How easy to make this app?

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by plooper, May 12, 2011.

  1. plooper

    plooper Well-Known Member

    May 6, 2011
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    Defender of Earth
    Mars
    How easy is it for a single person to make this app such as Fat booth and how muc his this making at number 1?
     
  2. MrLeQuack

    MrLeQuack Well-Known Member

    usually it's not that easy!You have to know how to code(objective c), you must have a good design for it and creating a FatBooth copy wont grant you the same success!
     
  3. plooper

    plooper Well-Known Member

    May 6, 2011
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    Defender of Earth
    Mars
    What if you hire someone to program it?
    Easy and cheap?
     
  4. MrLeQuack

    MrLeQuack Well-Known Member

    Easy...maybe, but not so cheap!It also depends on who is making it for you , but a good developer doesn't come cheap!
     
  5. I had a bit of a background in Java/Javascript/C. It wasn't too much of a jump to objective-c. Having worked with ASP and Cobol, I find the programming environment we work with much more friendly.

    I don't think that creating the apps are the main issue with what we do. More often than not their's a solution to most problems. Somebody, somewhere will have faced the same problem, tried to do the same thing as you. Their's lots of code out there. The main issue is about getting your great app noticed. MARKETING, MARKETING, MARKETING.

    I would almost say that if you had to better at either marketing or being a developer, being better at marketing would come first, IMO. I would imagine that you can make more money by having an average game with great marketing than you could with a great game with poor/no marketing.

    Just my opinion.
     
  6. MidianGTX

    MidianGTX Well-Known Member

    Jun 16, 2009
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    Name a price and we'll see how many programmers agree to it ;)
     
  7. plooper

    plooper Well-Known Member

    May 6, 2011
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    Defender of Earth
    Mars
    Thousand dollars


    How much are they makin you think in top ten?
     
  8. Big Ideas

    Big Ideas Well-Known Member

    Jun 2, 2010
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    MD of Instant Games. Designer of Instant Hero.
    London
    Plooper - unless you're extremely lucky and find someone who's raw but talented, I'd be very surprised if you'd get more than 3-4 days programming work for that budget - even less if you hire a dev company.

    And that doesn't take into account things like graphics, sound, marketing... I think that unless you can do most of these yourself, there's no way you could even get a simple app made for much less than $10k.

    If you want to start your own company to publish the game you also have to think about things like tax, accounting, and if you want to be a real business, staff and somewhere to work (though a lot of app companies work remotely).

    It's not something that should be taken lightly, and I think the gold rush days where you could make millions for a tiny outlay are long gone (if they ever really existed).

    The app store is so pro these days, and even huge companies with extremely slick apps are cutting their own throats just to get their apps in front of people (and I say this a developer with the #1 Free app in the UK right now).

    Unless you've got a huge amount of cash that you want to take a punt with, but can afford to lose, I'd think about it very carefully.
     
  9. mr.Ugly

    mr.Ugly Well-Known Member

    Dec 1, 2009
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    Berlin, Germany

    invest 1k and you probably earn 50-100$ in total.
     
  10. plooper

    plooper Well-Known Member

    May 6, 2011
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    Defender of Earth
    Mars
    Do app charts mean nothing then?
     
  11. NickFalk

    NickFalk Well-Known Member

    Mr. Ugly's point is, I believe, that it is extremely unlikely that such an app would sell in quantities. Fatbooth already exists, does what it does well and is placed nicely within the top lists. There are no reason for people to buy another app doing the same. Being a clone of an existing app will also mean that most review-sites won't bother and you'll probably be unable to get any kind of attention. This equals poor sales.

    It's as simple as this: There will soon be 400.000 apps on the App Store, the chances of succeeding aren't exactly stellar even with a great app that brings something fresh to the platform. Making a cheap knock-off of a popular app sounds like throwing money out the window. "Making a poorer mouse-trap" is not exactly the greatest business model in the world...
     
  12. plooper

    plooper Well-Known Member

    May 6, 2011
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    Defender of Earth
    Mars
    Who said I am copying it?
     
  13. NickFalk

    NickFalk Well-Known Member

    No one, but your original post kind of indicates this.
     
  14. Sinecure Industries

    Sinecure Industries Well-Known Member

    Honestly for $1000 it would have to be a pretty freaking simple app. You'd be better off picking up a few books on HTML/Javascript and winging it with PhoneGap
     
  15. Hollyweird Zombies

    Hollyweird Zombies Active Member

    Jul 1, 2011
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    Transmissions Engineer
    Hollywood, CA
    Hello NickFalk, I just bought Squid Drop. I like the (or later, just buy it, please!). Good luck with your app and your future apps.
     
  16. BigEyeGuy

    BigEyeGuy Well-Known Member

    Feb 15, 2011
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    I admire you guys for even answering to this thread.
     
  17. Charybdis

    Charybdis Well-Known Member

    Apr 2, 2011
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    Programmer
    Kyoto, Japan
    Sorry for rejuvenating a very old thread, but fatbooth/facegoo stuff is something I have been playing around with recently:


    It's really rather fun!
     

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