How You Have Destroyed The Mobile Market

I found an interesting article on my lunch break (yes I did actually work on my game some too!!!).

It is from a developer of a mobile game and reading it I found myself thinking "now that is just what I have been saying for the past two years". lol

Give it a read and feel free to post your thoughts.

Of course, I couldn't care any less about the mobile market and I am not even in this to make money but still this has been my concern for a while now. I definitely don't want to see it happen to Steam and the rest of the desktop marketplaces.

And in case you are wondering why I care if I am not trying to make money in game dev... it's because I am one of those weirdos who has been into gaming for a long time and always thought it was a cool industry especially on the Indie side (and of course I mean lone developer or tiny teams when I say Indie) where a talented person could make a living or at least a part-time income doing something they love.

That's how it was. How it should be. But if things keep going the way they are it won't be that way for long.

Anyway, that's all I'll say. Read when you have a chance if you have any desire to then feel free to share your opinions.

 

Pretty accurately described how I feel about the market.

 

Peasantry.

 

The part about users see a $5 price close the app and go back to sipping their lattes is probably more accurately described as users see a $5 price tag, exit the game and move on to one of the thousands of others.

It is a good example how there simply being so many cheap and free games is a major problem. Eventually why would any person ever buy a game unless you are one of the oddballs like myself who actually wants to support and show appreciation for the efforts of the developer? I mean that is becoming literally the only reason to spend money. You can spend all day every day playing games for free as it is now.

 

sadly though, one article written by a dev, read by devs wont fix the market.

The market is pretty much f***** from here on out. There is no going back now.

 

Thankfully, this won't be true forever. Things go in cycles. It'll crash. Just be ready to jump in at the right time... whenever that will be.

 

This guy is essentially saying "in order for our business to be profitable, YOU must change the world for us."

That's not how it works, as far as I know.
The world is what it is, right now. There are opportunities somewhere. The world will not change to someone's liking, so the only real choice is to adapt to the current situation. If they have hard time on mobile platform, they should seek something that is more profitable.

If someone prefers to sip coffee instead of buying their game, it means they find cup of coffee more valuable.

 

Reading that was like reading back some of my forum posts over the past few weeks. I think the one thing he said that I've never mentioned, but has always annoyed me, is the holding hostage of reviews. His example was that they'll give you a one star review and promise to "fix" it if you make the game for free. I don't check my reviews anymore unless I'm preparing ideas for an update, because that's just a needless emotional roller coaster. So I don't think it's ever happened to me. But I've browsed a lot of mobile games to judge the market and I see it constantly. It's hardly ever for something that might be considered legitimate. I could deal with something like "This would be a five star game if there were more levels for the price." For obvious reasons, that doesn't apply to often for mobile, and people aren't making those statements anyhow. It's more like "1 star. Make the character green and I'll give it 5 stars." It leaves you thinking, what kind of self important jackwagon thinks his opinion is that valuable? A polite request might get the change you want from me, threats, ransoms, and insults never will. I don't read reviews, but that nastiness is rather common in emails from customers. Especially Android users. Nasty bunch those.

The article, and my agreement with it, is also why the crap on Steam annoys me so much. Some developers say that it shouldn't bother me because if I can make a better game I'll be fine. History doesn't support that conclusion. Reading through the comments several users complained that they got burnt by spending $0.99 on a games so much they won't do it anymore. Consumer confidence is vital to any industry and crappy games trying to charge $10 on Steam for something they should be giving away on Itch.io is destroying that. Of course, inevitably, those games lower their Steam prices to levels that even Apple and Google wouldn't allow. Digital Homicide games are like $0.25 or something crazy like that now.

I agree with @anselmo.fresquez though. Eventually the whole house of cards will collapse upon itself and those of us who have historically earned a living doing it can get to work rebuilding it. I'm not sure it's going to happen soon enough though, or the the rebuilding process will be quick enough.

 

Also, it isn't just mobile. PC is affected, people are even publishing on Wii. Even major producers are having troubles.

 

Think that's optimistic ignorance.

This isn't fashion ;

 

Yeah @anselmo.fresquez that is the important thing. Mobile just represents the most obvious marketplace. And we can count on all of these developers that are investing money and time on mobile and failing to recoup their investment to move to other platforms.

