Lots and lots of people over the years but almost certainly not who you are thinking of. Peter Molyneux is one of the two best designers I've ever worked with (the other being Alex Trowers if anyone wants to google a true unsung hero of the game industry) and also one of the best programmers, though I suspect those skills are a little out of date after 13 years or so at Lionhead/Microsoft. Though interestingly, he is still doing it as a hobby: Feed Me. The weirdest thing about the pic on that page is that he seems to be using my graphics from '87!
Hi Gleen, You might not remember me, I've work for Lionhead in the past: made the engine for B&W and the Movies. I crossed your road few time around Guildford. Do you still drive this funny bike where you are almost lying on the floor? I agree it is very difficult (and I have been doing it fulltime for few years now). It was hard to let go my old life as an engine dev but like you I was in this business to actually create game and not just the tech. It is tought but it is also extremely interesting. And yeah, even figthing against small team of 3 or 4 people is hard when you are on your own. JC
Fair play. I doubt Peter remembers me. I only met him once, at a pc zone awards. I was very pissed and kept waggling our award in his face in what doubtless seemed to him a threatening manner!
No, I got rid of it years ago. It was great fun to ride and very fast on the flat or downhill but it only worked for my commute which was a mix of quiet country roads and dedicated bike paths. Totally unusable for normal transport though, impossible to pop up a kerb. Most people seem to assume that they are dangerous because nobody will see you but that isn't the case, you are eye to eye with car drivers and, with a flag on the back are if anything TOO visible. I once had a car drive straight into another one a few feet from my right shoulder because the driver had been watching the recumbent as he overtook. I also used to get lots of kids shouting "get a proper bike" and much worse. I'd get one again though if I ever found myself living somewhere like Brighton or Santa Monica. Yeah, I love the tech and the actual mechanics of gameplay but the rest feels like a chore because I know there are loads of younger coders who could do it just as well in half the time.
hmm well that depends what audience you target.. the neon shooter style games (geometry wars etc.) are pretty popular for various reason on various platforms.. its definatly not a casual mainstream game, but it does not need to.. success does not mean to become millionaire.. but to recoupe your investment and earn a dime afterwards.. ans thoose neon shooters are usualy the most colorfull games there is and i would say are always a good tool to trigger an epileptic seizure.. but like most games.. first if they are seen in motion you really get a feeling how things look.. still images do alot of games no justice.. maybe its time that apple would allow to put a video next to the screenshots in the appstore.. that would be actualy pretty nice. well visibility is always an issue.. but again exposure on the appstore is important.. website/blogs etc like touch arcade, slide to play etc. and all of them are just a very tiny tip on the huge ios market.. and since the appstore is still in general a casual market most people do not visit such websites. i don't understand this point.. what do you mean with "just iphone games".. the platform is bigger than thoose of their competitors, so psp games are just psp games and nds games are just nds games? huh? well it surely is a well polished product with a very high value.. it has a good chance of success.. if you don't label success as becoming the next angry birds.. as for success and failure of silverfish.. only the dev knows the amout it had cost him to develope the game.. and if it was too expensive it can always be hard to regain this amount. hard to say.. i have yet to see an developer lay out his developement cost to analyze them.. i only can judge about stuff i've been involved.
with Iphone games I mean, you get what you pay for. Games for the PSP/DS/3DS most of the time have higher production value's resulting in more polished products because the games have to pass the quallity check. This also reflects on the price wich is 10 times higher then Iphone games. Therefore iphone games have in proportion more value for their money since they are so cheap. The downside is that their is no quallity check in the appstore whatsoever - that resulting in games that you will never see on hardware from nintento or sony My point is that most Iphone games just lack deepness or a soul. What you see and pay for is what you get. (some exceptions off course) People have to wake up. Chances are indeed reduced to 1% that games like doodle jump can make huge profit. You have to come up with better stuff now
No, you really don't. We're investigating bringing GLWG to a variety of platforms for an RRP of around 6700% the iOS price. Admittedly that would be a much enhanced and expanded version of the game, but not by anywhere near 6700%! Better iOS games are beyond bargains to the point of being ridiculous. What's happened here is that people have gotten used to it and now focus on differentials between game X and game Y, forgetting that both of them are practically free.
well your points are true to an extend.. a quality check would help the overall quality of the appstore content.. but only by a slim margin.. maybe there would be 100k apps less in the store but there would still be alot.. also the collapse of the nds market shows that even limited quality control does not help if the market is flushed with low budget crappy games who then want to be bought for 40$.. the big success of the nds attracted so many developers it was (in a smaller scope) a goldrush like the appstore.. with the difference that nintendo earns on every single game, sold or not, as does sony with the psp (cost of cartridges/discs) and off course you get what you pay for.. at least to some extend.. the biggest problem i've seen with the start of digital distributions is that publishers & co did not took the chance to lower the prices. a retail game usualy cost the same as its digital variations.. but the publisher earns more with the digital one because alot of expenses he has during distribution falls flat.. he still has other structural cost like servers, payments etc. but thats still alot lower than thoose of traditional retail distributions (that includes everyone between publisher and end consumer) so this is then more a general question about how the iOS platform will evolve.. only higher prices who gets accepted by customers will allow for bigger budget production.. "console quality" alot of people tend to call them.. if this will not happen alot of the more traditional platforms offer an alot better revenue stream.. where the top hits on iOS earn millions.. they earn billions on other platforms.. and that difference is gigantic. but everyone should be realistic what he can achieve, becoming the next angry birds is an illusion. earning a living is quite possible if you are behind what your doing and push it.
gonna butt my head in here... go here: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=93608&highlight=underrated wow, 6700%?!!? and I hope you guys do well with that. Just make sure not to ditch us iOS guys! BTW, I saw an earlier post.... you guys got to like top 60 overall paid at 2.99, but still haven't covered your costs? wow....
what does RRP mean? edit: Recommended Retail Price? this can't be it.. 6700%... is that the retail price for a console game in the us? sounds a bit high that if it is 67$ ?
