Old questions never die: "is it possible to make a living out of iPhone development?"

That is simply not true.

Winning the lottery = pure lazyness, you have not achieved a thing by winning the lottery.

Getting rich by making an app = Pure awesome, you have made an app that people are willing to pay for (awesome! You have really achieved something!).

the thing is to get it right, make it addicting and simple. (i know nova and games like that are not simple, but they are not made by indie dev's)

 

Yes, it is indeed possible to make a living. But it isn't easy. I support a family of five with just App Store profits. It's fun, challenging, and very very stressful. But it's the best job I've ever had.

Don't count on any single game to be a hit. Make a game you can be proud of. Market it as best as your budget allows. If it fails, move on to the next game. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Do it enough times, and you'll have a family of games that can support you during the times you aren't benefiting from a massive hit.

 

I would challenge this assumption. It may seem like updates may net you very little money, but I can think of at least one example where it seems to be effective.

Defender Chronicles gained quite a bit of notoriety through word of mouth. Thanks to the regular updates and RPG elements, it stayed a favorite among players. With the updates, the publisher was able to raise the price of the game, thereby increasing profits from the late adopters.

Navy Patrol may be another candidate, but I'm not sure how well that worked for them.

Implode is in the process of testing out the process. Seems to be working well for them so far. Personally, I think they should go the DLC route.

In general, it's got to be a judgement call. Does your game have enough legs to where customers are excited about your updates? And if so, does it make more sense to push updates or DLC?

The raw numbers certainly support the idea of making a living on appstore games. Even at $0.99 a piece. (e.g. 200 copies a day x $0.99 x 70% = $138/day or ~$4000/mo) The trick is to nail your market and drive sufficient sales. Which is easier said than done.
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Suzuki A95

 

I think this thread brings up a good distinction between what I believe are two distinct types of app store developer:

There are those who'll create a highly polished game from a team of people (gameloft, EA, ngmoco, and occasional indie games like ravensword) — these games are the ones that are seriously paying off in the app store, but they can't be done by one person and requires an investment.

Then there are games being done by individuals on their own and getting moderate success, but mostly struggling. This 'I can do that' market is absolutely flooded with competition, and I think this is the market that's a considerably bigger gamble.

I think Little White Bear makes a good point (I feel like a native American!) related to the second type of developer.

I hear a lot of independent devs who say, "blah blah is making me below a minimum wage from the app store," but assuming you're able to create these games all by yourself, if you make another game, the income will go from 'barely minimum wage' into 'minumum wage' and then further games and the income could become a decent wage, and so on. The apps you put out will always be selling, even ten years from now. I think that's something to keep in mind.

 

I'm fairly sure Ground Effect couldn't be done with unity, the landscape has half a million polygons, the engine's job is to draw it with well under 20,000 each frame using custom LOD tech. It's possible that I could use the lowest level of something like Unity to do a similar job but then I'd be programming round it rather than using it for what it's good at and, at the end of the day, probably couldn't have made all of the optimisations I did with my engine. I was also using streamlined versions of ideas I'd used before so saw it as a low risk in terms of being able to do something that no other game was.

Why did it take so long?, partly because I was relatively relaxed about it at first, partly because I'd never used a mac or objective C, partly because I hadn't done a whole game on my own for 20 years!

How much did I make if I call it 4 months work?, let's just say less than I've earned in a 4 month period while working for a game studio in well over 10 years but more than a game industry intern.

 

Exactly. If your game makes $10 a day, make ten more, and you've got $100 a day. Your odds of maintaining that are much greater than your odds of having a single $100 a day game. And with any luck, one of those ten will be a hit.

Also, if your game isn't making money, don't keep updating it more than once or twice, hoping for a miracle. The people have spoken. Move on to something new.

 

very possible if your app just so happens to be a slight lookalike of an unbeliveably popular flash game played by thousands

 

Little White Bear is truly wise. I agree 100%.

The App Store is currently our only source of income, and we're doing pretty well. However, when we got started, I still had a job, so we weren't relying on the App Store. We were also going the route of creating small polished games to get that additive income. We didn't have a big hit until Harbor Master, but even before Harbor Master, we were making enough to live on.

It is very, very hard to make a game that will make thousands of dollars a day, and even harder to make that last. But what's surprising is that even our really old apps that we haven't touched in over a year are still making $10-$100/day. Make a few of those, and you have a steady income.

So it's very much possible, but it doesn't happen overnight. In general, you need to build up a catalog of solid games before you can make a living - and to build up a reputation so people pay attention to you. And like others have said, attention/visibility is the name of the game on the App Store.

Also, since you mentioned us, I think one of the reasons people have heard of us is that we're practically professional conference goers. It's expensive, and it takes a lot of time, but there's no substitute for meeting people in person

 

Wise words. I've seen plenty of indie developers (including myself) try and salvage a game that fails to catch on with updates or a costly marketing effort. If you main motivation is profits, this is rarely worth the time/effort.

