Focusing only on for example the Apple app store in deciding whether to go into making games or not is not a great idea, since it's by far the most congested (as the article also shows).
But for the moment other markets also exist, such as desktop where one can still be very successful (as long as you can hit a certain level of word of mouth).
Top paid app on the app-store show games that are of significant age (minecraft, plague inc) or with significant name recognition (monopoli, risk, etc) hinting at a stagnant market for independent, paid for games.
Now, evidence is a hard word, but I've the hunch that unless your game is an addictive style freemium incremental, all other genres are as of today more suited to desktop, because of user disinterest on paying a mobile game upfront.
It's far more difficult to gain recognition and get word of mouth going on the app store (due to volume), combined with the lower selling point as compared to desktop (for example $1 vs $15). People don't want to pay up front for games and the race to the bottom on prices have really hurt the little guy.
All graphs I've seen of sales on the app store show an inordinate amount of sales for the top sellers, whereas the tiers in the middle and below don't make anything significant at all.
Then go look at steamspy etc stats, even games 2/3rd's down the lists for a year's releases would have made a few thousand $ (as compared to app store where they might have been sitting on tens of $).
Either way, learning to code via writing a game is something I recommend for anyone, anywhere.
And then I guess mobile gamers don't feel so excited and invested in their $1 break time distraction that they would talk about it on chats, streams, forums, or with friends. Heck I don't think I've ever seriously heard people discuss a mobile game, whereas discussions or passing mentions of PC & console games (both old and new) happen all the time on various media.
The price point of an average game that is sold tends to be about an order of magnitude higher on PC than on iPhone ($9.99 vs $0.99). PC gamers haven't been sold on the race to the bottom quite as much yet - there's more disdain for slot-machine type in-app-purchases, which as far as I can tell, is the only way to make any money in the mobile market.
You can have people very happy about your product and still little to no "word of mouth" if your product is niche.
For a niche product each happy user would have to tell many other potential user to make one conversion. So practically niche products rarely get viral.
Hence why Steam focuses on games that can be sold easily, not especially those with the happiest users. To make a game greenlit the voters vote on the screenshots and the beginning of the video, not the gameplay.
To be successful, one still has to be focused on the business, something that many devs complaining about the app stores are not.
Game development is more of a passion / calling / addiction than a rational business decision. It's an even dumber idea than startups. But if it's all you want to do, then...
Mobile industrie are not the same than game for PC, they are really focused more on money than the game itself, they are for dumb users (sorry I don't have other word for, and it's not even casual) making game like this is more commercial than a passion for gaming.
There's plenty exemple of sucessful game that have only few developper and are better than AAA.
I personnaly have started to make game because I like it to try other approach of programming and I want try to do things that other don't do more or don't focus. Like choice, cooperation, rewards on cooperation, etc.
Just focus on doing things that YOU would play, that make fun and people will talk about it, pay for it (I'm not even close to this but finish something always give reward.)
> Mobile industrie are not the same than game for PC, they are really focused more on money than the game itself
That's a sweeping generalisation. Mobile games are not "focused more on money than the game itself". There are plenty of examples of PC games which are straight up cash cows, just as there are plenty of examples of mobile games which are deeply rewarding and fun to play. To make statements like that is insulting to both sides.
Sure. Reigns, Hopiko, Alto's Adventure, You must build a boat, Monument Valley, Hearthstone(arguable), Clash Royale(again arguable), Vainglory, Crashlands. That's what I've got installed on my phone, I'm sure there are plenty more.
So you listed few and can only assume others. Looks like an opinion to me. Comparing to average 500 games application per day it does not look like too plentiful.
I think AR headsets like Hololens will offer an opportunity to appeal to more traditional gamers first before, as you so humorously put it, "optimized filth" becomes the mainstay. This is due to, what I think, is a positive correlation between people that are early adopters and people that are gamers.
But is that because mobile game developers made a conscious effort to just focus on making money from IAPs, or because the economy on mobile is so badly skewed?
A $10 game on Xbox, PlayStation, or even Steam is considered fairly low-cost. On iOS or Android? Very few people are going to buy that.
> Mobile industrie are not the same than game for PC, they are really focused more on money than the game itself
I'd argue that this focus isn't necessarily to just make money, but to make money that mobile users simply refuse to pay up front. Most people don't think twice about paying anywhere from $10-$60 for a game on PC or consoles. Yet many will leave complain about an app or game because it costs $5.
