losing interest due to crap games success, and the corruption

....
i was EXTREMELY ambitious and optimistic, in wanting to create games...

but hearing of flappy birds... such a piece of crap game... not to mention angry birds, which is a knockoff of some castle/catapult game...

and i saw some video of a guy on youtube "how to reskin a game and make money"

i have an idea... it will take me more than a year to complete it... and it maybe?? wont be successful..
and these scumbags are successful with no effort...
and i HATE those "buy item" games... makes me want to "get" those scumbags..
ive been trying to think of some game i could make to artistically diminish the ability for others to make those "buy item" games..

lol i keep trying to think of cutesy, lame games that would appeal to the ipad or whatever people (i dont have a smartphone lol)
and i keep getting disgusted by myself...

really... i think games are waaay too simplistic ... GTA5 was a piece of crap... im hating gaming nowadays, and i wanted to make something really complex, and artistic too...
but will it make money? ... maybe not?... maybe so?...
but itll take ALOT of time... especially for just me... and i dont like the idea of hiring people...

bleh... just bleh...
makes me want to puke... no one has morals...
i guess ill try working tomorrow, cant today...?

 

Welcome to earth man. Take it as it is and enjoy it or face a life of depression.

It isn't all bad, don't let others get you down.

 

That's an awful lot of uncontrollable hatred just because some random phone game you don't like is popular. Perhaps you should get out of game development and consider a career as a Sith Lord?

 

Nah, the retirement plan for Sith Lords is terrible.

--Eric

 

LOOL!...

the thing is, as soon as i heard about the flappy bird thing, i keep thinking about how to make money...
the thing that got to me is seeing some video of a dude reskinning other games, when i looked up how to make ipad games

i read somewhere, if your goal is making money, you will fail...
you have to think about creating something good... and the money will follow.

 

No I don't think that's how it works, it's a business there is big money to be made so it's all about marketing and making money from what you sell.

Don't get me wrong I wish it worked like that but think about it, how many viral marketing successes do you hear about in a year, 1 or 2 maybe. And how many games and apps are released onto the app stores every year.

Well based on 148Apps.biz there are This Month (Games):[FONT=Tahoma, Verdana, Times, serif] 1,526 ( 153 / day )[/FONT]

[FONT=Tahoma, Verdana, Times, serif]So there are about 153 games a day appearing on the app store this month, that's about 6 an hour, so your game without marketing could have a window of a couple of hours where it will appear in the top of the new listing, unless it gets featured.[/FONT]

[FONT=Tahoma, Verdana, Times, serif]If you have a look into the F2P market you will quickly come across articles that talk about how much it costs to get a user to play their game, they are marketing like mad to get people to play their free games and this costs money.[/FONT]

[FONT=Tahoma, Verdana, Times, serif]But think about that one viral game and if we use this month as an example then in a year where about 56,000 new games are released (estimated) and only a couple go viral.[/FONT]

[FONT=Tahoma, Verdana, Times, serif]Better odds than the lottery, but still a lottery without marketing and promotion.[/FONT]

 

For once I agree with Arowx.

You should figure out what you want out of life, set goals that will help you achieve that, and then plan how to reach those goals. The "build it and they will come" strategy (or really it's a lack of strategy) has worked for some in the past, but mostly it's a fairly reliable path to some kind of failure. The problem with "build it and they will come" is that it's trying to fit what you want to do into a world that might not really care about it, without even bothering to find out if they care about it. A better idea is to find something that other people already want or are likely to want in the foreseeable future, and figuring out a mutually beneficial way to fill that need.

