Ex-mobile developer repents and converts to PC development

I don't doubt there's money to be made in mobile gaming, and I also suspect that older developers who started out on C64 or similar, and who have more of a connection to simple arcade games, would find it more enticing. But.....

...I can't help but notice that many of the people who leap at it seem to just blindly accept that it is universally lucrative, without any thinking any further than 'this is what's hot right now'. No serious industry analysis. No breakdown of how startups compare in that industry compared to elsewhere. No real sense of which market segments are underserved, or what a saturated market would look like.

This guy was better than most - at least he had a target market in mind. Even then, why that market? What are the spending patterns in mobile phone games for teenage girls v other markets? What's the specific market - 'teenage girls' by itself is just an age/gender category (it seems like he's using it as a stand-in for 'casual, fickle/fashion-driven' gamers, in which case he might have realised the downside before wasting his money/time if he had spelt it out)?

Most importantly, there never seems to be any consideration of what's your competitive advantage - what can you do, that your competitors can't, that makes you more attractive to customers? Unless it's purely a hobby and you don't care about remuneration, that should be the first question for any startup - but you just don't ever seem to hear it amongst mobile phone game developers. For the big companies, it might be an easy question to answer - they can produce more products, at lower costs, with better market research and broader distribution, they have less qualms about blatantly copying others, and they have greater funds and legal expertise that enables them to abuse IP laws (Zynga's favourite ploy being to copy a moderately successful game, make it marginally more user-friendly, and then sue the original creator for breaching their IP, stretching the case out until the original creator settles because they can't afford the legal fees). But an indie developer had better have a rock solid idea of what it is that will let him/her compete against companies like that.

The 'competitors can't' aspect is important. Let's say that this guy's game did really well (by indie standards), and had a big start - what would have happened then? Zynga would have rushed out 3-4 clones within a month, as would numerous other big players. Those clones might even have slightly better mechanics, and they'll definitely be more accessible and their distribution will be so superior that very soon anyone looking at the original game will assume that it is the b-grade copy.

If they asked themselves about competitive advantage, it would also lead them to consider whether there is really a market opening for them, as opposed to just assuming that there must be a customer base out there because 'this is the big thing right now'. Firstly, customers rarely know or care whether something is 'hot' within your industry. Secondly, if it's the 'big thing' right now, it's probably inundated with startups doing exactly what you're doing - an indie startup should be searching for the 'unfashionable thing that nobody has heard of, but has merit that outstrips its reputation'. That's where you're going to find untapped markets. Thirdly, just because a platform, or a general industry, is selling well (and even assuming that the high demand isn't being swamped by even higher supply), that doesn't mean that every section of that industry is doing well.

You get the same thing happening with the obsession over Silicon Valley startups. Admittedly, those guys at least will usually have some idea of what they can do that their competitors can't - they aren't slaving away making things that Zynga can cheaply imitate and outmarket. But there's this incredible amount of hype, really talented and intelligent people with valuable qualifications, working insane hours, and despite all the finance going to it, these startup entrepeneurs are typically working for free or for minimal salaries, as they're using all the investment capital to keep their unviable company ticking over for another few months...and they're doing it over and over again....And despite all that, the success rate for Silicon Valley startups is no better than the average for startups across all industries (i.e. terrible, with the overwhelming majority ending in bankruptcy). Again - these are people with talent and expertise of real economic value; for them to be doing no better than your average new small business, the market must be downright terrible.

But they just keep heading on blindly, like moths to a flame (where those moths are flying over a whole bunch of cushy moth holiday resorts that they could be hanging out at instead of burning themselves alive).

Edit: marketing often gets a bad rap, usually because it's conflated with advertising, but I think game developers could actually do with a greater market focus - just a greater emphasis on saying 'who are we selling to, and why would they buy from us'.

 

In before another ScamStarter...

 

Very, very well said.

 

Don't forget that the news that his little toy game studio was in a fiscal shithole was a total surprise for him. I guess he thought that God would guide him to a good game and many riches.

Or he's just a retard and deserves all of his failures, as I said before.

P.S. Good on the artist that he screwed over to overcharge this idiot.

