Why Mobile game Dev. ?

Why most of the developers ( Unity ) are interested in android/mobile game development. I mean ofcourse mobile is a great gadget, gaming in your hand, but, most of us still use PCs right? I just looked at "SHOWCASE" section in forum, and most of the threads were android/IOS games, very few were standalones and web player builds. I do not have very much exp. with unity, so i may not know much, but I personally dislike mobile dev. as you have to first spend time configuring your game for 'army' of screen resolutions, and not all have great gaming mobiles so you need to optimize your game. But still, they all (especially beginners) are going with mobiles.

is android game development better than pc? or is it good for beginners? what are your opinions?

 

One of the awesome things about Unity is that you don't really have to do much to get your game ready for mobile. There isn't much difference in developing your game for any of the targets until it comes time to build. Mobile is a popular trend because there are many casual gamers who only play games on their phone or tablet and even hardcore pc gamers will have a game or two on their mobile device to pass the time while doing something boring, such as sitting in a waiting room or riding the bus.

 

Barriers for entry into mobile game development are much lower than for PC. Getting a product onto Steam either requires a publisher or you have to be Greenlit in addition to a one-time fee. Android only involves paying a small fee.

 

we send a fortune on new tech and R&D in gfx and such like, then we all go play old spectrum like games on mobiles, i find it so funny. LOL

 

You can ask 20-30 of your friends or relatives do they play PC games or do they play on tablets or phone you will probably guess why. It can be a regional thing but a lot of people don't even buy desktop computers anymore as they go for tablets or consoles only.

 

The problem with barriers of entry is that it's very hard to stand out because mobile market is saturated.

 

Why mobile games? Why not?

 

You still need to market your product to be successful for any platform, but the barrier to entry being so low means anyone can get onto that platform and so many people target it. Most no doubt thinking it will be an easy path to success.

 

People will pay for anything on mobile, that's one thing. If it looks nice, it doesn't matter if your game is played by tapping the screen randomly while half asleep. The big mobile games are so mechanically simple it's ridiculous. On mobile you've got small payments, in game transactions and ads for options to monetize your games.

 

Haven't you heard? Flappy Bird!!! Crossy Road!!! Clash of Clans!!! Mobile games bring in huge amounts of money just google it and you will see.

 

Money...Low barrier entry....Lots of audience....Popularity....
all comes with mobile I agree, but, aren't mobile games becoming a little 'over-popular'? As a hobbyist I dont plan my game to hit on market. I find PC more interesting, maybe because my mobile is crap... becomes unresponsive every now and then. Yes, i have researched a lot and found that mobiles tech is becoming popular and first-choice quite faster than PC had, but, i find this little overwhelming, i mean, just look at it, 1 PC Game every 100 or so android games, this was what i was curious about. Some say that for beginners it's not good to directly come to mobile platform, but is it really true? I am not familiar with how fast and easy it is to create Multi-Platform games with Unity... Also aren't there any cons? (Please consider Development Only)

 

Wrong. The majority of the population is moving rather strongly away from PCs, and towards mobile computing. A lot of game developers still use PCs, and probably always will. There will always be an enthusiast scene for do-it-yourself desktop computing. But for general consumers it's the mobile age. The ease and convenience of using mobile devices is more important to them than rendering power.

As such, if you want to reach the broadest audience, your best bet is on mobile devices. This is a choice, you don't have to design for mobile devices. But if you want to reach a broader market, than your options are pretty clear.

 

Mobiles game industry is worth around $40,000,000,000 per year.

 

My personal disconnect has always been the touch screen. I grew up on consoles and handhelds, but there was always physical buttons. I want to satisfy that nostalgia.

 

Well, that's just a matter of design. Some types of games simply don't work with the touchscreen, and shouldn't really be forced to. Certain other types of games benefit immensely from the touchscreen. It's up to the developer to figure out what to use properly.

If you're planning to make an action-oriented game, please, PLEASE don't make it for mobile devices. Games like that need some manner of proper tactile feedback to draw the player in. They need buttons. Make a game like that for the PC or consoles.

 

@voltage I don't know what happened to the idea, but I'm pretty sure there was supposed to be a touch screen technology that had a surface that could make formations on its surface that felt like buttons and things. Sort of like a cuttlefish.

