People download anything...

This has been going on since the beginning of Unity, and on account of side effects, it must be allowed to continue. Unity's license explicitly states that any resources that are included with Unity may be used freely in any game made with Unity. This is kind of an important clause, because if it didn't exist, using Unity for professional production would be incredibly thorny legally. Can I use these UI elements, or do I need to make my own even though they look just how I want them? How about these particles? How about these skyboxes? Do I need to hire a copyright lawyer to work out which default assets I can and can't use? And what if I miss one?

No, Unity's "you can use included assets" has to be all-inclusive, or there's no point in having any default/sample assets at all. And scumbag app developers that do these things are a fundamental side effect of that.

 

RajaIsNotGreat's example is not the way to go for sure. If he had simply stated "this is one of the examples included in Unity3D" it would have made a big difference. There ended up being two discussion topics in this thread

 

Nothing.

People literally have the right to publish whatever they want as long as they abide by existing rules.

 

All Unity need to do is send Google a copyright/ issue notice and get his account deleted forever

 

I learned that I'm trying too hard =P

 

I just have to say hahahaha! out loud..via text.

 

Bet Raj is reading all this right now, and smiling

 

Excuse me? Does it matter how old I am? Does that really effect the conversation at all? Why was it necessary to insult me like that? Please keep this nice.

 

... And everybody lives happily ever after...

Nope. He simply changes his name, or even gets his friends and relatives upload his clones to Google Play, only this time playing a little more closely to the rules.

 

So let him do this then, why make life easier, if everyone had this attitude then we just keep getting more and more bullshit on the Android store

 

Lol, Does he need my permission?

You're asking the wrong guy.... I was nearly lynched the other week for playfully teasing what can be found on Google Play.

 

See my previous post. Unity's license explicitly allows the guy to do this, and it has to.

 

You mean the thread where you insulted a forum member?

 

Can we just ignore this dude? He is so negative

 

Says the person who says things like....

 

Except these demo clones don't travel very far. People will try them out initially because the graphics look pretty good. Unfortunately, since they cloned the game, they won't be adding much extra content, so it will dead end rather quickly.

So what did we learn from this? Well, there definitely is a market for people who like good graphics. But we kinda already knew that. And we already knew that games with good graphics are quite expensive to build.

Should all games be like this? No. Is it "what really matters?". Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

 

Is the game stolen? Yes: Contact store(s) and original developer.
No: Are assets stolen? Yes Contact store(s) and original developer.
No: Why bother?

Unless it's illegal, there's no reason to start playing the taste-police. If people want to download crap, let them download crap. It's their time they're wasting. If they pay for such games, it's also their problem.

If I were to play the taste-police, the app-stores would be pretty much empty as far as games go. Right now mobile gaming is just a big joke in my opinion.
I have far more important things to care about though.

 

I agree.

The main problem I have had for a long time with the mobile gaming 'craze' (the more I watch the market, the more that term is overblown in my opinion) is that it's less a 'craze' and more an exploitation of downtime. TotalBiscuit once called the games we often get on mobile, "Toilet Gaming", because the point of these experiences is to sit down, start 'em up, and be distracted from all the wonderful smells you're making.

These are time-wasters, which have a certain value - especially judging by the amount of money these games have been making their creators! - but don't ultimately have profound value to the medium. Arguably the most valuable game that has recently come out is the Kardashian game, because it's a genuinely novel application of RPG mechanics. The idea that being a major celebrity would be a premise for a RPG even two years ago would have been laughable. Now, it's apparently a profitable thing - and it's a licensed property!

Of course, the Kardashian game is a rarity in this field. More often than not, the games that are getting attention are either highly uncreative (Candy Crush Saga, Flappy Bird) or centered around some form of controversy (Candy Crush Saga, Flappy Bird.) These games are being elevated due to their cosmic background noise, not because they're inherently interesting experiences that grant the greater field revelations on ways to make a game.

