The Big Boys are really coming in this time...

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by unexpect3rd, May 18, 2015.

  1. unexpect3rd

    unexpect3rd Well-Known Member

    Dec 7, 2011
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    Mobile Game Developer (Fulltime as well as indie)
    Singapore
    #1 unexpect3rd, May 18, 2015
    Last edited: May 18, 2015
    First came EA, Capcom dipped their toes, Square Enix hopped in. Now more big names are declaring that they are "focusing on the mobile market", like Konami, Nintendo, Sega. They will be joining existing mobile senpais such as DeNA, Gungho and the such. Also not to mention for the past years there had been more "veteran" game developers leaving renown companies, leaving AAA projects to become indie developers (usually for mobile games).

    How do the existing indies and nobodies (like me) feel about this industry trend?


    For me, a nobody, I feel like things are just getting worst for us. Our puny games are already facing discovery issues, our non-existent budgets are already insufficient for any effective marketing. These big boys are going to jump in with their tens of millions of dollars and their numerous popular IPs that has garnered large fanbase by now. People are going to pay even less attention to games from nobodies.

    On the plus side, if these boys all believe the money is in F2P, indies still have a good sized demographic to cover. I believe there are only so many F2P a person can deal with on their device at any one time and they will need some non-F2P games to distract themselves while waiting for timers to countdown, energies to refill. Or if the boys starts making more AAA quality mobile games selling for Square-Enix pricing, it MAY mitigate the situation that was brought upon by the "race to the bottom" pricing economy of mobile games.
     
  2. PikPok

    PikPok Well-Known Member

    Nov 26, 2009
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    You say this like indies don't make F2P games. Plenty of indies make F2P games.
     
  3. unexpect3rd

    unexpect3rd Well-Known Member

    Dec 7, 2011
    369
    2
    18
    Mobile Game Developer (Fulltime as well as indie)
    Singapore
    my bad, my usage of F2P usually meant those games that relies heavily on wait timers (energy systems) or even Gatcha systems for monetisation and usually includes a large roster of collectibles that indies may lack the resources to produce. And such F2P games may have a emphasis on leaderboards and "social feaures". ie Rage of Bahamut, Brave Frontiers, FF Record Keepers.
     
  4. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
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    Lots of us love indie games. Look how leos fortune and monument valley came from nowhere with hardly any marketing and were huge hits

    If a games good, whether it's from an indie or big name company it'll get found and doenloaded tons from all the millions of gamers. I do feel the more basic games which might have been a huge hit in 2009 are now mostly forgotton
     
  5. Xammond

    Xammond Well-Known Member

    Mar 22, 2014
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    "good"? don't you mean "perfect"!
     
  6. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
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    Theres lots of 'gems' people find on the app store which you see on the games section of TA.

    Theres lots of retro fans who dont care about fancy graphics and are quite happy with older looking blockier graphics. So that must help some devs.

    I reckon a lot of the new games from these 'big' companies will no doubt be freemium and i hope to think thats theres a 'slight' push away from freemium from the gamers. Even the app store seems to now focus on non-freemium games. Hope to think Apple realise freemium is pushing a lot of games away from mobile gaming.

    Wish more and more indie devs would use sites such as TA and others for say beta testing etc. I still see a lot of games with issues where you think 'who beta tested it ? Their mum or brother ?' who seem to be too kind with issues/problems.

    But the 'indie games' of 2009 are i think a thing of the past, i see a lot of rubbish on the Android section here, freebie games which i doubt anyone would play for longer than a few seconds. Often see some free indie games where the devs keeps trying to promote/push it with bumps/sales/promo codes but the games basically rubbish in the first place.
     
  7. Xammond

    Xammond Well-Known Member

    Mar 22, 2014
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    Gems is a good/perfect word for what is required from an indie yes I see what you mean.

    The problem for me is competing with a publisher who invests $1m for a $1.1m return. Wish they would go invest in gold instead, and leave the free chart accessible to actual game developers. But the plus side is those guys are set on maximizing profit so they don't touch the quality pay-once chart.

    I tried a few TA testers (without really knowing it as developers are not allowed in to the tester forum!). In hindsight I couldn't have asked for a better bunch, at the time though it seemed overly harsh...Lesson learned the hard way.

    True that freemium is pushing a lot of games away from mobile, I literally suspended my Marmalade (SDK) licence with 6 months remaining because I have no faith that I would ever be able to renew it based on launching an iOS game, regardless of quality. After 4 years and already been through not being able to afford to renew the (cheaper) Apple developer licence, it had to be where I draw the line and make a native desktop app instead of mobile. Now all I need is electricity and even that is a struggle. Apple see the world as a bunch of numbers, my number is high and other developer's number is low. They select the low numbers which work for them.
     
  8. Tinytouchtales

    Tinytouchtales Well-Known Member

    Jul 24, 2012
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    Gamedesign
    Berlin, Germany
    It's always about finding your niche. You won't compete with those guys anyway so why bother. From my own experience people still look for small novel paid games a lot. Discovery is another topic but still one big Publisher more or less won't change that.
     

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