How You Have Destroyed The Mobile Market

Nintendo hasn't been participating in the graphics/violence arms race and they are still puttering around someplace.

I definitely think that a lot of developers are very confused about what games people want to play right now.

Which is too bad, because the people are telling us what they want every day.

 

Sorry just saw this come in, what's wrong with Nintendo graphics? It's still better than most indie games by a considerable amount.. Good graphics doesn't mean realistic, it also doesn't mean state of the art tech.. Good graphics are graphics that are good, well done.! Y'know not crap.!

 

Really?! Now I'm definitely interested in seeing what kind of feedback it got. I'll try to dig it out of the archives on my lunch break.

 

I know, but I was happy with game graphics in early Nintendo 64 days. Nintendo's hardware has been inferior to the other guys for a while now. But they just keep selling.

 

I hope it works out that way for PC games too. I'm thinking it will. What'd I'd like to do is pump out fairly crap graphics but well-animated with interesting and diverse interactions available. If a rock (smudge of gray) is visible the player can pick it up, throw it, build a little firepit for a proper campfire (with enough of them collected).

That kind of thing. Because what I really want to make is detailed/rich worlds I have to be able to churn out the graphics in minimal time. Probably lego style for 3D would work well. The cheaper gfx are to produce the more focus I can put on the game world. All screenshots and vids will have to focus on the overall epicness of the experience and the details of the "what you can do". I am thinking it is a sellable point to old school gamers anyway "in order to bring you the kind of detailed worlds you have been demanding I had to sacrifice the graphics quality".

 

@VNL Entertainment Games I found the threads you mentioned. Seems like for the most part people here completely overlooked the game and didn't even bother to comment on it. Two comments. And one said it "looks pretty good" and the other said it "looks very nice". I gotta say I am surprised. That is definitely not the norm for around here.

Anyway thanks again for dropping into the discussion. If I was into mobile gaming I'd give it a play. Are you planning anything for Steam?

 

Mobile graphics and quality is improving quickly, as are the expectations. If you take a look as some of the top contenders, they are quite impressive. Midcore is one of the biggest growing segments, and certainly the biggest in terms of revenue.

 

We live in a world now where from the kid next door to NASA Astronauts are making games 4fun in their free time.
Just accept that and move on; Quality has nothing to do with public acceptance anymore, it's now all about how you connect to people' feelings and desires, just like movie/music/whatever.

Indie devs could stop already, trying to go global when marketing budget is weak on your side; If you make something that people connect with, you succeed. Nobody knows your local culture and social rules better than you, you are part of it then use it in your favor to easier connect to the people and culture around you that you understand while global publishers won't go much farther than generic text/voice localization. I bet there's better chances of success for the unknown dev with that approach nowadays..

 

Wow... most of my favorite music is crap by today's standards, and my favorite games... it's the same.

 

I think it's important to make a distinction here. The games that @VNL Entertainment Games posted do not have bad graphics. They have good graphics. They have simplistic graphics, but that is something different than bad graphics. The lockers look like lockers, the tile floor looks like a tile floor. If you browse Steam Greenlight for a bit, you'll find that to be shockingly rare. Programmer art is notorious for not even making proper use of scale. Bricks are the size of televisions, the wood grain makes the character look like a giant, normal maps are way too intense (subtlety is never the strong suit of an amateur), the colors don't match, there's no coherent theme or art direction, and I could go on and on. Those things are what constitute bad graphics, not polygon count or texture detail.

Also, my hobbies before doing this for a living were coding games and creating 3d graphics for homemade VFX work. So I'm thrilled that we are now at I time that I can combine the two. I care about pushing graphics not because I think it is necessary to make money, but because it is also my hobby. So some people who care about graphics may see at as a pleasure rather than a necessity. I would go stir crazy if I couldn't split my time between the two fields. The burn out for each on its own would kill me.

