Journal
Soft launch on a Malaysian storefront
Limiting a listing to Johor, or to Malaysia, is a gift: testers and live players share a clock. It is also a trap. Friends and colleagues install on day one. Their sessions are long, their events are complete, and they will never represent the stranger who finds the icon on Friday night.
We ask teams to mark colleague installs in the first week, even if only with a simple allow-list of emails used for test accounts. Mix those sessions into D1 and you will ship a tutorial that only makes sense to people who already know the designer.
The other trap is featuring luck inside a small storefront. A short bump looks like a retention story. Check the hour the bump arrived. If D1 moves with the bump and not with the patch, write that down before anyone celebrates the copy change.
A sit-in during these weeks is mostly logging: hash, country, colleague versus stranger, patch. Boring paper. That paper is what lets you change the first session without lying to yourselves about who played it.