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Where have all the iOS games gone?

minotaurproject.co.uk

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Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#141

Post by NEDM64 »

Well, try your luck at Android or Consoles or PC.

Never noticied the AppStore was some kind of heaven where money rained.

Seriously, so much entitlement. If you want to make money selling games, you have to spend a lot in advertising, how much does Clash of Clans and etc spend? It's the rules, it always has been, what's the surprise? Maybe it worked for a couple of months out of novelity, but it doesn't work any more.

Get real, people.

And yes, it's free games with IAP the rules. Because they are designed for kids without credit cards that at most buy iTunes gift cards. And yes, it's jewel and candy games, because that's what there is for girls, which are 50% of the population that the "mainstream gaming" has abandoned.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#142

Post by colejohnson66 »

mback00 wrote: post #139
colejohnson66 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money and greed. It's as simple as that.

Poor and stupid - Simple you are. In a civil society those that provide a utility (or "fun") to others are rewarded and incentivized.

I have nothing against people being rewarded for doing stuff others enjoy. What I have a problem with is the freemium model that seems to have taken over. It's nothing but greed what some developers are doing. I had quite a few games that I paid for. Then, one day, the app claims that "due to compatibility issues, I need to download The New $game to continue receiving updates". Then you go and look at the "new" version to find it's free and full of IAPs. THAT is nothing but greed.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#143

Post by prawn »

retromario wrote: post #24

Yeah it's a challenging market. Just to add another data point, we're small indie (games) developer, we spent over a year on our first title with very little marketing budget and these are our sales figures from our launch: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/YacineSalmi/20160519/273030/E... In short, decent sales but not enough to recoup our costs. Still, we never expected that we would hit gold on the first try. I think…

This is when you need to build on your experience and go back for another shot. Maybe try a free variant with IAP.

We had a similar run to you. Built http://www.hexiledgame.com/ and had great reviews and some flurries of downloads, but outside of features and basic press, it's hard to really get rolling. Our game was free with one optional IAP to unlock extra modes more quickly, remove ads, etc - I thought that was a reasonable middle ground.

If I was doing it over and wanted to make money, I'd spend more time on virality, incentives to keep people playing, and not cap the most a hardcore fan can spend on that single IAP we had.

The reality is that a paid game needs to get especially lucky to maintain features or word of mouth and see a serious return.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#144

Post by a11957010 »

mucker wrote: post #2

The platform cratered with the dominance of pay to win games and the "freemium" model. This allowed the store to be cluttered with junk. I can't shop there, because I'm not sure what I am buying.

Your opinion is valid, but there's plenty of people who thoroughly enjoy many of the games you've stereotyped as junk. I'm among them; some of them I find good reasons to pay for, and others I just enjoy the free experience. One man's junk is another man's treasure I guess. Stick to what you like; it's just for fun!

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#145

Post by prawn »

jblow wrote: post #92
diziet wrote: post #13

It's often hard for indie developers without marketing budgets, but in the same vein the whole gaming market on iOS is doing tremendously well. Here's a high level snapshot of iPhone earning by country, month by month: https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/993499/16283312/2... The industry grew a lot - surely driven by the most successful titles, but also for the longer tail of developers. More of the total reve…

The problem is that games designed to "stick over many months & years and monetize the player" are generally garbage, as far as the quality of the actual game goes. Of course these things are relative or subjective and what have you, but it's pretty rare for people who have a lot of experience playing games to seek out stuff on iOS because of the great quality of games there. If you build a system that incentivizes g…

Depends on the user's definition of garbage. I have no interest in the games saturating the free-to-play ranks, but a lot of them looked very polished to me. Quality illustrations, very much "juiced", etc.

Garbage to me is the Flappy Bird clone with poorly sized graphics, ugly buttons and default fonts.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#146

Post by a11957010 »

freehunter wrote: post #128
themartorana wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Milked" is seriously loaded. AAA console games cost $60 and up - do you know how hard it is to get a paying freemium user to even $10? Yes. There are people that spend thousands. They also spend thousands on $60 AAA games as well. The idea that players get "fleeced" is ridiculous. Spent $15 on Candy Crush, a game that you spent months playing? That really doesn't seem like a lot to me. Edit: I should acknowledge tha…

There's a difference between Clash of Clans and GTA V, though. There is nothing on any mobile platform that can compete in any way with any AAA game made in the last 10 years (the most advanced mobile game I see is GTA:SA, which came out in 2004 or KOTOR which came out in 2003). Hypothetically, if someone spends $60 on Candy Crush and $60 on a AAA console release, the Candy Crush developers are seeing a much more mas…

Your personal preference for GTA V over Candy Crush is fine -- we're all entitled to our own likes and dislikes. But it's foolish to conclude, apparently based on your personal preference, that Candy Crush is trivial to replicate or less deserving of the money they've undoubtedly worked hard to earn.

