Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad • Hacker News Board

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#211

Post by Mithaldu » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 12:26 AM UTC

_lce0 wrote: post #196

Mithaldu wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's intentional. :) There are 2 classes of f2p games: free2play, which sell game content in small units. Characters to use, classes and equipment to unlock, etc. and they also make it possible to gain all of those things in a reasonable manner by simply playing. free2pay games intentionally abuse the human psyche and subtly push people towards buying things that are at the core consumable cheat codes, and which ar…

wow, I never heard of such thing --really interesting. Also searching the web, I got no relevant result; is this some term you came up with, or are there more info somewhere?

It's a slang word and other people i see online like to use. It's never gone mainstream since understanding the meaning behind it requires actually putting in some time to study psychological effects.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#212

Post by tomc1985 » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 12:31 AM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #183

api wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thought I had about MS as a development machine a while back: If you want your Unix toolchains for development, you could still have them. The Surface Pro is powerful enough to run Linux in Vagrant or another virtualization engine. So you could just run a virtual dev environment. Virtual environments are sometimes better anyway, since you can replicate your operational infrastructure. Windows 10 is looking good.…

I really hate using WinSCP for file transfer between Windows and the guest OS. If Windows shipped with a native sshfs-alike, I'd probably be ok, but I really prefer native Ubuntu development.

Set up samba? (thats how I work) What about NFS?

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#213

Post by douche » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 12:42 AM UTC

api wrote: post #167

Sort of "meta," but I am getting the feeling that the whole "mobile is the future everything else is dead make everything for phones!" era is going the way of "web/cloud is the future everything else is dead write everything for the browser!" Obviously mobile ain't going anywhere any more than the web is... I am referring to the mobile-only and everything else is dead mania. I feel like it has maybe a year or two lef…

The enterprise software "Social software is the Future" meme also thankfully seems to be dying down, but not before untold billions were invested in Yammer, IBM, Salesforce and others trying to clone Facebook and turn it into a business product.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#214

Post by eridius » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 12:42 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #205

eridius wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your argument. Flashlight apps? There was a brief flurry of flashlight apps, and fart machine apps, and Apple then declared that they would stop accepting trivial clones of existing trivial functionality like flashlights / fart machines. But that's not really relevant, especially as the average price for those apps was generally $0. Those apps existed because they were easy to make, people who made…

I thought it was fairly self evident that I used flashlight apps as a stand in for any specific segment you want to isolate in the app store. That said, here's something to think about: I myself have paid real money for a flashlight application for my smartphone. Why? Because I wanted a flashlight app that didn't take three screens and button presses to get to light, and I also was a little leery of what the ad suppo…

I can readily acknowledge that some people made some amount of money on flashlight apps. I expect that research would indicate that it was in fact "very few people" and "very little money" (relatively speaking, at least; I'm sure it's so cheap to develop a flashlight app that practically any money would offset the cost).

As for your original point, I'll grant that you have a point, but I don't necessarily agree with it. I'm finding it hard to speculate about markets where I have no actual data, but my hunch is that the market for tower defense games is larger today than it was 5-6 years ago (i.e. I think the genre has grown more popular). I don't know whether that correlates with increased revenue for developers of tower defense games, or whether the number of games has outstripped the demand for them. Although I think it's fair to expect that there are a few developers making lots of money, and bunch of developers making a moderate amount of money (that may or may not offset the cost), and a bunch of developers making very little money. It turns out the App Store in general has a very steep revenue curve, with most of the money going to relatively few developers. But I think it's always had that curve, we just didn't used to have the data available to see it as well as we do today.

I think the more important question with regards to the App Store is not "how much money are developers making?", but "how easy is it for a new entrant to make money?". And I don't know the answer to this either, but I would be interested to find out.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#215

Post by miah_ » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 12:43 AM UTC

Steko wrote: post #180

Mithaldu wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as i know free-to-pay stuff never worked even remotely as well as on cellphones, because on average pc gamers are more experienced and recognize more easily when a skill-based difficulty curve morphs into a payment-based difficulty curve. So i didn't think it worth mentioning.