 

If you look steam indie top sellers not too many have bad graphics
http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/Indie/#p=1&tab=TopSellers

 

Well you've summed up a key factor here, attention to detail. I'm unsure if "graphics" is too broad of a term, because it kind of ensues a lot of debate.

I think what I'm talking about simply put is effort, to make your game cohesive. This doesn't apply to graphics only either, it's only one proponent. Everything from the sound, controls all the way to visual style should feel fluent / well done..

It's a holistic collection of components merged to make a unique and engaging experience. If I'm buying a game ultimately I expect a certain level of quality across the board, graphics included.

 

In a nutshell the word "graphics" it is to broad a term to use when discussing the visual elements of video games.

When players discuss the graphics of a game they usually compare it to their actual game play experience more so than most of us would like to admit.

So as they play the game they are obviously looking at the games graphics and visual structure and they tend to subconsciously ask themselves some of the following questions as they play...

Do the graphics look like they go together? Are the graphics using the same color scheme? Are the graphics the proper scale to one another? Do the graphics look like they make sense or are logical? Does it feel like I am actual playing the game? Does it feel like the game is actual playing itself? Does it feel like it moves according to how I am controlling it? Does it feel like I have very little control at all?

If the answer to one or more of these types of questions is NO/YES, than that can have a HUGE impact on the overall value of the game to the market. Since the current and future market is driven by word of mouth more than ever; than game play must be top notch with graphics that compliment it correctly based on the genre you are developing for.

So having a excellent game play experience is the foundation of whether a game will sell with the graphical qualities assisting this trend.

Think about it. How well would The Witcher game had sold if the game play was the same BUT the graphics were no better than The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? This includes the environment and characters. I would say the game would not had sold as well as it did and in the end would have appealed to a very small a niche market.

Conversely, if it had game play experience equal to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, press "A" to attack; "B" to dodge but had The Witcher 2 graphical qualities, it may have grabbed our attention more but in the end the game play would not feel right with the graphical quality and it would have the same fate.

Bad, horrible game play experience with life like graphics across the board is simply not going to sell well in this day and age. Conversely a game with bad, horrible looking graphics, but incredible game play experience complete with a unique game play feature may grab our attention a little longer, but in the end it will not get much out of itself, perhaps a 2-1 or even a 3-1 advantage over the former but still not a money maker by any means.

So to sum up my point, an excellent game play experience is required first and it should be complimented well with correctly design graphics that help to provide proper cohesion for the overall sales of the game. So focus on the game play first, graphics second, while also being mindful of your genre your designing for.

The actual depth (or complexity) of the game play experience is a discussion for another time.

 

Sounds pretty on paper.

But in real life, where I am currently taking up residence indefinitely, your graphics are going to be limited by the talent you have at your disposal.

Picking a visual style you can handle well is important. If your artistic skill is limited to clip art, then that's what it is going to be. Trying something you can't do because you have made an executive decision as the CEO of your pretend studio what the art style should be will result in pretend success.

 

It always does. Every thing is simple, easy, pretty, good when it is on paper, the actual implementing it has always been the hard part.

And that's fine, I use the UNITY Asset Store for 99% of my graphical needs.

Than I would advise not developing a deep/complex game experience as coupling that with simple clip art will have a negative effect on the over all performance of such a game.

Simple graphics, tends to compliment simple game play. We may not wish to admit it but it has proven itself time and time again in the markets going back to the 80's.

Games that had simple graphics also tended to have simple game play. Games like Pac-Man, Centipede, Missile Command, etc.

Games that had more complex game play tended to have better graphics like Contra, Gauntlet, Ghosts and Goblins, etc.

Games that had simple graphics and complex game play or simple game play but better quality graphics tended to not do so well in the long run compared to the others like Jungle Hunt or Spy hunter respectfully. They grabbed our attention because they were new or different but it ran out of steam while Pac-Man went on to be a cult icon to gamer's.