If they were smart, the message behind wherever you read that (referring to what the quote was quoting) is that the money doesn't have to be the sole focus or top priority - but it is absolutely a requirement. If you read business study books like Built to Last (well worth a read, by the way) you'll see that while all of the successful case studies did have money as goals, in many cases it wasn't the primary goal. I think one example may have been a pharmaceutical company who's mission statement was something like "create products that improve health conditions across the world while also making a reasonable profit", who was being compared to another company who's mission statement was more like "make money by creating and selling drugs". The former's focus was clearly on the service they were providing, while acknowledging that they couldn't do so if they didn't also make money, where the latter's focus was on making money and the service they were providing was merely a means to an end. In both cases, those points of view filtered down throughout the whole business, reflected on day to day activities and overall successes, and the former company met with far more long term success than the latter. (And all of the case studies are between pairs of long-running, successful, well known companies who are still in business.)

 

+1 to this...


@CaoMengde777 yes i've read the same somewhere, although yes having a Quality Game is nice, it's not going to sell itself. You need a marketing plan...

 

Reminds me of that Southpark episode with a Cynical A...
I found GTA5 to be very enjoyable. A lot of people worked on Angry Birds very hard, and its a highly polished product that was in the right place at the right time, having just an idea wont get you anywhere. For every flappy birds there are millions of small apps that get buried.
Most of us are designing games because we love the process. And if someone is making 50k a day on an app that they made in a few days, its amazing, and we should support them.

 

People don't have morals because they are better (or luckier) at making money than you? I could understand saying that about large companies who rapidly clone a game and then use their superior resources to crush the original, but your examples are ridiculous. Most of them are almost the epitome of game development success (the lucky solo developer, the persistent and dedicated mobile game company, the world beating mega game).

I find this childish, foot-stomping, self-entitled attitude significantly more disturbing than someone who reskins a game to make a bit of cash.

 

He's obviously not older than 13.

 

I would refine that philosophy further.

Money is a tool (ok, it's actually a real-life MacGuffin, in that it's an ordinarily worthless object with arbitrary value, but let's go with tool for the purposes of reality and philosophy.) Money allows you to do things you can't naturally do - sure you can walk at 1 mile per hour, but if you have enough money, you can buy a car that lets you travel at more than an order of magnitude faster.

If your works don't allow - or refine - your access to this basic tool, speaking in a modern context, said works have little value. Money is the gold standard by which we measure non-tangible things like work, or the 'success' of a game.

I don't think this basic idea is all that far 'out there', but in practice it's difficult to execute, which is where it's easy to fall flat. I should know, and I think most of us do, intimately.

What's more, gaming is a pretty new profession; we haven't fully figured out the best practices for making our metatools (games) provide us more easy access to our basic tool (money) - the F2P concept is the most recent attempt, but again executing it well while being respectful of players is proving to be notoriously difficult.

I think it's less a problem of corruption in game development, and more a problem of a saturated market. And, that saturation problem isn't going anywhere. Thus, why advertising and careful thought of monetization is necessary.

 

Yes games haven gotten worse. This year looks promising though with The Division, Destiny, The Order, Evolve (new gameplay came out today ), and possibly Uncharted. It was also stated that there are over 100 ps4 games coming out this year alone, so I am very excited to see what is coming! Im losing my mind waiting for the Division. That engine is a true next gen engine and game. It really is.

 

I understand your feeling

One guy can make a simple game, put it on a store and make millions

another person can spend months trying to make a long game and it won't be as popular because most people have a short attention spam and games like flappy bird where they can just play when they are bored during lectures or when they are on the train going to work will just always be more popular ):

 

about my quote... i mean,

i find myself now trying to think up ... kinda lame games that i can just put out there, and appeal to kids and women..in the pursuit of making money.
money being my only pursuit in this thinking...

however, my original intention was never money... rather artwork that may alter the way people perceive certain things.. (im silent for now til i actually have it)
(games with morality, theres not enough like that nowadays... like, i learned to read by playing some game when i was 3-4 years old, with my dad, and i realize the morality of the game effected how iam today)

.. and i would believe that since my intention was just, and with good heart, the way of the world may reward me?.. but it is not my main concern... and so i will focus on my original intent

although, in my current situation, i do have money woes.. and so, i figure, for practice i will pursue ... practicy games and see what happens.

