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Yep. If you'd have just made it in UIKit you'd be raking in the dough right now.

 

What value do you provide to the customer?

ie: why would they not just buy Poker by Zynga as opposed to your game?

You cannot expect to be profitable without providing value to the customer :X

 

Maybe they win special decks with different art on them. maybe a nudie deck too.

 

How is it a myth that indies make money with Unity when you're the one who was putting out a $5 poker game on iOS? Poker games are a dime a dozen on iOS and for $1 or $2 more than that I could have bought Infinity Blade 1 or 2, respectively? Even with the price drop, it's just a poker game and you're trying to compete in a super-saturated part of the market.

 

I'm saying that you entered the market at the same price as a AAA mobile title, which is kiiinda like releasing an Xbox poker game for $60 and putting it on the shelf next to Call of Duty, which costs $65. You can say all you want about your advanced poker AI but, uh... the consumer doesn't really care, especially the average consumer. The average consumer wants something they can see and feel right away. They want an immediate hook because first impressions last a lifetime.

 

The $1.99 business model is the iOS business model, period. There are many $0.99 and $1.99 games on the app store not because it sends a message, but because that's typically the upper limit of what people are willing to pay for a game unless it really "wows" them. The only message you send by charging more than that when your key selling point is "advanced AI" is "I probably didn't think this all the way through.

 

That's way too much for a poker game, go for 1$ or at best a cash shop.

 

I've never played any single-player mobile poker games, but I don't think price is the most important issue here. As a former avid online poker player, I'm totally put off this game by its presentation (at least the web demo's one). Weird camera angles, camera jumps too much and distracts from action, i only see either my hand or flop, colors are too bright, 4-max table. For example, here is Full Tilt (R.I.P) mobile multiplayer client from when they weren't killed off by government:



On the same view you can see your cards, flop, pot, everyone's actions, everyone's stack. Simple interface, soft colors, 6-max table and no distractions from actual gameplay.

I like the AI and idea of private games, but emulating real-life casino view is very distracting. I'd like to play some easily organized private games, but not if it looks like that. For attracting casual players, I'd also suggest stating explicitly what combination player is holding at each action.

TL;DR: Too confusing for casuals, too limited for pros.

 

Is it going to look like your web demo? Because that web demo was very unpolished.

 

You're coming off as someone trying to guilt the community into giving you money. "If you don't pay me, I'll leave and your engine is to blame." That's not the best approach.

I checked out your game, and its far from being ready for a commercial release. Maybe it functions the way you'd like, but the appearance and interface needs some serious polish.

Add to this that, as mentioned, you've entered into a saturated market with hundreds of well polished titles, its going to be tough to pull in a profit with even a great looking game.

As to your broad statement of indies not making a profit with Unity, you couldn't be further from the truth. Tons of indie developers are making their living from Unity (myself included). I'm sorry that your game isn't selling, but instead of blaming Unity and getting angry at us, try to figure out what you're doing wrong, then try again.

And don't try to convince us (or your customers) as to why they're wrong, and that they should like your game anyway (for X reason or Y reason). In the end, they don't like it, no matter how much you tell them they should. Ask them for feedback and work with them.

It sounds like you have a good handle on AI programming, which is a strong skill to have. Good luck with your future projects.

 

Your graphics aren't high end, that's true. They're also not medium end. They are very, very low end. From a graphics standpoint I could probably teach myself how to use a 3D program to make the assets and make better menus in less than a month.

 

Calm down. First, no one said they could do better or make the game faster. We're offering advice.

You need to understand that the customers won't care how much (or little) time you put into this. And, if you only put a month into making this game, then kudos to you. Now take another month to fine tune it, test the interface with different users and replace those buttons with something a bit more suited to the game.

 

There are loads of middleware GUI engines with mobile compatibility that require a very low investment cost, such as NGUI. The engine also gives you the option of making your own GUI rather than using the built in one.

 

You can make a game in an afternoon with Unity, depending on its complexity. And speed has nothing to do with the quality of your end product, effort does. Effort, attention to detail, polish, selling the product, all those things. It doesn't matter if your game took a week or a year if the game itself doesn't present itself well.

No it doesn't, and I'm not the only one saying that. Your entire UI is clunky and looks like it belongs in a prototype version of the game, not the release.