 

It's a fascinating discussion simply because everyone has their own opinion. Their own reasoning and examples to back up their views.

And none of the views are completely wrong yet no single view can be completely right either (simply because if that was the case most of the other different views would be absolutely wrong).

So basically I think it comes back to the fact there are billions of people out there. A number most of us cannot wrap our brains around and maybe tens of millions of desktop gamers and I have no clue how many on mobile. I can't even wrap my head around millions of them. Dozens or hundreds yeah. And even with a half a dozen there will likely be a half dozen differen views. Everyone has their own views just like we do here. And for each of us our views are absolutely correct and almost certainly our views are correct for some percentage of the rest of the people out there as well.

Which means ultimately just do whatever in the hell you want to do because there will be x people out there who feel the same way as you do.

 

Nailed it, and I'd like to add my own on the mobile market...

After having negotiations with a well-known publisher recently, their review of my game for a potential publishing deal came down to comparing similar games analytics, retention and the spend/conversion ratio of the target market and the fact that the game is 'skill-based', they don't see it making any money, and thus they won't be publishing it.

The review wasn't about anything else really...

 

How have I destroyed the mobile market? I bought over $300 - $400 of apps from 2008 - 2009 and maybe $25 2010 - 2016.

 

You did it. It was all YOU.

 

And everyone is an expert. Except, not everyone has developed hit games. There's a lot of people here who are absolutely positive that they have it all figured out. But still, no games to prove it.

I like discussing flooded marketplaces and rambling on about general art/business stuff more than the average person. But none of us are masters of this and everybody sees through the facade.

 

Oh I don't have a clue what's going to happen when I get to release day, that's the reason I'm fussing over a mass majority of stuff I'm sure most people could care less about.

But it only takes simple observation in the target market I'm aiming for (PC / Console / RPG) to realise why they're successful. If someone can't fathom that bit out, firstly it'd be astounding (it ain't that difficult) secondly I'd be questioning if they should create games in a professional manor. It's like a professional / session musician being tone deaf... Not sure you'd have a long lasting career if any at all.

What ain't so easy to figure out, how do I make my game successful with very limited resources?

 

Well the thing is it even goes beyond "not everyone has developed hit games". The majority of Indies (I am sure there must be one or two exceptions... so far) who have developed hit games have not been able to duplicate it. And that says a lot in itself about our (as in people in general... everybody) ability to figure it out.

Actually I don't see the sense in even thinking about hit games to begin with. As far as I am concerned they are a fluke. Not something that is truly done by a plan (for the normal folks I mean not talking about AAA here they not relevant to Indie discussion as far as I can see). Lots of people have made great games and had (certainly seemingly) solid plans and not seen a hit.

I think @VNL Entertainment Games and many others like them have the right idea. I mean sure they might be trying to make a hit. But it seems more like they are just working this like any other business. Growing a business. Not relying on hits.

I know I am looking forward to dabbling in it. I still believe a person can just start out small with not so popular games and through time build up a business that way. It'll be a fun test if nothing else.

 

I think the 'minimum' baseline for indie success is having your game making enough to sustain you so you can work full time on your next game, and so on.

 

I disagree completely.

Which goes back to "what is an indie", which is essentially whatever you think it is.

 

Well yeah I don't know about the rest of the folks here but if you were able to replace a $45 per hour job with your Indie Game business I'd certainly call that a big success.

 

My minimum baseline will be first to just break even on what I am paying out of pocket. That'd be a great first step in the right direction. Right now it is just an expensive hobby for me. A fun one though! lol

 

Well I agree with that completely. It's the way I see it. Only because I've had other businesses in the past and stayed with them until things either changed majorly in the markets (and I did not lol) or I simply got bored and went and got another job. But anyway yeah it was always the same thing. Start out with nothing, make plan, bust ass for months finally start making some headway and then just grow from there. I see no reason why the same is not true for this. And you are living it so that is a great indicator in itself.

