***UPDATED AFTER 2 YEARS !!!*** The sad story of my start as Android/iOS game developer

Ok, thanks Buddha.

 

Yeah, I really have no idea what happened in this thread. Probably time it could be closed, right?

@hippocoder?

 

Your end results there are exceptionally broad. Lets look past the fact that they're ranges of numbers and remember that they're just one number, with no context. How big were the relative markets for each game? How was each marketed? What were the price points? So on and so forth.

 

OP here
I really like, the discussion here and the disputes that are going on. It`s really interesting for me.

The last game was copied from those two games, as i said i have some original ideas, but they will need moths of development and I need to learn to not make stupid mistakes and to increase the chance of success with market knowledge.

The reviews of Frisky Sparrow, those 2 that I saw posted here are the only ones with 2 and 3 stars. The other 7 reviews are 5 star but just rating, no description.

Another stats that i can show now, and i think it will be interesting for you guys, seeing the discussion here...

51 page views - 23 downloads on iOS.

This means 47% of those who viewed the page, downloaded the app.

I think the page views are very low, and this is mainly from the S***ty icon and the name ? But the page views/downloads rate, I think is fine?

 

I feel thats because people are more inclined to say whats bad about something rather than whats good
Like you are allowed to say something is really good without further explanation, but saying something is terrible without explaining is not constructive or helpful and could be considered rude

I personally think, that the conversion rate you have going on there is rather good. It may be because of what you said, the icon and name, but I personally think it was mainly because of the fact it was a clone
If I saw a flappy bird clone I wouldn't click on it, but anybody who does click on it would already know what they are clicking on, hence would download it as there is very little chance of the landing page changing their mind (unless it looked like utter crap)

 

or, for those who prefer text over video: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983

 

Problem is it seems like very few people can see it as a problem today. I've posted about TGNAVC83 before and all comments were along the lines of "it can't happen now with a global market", "more games are better more choices for players" and so forth.

I agree with you though. It seems like it is incredibly easy to see the damage being done already if a person has at least one eye open. Pretty easy to find developers talking about how much less money their games make now compared to just a few years ago. The flood is already causing the race to the bottom as devs try to undercut each other in an attempt to sell. It is definitely a gamers market Far too many cooks in the kitchen.

 

The numbers are too low to be significant. What they probably say is that you got downloads from friends and family that felt sorry for you or had a vested interest in your success and gave you high ratings.

Disclosing that the game was a clone in your OP would have been relevant to the discussion. The best you can hope for from an exact clone is learning the process of game development. Don't expect money to pour in from copying someone else's work. And if money does pour in, expect the lawsuits to pour in soon after. While its not illegal to clone a game, it is illegal to directly copy a game. The distinction is blurry, but there have been plenty of court cases over on similar issues.

 

Definitely agree with @BoredMormon. While a nearly 50% conversion rate seems very high to me I think you will see that drop over time as more people arrive at the landing page. It may not. It really all depends on where they are coming from. If the people visiting the landing page are prequalified/presold then conversion will remain strong. If the people are just general visitors browsing around conversion will be much lower.

Like he said conversion is likely high now from your immediate circle of family and friends.

His other major point I also agree with. If you see a game that already exists (especially in two or more implementations) there is no point in making the same exact game yet again other than practice. When you make it for practice to gain dev experience you don't throw it out on the market trying to make money off it.

 

This has become an enormous discussion, so I'll have to just make some brief comments due to a lack of time.
I've never argued that good graphics aren't desirable : in fact I've tried hard to give my current game "Aeronautica" graphics that are as realistic as possible and hopefully pleasing to look at, and I spend a lot of time lining up camera angles etc for the screenshots. I used to do a lot of oil painting and took a lot of art classes in college years ago, so it's not as if I'm a philistine who can't appreciate art. But my previous two games were rejected by company after company partly because they didn't want that type of thing: one company rep actually told me that although my graphics were "beautiful" (her term), her company was only interested in clones (also her term) whereas mine wasn't a clone (because I foolishly thought I should make something original and creative). Another company rep said they didn't want my game because it didn't have high enough production values, although they did accept several games that looked like they had been drawn by a ten-year-old. Other companies apparently wanted only pixelated retro cartoonish graphics rather than realism. One guy from FGL told me that my games were failing for that reason. My current game hasn't gotten any interest to speak of and absolutely zero crowdfunding dollars despite the fact that I worked hard to make the graphics as nice as possible. My point : what I thought would qualify as "good graphics" turned out to be the wrong choice, which means 1) the entire issue is purely subjective; 2) graphics often are secondary to other factors.

