Reality Check - can a one individual makes a successful mobile game?

I know the story of the Flappy Bird exception but the thing is.....

Can any one person makes a successful mobile game WITHOUT being backed by artists, marketers, sponsors, budget, copyrights....etc?

I made three games (all in unity) so far (https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Sam.+K&hl=en) - the first two are total failures and the third (TetroMania) in alpha version phase https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.Samer.TetroMania (Note, I didn't take the best screenshots yet nor formulated the best wording yet..it was posted yesterday , still want to add leaderboard and few ads), but it's not even gathering any beta testers yet.

Even those posts on those free Google beta testers communities don't even work either, you see plenty of people promoting their beta game and no one even replies.

And seriously, spamming friends and family doesn't work that greatly either, yet many of them downloaded and even liked it but they're just few people after all and can't break even.

I feel with all this competition; only companies can do it with a full functional team and wit all the needed talents - and many yet still fail. The game has to have the 'wow' factor and let's face it, this is almost impossible to achieve without the right resources.


What do you think? Isn't that the reality or am I just being down?

 

What does "successful" mean to you?

Personal satisfaction because you've created something that you personally like?
Reaching a few hundreds or a few thousands of people?
Making a living?
Getting a millionaire? xD

For me, the most important thing is that I'd like to see people enjoying content that I've created with passion and to see all the ideas that have come alive, even if I couldn't make a living from it. The latter would be ideal though, who wouldn't like it?

 

Take a look at this Extra Credits episode about this topic. It really gives a good idea on what your goal in development should be and realistically can be with being a hobbyist.

Edit:
I would also like to mention that it is quite possible for a hobby game to take off. Games like Pixel Dungeon, Big Hunter, and Adventurer League are all hobby games that became popular because of their well polished and fun gameplay and don't rely on good graphics.

 

I think you are just being 'down'.

Take a look at what you haven't done if it applies.

- Do you have a landing page for your game?
- Do you have a facebook page for your game?
- Did you make a 30-90 second trailer for your game with good music on youtube?
- Did you make the best App Icon you can for your game?
- Did you make a playable demo of your game for Web?
- Did you take the best screenshots and arrange them with a call to action?

I think one of the problems a lot of Mobile game developers have is they put something up on the respective App Store and expect to get the download numbers that makes it all worthwhile.

You are competing with hundreds of games per day being launched. If you don't take the marketing seriously, you'll be a blip of 100 users who play the game for 3 minutes and that will be your launch month.

Can individual Game Developers have a lot of success? Sure they can. Several top free and paid games were made by one person. Some of the most famous ones were actually.

I think your goal should be to polish a game that you could submit to a publisher, and be prepared to have all your marketing ducks in a row if they don't take it.

90% of games aren't doing the checklist. Nice trailer, nice screenshots, playable demo, nice icon, landing page, etc. If you do all of those you are way ahead of the other 600 games per day that are submitted to the app stores.

 

Congratulations on launching three games and getting a few hundred downloads. That's three more than most people around here including myself.

However I'm going to be a bit blunt: you've made three extremely simple games with passable graphics. This is the 'everyone and their mum can do it' level of game development. If you don't believe me, look at the top 100 games in your category and tell me if, side by side, yours seems more attractive? Why should people choose yours?

I'm not trying to be a downer, I think you're doing great so far and it's great that you launched a game or three at this stage. But to get to the top there's still a long way to go.

I suggest hiring an experienced artist, focusing on getting the publication right (description, name and store graphics) and start documenting the impact that each new investment you make on the game has on your downloads. Iteration is key and this is only the first step.

Good luck!

 

I read about those tips everywhere but don't they need some investment to make these things look good? They would cost at least thousands of dollars.

A WordPress or free Google Site landing page wouldn't be so convincing (and a hobbyist website faces similar issues of a free hobbyist game; same dilemma) , a trailer done with your freeware screen recorder would look lame do more harm than good.

A playable demo for Web is a good idea, and I think i can make a better icon and better screenshots.

But here the thing: let's be honest, did any of you ever downloaded a mobile game because you visited its landing page or FB page? I personally never did so, I have never visited Angry Bird's website/fb or even Flappy bird's landing page?I think most people download games due to their visibility in the store and search engines.

The Extra Credits video is really my story i guess - I am a hobbyist with a full time job (IT related but not programming) and with very recently new programming experience ; yeah I guess a 3 simple 2D games could make a fairly passable portfolio if i wanna join (as part-timer at least) a team making games on unity but not more than that.

 

- Reaching few thousands.
-Making a very very small income, like a tiny extra pocket money thing. ie. $50-100 a month.

 

I'm not going to sit here and hold your hand.

You games are garbage.

Zero adherence to game design concepts, systems, and processes that promote a meaningful gameplay experience.

Not your calling. Grab some training under your belt and try again or pursue another verticle.

