[...] your way to a game dev fortune

Missing word... re-skin.

I think it's something we have all thought about at one time or another.

Instead of working on a single game that takes "forever" or even several smaller completely unique games... just make one game rename it, change the fluff (just the presentation) and release it as a new game.

EDIT: REMOVING ARTICLE THAT IS THROWING OFF DISCUSSION

You could make one good solid game and it may get no downloads. The same exact game renamed, redressed with different (but no better quality) graphics released a few days or weeks later may get a million downloads.

 

Reminds me of that old anecdote about a book seller that searched markets for books nobody bought, then turned them into sellable products by changing front cover and the title.

 

What you lack in quality you make up in quantity?

 

@neginfinity yeah I've thought about this many times. Despite all of the things that people come up with to explain the success and failure of games... I think the most important are these kind of things most folks just don't think about.

Simple things such as the name of your game, the theme of your game and the timing of when your game is released.

Say I made a platformer game and released it on July 15th and it sits out there with about 10 downloads. However had I simply changed the name or released it the following week when a certain big youtuber was searching for a game to cover it would have got 1 million downloads. That kind of thing in this case only difference is the name or the timing of the release.

Then you throw in redressing the graphics and this also makes sense. Just as some names will appeal to some people and not others some themes will appeal to some people and not others. Maybe an endless runner of the normal dude running along is overlooked but maybe if it is a fella riding a Harley suddenly you have a massive amount of folks downloading it. It is simple things. Not necessarily really the actual game (as in meat of the game).

Reskinning and / or Flooding allows you to stumble upon and capitalize on these things.

 

wow...unbelievable. Kinda depressing that sometimes making one big game over years is not really worth your time. Rather might aswell spend those years reskinning and rehasing games into the thousands lol release multiple reskins everyday?

Day One
------------

Release 10x Flappy Reskins
Release 10x Infinite Runners Reskins
Release 10x Infinite Runner Car Games Reskins ( Use same code as above )
Release 10x Infinite Runner Airplane Games ( Replace above games model with a airplane. )

Day 2 3 4 5 6 7
--------------------

- Repeat reskin process as above

Lol

 

How do he get the art done for the reskin? Asset are often the hardest part!

 

If I wanted to be guarenteed to make a bunch of money with my current skill set, I would have gone into web development or something

I design games because I like designing games. Making money is just a mundane thing I have to do to pay my bills, designing games is fufilling on it;s own. I see nothing fufilling about taking someone elses work and reskinning it and selling it.

Though, I guess some of us have to actually come up with new ideas that these paracites can live off of.

 

@neoshaman No doubt this path would be ideal for an artist someone who just wants to spend their time making pretty graphics all day and night. I think re-skinning is literally the ideal way for them to tackle game dev. They get to spend all of their time just making graphics and releasing numerous games. Of course, they still need that first game but they can buy a kit from asset store or hire someone to make the first one.

As far as how he actually got all of the art for the re-skins I'd guess he purchased it. He mentioned that he originally spent $15k hiring someone to develop a game. That game did about as well as most people's games do which was definitely not worth the money he had put into development. Because he invested in game development originally I'd guess he has an investors mindset and probably bought cheap graphics sets around the web for his re-skins. Maybe after he found some initial success he hired artists to do some custom artwork. However, that is entirely speculation on my part based on what we do know. It is quite possible he actually is an artist and did it all himself.

 

@KnightsHouseGames Yeah you've hit something I think about from time to time. I'd say this person has no interest or passion for game dev. I mean I don't fault him for doing what he did. He recognized it as a way to make a lot of money. Then he came up with a smart plan focused on exactly that... how to make the most money from his time.

His definitely has more of a business mindset than many game developers I've "seen". If you're going after money you need to be doing the minimum required to sort of cover the bases to get a good return.

He could have spent that time learning game dev then pouring tons of time and money into making a game he really wanted to make... and like so many others ended up with 1,000 downloads or less. Basically he is just doing what the market has forced people to do if they absolutely must make a meaningful amount of money from it.