 

I'm looking at the Google Play version and your web demo, which is full of semi-transparent grey buttons with no personality and poor alignment. You talk about all the polish you put into the game but I guess I'll just have to ask you: Where was this polish applied? Because it doesn't appear to be the presentation.

 

There are some really awkward problems..

First, community cards are shown for literally a quarter of a second. It takes real effort to memorize the community cards before they're offscreen.

Second, I had a great hand and had caused your AI to bet up considerably, so I went "All In" except it told me I couldn't, and then auto-folded. I understand house rules that you can't go all in or whatever; i've played like that before, but auto-folding? D:

Third, you keep saying you spent time on the GUI but that's default GUI right there. I'm not sure how you could have possibly "struggled" to make it work.

 

So one of your main selling points is your advanced AI, an AI that is so advanced that it's confused by someone going all in for more than $350... and you fixed it by not allowing a player to go all in.

Yup it's definitely Unity that is broken here *rolls eyes*

 

I'm not complaining about not being able to go all-in. That's fine. Plenty of real poker games prevent huge bets and all-in tomfoolery. The problem was that it AUTO-FOLDS you in response. It doesn't say "hey player, you're trying to break the rules, please reconsider your bet." It straight up folds your hand for you! That's clearly NOT the intention of the player. The better thing would be to set it to the highest bet possible. This is what many online poker places do.

 

...first you complain about the engine being too slow, then you say you would have written a whole engine yourself. That would have taken forever...besides, Unity actually IS the fastest, most intuitive, indie-friendly game engine out there from what I've experienced. Don't take out your frustration on the community please...you honestly sound like you're trying to make us all feel guilty because your game's not a great success. Also, no, the GUI does not look fine. You didn't even bother buying/creating a better GUI skin than the standard Unity built-in one...? Why?? It doesn't look good or professional, what you need is a GUI that wasn't made by Unity themselves (no offense UT ).

 

Yes. 5 lines of code.

http://unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=ScaledRect

 

If the game is not selling, you might try packaging your poker AI and selling it in the Asset Store.. sounds like a nice AI

 

Okay, seriously? This "it's everyone's fault but my own!" thing needs to stop. Now. It's incredibly petty and childish and you're just making yourself look bad. It's very easy to use ScaledRect and I've used it myself to rough out menu elements much like the ones you're presenting. You may think what you're doing is more complicated but it's very likely you've just overcomplicated your own problems to shift the blame, as you have done several times already.

 

You should at least switch the timescale to something like 0.1 when it switches to the camera that shows the public cards for several seconds, then switches back to full speed when it switches to the other angle.

By default it just blips/flickers back and forth at each other player's turn. A simple timescale toggle would make it much much better.

Also the camera angle from the corner of the table could be higher and pointed down at the center of the table more, so you can see your hand and the public cards or something.

 

I did it in a real game. Made sure that GUI always stays in the center of the screen, no matter what the window size (had problems with webplayer). I did it in a day. With no previous GUI experience. It's not that time consuming.

Then make a transparent GUI of your own...?!? It's not that hard...and it'll improve the presentation of the game by at least a factor of two

 

Oh, my bad. That shouldn't be too much more difficult...but I haven't done that yet, so I'll take your word for it

 

It's not difficult at all. You can just set position and scale to be percentages by grabbing the current resolution. It's like two extra lines of code.

 

That's what I thought...that's even easier than what I did.

 

A poor tradesman blames his tools. Unity is plenty quick enough, you just need to take the time to learn to use it rather than looking for something to blame.

A few points:
- "Building a better mouse trap" (Google it) has never made a successful business. People won't buy your product just because it's technically superior to something they're familiar with.
- You seem very focussed on what you want (big cards, 3D interface, advanced AI, and so on), but if you want something to sell then you need to find out what your audience wants and deliver that, even if it goes against your personal desires. If you want to build things the way you want, awesome, but recognise that that's a hobby, not a business.
- The value of your product is not based on how much effort or time you put into it, it's based on how much your market is willing to pay for it.
- Don't get defensive about user feedback, and take it on board. If you have to tell people that "Honestly the GUI looks fine" then perhaps the GUI is something that needs work? Whether it looks fine or not is not up to you, it's up to the people you want to pay for your app.

 

Uhhh... games get changed post-release according to reception all the time. Mass Effect 3 is doing so right now. Fallout 3 did it. League of Legends and World of Warcraft are continually updated to bring forward interface and balance changes. Design is not an immutable law and if you think it is nobody will ever buy your poker game over any other poker game on the market.

