is ios development dead?

<-- this is very important. Level of quality and to be honest most of the indie devs who post here (sorry if this sounds hard but there is no other way to say this) develope junk. Ugly games with basic gameplay most serious dev would not even call a proof of concept rather than release it on the store.

Check the games you bought recently and compare that to what you are developing. Does it compare? Are you sure? Take a few steps back, look at both of em, still sure? Most likely its not even close.

Why should anyone spend money on an low quality product. Thats what you are creating. A product you want to sell, in this case a game. This is a business so if you want to compete you need to be able to compete.

You need to have a product that shines, that looks good, that plays good no matter how big or small the title is. You can't get away with a half assed atempt of coder art, generic sound effects or bugs gameplay.

Everyone starts small but back when i was young we did not try to release every little crap game we cobbled together as a product to customers.

Yes its tons easier nowerdays to offer your product digitaly to the world, but that does not mean that you should do that or that you are even close to compete.

The AppStore is not the indie backyard it was a couple years ago. Things changed and matured to an high quality marketplace where big publishers spending millions on developement still have trouble to compete against other big guys who are already established in the market.

If you can't offer compareable quality, then please don't expect to make a single dime of your work, because chances are very high that you won't.
See it as a hobby that you enjoy doing instead of trying to actually sell a product to customers which is a completly different "game".

A reality check is something most indie devs here need about their offerings.
The harsh reality is usualy reflected by your monthly apple sales data.

Good luck and like Eli said, maybe a lottery ticket is the better way to spend your money.

I'll hope this post was not too offending, it was not meant to be.

 

There's some awesome 'real talk' being offered in this thread.

I'm hesitant to chime in on discussions like this as I'm well aware that I'm a relative newbie, having released only one game. But I must say that warning bells sound when someone says they released 15 games in the amount of time it took me to make one.

So as a relative newbie, I encourage any beginner dev to take on board the responses in this thread and take some time to think about the ones that sting the most.

So true. I guess it's the Flappy Bird effect -- people think it was just a crappy little game (debatable!), so they think they might as well throw whatever they make out there just in case it somehow takes off.

And that's a decision they can make, sure, but it is a bit odd when they do it with the expectation that it should take off.

Also I see on twitter and elsewhere a lot of encouraging "JUST MAKE THINGS!" posts, that say stuff like "It doesn't matter if it's crap. Making crap things is how you get better" etc. And that's fine, but it should come with the footnote: "But strive to be objective, be self-critical, and don't feel that you must release every little poopnugget you make. Or if you do, don't be surprised or resentful if it isn't received as a rare and wonderful jewel."


re the ios gaming is dead side topic...

Right, and also don't forget the third pillar, which people often seem to overlook in these discussions. Namely, free ad-supported games with optional IAP to remove ads. Not all free games are geared towards consumable IAPs or pay-to-win malarkey. But I do understand they might be seen as guilty by association.

 

You nailed it and everytime I hear the why isn't my game selling (which I hear a ton). I will point them to your post. You should make it into an article or blog post or something.

I'm by no means saying I'm a pro or anything close to that but this is great advice.

 

@justking14

Well, to look at it another way, maybe I need to pick up the pace and improve my workflow.

Actually, no maybe about it. I seriously need to streamline my workflow. Good thing I don't bill myself per hour!

 

I used to think like that, still do, and always will. Flat broke.

 

I have read this thread with great interest and thought very hard whether to respond. But I think I will. These are just a few of my thoughts as a developer that spent a lot of time before releasing my first App.

Some background as it may help understand my views:

I am a finance professional in my late 30s, so entirely financially NOT reliant on any proceeds from my games, but not giving them away for free either because I want to recoup some (small portion?) of my costs and time. I have spent years in my youth playing all sorts of computer games, most enjoyable experiences were with CRPGs like Bard's Tale, Ultima, Phantasie III, Demons Winter ...

As a finance professional I have had a very hard look at the App market and concluded (initially), that I should design a game that I would like to play myself. If I am convinced I would be drawn to buying it than others will feel the same and also enjoy it. Later on I found that this is really hard to check though because you CANNOT judge your own creation from the viewpoint of a gamer that just stumbled across it. A developer is blind in terms of seeing what his own creation's first impression is. So I got help. I got the harshest critic that I could find: someone with even more experience playing games, someone with 10 times more experience coding (and a degree in it), someone with a lack of 'I don't wan't to hurt your feelings' barrier. My older brother. I got him a TestFlight account and he played the early version of my game. I got a 3-page email back, each bullet point causing me to shrink in my chair and despairing at the challenge to functionality implement this stuff. But I figured that I need to listen to my customers. I could defend my choices so far but instead I need to drop those defences and build what people want. I knew my brother has the same fondness for the same RPGs so his wish list was very relevant.

So my advice to any developer is to find a good friend that you can identify as being part of your target audience. The reason why it needs to be a good friend is because he needs to tell you what's what.

==> 1. Releasing a game before your target audience has voiced their feedback is futile.