 

Ha ha. That was supposed to be an attention grabbing headline. Sorry about that. You did not destroy it. The rest of em did. And in case the joke was lost due to text... yeah that was a joke. It was just an interesting article which may or may not be helpful to people around here.

 

Late to the conversation, so I didn't real the full thread yet. But I recall seeing this article when it was new, and I agree with it, the sentiment surrounding it, and this thread's OP completely, obviously. In my case, it's been worse.

My sole gam, Viking Chess!, is completely free and has no ads or IAP. That alone should make it obvious I'm a hobbyist and created the game out of passion and wanted to share it with the world. Despite releasing it for free, I worked very hard on it and believe it is a fun game, and that I set out what I intended to do with it. This is a review I received for it today.



So instead of saying something like "I love this game! It would be great if there were an AI so I could play against the computer while I'm waiting for my slow friends to take their turns. 4 stars!", he instead slams the game with a single star and blackmails me into adding a feature he wants. This despite the fact he suggests he really likes the game!

I know this isn't how everyone acts, but there's enough of the market that feels this way, even if they don't actually take the time to post the reviews. There's this expectation that they're owed a game that is everything they want it to be at little or, more often, no cost.

I was questioning which platform I should target for my next game, and this pretty much sealed the deal for me. I may crank out another small app or two just to build the portfolio up, but any project I really want to dedicate myself to will be aimed at the PC crowd. There's just no way to really connect with an audience who thinks the way the mobile market currently does, and I have no reason to think this will change anytime soon.

 

Generally I consider personal success meeting or surpassing your goals. Professionally, typically succeeding would be generating enough revenue to let you safely continue to ply your trade as your only source of income. I would consider you successful. Past that, you can create new goals to aim for personal success. You are correct, you don't need to need to make millions to be successful. But if you do, you are then really successful.

 

Yes, but... it's not how he feels about the comment that's the issue, is it?

The issue is that the review in question is objectively destructive. No good could possibly come from it. It turns potential players away by damaging the rating. That in turn is likely to push the developer away. And all of this despite the fact that they appeared to actually like the game.

 

I hope you don't honestly think that the pc market is better in this respect. Look around game specific forums. Look at steam forums. Heck look at some moaning here, and this is a dev fourm. People will bitch about anything and everything, and will be bigger dicks online than irl. Ignore the complainers. Do look for useful input, and many people saying the same thing. Look at it this way, if they are taking the time be jerks and bitch about stuff like that, they probably have a pretty sad existence. Be happy you aren't them.

 

Perhaps a leaf out of classic science fiction?

1st Law of success

2nd Law of success

Only when it doesn't conflict with the first law of success

3rd Law of success

Only when it doesn't conflict with the first and second laws of success



This post is only half in jest. I've seen plenty of people get these mixed up, and choose monetary success over something that would make them happy. After all, what good is money if you have no time left to spend it?

 

If you & the Viking Chess guy are getting comments like that I'd suggest that your downloaders are driven by your activities on the internet rather than their interest in your game. Sad that they'd talk like that but their you have it. You want people that want to play your game to play your game, not people that are interested in your celebrity to play your game.

TMZ.com, National Enquirer, and other such drivel is read by people who live to speak hateful things about people. I cringe when I check out at grocery stores and make a point of diverting my gaze from those magazines before I can read what they are, almost always, lying about.

 

I've got just a few downloads but I've enough downloads to know that most of those downloads where recommendations by one customer to another so despite my game being free and not played by many people I am very happy it's been enjoyed for what it is and recommend too: a simple game to have a few minutes of fun with occasionally. It has only 1 review too. Authenticity you can't buy. I've seen so many fake reviews with bought advertising.

LOL, businesswise big flop though...

 

I'm interested to know what you're referring to by this. What are they doing online that you think would result in this kind of comment? And how do you think that their players are linking their game and that behaviour?

