an end. Yeah. And I love just being in this like game design artistic direction seat and be able to work with someone closely that understands. Uh, to get that sort of stuff done, I am learning process and information from other people.

[01:10:37] Antoine van der Lee: Right. Yeah. That could be a future direction. Yeah. And I think also for those that might think about going indie, that it's super fascinating to have people around you that do the same thing, right?

Mm hmm. The example that you gave. Uh, checking in with indie developers every now and then that are around you is great for accountability, but also to stay up to date on the latest, right? Like, or how do they work? Yeah. And you don't have to do what they do, but pick the ones that you like and, and bring them back to your, uh, work

[01:11:05] Ryan McLeod: environment.

Right? Extremely important. Yeah. I think like, I hope everyone listening to this, like has some sort of. chat group or support network to ask people questions. And I just would say like, don't be shy about that either. And don't feel if someone didn't respond to you that you can't follow up. Like these people are busy also.

It's so. You know, I really, I sometimes have these like group calls with other indie developers and stuff. And I love our community is like very open at sharing stuff. One person starts sharing numbers and the others all start sharing numbers and screenshots from App Store Connect and stuff. And you realize like, damn, like I, I could do better at that.

Or like, you know, what, how does that work? Like, how did you do that? And tell me the story. And it's so helpful. It's yeah, we really, really need that. Especially because you're not, you're not working on this team. You're not in this like,

[01:11:53] Antoine van der Lee: And most of the times you're not competitors of each other. You want to make each other better, right?

Like you can learn from each other. You

[01:11:59] Ryan McLeod: can, um, competition in our space is so funny. It's like four apps that like, you know, respect each other, but like they are competition.

[01:12:06] Antoine van der Lee: Yeah, yeah. But that's also with sharing numbers, right? Like many feel jealousy or something, but you should just feel motivation there and try to make the most out of that opportunity.

Ask them, like, how did you make so much money? Or, or, or what do you do to, uh, market your app, right? Like, having like minded people around you is, especially when you work alone, is, is is key for, for your own development as well as to replace that feeling of, you know, not, you don't want to feel alone. Like, uh, having people around you is in that regard also important.

Yeah. So, uh, that's, that's great that you have that call that, that is something I think many wish for, uh, to have that. And yeah, I think it could be as simple as just reaching out on, on a social platform and saying like, Hey, I'm an indie. It was also in India once, it's yet for me or something like that.

Yeah,

[01:12:54] Ryan McLeod: yeah, definitely. I think just like, I mean, keep it very pointed with your questions too. And it's easier for people to answer rather than like, how did you go indie kind of thing? You know, like I'm trying to figure out this one problem or, I think we make a lot of assumptions of how, how someone was featured or got something done or, you know, that something just worked.

So be aware of when. You're maybe making that assumption and just ask to clarify it. Yeah.

[01:13:18] Antoine van der Lee: Communication tactic. Exactly. Yeah. Respect everyone. You know, give and take and don't brag just about your own things. Yeah. And you know, like, it's really, uh, how friendships work

[01:13:27] Ryan McLeod: as well. Keep our community clean and happy and nice.

[01:13:31] Antoine van der Lee: And to round up, um, for those that, that have side projects and hope to go indie, is there one thing you wanted to give them? That's a tip.

[01:13:40] Ryan McLeod: Yeah, I think just my biggest thing that I already have harped on a bunch of times is that it's a marathon, not a sprint, and I see a lot of people getting frustrated, especially with all these kind of AI, MRR, whatever.

It's like, it's not everyone. There's a lot of quiet people. There's a lot of slow success. And, uh, yeah, just know that that can take a while, these like making the exact salary that we have these crazy inflated tech salaries generally, and like the only way that's happening is through VC money or just like these large, large structures to be able to get even anywhere close to that on your own is.

It's going to take a lot of time and a lot of work and it's, yeah, there's not just like gold waiting on the surface, you know? So

[01:14:24] Antoine van der Lee: push through the valley of disappointment and hold on,

[01:14:27] Ryan McLeod: push through, hold on, get moral support from others and keep improving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:14:33] Antoine van der Lee: You'll find the light.

Absolutely. Awesome. Um, if people want to follow you, where can they find you?

[01:14:39] Ryan McLeod: Yeah. I'm pretty much warbling on everything. It's w a r p l i n g. Why? I made it up when I was like nine, I think it's kind of a, it's, it's always available. That's actually changed cause it's like a thing in Minecraft apparently.

And so now it's started to be taken places. I have to be a little quicker, but, uh,

[01:15:01] Antoine van der Lee: maybe it's those kids that want to be like, uh, the black books creator.

[01:15:05] Ryan McLeod: There are some, uh, there are some fan accounts that are, yeah, flattering and usually not a problem. Oh,

[01:15:12] Antoine van der Lee: amazing. Well, thanks a lot for being here. Yeah.

Thanks. It was super helpful that you live in Amsterdam. It's great to be here. It solves my little challenge there and I'll keep following you and

[01:15:24] Ryan McLeod: thanks. Yeah. Hope it's helpful. Hope to hear from people and see us continue to support each other.

[01:15:29] Antoine van der Lee: Awesome.

[01:15:30] Ryan McLeod: Thanks.

[01:15:31] Antoine van der Lee: That's it for this episode. Every Indie journey is unique and you might find inspiration in other episodes as well.

If you enjoyed the show, please like, subscribe, or leave a rating on your favorite podcast platform. It helps me reach more creators who dream of going indie. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

How Blackbox Won an Apple Design Award, twice! – Ryan McLeod
Broadcast by