as for morals..
i believe that crap where you purchase items, simple data that can be replicated infinitive, is a sad, poor, low act.
in the real economy, we pay for, an apple, because that apple is the only apple that exists as that apple...
however, in computers, the apple is not an apple, it can be replicated... to bar a person from this apple, is evil.

it of course took work to create.. and you can argue many things against my belief, but i stand by it...

and lol, yeah my original post was ill composed cause its like whatever

 

If you don't believe in selling software then why did you "keep trying to think of cutesy, lame games that would appeal to the ipad or whatever people".

If you don't believe in selling software then how will "the way of the world may reward me?"

If you don't believe in selling software then why did you point out examples not of people selling games but of people successfully doing so.

I call bullshit! You had every intention of selling your game, you've come to realise you probably wont make money from it, and now you have decided to jump ship and label any kind of monetary success from games as immoral.

- - - -

PS Yes all software is "simple data that can be replicated".

 

loool yeah..
i always maintained that belief, since before i was interested in making games for profit...

doing the item selling thing is going too far i think.... no, more accurately, im thinking of the lame games theyre making now, with the deceptive tactics
people should be paid for their work, but theres alot of them that are working just to milk your money, not to entertain

also, there is money from advertising, in which the only loser is the advertiser....

also, there are far grander rewards than money...
....

you misunderstand what i mean as immoral...
i mean theyre making these games with so many ways to milk money out of people... pay to win, and etc...

 

Some ideas...

OK what about this you go freelance, then you can make games or help make games for others whilst still making games for yourself. And/Or alternately make some silly little games to try and get the money coming in, just make they quick and fast and throw them out there with the aim to bring in enough money to make the games you want to make.

Or you could just try and get a part time job that will provide you with some money and let you work on your games.

There is the niche game market it's the idea of making a game that you like and want and finding a set of like minded individuals to help build up a community who want to play it. There are some niche games that keep their developers going via subscriptions with small communities of players.

Good Luck

 

@CaoMengde777 you can always consider KickStarter to see if your idea is worth the time and money. It isn't a guarantee but it is close. We all want to make great games fast and make great money as part of the reward so we can make more great games. Life is hard. Being successful is hard. Don't let the App Store get the best of you. Hope you feel better soon.

Let me know if you do a campaign I will help back you!

 

Maybe try the game you want to make on desktop and not mobile. It seems an environment more suited to sitting down and getting involved in a game.

You also need to think about this. ... you're trying to make a game that you think you should make, not what other people want. The people have spoken. The game THEY want to play is flappy bird and others. THEY go along with the free to play model. It's their free will choice, nobody's holding anyone at gunpoint to play a game. If you want to make a game that the people want, that may very well entail NOT making the kind of game that you want. If you want to be the artist, the hero, the core figure in your creative process, then you need to accept that you're appealing to people like you, who are into the niche you're into, and not to the general masses. That's ok ... just be honest about what you're trying to do and who your audience is.

 

@imaginaryhuman: Hear here!

Though just because lots of people like Flappy Bird doesn't mean that they don't like anything else, or that they'll like it forever, or that they account for the whole market. There are other people, they will like more than one thing at a time, and so on.


But in a nutshell: If you're making a game for you, you can't really expect others to want it.* If you're making a game for others, you need to be ok with it not necessarily being a game for you.

* After all, game developers are a very niche audience!

 

Well, my 2 cents:

Consider those phenomena happened, like Flappy bird or gangnam style, call it luck. That just it, you can't compete with luck, like you can't compete with a lottery winner. Call it destiny or randomness, that is, out of human reach.

Think about lottery winner, the probability is extreme low. And behind that, how do they spend their luck? Many lottery winner lost their money quickly, but that story often you don't hear. Because of fame and money, many people fall, family get broken, so don't get jealous with them.