 

@StarvingIndieDeveloper you're right for sure that art is a very subjective personal thing. Although I do like and appreciate the work of real artists I also very much appreciate programmer art and amateur art works.

And it is not just me although I would imagine it is a minority. My boys and their friends often play games with some of the ugliest graphics you can imagine. They also play AAA games and I think that probably what it is that after playing AAA games they want something different. I am guessing this is the case because I think I am the same way. It is kind of like cleansing your palate I suppose.

AAA games look extremely detailed. HD. A lot of focus on lighting and so forth. The thing is they basically all have this so other than different objects in many ways they look very similar to each other. It used to be people went for Indie games to get something different. Different gameplay experiences than AAA games offered was a big part of it. So was the presentation. There was something interesting about playing a game that had say programmer art instead of detailed shiny AAA work. That something different was the appeal. When we saw the programmer type art we figured this game will be different. Maybe this is why I have the views on game graphics that I do.

 

You've done great work to get this far. Very few people release three solo-titles. And, even fewer can hit 8,000+ downloads on their first! These are MAJOR wins! Celebrate them. It's only because you had even higher expectations, that you are now frustrated. Yes, it is very reasonable to expect to be able to earn $5/day from a variety of small efforts. You're just not there yet.

• Shredd is the most visually appealing. It also had the most downloads. 'Nuff said.
• The video in frisky Sparrow looks hard, without any emotional Interest Curve (image below).
• Look up mystery box (people like curiosity).
• Read about Flow, or if you prefer, listen to Ep2 of Game Design Zen.
• If you chose to hire an artist, I recommend Peter Simon (peterfolio.com).

The rest of my thoughts will end up in my next podcast episode. Good luck!

Gigi

 

This deserves repeating! 3 games in a few months, reaching almost 10k downloads, starting from nothing, is a HUGE success. It is worth celebrating. And, it is only by comparison of his expectations that he considers himself a failure.

Gigi

 

First, I'm a developer. My artistic style is worse than Bill Gates wardrobe. Second, I agree with @Ony. The 'subtle things' an artist brings to the table are intuitively perceived as better. Yes, I 100% agree that most people won't be able to explain why they like it better. They will however, like it better. Here's a few artistic nuances that the average person will intuitively prefer without knowing why:

• Better palette - cohesive, complementary colors
• Spacial Proportion
• Accents - shadows, highlights, high contrast
• Rule of 3
• Golden Ratio
• Cohesive style

As an example from Frisky Sparrow, the bird has one style, the circle uses another. This creates dissonance that I disliked immediately, though I couldn't explain until just now. The proportion of space is also wrong - for instance the spinning circles, have 3 rings that don't feel right. As I'm a coder, I'll stop there, before I hurt myself.

Gigi

 

As people have said, getting the 3 games out is impressive. Acknowledging you have an issue, asking for help, & doing it in a public forum is also a massive step. I know I've learnt a lot from the preceding discussions.

 

I released a game in GooglePlay last December with no advertising and outside myself and a friend's son it wasn't downloaded even once by an entity that wasn't an app rating or warez site and honestly I think they were all warez sites. I tried searching for my game and it was like trying to find a needle in a hay stack and that was on the day of release!

So it's not just the flood of apps from so many people that your problem, it's the very real fact the GooglePlay heavily weights against your apps ever being noticed. It's almost as if you have to design a set of search terms like a lawyer writing a legally binding contract to even pull your app into the search results - I found using the app identifier as being the only way to get a new game from an unknown with no advertising budget pulled up onto the 1st page of results.

My advice is you should go with the app that has 8200 installs and redevelop it, that is unless those 8200 installs are bogus installs. You should hope the most of those 8200 installs are still installed and work to create a fun, bug free game that your current installed base of 8200 will tell people they know that it is a fun game. You know how much money it would cost to buy 8200 installs of an unknown game that was mediocre? A lot.

