91–100 of 509 posts
> Competition on the App Store has risen to a frenzied level. This is a curious argument to make. The platform is too popular ? Would it have made any sense at all if anyone made the same claim about, say, Windows game development? I suspect what this really means is "there are more games than ever, and the iOS App Store is becoming increasingly difficult to rely on as a discovery mechanism, thus requiring advertisin…
> 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?
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…
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This really isn't true, as the costs of personnel are usually dwarfed by the costs of marketing.
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I looked up the company on pocket tactics, the site I menioned after I posted this. Infact they have had numerous mentions there as well, but no real detailed coverage, no real follow up. I don't think iPad games journalists are failing to cover companies like this - I think these kinds of companies are so anti-marketing in the presentation and design of their games that they fail to stand out or get noticed even by…
You are saying "anti-marketing" but what this really means is that they are putting less investment into production values than you prefer. The whole point is that it is doubtful that they will stay solvent if they put more money into production values on that platform. Nice graphics are very expensive. (They are more expensive than any other aspect of game development, in fact). If it seems unlikely that enough peop…
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.
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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…
The original post here was on Spiderweb Software's forums, which have been around in some incarnation or another for over a decade and hosts a community that has built up around their games. This is a company that has always relied on a close relationship with its customers.
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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…
iD/John Carmack, David Braben, Sid Meier, Rockstar, Volition, Gearbox Software... I could keep rattling off names and developers, but those are all examples of companies and individuals who have dedicated followings who follow them from game to game or platform to platform.
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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…
It's not about giving your email address to everyone (I wouldn't want that either), but it's about having the friction-free option of doing so. There are a number of game-makers for whom I absolutely want to be emailed when they make something new, because I love their stuff. That doesn't happen on iOS very easily.
Edit: I recognize that it's not particularly common for developers to try and encourage users to sign up for some sort of marketing. But I think that's just because developers haven't really considered it to be an acceptable thing to ask users of their games for, rather than any actual difficulty in doing so.
I own a couple of Spiderweb Software games on Windows, and play them on my Windows 8.1 tablet. They almost play like they were made for a touch screen (and they run great on the ancient dual-core Atom and stupidly non-existent video card in my Thinkpad Tablet 2). Actually the only thing I need a keyboard for is if I have selected a magic spell and want to cancel casting it. Then I need to pair my Bluetooth keyboard j…
I enjoyed the heck out of developing drivers for that thing—it was a constant uphill battle to even get correctness, nonetheless, the pretty decent performance we got. In the end, my tablet's battery died, and it now sits in a drawer, forgotten.