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Show HN: I made 22 apps and games this year mostly by myself – here they are

davesapien.com

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Re: Show HN: I made 22 apps and games this year mostly by myself – here they are

#31

Post by ido »

velcro wrote: post #12

Very nice work Dave - one thing thats probably a more interesting question - can you make a living on that? Making many small apps? Have also been toying with an idea to start doing apps for a while now and rather than do a major idea, instead do many small apps. Like for example if 1 app brings 100$ per month - then making 20 could make 2000$ and so on - but does 1 app make 100$ on average at all?

Don't take this the wrong way, but please don't contribute to the flood of low quality apps in the app store(s) that serves to drown even the better apps out there.

I know of a person (via one of the local game dev groups I was part of in a previous city I lived in) that would just crap out a "new" app every couple of days by making a super simple game (like infinite runner) and then get some artist in Romania to reskin it 4-5 different ways for $10/hour, then SEO the title for popular keywords (names like "Runner Game for boys and girls with cute bunny! Christmas edition!").

If you have an idea for a genuinely useful app or good game, something you would enjoy working on and can imagine others enjoy using, then go for it. But don't do shotgun-dev of shit app. We have enough of those already.

Re: Show HN: I made 22 apps and games this year mostly by myself – here they are

#33

Post by DaveSapien »

neovive wrote: post #29

Very nice porfolio. Do you build all your games in Unity?

Some of them, mostly I use Unity on the Me and the Giants(my kids games studio) games. I build my own engines to power my more quirky projects. My paint tech is leading to a few games next year for example. (opengl Objective C/C)

Re: Show HN: I made 22 apps and games this year mostly by myself – here they are

#35

Post by DaveSapien »

velcro wrote: post #28
tseabrooks wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a question of what constitutes a "small" app. For my purposes I'll assume small is - "can be made in a month @ half time". I know someone making a decent salary on about 8-10 of these types of apps. they vary in technical difficulty and a couple required coming out of pocket a small amount of money for rudimentary design work. But it's definitely doable.

Yeah, its definitely a weird calculation I know. Was just curious if an average "small" app makes anything at all or not... My definition of small is even stricter than yours :) I'd say something that you'd be able to make in 2 weekends - like lottery/weather apps (of course both of these have been done to death - but in that general direction). I'm not expecting those to make anyone rich - just curious if something…

Small games would be your best bet, though I have a feeling that the indie bubble is bursting. In saying that, ultra niche is the sure way to go for small projects.

Re: Show HN: I made 22 apps and games this year mostly by myself – here they are

#36

Post by moron4hire »

fit2rule wrote: post #10
tlarkworthy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urgh, #makgammon is every November :( The lab has a public open night every Tue and Thurs though. General hacking then. The game things is a once a year special event. (check out the Doodle app for this year) Join the mailing list, or just email me if you want to visit. Oh there are bitcoin talks on the 3rd of Jan I think. (check the mailing list)

Maybe you can answer a question for me - why is that the hackerspaces in the UK are not open to the public all the time? I've been quite surprised at how difficult it is to get involved in the hackerspace scene in the UK - but I guess I'm kind of spoiled with the Metalab/Vienna situation. Is there some law in the UK that makes it difficult for hackerspaces to maintain an open door policy for the public, or is it more…

A lot of it comes down to the fact that there is no one such thing called "hackerspace". Everyone has their own opinions on what that constitutes.

My old space while I was still in Philadelphia was more like what you described in the UK, and we would occasionally get people who would complain about it not being more like what you described for Vienna. We had a set membership fee, only one public night a week, and membership had to be approved by unanimous vote of the current membership.

But every space is there to serve the membership. Our membership decided the space was a workshop first and foremost. I think anywhere you are out of the mainland-European anarchist scene, you're going to see hackerspaces gravitate more towards that form. A wide open space like Noisebridge with pay-what-you-want mentality takes a non-traditional mindset.

Luckily, there is room in the world for both types.

Re: Show HN: I made 22 apps and games this year mostly by myself – here they are

#40

Post by tsunamifury »

ido wrote: post #31
velcro wrote: post #12

Very nice work Dave - one thing thats probably a more interesting question - can you make a living on that? Making many small apps? Have also been toying with an idea to start doing apps for a while now and rather than do a major idea, instead do many small apps. Like for example if 1 app brings 100$ per month - then making 20 could make 2000$ and so on - but does 1 app make 100$ on average at all?

Don't take this the wrong way, but please don't contribute to the flood of low quality apps in the app store(s) that serves to drown even the better apps out there. I know of a person (via one of the local game dev groups I was part of in a previous city I lived in) that would just crap out a "new" app every couple of days by making a super simple game (like infinite runner) and then get some artist in Romania to res…

This is a kind of naïveté. Experimenting at scale to sell apps and find what might be a viable business is pretty much all the AppStore offers developers. The lack of custom storefronts or advertising/marketing options makes this the only viable way to try to make money.

Just waiting til you've made the perfect app and only launching that would mean you were one of the most brilliant people in tech, having complete knowledge of your target market even before release.

And relative to your comment about not releasing 'low quality apps', you might as well tell people not to release their blogs on wordpress because all these 'low quality' websites are just re skinned versions of the same blog engine.

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