 

And you're never going to receive any chunk of revenue until you realise that there's a bunch of people all telling you the exact same things while you dig your heels in and say "no, you're wrong!"

 

I think this pretty much wraps things up.

You don't believe your game needs improvement, and that if the customers don't like something, then that's fine, that's on them. Its a bit rigid for a small developer, but whatever, its your choice.

If you think its a polished and finished product, then you believe it will do fine, providing profit on its own merit.

Though previously, you said:

So in the end, either your game will make money or Unity sucks. (Because your game is perfect the way it is, regardless of what others say.) And if it doesn't make money, you want us to donate, so you can keep working on it.

I truly do wish you the best of luck with your game.

 

I'm not making demands, I'm telling you I think you're dealing with feedback in a significantly less than optimal manner. People have criticised your GUI, and you've turned around and said it's good enough, rather than asking what they don't like about it. It doesn't bother me one way or the other how you deal with it, because the success or failure of your game is not my problem. But I do like sharing some of my experience because a positive community is good for everyone.

Also, this whole concept of a "fair amount of work" based on "the amount of money I'm asking" is totally and utterly irrelevant. "Fair" doesn't mean anything in a marketplace. People don't pay what is "fair", they pay what they think it's worth, and that perceived value has zero correlation with how much time or effort you spent. I'm not having a whinge and saying you're not working hard enough or that you're charging too much. I'm just pointing out the reality that you've got to do what you've got to do to make your game sell, and "fair" doesn't enter into that equation.

Personally I'm finding it hard to see how one can come up with a "fair" price for an individual sale of a game, anyway. Pricing should be based on what will get you the most income. Which is more "fair" - 100,000 sales at $1 each is better for you than 10,000 sales at $5? I'd argue the former, since more people get to play your game cheaper and you get more money - it's a win-win. But you seem to be arguing that individual unit price should be higher based on some notion of "fairness" in a market that just outright doesn't support it...

By the way, I've been using Unity commercially and making money out of it for around 4 years now.

 

Good luck selling your game when there's like 3 free poker games in the recommended list next to it.

 

Do your customers see it this way?

I think it's great that you made an AI that you're obviously really proud of. The unfortunate fact, though, is that nobody else will ever see it the way you see it, and therefore won't value it as highly as you do.

I ask again, what is your idea of a "fair price" based on, and why do you think your users will be willing to pay that?

Yes and no. In this case, having a freely playable web browser version doesn't help you at all.

Where are your customers going to be when they make the purchase decision? Chances are they won't be at a PC with an installed web player and a link on the screen to your freebie version. Chances are they're on a bus or in their kitchen or at school just with their phone or iPad, looking at the App Store listing for poker games and seeing your paid one amongst a bunch of others which are most likely free. So does having a free web player version help their purchase decision? No, they're just going to press "Install" on one of the freebies. It's two taps away, your game isn't.

You're looking at everything from your point of view as a developer. You don't see the end product, you see the effort you put in. You don't see the user experience, you see what you're trying to give the user. They see a bunch of poker games with varying levels of presentation, you see a sweet AI.

If you want to sell something, what you see is completely irrelevant. What your customers see is everything.

Feedback is important because it helps you see your product as other people see it, and if you can try to see it the same way that'll help you get it out to more people.

 

Your description in the app store needs to be updated. It's incredibly bland.

 

Have you fleshed out the Strip Poker option?

 

I checked both store links and have to say that if you don't get much sales and really blame Unity or anything else than yourself for it you are working on the wrong industry.

First I didn't read all the previous replies (only some) but for first reactions the screenshots show large black bars on top and bottom. If its like that on the devices too then why on earth? Good screen space wasted when you could like have player stats at top and actions at bottom. Now its all cluttered over the game play area with buttons and labels not aligned right. Also some screenshots have massive watermark on top of them and it does not look good (and is against App Store rules for screenshots anyways).

I also tried the webplayer. The UI is very unintuitive. The buttons and labels look too similar and the coloring is just horrible in some places when they get mixed with background. You cant really blame unity GUI for that if you didn't bother to change the colors or any styles but just slapped everything with default settings(?).

Also when it comes to actual poker play... you get no good visual overview whats going.