The next advice is simple:

2. Do not compromise quality for speed. Sounds easy. Unfortunately it means that you need to make the App's development timeline independent from as many pressures as possible. Is your financial livelihood dependent on some proceeds happening very soon? that is a recipe for disaster. Is your wife nagging you to stop spending so much time on it? Explain it to her: it is your creative side that needs to be nurtured and while you may not get rich quick, you get rich in experience and will become a good developer if you stay passionate. Do you want to get into the Christmas release time and have the App online by early December? tough, do not get rushed with a buggy product.

This rule is not simple to follow, but it is my belief that it is probably a very important one. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing it right.

With my own first App I was trying to release in time for the Dec 2013 Christmas release wave, but I fell way short of that and then gave myself 12 months to aim for Dec 2014. I just made that, but I was willing to delay it if I saw any big bugs or gaps in the game. It was tough. Other developers work with fixed release dates and I think a deadline can be motivating at times, destructive at others.


Few more things I want to mention: App pricing, Price psychology, Marketing and Market dynamics.

App pricing: I think the supply and demand has shifted massively over the last two decades, with App Stores giving access to anything anyone develops globally, games that could fetch $50 in the past now fetch $5. That is not going to go away. Many more games are now available, but the games that any particular player can play is limited. If Germans would play German games and US people play US games only, such segregation would still keep prices up a bit, but the fact is that REALLY good games will take a big chunk of most player's budget and time, and the rest will scramble. If you want to get rich with an App it needs to be perfect (absolutely perfect) niche idea and product, or a reasonably well executed money grabber.

Price psychology (money grabbers): the games that have the highest revenue are freemium with very frequent gratifications (achievements, sound, graphics, fireworks) luring you to constant use over a few days, then slowly increasing difficulty, paywalls, social competition etc. You want to build a game that makes you a lot of money that way? Play Candy Crush. Not for fun, but with a pen and notepad next to you and take note: how the level difficulty develops, when the App does (and more importantly that it does not at the start) ask you to connect to facebook, see how facebook friends appear on the same level ladder, notice the sound effects on escalating candy matches, notice the colour palette, see how the higher difficulty is overcome with powerups, see how the powerups run out and are offered for inApp purchase ... The developers employed a psychologist full time to tweak these things. But they are not rocket science, some are there for you to see and immitate.

Marketing + Market dynamics: it is VERY hard to get featured. There is a huge gap between Apps that do and Apps that don't. It makes the 'don't rush it' argument above even more important. A slightly incrementally worse game will get massively less attention. I have not played around with spending money on marketing yet, but will do that eventually. My game for me is also a playground to get experience with App development and marketing. Consider your experiences the same. Experiment.

And as final food for thought, my company (telco) just got a new CEO, formerly the CEO of the digital division, and I asked him a few months ago why our company is not going into gaming. He said: 'we looked into it but could not figure out what distinguishes a successful game from the others'.

Disbelief is the best word to describe my reaction, but the longer I gather experience in this field the more I understand exactly what he is saying. From a business perspective, the uncertainty and dynamics at play are mindblowing.

Volker

 

I think you raise an interesting and important point on getting good and honest feedback from an external source, during or maybe even before development. It is easy to run into the pitfall called tunnel vision, especially if you're making a game on your own. (This is also true outside of game development ^_^).

 

This is spot on. I could not of written it better myself.

 

@volker

Great advice. I love the part about playing candy crush or other top games with a pen and paper. If you want to be the best study the best and become it. People ask why isn't my game selling. Well look at the top charts does your game have the appeal and looks of those?


This thread needs to be sticky there is so much good info in it.

 

Regarding "tunnel vision" I suspect that one of the differences between successful developers and less successful ones are that the more successful ones have natural instincts that match what the most picky average joe would find appealing/intuitive/fun.

If one's "make what you'd love to play" approach is out of sync with what other people want to play, you're going to have a very tough time. Collecting external feedback and applying it after the fact seems unlikely to result in a cohesive experience, especially if it doesn't align with your original instincts/vision. You're going to end up second guessing yourself, and/or ending up with a design-by-committee app.

This is one of the things that Steve Jobs absolutely excelled at. He had instincts for how software should look and work that struck a universal cord.

 

I keep telling my wife that I am not playing games, I am doing competitive intelligence.

There's a great book that covers lots of things to consider when making games: The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses

 

While I definitely agree you can't sacrifice quality for speed (so I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you), this is a very slippery slope imo, especially depending on what kind of developer you are (full time, hobbyist, etc). Of course you can't rush and put out a crappy or buggy product, but I've seen too many developers spend literally years making a game trying to put that never ending level of polish on it or adding an extra 30 hours of gameplay, only to have it flop (and not even be that great of a game in the first place). IMO its an important skill to be efficient, knowing exactly what needs to be polished, and where to trim the fat. In the mobile market where luck is a big factor, these skills are even more important.