And then the same things will happen there as well. And the reason is simple IMO. There are too many people making games and trying to make money from them. So one of the first things they will do on Steam or wherever is to start trying to undercut each others prices. What was $20 devs will start selling for $15. $15 will be challenged with $10 and so on. Until ultimately Steam will be filled with games for a buck or 50 cents and still gamers will complain and want them for free.

 

That's just regular ignorance.

Everything goes in cycles. Politics, art, economics, social structures. Ever heard the expression "history repeats itself"? Humans haven't changed. Whether you agree is not relevant.

 

What I don't understand (other than I guess they are making money and have a very shortsighted view not caring about tomorrow) is why these platforms don't act.

The whole problem comes from so many people releasing games. It is not strictly a problem of too many people releasing games but that is the driver of the problem. The quantity causes its own issues but the actual problem is the sheer amount of games available, the amount of competition causes developers to repeatedly lower the game prices. The Race To The Bottom.

So all the mobile app stores, Steam and other marketplaces have to do is set a minimum price. Like on mobile all of the free games cost at least $1.99 period. For desktop all of the paid games cost at least $10 period.

That is the way to get devs to compete on terms of gameplay, replayability and so forth. You know... the important things. lol Take price competition and undercutting out of the equation entirely.

Such a simple thing yet they stand idly by seemingly oblivious to what is happening.

 

Again, it doesn't hurt the app stores to have more people visiting and downloading free games, while being exposed to ads.

It also doesn't hurt the top grossing games, which are the primary reason the stores exist anyway.

The little free games just add value to their product. And without them having to create the content. And they charge you to publish. You pay them to help them make money.

 

No, game dev is getting easier year by year. This will just continue to propagate the problem. While big companies are milking consumers this wont change. I cant even imagine a realistic way to stop the problem.

Not everything runs in cycles.

 

Yawn. Another developer claiming they failed because they didn't do their research properly. It's that guy with a 12 month pro subscription who should have been on personal all over again.

The mobile market is hardly destroyed.
Last I checked it was almost the same size revenue wise as the traditional game space. And it's still growing at a rapid pace. There is no impending mobile collapse.

The article basically amounts to "We made a PC game, with a PC marketing strategy, and a PC business model. We launched it on mobile and it failed".

If still amazes me that so many otherwise competent developers don't seem to get this idea. Mobile devices are not little PCs. And treating them as such will lead to failure.

 

Heh, that's not the impression apple are trying to push on people! They were saying the end of the desktop pc is nigh, but that's both arrogant and ignorant... Id like to see the developers at apple writing the next OSX on ipads. yeah nah.

 

Everything is getting easier and easier. Always has been. Everything is part of a cycle. For example, whenever somebody makes a bunch of money someplace a ton of people come flooding in. This reduces everybody's chances of hitting it big. Smart people with some resources come up with a business model based on profiting from the craze and make money hand over fist. Realizing that the craze is making them rich, they promote the craze and overstate the rewards, create folk heroes out of success stories and sell you on the virtues of taking risks and making it big. Eventually people catch on and the craze dies.

The craze is still in full swing.

It will never go back to the insane levels of Angry Birds style success. But it can go back to the point where a reasonably good developer can make a reasonable amount of money from a reasonably good game.

I don't know how long this will take, though. 5? 7 years? Hard to say now.

Often, people think that because things have been a certain way "as long as they know of" they think it has always been that way and will always be that way. Not true. Things change, big things, all of the time. Things you thought would be the same forever just change overnight.

This whole indie game craze could keep up a while, but then again it could die in 2 years.

 

Im not convinced tbh.

It only takes one success story to keep it going.

I dont think game dev is a craze...

 

While I see your point, I don't think current situation qualifies as craze. It is not dot com bubble or USA housing market bubble.

What you have is what people always wanted. Gamedev tools accessible to everyone, for "FREE!*".

 

Game dev isn't, but this whole "I am going to be an indie game dev and be rich!" thing absolutely is. It's analagous to the hipster movement. It's like stocking caps and thick framed glasses. A last hurrah of a generation that isn't ready to accept that they need to grow up and get real, sucky jobs to pay real bills. People have begun to see it's not all roses. I wouldn't worry.

 

There's that word again.

 

It ain't a craze. It is the usual thing (you'd need the data to prove it is a craze).

Those people always existed. "I'm gonna move into a big city and become a STAR!", for example. They say that, they try that, then they fail.

There's always this type of people who want an "escape" from their current life, and wish for a miracle. Sometimes they work for that miracle, and sometimes hard. The problem here is - there are no miracles.

