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Comment by socialist_coder | Hacker News Reader

I hate when people say things like this, "prices for the apps drop, so far that even 90% of the developers can't live anymore from their apps".

90% of developers are releasing shitty or niche games with no sense on how to market or monetize to the audience. It's the #1 problem of the indie game developer right now- they're building games that they themselves want to play, instead of the games that actually work for the market.

It's the difference between a professional and a hobbyist. If you want to make money, stop being a hobbyist and turn into a professional.

For professionals, none of these engines are cheap by any means. Unity is $4500 per developer once you add Pro, iOS, and Android. Unreal / Cryengine are potentially going to cost you a whole lot more than that given the 5% gross revenue share.

For hobbyists, yes, the price is low and probably not sustainable, but for professionals I think it's priced perfectly.

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Oddly I get the opposite impression, most of the crappy games on app stores I have a hard time believing that even the developers themselves would ever sit down and play for fun.

I get the feeling that they targeted some arbitrary demographic and worked through a checklist of features and finished when that was completed rather than iterating on an idea until it was good and working out from there.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to start a game development with "what would I like to play?" rather than "what would the market buy?".

Working in the game industry, I see "what would the market buy?" generating much more crappy content than "what would I like to play?"

Usually it's a mix of both that makes it happen, you start with what you want to play and adapt it so others want to play it too.

I've looked in the mobile-game market and most of the people I met told me, they have to sell mini-games to publishers/sponsors to make money.

They have to think what the sponsors want, not what they or the players want.

Mobile is an entirely different medium with a completely different target demographic.

They are most often targeted at casual gamers with a huge focus on micro-transactions. Most hardcore gamers stay far, far away from such games.

Most of the mobile development I see is as you said, for the publishers/sponsors to make money rather than for the consumers to enjoy. Rather sad indeed.

Honestly I'm kind of sad by this, being a player of mobile games. I've found over the years there's just less and less interesting stuff, to the point where I just haven't downloaded a game in months. I'm sure there's good ones out there but it's tough to find given they're being drowned out by incumbents with big marketing $.

And the top 100 lists have usually been an instant-avoid for me, as they have tended to be either freemium-milk-the-user games, or brand-name-port of something that would be better on PC. So I guess at the end of the day, I'm no longer a target demo lol.

Just a small correction, the CryEngine doesn't have the 5% gross revenue share. It's 9.90 a month and that's it.

three quick thoughts here.

1) you're bang-on-correct.

2) that why i only read industry analysis from folk who are making money for a living doing it. not a guy who hasn't shipped a game. not a guy who's only tinkered with small libraries.

3) more to your point, a hobbyist can't even USE unreal or cryengine. how many posts of "why doesn't this look better? i'm using unreal!" have you seen? "well, for one thing, you don't know a lightmap from a bumpmap and your game stutters because your objects have 50,000 tris and you're doing 200 draw calls on each one...."

Most of innovative indie games are probably using a custom engine anyway. I think it's good when the whole team is creative including programmers.

It's the #1 problem of the indie game developer right now- they're building games that they themselves want to play, instead of the games that actually work for the market.

It's the difference between a professional and a hobbyist. If you want to make money, stop being a hobbyist and turn into a professional.

This kind of thinking is the reason why the contemporary video game ecosystem is so dull. When you orient everything around profit and "working for the market" (appeasing to the lowest common denominator), you make crappy products that sell, but fail to leave a lasting impression.

It's the reason why demos are no longer released, a few levels or even core game functionality is shipped as DLC, games no longer ship with mod tools and why you get tons of microtransaction-focused games with predatory mechanics. Among other things...

I agree with the 90% thing, it is Sturgeon's law. But to say that the root cause is indies not exploiting their players for $$$ is ridiculous. We need visionaries and hobbyists who develop games they want to play.

The contemporary video game ecosystem is dull because customers demand dull.

It's the same reason why 90% of the cars coming out of the major manufacturers look like identical bars of soap and come in shades of black, white, silver, red, and blue. The market's taste is generally very dull, and people want cars with styling that doesn't vary far from the norm.

Well, that and the increasing requirements based around safety and fuel efficiency. You have to suppose that there's one optimum shape for each type of car for fuel efficiency and all cars will eventually slide into it's shape. At that point only minor visual cues can be different from car to car.

In which case there is nothing wrong with people defying market expectations and stepping outside of boundaries, even if they do not have the capacity and/or skills to deliver AAA-quality titles.

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