Atari co-founder: mobile games make me want to throw my phone

Post by csours » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

Avernar wrote: post #135

howlingfantods wrote: post #5

I played Clash Royale for several days and the insistence on payments to progress was really off putting. The gameplay itself was quite addicting so I presume they're trying to avoid players burning out from binging. But the fact you either had to pay money or wait three hours to do anything of value was just too much to bear. The entire game design is genius in how it funneled you toward purchases.

My friends and I play Clash Royal, Clash of Clans and Boom Beach. Out of the three it's Clash Royal that has made us come this close to smashing our tablets in rage. But it's not the IAP that's the cause. It's the skewed matchmaking and the mysterious loosing streaks that occur very frequently. You'd be playing and winning some and loosing some and then all of a sudden you hit a losing streak of 6-12 losses or more.…

Post by bluedino » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 8:21 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #72

intrasight wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is almost a fluff piece to promote a developer Clearly you do not know who is Nolan Bushnell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Bushnell Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters chain. Bushnell has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of F…

Clearly you do not know who is Nolan Bushnell I would argue that he knows who Bushnell is better than you do. What you posted in no way invalidates what you quoted from the parent post. Yes, Bushnell started Atari. Since he sold, he's done...golly, I'd have to go look it up because all I remember is a string of forgettable (duh) games that he put his name on because "founder of Atari".

Post by justinhj » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 8:56 PM UTC

Goronmon wrote: post #19

Honestly, the lack of dedicated controls will never allow for mobile gaming to be anything more than a time diversion for most people. A touchscreen just isn't something that's comfortable to use for extended lengths of time, in my opinion at least.

Post by tracker1 » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 9:22 PM UTC

idunno246 wrote: post #158

Arjuna wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The key thing for me is quality." I wanted to say that I developed Rocket Renegade [1] for iOS. It's an 80s-inspired arcade shooter, with elements reminiscent of Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaga... and, of course, it contains bosses. I wrote all of the code, and I composed the soundtrack as well. The bitmap graphics were done by game designer Daniel Cook, who released them under a Creative Commons Attribution licen…

At 0.99 though, do you really make much money? Back of the envelop numbers seems that any game at that price point is so underpriced to never be profitable or more than a side project. Especially when an ad driven install costs more than that - relying on the pretty poor app store discovery mechanisms cant drive much traffic. (ive worked for free to play, so maybe we just saw a totally different thing) The reason IAP…

Post by hudell » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 9:33 PM UTC

jwcooper wrote: post #18

roymurdock wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you discover quality games? I've found the ability to discover apps outside the top 100 to be virtually non-existent with the current app store configuration.

This is the biggest problem for sure. So many of these games just get buried in either app store by the worst type of games and apps. I've mostly discovered them over time by recommendations from people, or from discussion boards or sites that cover games, or even when they get featured by Apple in the app store. It's amazing that app discovery is so difficult to solve for the big app stores.