For talking about polished game. From graphics and UI side to me this looks like something wrapped up together in a week for prototyping the AI. Graphics are blurred, UI is not aligned and is confusing and not even the lines on the table are straight.

If you cant master UI design or artistic work then don't blame it on the engine but hire some people to do the visual stuff and focus on the core aspects of the game like the AI (like you said).

 

To be quite frank, it looks bad. The GUI looks bad and customers cannot hope for any sort of support that will take the blame. There are a lot of faults but you are too stubborn to accept them. The immature way you're acting makes it seem almost is if you're trying your hardest to make people not play your game, as you don't care about the user at all. If you don't care about the user, you most certainly shouldn't care about his money. Good luck getting any money from the game or the Kickstarter. A bad looking game with an immature, stubborn, angry developer never ends well.

 

If your opinion on any kind of product is "I spent time of it, therefore people HAVE to buy it, and have to buy it at the price I say", then your game is essentially doomed from the start. I understand the tendency to feel strongly for any kind of product you've put a considerable amount of time in, but...

I really think you might want to take a bit of a step away from this, and genuinely try to understand why it isn't selling.

 

I don't play poker computer games. Dealing with Unity is poking and peeking enough in my opinion but i did enjoy two, no wait, three types of poker games:

#1 Klondike Deluxe AGA - runs with tons of sets
#2 I confess, Strip Poker games, when women in HAM mode were considered being hot - they don't make them anymore, those games.
#3 TTG's funny poker games like Texas Hold'Em, silly but somehow relaxing.

All three options covered my Poker needs. I gave your webplayer a try and i wouldn' blame you for making a poker game but the flow, the layout, and many other little things which could be improved to make it feeling more like a enjoyful game were missing for me. It's okay if it's you first game or you developed some sophisticated AI most people won't notice but beside of such invisible values there are a number of things which really could improved, like some others most probably already mentioned.

 

We're all for the truth. It's just unfortunate that you do not understand what the word "truth" means.

 

Nope, but independet of what others say there are a number os issues with the game, simple layout rules and a number of other things you could improve.

 

You do realize that you're talking with several people who have, in fact, completed games with Unity.

This was designed and built (including the models, GUI, AI, promo video and webpage) in 1 week.

 

I don't know how many work hours did you do during the 6 months but for average experienced developer that time frame and the result sounds like a small hobby project done randomly on Sundays. As work days it would have been less than a week even if not Unity used. I think you are underestimating peoples skills and overestimating yours?

If it was one of your first project then it might be ok but expecting a good pay out from it is just wrong. Poker is also one of the easiest things to do or start with since it has fixed rules and game play which you don't have to invest a lot more time to design or plan vs. new project with unique game play.

For people doing stuff in short time see Ludum Dare or some other coding session results that had less than weeks time frame. Some of them are well done and polished no matter how short the time frame was or what tools used.

 

Just because you put a lot of time into a project doesn't justify any price. There have been plenty of people who have spent years on their games and gave them away for free.

 

It doesn't take long at all to deploy to multiple platforms if you make use of the tools that help facilitate that. You've kinda routinely shown in this thread that you're putting the bare minimum amount of effort required to make something work and claiming that it was loads of work instead. You've blamed everything about Unity for your problems but never took any active steps to overcome the problems that you faced, many of which have had really simple solutions. In response to people criticizing your work, you've responded with "no, you're wrong, everything I did was perfect and it's everyone else's fault." Stop being childish.

 

But the 3d part isn't hard at all? all you need is few simple quads for the cards and some room accessories to give some environment feeling. You can setup these in few minutes. AI is not that hard either since there are several resources out there for poker AI and its not even engine related. If you want to make one yourself without any existing help then you cant really blame on the time used on it either.

Hmm wait what? This sounds that there is something wrong in your workflow if testing simple stuff inside editor takes a lot of time. And what do you mean it takes hours to convert a project? one of my projects is an iOS/Android/Mac app and switching between target platform takes only few minutes and I can still do changes just fine? It sounds like now you are either making up reasons or don't know how to use the software and/or how the pipeline works.

 

You've already said that you refuse to change the end product, though, and that 1.38 is the final version. How can you end up with a better end product if you don't change anything?

 

Already did it for my custom GUI system. These same 5 lines of code keep my GUI resolution independent.

I use these same 5 lines of code in the game I'm currently working on which has been under development for 1.5 years now and will be released next month.









I'd say it qualifies as a real game.