The End of Indie Game Development on Android
polyclefsoftware.blogspot.com
polyclefsoftware.blogspot.com
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Polyclef+Sof...
Speaks for itself.
Unless you're arguing that there are better direct equivalents of those apps on the market these days and there's more competition from good apps, I don't see how "your products have always been poor and have not recently gotten worse" answers "our sales have gone down".
It also doesn't help that the exact functionality of their most famous app (EasyTether) has been baked into the OS since ICS (and similar functionality has been in since Froyo), and their second most famous app (WordFeud) relies somewhat on network effects and has been mostly supplanted by Words With Friends.
This is "their" app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mstream.et...
This is the /actual/ Easy Tether app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mstream.ea....
So not only is this developer a hack, they're also a thief.
I think it's the way it is because EasyTether was developed by someone living in Russia (look at the whois for mobile-stream.com), but they had no way of charging for it on the app store in the early days - there used to be a very restricted set of countries. So they got Polyclef to publish it (whois polyclefsoftware.com points to Louisiana). And that's what the description on the first link says - "EasyTether is developed by Mobile Stream and published by Polyclef Software".
Going with a publisher should be avoided as much as possible and it's a very ignorant answer, but for the end user, it seems that only these types of games seem to be worth their money.
"Just In", if it worked, would be great.
I hear so many developers complaining about their apps not getting exposure on the app stores, but guess how many of them have put any serious sweat equity into building their business outside of the app stores? Hardly any is the correct answer to that question.
The whole world of internet marketing is open to you. Build a brand for yourself, cultivate a community. You think the only way to get people to download your app is through the app store? The only time I go the app store is when I want something specific. I find ALL the apps I use through search and social.
You need to think bigger to survive. Yes, competition is increasing- nobody gets a free ride in this world. But there are advantages to being small and nimble in this market. You just gotta think outside the store.
They found 34 games worthy of review in a 2 week period. That implies that there are hundreds of others that didn't make the cut. That's a lot of competition.
"For my new app I got 30 downloads on Android, 4,000 downloads on iOS."
That's not remotely the difference between the size of the markets. To me that says yes it is partly or even mainly Google's fault. If anything iOS should be relatively harder to launch in.
I rely on places like /r/gamedev, and /r/android for finding new apps. If someone could aggregate all of that data into something that actually usually it be freaking awesome. As it stands now, the playstore is horrendous. Google is doing a pretty overwhelming job in my opinion.
If you've made something great, it doesn't take much hustling to get your stuff in front of a lot of interested people.
My app is called "My PlayHome" (the wisdom of that branding decision is another matter). Let's see what happens if a potential buyer (quite reasonably), adds an extra space and searches for "My Play Home"...
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=my+play+home&c=ap...
To save you time, my app is at the bottom of page 3 of the results. To make matters worse, Google autosuggests "My Play Home" as you type. "My Play House" does rather better, appearing in the bottom half of the first stage, even though that's not the name of the app.
Compare, a normal Google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=my+play+home - right first time ..or Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dmo... - http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dmo...
Add to that Google Play doesn't have keywords or indeed a Kids section.
Now, I should probably mess around and add some spammy keywords to my app title on Google Play but my point is that Google hasn't even bothered to get search right on its app store. That's some hardcore irony.
[EDIT] I just changed the title on Google Play to "My Play Home" - that immediately drastically improved the search results for the incorrect name even before the name is being shown as changed on the search results or the actual app page. This is not exactly optimal, as the app has 10s of thousands of paid downloads on iOS as "My PlayHome" (iOS app search also compensates for extra spaces...) as well as all the reviews on the web using my original spelling.
I'm an Android user, so I hope that if this experience is indicative of many, that there will be new tools for indie devs, to help them get that initial bit of momentum.
I'm very interested to see if the OUYA can deliver on promise. It looks like a fantastic machine and at its price point, there will be no reason not to have one on every tv in the house. That will be an exciting new frontier in game development.
Sheesh, all consumer software is hit based.
In short, it's a very well made game that is worth talking about. Marketing something brilliant is easier than marketing something that is average. Let's face it, most Android and iOS games are mediocre.
http://nmccoy.net/2011/02/24/on-the-whole-wavespark-tiny-win... http://nmccoy.net/2011/02/26/setting-the-record-straight/
Compare to Tiny Tower, a hit, polished iPhone game made by a two-brother development team that is then carbon copied due to its success by mega-corporate Zynga with exact gameplay systems ripped off wholesale and yet a claim of originality.
McCoy doesn't begrudge Illiger his success with Tiny Wings... Why do you feel the need to hurl a vicious, unsubstantiated attack against him?
[1]As far as I'm concerned, that's an incredible insult.
I'm sorry if that came off more aggressive than I intended. I don't like writing long posts. I think that my perception of the situation might also be skewed by my preference for gameplay over art; I play Dwarf Fortress and Aurora, for pete's sake. I was also following the game-a-week project while it was in the process, so there's that.
"mediocre" seems generous; I'd say most are complete crap.
My girlfriend finally made the jump into the smartphone world by getting an Android device. After excitedly poking through the app store, she disappointingly asked where people are remaking the same exact game over and over again. In the end, she downloaded Angry Birds, and Word Hero.
Finding great --or at the very least mediocre -- apps should be at least somewhat easy and fun.. but it's not. It feel like a chore because to get to one good items, you have to sift though hundreds of items that, honestly, shouldn't have been made in the first place. The last 4 apps I've downloaded, I've instantly uninstalled after the first run. There's rough around the edges, and then there's shouldn't have ever been released.
So i go on the web making random searches for new games & apps but it's neither convenient neither all that successful either (its mostly spam sites as in sites made to rank high with crappy content)
I can't think of anything.
The idea that if your product is good, it will float to the surface is very true, well for some apps/games. The truth is that the developer need feedback to improve his product. Before it gets there, not after. The "Develop for a year and wait to be rich" really just works for big brands, who already know the market well.
What makes Android different?
* Lots, lots more competition from crappy spammy games that flood out the good ones.
in that case, partnering with a publisher makes a lot of sense. For example, Flight, the iOS game heavily promoted by ArmorGames could have gone it alone, but decided otherwise.
If you think about it, the mismatch is easy to spot. Google made a great product (web search) by being ideologically non-editorial, but you need to be editorial in the gaming space, and you need to support the indie developers who are where quality comes from. The problem, at "Google scale", is that you also need to figure out a process and strategy that enable you to be editorial without micromanaging every decision (because you can't).
Oh, don't get it wrong. The long tail market is there. But what many people get wrong is that you don't make meaningful money as a producer in a long tail market. The guy owning the store with all those obscure niche titles in it will make the money.
Yes, you can produce obscure apps (and music) and find customers. But it won't be many customers. You as the producer will be making only cents. The app store owner on the other hand will be making the big money because he can monetize the whole long tail with his indefinite shelf space.