 

I think it won't happen again, or at least won't be as severe. The thing is, in 1983, game industry was in its infancy so it was easy to make it crash. Kinda like dotcom crash in early 2000s. But now, both game and dotcom industries have matured and they're at the "too big to fail" point. I don't think Facebook will file for bankruptcy any time soon. It won't happen to EA or Ubi either (as much as I want those two companies to go away).

 

You don't even need to know the market or really "have one eye open". I was talking to a jeweller a few weeks ago. A craftsman who runs a small but successful local business, who personally knows little about computers or video games. His grand kids are interested though, so he asked what prospects were like, and before I'd even finished answering he nodded and said "It sounds like you really need get together as an industry, form a guild or industry association to set some standards." He immediately worked out that the industry was damaging itself with current behaviour. It's not a problem specific to the games industry, and it's clear to anyone who understands business 101.

 

Some people call this sort of behavior "crab mentality". I would almost bet it has to do with the current job market, people are just trying to grab whatever cash they can.

What does it take or would it take to actually form an institution that helps promote games but it has rules and a cost of membership?

 

I actually have no idea. For digital goods there's fewer opportunities for the benefits that this kind of thing can provide, and without strong benefits why would any individual sign up and be bound by the rules?

 

I don't know what the answer is. The consoles have done well to stick with their licensing agreements and high fees (well much higher than mobile or Steam). With two barriers to entry money and some form of quality control they seem to get a lot less stuff flooding them.

If the mobile app stores, Steam and other such places raised their fees dramatically and started approving games based more like the consoles I think it would clean up the Indie industry to a huge degree. Of course, when I say things like this it often seems like hundreds of thousands of Unity users are getting ready to march down the street with pitch forks and molotov cocktails in hand.

That is okay though. I mean the whole point is the only way to change things is to put up some barriers to entry. Meaning reduce the amount of people publishing games by a huge degree to maybe 1% to 2% of what it is now. So, of course people will gripe about it. I get that.

It's not like a person couldn't still develop games for fun or sharing with their family and friends or even self-publish them to try to get that money. All I am talking about is decreasing the number of games coming out on the actual major marketplaces.

 

Then again, it could correct itself in time. Either that, or remain a venice beach/peddler's marketplace. Or maybe it has corrected. I remember a friend of mine made $15,000 off a simple puzzle game, he even paid me to make some levels. His next game performed not nearly as well. The next game was actually the biggest success, I believe they got attention on Kotaku... they went f2p w iap. But there's no fortune being made there, as far as I can tell.

But he made more than he spent on it. But he hired an artist. He bought music. He had skin in the game. Treated it like a business. I think that's the key difference between those who make some money and those who make practically nothing, from my observations.

Also, between all the people I've known making indie games the more successful ones have released more games and don't quit after failures.

 

I agree with that. I see all of these people making games and making no to very little money. And read articles / interviews from developers who have been doing it for years and talk about how it is getting harder all the time and they are making less money for more work. From that perspective I can definitely see the reason being the flood of games. Even if the vast majority are not treating it like a business they are still flooding the markets so much that it makes it harder for the people who are treating it like a business to get their games noticed. That just makes sense. I imagine walking into a store and looking for a certain something and there are only 3 kinds on the shelf. Pretty easy to commit to a purchase of one of them. However, walking in and seeing aisle after aisle packed full of many variations of the same thing it becomes more difficult to commit to purchasing any one of them or finding exactly what you need.

Still I agree that treating it as a business is the way to go for sure. If I ever decide to really commit to getting into the game dev seriously (meaning not just doing it for fun as a hobbyist) I would certainly create a plan, allocate hundreds of dollars per month for marketing, hundreds more for contracting and spend at least 4 to 5 hours per day personally working on the development and business. I'd expect it to take time and work and to be inevitable to succeed just a matter of time. How much time I have no idea really. If I was able to recoup my investment within 2 to 3 years I'd consider it a success.

I expect it to be a lot of work and require a real commitment. And right now I have no desire to get back into that kind of thing. After spending years working in my own freelance IT business and then building up Internet business I am finding it very refreshing to just work at my job during the day and spend 90 to 120 minutes each night messing around with game projects or at least experiments.

I think most folks doing this stuff have a different view though. I get the impression they are basically trying to do it all for free or spending as little money as possible and thinking they should be making money from game development not spending money on it.