 

Yeah, thats something that kinda makes me sad. A lot of different schemes that make people tons of money are based on some sort of perverse insentive brought on by the way a market works. It just feels kind of wrong that such things aren't discouraged, but at the same time theres no reliable metric that can be monetized based on design skill or effort. I mean on some level there is for the massive hits, but for in the middle stuff that gets buried in clones and reskins that obviously require less thought or effort, it just seems so unfortunate that those people have to suffer while people who are taking the easy way out make all the money.

 

I've certainly thought about it. If I was to go into business as an indie I would probably follow a similar approach. It seems to have worked well enough for places like Disney, Hipster Whale and Ketchapp. And there are of course franchises like COD or Assasian's Creed.

Reskinning an existing success is cheaper then creating a new one. And reskinning failed games is also cheaper then creating a new one.

The only way reskinning can fail you is if you end up competing with yourself. But even that is not strictly a bad thing.

 

Well I think it is just natural for game devs who want to "make something special" to view it as this person (and others like him) are "taking the easy way".

It's more about what is your goal? You don't create a business to make a great product. You can make a great product without having a business at all. And you can have a great business without having a great product. I think sometimes people confuse that.

@Ony touched on that recently in another thread. Game devs want to make a really great game. Something that is "special". Business people want to make money. All of their decisions should be based on how they can best make that money. There is nothing illegal or shady or otherwise bad about someone reskinning the same game hundred of times and in the process being able to cater to a much larger audience allowing more people to enjoy the game. It's a win-win. This person is working smarter and more people are able to enjoy the results of his work.

It's just ego that makes game devs look down on such practices. Because the game dev part of us wants to create something that is really cool. We see it as an art form in a way. But that is more the realm of dreamers. Business-minded people think more about the real nitty gritty of how to build the "perfect" business and get the money flowing in as easily and reliably as possible. Game devs generally think more about this magical thing they are building.

It's just two very different views. If a person wants to make money from game dev they would be much better served to view it as a business. That means making games as a vehicle to bring in money. If they want to make games just because they want to make a really great game and don't care about money then sure focus only on building that awesome game they have had in their mind for years.

Both approaches are completely valid.

 

Sure you can. This S***-pumping is a not a solution to "visibility" it is the reason for it. It is like fishing with dynamite, sure it works the first few times, but is obviously unsustainable.

Also, I wouldn't read too much into his "success". Only a portion of his apps are games, a lot are the more lucrative self-help category, (which is pretty morally offensive). He has "raked in" "nearly" a million... in 5 years? It doesn't say revenue, if that is before app store cuts, taxes and expenses, he is pretty much making around what a full time job would make, but as a low end crap peddler. Also he is making money off many other social media streams as a "consultant".

Honestly, there is nothing of value to take away here. Other than it is possible to make a living off of being a bottom feeder, crapping in other folks arenas. The guy isn't a game developer, he isn't even an app developer. He isn't even good at what he is doing.

 

I'm calling BS. The place that published that article linked to in the OP has lost all creditability. That 25 year old ex-basketball player person is a front for some other business that has reskinned 600 games in such a short period of time and artificially jacked those games in the rankings. Read the reviews, when there are any.

600 complete re-skins of a few variations of a few games. Try it some time. That basketball player didn't do that work but then it says he didn't. He also didn't spend the money he claims to have spent and absolutely has not made over a million dollars on those games nor has the 'game business' he is fronting for made a million dollars.

Don't be so gullible.

It's articles like that that make me proud of my obscurity and LOL, my game's obscurity.

 

I don't know if the article is true, or whatnot, but the info in that article is VERY true. I see it, I even take part in it. I don't make a bazillion bucks or whatever, but indeed this business strategy is very very real - trust me.

But I write my own code

 

A business that claims to have made a million dollars and in fact has not, isn't a business at all. Doesn't matter if that business has published 1 game or 600 games. In fact, if I were the tax authorities of various governments where this business is purported to be selling their wares, I'd look at investigating the money flows that are claimed to be involved.