 

Based on experience you either be very rich and famous or exceptionally rude to have people go to all the trouble to download your app so they can insult you. That or be hanging out in places where exceptionally rude people hangout. Despite my disagreeing with Unity forum users often, most people in these forums are mature, but go to some of the other forums and that won't be the case. I don't frequent any non-development gaming forums.

I know of a group of Unity developers and Unity artists of varying talents on a group skype channel (that will remain nameless) and watched one of the skype users stalk the efforts of another skype user in that group to denigrate that user's efforts, which were pretty good really, and the stalker guy actually recruited help from some other forums (I can't even guess where as I don't hang out in such places) to gang up and denigrate this guy's work. It was so obvious this stalker did that despite the stalker lying through his teeth and claiming he didn't. After that episode, the guy being stalked left the group.

Consider this, what do those Hollywood stars do to deserve the scathing articles they have written about themin those magazines? If you conduct yourself such that you make it clear you seek fame and fortune you can be sure there is a genre of folk that get much schadenfreude denigrating such people.

And you have some vengeful people that can't take constructive, reserved criticism. I've been criticized for correctly demonstrating a cartwheel to a child whose paid teacher wasn't doing their job. Hello? You have to know that criticism isn't denigration. Those reviews those guys mentioned were denigrating not criticism, but a few people actually take valid criticism and consider it denigrating and seek vengeance afterwards. You have to watch what forums you hang out in and what you say in them. Keep criticism clean and avoid swear words and slangy speech which won't make sense to the high number of non-native English speakers on the internet anyway.

To be clear, if I read such a review that wouldn't sway me in the least from downloading a game I think I would like, I'd just roll my eyes, and download the game anyway. Which is why I'll download the Viking Chess! game now.

 

He makes some good points and you know I never go by one or two negative reviews. Probably because I know someone is always griping and these days especially with reviews of products. They do the same for physical products on Amazon. Always at least a few moaning and groaning about something. So I read through many reviews to see what the general consensus is. If a third or more are saying it's crap then I might start taking it seriously. Hopefully others have the sense to know a lot of people just make up crap.

I stumbled on a forum not too long ago where some teens (according to them) were laughing about how they liked to go around writing crap on games leaving bad ratings and reviews. The people yelled and asked them why. They said because it's fun and because they should get a job if they want to make money. Just a bunch of random stupid stuff really. I don't know where all these people have come from in the past 5 years but they seem to be rampant and especially in the game marketplaces. And I know many people may take offense to this but one of the biggest problems with the Internet is that kids can write whatever crap they want and it is received as being real. People have no way of knowing it is kids just writing crap.

 

Seems like Viking Chess! is osX only but the a reviewer seems to be complaining about the AI on an Android Viking Chess game too but he's not so rude.

 

That's based on the idea that the app is being downloaded primarily for the purpose of insulting a targeted individual.

People download apps all the time anyway. And once they're downloaded they're often only a few taps away from being able to leave a review. And given the number of people downloading apps it's kind of inevitable that some will leave bad reviews for silly reasons. You don't need to do anything to get targeted for that, and that's not even taking into account the kind of drive-by harassment described by @GarBenjamin.

 

I pretty much always ignore ones and fives when looking at reviews. It's the twos and threes and fours that provide relevant information.

In a small app fives are just as likely to be dev friends as ones are likely to be random haters.

 

People that spend their time downloading games & apps so they can denigrate the maker of some obscure game? And compare that at the same time to all those people that downloaded what looked to be a very poorly created game with the PewDiePie brand name that looked as if they were paid to leave fawning interviews? I don't buy it.

 

Thanks for the support, guys. As frustrating as the review is, I'm not put off by it much, and I'm actually not trying to fish for sympathy or anything, either. I know my game has flaws that could legitimately be levied against it, but my issue was that a) it wasn't a legitimate issue that was the basis for the poor review, and b) the one-star was being used as a tool to extort me into giving the reviewer what he wanted.