Games like that are what I was referring to

 

Subtract 99% of that for big games, divide the rest by the bazillion mobile developers and you'll know what you earn with an average game

 

For me, mobile games provide a simple publishing platform, where you can get your game live in front of people for 25 bucks USD. To get a PC game in front of people's faces requires you to either use steam, or advertise the junk out of it.

Plus the mobile markets young, and exciting, because not every game idea has been tried there (but that gap is closing quickly) and it allows for new genres that never got too popular with a keyboard and mouse to catch on (infinite runners, tap jumpers, drawing games/pictionary)

 

For me, mobile isn't a viable option. Being forced to go through gatekeeper stores in order to sell my games means oh well I can't sell my games on mobile. Why is that?

I make games and software primarily about sex. Sex is bad, so I'm not allowed in those market places. Not being in those market places means barely any exposure. Same with Steam on PC. They will happily sell games like Hatred but not games about sex.

On PC, though, it's open. Anyone can download and install my games right from my websites. Not being allowed on Steam sucks but I've been doing do this for a long time and I've managed to do just fine on my own. Trying to explain to the average mobile user how to download and install an APK is just asking for more tech support problems for what could be a very low number of users, so I don't bother. That may change in the future but basically yeah, the gatekeeping on all these platforms is a major issue for people like me who would rather make games about love and pleasure instead of games about hate and killing.

 

LOL... "we can't allow THAT... some young kids may try it! Let's play it safe and approve the game where you are a young boy who steals his father's guns and goes through town killing people dressed like clowns! Either that or that one where you click a red button to nuke various cities!"

 

Haha, or spread a deadly virus in order to annihilate the human race!

 

And the issue is that your games are about full exposure

I don't think that a pleasure seeking and greedy species like ours will be able to resist much longer. You're offering pleasure and profit!

I saw popular twitch.tv streamers playing that. For some reason "Kaceytron" was a popular name for the virus and parasite playthroughs.

 

Yeah, but unless you are in America, your kids don't have access to guns or nuclear weapons. Very few young people lack the equipment to experiment with sex. Misused sex ruins more lives then misused guns.

That said my opinion on this is heavily influenced by my religious background.

Back to the OP, mobile development is much easier then PC development. Flappy bird was a hit on mobiles. Starcraft was a hit on pcs. Assassins creed was a hit on consoles.

I can build the core functionality of flappy bird in 15 minutes. The game could be fully completed in a week, graphics and all. A Starcraft or assassins creed game takes a pretty large team years.

 

It's where the players are.

 

PCs also require configuring for multiple resolutions and target performance specs. So this point is moot.

 

I think we can integrate this with the op nicely.

I think @Ony 's games would benefit from a touch based interface

 

HTML5 is promising in this regard once mobile browsers catch up a bit - people can simply bookmark your game to play it rather than have to get it distributed by the app police.

 

Very true. Something to look into, most definitely. There's still the question of visibility, but one thing at a time.

 

Mobile browsers will never catch up on webgl - apple and google want to get their cut with the app stores.

 

It's funny that webgl is on desktop / laptop browsers first. Plug ins are a security risk, right? webgl means less plugins to go and download, right?

Mobile phones hooked up to personal media are loaded to the brim with personal information, storage space is a much greater concern on phones than desktops, and I don't think there's a more casual/lazy market than mobile (to not be bothered with plugins and additional downloads). Mobile is the obvious fit for webgl.

 

WebGl works fine today in mobile browsers, but there are still a few holes here and there and it doesn't work well on older(>2-3 year) mobile devices. Going forward I see it as a pretty nice fit like you said, the newer processors are more than capable of running it well.

edit: http://media.tojicode.com/q3bsp/ <-- quake 3 map in webgl that works on mobile, pretty cool

 

I don't agree with that, although I guess it depends what you mean by catch up. It is a given it won't be as performant as native code but certainly good enough for most games as has already been proven.

 

No kidding. I was blown away a few months ago when someone posted a link to some specs for the new tegra chip. I didn't think mobile had come that far, it's comparable to desktops now. It's utterly ridiculous that it closed the gap so fast.

I'm actually kind of disappointed by it, haha. I like that I can operate my tv, laptop and garage with my phone... but I am questioning why I should be able to.

 

This is just wrong.

https://opengamingalliance.org/pres...-expected-to-drive-record-growth-for-pc-games

Heres a more realistic set of numbers:

 

Wow nice info, but, look at the graph, mobiles are closing the gap too quickly !