 

Great, now everyone is band-wagoning back to "real dev".
I'll give a year till flash is popular again.
god fucking damnit game industry

 

Yea and it is so warming to see developers on the verge of suicide because they lost it all on a gamble to make $50k dollars per day like the Flappy Bird creator. So many articles on the web of dreams shattered in becoming wildly successful as it is impossible not to be with over 100 million smart phone/tablet users.

Well the problem is that most mobile developers stick with IOS and some goes into Android, he also did it for the Blackberry tablet and allowed his publishers go retardo on him. Read of developers spending more cash in the hopes of being successful.

Yea there are dozens of stories on the web of failed mobile start ups as the few articles on Gamesutra of studios hitting the jack pot and Flappy Bird makes them blind to how toxic the mobile market is and how fickle as hell it is. At least with consoles/pc's you have an idea of where things are starting to trend and soon die like moba's is at the tail end with Gearbox/Crytek jumping in to get some of that Jew gold. Mobile and tech start ups only difference is that the spigot for cash is open to a tech start up in the form of VC's and possibly Angels with the hopeof getting to an IPO and cashing out.

Also funny thing is that Gamesutra is now awash of articles as it has dawned on indie developers that marketing is necessary or else your game will never sell. This is why I always love video game industry news over others as basic concepts other industries learned over the last 30 years like reputation management, project management, marketing, and etc is archaic to video games which is in tech.

 

It's because of right wing propaganda. Because of their lies about hard work making people rich and poor people being poor because they are lazy. People start imagining if they'd become like Bill Gates just because they work hard and get dragged into idiotic business like that without ever looking at what other advantages people who got rich had.

 

The guy is independently wealthy from his primary business, he can't be that bad. There's a reason that despite slamming hundreds of thousands down the hole of mobile development he still has the money to fund an 8 person team to work on a desktop game.

 

Nice article. Hindsight is 20/20 but for an aspiring developer the mobile market sounds very attractive. If shit like Flappy Bird can become incredibly popular, why your game would flop?

 

The only thing that is really appealing to me about mobile development is that the expectations of the games are much lower, I would feel comfortable releasing a relatively small and simple game on mobile, but not on desktop.

 

Because Flappy Bird was made by a Taiwanese guy in a couple of days, not over one year on 200 thousand dollars.

I'd chalk that achievement on better bosses and subordinates who keep his stupid shit on a leash, maybe a bit of luck on the side. He reminds me of a former teacher of mine who spent most of his time bragging what an innovative businessman and teacher he is and sharing articles on Facebook rather than doing those things properly. A self-described expert.

 

Damn, talk about the school of hard knocks.

I hope his ship comes in.

 

Yet another powerful testimony from a ex-mobile developer.

 

An interesting read. What's particularly depressing is that this guy seemed to have had all his ducks in a row before he started as a game developer. Still, $400K is an expensive price to pay just to learn that casual gamers are fickle audience who mainly care about wasting time.

 

I wanted to learn Android game development but I quickly realised that it's going to be like this and I stayed with PC.

 

No, it's not like this. A friend of mine from college did Android games and apps in his spare time. He didn't get Angry Birds money, but we're still talking a dozen hundreds of euro at least. For two or three games he did as a hobby. I've only played one of them, but it certainly was better than that "tickle the monkey" bullshit.

I mean look at the trailers and screenshots for the games he made. I can tell it's absolutely unplayable shovelware just from looking at it. Many of the popular smartphone games tend to be smooth and pretty well made, with easy-to-understand rules and responsive controls and an unique draw to them. Candy Crush and Angry Birds and Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja are not the bestest games ever made, but as far as casual puzzle games go, they have pretty good production values. They're fast and responsive, have pretty nice visuals and memorable songs. The monkey game feels sluggish from videos alone.

 

This guy has bad decision making skills and lacks self-awareness and common sense.

If you know that you can't even draw a straight line, then what makes you think you have the artistic sense to select talent that will make your product stand out visually, hmmm? The illustrations for this game look like 1000 other fantasy games. As much as I like to shit on DeviantArt every now and then, I've seen some work on there that is practically visionary compared to the stuff he's got going for his game. Two artists with style are worth more than 6 without; he could have taken the money he saved hiring 2 instead of 6 and rolled it into some business classes.

