Developer's view about viability on the app store.

Not leaving the platform, far from it but it seems like less follow up indy games are being released now than half a year ago.

Lack of sales is without doubt the reason. Sweating for 3 months on a single game and then watching it sell 5 copies a day isn't motivating.

 

read karlth's reply again. He's not saying it's viable. It's crap. But 5 copies a day is actually not terrible, and certainly much better than I'm making. (It's ~$100/month for a $.99 game.)

Anyway, to your other question, yes, I think most indie devs are "part time" or put another way, we haven't quit our day jobs. On the other hand, I know a few who have. They seem to be in the minority though.

 

Try spending 8 months on one.

Right now I'm personally sticking it out and even have 3 new games planned. But, something has got to change on the sales front. While I love making games, I'm looking for ways to create ones that don't require 8 months of development. From what I've seen of the market everyone demands 99 cent games and from a business reality standpoint that means very little content. The only way you can break that mold is to have 100s of thousands of sales. But, at 5 sales a day (or less,) that is a far off concept. Getting sites to even do reviews is a problem currently, for me at least.

 

If you consider the iPhone a game platform, then true indie development will continue to thrive on this as with every game platform. There is something exciting about the iPhone that many of us just don't see with other platforms; I was personally never motivated to develop for WinMobile or Symbian. Part of the appeal is certainly the App Store, and the Apple distribution model -- it's a relatively low-cost entry for indie game development (compared to Wii Ware, for example). However there is already a flight to quality, and the development costs will surely increase (3D games are *lot* more costly than 2D games...) but the as long as there is enough of a possibility of a viable reward, we'll continue to take the risk and develop for the iPhone. And of course it's nice to be able to whip out the latest beta version of my game running on the latest Apple hardware... which is slightly less nerdy than with other platforms. Kinda helps devs get laid I guess... good upside, no?

--yarri

 

It goes without saying that good content will always cost money to make.

And IMHO 3D isn't really necessary to make a high quality app on the iDevice.

Haven't been impressed by any app that uses 3D on the iDevice, as many of the apps suffer from the same thing that has plagued the PSP platform from the beginning. No unique apps.

No one wants to shell out top dollar for a watered-down port of a console app.

It also didn't help that the PSP was rife with piracy, ironically, something that the iDevice shares in common.

Let us know if it works.

 

I've noticed some devs are releasing their game in stages.

maybe 2 development months for the initial release at $1 then add new features via updates. maybe that's the way to do an 8 month dev game on the iphone.

 

I personally really think apple should make two charts, one for indipendent developers and one for bigger studios. The way gameloft prices their games is in no way a positive move for any other developer, most high end games from them are now .99 cent. No way anyone can compete with that ? ( even glu etc having trouble ). Also for the bigger studios the chart and games must have a minimum price ( like 5$ min and a 15$ max for example )

I really think that if the pspmini's will be succesfull in the first 6-12 months, that the bigger companies will leave appstore and focus on that

 

If they are turning a profit at all you won't see them leave the platform. They may make the new PSP top priority for new releases and updates but they won't leave a platform that is profitable so I think we are stuck with them.

Personally I've made next to nothing on the App Store.
My game iNsane has made me less than $100 since it's release in early July despite very positive feedback from the people who own it. Rated 4 1/2 stars.

Exposure is the major problem I think. With all the shady business with developers "buying" chart spots and the larger developers producing really high end games and selling for $.99 the top chart spots are pretty much locked up. You can't produce enough downloads from the occasional promo code giveaway to come anywhere close to the top 100.

Add to that the fact that Apple has held the latest version of iNsane in review for nearly a month now. I've been adding user requested features with each update but it's impossible to get steady feedback on the new features with the way the app store is managed.

The current game I'm working on will have taken atleast 4x the development time than iNsane required. If I can't find a way to drum up some sales I may have to start looking into other platforms myself

 

I doubt that. They'll just port from the PSP to the iDevice or visa versa. At that point, porting will be just another way for them to amortize and monetize on their dev/marketing costs.

