Damnit! I just died when I played a game of minigore. I saw a clover on the ground, so I walked on that one, then turned around to run straight into the furries. A moment later I realised I only had 1 clover... so I died. My score was 10070. Damnit I was about to beat my record!! How stupid!
We really like the idea too, but I don't want to blame all the troubles on Apple either. Because of the vast number of developers and the relative newness of the market they can't make big changes overnight even if they wanted to. The fact that it was possible to independently develop and publish a game at $0.99 and make any relevant sales is quite amazing in itself and hasn't really happened before App Store came around. It seems something worthwhile to buy or try turns out almost daily or at least weekly, which from a gamer's point of view is great. The big companies like Gameloft and EA can afford to spend a large budget in advance to make a game that's worth paying 5-10 dollars for, but for a small developer that would be impossible to finance without signing more or less all rights to the game away. This incremental development is a chance for us and many other small teams to build a quality products while supporting the work through game sales, rather than sticking with a day job and hoping for that first streak of luck.
^^^^^^you didn't know that promising updates on a general time basis, which is not even in your control after submission is going to make adopters mad when those promises are not fulfilled? We all know apple takes forever with releases & updates unless your Gameloft or E.A. & even then it's a fickle process. It's the equivelent of predicting the end of the world. You know it's coming but when....who knows? Never promise updates at certain times. Promise updates by all means, but you cNt say the update is coming out next week or there will be weekly or monthly updates. Because it's just not up to you when they will be available after you submit, they might even get rejected. Good idea guys but you had to see this coming. Now you guys are left defending apple, explaining your position to short sided customers who feel "lied to". For indie dev's that make small games...updates are crucial. They allow you to introduce the game when it's not complete (in vision), add content to increase shelf life, adopt new customers. I can see how a game like minigore could be an "unfolding story" type game complete with new info, characters, backstories, levels & enemies....oh of course weapons too. But I would just promote what is planned (new for episode 2,3 & so on) instead of trying to tell people when to expect it.
You're correct, people would rather be surprised by receiving things when they didn't expect them, than be disappointed by not receiving things when expected. This is why the Minigore blog lists only the submission date of the current version, but it might make sense that we handle even that internally rather than set people up for potential disappointment regardless of who's fault the delay is. We've shared openly our intention to make updates frequent, and we've told people of every submit and rejection date; it's hard to say even in hindsight if this was the best strategy but I can see how us getting through the approval cycle is really *our* problem. We don't have a hard principle or strategy about this, we just want to make things run smoother in the future. And yes, we were initially blindsided by these issues as Minigore was our first ever iPhone project. We now see that estimates on the approval cycle are even at best just informed guesses and probabilities. You make some good points and we hope we can reach a stable release cycle soon which would make most of these worries go away. While it's true that there are no guarantees, we're hoping that being honest and open even about these troubles helps people see us as a developer dedicated to quality in our work.
Don't hate me please, but... Jouni, I thought that Chillingo Ltd., one of the biggest iPhone game publishers there is, published MiniGore. Or at least that's what it says on the App Store description...
Chilingo Ltd, Ltd stands for a partnership. My guess is between multiple game developers and Chilingo Ltd is the publisher.
Aren't we being cheeky. If you get really technical about my sentence... "The fact that it was possible to independently develop [x] Check! and publish a game at $0.99 [x] Check! ... but lets give Chillingo some love too, they've helped many indies reach the market. I've heard stories about people who have also independently published games and done well for themselves, but who knows what the future brings.
Ltd. comes from "limited", it's a form of company, nothing to do with partnerships. It just means that Chillingo is privately owned company, not public. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_company
Sometimes Ltd. is referred to LLC, then it could mean a partnership. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability_company But I'm dutch so I'm not 100% sure it's in this case, but it seems like it.
exactly...Chillingo is a publishing company and so devs pay chillingo to publish their app, because sometimes it pays off to have a big time company name under the developer. Chillingo's name is as big as gameloft and EA when it comes to buying games. This is not always the case though because as you see bolt creative used their lesser known name and it helped them...the truth is that every game is different and hiring Chillingo to publish your app is a marketing decision that mountain sheep must have thought would help...though whether it did or not is debatable.
im not sure whether having chillingo as a publisher has made any problems for Minigore. But it is a right pain that its been rejected again.
timo just said the first 60 have been selected and the last 39 will be chosen tomorrow then those who are lucky will get an e-mail so good luck to all and i will be saying a certain prayer before i go to bed tonight...
yea so we can atleast expect an e-mail tomorrow or today for those of us across the dateline... idk... time gets confusing for me...
