My son (with some help from me) made a little iOS Game called Meteor Kids (more about the project in this toucharcade thread). The basic game mechanics is very simple. You destroy some meteors and avoid others. The game is in review right now and will be published soon. My son (9 years) definitely wants to charge 99 cents for it. He was shocked by the proposed idea to make it free (no kidding). I am a bit worried that we might get hammered with negative review and feedback as it's not what people expect from a paid app these days. Keep in mind this project is not about money and the last thing I want is a whole lot of people complaining about it. Should I touch on this point in the description of the game in iTunes? Any recommendations? Again keep in mind that he wants to charge and that adding functionality is not so easy as he is a little kid and I don't want to do it for him. It's his project after all. Here are some screen shots to get an idea:
Let me know when it's released and I'll buy a copy regardless, I think he should be rewarded for his hard work regardless of the games qualityut I dunno if the AppStore is the place to get that reward. I'm not saying don't charge, I do think he should be prepared for bad reviews, people don't see the person behind the game and want the world on a stick for 69p, even the very best games have some mean reviews and a lot of great games drop to free very soon after release because of the lack of sales. As long as you prepare him for the negative stuff it'll be fine. Send me a pm when it's released and I'll buy a copy to help.
Thanks cloudpuff, that's really nice of you!!! Seems there is something quite wrong with this market. No developer should put out their work for free. Most painters would rather starve than just give away their art. Maybe small developers have to start thinking outside the box and sell stuff like limited prints of game art design (to put on a wall). Right now people seem to spend months on games and simply hope to hit it big. imho there should always be a plan B in place where you still can extract value out of your product even when downloads are slow.
yeah no game should be free unless that is author's intention, otherwise propel cant continue to make good games. shitty games should not cost cost money of course - it doesn't mean they should be free - they just shouldn't be made Yours looks like something i would pay for.
That's awesome, what did your son use to make the game? You could also make it free with ads - it works very well for some developers and games. It's probably a story you can spin to get some media attention. Regardless I'll buy a copy for encouragement purposes
Thanks, I passed on your comment to him. He is so stoked and can't wait for Apples approval. He started on Khanacademy.org and did the programming tutorial. The tutorials cover how to use the JavaScript language and the ProcessingJS library to create fun drawings and animations. It is very visual and you get to draw and move stuff on screen in literally minutes. Much better than all the "Hello World" stuff you have to digg through usually. With little guidance from me he finished the Processing JS version. After that he wanted to do an iPhone version. He drew all the art design on an iPad all by himself. For the iOS version he needed some help from me. Setting up developer account, Xcode and objective-c would have been to hard for him. He sat right along me the whole time porting the code and helped wherever he could.
I've got my sister to commit to buy a copy too. Will also leave encouraging feedback on the App Store, her little boy is only 7 and has a million ideas for games, his parents don't know anything about developing so he probably won't be actually making any anytime soon, but she said she's happy to encourage your son. Does he plan to make more in the future?
That's really excellent parenting. Teaching your kid to produce instead of consuming is one of the best things you can do, I commend you for that. I have 9 year old girls and they're also interested in programming (not a big surprise since they see me do it), they aced some exercises on paper ("programming" a simple pac man for instance), I thought about pygame for them but javascript sounds even simpler. Of course the appstore setup is something you had to do (it can be confusing even for a grown-up ) but that's really impressive skills on his part and parenting on yours. I hope he enjoyed the process and will make more!
Thanks again both of you for the kind words and your support! You should really check out khanacademy for your niece and daughters. These video tutorials are made specifically for kids and the code is interactive (it's hard to explain check out for yourself). Best thing is the site is 100 % free. It is supported by the Bill and Melinda gates foundation. Bill Gates is a big fan of the site himself. There is still a lot to do with this project. First it is still not approved by Apple (we are still waiting for review). After that Ian wants to start making proper levels. As of right now the game mechanic is quite simple. Except for sound, menu and of course the visuals it is basically still like a browser game. But there is real potential to make this a fun game for kids (and adults) to kill some time. In retrospect I am quite happy that Apple kind of "demanded" Game Center because achievements can make a game more engaging. (I wasn't so happy on Tuesday though when the rejection email came in). The important thing for me is that he picks game ideas that he can achieve mostly by himself (at least in ProcessingJS). There is no point in him having the ideas and me coding it. So I think we will still be working on this project for quite some time.
Dont mean to upset anyone BUT i purposely stay away from any apps where they advertise that a kid has created it. I've seen it before where they seem to advertise it that its based on some 7 year old kids idea etc etc. Happened quite a few times here before I'll buy a game if i think its good, not if the devs 7 or 40 or 75 years old. The last thing the kid needs is pity where someone just buys it simply because its 'created by a kid'. Surely he wants his games bought because they're good not just a 'ahhhhhh i'll buy it....' Dont mean to sound negative, great that this clever kids created an app and released it, but i wouldnt try to keep pushing that fact all the time.
psj3809 not upsetting at all. it is always nice, when someone brings up critique in a friendly and constructive tone like you did. first off i assume there are plenty of marketing ploys out there were people try to make a buck out of it. so I like you am always a skeptic first. I understand that if people look at our little website one might get that feeling ( I see that as a compliment for my ability to throw up a half decent wordpress in a few hours). Reality is, that if I had not drummed up a little support here and via twitter Ian would have had nearly 0 downloads. Excluding our friends we had 9 downloads within the first two days. 8 out of these 9 I know from toucharcade and twitter personally. The game probably won't ever see 50 DL. But that wasn't the point anyway. As for supporting kids on projects like this. Before I was a father of two I was right along your line. It didn't really bother me but I wasn't exactly the guy buying cookies from boy scouts. Now that I know how much love and energy kids put into crazy projects and how much joy any support from adults gives them, I see it in a different light. Still I only support if I feel it is sincere. Hope you can understand a little bit better my motives now. Oh and one more thing: If we implement iCade functionality you have to buy the game. ;-)