Now don't get me wrong - that doesn't mean cut corners or put out crap by any means. It just means being smart about your game, all the way from the design concept to the final polish stage. You can definitely put out a quality game in 2-3 months for sure, as long as you plan appropriately for it (even core games with a good amount of content can have shorter dev cycles). In fact, at the rate that the mobile market evolves, I think it can be dangerous to not be able to release quality games at a good pace and stay relevant, especially if you've already seen a modicum of success that you should be building off of.

Not to toot our own horn by any means, but as a reference here are some of our games that have been on a 3 month dev cycle, usually with ~2-3 people working on them: Bug Heroes 2, Heroes and Castles, and Puzzle to the Center of the Earth - all games were featured by Apple and we're very proud of the content, depth, and polish level of these. I really only bring up these examples because we actually hit rock bottom ~2 years ago before we had to completely revamp our process to one that is more efficient... and its really been great for us.

 

I agree. I have kept a list of features I want to add to my game, and while I ticked off things from the top I kept adding things at the bottom. For adding of features and depth, this is very true.

I have cut a bold line at some point and said everything above will be done for the release, everything below won't. that was tough, but actually felt liberating because I could see a clear timeline emerging as opposed to just chipping away at things forever.

And this is even true for content: I wanted my game to have a lot of quests and long storylines and so many non-linear locations and treasure, but for my release I openly said it includes 'Chapter 1' only so far. That was a bold move and I was quite concerned it may not be received well, although I knew chapter 1 has 8-20 hours of gameplay which is quite good for the price tag I used.

I have been fortunate enough that I got that line about right, I got a 4.8 star average on the AppStore so really pleased with how well it seems to work for most players. And now I got en engaged fan base that motivats me to release Chapter 2. So both features and content volume needs a fine balance, I agree.

But in terms of bug testing, testing on various devices, player feedback: on those elements you need to set yourself a minimum quality standard at the start and NOT budge to the time pressures that may be. It drags all the rest down to get that wrong. For example you cannot release an App today if you have not tested it on the lower end range like iPad2 as well as higher end like iPhone6Plus. that is an absolute NO.

Note: if you develop a niche game it is also good to offer a free (demo/lite) version. Not with ads to built a secondary revenue source, I mean a trimmed down version to let people test if they like the UI and game idea without spending $ on it. It causes two effects:

- people that buy the full game by definition are not disappointed with the UI and feel and drag your ratings down. Can be important for AppStore optimisation and media reception
- people that hesitate to spend money have a HIGHER chance of ending up buying the full game because they can try before they buy and reduce their risk. I do not like buying games based on screenshots alone. (yeah I know, you can do videos now. but I find that very challenging for a touch-based App)

 

Some more science behind the App Revenue distribution:

market stats

0.07% of the App Store population collect over 40% of the App Store revenue.

If you are in immediate competition to EVERY other app, there is only so many that will stick out and be regarded as worth the money (comparatively).

Brilliantly service a niche audience, have a truly innovative game, or try to mirror the big guns. A lot of companies and developers try the mirroring option, only a few can succeed and in the process it also pushed prices down. Permanently.

 

This is feature creep and not good in most cases. Theres a difference between polishing what you set out to create and just adding more and more and more. but yea you are right there is a fine line to walk. Ive been pretty lucky with my releases but both of them have had tons of feature creep and took about 2-3 months more than I thought.

 

yeah, I can see there is a lot of depth in the game engine. How did you do the trailer? A lot of people say you gotta have trailers, but I keep pushing out the task of finding out how to do one without spending money on any software to capture such a video without watermark.

 

its very very easy to make videos now. These are the steps I took.

get an idea in your mind of what you want to have in the video (you could make a storyboard but i didnt)

connect your phone to your mac and then go to quicktime player. theres an option in there to record your screen.

Go though everything you want in the trailer/video

open imovie and edit the scenes you want (use transitions inbetween so it looks better).

Toss some music in there.

Toss some text in there (not for your trailer part because apple will reject)

Export a < 30 second clip for your app trailer

export a larger clip with text etc to youtube.


Thats really about it. Im no pro but it took me about an 2 hours to make my video and trailer.

 

Kind of... "polish" is pretty ambiguous, and imo you can go overboard on polish, especially for a free or $.99 mobile game.

I know it may sound like I'm saying "cut corners and rush a game out" but that's not what I'm saying at all... I'm just saying you have to be smart about when to stop, and knowing when you're game feels complete - from both a content and polish standpoint. Spending an extra week fine tuning some obscure (non essential) particle effects, another week making the intro logo animation something spectacular, another week revamping all of the already solid UI backgrounds, and another week making the options screen have a ton of bells and whistles for ex will all probably go unnoticed by 99.99% of players (assuming the original work is of a certain level of quality).

And that's the skill I was talking about: knowing when to say "This is a good, release worthy game." Some people draw the line too early, where the game is released as an unpolished piece of junk. Others may spend literally an extra year+ polishing up an already great, ready to be released game and see zero results from that extra work.

There is such a thing as "good enough"... there has to be or else games would never get finished!