 

It definitely seems like we are hearing more and more stories of failures than ever before.

Yes a lot of people are just writing them all off as poor choices and so forth but I think that is easy to do really. I definitely believe there is always a reason for success or failure even if it is a number of things completely beyond our control. Timing. Saturation. Whatever.

I just think it should be simple common sense that you cannot have "everyone" making & releasing games and expect it to remain something that is a good way to make money. Games are not some magical thing (although part of me hates to say that). In the end they are just another product.

As more and more people make them, no matter how good they are, the value of games on a whole have less perceived value. That is just the way it is. And particularly so when developers try to compete by continually lowering prices until finally they are struggling to give the products away for free.

It's almost like people are so caught up in this thing and want to believe in it so much they just refuse to actually think about it. To honestly look at the reality of it all.

If I was a conspiracy theorist I'd almost think this was the plan of Unity, the app stores and others all along. To turn games into nothing more than a way to deliver advertisers messages to end users. To do that most effectively all of the Indie games would need to be free. Of course, that is only if I was a conspiracy theorist.

Anyway, time for me to get back to making my Christmas game. I have almost two dozen people looking forward to playing it.

 

no, while there is money involved (lol ironic much...) the 'craze' wont stop... You cant compare it to a trend like being a hipster... there's no money in being a douchebag (er, I mean hipster).

In fact, I expect it to get worse. Computers run society, they are talking about introducing computer programming as a core subject in schools. That will mean the entire next generation of kids will be able to code if they want, and while the money carrot dangles...

 

...and while the money carrot dangles, asset creators and actually skilled programmers will be in high demand in the ocean of script kiddies.

 

maybe... I need to release some assets. I suspect theres a lot more money to be made of other peoples dream of being the next flappy bird.

 

@neginfinity

I've heard from some of the shovel sellers even that gold rush is fading away now.

@JamesLeeNZ

You've been doing this a while, what's changed from a decade ago? Instead of not being able to get published anywhere, now you can get published everywhere and nobody cares. It's the same **** with a slight addendum.

 

I would like to add onto this...I haven't been with Unity for very long only 7 months or so, but I have been in game development for a while now. While being with Unity and an "Observer" to watch my competition, the past few months have been mostly filled with "failure" attempts and people freaking out on their blog posts about it like the OP posted. After analyzing the first few games that were made over years and seeing the poor souls get very few downloads, they had very polished games and pretty interesting stuff and it truly left me in shock on why people wouldn't but their game.

A few months passed, and lately this has been happening a lot with people posting their failure attempts...and I have been trying to figure out the common theme with them all. It finally occurred to me that they all been space / space shooter / ball physics type game. Seriously they all been these type of games, and a light bulb finally hit in my head!

If a new person would to come into Unity now, the community would force them to make small crappy game which is our first problem. Next they would go over to watch tutorials and all the tutorials are mostly only about space / space shooter / ball physics game. It would make sense people are flooding the market with these type of games, and people are getting sick of the theme all in general. How do you expect to compete with a market where the easiest thing to make and widely document is only space / space shooter / ball physics type games. People are lazy and they will go the easiest route to make money.

 

Another side of this problem is the fact games take so darn long to make, and so costly.

Because for everything you do, you're not going to get it right the first time, often not even the second or third. Like when you want to try a new cooking recipe, it may take several tries. Problem is, if you burn a pie, there's always tomorrow. But if your game doesn't give you the results you wanted, it's quite a hit to take.

We can't reason with the mobile market anyway, it's too big. If it's cruel, dumb and unfair... then it's cruel, dumb and unfair. I say there's always room to adapt. See what went wrong with the first "pie", fix that in the next iteration. This is not an easier path or a shortcut, it's only the best compromise between doing what you want, and dealing with black magic that is pleasing a market.

 

That's only a problem if people release their first game commercially. That isn't a thing you should do. No other industry does it. People usually learn their craft before they start charging for it.

 

This.

People often refer to the golden days of indie on mobile. Not sure exactly when they think that ever happened. From the beginning, it was select developers who where ahead of the curve, then came the experienced developers/studios who had the foresight to pivot and do well. But in all these cases, most of the early successes were from experienced developers/studios. There are always a few exceptions where new devs may get a hit. But there was really never a point where noob indies where succeeding in droves. The platform is growing and has lots of potential to succeed with a good game. Its never been a case of just putting in the hours and somehow getting paid for it. It's not digging ditches or flipping burgers.

