Articles like this reduce games to some grey, by the numbers marketing exercise. The reason so many games on the app store sink like a rock is because they just plain aren't enjoyable experiences and treat their players very cynically. It's totally disappointing that micro transactions, sneaky psychological tricks and nagging the player at every stage is so actively encouraged in the mobile space.
Gameplay and designing experiences for the player is seen as some sort of afterthought.
Games can be such a wonderful immersive medium, but it's hard to get lost in another world while there's a bright bouncing icon asking for your credit card or facebook details every three seconds. Mobile games really could be so much better than this.
I for one would love to see more focus on building great things and less on monetization. Long live the indies and hats off to people like yourself who are out there pushing things forward.
I spent two years building an iOS game without any special psychological or monetization tricks. My goal was simply to make an interesting and engaging game, and charge people a few bucks up front to play it. But making a living doing this is not as simple as it seems.
My game (http://buttonbrigade.com) is completely unique and those that play it love it, but so far the market has shown very little interest, even for the free version. From this side of the fence, it seems much easier to market and make money off of a clone of an existing game.
I wish it were simply a matter of making a great game and enjoying success, but if I want to keep doing this for a living, it seems I need to put much more effort into marketing than actually making great games.
Articles like this reduce games to some grey, by the numbers marketing exercise. The reason so many games on the app store sink like a rock is because they just plain aren't enjoyable experiences and treat their players very cynically. It's totally disappointing that micro transactions, sneaky psychological tricks and nagging the player at every stage is so actively encouraged in the mobile space.
Gameplay and designing experiences for the player is seen as some sort of afterthought.
Games can be such a wonderful immersive medium, but it's hard to get lost in another world while there's a bright bouncing icon asking for your credit card or facebook details every three seconds. Mobile games really could be so much better than this.
I for one would love to see more focus on building great things and less on monetization. Long live the indies and hats off to people like yourself who are out there pushing things forward.