Wow, I walk away from this thread for a day and there are several extra pages of comments. First off, Rubicon, I grabbed GLWG a few weeks ago but haven't had proper time to play it. It looks great though. I may want to pick your brain as I think our games appeal to the same crowd. Just speaking from personal experience, I got an xbox 360 last Christmas but I rarely play it, In fact, I'm usually on the couch with my ipad as it's more relaxing. The older I get, the less I want to commit an hour or two to a console gaming session. If you're a hardcore gamer, I can see the appeal of an xbox/ps3, but if you're like me, I may get interrupted a dozen times a night. The ipad is much better suited to my lifestyle and I think is a better overall couch companion.
+1 @CharredDirt . I have been having troubles trying to sit down with a console game since i move around alot. That was probably why i bought a psp a few years back. With my Ipad, i prefer to load games that are non-casual like. strategy or rpg types of games. However, i find that the variety of IOS games are more casual like.
I think it depends, if you want to make a living out of it as a game designer 20 years from now, or if one just cares about the money now. Nothing lasts forever, at least not in it's current form.
Quantity iLifeTouch currently has the most Mac apps on the store we are striving to push even harder to make sure we publish 2 apps a week. Without the exposure of new apps we wouldn't be able to make payroll. Every new app helps sell our established apps.
That's extreme, no? Here at Zenout we put our apps through triple-filtering to produce the finest quality ;-)
Well here are my 2 cents, I am 38 yo old guy quite well off selling stuff for big blue. I live a good life but I want to earn money by making games . Since I was in high school I am doing programming, paining and 3d stuff.. so I have a quite experience in doing all those things to a certain extent. I have tried before to do something for commodore, Amiga or PC but until the iPhone and App Store - forget it. No way. FINALLY after long 8 months (working after work, all alone - still looking for good art guy(girl?), learning as I go.) I have managed to release my first game - Missile Storm. And FIRST advice I got form the same (now quite successful) gentleman solo developer was - CREATE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE OF SIMILAR GAMES! - just change the scenery or theme - until you hit what is interesting for the consumers. That will make also your other games sell and then , maybe then - when you have enough funding coming in - do something you really want to do and expect to - fail My plan is actually quite similar ( but i will stick to various retro themes - as my current game) - to make several various games and hopefully get it going and only then to spend my time on something - well of great quality and content.
People who cannot recognize quality unfortunately will never produce something that actually is quality. It is not math*. Making 1000 things will not lead to one product that is suddenly quality or suddenly clicks with consumers. Creativity and talent just do not work like that. Now someone that does recognize quality and can look at their previous efforts and understand what went wrong while continuing to improve their craft will eventually make something that is quality. But if the recognition of what makes something great is not there, it will never happen. Not ever. * If you want to make it math, let's say that there are 10 aspects to a good game, and one could rate each of these aspects on a scale of 1-10. That means there are 10^10 permutations of how good a game can possibly be. 10000000000. A good game would have >=7s in almost all of the areas, which would be 4^10 (7-10 is 4 values) or 1048576. Releasing 1000 apps as fast as you can by just throwing shit at a whiteboard is essentially generating random apps, resulting in random values of quality for these 10 game aspects. Because of the random output, you could then deduce that the chance of actually making a good game this way is 1048576/10000000000, or 0.0105%. Now say this is a per-person statistic - if you wanted a 10% chance of a quality product, you'll need to hire 1000 employees. And pay all of them. For an app that has a 10% chance of being a success. Which proves that essentially it is never going to happen if your goal is to randomly throw together ideas to make a good game. Not to mention you are basically ruining the App Store with this approach.
If Publisher/Developer would finally start to ask themself if they would buy their own Games we would see less shit on the Appstore pop up every Day. After 10000 Games that I have played since early 2008 each Year I see less and less App/Games that are unique enough to stand out on their own. I don`t know if Cloning, Freemium and Kickstarter are to blame for that but I would assume that they might have to do something with it.
but what is quality for you can be not even remotely interesting for me and ofc vice versa. If you ask me - making a game is like going to visit your nephew who is 9yo and you didn't see him for 3 years. You are very happy to finally see him and you want to buy him some toy that will make him feel like you are the best uncle ever! Now let me tell you - in 99% of cases you will fail - you can buy the BEST (quality) toy ever that will COMPLETELY miss the mark what he wants at that point and he will think of you as the worst uncle ever when he unwraps it. That is how I believe all the uncles (indie studios/developers of the world) are feeling today. Good bless us all.