And on the other side of the earth, these are still people who achieved success because of hard work and talent, because innovation, there are still many stories of this. Many of them get much much richer than any kind of luck. So you still can choose you side, try to duplicate the lottery winner or follow the story of smart and hard work. Not to mention, if you get success like Flappy bird, many people will hate you, each way has it reward and result, choose wisely and carefully and after that, don't let those story bring you down.

There are two kinds of marketing: one is to follow the market, make what people want. The other is create, force, teach the market what they should want. To force the market follow your product and success, they call you a genius. For example, Steve Jobs created the whole smart phone industry, just one man beats the whole electronics industry. Often the first way wins, but if you can make the second kind, the first often loses like ice melting under the hot summer sun

Also the first rule to success is accept reality and learn from it. You can't deny reality

 

And with a 100% free game, no less. Think that over for a minute. Put aside any disdain you might have for Nguyen or his game.
A completely free game, without even IAP purchases, made by a single person over a matter of days, was raking in over 50k a day from just a small number of adds.

 

Oh look a guy that never made a game before wants to make the next "super artistic complex thing" while bashing on other people's work...

Game development is still a business you have to know what you are selling, who are you selling it to and where are you selling it!
It kinda almost looks like movie maker complaining about YouTube cat videos becoming super-popular, i mean if you don't want your movie to be buried behind cat videos than don't release it on YouTube, it's that simple! Do the research, know the markets, see what will sell where and how much, it's common sense.

 

This is a great thread to illustrate a very broad scheme: work.

On the one hand you see seemingly simple applications that everybody buys or uses to make money from advertising and on the other hand you see elaborate, well-crafted applications that rarely sell.

And this is exactly where the problem is: people mistake work for what they love to do.

I am sure that those people who created games like angry birds or flappy birds did not enjoy most of it. I presume that they did not enjoy coding it. But what they surely did do was creating a business plan beforehand. These apps are not just apps, they are part of a much bigger concept involving marketing and long-term strategies.

This is the very reason why people that are engineers more often than not fail as businessmen. They lack the competence and courage to sell. They do what they love and avoid work. Yes of course, sometimes even for them coding can be tedious(aka "work") but in general for them it's much more tedious to do business and marketing - maybe even frightening to get into contact with people.

So no, it is not the stupid people who buy it is you refusing to do uncomfortable work. That means doing things that you are not good at. Things that are really boring like market research.

Let's say there was no other opportunity than coding boring games, would you still code? If yes, then you are on a good way to financial success.

If you want to create an application that makes money you first find a market. Then you create a product tailored to this market. Then you create marketing to make your product known. You might have to deliver for a boring market. Guess why waste management is so lucrative? Because nobody wants to do it.

 

So many missing capitals, and unnecessary ellipses everywhere and abstractness thrown down in an arbitrary manner. I'm actually confused here. What are we talking about?

 

fappy bird doesn't look like it was crafted from a "business plan", the game was made in 3 days and just uses a banner ad for monetization, dong even got stressed out from all the media attention, this is a sign that he clearly didn't expect the success or he is a very smart and it was all a part of his master plan. In later interviews with forbes, he said a factor in why he closed shop on fappy bird is that it was too addictive. That is almost counter to what major business plans do with their infection rate and etc.

 

"fappy bird" hehehe...

I'll get my coat.

 

hah i bet there is a fappy bird on android somewhere.

 

So you're worried about working for a whole year and not be successful.

But look at it this way.

Flappy Birds is only one in several hundred thousand developed games. That's what you call an exception, statistic noise. In general terms, you still must make a good game to improve your chances of making a successful game.
It shouldn't worry you that one guy made money with little effort. The rules doesn't change, give the best you can, and you'll get the best of chances. If you surrender because a single guy made a lot of money with a lot of luck... I'm sorry but many people win the lottery, are born in rich families, etc. You're not going to enjoy this life if you measure life this way. Just make a game you really want to make, get rewarded for that, that's it.

