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Comment by takasc2 | Hacker News Reader

I follow Ipad gaming quite closely because it is perfect for my commutes. I would consider myself as close to a hardcore ipad gamer as it is possible to get - I read specialist sites like pockettactics and spend well over a hundred dollars a year on ipad games. I had never heard of this company or its games before.

The ipad is a marketing platform in the best and worst way I can mean that. Looking at this company they seem aggressively anti-marketing. Their entire presentation style and format is opposed to the kind of experience the ipad offers. They are the anti-flipboard. The fact that someone as interested in ipad gaming as me was not even aware their games existed until now suggests it is probably not the best platform for them at all.

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Spiderweb games are very highly regarded RPGs that came from the PC. I definitely know TouchArcade has covered their games a few times over the years.

I looked up the company on pocket tactics, the site I menioned after I posted this. Infact they have had numerous mentions there as well, but no real detailed coverage, no real follow up. I don't think iPad games journalists are failing to cover companies like this - I think these kinds of companies are so anti-marketing in the presentation and design of their games that they fail to stand out or get noticed even by people like me who might have been looking for this kind of experience.

A contrasting company would be someone like inkle's 80 days - that's was an odd iPad game that was hard to sell just on screenshots, but it was marketed brilliantly and had a vision throughout the product that was reflected in taht and the buzz around it was and is huge because of that

You are saying "anti-marketing" but what this really means is that they are putting less investment into production values than you prefer.

The whole point is that it is doubtful that they will stay solvent if they put more money into production values on that platform.

Nice graphics are very expensive. (They are more expensive than any other aspect of game development, in fact). If it seems unlikely that enough people will buy their game given that type of investment, then it may be a good choice to stay away from that.

On top of which, maybe they just don't want to spend all their time doing graphics. Maybe they want to work on the story / world / etc.

I would consider production values part of marketing (a vital part) - they are competing only on PC without the marketing/production values being an issue - iPad is not a platform they can do that with. I don'et think they are necessarily wrong to step away from th iPad from a business perspective, just saying very different audience customer retention strategy and maybe not suited to them.

No, he's saying "anti-marketing" to mean just that: marketing.

It doesn't matter how much work you want to put into your graphics, story, world, or whatever if no one knows that your game exists.

> Nice graphics are very expensive.

Alarmingly true. Good 2D graphics for a game like Avernum could easily scale into the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars.

(Source: my spreadsheets. :-/ )

Do you think there is still the chance for a well-made, expensive up front iPad game (we are talking like $10 to even $30) to make it based on word of mouth from hardcore gamers and Gamespot/IGN/etc. ? I know that the ecosystem itself optimizes f2p, but still.

Games which target iPad first inevitably make design and marketing compromises that harm their other platform performance & experience - whereas games which target other platforms then are adapted can typical make far less painful and less compromising changes (which can work against them or for them).

Yes, it is possible but not easy - look at for example Shenandaoh's Desert Fox / Battle of The Bulge). But I don't know if that is a long term model for success. $19.99 is the highest price point you can set for a game and then you are competing with things like FMC2015 or Xcom (heck, you can get GTA San andreas for $6 or so - is your game better than GTA?!?) which are full PC ports. Clever developers will I think make a game for more established platforms, and if successful port to iPad for additional revenue. The iPad has millions of active premium gamers, but a tiny number compared to any non-portable system.

Well I just bought space program manager, got many more before and will pay ten bucks for prison architect, even more for tiny trek or if ever rimword would get a porting

Fact is all iOS categories and ratings are useless to me, mostly rubbish game built for freemium and with loads of marketing wind behind get visibility on the store, while real games get buried and I've had to follow third party website just to even know their existence

App-store-sarcasm-on: Oh, the curated library of applications and games is failing? You have to resort to 3rd party sites to actually filter things?

At this point App Stores are nothing more than extremely expensive anti viruses for all the applications installed. We'll see on the long term if giving up so much control is worth it for a security scan :|

given the many malicious app that pass trough, I guess not.

anyway, even steam has given up, but at least they added curators before opening the early access floodgates

Would you think there is still a chance for iPad games that are well-made and well-advertised on the internet, that cost perhaps over $10, maybe even $20, to do well?

I see this as, first you have the stuff that's top ranking on the app store which is mostly f2p optimization problems. But hardcore gamers should be able to spread the word about an actual good ipad game, right? Or is the notion of an ipad game itself not hardcore enougH?

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