That was my back of envelope of whatever 40 euros is compared to one dollar. In all likelihood we'll be going for the second tier at 20 euros tbh, but I was just making a point. It's very, very easy to forget just how cheap most apps are. @phattesfatty: Indeed. If we'd stayed there longer than a few days we'd have been one of those champagne cork poppers I mentioned. As it is we invested something in the region of $120K and are three quarters of the way to getting it back after two months. That's not bad in the grand scheme of things btw, I'm certainly not complaining - it looks like we'll turn a profit at some point. However it does kinda smash this myth that all iOS devs are coining it in. There are many, many more devs behind us than in front of us and we're about break-even ish.
Yes it is, being the majority of them Even some of the richer developers put a lot of their success down to something they couldn't have forseen or planned for such as lucky timing. It seems some people in this thread still think that great games can't possibly fail on the App Store. My advice to you would be... look harder. The very reason you find this hard to believe is because they've been buried to the extent you don't even know they exist!
Agreed. 'Discoverability' is the biggest challenge for any game designer out there right now. If you don't have a solid plan for helping people to find your game, then you are really rolling the dice. The marketing for any game that wants to be a big success these days needs to run in tandem with with the development. Even if you've got an amazing game, if you don't do that, you are running a huge risk. Sux... but that's just how it is. This is a great series called the Video Game Marketing Bible that has some of the best tips I've ever seen for how to market games in this changing market: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-05-09-video-game-marketing-the-new-bible-article
The reason I find it hard to believe is because I'm also a developer. I see this a lot in business: a person will often blame external forces for his or her unsatisfactory results in order to be free of responsibility, as if the marketplace is really a crapshoot. If the majority of developers are not finding themselves successful at their businesses, maybe it's because their skill set is not in business.
THIS I still want to see this specific list of games that are sooo good that you guys are talking about and didn't get noticed or made a profit.... the list, WHERE IS IT?
you didn't even read your own thread.... and there are plenty not on there. I bet there are a couple hundred that not even TA picked up on, but are quality titles. Note rubicon. GLWG is one of, if not the best (and definitely with the most supportive dev and best artwork) TBS on the market. It topped out at like 60th overall on the charts, yet STILL hasn't covered developing costs.
I've seen the games posted in that link and to be honest, there were no games in the thread I think that could have enough potential to reach the bigger audience. Don't get me wrong the games are prolly good but my first impressions of them aren't good. Then the rubicon dev, I just saw the trailer and I was impressed by the visuals altough I can also see that this isn't a game for the big public. It seems too hardcore for the casual gamers that most of the time want to play a simple (yet good/fun) game. Strategic gamers is a smaller audience then the casual gamers. Overall, it seems like a solid product and I hope that it will sell more in the future. @rubicon any idea how you are going to achieve that? *nevermind, didn't read your previous post. good luck with it! Just a small question left, How much $$ did you invest in this game?
Perhaps you just got lucky and wrongly attribute your success to your own business acumen? The way I see it, there's a bunch of developers with games I know are great telling us they struggle to get by, then there's you selling a bunch of relatively safe apps and no games trying to tell everyone they're not working hard enough. No disrespect (I really like the Minecraft Bible), but I'm not sure you're in a similar enough position to convince me what you're saying is true. We could show you the greatest game ever and all you have to do is say "I don't think it's great" in order to fuel your side of the discussion. If you know so much about the App Store, why don't you know any great underrated games? If you can't name any yourself, all I can assume is that you haven't searched enough, aren't familiar enough with the content of the store and don't play enough iOS games period. Do you think that every great film ever made has seen success? Every great book? Every album? There are immensely talented people out there in all kinds of different businesses and situations that go completely unheard, so why should the App Store be any different? Visibility for iOS games is quite obviously worse than it is for console games, anyone can see that, but even console games sometimes miss the success they deserve. If it can happen in plain sight on store shelves, it can happen a hundred times over on the App Store. What do you do exactly that gives you so much (apparent) knowledge about it anyway? How do I know I'm not just talking to the most ill-informed person ever to grace TouchArcade?
I didn't tell anyone they aren't working hard enough. I'm just saying they aren't working smart enough. Pride in one's work is admirable but the quality of product does not directly parallel financial success. On a side note, no offense taken. Sure I'm playing it safe. It's funny that I was just called opportunistic yesterday as if other developers are allergic to opportunities. LOL
Even if the first part of your statement was true it wouldn't make any difference. THERE SIMPLY AREN'T ENOUGH MONEY COMING INTO THE APP STORE TO SERVE THE NUMBER OF APPS/DEVELOPERS. This isn't rocket-science, the figures are there...