 

You are telling me this, but why is the market flooded with them? The next step the community gives, is you should publish something as soon as possible to learn how to do it properly...expect people to publish their first game.

 

Man ... I hardly got into that article before I was longing for a pumpkin spice latte.

 

There is a difference between putting a game out, and putting a game out commercially. If you are to grow as a game developer, you need people to play your game. That doesn't mean you need to charge for your game. Think of it like cooking. If you are learning to cook, some brave soul has to try your first dish. In fact, several brave souls should try your dish, to account for differences in taste. Those poor souls should be your family/friends, or culinary school peers. They should not, under any circumstances, be customers of a restaurant.

 

I think this community, for the most part, *gets* it. I think a growing portion of developers are hitting an invisible wall that simply didn't used to be quite so tall.

@GarBenjamin - It isn't a conspiracy that created the current situation, but a combination of seemingly unrelated and diverse factors. We have covered it over and over. Perhaps someone can put it succintly one day, but for now we just ramble on. Nobody made this on purpose, seeing the whole big picture. This is just what happens. Look at the people who try out for American Idol. Same thing.

I am saddened that my ability to develop a game reached this level at the worst possible time. But, I know it will change in time.

In the meantime, you can still release games. But this whole methodology of releasing a slew of minimum viable products and leveraging social media to create a loyal following doesn't work when everybody else is doing the same thing. We are all doing the same things, without being aware of the damage it is doing. That's going to have to stop.

But mass movements in people don't heed warning signs. They go right off the cliff.

 

Just read the article, and would summarize it like this: "Our game didn't do well, and it is the player's fault."

Not a single comment about the game, what they would have done different, analyzing why they had limited downloads or how they could have improved marketing or the game. Shifting blame and fault instead of looking to improve will only ensure that their future endeavors will fail as well.

Seriously, which is more practical, A) improve your game to make it more desirable to players or B) call for change in markets/culture/society? Let's be honest, they were only able to sell ~10k copies, people who youtube about a scrapbooking have the ear of a larger audience. The market is massive and growing. More and different people are spending more money on games every day. If they are not spending money on your game, the problem and solution should be pretty self-evident.

 

I agree, I think most folks here see the reality of big picture and the challenge they face. But that wall has always been there, optimism and lack of experience makes it hard to see.

 

Yep. I believe this is just part of being in a creative field. Believing in your ideas is what drives you. As such, most people do see the warning signs but assume they don't apply to them, because they are different and special. Which, if that is truly the case, ignoring them is a good thing. But for the rest... well...

 

I honestly think it is good to have all those negative articles about games development and that there is no more money lying around. It will shave off a big amount of people, who were into games development only for the money and launched tons of half arsed shovelware.
Not that I blame them, for doing so. It was a opportunity to make a quick buck. Now these times are over and naturally some people start to publicly complaining how S***ty everything is. So they search for new opportunities to make money the easy way. That's what happens with Steam right now (Assetflip anyone?)

 

My point exactly. Game dev has always given its prizes to those that are experienced, or to prodigies. Its never rewarded newbies in the field. The only difference today is the failures are more public.

 

Yeah we could use another bust so that people go do something else. Anyway that game the UI looks kind of cheap its not bad its just not good enough (to stand out from the crowd).

 

It'd be awesome to see one of the people (anybody) who believes it's all down to the quality of the game make a game and sell say 200k copies or get 5 million free downloads on mobile.

If a person really believes it is that straightforward... just make a game with the quality you feel is needed to achieve that, release and then we can see what happens. I have a feeling many of these people griping about lack of sales and downloads already spent a lot of time on making the game a high quality product. In several of the recent cases the games have excellent reviews and high ratings. In fact, no mention is even made of poor quality or the game being bad in any way that I can recall.

That being said... I think a lot of people wouldn't see this (or some of the other) cases as a failure if they only look at the money they actually did make and not consider the time and number of people involved and so forth.

I think these devs are complaining because they are trying to do this full-time for a living instead of doing it to make some extra money to supplement their day jobs and that's where it all falls apart. They made a very good game, great reviews (other than people trying to force them to make it free) and a lot of good coverage it seems (found a small piece on IGN and other sites and a good number of video reviews for it). What I am getting at is this isn't like someone knocked out Flappy Bird clone in a week and threw it out there.

 

10 years ago you had to create games in c++/c. There was little in the way of other languages suitable for creating games.