And he fails at Christianity too, btw . Some people in need could have really used 400k instead of throwing it away on projects that did NOBODY any good. It's not God that separated you and your friend, it's your fucking idiocy that more than likely was the cause. Oh, and you may want to think about whether you're showing proper reverence in thinking your vidya gaem endeavors are worthy of His time and interference.

 

I bet friend of buzz didn't sink $400k into development of his games. Dozens of hundreds of euros doesn't quite cover expenses here. Actually after quick googling ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/tristanlouis/2013/08/10/how-much-do-average-apps-make/ , http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/vision-mobile-average-mobile-app-revenue-under-4k/2012-06-25 ) it looks like "dozens of hundreds" is pretty much what your average mobile game will earn (if that). Maybe this kind of knowledge wasn't readily available in 2011 (I can't bother to dig up older articles) but it still makes you wonder what was this guy thinking spending 200k on mobile game. How did he plan to earn it back?

Yup, dude was just delusional. He didn't make market research or anything like that (probably just looked at success stories). He just assumed iPhone is "next big thing" and he'll earn millions. He probably also assumed that burning more money will make his game more successful/better.

Oh look he even admits this much

To be fair second app got to be another 200k sink hole because things got out of control / publisher made him target too many platforms.

 

My friend did those games in his spare time with another dude, there's no actual budget to speak off. That's the point, you have to be a little bit insane to use 200 thousands dollars to make this app:


I mean, look at that fucking drawing. That's not "hire artist to do work for months" art, that's "get that little nephew with a graphics tablet to do it for you for some ice cream" art. Look at his hands also why is the image mirrored? Never saw a keyboard that looked like that

Look, Rovio has been doing phone games since 2003. Angry Birds was their 52th game released. And it was quite big and expensive, I agree. Their estimated budget at release was 100k dollars.

That's still half that what this douche had spent on one of his retarded little game. And they did ports, just later when it was safe to do so and they had the money.

 

This is exactly why the market just sucks in general to get into as many people are doing it for a hobby and not trying to make a living off of it. This is what I always see in just about every story of developers crying that their studio is going down the shitter on a lot of sites is that they don't realize that the big companies like Candy Crush and Zynga are developing dozens of titles simultaneously. Video games is a hit driven business and so it has to operate like movies where they have a couple films in production so that 1 game doesn't bankrupt them as a way to diversify risk.

I am confident he will do okay on Steam as I have seen dozens of games like the one he is doing for Steam make it if he does some marketing. Also your description of the guy "This guy has bad decision making skills and lacks self-awareness and common sense." is a good description of a lot of studios in general in the video games industry so he will fit in perfectly. Just read the Puppy Love drama in the corrupt journo thread of the guys bitching for the reason his studio is going into the shitter.

If you are going to enter the mobile games market as a studio start up you can't just do one game you have to have at least a dozen being worked on and more being prototyped. The market gets more fickle when you go to the low rung of the video game totem pole which is mobile games, high rung is PC development since it is obviously superior.

 

Dude, you're looking wrong at that guy's problem. The reason he fucked up is not really because the mobile space is a harsh mistress, or he had to do multiple games at once to survive in that wasteland. Those are some ways of achieving this, but it's not really it.

I know it's hard to believe, but sometimes quality IS serviced on smartphones. These are some best selling or best "grossing" games on both Android and iOS right now:

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

I'm not saying that these games are good or that those market places is not full of shovelware. I'm just saying that if an app costs a lot of money to make, there's a REASON to it. The reason being: good marketing,good production values, fairly well designed (in a casual gaming, skinner box way at least) and so on.

Take another guy as example, he is known as Damp Gnat. Check out two of his games, they're pretty fun:
http://www.dampgnat.com/wonderputt - a minigolf game set in an Escher/Surreal-like world with tons of pretty and inventive animations, and the getting the holes are fairly challenging (given the type of game). Not his first minigolf-type game, but the best one.
http://www.dampgnat.com/icycle - one of my favorite platformers in the last years. Inventive, GORGEOUS AS FUCK graphics, no enemies, the platforming challenge consists on surviving the decaying environment (buildings falling down, melting snow and so on)
I really recommend both but the second one is boss.

