Well it all depends on how one views it. A lot of people think DLC is just stuff that should have been on the disk in the first place thus all the developers did in the beginning was release an unfinished game only for us to buy the real content later. I mean some are extra costumes and versus mode as dlc. That's not really extra content that's just adding to an uncompleted game... but yeah I'm just debating to debate
In those cases, DLC is a complete rip-off, but the titles previously mentioned such as Fallout 3 is a totally complete game without the DLC...same with GTA 4. Those are complete games. Those you mention (buying costumes and vs. mode) are the dlc's you have to watch out for....but to say Fallout 3 wasn't a complete game is ludicrous.
Oh trust me I <3 Fallout 3 but yeah dlc does have some nasties out there. Apps for the iPhone specially 99 cent ones you almost half expect them to later on come with updates. Sure it doesn't happen with all of them but we can't think the appstore can be the same as consoles or PC's. It is a total different mind set on how development and growth goes.
I've been a gamer since Nintendo released the first NES console and remember paying real money for the games as a kid, I saved months to just get one game at a time - and sometimes it was a horrible game. For the price of one NES, Xbox 360 game you can buy like 60 games from AppStore! After having first hand experience with the AppStore I don't think this cheap pricing model is gonna last. Three years ago you couldn't buy games for $0,99, let alone great games like Flight Control or Harbor Master. Probably three years from now they will again be out of reach, so consider yourselves lucky to be living in these times. There's only a handful games on iPhone which make decent profit and if you wish to see Naughty Dog or Blizzard level coders or artists working on these games there needs to be a system which can compensate for their ability. Four man team of that caliber would cost you easily $300 000 a year. And you can forget about the cool niche genres, they're not gonna sell that much so it would be either action games or casual games. Currently we are in top ten of the US iTunes, there's only 6 games ahead of us and it's not amazing money compared to what we would get with freelancing or consulting - and who knows how long this is gonna last so can't really talk about job security either! We were two full-timers working on Minigore, and after half a year of development I can say the bank account was starting to reach zero. We do this because we love making games, if we loved making money we would be at some studio getting paid instead of losing money and fearing how the next day ranking is gonna look. People might say "you should have worked on it for longer and add more content" but we simply didn't have the budget. The only other option was to pull the plug and go get a job, doesn't sound like a good option to me. Before we decided "let's make it 3d and really work on the engine so we can roll out updates quickly" the game was supposed to look like this: I can only imagine the reception for that 2d mini minigore if some people feel like the current Minigore sucks haha! Three years ago you couldn't buy games for $0,99, let alone great games like Flight Control or Harbor Master. So I find it funny when people talk about the "1 dollar market". How much does a song in iTunes cost, isn't it something like $0,99? We have 3 songs in Minigore, granted - the third banjo music doesn't play completely unless you combo like 10 clovers The other day I was looking at Playstation Network DLC content and one costume for Little Big Planet character costs $1.99. I'm sure that costume is better than Pocket God and Flight Control combined Being a 3d modeler myself I know the costume took only a fraction of time to make compared PG or FC. My personal opinion is that console games are heavily overpriced and iPhone games are heavily underpriced. Apple needs to change the system so it's revenue based top ten lists, not units sold. /end rant
TimoVihola, I agree with everything you said. I honestly never expected the game market for this phone to be this big. And I didn't know about it until I bought one, and then found my way here. The second big surprise was the price. There are some games out there that could be charging 20 bucks and people would still be buying them. It really surprises me that people are teaming up and taking half a year to make games only to sell them for a dollar just cause it's for a 'phone'. It will not surprise me when the prices go up. And i will still be buying the games. Oh, and I'm a gamer from way back when too. Back when my c64 and NES were new, I beat every game I owned. And that was because I could only get a game every few months. I can remember getting 3 Atari games for my only gifts one christmas. Now? i have games I still haven't played yet cause I have so many games spread out across systems. If you have so few games that you sit at the tv and play asteroids over and over until you flip the scoreboard you know you have a limited selection.... Anyway, thanks for the artwork and the post. I bought minigore and enjoy it. And I will enjoy it more and more as updates come out. Nice work, stay busy. Don't realize how much you could be making doing something else until at least minigore 2.0
HE SPEAKS THE TRUTH!!! Except I dont think console games are heavily overpriced, I think some console DLC are though. Some console games cost millions+ to develop, iPhone games cost a fraction of that. $60 is a reasonable price for most console games. iPhone games are underpriced, not sure why though. Maybe there are too many games being released at once or maybe because of all these $1 sales (imagine the appstore if there were no sales and price reduction took months). Apple needs to make a better system anyways, big games are not selling because people are waiting for a $10 game to go to $1 or they just simply dont know about the game.
The problem is too many games are available and not enough customers. Remember most iphone/ipod touch owners aren't gamers and many of them never even use the app store. Of those who do buy games many are very casual and might buy one or two every few months, usually whatever cheap game is in the top ten, or something retro such as Tetris, Pac Man or Sonic. So yes there are tens of millions of iphone/ipod owners out there but (guessing) maybe only one in ten of them buys games and apps regularly. The market isn't nearly as big as you might think it is, and with since the barrier to entry is so low for developers there's really way too many games being released to charge premium prices.
if iDracula comes with 5 maps and 5 weapons that's how minigore make big money... 1) change iDracula to funky graphic (copy & paste Lego idea... with square head) 2) chop the iDracula into 10 episodes (each Episode release one map or one weapon) seriously, this game is for causal gamer and foucs on kids... only kid without life can sit there couple hours to play this boring game repeatly... to archieve 10k score and post on the board.... "wow, I got 10092 today" "here is the survival guide...kepp running circle" bla bla bla... that's stupid. if you read most of the review (e.g. Big Al) they only give it 3~3.5 out of 5... but most of kid just get excited for the new coming episode ... like a new map or sth... that's really silly, coz those map and weapon should come with the first release.... but kids just don't get it.
Very much the same situation with me. Only, I don't see the prices coming down soon unless apple reorganizes the app store. With the size of the market, charging $0.99 and getting a million downloads is worth more than charging $4.99 and only getting 100,000. Its cruel that with more downloads, a game gets more publicity and then even more downloads. To get more downloads, the price has to drop. I daresay if Apple allowed devs to drop to $0.50 devs would do it!
I think that is exactly the reason everyone loves it. That is like saying Metal Gear sucks because it is just a stealth game with long cutscenes. The problem is, that is why everyone buys it.