My best selling game to this day remains Card Shark Solitaire (a collection of 30 card games including both popular Solitaire variants and classic multiplayer titles: rummy, hearts, spades, euchre, cribbage, poker, etc.).
I have no complaints - I'm really happy with how it looks/plays, my wife loves it, and it's got thousands of hardcore fans that have personally thanked me via email. It grosses about $100 a day, and has shown no signs of slowing down. It's not a game I originally intended to charge money for, nor something I expected to become popular. I'm fairly sure it would be making me considerably more money if I split it up into seperate games each with unique names/icons, but so far I've resisted doing this.

On the heels of iFart, I tried my hand at simpler entertainment type apps: Bug Juice, which features realistically scurrying and squishable insects, and Sniper vs. Pirates, but while money continues to trickle in from them, none had the good fortune of going viral/mainstream.

Xiangqi has an excellent UI and AI but has been largely overshadowed by other (more expensive) Chinese Chess games.

Hurdler is a licensed port from the folk at TheGamesPage of a funny stickman running game that I quite like. It was featured by Apple.

Karate Fighter is the first side-scrolling martial arts beat-em-up in the AppStore, and remains the only port (official or otherwise) of the arcade game, Kung Fu Master. This was one of my favorite games to play as a kid, and it's made back its development costs and a bit more. I still play it to this day, and am pleased as punch when a fellow fan of the arcade reaches out to me via email to thank me. It sells 1-5 copies a day.

From a gameplay and animation perspective, Pocket Boxer, the newest boxing game for ipod/iphone, is arguably the best PunchOut type boxing game for the iphone, but entered a crowded field that includes Glu's extremely pretty KO Boxing 2. Nevertheless, Pocket Boxer continues to sell in the double digits, and I'm hopeful that it'll make back its development costs. The real test will be when it's lite counterpart is released.

I have several other titles on deck almost done or largely done, and look forward to seeing how people respond to them. I love my day job, and love this hobby as well.

 

I agree with folks that the "Can you make a living?" question depends largely on where you live. My little biz that I started in April (see sig) nets me on average around what I made (gross) as a part-time $7.50/hr worker per month as a college student. It was enough money then.... but now I own a house, cars, etc, so I definitely can't live off it.

But in all honesty, that's not too far off from a "livable wage." In Oregon, that amount is defined as 2080 hours at (gross) $9.50 for a single adult. OK, well below what a programmer averages here in salary, but hear me out: that's only approximately 3X or 4X what my 9 month old business does now.

So I'll declare that getting rich isn't easy, but with some focus a single person should definitely be able to live off their iPhone business.

 

First to market is another factor that led to the early success of some iPhone developers. Ravensword is an example of this. The high barrier to entry has also prevented copycat clones from entering this market.

The "top heavy" nature of the store has been mentioned many times before where jumping up a couple spots can mean an exponential increase in sales. This coupled with the nature of the app store means there's a rich get richer and poor get poorer mentality. Developers will close up shop, move on to greener pastures (Android?), or simply go back to their day jobs.

There's still no top grossing list. The current system benefits only a few big companies. Our games actually makes more revenue at $3 than $1, but at a cost of less sales. Selling 99c games also doesn't give much incentive for developers to make more polished or complex games if they can't get their ROI. And if they don't make any profit, how are they supposed to make bigger and better games.

Another important factor are the skillsets the individual developers bring to the table. They have to wear many hats like PR, HR, finance, project management, designer, programmer, artist, marketing, legal, and of course CEO. All of these are very important and not to be underestimated. The days of just making a game, sitting back, and raking in the cash are long gone.

Many people underestimate the times needed to complete a project. If you've never done project management, then take your estimates and multiply it by 3 or 4. I've even seen someone said 5. This is a big factor in determining your chance of making a profit and even completing the project. If you estimate 3 months and it actually takes a year to complete, will you be motivated enough to continue, or will you start a new but smaller project. For example, many people have said menu systems took a lot longer than they expected. There's also a saying that goes something like "I'm done with 90% of the project, now I have to finish the other 90%.

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned is reuse of existing assets like art or code. Stuff that needs to be programmed like multiplayer systems, high score list, saving the game state, title screens, options screens, accelerometer control, 3d/2d engine, particle engine, physics engine, etc. If you want to make a 3d game like a racing game, then you need to have an optimized 3d engine, great controls, and fine-tune the physics and collision. And don't forget to learn OpenGL too, have a good grasp of math, and computer architecture. This is the reason why you don't want to use an existing engine if you want fast framerates. We actually have most of these in place now, so I'm hoping to hit the ground running this year. And this is the reason why most companies make sequels.