Angry Bird? That's Rovio's 52nd game, 8 years of working in this business. And it took 8 months to develop, multiplied by four people involved, that's 2.5 years of work in total. (Still worrying about investing just one year and get nothing?)

Putting that into perspective, you have 8 years of working on a game development team ahead of you. Then investing 2.5 years of work, between you and your teammates. If you still don't succeed enough, then you can start worrying about it.

Game development is a great thing to do man. If you're doing it only for the money, you're going to drown fast. You really must want to make games to keep yourself afloat.*

*Of course, don't forget you have to pay the bills. The strategy seems to be to release games in feasible periods of time, that means 3-6 months on each project. Also try to stay reasonable with your gameplay... it's ok to make a game you like, but customers must like it too. And after you finish your first game, you must ask hippocoder how do you market it. That's how game development works man. If you put your heart into it, you should at least be able to make a living, besides that... does it matter if you become filthy rich?

 

I think there's also a huge misconception here in that people are automatically assuming that a simple game can't be a good game. Here's an example where it's pretty strongly implied that Flappy Bird was successful despite not being a good game:

Why is something necessarily considered bad amongst developers just because it's simple?

Do we all think Tetris is a bad game? Space Invaders? Breakout? They're all simple games. The only thing that makes them different to similar games today is that they were harder to make by virtue of the technology available at the time. Would Flappy Bird suddenly be good if I hand wrote the whole thing in assembler?

I'll tell you one thing for sure: the people who play games don't give a toss how you made it, or how long it took.

As I've said in another thread, to me there's a hint of jealousy or envy or... something whenever developers talk negatively about Flappy Bird. An impression that people feel like they need to justify whey they didn't get that "easy success" for themselves, even though that's totally irrational in a number of ways.

 

Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't think flappy birds is a bad game. I actually like this game, my high score is 94 and I got the doge mod. I dig the mario look... it was intended and well executed. I've heard in several places flappy bird is not a good game. I think its success speaks for itself, you can't argue with numbers. It's just a good game for different reasons.

Complex != Good

What I meant by you have to make a good game... is that you must do your best. That means often you'll have to put a lot of work.
But if you can come with a good game with a week's work, all the better.

 

Yes, the bird could be a giant ...

Time to start coding!

 

Thats exactly how I felt yesterday, how many good games have we seen fail armored core a really great game made by 3 people over 6 months -- failed so hard there are hardly any people playing it, but someone craps out a game in day and it makes $50k a day. Not only that but the top 3 games in free spot are now clones of the same game.

 

Make a really good game and you will do alright, but making it is not easy

 

Do you know how many stupidly simple games we are going to see for the next few years.

 

Those are exceptions!

It's like trying to score in basketball... every now and then someone is alone just below the basketball hoop, and misses. And other times it's 5 seconds to finish the match, someone throws the ball from half the court and it goes right through, doesn't even touch the ring.

It happens, but it's hardly what will happen to you... it could, but don't depend on it. Depend on working for your goal instead.

 

This business is not for the faint of heart, that's for sure - you will fail early, often, and occasionally rather hard. That's a base fact of game development; there are many people who do everything you can (and more), better, have better resources, and better support structures underlying those.

I think a good idea is to focus on improving your works. Getting a 'hit' really is like winning the lottery, but unlike a casino, you can improve your chances. My second game, Zombies vs. Knights only scored a 2.49 on Kongregate. My most recent title, The Hero's Journey, is up to 2.59. While I disagree that my latest game is 'only' 0.1 stars better than its immediate predecessor, I'm edging closer to my goal, and more importantly I'm also getting great feedback from my players on how far I still have to go.

I persist in this business because I believe with time, experience, and a lot of work, my voice and works can account for something...even starting as a one-man hobbyist. Sadly, I don't think such perseverance is something that you can 'just get' - it has to be in you. If you want to do something that speaks counter to the success of Flappy Bird, or the Free-To-Play business model, I suggest digging deep and looking for that perseverance, and working both smarter and harder. It's your only hope...unless you've already given up, in which case this is all a moot point.

