I spent hundreds of thousands on making high-quality mobile games in a booming market that went largely unnoticed. I spent years of my life making games, but never the games I actually wanted to make. Here are the important takeaways from my experience:
1) People always say Write what you love. I didnt. I wrote what I thought others would like. I wrote what I thought would sell. Im poorer for it.
2) I dont like casual games. I dont play them. They bore me. I think I made it to the 4th level on Angry Birds, and about 12 floors in "my" Tiny Tower. I love sophisticated war games with tons of menus. I love RPGs filled with stats. I love FPS like Far Cry and Battlefield. I love highly competitive RTS games like Starcraft II. In short, I love PC games. What the hell am I doing making games for a platform I dont use myself? Write for what you love.
3) Yesterday 304 apps were released in the App Store. I didnt bother counting, but about half of them look to be games. 152 fresh new dreams went on sale. How many of those will hit the top 100? Probably 0. How many of those will be profitable? Probably 0. How many will cover their costs? Probably 0. But here is the real kicker: tomorrow, 152 NEW dreams will go on sale. Today's will be old and discarded, for you only make the new lists the day you launch. Apple boasts about hitting 1 million apps. That is about the worst number a developer could hear. It means 999,999 other people are competing with me for a customers attention and wallet.
4) There are 100 winners and 999,900 losers in the App Store. Each month the media spend (banner ads, ad words, intercessionals, facebook ads, free apps) for attention keeps climbing. The trend isnt headed down. The trend isnt even for costs to stay the same. The trend is that the cost of customer acquisition keeps climbing, from $1 to $2 and change now, to soon $3 per install. Casual players dont read review sites, or follow Facebook sites, or read developer blogs, or watch threads on Touch Arcade. They are casual! This isnt an important part of their life!
5) The average casual game app store player has NO brand loyalty. The casual player loves THAT GAME ONLY, for some reason they dont care what else the developer has made. This is completely backwards from other businesses. Music: people follow an artist. Movies: people follow an actor or director. Cars: people follow a manufacturer if not a specific model. The casual player who likes FarmVille doesnt care Zynga made something else, they like FarmVille. It is next to impossible to make a business in an environment of no brand loyalty. Every win of a customer requires you to re-win them on the next sale, as if they were a stranger. Look at how Zynga lost big on Draw Something. All those customers didnt leave Draw Something to other Zynga games like they hoped, they just left to something new and shiny in the store. One of the 152 new daily dreams.
6) The cost of making an app continues to increase. I remember when I first installed Flight Control on my new iPhone. I was thrilled. If that game came out now? No one would pay attention to it. Graphics are too simple, too basic. No multiplayer to rope in your friends, no in app purchase. The cost of being status quo with graphics keeps rising. But the selling price of games? Still $1. Even though costs have doubled to make a game, they still sell for $1. This is lunacy!
7) Casual gamers dont love games, they love distraction. Distract them from waiting, distract them from their surroundings, distract them from their lives. This is what they pay for if they cant get it for free. And when it comes to distraction, quality doesnt matter anymore. All that matters is fast in and fast out to kill the time. Well Im not going to put my heart & soul into making something that could be just as easily replaced by reading celebrity gossip in Us Weekly.