 

Amperage - 1st of all, good that you got a game out and it looks like the reviews you got are all good ones. looking at it on iTunes I can see why you're having a hard time making sales though, and I am sure you know what I am saying. You can have the most fun/addictive game in the world, but if it doesn't have some crazy looking screenshot then you are going to have a very hard time getting any attention. it sucks, but the video game industry has always been shallow in this way.

I am having the same issue right now. our first game was a lot of fun but we totally should have spent a lot longer tweaking the visuals. as we are in development for project #2 I am spending a lot more time on this, it's a lot of iteration and sweat but nailing that all-important 1st impression is everything. it kinda sucks because our new game, even in an early form, is already very additive to play (and the graphics work well for what they are) but when I compare it to what it's competing against, i see a lot of aesthetic work ahead of me (esp. for something that's not going to matter when people are actually playing the game).

To steer back towards the OPs general question-

I still feel that an indie can make a splash in this market, versus "the big boys," if they make an honest effort to hit all those marks, though. Make an easily playable game (within convention), make it look really polished (a lot of trial and error, but not too impossible), load it up with features (good/useful ones, not fluff - by this I mean multiple game modes, some kind of online connectivity, at the very least leaderboard tracking), good name that stupid people can remember, good icon that is.. well, ICONIC and looks like it fits on the App Store..

spend a bunch of time on the social end of things as well (after your game is ready for release, your work is just beginning!) Myspace, Twitter, facebook, forums, maybe a blog, make it all as legit and accessible as you can, try to shop your wares to any kinda journalists you can (and make sure it's something that they can generally be psyched about). If you aren't keen on doing all that backend then you had better hook up with someone who can, otherwise it's gonna be a long lonely voyage.

and, esp. when you are a noob (like me), if you don't wanna just put your game out for free (EFFF THATTTT) you can't really charge more than a buck or two, else the armies of 14-year-olds who make up so much of your audience will thumb their noses at you.

even with all of this, the window is closing and the amount of noise from all the other volume of apps is staggering. you can try to follow a rough plan to a T but it's still just a chance. the loonger you hang out.more tricks you learn/connections you make, higher quality apps you release, you are getting closer to a shot at some success. Just tread carefully!

 

It does? What would be the expensive element of Flight Control, say?

Quantity != quality.

As for iNsane, I haven't played it and it might be brilliant, but from the blurb it just sounds like another Simon game, and you're always going to have a hard time selling something there are 20 free versions of, no matter how much you might have polished it. And if it's not just a Simon clone, you need to write it up a lot better to get people to understand that.

 

Yep! Exactly how the bubble bursts.

 

I would say Rob Murray's opportunity cost.

Oh yes, time costs money. And maybe you should ask him how much Real Racing cost to make.

You're absolutely right, quality doesn't equal quantity. But the loss of time and use of resources in the form of opportunity cost is very real.

At the end of the day, I think Rob invested a lot of time on FC, not just in dev but getting the word out in the initial stages of it's release.

Considering that he's essentially one of the core profit centers of Firemint (i.e. brains of the outfit), it's time he could have spent working on real, bird-in-hand paying gigs.

So sure, FC is not Final Fantasy or Call of Duty but it took the best resource (Rob) from Firemint offline to make it happen.

 

We definitly ran into the same issues discussed here.

Our game (Lunarcy) is well received, but still isn't making our business viable. We have at least three other games we want to release (one of them we've already begun working on) and we want to update Lunarcy with several customer wishes. (General online leaderboard, some tweaks, etc...)

But, after months of work, seeing the sales as they are - DESPITE the positive reception of our first real game - we definitely struck a demotivational wall.

It's sad to say, but it looks like the current market is very much broken. It's silly that anything above 99 cents is considered "premium" priced when you come to think of it. We're talking something cheaper than a McShake.