 

It's time for Real Talk. Every pro that I see out there started as a noob. I am just o.k. at making games, based on the feedback I get. I can live with that. We all have to start from nothing. We all have made little game projects that aren't very good (but seemed amazing to us until we showed someone else). We have all experienced the humbling experience of having something we thought was fantastic elicit sideways glances from people we thought were our friends... erhm. But I didn't release those little crappy games for sale.

So now what we're seeing is a world where you can sell your practice/first games without any review or screening process.

And that really sucks for indie developers.

But it isn't as big of a problem for the really talented top developers. I'm sure it has an effect... but they're still making money. They probably wish average indie devs would go away, also.

So what's fair?

"In an old fable by Aesop, a hungry fox noticed a bunch of juicy grapes hanging from a vine. After several failed attempts to reach the grapes, the fox gave up and insisted that he didn't want them anyway because they were probably sour."

Since you can't change the fundamental nature of the marketplace, I think the answer is simple... just keep trying to become a better game developer.

 

Agree 100%. I've always had the view I cannot change anyone else. I can only change myself. Of course, that doesn't mean I don't still slip into the human way of wasting time trying to influence others. lol

You're definitely spot on about people apparently releasing their first game no matter how bad it is. I agree that is very odd because yes I have made tons of little games and experiments. The vast majority of which I never showed anyone at all. I just did it then went on to something else. It was all just experimenting trying out different things. Just having fun and learning at the same time. I don't agree with this new mentality of making your very first game ever then throwing it out on the market. It all comes back to that no barriers thing though.

I guess I can understand people doing that because it is probably pretty exciting. I mean they did it. They made their first game! And they probably have dreams of that game becoming popular and suddenly they are making $5,000 per day or $5 per day whatever they consider $$$ success. If no money at least they can show their family and friends "see this game? I made this!"

I agree the only thing the serious and more experienced people can do is keep treating it like a business and keep improving.

 

Yet that's what's going on. People actually just put any finished game out there for sale no matter what. That's the new normal.

That said, the creator of this thread is doing what he's supposed to do, though. He's having a reality check moment and he's doing it openly. And honestly, that earns him my respect.

Now for one more point I want to make. Basically, this is only for every person who is not where you want to be with your skills, who is maybe considers themselves a "noob"... you don't need to put yourself down. You can have an opinion and ask questions. Don't fall for survivor bias, where you only look at successful people and think you will have success only if you copy them and do exactly what they do. That's not true. You could copy someone else exactly and fail. You should listen to their advice, though. Just because it can save you time.

But you don't need permission from someone else to pursue excellence and aim higher. I think maybe some people are hesitant to try something more ambitious because they're afraid it won't be accepted. They maybe are afraid to commit to a lot of work that might not end up being very good. When you see other games that are so good, you will feel like it's an impossible thing to ever achieve.

Just know that you will have to go through these kinds of problems. Many bumps in the road before you start to figure it out. But just know this... All the best artists and developers have one thing in common: They create more stuff than anyone else, they face disappointment a lot, they get sad and angry and all of that, just like you, what you are seeing is what comes after all that past that they hide from you as creative people. They don't want you to see their old stuff... their worst game ever... their worst 3D models. So you just remember if you are starting out that this is the worst stuff you'll ever make. And look... it can actually be compared side by side with stuff that professionals are making and you can get a 2.5 when they are getting 4.6... Think about it. It's not that bad.

Never be discouraged when you are new in an artform and you aren't that good. You are supposed to not be good. You're doing it right. Now just keep doing it, keep asking for feedback, keep showing your mistakes. It's the only way. You're going through an adolescence, an awkard stage of development. Just keep going.

 

to OP, sorry to hear that, but is funny as hell as you want to make games to make money. Welcome to real world. Start making games because you like, maybe one day.. maybe one day you will earn something.

 

You are right. But today the situation is even worst. Market is flooded with apps/games for mobiles. And desktop side is almost the same. Not counting consoles competition.

I am amazed by the numbers of peoples coming to game development thinking at instant BIG profit.

 

Even if an industry organisation existed to set game standards how would it be enforced? If shopfronts like apple make money anyway then where's there incentive? If it were possible to get metrics showing that the $ they make will be higher if they charge the same price but restrict what can go onto the shopfront then what has happened is that the newly formed game guild dictates the market similar to how guilds worked in the old days.
I'm not saying an industry group outlining quality & trying to define standards isn't a good thing, but quality is subjective.

