Interesting post about the state of difficulty in mobile game developing....

ackmondual · Feb 1, 2017

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/super-mario-run-sales-nintendo-financial-q4-2016/?comments=1&post=32737255#comment-32737255

Nintendo is way late to the game. They should've been making mobile games eight years ago when they were profitable. Now, the market is far oversaturated. If we're being honest, there's almost no dregs for them left to try to scavenge.

Generally speaking, as of 2017, if you're new to the market and considering making a mobile game, don't. Write a PC game instead - it has lower development costs, and tends to be more profitable, even if your audience is going to be smaller.

If you're new to making games, don't sell them - write your first games for free using Unity or something, and distribute them on platforms like GameJolt or itch.io.

Edits: Clarity, based on observed best-practices in the Indie community. Source: I am an indie game developer.
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Aren't one of the advantages of developing using something like Unity that you can deploy to multiple platforms using basically the same source?
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That's what the marketing materials say. Practically speaking, though...not so much.

I was going to write an impassioned few paragraphs about things I've encountered with porting PC games to mobile, and the considerations it forces you to make. Unfortunately, that turned into a depth-first search of the 'gotchas' of mobile game development relative to PC game development (not that PC game dev is much easier - game development is always hard to do well.)

Long story short, I've written three free games that I tried converting to mobile. I gave up each time, because the games I write just aren't design-wise or usability-wise compatible with mobile devices (my art is sub-par in any event, I don't care if I get that as deprecation.)

I get that people like mobile gaming, both as developers and players; I'm not telling you not to. What I am saying, is that mobile is a platform with serious drawbacks:

1. The possibilities for what you can build are drastically limited by the input technology.
1a. This means that the types of games you can realistically develop for mobile are limited to a subset of what you can develop for other platforms.
1a i. Infinite Runner
1a ii. Puzzle Games (possibly including puzzle RPGs)
1a iii. Asynchronous Strategy game (e.g. Clash of Clans)
1a iv. (This is not an exhaustive list, but that's more or less the majority, based on my market research.)
1b. Casual games dominate, due both to the limitations and the demographics. A 'core' game on mobile has not yet shown to be entirely viable. (To use TB's words - mobile is for 'toilet gaming.')

2. The business situation for mobile is awful.
2a. For freemium games, low-single-digit conversion rates are commonplace.
2b. Many freemium games are buried due to sheer market saturation.
2c. Retention is a major challenge, because it's so easy to play something else.

2d. Your game can go bust right out of the gate due to lack of coverage, attention, malice, or luck. You're more or less playing the lottery by releasing a mobile game, instead of 'merely' participating in a risky market.

2e. PC's business model is typically buy up-front, with some notable exceptions (LoL); Mobile gamers typically reject that because so many mobile games are freemium that paying simply isn't attractive.
2f. Your standard PC game - regardless of status as a port or not, though mobile ports to PC are generally considered inferior to PC games developed for PC - will make most of its profit in the first month after release. From that point on, your game will only bring in a steadily-declining trickle, until it fizzles out entirely. This is almost a non-point, since buy-up-front games don't generate much profit...though, they do typically enjoy better retention.

2g. On both app stores, there is a black market that apparently trades in fake reviews and ratings for cash. Long story short - your princess is in another casino, and the house is rigged against you. (I recommend reading the entirety of that article, though, Seanbaby has some very interesting insights.)

3. Porting from PC/Console to Mobile is much harder than it seems.
3a. PC to Mobile ports have to deal with reduction of controls, which has serious design implications.
3b. As Mobile devices are often far weaker than PCs, you have to deal with optimization problems very aggressively for the port to be playable.
3c. Mobile to PC ports have to deal with control remappability, which is not a mobile problem in the first place.
3d. Mobile to PC ports have to deal with the fact that their art is setup for a technically inferior device, and thus the aesthetic will have to be carefully considered (see Final Fantasy Type-0's port to PC from the PS Vita for an example of the critiques that can easily be leveled at such a port)
3e. Mobile's business model is primarily freemium; PC gamers typically reject that due to the number of 'Pay-to-Win' games based on the business model, or games with the perception of being so designed.

Any time mobile game dev comes up, I will (and do) ask people to be skeptical of the viability of it, especially for a newcomer. If you disagree, OK. I wish you luck...you're going to need it. The time to get into mobile games was about eight years ago.

Getting back to the article, Nintendo attacked these hurdles head-on - to their credit - but appeared to have unrealistic expectations because their mindset is much more like to PC development, than to mobile. Nintendo can adapt over time, but Nintendo is not known for adapting over time; they're very set in their ways. To this gamer, they've set a bad first impression with the Mario infinite runner, and I'm not confident that, until they reconsider their place in the mobile market, that future outings will necessarily be any better.

The only way they can do that is to play to their one core strength - a wacky, inventive game that renders everything we know about mobile games entirely wrong. If they do that, stuff will be very interesting.

Edit: Revised the structure of my critiques of the mobile ecosystem. I also didn't state my distaste for it nearly strong enough - the mobile ecosystem is an ethically and legally bankrupt place. I strongly encourage not participating in it - regular game dev is hard enough as it is.
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Interesting post about the state of difficulty in mobile game developing....

ackmondual Well-Known Member

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Interesting post about the state of difficulty in mobile game developing....

ackmondual Well-Known Member

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