You had to be a competent developer to even consider it. Now you can be an incompetent JS developer and still make a game. You dont need to understand the ins/outs of what you are doing.

I think Unity has been part of the problem (but I dont blame Unity even slightly, because without Unity I probably wouldnt be making games either).

If you make something accessible to everyone, then some common dude makes something that generates millions of dollars, you are going to get people jumping on board the metaphorical 'cash train'.

I wanted to be a game dev from the age of 12-ish when I got into computers and starting gaming. Back then you had to be top of programming heap to be a game dev. Now game devs are one of the most underpaid form of developers, which is pretty sad.

 

That's not quite right, did you know that Unity is a decade old? Also XNA followed suit like a year after. Even before that Darkbasic came out around the year 2000? There were plenty of pre-made frameworks back even then.. So it wasn't quite you had to make games in C++ / C..

Although, I agree with the premise I remember it being far more difficult and I actually did a lot of my games development in C++ with GL..

 

well, yeah... the years have slipped by (older you get the fastest they seem to go)... but you got what I was saying.

 

Generally, I pretty much agree with this sentiment.

However:

I would agree this is technically accurate, but in context, I think it is more of a "righting" of things. I am from the first generation of computer geeks. As such, in my teens I could make mad monies doing things that now everyone can do. My sister did really well because she could create formulas in Excel, which was crazy voodoo to folks in the prior generation.

Much like photography and other segments, the tech improvements enabled late entrants to compete directly with seasoned professionals. Photographers used to be very expensive, now I can get the same for a few bucks on a stock site or with my iPhone. Mid and low range photogs died out. But top photographers still make bank, and can even to better because that level is more narrow.

Game development is going through much the same type of changes. Only a few years back a mediocre game developer/artist could make good money simply because there were too few. Now there are many more, so competition at that level has spread the earnings out quite. But with the maturation of the industry, and the bigger companies needing to stay out on the bleeding edge, the top players make very good money, more than similar fields because of the dynamic nature of the tech. Indeed, because the industry is expanding, it is difficult to find enough true masters for many companies. We are a small studio, ~120 staff across three teams. At any given point we are usually about 20 people short. If you look at most of the big studios, you will see huge lists of open positions. IIRC, the recruiters in our studio were vetting nearly a hundred applications a day. (less now because of time of year). It is becoming harder to find the qualified staff as the industry grows. The broader base influx of amateur/indie developers is mostly too general/limited skills. The new crop of "rockstars" are difficult to recruit, because of there are so many startups paying astronomical salaries, riding out investors. And younger developers are in a position to take advantage of that. (big bucks for a short time, until the company fails, and then move to the next).

 

LOL, people publishing games aren't going nowhere when it's getting easier to make a game. Hobby or not it's essentially free to publish a game and free to make a game, so much so I'm more impressed by a finished book or album by a unknown amateur author or musical act then an unknown game from an unknown game author. Well there must be thousands of movies, books, and songs about those 'starving artists' in other fields going back centuries so why would making games be different? Even the wall art pictures used for homes and businesses is dominated by big industry rather than individual artists and for hefty profits too because of the 'high class chic' associated with art.

 

I checked the game out. It looks kind of pretty. But that's about all the game has to offer. The game play is essentially an idle game of the style of cookie cutter or adventure capitalist. You click a few upgrades. You wait for them to be built. You click a few more upgrades. You wait. And then you uninstall the game and go back to playing shooty skies.

The designers haven't even gone to the effort of implementing a tutorial to teach players what is happening. I learned how to play by hitting random buttons and observing the effect.

They haven't paid attention to basic design principles like paradox of choice. One of the first screens the game presents you with is a screen that asks you to assign resources. There are a bunch of different resources, and no obvious reason why I would want to assign anything anywhere. (But don't worry, this assignment appears to have no effect on the game play).

Then there is the research menu. You assign your scientists (another choice with no apparent reason or consequences). Then the game randomly assigns you technologies.

The failure of this game has nothing to do with the market. Its simply a low quality game. If anything the markets have done the right thing by letting it be buried and letting the developers go bust.

TL;DR - If you can't convince someone to play the game for free, don't expect people to pay for it.

 

You will always have the "believe in unicorns" people virtually guaranteeing that if you do a great job, you will find huge success.

And then you will find countless people who did a great job, did well enough... but no riches and fame and glory.

And the unicorn believers will come up with a million reasons why none of those games were good enough, almost none of them valid.

Don't believe in unicorns, is what I am saying.