None of this is on topic for the op's post but I hope he doesn't mind because this thread is really interesting.

 

That's probably why we don't have one. I mean, we do have industry associations and such, but they don't have a lot of leverage to encourage particular behaviours.

It's not quality that they'd define, it's things like price points. For instance, "if your game fits criteria X, Y and Z then you shall not charge less than W dollars for it". That would force member businesses to compete on quality rather than by undercutting one another's prices.

Now, it's clearly better for the industry as a whole for everyone to abide by such guidelines - it'd avoid the "rush to the bottom", for starters. But as an individual what leverage could there possibly be? In our industry a guild couldn't significantly influence path to market, logistics, etc. as they could with physical goods, because those things are 99% controlled by a small number of global gatekeepers. So if I did want to compete on price then what benefit could they offer me to change my mind?

 

That would be nice, & I'm all for not racing to the bottom while also letting people earn a living but something like this would run foul of cartel laws in most countries. As an industry organisation all that could be tried is lobbying distribution agents to have some quality standards & enforcement that they themselves decide on (with input from various affected parties), but even this would be a step up from the almost auto approval of any app.

 

Interesting read. My parents hadn't actually met in 1983, so its not a period in history I'm familiar with. I'm curious what the differences are from today's market.

the smart phone is probably the market most similar to the '83 one. But the phone has a key advantage over the crash consoles. Not many people know it, but it can also be used to call people.

Anyway my point is that the spread of casual games has been driven by the spread of smart phones, not the other way around. So a collapse in the mobile games industry wouldn't kill phone manufacturers.

The console manufacturers are keeping a tight lid on quality. So they are probably not as vunerable.

The big losers in a collapse would probably be small studios.

Thoughts?

 

I hope you don't really believe this?! I agree it is the most visually interesting game and that may very well play a large part in its higher popularity I'd look at other factors as well such as the number of visitors that arrived at each game's landing page, where they are coming from and the % of those visitors that actually downloaded each game.

All I am saying is if he happened to strike upon a certain title or keywords or got more attention from family and friends from it being his first game (perhaps some sharing it on their FB accounts or whatever) all of those would just as likely explain the higher popularity.

Again I am not saying graphics are not important but generally people don't see the graphics until they are at the page to download it, right? So my question is where did they come from, how did they find it. If the other two games only got 2,000 visitors to their apps page to begin with then it is quite possible it was something else entirely such as the game names or whatever played a key role.

 

He's not the only developer with a game titled "Shredd". This one came up when I searched for his game on Google.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shredd/id844153422?mt=8

 

Great find! It seems very reasonable that some people came across the marketing and articles (top x lists) for the iphone game and searched for it by name on the Play store. Also I notice he has a text that says "The insane addictive game for iPhone is here on Android". I think this can certainly explain a good part of its higher popularity.

 

My own experience has been that the single hardest thing is getting exposure for a game, without which it's obviously impossible to sell anything. Does anyone have any suggestions for gaining exposure?

 

How about YouTube reviewers? Ideally one who focuses on the genre for your game.

 

That is always the case for everything I think. I have seen loads of rubbish outselling superior products (digital and physical) my entire life based solely on marketing.

To me the marketing is the most important thing. What good does it do to labor and make the greatest game ever if nobody ever finds it? None as far as getting downloads or making sales.

I haven't made a game to market in a long time. I did a very simple test of some marketing for my simple Christmas game last year where for a couple weeks I invested a small amount into some ads online.

I am very interested in doing some tests though. Right now I am busy on a project comparing dev tools. Eventually I plan on making some games with super fast n easy graphics and thenset up a site or at least pages for them. Then I'll do some marketing to see how many downloads I can get.

Not into the mobile market so don't know much about what is available but I am sure there are ways into it. Apparently there is a "users also downloaded" section on an apps landing page. If there is another section something like "similar games" a person may be able to use that to tie into games that are fairly popular and gain some exposure.

All of those pesky ads I see on the few mobile games I have tried (mostly from devs here) might be another way to get some exposure. I think conversion (CTR) would be extremely low because I think most gamers see those ads as just an annoying pain in the ass. So I'd look for an ad platform that you pay for installs or clicks not just ad impressions. Yes those two can still be scammed but at least it is better than paying for just displays that most people will completely ignore. YouTube, participating on app game forums, forming alliances with other app game developers for cross promotion and so forth are things I would try.