 

Anything after 2015 is an estimation based on current trends. Mobile is already oversaturated, it will peak sooner or later.

I think the mobile craze amongst indies has also a lot to do with the heavy advertising of the one-hit wonder success stories, such as Flappy Bird. These games are usually simple which makes us instantly think "I could have easily programmed that". On PC, really succesful games are usually much more complex, to the point that many indies don't actually get to finish their games. Comparing the amount of PC games vs mobile is really apples to oranges. Many mobile games are the equivalent of the gazzilion free flash games you can find on the net.

 

Well, Generation Y, Z, Z+1,... all of them start as baby playing games on touch screens...

 

My thought on all this is: if you want to make money and you don't have a lot, mobile is the worst place to make money.

There are 15,000 game releases on the app store monthly. There is so much noise that it's nearly impossible to stand out. The more curated the environment the less competition for sales. If you can get on XBLA for instance: riches.

But I also really know nothing, so take that with a grain of salt ;D

 

Creator of Noir Run for iOS here.

My game was in the top 50 grossing titles for 2 weeks in SPAIN. I made it on my spare time just for fun although I had good expectations (invested some effort on the pre-launch stage). Do you know what? Less than 1 thousand € of revenue on the first month... meaning that there're so little purchases ... or they are so spread on the sheer number of titles ... that you need very few sells/day to appear in the top list on some countries!

Don't make games just on mobile for a living (unless you work for companies willing to invest millions in marketing).
Make them because you love to create them and for the fun.
Ultimately, make sure they're quite appealing and interesting!

 

yea, i make games because i love it, it's my hobby. I never make games for earning( All The games i have made TILL NOW are completely free ) the reason i am staying away from mobile devices because you have to spend money to add it into store, and then it's no use if you do not plan to earn from it anyway while in pc, and i can just add it in forums or a website where anybody could play it and enjoy it. Although mobile is gaining popularity(consumer wise) very very quickly, there are few drawbacks i've understood after seeing everybody opinions.

Yea, that's a problem for indies. Everybody loves those high graphics realistic games in their PCs, but personally i find some games more interesting than those (Minecraft for example). Developers are continuously working for creative ideas but they release them on mobiles, which is a huge set back to PC gaming and development. I will always prefer PC though

 

@Grafos that's exactly why I dislike the mobile market. The game complexity is designed for children / casualized to the extreme to appeal to the entire planet if possible. It's about making money instead of having a good idea. It's more like they research what will get people addicted the fastest, sprinkle in a competitive aspect so it spreads to friends and family, and then profit on it every way possible.

I get that making money is important. I'm just a little sad to see something I love become more about profit every year. More aggressive DRM schemes to force online connectivity to single player games, micro transactions, features cut from the game to be reintroduced as DLC, complex mechanics streamlined until you turn an rpg about thinking into a button mashing arcade game, etc. And that's just diablo!

 

From what I have read in various articles around the web... the expectation is not for Mobile to surpass PC and consoles and instead for them to all average out about the same in time. So a realistic way to view this is despite how it looks people are not doing the majority of their gaming on mobile they are still heavily gaming on PC and consoles. Or at least are spending more money on PC and console gaming. That is probably more accurate. Mobile is growing faster simply because it has the most room for growth. People develop for mobile because... and this is just my opinion here... a) it is probably cool to take your phone out and show family and friends hey I made this and b) like @Grafos stated... the expectation of mobile games is far less than the expectation of PC and console games. Meaning people can literally make any ole simple piece of junk throw it out and hope it is a Flappy Bird like hit.

EDIT: actually... thinking about it more... I once mentioned it would be cool to have a place where new game devs could prove their skills. And I think that is what the Mobile Game Market has become. Masses of people will make their first games on mobile. A few will find enough success to continue. So maybe Mobile IS the proving grounds serving much like PD software did years ago.

 

The only upside to mobile trends is that I'll never see my favorite kinds of games there, because they require a degree of thought. Or if they do try to make it to mobile, the translation will either be a totally different game or a complete failure.

Again, the diablo franchise comes to mind.

Or because the target age for candy crush is ages 2 through 200.