For some reason, the consumer refuses to accept iPhone Apps as full blown software. The lack of physical content and/or the iPhone and iPod touch being a "small" device definitely contributes to that; we're fully aware of that. Nevertheless, it's bullocks in my opinion. It's still thought out, well designed software most of the times, and it has actual production costs.

And of course, large game houses selling full-blown games for 99 cents is killing the playing field, for everyone!

So, yeah, we're very much doubting the viability of developing for the App Store. And we're truly saddened by it. Our sales are declining everyday. Despite a just as much declining reminance of motivation (and budget) we really would like to continue doing what we love: making games. We're unsure about the chances of this future actually happening.

 

We've just started the submit process for the game we just made over the course of the previous 9 months:

http://www.roguepirateninja.com/games/iris

And we're hoping for the best, but probably, like most of you, won't see much of anything. Reading articles like these have my feet cold, but, that's why I eat ramen noodles.

A lot of the stuff I read about anymore is about marketing and branding. Technical aspects are the easy part (iRis is about 80,000 lines of C/ObjC code), it's all the business aspects that get in the way. It's the marketing that makes or breaks the entire experience, and with marketing, it is a game of who-knows-who, the ultimate in popularity contests.

It's nice that there are things like App Treasures, and reviewer sites, and all the other Indie communities that have sprung up around the iPhone or deal with the iPhone, but in the end, the name of the game is getting your game out there for people to see, and Apple is not going to be your friend in that respect. Sure, they'll let you use their App Store, more money in their pocket, but it's going to be the big names, the names that pull in the cash, that are going to get the top placement. Apple is a business like that, and unless you've got a name or an app all the idiots out there want to buy (iFart is such a great example), you're screwed.

App Store will continue to see less and less market potential as it is swamped by the bigger names who can win the technological warfare. As the mobile hardware gets better, it will simply serve to drive Indies out.

Sad but true. Demotivating? Absolutely.

At any rate, shout out to some of the posters - went and bought a few games listed here.

 

another thing that is really getting me is the piracy potential. it's so easy to jailbreak (my girlfriend just did it - grounds for dismissal!) and if you make an app of any note, it's gonna end up cracked and popping up pretty quickly in google searches. scratch that - even if you game is not that noteworthy, your app is gonna still get cracked and pop up in google searches.

so say i am a little dev and i make a kickass game and everyone loves it but it's not big enough that i can really pay for serious marketing to get the word out? people will talk about it in forums, and then just grab a free version and enjoy that. i don't even get a buck or two out of it. sure they love my game, maybe even remember my name, and a few of them feel a little bad about it so they throw me a bone and buy it - but the majority of folks are gonna be 12 yr old warez lovers who don't worry about the fact that someone spent time putting this thing together.

yeah, app development is a minefield. if one thing doesn't nail you another one will. in spite of my whining i have seen some peers do alright with it, and i still feel personally that it is worthwhile to push a little longer in my own case. but the window is getting tighter.. if you wait 6 months from now to put out whatever it is that you are concocting as a 1st (or 2nd.. or even third?) effort, you might get kinda spanked..

 

Headcase, glad to see you made it here.

About the piracy issue - while I think most adults understand your point of view, a 12 year old warez lover stealing your game is not a matter of a lost sale - it is a no sale, period. You can't get into the mindset of "OMG somebody stole my game" because that mindset does not add to your marketing credability, but rather to your greed potential. Thee last thing you want to do is get head over tails zealous about piracy because you will just shoot yourself in the foot. Be glad you get your name out there, and do what we did and market your game as an Indie brand label.

For an example of what I'm getting at: we have loading screens in iRis with text hints and tips on them. One of the tips is akin to "Thanks for supporting Indie developers like us. It really makes eating Ramen noodles in front of the computer screen at night worth it."

Plus, for all developers, you have to look at alternate revenue streams. For instance, Rogue Pirate Ninja Interactive is looking at posting it's OST, game manual, etc. as an additional paid download.

If people pirate your game, don't fret. It means you did a good job as an Indie.