In my experience with offline and online marketing it really all comes down to testing and time. You just have to test everything you can think of to get exposure and measure it. You gotta track the stats to know what is working and how good it works. Then you throw out the stuff that sucks and keep the rest. Then test some more things. At least that is my approach. I have no "do it quick n easy" solution. Only effort over time and tracking it all.

 

You basically have a few options for getting media coverage...

1. Luck
2. You're a girl
3. You're really, really good looking
4. Your friends are producers/editors/writers
5. Pay money

Enjoy

 

LOL! Yep all things (well darn close) become possible for the person able and willing to spend money.

I look at it like the ole "success breeds success". In the beginning you need to bust your ass and / or spend a lot of money to get that initial success. It pays off later though. When you start being featured in articles and your games start getting press.

It is like moving a car up hill by hand and leg At first it takes a lot of effort just to get it started. Pushing and pushing. Finally it starts moving and you eventually get over the hill and onto level ground. Then the car basically moves on its own with just an occasional slight push from you. Finally it starts picking up more and more speed as it moves downhill on the other side. Gotta make it over the hump.

I am old school so all I know is work and investing money. Luck and social status (even as a good looking girl) all help for sure but we can't depend on those things.

 

1. Maybe in getting noticed but the game better be fun.
2. Overs 3.5 billion women and girls wanting for nothing because they are women and girls???
3. More truthful
4. And even with 4 you'll still need 5

 

Obviously, we ALL can't benefit from those social advantages. Because we all don't have them! Often people with them don't actually understand just how deeply they benefit from them, so they just tell you what they did to get where they are. They think that their actions brought success, when it could be a great deal due to having social advantage, timing, luck, etc.

In more seriousness...

So we want to discuss what are the actual things all people can do to help promote their games, not counting outliers, viral superstars and social media success stories that sound good but have been disproven as being universally effective time and time again by people who have tried them and had them fail.

From all my research and observation... to succeed at anything requires "try, try again" and doing the best you can at every aspect of the thing you're trying. Imagine that it's a random number generator.... each time you try to succeed at a thing, there comes a random number. You must "score" higher than this random number to succeed. It varies up and down, but it has a mathematical floor. Say the minimum is 60, but you only can score 30. Okay, well you'll never suceed. But if you score between 55 and 65 then every once in a while... you'll make it. The more consistently highly you score, the better your win/loss rates are going to be. If you can score in the 90s, well... there you go.

So that's what I have seen. Those who do their best and try more often succeed more than those who don't try as hard and don't try as often, despitr having the same statistical chances as everyone else.

 

This assumes you're working just as hard as everyone else, and now you need to promote your game. It's just easier for some people to get that promotion.

 

Then that isn't luck, that's cronyism and it's usually associated with money or being related to the right people or friends with the right people.

 

There is definitely luck in these things. I agree. A youtuber with a huge number of subscribers happens to have a nephew who looks far and wide for little known games because he "wants something different". The YouTuber visits and sees his nephew playing some random game and asks about it. He then does a video on it and because he did a video on it other youtubers do videos on it. Because of that and the games sudden popularity game sites start covering it. These things all feed off each other. A chain reaction. If that nephew just happened to be playing your game you'd be set. The key point is it could have been any game this happened to. This is most likely just luck plain and simple.

 

But it can't happen unless you have cool games out there to start with. So at least you have some ability to make your own luck in this regard.

 

Yes for sure! People have asked me before how I got so lucky or what makes me so lucky regarding my job and life in general. I always say my luck has a lot to do with the decisions I've made and the amount of effort I've done. The more you try the more you fail. For some reason people notice the failing only before you succeed. After you succeed they seem to only notice the success and chalk it all up to luck. lol

Absolutely the more you do the luckier you get. It doesn't mean luck doesn't play a part. It just means you need to give luck many chances to come into play.

 

Wait a second. Aren't you the one arguing that graphics and visuals mean nothing in how people respond to something?

 

No, 100% the opposite.

 

If anyone is doing that it might be me but even I never said that. Of course presentation means something in how people respond. It is the whole "judge a book by its cover" thing and is quite common in society.

He is agreeing that art is a major factor in a game's popularity. I am saying before we attribute success solely to how something looks let's also consider the other factors.