Now, this guy went on mobile platforms as well. First with a port of Wonderputt on the iPad, then with a sequel to icycle.

I've read his Facebook page and his blogs and whatever. He spent about 6 months to a years between contract work to make the golf game, and about 1 and a half years to finish the sequel to the platformer. But I think it's clear that in his case, it does make sense why it took so long. He didn't port them to every piece of toaster, he just released on one or two devices at most.

Did he recoup his money? I dunno, I like to think he did. I mean, he did get plenty of coverage in websites, magazines, awards and nominations for awards, Here's what he said about Wonderputt's sales:

So what lesson am I trying to extract out of this? Well, the fact that the "mobile gaming" industry works in the same way anything else related to entertainment does. It's not very different than from kickstarter, really.
If you want "da big money", you need to show that you can make quality products, you need to have a certain degree of experience, a good sense of marketing and a proper way to handle money.
If you want a small project, to make your first game, you can't jump to ridiculous levels. You start small, doing free games, testing the waters, working for the big guys, asking for a little amount of money and so on.

Lack of experience + spending a risking amounts of money on a product that lacks substance = shit and done.

Would I give hundreds of thousands to some random fucking shmuck who made money doing "commerce sites"? Some retard who talks big and reads all kinds of books and goes to conferences where people chew ideas rather than apply them? (see Warren Spector).
Hell fucking no!
But would I give that kind of money to Damp Gnat? Sure, in a jiffy. If he has some people who can help him properly with administrating things and so on, I can't see why not. I'd love to see bigger, proper icycle platformer made by him.

My prediction with his PC game, it's either never going to be finished or it will never pass greenlight. I dunno, maybe he can really make that great game that he promises. But I seriously doubt this will be the case. He got a little attention with his gamasutra articles, I give him that.

Here's his last update on Facebook about Archmage Rises:

he's not shooting very far, is it? He's an idea guy dudes, we needed plenty of those in here.

Before that, he was talking about making a more "hardcore" logo for his game, taking inspirational cues from Skyrim and Dragon Age. He came up with this



God fucking speed, dear fucktard!

 

A hardcore logo. HAHAHA.

A hardcore logo like Skyrim and Dragon Age. OH WOW

This guy is a character. I'd be more interested playing a game based on his life- the trials and tribulations of a mentally unhinged software developer- than any of the ideas he's presented so far.

 

Like a bigger brain and the ability to make money. That isn't a problem for right-wingers though because most of them have bought into that whole darwinistic shit.

 

Mobile games are shit, and if you enjoy making shit, you may succeed. There's an astronomically low chance of that happening, though. No matter how polished your game about matching 3 gnomes is, it will never unseat Candy Crush Saga. It's the same reason why WoW clones all die, because people would rather just stick to WoW.

 

I'm not sure what are you trying to say. How does that explain that the developer in question made some extremely shitty games for $400k?

Candy Crush Saga is actually the counter-argument to what you said. A more polished version of Bejeweled, which in itself was an extremely popular casual game. Just like WoW was the Everquest killer, so is Candy Crush the Bejeweled killer.

Not to mention that more often than not, the "big guys" in casual gaming don't stay at the top for too long. Rovio and Zynga games are not the most played/best selling any more, even Candy Crush is now on 3rd place behind the games from which I provided the first two screenshots. There's not such a giant monopoly as you think it is.

Again, Flappy Bird was made by a dude from Vietnam in 2/3 days. We're not talking about some dude who poured millions into a game or ruled the app market with an iron fist.

Whether or not the games on phones are shitty or if you can reach top spots, that's irrelevant. It doesn't change the fact that this dude spent over 200 thousand dollars making this game (look at the main menu at 0:20):

And then being somewhat shocked that it flopped as heavily as it did.

I didn't see the KoDP guys complaining about their iOS port. I think it sold pretty well for a niche game, and they plan on doing Android soon.

I mean, your game alone is infinitely better than both the games he made. Would you really say you spent 400k on developing it?