 

A good example of someone from this community who did all these above:

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/interactive-2d-book-with-unity.437861/

She really did a good app, a nice landing page, a nice trailer, and marketing, very professional. She even got a TV interview and an award for the app.

Yet despite all this tremendous effort, she only got 1000-5000 installs: https://play.google.com/store/apps/...outube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=profil1

and the non-free version 50-100: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.deev.threelittlepigs


Probably it was a small team effort though, I dunno. If it was all by herself, that's an excellent one-person work. It is really sad that a work like this one didn't fly.

 

Can ANYONE make a successfull mobile game in 2017 without a TON of luck? No.

Mobile market has become VERY EXPENSIVE to compete in. Which is ironical given the Indie devs once flocked to mobile because it was to expensive to develop for consoles and PC at the time, or forced them into the publishers clutches.

Right now you need a TON of marketing and a big network to compete with the likes of King and all... and if you cannot compete with those, your "success" is likely to be 100x less big because its the big 5 (or so) that are owning 90%+ percent of the market (or so).

Go big or home... or to better, go big or go PC/Consoles

 

^ Still, I think one has to be very multi-talented (to be artist, animator, developer and maybe even musician in the same time) to make it good enough even for the PC/console market, probably those exceptional people can make it, like dogzerx2 member here for example. You can find big names games even in Windows Store today.

Yeah, i guess my (very simplistic) games are suitable for web games like the likes of some simple games in Miniclip; but not more than that.

 

This.

Someone working at one of those bigger mobile companys recently said they drop every project that isn't generating at least ~30k$ revenue PER DAY, because the budgets they operate with start at around "~2 million $ for a simple match-3 game". Unless you have some exceptional aces up your sleeve like having half a million or more fans on youtube or getting your hands on super popular licenses (Warhammer 40k or more popular I'd say), then forget it. Either contract for someone else who wants to gamble their money in that market or just wants an app that compliments their primary products and services, or try your luck in the PC market with a decent (read super risky due to high dev cost) game.

 

If you want to do everything on your own, you have to be a multi-talent. That's true. But that's rather exceptional, instead you should focus on your strengths, because that's your tool to convince others to join your project.

For example, I am only a programmer. I'm not an artist and it would simply take too long to compete with someone who's into that for many years with a great passion and so much attention to details. I don't even have the time for that, and I don't even want to spend the time.

Use your strengths to create a concept / a first prototype and convince people to join your team. There are very talented yet desperate 3D artists who lack programming skills, great sound designers who can neither do 2D/3D art nor programming.

They all hope to do something great with their professional knowledge but usually don't succeed, because they're often trying on their own which is only going to be a success-story for a tiny amount of people.

 

well on the other hand this guy release 245 games mostly based on unity assets in just few years! http://appshopper.com/search/?searchdev=605667245&sort=name&dir=asc
and i m still struggle with mines for more than a year!
and there toons of developer like him , so competition is very fierce. the problem is user/player have too many options, and get bombard for whatever kind of app/genre so there less demand, better make sure u know where you are going before getting frustrated and burn out.

 

One code base (per game type), different visual and audio designs. If he needs to fix bugs, he'd do it once for X games. Look at all these simulators.
And he does it (or they do it) for multiple types of games. Actually smart, but who know how sucessful it is? Games could lack quality and there are almost no ratings/comments. Haven't found an information about number of downloads though.

 

Mass of releases is no indication of success.

If anything, this guy is following the "drip feed of income x 100 is still something" mantra.... throw enough small games on the store, and no matter how little they individually make, as long as most of em at least generate SOME income it might add up to something that still is usable.


I wouldn't call that successful though. Might pay your bills given you live in a low cost location, but the amount of games you need to flog on the app store is going to be insane... like, 245 games insane!
And unless you enjoy creating a copycat per day, that is not going to be a fun process....


Of course, the question is always "how far are you ready to go to pay your bills with game development?"....

 

I'm not a big fan of EC - but this video is great.

There is no shame in working on a personal game, and trying to make them into something more than they are is usually a terrible idea.

Success has many different meanings to different people (as mentioned above). Treating making games as only having one real goal or measure of success: money -- that's really kind of unhealthy for personal scale efforts.

 

Congrats on finishing some games even if they're not doing well. Some people can't even finish a single game.

Now I think you need to add more polish. I generally agree with what someone was honest enough to say, that your games at the moment look pretty basic and ameteur. Just in the visual appeal of it. People will look the other way if it doesn't "look" interesting cus they make judgements about what sort of a game it's going to be based on its appearance. Your design skills need improving.

Making games isn't luck. If it were purely luck then totally random games of all kinds and qualities, from massive AAA to tiny little crappy indie games would see equally massive success. Clearly that's not the case, and people wouldn't be in big-business doing this and making millions of $ if there were some kind of art to it, some kind of skill or strategy or purpose or deliberate understanding of the audience and their needs/wants etc are all things you can figure out. The idea is to NOT leave things up to mere chance and to have some mastery over the medium. You probably just need more time and experience and practice to make better games.