 

Or you know, if you can make art assets for 40 games in one day you could just work for a month and make another skyrim alone. Just saying.

 

Ha ha! Yeah I mean we can always find more cases out there. This is just one I stumbled across today so reminded me I wanted to make a post like this a while back and didn't.

There are absolutely people out there making good money from re-skinning games. I'm not saying it is helping visibility for other games but I don't think it hurts them either at this point. With all of the different game devs making games releasing games every day that is what caused the visibility problem in the first place.

It doesn't matter if 1,000 games of the highest quality are released every day... quality doesn't matter... the issue remains of visibility for those 1,000 games. And then comes the next day. I mean ultimately taking that to the inevitable outcome if everybody follows the advice "make a better game".

The idea is that spending time making this really awesome "special" game may or may not be the way to make money. But focusing on it like a business and asking questions from that frame of mind is likely to have a much better chance of making money.

Ultimately it comes down to... is it smarter to spend your time working on one game just because you really want to make it for personal reasons because you think it is special... or is it smarter to make a simpler game even hire out that work and then make spin-offs of that game across many different themes with many different names. Which way has a greater chance for a game to be seen? Which way has a greater chance to appeal to more people?

That is the kind of thing I was getting at regardless of this specific article.

 

The business person in me wants to "like" this post, and the game developer in me wants to smack it.

 

(1 000 000 / 5 years ) / 12 = ~16 000$ month
for reference

 

I mean, for me, my game uses all original graphics, all original code, and until yesterday, all original sound effects. yesterday I downloaded a single royalty free explosion sound, because I can't think of a way of recording an explosion sound (Without getting myself put on some sort of FBI watch list or something), and I feel terrible about that, because I took pride in the fact that we made as much of our own original stuff as humanly possible, and yet these people just download someone else's stuff, swap other assets (I'm betting in some cases also not theirs) into it, publish it and call it theirs, and I'm supposed to view that as a legitimate business model?

 

You're missing something here. Some of us work on one game for a while because we personally think it's special, but at the same time we are well aware of the business side of things, and how that game will potentially perform in the market once it's out there. This thread seems to be focusing on the black or the white, when most successful developers work somewhere in the grey.

 

I agree. You're right of course. I kind of wanted to present it in a black and white just to make it easier to approach the topic and look at the two sides.

I definitely agree ideally a person would be making a game that is very meaningful to them that they have also researched and found a market for and also know exactly how to reach that market in a very cost-effective way. Then they can have their cake and eat it too. I think this is the thing most folks thinking of making a living as a game dev have in their mind... working on the games they want to make and making a great living doing so. But... I also think most of these same people don't think about those business parts. Finding the market. How to reach the market. They are focused only on "make the best damn game ever [that I want to make]!".

You're definitely not in that group of people.

 

There was no mention of revenue, only "raked in", take away expenses and taxes and such and it considerably less. If they are claiming "nearly a million", they are considerably less.

And again, it isn't talking about games, it is crap ton of reskinned lame apps. I checked out a few "games" and there wasn't even a complete game I could find. You'll get 5-10 ads just loading it. Their model is to keep pumping out icons on the app stores and serving up ads a few at a time. This isn't remotely about games. Anyone should feel deep, deep shame doing this or considering doing this.

 

I'm establishing the equivalent magnitude to salaries, skill workers generally do ~8k a month as a basis. It put things in perspective, considerably less may be still in comfortable ballpark it seems.

 

Thank goodness at least Apple is clamping down on reskinners now. If you launch a large number of apps, you automatically start moving to the bottom of the search results.

http://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/599...n-on-reskinners-with-new-app-store-algorithm/

Seriously, this is no good, they need a strict curation process moving forward. If your game looks like a clone of 100's of other games out there, just reject it, or if its a reskin of an existing title you have in the store, reject it.

Apple reviews every submission anyway, why is this so hard for them to do?

 

I guess what I was really hoping to explore with the discussion is....

There are a lot of folks on this forum who have made what appears to be a quality game and ended up with no more than 1,000 downloads.