Take the Nintendo 3DS as an example. Games vary in cost, but $20-$40 is most common for many games in the Nintendo Shop and on cartridge. There are very, very few games that are in that price range for iOS, simply because no-one will buy them. Instead, developers focus on IAPs as a way to offset that.
Pricing on mobile is caught between a rock and a hard place. IAPs have a terrible reputation because they're used (sometimes overly) frequently as a way to generate revenue from games that were released for free (or at very low cost). The alternative is to have users pay a fair, up-front price. That's not going to happen as long as people complain that apps cost $5 (which is usually how much that same person just paid for fast food or coffee that they didn't even finish).
>they are for dumb users (sorry I don't have other word for, and it's not even casual)
That is a sweeping generalization, and wrong. Why is it dumb if someone might be quite happy spending their own money playing Candy Crush on their iPhone? That's no different than someone wanting to use micro transactions in games like Overwatch, Call of Duty, or even a monthly subscription to WoW. Just because you think it's dumb, doesn't mean it is. If they enjoy playing the game, what does it matter?
Because they didn't realize that the mechanism of the game make there pay for playing like it's a coin machine.
You can't compare micro transactions in game that you already pay and candy crush, you didn't pay for a full game, if people want spend their money they are free to do so, I'm also free to call them dumb for that reason. I personnaly play CS:GO sometimes and I have sell all my skins, cases, etc., and thus make the game free for me more that 15$ earned, then I can only say that others people are a little dumb to pay for that.
Mobile games are focused on exploiting addiction on people vulnerable to them. There are no interesting gameplay process, no nice graphics, no art.
Traditional games vs mobile is the same as journalism vs clickbait. Mobile games are in the same league as downloaders, browser toolbars, doorway pages.
I've pretty much given up on mobile gaming. People just aren't willing to pay money for a quality game. These days if I play a game on my phone or tablet it's usually a board game (one of the few genres that's mostly free from exploitative IAPs) or an emulator.
It's a terrible business, though. Making an indie game you'll be lucky to draw a salary. Much better to get paid market development rates and make a game on the side, or go work for one of those "evil" monetization focused game companies.
Case in point: Toronto, Ontario has a lot of indie game devs. Ontario has great government grants for interactive digital media, through the OMDC.
All that said, the typical indie game studio here is marginal, surviving year-to-year off government grants.
If you actually manage to make a profit and draw a salary ($50k), you're a big success story.
One thing I would strongly recommend against is going to a private game-development school. These tend to market very aggressively and be very expensive. The education provided is hit-or-miss, largely dependent on the specific high-turnover instructors you get.
In my province, you can pay > $25k for an 18 month program. At the end of that program, only the top handful of programming students will actually know how to code vs. copying and pasting.
If there's any way you can get into a college or university CS or engineering program, do that instead. Four years may seem like a long time, but if you include the time spent looking for a job after your 18 month program, it could easily be 4 years before you get your first reasonably paying game gig. Also, you can do a four-year engineering degree for about 8-10k a year in Ontario. Co-op can help defray those costs further and make you more attractive for that first full-time job.
Universities all have game-development clubs. Also, these are the people you're competing with for that first job. I would much rather hire a CS grad from University of Toronto, or University of Waterloo than someone who barely knows C# from a game school.
The flip-side is that there are exceptions. It's possible to find those diamonds-in-the-rough who weren't able or willing to go to university.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadBut for the moment other markets also exist, such as desktop where one can still be very successful (as long as you can hit a certain level of word of mouth).
Now, evidence is a hard word, but I've the hunch that unless your game is an addictive style freemium incremental, all other genres are as of today more suited to desktop, because of user disinterest on paying a mobile game upfront.
It's far more difficult to gain recognition and get word of mouth going on the app store (due to volume), combined with the lower selling point as compared to desktop (for example $1 vs $15). People don't want to pay up front for games and the race to the bottom on prices have really hurt the little guy.
All graphs I've seen of sales on the app store show an inordinate amount of sales for the top sellers, whereas the tiers in the middle and below don't make anything significant at all.
Then go look at steamspy etc stats, even games 2/3rd's down the lists for a year's releases would have made a few thousand $ (as compared to app store where they might have been sitting on tens of $).
Either way, learning to code via writing a game is something I recommend for anyone, anywhere.
For a niche product each happy user would have to tell many other potential user to make one conversion. So practically niche products rarely get viral.