League of Legends, TF2, Minecraft, Dota 2, Hearthstone, World of Tanks (etc) are all wildly successful F2P PC titles.

The difference here is f2p vs p2w. p2w mean Pay to Win. There are many P2W FPS type games where you can buy weapons that give you an edge over those without those weapons.

In some cases, you can 'unlock' these weapons by earning in game credits, but often the amount of grinding required to get there equates to months of game time.

In DOTA2, LOL, and TF2 the micro-transactions are generally restricted to cosmetic / vanity items. These items offer zero competitive advantage.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#216

Post by dade_ » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 12:45 AM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #104

I think that becoming the most profitable company in the world has negatively impacted Apple, at least how I view them. I wrote the chess program given away free with the early Apple IIs, made some good money on a Mac app in 1984, and until recently favored Mac laptops: a fan boy. That is changing. I bought an incredibly cheap and underpowered Windows 8.1 laptop in January (HP Stream 11) for $199 and like it quite a…

My Surface 3 Pro is my go to, take with me device. I always know I have everything I need, whereas I obviously don't with my iPad. Hopefully the next Surface Pro will have a longer battery life, it is still a few hours short.

I recently started using the Windows Chocolately package manager, strange name, but works great and makes setting up a new machine and maintaining utilities much more simple.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#217

Post by rodgerd » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 12:46 AM UTC

eridius wrote: post #191

rodgerd wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, you can follow companies, but "relationship" generally implies that it's reciprocal. iD and Bungie both have a long history of heavy interaction with their customers. That's rolled off for iD, but Bungie's back-and-forward seems as lively as ever.

I'm still unclear on what part of the App Store makes it impossible for companies to engage with their customers. I've played many Bungie games, but nowhere in the purchase process for any of their games was I encouraged to form a relationship with the company. Any back-and-forth with companies happens in channels other than the retail channel; twitter, forums, websites, etc. I don't understand why selling on the App…

> I'm still unclear

Given you're fighting with actual, successful game developers as well as adopting a take-em-all-on style with everyone else I'm not sure you want to be clear.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#218

Post by dade_ » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 12:48 AM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #183

api wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thought I had about MS as a development machine a while back: If you want your Unix toolchains for development, you could still have them. The Surface Pro is powerful enough to run Linux in Vagrant or another virtualization engine. So you could just run a virtual dev environment. Virtual environments are sometimes better anyway, since you can replicate your operational infrastructure. Windows 10 is looking good.…

I really hate using WinSCP for file transfer between Windows and the guest OS. If Windows shipped with a native sshfs-alike, I'd probably be ok, but I really prefer native Ubuntu development.

https://chocolatey.org/

Choco install git.install /GitAndUnixToolsOnPath Choco upgrade git.install

It is a beautiful world with and my slashes work both ways!

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#219

Post by yellowapple » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 1:04 AM UTC

thefreeman wrote: post #153

s73v3r wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Clash of Clans is Supercell which is a foreign company that can afford to pay their developers less money in a foreign market. Any US or EU company would have a hard time competing with them." This really isn't true, as the costs of personnel are usually dwarfed by the costs of marketing.

Aka the cost of getting Kate Upton to run around with her boobs out asking if you want to be her hero.

Hey now, give Kate Upton credit where it's due; she also struts around battlefields and tells people to shoot monsters with catapults. That's hard fucking work.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#220

Post by teacup50 » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 1:05 AM UTC

eridius wrote: post #7

untog wrote: post #4

I'm interested to know what changed in 8.3 that broke their game engine. It's supposed to be a minor update, after all.

So am I. I'm also interested to know why the engine can't be fixed, rather than being forced to replace it with an all-new engine.

Not the engine author, but from our app experience:

Tracking Apple's breakage (in minor releases, even) and fixing our code -- code that was written to the defined API -- is a cost that is rising precipitously as Apple's quality and stability keeps going down.

If you have revenue from other platforms, it can make sense to just say "f it" and drop the platform. The AppStore is a shitty retail pipeline; 30% is a crazy commission for digital software distribution, the single-retailer-monopoly + appstore design is driving prices to unsustainable levels, etc.