EDIT - and a shameless Patreon plug - I don't believe in the Free-to-Play model as it currently exists, either. I believe games should be presented up-front, and fun.

That's why I have a Patreon campaign, so that other people who want to support that outlook in games can have a hand in backing my projects, and making their voices heard through the same. Consider dropping something into my tin, as it A) helps me keep doing this which is nice, B) means you don't have to question my motives as it's in my best interests to do good things, because C) this gives you some recourse in what I create - you can pull your support from my freely-distributed games at any time. Finally, D) you get a shout-out in things I create.

I'm surprised no one thought of a service like Patreon earlier, to be honest.

 

How is this any different to... ever? Particularly how is it any different to any time since open publishing platforms became so easily accessible?

 

I think one of the most important things we'll have to remember is that there are no guarantees in life. It doesn't matter whether we come up with the best gameplay mechanic in recent history or the best stories that would make grown macho men weep. Factors in success change fast just as how we all have our personal definition of what success is.

Honestly, if I didn't know about the success (and then downfall) story of Flappy Bird, if you showed it to me, I'd just say it's not something that would be in the news almost every day. No disrespect meant to the maker of the Flappy Bird, but it's just that the gameplay seems like something that belongs to the 70s or 80s, not to mention the pipes that seemed to have been borrowed from Mario. The art style is nothing really special (but the bird is cute) and there's really not much else to it. It looks like a game that anyone with a basic knowledge of programming and access to MS Paint and a free version of Unity can cook up in less than a day, especially since we already live in the information age where almost everything has a tutorial online.

I think I kind of understand where some people who make games who dislike Flappy Bird's success is coming from. Their games must use more resources and manpower to create. There must be more planning involved and they have to deal with complicated problems that require precise technical knowledge in order to give solution to. They need artists who actually know how to draw using principles they have learned about art. They need 3D artists, sculptors, modelers, rig makers, and animators to give life to their characters. The story to their games were written with passion in an effort to deliver a memorable experience to the player. They think up of interesting gameplay mechanics that fit within the context of their game and try to offer more replay value to whoever plays them. Then comes along Flappy Bird, where you could easily replace the assets with a single pixel and the game wouldn't change at all, something that has a gameplay mechanic that belongs to any game development book's first chapter... and it makes $50K a day and becomes a global phenomenon, all the while other game developers who need more effort to create and polish their games are still left in anonymity.

Yup, that's life alright. It's very unpredictable and unexpected, just like how a coffee bean that's been eaten and pooped out by some Asian cat can net you $300 per pound just because some people consider coffee bean cat poop to be some kind of ultimate coffee experience. In Flappy Bird's case, I imagine that social media is the main cause of its $50K/day success, especially since according to stories, it made money with ad revenue. It didn't have to be a good or great game. It just needed to be popular enough to get those ads rolling.

Anyway, there's no real use dwelling on the matter. There's no straight formula for success, as we've seen in this Flappy Bird situation. All we can do is try to give our best efforts so that if the opportunity comes (like how it just happened for Flappy Bird) and we somehow end up in the spotlight, at least we'll have something good to show for. Cheer up

 

@Adeno: Regarding:

Of course the gameplay is like that, that's probably the idea in the first place... who could predict, or even plan out so much repercussion?

You could make a pong game with a twist tomorrow, without any expectations... figure you'd put ad revenue on it, because you're hoping to get to get $100 $150 dollars revenue every month, for your weeks's work, and it snowball effects right on your face! You'd become an accidental millionaire!

Wouldn't you think it'd be funny if people would criticize your game? When it wasn't intended to be other than what it is in the first place?

Nevermind overwhelming hate, and death threats...

If this teaches us anything, is that no matter what happens, you will get negative feedback, and people will speak ill of you. That's a given! But ffs if any of you guys make a hit, ignore all that, take the money and don't look back!