 

what does it mean "top 10 US" in term of copies? We cannot reveal that number just yet, but "may" at a later date.

how big was your team to make such a polished game? Has it already reached break even point? We have a core team of 5 individuals with extra outside help for smaller parts of the game, such as audio.We are very happy with the success of Trenches.

did you think of marketing strategies from the beginning? did you do market researches before choosing a game type, or did you just go with a concept you liked? Yes, we are well aware of the competition on the AppStore and took a very educated and critical approach to our marketing efforts through a combination of social networking and traditional advertising, as you can see on the forums. The game concept was one that we as a team were interested in and saw that there was a market demand for the game. The high amount of polish went into it for our love and passion of what we were building. We enjoy having our players enjoy our games.

do you think putting ADs (like on TA main page) can help selling? Not for us since we were in the Top 10 before our advertisements went live, but that was expected. The purpose of the ads are to solidify as a successful and prominent independent development studio.

 

That's an easy opinion to have when sitting in the Top 10 overall.

Unfortunately, I contend that you still got lucky. There are many, many developers (even on these forums) that put out great quality products and put tons of effort into marketing, and get fantastic reviews from review sites, and get wonderful feedback from the people that happen to see their game and play it, and yet they still don't see the Top 10 (or Top 100) overall list.

I can honestly say the same about my game Charmed. I am very pleased with how the game turned out, and I put in countless hours into sending it to reviewers, promoting it on TA, running banner ads on iPhone sites, running contests, etc., but I still have never sold more than 200 copies in one day, and have grossed less than $5,000 overall since its release 4 months ago. Now I am selling about 5 copies a day.

My girlfriend tells me that it's because my game does not involve shooting or killing, so I think my next game will have some of that in it!

 

as per the violence and killing: This is something that irks me. Personally, I find the prevalence of violence in the video game industry appalling and I do not want to be involved with a company that is just promoting more violence in the world. However, there's a catch, because people want to be involved in simulated violence.

Releasing many apps seems to be the way to go. it's a challenge to find the time/start up to continuously put out titles when the one you ahve out is not allowing you to "quit the day job". However, that's part of the fun of becoming a indie dev I guess.

 

I think this is a slightly flawed comparison. If you have enough talent to design, implement, and finish a complete game, then you probably wouldn't have to work for minimum wages.

I think a safe rule of thumb is: Make something you enjoy making. The cost of getting an app on the App Store is negligible, and you'll probably recoup that cost even if your app ends up at the bottom of the list. So the only thing you need to invest is your time and talent, and in return you'll have a lot of fun, learn a lot of things, and at worst get a nice item on your resume (a much better one than "I bought a ticket for the lottery once.")

I realize this is not the answer to the question "Can you make a living out of iPhone development", but to that the answer is simply "Some can, most can't."

 

That was merely put in to show you how LITTLE most apps and games make, and that you'd actually make more per day at a minimum wage job in the USA.

Basically, the message to anyone reading: if you are thinking of quitting your job to start developing for the iPhone "gold mine", don't. You are much better off keeping your job and doing it as a hobby until you become that mythical 1 in a 1000 developer that hits big. Even then, consider carefully before quitting your job.

I did OK in the App Store for 2009. Would I like to sell more copies? Yes, even those guys at the top want to sell more Still, I sold more than expected, and beat some games I would have thought to be more popular in sales and income. I have made a lot of people's "top game" lists. Could I live off the income from Rogue Touch? Maybe, if I wanted to lower my standard of living. But why do that?

Instead that profit has become a way to fund my next, more advanced game... meanwhile I continue to work as an industrial consultant by day to cover my bills and pay for my various toys

PS- I definitely agree with your stance as far as doing it for fun and experience, rather than income... That was my original goal, to learn a new skill and make a game that *I* wanted to play. The fact that many other people wanted to play it was an unexpected bonus

 

My 2 cents:

You can make a living off the App Store, but the competition gets tougher every day - there are many established brands that were not there a year ago, and you have to be capable of a professional level of polish if you want to keep up. I think people get stuck on "coming up with a clever idea", which is really not the core of it - the days of coming up with something novel like iBeer are over. People fantasize with dollar-signs in their eyes about making something simple in a weekend that makes a million, but I think that ship has sailed. Its much safer and more realistic to, instead, rely on execution instead of merely being first or novel.

Making a good, appealing game is not a guarantee that it will be a hit, but it will ensure that any success you do find is not fleeting. I've been watching the US charts quite closely for the last year, and have watched apps come and go, some peak in the top 10 and then vanish off the charts in mere weeks, some hang out in the middle of the chart for months. Longevity and momentum are far more valuable than poking your nose into the top 10 for a couple weeks - Zombieville peaked at #2 in paid apps, but its actually made more total revenue in the months after it fell from the top 50. Our second game OMG Pirates! has enjoyed mostly flat sales since its release, in fact sales are higher today a month after launch, and its already made a year's salary at my old day job in that short time... without ever cracking the top 50.

 

Everyone listen to nattylux. If you can afford it, go to conferences. If you don't have an established name, this is a good way to get it out there.

 

I wonder. Have you seen the success of Heat Pad? They claim to have sold over 1 million copies? Seriously? Stuff like that makes no sense to me. Maybe that's why I haven't made a million yet.