At that point (game released with 1,000 downloads) I wonder if it would have made sense for them to focus on simply re-skinning the game and making different versions across a variety of themes.

Say they made an Infinite Runner standard dude moving along platforms. They get 7,000 downloads.

They reskin it to become Knight Runner and now it is a knight on a horse with castle and other medieval scenery. Maybe they get 5,000 downloads.

They reskin it again to be Ostrich Runner now an ostrich running avoiding predators and such. Maybe they get 11,000 downloads.

They have made 3 different games that will appeal to different people. They've leveraged their game to have over 3 times the number of downloads they would have got. And the only thing they had to do was change the name and swap the graphics. So they got 3 times the results with less than 3 times the work.

And perhaps one of these reskins just hits on something people really are interested in greatly and they get 1 million downloads.

Granted these numbers are not going to result in much money but I think basically you can scale them up and down as needed. A lot of folks making games get less than 100 downloads. Some may consistently get 1 million downloads.

 

Well really, we know these re-skinners can't be legitimately making money from unique individual customers that are playing those re-skinned apps, really, so one has to question the motive of those business fronts that are pushing all these apps into the app store when it's quite clear they have no interest in their customers or in the games they are making.

 

What you are not taking into account is the business you site with that link to the article is not a sustainable business. They are not doing what they claim with that business. They don't have the customer base needed to have made that much money.

 

Basically make a good game that is theme agnostic and theme it accordingly? Well cloner would do it anyway on your behalf.

 

Well the problem is people like jim sterling will complain your flooding the store with crap. Look at digital homicide so even if he makes a good game it might get S***canned
http://www.digitalhomicide.ninja/

 

The retheming of original good game™ is not the same as asset flipping

 

I guess I just don't get the negative view here on re-skinning causing the problem.

Does it really matter if one person here makes the Infinite Runner "standard dude & platforms" game, a second person makes the Knight Runner game and a third person makes the Ostrich Runner game compared to one person making all 3 games?

I don't understand the logic behind that. People have been, are and will continue to make "their special version" of existing games out there. The games are going out to the market regardless of whether they are being made by dozens of different people or one person is making dozens of them.

 

Yeah you could change the theme and I would buy it again. i did all games from sigma, I would have also kept buying them if they kept making them

 

I don't have a problem with re-skinning. I simply pointed out that business talked about in that article isn't making the money it says it was making, doesn't have the customer base needed to have made that money, and if that business is the argument for re-skinning as a successful business ploy then really it's not one others should want to emulate.

This comes from the school of: I always believe sports stars, war heros, and fishermen. Or maybe not.

 

That's what we're talking about. That is reskinning. You change the name and the presentation to fit the new "story". The internals all stay the same. I mean sure you could slightly tweak here and there.

And yes those are great examples. Part of why I was surprised at the views here on it is that it has been done countless times over the decades and is generally considered a smart business model. Reuse as much as you can.

 

You could make 1 game change the themes to attract different types of people (change the gameplay abit -- which is the part I have an issue with) and sell those games to your audience forever (with evolving sequels).

 

This is exactly the business model I mean!

I think that is the part maybe some people are not understanding. There are people who will never buy a zombie game. Simply reskinning that game with a different name, story and presentation (graphics & sounds) to something different maybe colorful cartoony sheep or whatever and suddenly there is a whole new market for it.

Not sure why anyone would see this as a bad thing. It is working smarter not harder. Especially when if you don't do it another dev likely will make basically the same game only with the colorful cartoony sheep instead of zombies.

 

@GarBenjamin
Everyone think that their medieval rpg n°7841134561 is special because the main character or the combat system is different! No other revenge story was make exactly like that and the combat system use the B button instead of A.

Everybody because, even me, because it's an expression of our tastes and desire, so it's validating... I guess? I don'like to think of myself like that so I ignore it

 

That article is from 2014. Not sure how much good their new algorithm has paid off.

 

A lot of folks here aren't actually making games in the first place, so what you do with them after that is moot until they have completed step one. And certainly the solution if your game isn't a hit, isn't to S*** it all over the place, it won't help your game, your reputation and you won't learn anything.

