Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 509 posts

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#81

Post by freehunter »

izacus wrote: post #35
mahouse wrote: post #14

> Competition on the App Store has risen to a frenzied level. As a result, sales for our games has dropped massively and the cost of advertising them has shot through the roof. So... Actually make good games? I don't know what the games of this studio are, but if you can't shine anymore in an app store just because there are more competitors, maybe your products weren't that good to begin with?

Unfortunately the definition of a "good" game and a game that earns money on App stores is slightly disconnected at this time. Skinner boxes that rely on practically scummy ways of selling expensive IAPs for basic amount of gameplay are the ones that dominate the earnings.

Which sucks because some of the games are quite good, or could be without the IAP stuff. I do enjoy Peggle and would be willing to pay a few bucks for it. Instead the only option I have is to get it for free and only play a few rounds per day until it's begging me for money. And not a one-time purchase, literally 99c per day. No thanks. And an Age of Empires style game would be awesome on mobile! But not a "it takes five hours to build this building unless you pay lots of money" style game.

It would be nice to have a platform that outlawed that kind of stuff, so real games for real prices could go back to being competitive. It's to the point where I won't even download a game that they won't let me pay for upfront (and even then, I find some $1.99 games that have stupid IAP requirements, and that pisses me off even more).

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#83

Post by sleepybrett »

MarkG509 wrote: post #68

Back in the time-frame of the Leopard to Snow Leopard transition, I visited an Apple Store (for the last time), where upon I informed a 'genius' that on Windows, I had code that I needed to (or was required to) run everyday that was older than him, and that Apple's complete disregard for backward compatibility lost me (and everyone I know) as a customer for ever.

Progress is hard.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#85

Post by ta0967 »

chx wrote: post #44
justinpaulson wrote: post #40

> My brain no longer has the time and energy to deal with Apple forcing me to relearn how to program every few years. Is this just kind of how developing software works on every platform?

Did someone invent a whole new language for their platform and solely for that platform like Swift?

.NET

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#86

Post by gmisra »

Honest question: how/why is it legal for Apple to ban any other "app store" from existing? I understand the motivation to require the presence of an intermediary to combat malicious software, but it seems blatantly anti-competitive to forbid competition within the domain of providing this intermediation service.

Similarly, why haven't any major app companies challenged Apple on the 30% app store charge, and how it is inconsistently enforced? For example, rdio charges a premium if you purchase a subscription through the app store, but MLB radio does not.

I don't know much about these things, but as a user I think it's fair to conclude that Apple has not done a very good job of app store stewardship, and I personally would welcome potential new overlords.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#87

Post by djur »

quietplatypus wrote: post #46
justinpaulson wrote: post #40

> My brain no longer has the time and energy to deal with Apple forcing me to relearn how to program every few years. Is this just kind of how developing software works on every platform?

Well, compared to Windows, which up until Windows 7 let you run a bunch of very old games (and even then you could still get some of them to work in compatibility mode), I'd say no. And that's a software platform that has to run on a bunch of different hardware. Also, your Xbox 360 games will all still work on your Xbox 360, as long as you have the hardware around. AFAIK all the Xbox 360 software updates never broke…

To back this up, Spiderweb's original Exile series still works perfectly well on modern Windows machines. I dug up my disk for Blades of Exile a while back and spent some time playing it on my Linux machine without anything other than some very minor graphical glitches. The Mac versions haven't been playable without an emulator for a very long time. And in this case, we're talking about the most recent iteration of SW's engine (they seem to remake Exile with a more modern engine and refreshed graphics every so often; the current Avernum 2 is the second remake of Exile II). Software platform vendors should really make an effort to maintain backwards compatibility for at least a few years -- especially when the platform is so centrally controlled.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#88

Post by ojanik »

[deleted] wrote: post #73
aresant wrote: post #31

It is fascinating how much the "micro-transaction" model on the iOS platform continues to bury everything else. Spiderweb throwing in the towel I would guess has a lot more to do with their #1 point "Competition on the App Store has risen to a frenzied level." than the others. The top two grossing games - Clash of Clans and Game of War - receive metacritic scores of 74 and 67 respectively. Whereas the most recent Spi…

[deleted]

Isn't Supercell Finnish? That counts as EU.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#89

Post by roblev »

eridius wrote: post #62
jblow wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are massive differences. For example, in the Windows world you are allowed to find out who likes your stuff and build relationships with them.

Relationships? What are you talking about? I can't recall the last time I ever felt I had a "relationship" with a game developer, on _any_ platform. The only way I can meaningfully interpret your claim is by replacing "build relationships with them" to "and market directly to them", i.e. being able to email your customers with marketing messages. And I'm glad Apple doesn't give my email address to everyone I buy an a…

I would think jblow knows what he's talking about here, he's delivered at least one great game to the world (to me, Braid had the perfect difficulty ramp and an awesome level of inventiveness).

As a buyer on Steam actually I didn't feel I had a direct relationship with jblow as the developer, but I would have been very happy to receive his marketing material, especially if it was programming tips!

http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-5-tips-of-a-productive-dev...

(...looking forward to The Witness)

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#90

Post by Finster »

gmisra wrote: post #86

Honest question: how/why is it legal for Apple to ban any other "app store" from existing? I understand the motivation to require the presence of an intermediary to combat malicious software, but it seems blatantly anti-competitive to forbid competition within the domain of providing this intermediation service. Similarly, why haven't any major app companies challenged Apple on the 30% app store charge, and how it is…

They don't have to ban other app stores. All they have to do is require that apps that run on your device be signed by Apple's certificates... which requires the App Store ecosystem.

If you jailbreak device to be able to run unsigned code, of course this restriction goes away and you can use whatever app store you want... like Cydia, for instance.

Post reply on HN