AAA developers aren't entitled to make more than mobile games.

Even if you're not among them, I'm sure there are plenty of players who elected to make IAPs and are more satisfied with their purchases than if they'd spent their money on AAA games. To throw one more anecdote on the fire, I'd happily pay $60 for all my time in Candy Crush ... and another $60 to NOT have to play GTA V instead (just not my cup of tea, though some friends swear by it ;).

PS. Candy Crush is owned by Activision.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#147

Post by kbenson »

chii wrote: post #127
kbenson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different stores would allow competition on store policies and inventory. Would a store that differentiates by disallowing certain in-app purchasing strategies by useful? It would to me , because I don't want to support companies that use certain sales strategies.

By disallowing certain IAP tactics, the price of an app might rise to meet the required profit margin. Would you be willing to pay more in that case?

> By disallowing certain IAP tactics, the price of an app might rise to meet the required profit margin.

To the degree the market will bear that price, sure. I suspect we would see both a raise in prices (of course), but also a realignment at the studios as to what the expected profit margin is.

> Would you be willing to pay more in that case?

If I could demo it to confirm it was worth the cost, or there was a fairly thorough review, then yes. Even if the "demo" version was ad-supported (and/or limited in some other fashion), that would be fine with me, I could update to the ad-free paid version with less permissions required if it was good. The problem is that they've discovered that ad-supported doesn't hold a candle to in-app purchases powered by game resource scarcity. That gameplay doesn't generally translate well to a paid version (unlimited gameplay resources makes it no fun), and it's too much work to expect them to essentially make two different games.

At this point I've basically given up on most app store apps. I do occasionally put the odd game on there from Humble Bundle though, and those are ones I pay for. You could say I'm getting a really good deal because I'm paying $5-15 for 5-10 games each time, but since I generally only play one of them...

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#148

Post by moogleii »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #94
fnayr wrote: post #14

I hear this myth perpetuated incessantly. (That there's no more middle ground in the app store, only the Clash of Clans and Candy Crushes and the rest with no downloads). People paint the picture that it's the top 0.1% and everyone else with an unsustainable business. The truth is there's plenty of us in the middle still. My two person iOS dev studio has pulled in 6 figures a year for the past 4 years. The problem is…

I really don't think the top 200 is as impressive a metric as you think for so called middle ground. I mean really, extend it to other industries. The top 200 highest grossing album, concert, football player, movie star, corporate executive etc, are all making big money too, and not because these industries have a great middle ground, but because the top 200 on the planet in just about anything is the top 0.1%. For e…

I don't think he's saying top 200/0.1% is middle ground. He said that level can probably support hundreds of employees, and that they take in ~10k/day, which is 7 figures annually.

He's saying he himself is in the middle ground, which is a 2 man operation pulling in 6 figures.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#149

Post by NEDM64 »

onion2k wrote: post #102
Steko wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Jeff Minter can't make the App Store work then no-one can. As a counterpoint I grew up on no small amount of Jeff Minter games, lost more hours to Tempest 2000 on the godawful Jaguar than one should admit to in polite company, and have downloaded almost all of Llamasoft's iOS games due mostly to the fawning reviews in Toucharcade and played them for not all that long because -- frankly -- they are simply not ver…

So the reality is that even if you're a semi-famous developer who has a practically guaranteed revenue and media coverage from your fans, it still isn't enough. You need to make a game that competes on quality with the studios that spend $millions on their apps. Thats not a very promising proposition to anyone considering making a game.

> You need to make a game that competes on quality with the studios that spend $millions on their apps.

No, for example Crossy Road or Flappy Bird made some good money with a minimal team and minimal investment.

Not $millions like those studios, but also the creators didn't spend $millions in marketing and assets.

> Thats not a very promising proposition to anyone considering making a game.

Risks.

That's why most people find a job and not make games for the AppStore/Play Store in their room.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#150

Post by NEDM64 »

freehunter wrote: post #130
orik wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What type of game are you looking for? Do you believe there's a untapped market?

I do. All I want is something like boxcar2d.com that runs on iOS. It exists on Android, but the web version is Flash and even the HTML5 clone is far too slow in mobile Safari. I like leaving it running while I work on other things, checking on it like a fish tank.

So your problem has nothing to do with search, but it's simply a game that isn't available on the AppStore.

What did you expect?

The search to port the game for you?

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