So You Want to Make Games
szafranek.net
szafranek.net
There's plenty exemple of sucessful game that have only few developper and are better than AAA.
I personnaly have started to make game because I like it to try other approach of programming and I want try to do things that other don't do more or don't focus. Like choice, cooperation, rewards on cooperation, etc.
Just focus on doing things that YOU would play, that make fun and people will talk about it, pay for it (I'm not even close to this but finish something always give reward.)
The PC AAA developers a very, very quickly catching up in dumbing down games; DA:Inquisition comes to mind.
That's a sweeping generalisation. Mobile games are not "focused more on money than the game itself". There are plenty of examples of PC games which are straight up cash cows, just as there are plenty of examples of mobile games which are deeply rewarding and fun to play. To make statements like that is insulting to both sides.
Really?
Sweeping generalization? Yes. Holds true for the most commonly installed games - I think so?
A $10 game on Xbox, PlayStation, or even Steam is considered fairly low-cost. On iOS or Android? Very few people are going to buy that.
I'd argue that this focus isn't necessarily to just make money, but to make money that mobile users simply refuse to pay up front. Most people don't think twice about paying anywhere from $10-$60 for a game on PC or consoles. Yet many will leave complain about an app or game because it costs $5.
Take the Nintendo 3DS as an example. Games vary in cost, but $20-$40 is most common for many games in the Nintendo Shop and on cartridge. There are very, very few games that are in that price range for iOS, simply because no-one will buy them. Instead, developers focus on IAPs as a way to offset that.
Pricing on mobile is caught between a rock and a hard place. IAPs have a terrible reputation because they're used (sometimes overly) frequently as a way to generate revenue from games that were released for free (or at very low cost). The alternative is to have users pay a fair, up-front price. That's not going to happen as long as people complain that apps cost $5 (which is usually how much that same person just paid for fast food or coffee that they didn't even finish).
>they are for dumb users (sorry I don't have other word for, and it's not even casual)
That is a sweeping generalization, and wrong. Why is it dumb if someone might be quite happy spending their own money playing Candy Crush on their iPhone? That's no different than someone wanting to use micro transactions in games like Overwatch, Call of Duty, or even a monthly subscription to WoW. Just because you think it's dumb, doesn't mean it is. If they enjoy playing the game, what does it matter?
Jonathan Blow nailed it in this presentation: https://youtu.be/AxFzf6yIfcc?t=2436
You can't compare micro transactions in game that you already pay and candy crush, you didn't pay for a full game, if people want spend their money they are free to do so, I'm also free to call them dumb for that reason. I personnaly play CS:GO sometimes and I have sell all my skins, cases, etc., and thus make the game free for me more that 15$ earned, then I can only say that others people are a little dumb to pay for that.
Traditional games vs mobile is the same as journalism vs clickbait. Mobile games are in the same league as downloaders, browser toolbars, doorway pages.
I've played some where I've thought - "oh, this game would be so much better if it wasn't stuck in a IAP addiction mode".
I never get very far in these games due to the artificial IAP barriers.
True.
> There are no interesting gameplay process.
Maybe.
> [...], no nice graphics, no art.
False.
Case in point: Toronto, Ontario has a lot of indie game devs. Ontario has great government grants for interactive digital media, through the OMDC.
All that said, the typical indie game studio here is marginal, surviving year-to-year off government grants.
If you actually manage to make a profit and draw a salary ($50k), you're a big success story.
In my province, you can pay > $25k for an 18 month program. At the end of that program, only the top handful of programming students will actually know how to code vs. copying and pasting.
If there's any way you can get into a college or university CS or engineering program, do that instead. Four years may seem like a long time, but if you include the time spent looking for a job after your 18 month program, it could easily be 4 years before you get your first reasonably paying game gig. Also, you can do a four-year engineering degree for about 8-10k a year in Ontario. Co-op can help defray those costs further and make you more attractive for that first full-time job.
Universities all have game-development clubs. Also, these are the people you're competing with for that first job. I would much rather hire a CS grad from University of Toronto, or University of Waterloo than someone who barely knows C# from a game school.
The flip-side is that there are exceptions. It's possible to find those diamonds-in-the-rough who weren't able or willing to go to university.
But for the moment other markets also exist, such as desktop where one can still be very successful (as long as you can hit a certain level of word of mouth).
Now, evidence is a hard word, but I've the hunch that unless your game is an addictive style freemium incremental, all other genres are as of today more suited to desktop, because of user disinterest on paying a mobile game upfront.
It's far more difficult to gain recognition and get word of mouth going on the app store (due to volume), combined with the lower selling point as compared to desktop (for example $1 vs $15). People don't want to pay up front for games and the race to the bottom on prices have really hurt the little guy.
All graphs I've seen of sales on the app store show an inordinate amount of sales for the top sellers, whereas the tiers in the middle and below don't make anything significant at all.
Then go look at steamspy etc stats, even games 2/3rd's down the lists for a year's releases would have made a few thousand $ (as compared to app store where they might have been sitting on tens of $).
Either way, learning to code via writing a game is something I recommend for anyone, anywhere.
For a niche product each happy user would have to tell many other potential user to make one conversion. So practically niche products rarely get viral.
Hence why Steam focuses on games that can be sold easily, not especially those with the happiest users. To make a game greenlit the voters vote on the screenshots and the beginning of the video, not the gameplay.
Game development is more of a passion / calling / addiction than a rational business decision. It's an even dumber idea than startups. But if it's all you want to do, then...