With all of the potential coming to mobile with the tegra x and how much you can innovate and make new games with the touch based interface... it's a shame that so many of those devs will be trying to make the most generic game possible so a broader audience will enjoy it. Can't blame them though, since that's what the big successes are for the most part. The trading card games are doing well too, and I'm happy at least that those require some thought from the user. Hearthstone, as brief as each game is, has potential for depth. The potential is ruined by RNG giving some players cards that deal unavoidable damage to the enemy player directly and cost almost nothing... but it leaves room for indie developers to do it right.

 

Mobile is FAR from oversaturated. It is only getting started. Huge segments are underserved, new devices and utilization/applications are on the horizon. Mid core is exploding, we are on the verge of core on mobile. If you believe that the mobile is oversaturated right now, that is awesome... for your competition.

Sure, if you are making flappy clones on phones, then yes, the market for bandwagon developers is completely oversaturated. But the market for "mobile" (which is evolving in and of itself) games is huge and (wide and deep), and largely untapped. If you are making games for existing players/markets, you are missing the boat.

Pretty much starting in the next year or so, platform innovation will start bearing fruit, and there will be opportunities that aren't even defined right now. Next-gen is pretty sweet, next-next-gen is amazing. Hardware development has radically changed. There are areas where the tech moving way ahead of the application for that tech. Google has mind-bending stuff coming, as well as others. Its a great time to know (or get to know) Unity. Unity is going own. I have seen some crazy fringe hardware/apps, and they are developing the content in custom versions of Unity. The next few years is going to be a blast for savvy/innovative mobile-centric devs.

 

But I think your perspective might be really different from most of us. I think you're working in the top 0.01% of mobile. Working on generally very well funded, larger efforts. Efforts that probably include significant marketing budgets in an environment where you have immediate access to press contacts and other social infrastructure.

Your projects will get immediate gaming press. Hell, you worked on the friggin Starwars franchise!

From the perspective of many in the 'aspiring' category who don't have those resources and don't have those connections getting to the point where your "working in the attic for 8 months" project gets picked up by press at all is an increasingly long shot.

It's just a question of raw volume, with so many games coming out, standing out from that crowd is harder and harder. And with 15,000 games coming out monthly (and that number increasing month after month)... really friggin hard.

 

As opposed to when he started and had to physically send a disk to every person that wanted a game?

 

It's about what is not being made as opposed to what is. Sure, being who and what are, we can complete in tight market like mobile mid core leveraging brand and resources. That's what I'm saying. Narrow markets are saturated. But if you look at mobile and only see what already exists you're already late to the party.

But if you look at what is missing, gamers that aren't being catered to, people who maybe don't know they are gamers it's larger than existing markets. Millions of people carrying around powerful gaming devices that aren't playing games. I can tell you the big players are heavily focusing on several of the these markets/areas, but the downside of being a big company is you move slow, and take less risks. Smaller companies/teams could and may possibly be the first ones to break these open.

New hardware, untapped players, new experiential options, new games.... all largely untapped. That's what I am talking about. Tons and tons of potential and new markets that no one is tapping yet, big or small. There is opportunity for small players to own new markets.

 

No S***. Indies have it freaking easy today.

 

I agree with you to some degree. I believe there is room for simple games and some work fine for mobile(others don't do to physical restrictions, mainly control related). I am 99 % of the time a PC gamer and love those complex, highly polished PC games, but growing up with a commodore 64, I also enjoy simple well executed indie efforts. What saddens me with mobile is the race to the bottom of the prices which lead to not being able to give your game for free any more, and all the nasty cheeky mechanisms we now have to incorporate to make money from our mobile efforts. But, that's the reality of the market unfortunately. Lets hope the PC scene won't evolve to that, though there are some worrying signs.

 

We also have more options than other developers, especially one like yourself with a big publisher making sure you don't do anything stupid

Without a publisher on your back & with how times have changes, games like hatred can exist. And in maybe another decade or two, the games @Ony wants to make can also exist on the same store.

I consider atari adventure a lot more complex than a majority of the popular mobile games

My worst fear is PC becoming the worst of everything. The games being console ports, the games adopting severe DRM practices, and instead of finished games, having tons of expensive DLC. And then slap in mobile's micro transactions (which to be fair do exist already on facebook games and some mmos).

The only bright side would be if the option came up to play your game with an ad banner which would generate premium currency for you over time, and maybe having the option to watch ads in exchange for even more. It'd still feel scummy to do to others, but at least you're not taking their money anymore.

I'm just waiting for a AAA game to go the DLCQuest route. At that point we'll be living in the civilization depicted in the film idiocracy.