@goat Viking Chess! is iOS only at this time. The review was for the iOS version (I screen-captured it from LaunchKit, which is why it may look weird).

I'd also like to point out that I'm a nobody. I have one completed game to my name, and that has ~650 downloads (< 175 actual downloads from my estimate, the rest being bots). I've only promoted the game on the forums here, MadeWithUnity, and Twitter. I sincerely doubt anyone's reviewing the game poorly just to deface my brand.

@zombiegorilla You're absolutely right about the PC market. In my moment of weakness, I fell into the "grass is greener" fallacy. I'm better off measuring success by my own standards and concerning myself with actual, legitimate criticism only.

 

True. They may not have thought about it to that degree. Imagine a few kids sitting around bored. Long ago they'd do prank calls "Hello. Is you're refrigerator running?" "Uh... yeah." "Better catch it!!" (crazy laughter from a few voices followed by a hang-up). These days it is likely "man let's go trash some games again. That was a lot of fun last time!"

In your example though it definitely sounds like the same kind of coercion described by the devs in the article. Give me this. Give me that. Then I will make the bad go away. Nothing to be done about it though. It's the nature of the Internet combined with the entitlement people are filled with these days. "I deserve it all and couldn't care less about you".

There's still good folks out there though!

 

If trolls get a reaction out of you, they'll never stop. If they can't, they get bored and move on. It's all how you react.

 

Ugh, I hate to think that may be the case, but I suppose it's possible.

I suspected, with the username "Old man old games" that it was an older guy who likes older games. Viking Chess is a [port/inspired by/whatever you'd call it] of hnefatafl, a board game that predates chess. So it makes sense that he'd discover it organically while searching for games he likes.

And again, it's not like he trashed the game with the actual review. "OMFG this game sux u cant evan play agianst the cmoputer come on guyz this is the twentyeth century isnt it?!!" Hence, I stand by my belief that this is an entitled gamer who genuinely liked the game, but wants it to contain additional features and is using the stars to try and force it.

 

Maybe this is why Apple doesn't allow responses to reviews? On one hand, it'd be great to be able to respond and indicate that poor reviews are unfounded (or even if a legitimate issue brought up in a review is currently being addressed), but it may open a whole new can of worms for battles between developers and terrible people.

 

I found it interesting looking at the number of viewers of my app page on GooglePlay for a monthly basis in the past year given that it's surprising any people at all see my app giving the difficulty I had myself finding it when I first uploaded it (hint: I gave up), since it's not possible to do an honest (Google's fault not the consumer's) search for the average consumer based on a timestamp as a easily selectable and configurable search sort option, which is critical to the results' relevancy really. I fixed some bugs for a guy's code and uploaded that app to GooglePlay so he can have people test to be sure his app works and I got 2 or 3 emails the 1st week trying to get me to buy SEO services for the app I published but none since. His app also has fewer page views as it's in a really more saturated genre than my app. Also I should note that when I search for my game based on keywords most of the top results are obviously SEO'd to the top and likely get some honest downloads now - it's that easy to tell from the reviews and the number of downloads - not that I'm going to pay to do that with anything I publish. When you compare the ratio of the number of given reviews to the number of downloads for the apps using the keywords I gave to the ratio of reviews to downloads of current featured apps on GooglePlay and read the content of those reviews it's pretty clear most of the reviews for the apps I listed using my keyword search are not legitimately most relevant as their popularity is via fake SEO engines and review scripts posting reviews and hence their total obscurity from Google's current featured apps despite the very high number of downloads.

 

It's somewhat black box like the App Store, but it is a mix of things. If it's new and has few stars/downloads, it is most likely that it from a developer that has had previous hits, or it is what the feel is an outstanding game with the potential do well if featured. Also it may be exclusive to android or leverages android only features that help promote the platform. It's really just up to the editors as to what they think is a good fit and worthy of being featured.