TouchArcade Is Shutting Down

> which, for whatever reason, do a much better job of not just promoting stuff that will be profitable

it's simply the law of large numbers. The early Switch was a goldmine for indies. If you could get a game on in the first 12-18 months, you were nearly guaranteed decent sales. That mine ended about 2 years in, though. Still a big market, but you will probably be buried more often.

Now Go to Steam. Decent storefront based on recommendations, but due to user tagging and the sheer volume of releases you're bound to get some random $2 hentai game everynow and then, no matter how fine tuned your filters on. This is partially because again, steam leaves it to the community to tag, but those weid recommendations are a peek into the surface of how much slop there truly is on Steam. And we don't even talk about how 99% of indies fare on Steam.

Google/Apple's stores are just Steam x 1000. There's millions of apps released per year, nearly impossible to curate manually. And due to the f2p nature, it'd take a lot longer to build a proper recommendation engine. because games optimized towards playtime, not getting $5 out of you ASAP.

But on top of all that: mobile games aren't on that power curve where they peak sales for the firs month then trickle along. Roblox was a highest earner for years and probably makes more revenue over time, not less. So the top selling board doesn't change. And google/apple have negative incentive to change that, because they will keep selling and they will get their cut. Who cares about new titles when the old ones are making hundreds of millions years later?

>And so I think the market generally treats mobile games like garbage. Which they by-and-large seem to be.

well, money talks, and Whales can disproportionately talk louder than some complaints online about mobile games. That's all that matters to the company. The best compromise would seem to be to support those games offering console experiences (more and more these days also on console/PC as well) but using a f2p monetization system if that's desirable. it won't change the candy crushes and robloxes, but it does show you can still grab console-oriented players on mobile.

Is that a bad thing when you see what the western mobile scene looks like?

My biggest gripes are definitely within the mines and relationships, but there’s also a general feeling of, I guess best described as urgency, I feel in SD but not in FOMT.

The mines are an easy target to pick on, and I understand why it is like this. The game is first and foremost an indie farming sim, and as someone who really enjoys action JRPGs (having grown up on Summon Night: Swordcraft Story) I was thoroughly dissatisfied with the mines. It’s essentially pre-1.12 Minecraft combat (aka spam clicking) against the same 5 enemies, breaking rocks to either get to the nth floor or collect enough of whatever resource to get out and do something more productive. I understand that making it more in-depth would pull the lone dev’s resources from other things and may not even be an interest for them, let alone the mostly casual players, but still a critique I will field.

Probably bigger to me is the relationships. I adore most of the characters, and especially Penny and Sam. It makes romance delightfully difficult when your preferred partner gets with your favorite guy, but that brings me to the problem with the base game. I can’t have a best friend. I want to get full hearts on people without it being strictly romantic, and I am thankful there are so many mods that do touch on this.

Finally, as for urgency, it’s really hard to describe and I’m not sure if it’s the right term. I just feel pressured in SD in ways I don’t in FOMT. Pressured to focus on the game, to plan my time around the game rather than picking it up, playing for the time allotted during a break, and then quicksaving for later. I feel pressured to be profitable, to be efficient, and to be social on top of that. It’s been a good few months since I’ve played FOMT, I admit, while SD was only a few weeks ago, so it may be revealing to play it again and see if I can deduce where these feelings originate.

Yeah, I think we are in full agreement. I usually prefer to try and offset downer news like this with some attempt at a solution. But I know those solutions won't come from anything currently in the scene; not from Apple/Google, not from whales, not from the devs. We basically need a storefront focused on premium games so we at least forge a new audience. A "Steam" of mobile. We can't drill through the diamonds but we can drill an alternative path, in theory.

I'm very slowly working on a PC game but I always fancied the idea of also doing a mobile port. It'd be a fun challenge and I know a phone can be more accessible for many. Due to the factors you highlighted I know that's a fool errand in the current state of mobile. Even if I made it a truly free game I wouldn't get many views (let alone downloads), especially compared to all the dopamine inducing hyoercausla games or high budget services. The native stores are just hyper black holes for people like me. So this "mobile Steam" would really help motivate people like me.

But are there any platforms that help with managing the payouts and tracking these events? That's the daunting part that I don't want to do manual accounting on every month...