2 apps a week is paramount to shovelware. It's a way to run a business but that is the very essence of quantity over quality. You're basing your business completely off of initial exposure. Since the games aren't very good, they quickly sink to the bottom of the pile, hence the need to publish another one again. I wouldn't say change it, but it would be cool to see what your team could do if they dedicated one day a week to a long term project that was a high quality app.
We don't build games and we try really hard to build the best apps we can. We are working on many large projects that usually hit a snag and have to percolate or Apple adds API's that help us solve issues. We also update our apps frequently and listen to requests from users. We now actually have quite a following on the Mac App Store. We have worked our tails off and have burned out several times already. The Mac App Store is more about building up a library of code that help with other projects.
I think an easier way is to require them to play their own game for one week straight before submitting to Apple for review... I know there's a lot of games on the app store, that it are hard to stay interested in for 5 minutes...
You are missing the point entirely. I am not talking about enjoying/making a specific kind of game or genre of game. I am talking about inherent development skill and having an eye for what makes a good game despite the genre it fits into. That is not subjective. I do not enjoy Angry Birds but the game is smooth, has great assets, has extremely really good sound and music, doesn't crash, etc. same with Doodle Jump which was brought up before. Yeah, it's kind of boring after a while but the game is made well. It feels smooth, looks sharp, and has a good user experience whether or not you actually like this gameplay. The game design itself is only one aspect of the whole picture. Making a good game that has a chance of reaching the top 100 requires an eye for quality in ALL aspects (including sound design, music, performance, stability, graphic design, theme, etc). If you don't have the talent to fulfill one of those areas you need to hire someone who does. What I am talking about has absolutely nothing to do with game preferences or little boys and their uncles . This is a fact: if you don't understand the importance of performance and stability or how to achieve this goals, don't make software. The good news is nobody inherently knows these things -- you gotta learn! Educate yourself! In my opinion it is simply impossible to touch on all of these aspects in under 6 months of development time, unless you and your team are comprised of veterans and simply have the experience.
I think also, some companies put out a good game with attractive graphics that are well polished but there is zero depth to the game. There's lots of endless games like this. I have a hard time playing them for more than 5 minutes. My idea of a good game is one that is deceptively easy to pick up and play but introduces new skills and mechanics over time and before you know it, you're totally hooked and the gameplay is deep. I'd like to respond to Genie52's "gift from uncle" analogy. I feel that analogy is pretty on the mark, but I think it could be expanded a bit. The Uncle in your story has 3 options in my opinion. 1. Buy random but quality gift with the slight chance that nephew might like it. 2. Spend the same money at the dollar store and get 30 crappy gifts. Hope that one is to his liking. 3. Do research before buying. Call the mom or relatives. See what the kid is really into before buying a quality gift. The difference between 1 and 3 is research and knowledge. If the nephew was into Star Wars and the Uncle was into Star Wars, there's a pretty good chance of getting a good gift. I play iOS games constantly, I scour the market for not just the most popular, but the best made games. I'm hoping my research and devotion for what I feel makes a good game will transfer to the people buying my games. I myself do not buy quickie dollar store variety games.
None of those things have anything to do with it. For example Organ Trail was a Kickstarter project and that game's pretty good. Pocket Planes is original and freemuim, and really great. Cloning is a problem, but doesn't have to be if developers at least put their own spin on a title rather than just duplicating features. I think a big problem is the race towards $0.99. As Rubicon said up above, people complaining about their title costing 2.99 is absolutely ridiculous! Both GLWG and GBWG are really quite good and well worth 4.99. The problem is all the 8-13 year olds who demand shitty games priced at 0.99 and the developers who try and pander to them or scam them into buying their apps (and spending their parents money) by stealing assets, throwing them into whatever the easiest to use SDK is at the time (GameShitter 2.0, whatever) and tossing it up on the App Store with no intention of actually making a good game in the first place. Sorry, that sort of turned into a rant at the end...
Just wanted to say: I'm glad I came back to this thread. I was disgusted with some of the comments (especially the "reskin and submit, repeat until you have enough suckers buying 10 copies of the same game" mindset a few pages back). Reskining is done from beta tester feedback. What any dev doing that is essentially doing is making people pay to be his beta testers. I'd rather put out one mild-financial success that I'm proud of than 10 copies of the same thing that should never have been released. Sanuku said it best. When I'm considering ideas I think to myself "Would I pay any price (even *gasp* $9.99!) and play this for a long time." If it's no, I don't pitch it to the rest of my team.
Spot on. I'm not wild about cloning but no idea is 100% original. My game is a tower defense game so I guess its a clone of sorts but I'm still adding a unique graphic perspective with height and a few things that just haven't been done before so I'm hoping it will stand out from the pack. Stealing assets is just garbage though. Can't believe anybody would do that. There's some really unscrupulous developers out there.
