Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

You're suggesting I change my advice to say "Hey guys, people cheat, you shouldn't." Either that, or you're suggesting I should have simply said "Hey guys, this game isn't going to be big, so just make another game."

Gaming app stores isn't morally bankrupt, it's about circumventing an arbitrary set of rules set out by Apple or Google. It's not breaking the law, it's not raping and pillaging. It's capitalism. The other games in the app store that have this gameplay are dialing home, selling ads, etc...

Yes, you can make a good living making awesome games and selling them in the app store. If yer a game dev, you should know that just expecting every game dev to make an awesome game is ludicrous. Gameplay design is about iteration, refinement, testing, and iteration, refinement and testing. Just like software dev. It's really tough to get right, too, because gameplay doesn't "compile" in the same sense as regular logic. You have to test subjective "fun" levels. Making an awesomely fun game with a unique gameplay hook is the hardest possible thing to do in making a game.

So what is an indie dev to do? Monetize the lesser games to fund the big, awesome ones. Is gaming the app store any more scummy than downloading a user's phone book? Tracking their phone call regions? Reading their cookies?

>See this from a user's perspective

This pattern has repeated time and time again in the history of software. See the videogame industry in 1984, or the Wii, now: crappware hurts the whole ecosystem. I totally agree. Please go browse through the Android App Store and then explain to me how the ecosystem is in anyway un-besmirched now. There will be a flush out. The decision of these guys doesn't make a difference. Get while the getting's good.

>Apple's rules are not arbitrary. I could then claim that the laws of a country are arbitrary.

Yeah, you could. But in this case, we are talking about the rules of a marketplace versus the rule of law. The rules of marketplaces, historically, are gamed over and fucking over again. See any Ponzi scheme/Mortgage crisis/stock swindle. It happens all the time. The rule of law sometimes overlaps with the rules of the marketplace.... I dunno where I'm going with this...

It's just that your statement equivocates the rules of a private, corporate entity with the rules of a democratically elected body of government, checked and balanced with the judicial system. Say what you will about the process of our Republic/democaracy, but I'd say it's anything but arbitrary.

For some reason, when you say arbitrary, I think "spontaneous," and... wow... the federal government as spontaneous. It may be completely non-sensical, but the government tends to move in very premeditated, well explained fashions. OMG, the extent to which they go to explain things.... Jebus.... 10,000 page research studies and... this is another argument.

Point being, Apple's rules change when Apple wants them to. Our laws change when ( and this is another argument waiting to happen) the people decide.

Here's the problem: in the app store graph of revenue, the top 10 apps are on Mount Everest, the next 15 to 25 are at sea level, and the next 75 out to 100 are in the Marianas Trench. Everyone else is somewhere in the molten core of the planet. I was offering blunt advice on how to succeed. The sad fact is, gaming the app stores is a whole line of business. App stores suck. As a game dev, you should know this. Xbox Live Arcade? How's that for patch management? Apple? Holy gods! Why are you so protective of their TOS? I mean, yeah you should abide by all rules of your marketplace. But people don't. And people get rich that way. I sure as fuck don't get rich. On anything. Maybe that's why I am so bitter. Or maybe it's SimCity V's BS...

i ended up finding it! it looks like it was one of those backdoor wordpress hacks where they set up commands that are evaled() as base64 strings

Sounds like you and I have similar religious (or lack there of) beliefs, if you're arguing from that. Sadly, HN is all about the startup dream: money, and changing the world...

I would say that money is the guiding light of many here, perhaps only out-shined by the dictums of clean, recursive code. I just felt obligated to tell these guys how they could best support themselves with this game, as is, barring another 6 months of reworking it. Having quit his/their jobs and such, I'm sure money is very important.

Making money on games, and making awesome games are kinda two different things. The lines around advertising, Terms of Service, and the general expectations of a free versus paid user, this is all some very shaky ground on which to stand. But when I'm giving advice on a game in this market, I just calls 'em like I sees 'em. It's a terrible reality inside the app stores. Their terms of service change monthly, they can throw you out in the street for a lot less than gaming their systems. It's a marketplace, and these paid install services are growing, just like search engine optimization sites did. It's one of those icky business decisions, and lines that you pay a suit to worry about. Given money from this app, these guys can go and make a great game that can stand on its own merits.

In the video, use onscreen text, like "connect the squares that have the same colour" (sorry I didn't play your game, but this is what I got from the video that it's about, I'm not sure how the air balloons tie in though).