Hence why Steam focuses on games that can be sold easily, not especially those with the happiest users. To make a game greenlit the voters vote on the screenshots and the beginning of the video, not the gameplay.
Game development is more of a passion / calling / addiction than a rational business decision. It's an even dumber idea than startups. But if it's all you want to do, then...
There's plenty exemple of sucessful game that have only few developper and are better than AAA.
I personnaly have started to make game because I like it to try other approach of programming and I want try to do things that other don't do more or don't focus. Like choice, cooperation, rewards on cooperation, etc.
Just focus on doing things that YOU would play, that make fun and people will talk about it, pay for it (I'm not even close to this but finish something always give reward.)
The PC AAA developers a very, very quickly catching up in dumbing down games; DA:Inquisition comes to mind.
That's a sweeping generalisation. Mobile games are not "focused more on money than the game itself". There are plenty of examples of PC games which are straight up cash cows, just as there are plenty of examples of mobile games which are deeply rewarding and fun to play. To make statements like that is insulting to both sides.
Really?
Sweeping generalization? Yes. Holds true for the most commonly installed games - I think so?
A $10 game on Xbox, PlayStation, or even Steam is considered fairly low-cost. On iOS or Android? Very few people are going to buy that.
I'd argue that this focus isn't necessarily to just make money, but to make money that mobile users simply refuse to pay up front. Most people don't think twice about paying anywhere from $10-$60 for a game on PC or consoles. Yet many will leave complain about an app or game because it costs $5.
Take the Nintendo 3DS as an example. Games vary in cost, but $20-$40 is most common for many games in the Nintendo Shop and on cartridge. There are very, very few games that are in that price range for iOS, simply because no-one will buy them. Instead, developers focus on IAPs as a way to offset that.
Pricing on mobile is caught between a rock and a hard place. IAPs have a terrible reputation because they're used (sometimes overly) frequently as a way to generate revenue from games that were released for free (or at very low cost). The alternative is to have users pay a fair, up-front price. That's not going to happen as long as people complain that apps cost $5 (which is usually how much that same person just paid for fast food or coffee that they didn't even finish).
>they are for dumb users (sorry I don't have other word for, and it's not even casual)
That is a sweeping generalization, and wrong. Why is it dumb if someone might be quite happy spending their own money playing Candy Crush on their iPhone? That's no different than someone wanting to use micro transactions in games like Overwatch, Call of Duty, or even a monthly subscription to WoW. Just because you think it's dumb, doesn't mean it is. If they enjoy playing the game, what does it matter?
Jonathan Blow nailed it in this presentation: https://youtu.be/AxFzf6yIfcc?t=2436
You can't compare micro transactions in game that you already pay and candy crush, you didn't pay for a full game, if people want spend their money they are free to do so, I'm also free to call them dumb for that reason. I personnaly play CS:GO sometimes and I have sell all my skins, cases, etc., and thus make the game free for me more that 15$ earned, then I can only say that others people are a little dumb to pay for that.
Traditional games vs mobile is the same as journalism vs clickbait. Mobile games are in the same league as downloaders, browser toolbars, doorway pages.
I've played some where I've thought - "oh, this game would be so much better if it wasn't stuck in a IAP addiction mode".
I never get very far in these games due to the artificial IAP barriers.
True.
> There are no interesting gameplay process.
Maybe.
> [...], no nice graphics, no art.
False.
Case in point: Toronto, Ontario has a lot of indie game devs. Ontario has great government grants for interactive digital media, through the OMDC.
All that said, the typical indie game studio here is marginal, surviving year-to-year off government grants.
If you actually manage to make a profit and draw a salary ($50k), you're a big success story.
In my province, you can pay > $25k for an 18 month program. At the end of that program, only the top handful of programming students will actually know how to code vs. copying and pasting.
If there's any way you can get into a college or university CS or engineering program, do that instead. Four years may seem like a long time, but if you include the time spent looking for a job after your 18 month program, it could easily be 4 years before you get your first reasonably paying game gig. Also, you can do a four-year engineering degree for about 8-10k a year in Ontario. Co-op can help defray those costs further and make you more attractive for that first full-time job.
Universities all have game-development clubs. Also, these are the people you're competing with for that first job. I would much rather hire a CS grad from University of Toronto, or University of Waterloo than someone who barely knows C# from a game school.
The flip-side is that there are exceptions. It's possible to find those diamonds-in-the-rough who weren't able or willing to go to university.