If they are serious about games, the solution isn't to repackage, it is to learn and improve their game or next game. If the goal is to make a ton of money, (and you don't give a S*** about what you are doing), there are thousands of ways much better than making games to achieve your goal. Make self help apps, make news apps, make [insert topical interest here] apps. Spam/skinning games is the least intelligent path to making money. Make dumb little joke apps and reskin several times, whatever. Doing this with actual games is pointless.

Making skins or alternate versions of a game isn't a bad thing in and of itself. But the OP article is completely unrelated to that in any way whatsoever. Look at any of their "games", they are not games. They have enough of an appearance of game to get someone to download it and consume a few ads before they un-install. It is a scam, not game developement at all. It it a pointless discussion in a game development forum, because it isn't about game development.

 

Actually, that would be wrong. Because like it or not, reskinned game represents a different product, and there might be people to whom new visuals would appeal better.

Also, "big companies" have that fun habit of theirs releasing "hd remakes", which are essentially reskins.

Jealousy, imo. Same as with asset flipping. "He did less work and earned more, I disapprove!".

Except those weren't reskins. Zombie/alien shooter 1 (whichever came out first) was a playable prototype, later games had improved graphics and engine. Heck, I think second part even had voiced narrative.

 

What you're talking about are two different things. There's a big difference between re-skinning and re-using your own game frameworks, code, etc. and dumping a bunch of re-skinned garbage barely playable "games" into the marketplace. One is (or should be) regular business practice for any successful developer, and the other is just hastening the downfall of the games market.

 

I probably shouldn't have included that particular article or any article at all and just opened the discussion differently.

Like I said, I was on lunch break today when I came across that and it reminded me that I had wanted to post this for a while now and just see what the general view is.

 

I agree, just saying for the sake of those wondering

My passion projects and my "lets see what the market thinks of this" projects are two totally separate parts of my endeavors on mobile. In my sig I have my passion project there, but the time and dedication projects just seem like they never get enough attention, and you end up pouring hundreds of man hours into them, but these types of "change things and reboot" kind of strategies are like... well they are interesting, and potentially financially beneficial.

Thats my two cents anyway haha

 

Brutal

But true.

 

Yes, because that article and a investigation of that business's wares makes both the publisher of the article and the ex-basketball player look to be not credible. Re-skinning is a legitimate strategy. It's essentially what everyone of us are doing just by using Unity. 5GB of game art or 5MB or game art.

 

So let's get straight to the point.

At one time I kind of viewed reskins/clones as a very bad thing but then I noticed there was something going on that I hadn't considered (from reading comments about the games). And that is the part I mentioned above about different people liking different things in general. You can have a game with zombies and marines and a certain segment will enjoy it. Others will quickly pass it by. If you had the same game except it was cartoon snakes and frogs there is segment who would find that very interesting. And the zombies & marines folks would likely quickly pass it by.

Doesn't this just make great business sense to make two games that can be enjoyed by more people than either one of them could alone? In this case, we have done nothing except reskin the game. Changing the name and theme (via story and presentation). Everything else is the same. As I understand it this is exactly what re-skinning is.

Or am I incorrect on that definition?

 

In my defence when I said doing something like this I hadn't read the article. I wasn't suggesting pumping out hundreds of rubbish apps. I was suggesting something more like @GarBenjamin's formula. Taking a decent game and re skinning it.

Something like these examples

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/frozen-free-fall/id692412579?mt=8
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/maleficent-free-fall/id839618264?mt=8
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/cinderella-free-fall/id945566094?mt=8

They are all the same app, with only minor cosmetic changes. Look through the publishers page at other aps and you will find the same trend. There are several games that have been released multiple times, simply changing the art work.

And this type of reskinning seems to be a viable model

 

I've updated my original post to remove that article. Really shouldn't have listed it. Sorry about that.

I'm more interested in the meat & potatoes discussion here. The article doesn't matter one way or another to this discussion about reskinning. When I saw it today it reminded me I wanted to post this thread so I included it in that post.