I love NOT developing for Android

Discussion in 'General Game Discussion and Questions' started by yellowoats, Sep 29, 2015.

  1. yellowoats

    yellowoats New Member

    Sep 29, 2015
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    I've worked for some (mostly-)reputable Android and iOS dev companies, but I decided to stop game development for about a year or so (most of my previous work had been in reading and survey apps). And I'm loving it - ok actually I really miss it. It has been a somewhat big year for mobile dev (migrating from Eclipse to Android Studio, Swift 2). Sounds minor, but miss being a part of the action. That said, it has allowed me to take a new approach to my development. I'm currently working on an offline game (card game) with some colleagues.

    The game uses programming as its primary game mechanic - check it out at kick.srccard.com. It is a totally awesome game, but I do miss being able to see my changes immediately. Tabletop development is very different.

    But what i wanted to discuss is the price points. In tabletop games, the investments are much lower (salary costs are less, infrastructure costs are less and production costs are reasonably low). Basically for 20% of the investment a project can create a game. Obviously distribution is different, but the question is this - why are people willing to pay a premium for tangible games and not mobile games? My designer said - "i love working on board games because unlike 3d art it is not temporary". Curious what you think - and check out my project - here's some box art (cheers)

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  2. ackmondual

    ackmondual Well-Known Member

    Dec 25, 2009
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    #2 ackmondual, Sep 30, 2015
    Last edited: Sep 30, 2015
    Thread name doesn't make sense. It's more so a physical board games vs. digital video games topic, and there was no mention of Android in contrast to iOS in the context of development.

    I'm also an avid board gamer. At a seminar at Gen Con 2014, one of the panelists mentioned that 99% of us would make more $$ picking up cans and bottles off the streets and sending them off to recycling centers than designing board games. Most of the board game designers out there have a day job to pay the bills, or alternative means of financial support (which sadly, is what many iOS devs should be doing).

    Print runs for modern day board games are also not that high (sadly, this mirrors iOS sales too for smaller devs). We're talking 800 to 8000 copies. Note that in order to get generous volume discounts in printing, you'd need 100K+ copies to be printed.


    As to the question, many things digitally can be had for free, so those options are often explored first. And more than one podcaster has agreed that there generally isn't a culture of paying for stuff on the iOS AppStore. (And note I'm not saying Android's better. Devs on some of the podcasts I listen to say there's generally more $$ on iOS. It's just that that's still not saying much.)
     

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