I think a mobile game is a great way to get started writing games; a few years ago, if I had owned one of the early Android handsets or iDevices, it would have been a better idea for me to plunge directly into writing mobile games (and, maybe more profitable by a slim margin.) But, it's a field that as it progresses, as the works become more about kicking up sand instead of being truly innovative works that help the greater industry, I've noticed becoming less valuable, less influential, and over time less profitable. I see a decline in this sector of the industry coming due to its own weight and lack of value provided.

 

Blocked. I smell a ban coming your way. Stop being so negative and post something that contributes to the topic.

 

I agree. The current mobile game market reminds me of the 80s right before the great video game crash. Tons of low quality games were coming out as everyone scrambled to get their piece of the cash cow. With no to little quality standards in place consumers simply became burnt out of wading through all of the junk to find the rare good game.

Beyond that, I just don't see a cell phone as a gaming device. A big part of that is the interface to the game. If all cell phones came with something like the MOGA, that could be a game changer. Obviously, a lot of people do enjoy mobile games though. In fact, about 15 minutes ago my girlfriend just told me "this game is cool. it kind of reminds me of Super Mario Brothers" and then she showed me the game she was playing on her Windows phone: Crocs World. Watching her play, the game actually looks very well designed. Still... I just noticed she was now playing a slots game so I asked "what happened to the croc game?" and she said "Got aggravated with it". Yet she can blast through Super Mario Brothers on the NES and DC Universe Online on PC. So... I think this is just another example that even if the games are well-designed and would be very fun on a true game console (handheld or otherwise) they are whacked due to the lack of a real (physical) control system. Just my two cents.

 

I would be very surprised if the mobile gaming population would all-of-a-sudden start to plummet from burnout. Though its growth rate might taper off. The number of developers OTOH might plummet because of over supply.

As for app quality, it can be a good thing, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. With mobile games, you're mostly interested in entertaining people for 5-10 minutes at a time. You don't necessarily need premium content to do that.

 

Solid points. You're right. This whole casual gaming thing makes a difference. People want a game to play during commercials, using the restroom, standing in a line, waiting for food, etc. In that context... it probably really doesn't even matter much what the game is. We're basically talking about micro gaming sessions. Sometimes only a few minutes. And the games are probably seen as being disposable which means the more games to choose from the better. In these situations the quality of the game might not even matter much if any at all. Because it is simply giving the person something to busy themselves with for a bit of time filling in the gaps between other more important events. Yeah I can buy into that view. They serve a purpose. Not for people actually looking for some great game they truly want to play such as games for consoles and computers. But as fillers for those odd moments here and there.

That also explains why I am not into them. I fill those odd times using Mind Mapping software on my phone, thinking about a project or goal, doing some planning, etc.

 

I agree that the mobile gaming market seems to be about temporary distraction, or distraction in small bits. You don't want complicated when you're only picking it up for three minutes at a time. Like playing Solitaire on your desktop to pass a few minutes on a break, you can slip into the game easily and comfortably.

Put another way, PC games are like novels. Mobile games, on the other hand, are more like short stories, with some being more like fortune cookies.

 

Those are awesome points. Usually when I think of a game to make for mobile, I tend to go all out and try to make a campaign and stuff. Through this conversation, I realized that the most successful games (flappy bird, candy crush, temple run, etc.) are usually the quickest games to get into and out of. They are very simple and that is totally going to affect my future development. Very great points you guys

 

Meh, he's probably made probably about $30(best case scenario with people replaying a couple times & has ads) from a game with 10k downloads.

 

Yes and no.
Yes, it's pretty much a description of the current state of the mobile games sector.
No, it doesn't have to be that way. Just look at handhelds like the Gameboy, PSP, NDS and PSVita. There certainly is interest in portable quality experiences.

To see just how much of a joke mobile gaming is, simply compare it to PC gaming in the late 90s till the early 2000s. The performance of your modern smartphones/tablets is far higher than what was available to PC-developers back in the day. Yet somehow they managed to produce games that went into the videogame-history books right away. Thief, Half-Life, System Shock 2 and Deus Ex.

Performance isn't the bottleneck here.
It's why it always stuck me as weird, when people started to wet themselves over Metal.