Advice wanted/AMA - Average person making a mobile game.

humdogg on 26/10/2015 - 12:08

Hello all,

I'm a massive bargain hunting fan and I think it is important to save money and shop wisely to be financially successful. On the other side of building wealth, I'm trying to increase revenue streams and "passive income" aside from my day job. Tiny bit about my financial situation: have a decent paying job $90-100k, some safer investments such as two properties, blue chip shares, ING savings account.

So I'm trying my hand at some mobile development. Specifically, i am making a mobile based game. Thought some of you might be interested in that journey. Particularly as I have 0 expertise and skill in that field. Crazy right? I mean in theory it sounds pretty sweet. Pay a developer to make a game, put it on the mobile app stores and see if anyone bites. If they do and pay for the game/play the game with ads, you can get some income without doing much further work or work only if it is required.

That said, money is a big motivation but not the biggest. I think it would be an achievement to successfully launch a game on the Apple/Android stores. And there is something super exciting about taking something from a concept to a tangible product. That is biggest reason. I just want to say i've launched a game on the app store/android store and tried my hand.

Also, I am not that crazy. I'd like to say I'm a big dreamer and thinker but not an idiot. I know there is virtually a 99.5% chance my game will fail with the saturation of apps on the marketplace and the big boys dominating the field. Those odds are not great. My reasoning for nonetheless giving it a go is: given i just want to try something, if i break even on this project i would be really really happy and you always have to try to make it. If it fails miserably, I'll lose about $5,000-$15,000 which i won't lose too much sleep over, especially if i am trying to use that money well.

Ok so the game: It's a pretty stupid game but i'm still excited about it. A text and numbers game choose your own adventure type of game. Why? because games with graphics and movement and action are expensive to make and if they do not made well, generally suck imo. My game is based in the corporate world. You have life categories that you need to balance/keep high: money, social life, reputation, career, health, emotion. They whole game is just a scenario/question and 3 answer option format. eg. Your boss has asked you to stay back and work late tonight but it is your 5 year old son's birthday party. A - stay back and work B - Go to the birthday C - Punch your boss in the face. Each decision changes the value of the parameters. A similar sort of game in a different context is Dictator:revolt.

Developing the game: I put a lot of research and time into this. I explored many avenues for finding the right developer. Development, especially for Oz based developers is expensive and you get what you pay for. I wanted to find the optimum balance between quality, price and risk of course. In the end, i settled for developers based in Ukraine charging about $3,000 US for the project with some contingencies built in for more (as I knew that I would want changes as i went along). So far they have been great and things have moved along nicely.

Status of the game: in beta testing/final changes. will post screenshots if anyone actually reads this or is interested.

My immediate question is this: When you answer a question, each value of the parameter changes accordingly (generally the life parameters are a value between 0-5000). Say if you answer A in the example above, your money goes up ~2000, career goes up 1000, reputation 800, but health and emotion decline say 600. The goal of the game is just to get the highest score possible which is basically the sum of all parameters. However, different events trigger on the value of a parameter. eg. if your reputation is very high, after any question there is a % chance you get a 'citizenship award' and you get a money + stat bonus. If your emotion goes too low, your character might suicide and it is game over. Stuff like that. Anyway, there are a few events like and they exist for every life parameter. When we were discussing the game, the developer did flag to me that tutorials were a little tricky to program because they need to program when it appears and how it goes away after further game play and said that can be a bit expensive to do. I declined the option, thinking at the time that i just wanted to get it to market and if it goes ok, I can make changes. Now, I'm thinking that the tutorial is actually really important (in explaining the rewards/risks of the game, the game play is really just pushing a button to answer question after question). The thing is, it'll cost about another $1200 US dollars to program which is in part i think the developers seeking a bit of compensation for some extra work they have been doing (which they have). My question is whether I should spend the money and make the tutorial or not. It is not so much a question of money alone. On one hand, there is no point spending even more money if I do not think my game will be a success and my main goal is to launch something but on the other hand, if i do not make this game the best possible (within a reasonable scope) i'm not giving it the full chance of success. What should I do?

TL;DR Layperson making a iphone/android game. Doing it mainly for fun but in the hope of making some money. Just looking for general thoughts and advice. AMA.

Look forward to anyone's thoughts. Ask me anything for those remotely interested.

Gaming

Comments

  • t_c on 26/10/2015 - 12:27
    +3

    I heard that 60% of apps on apple have not been dloaded once.

    So I would launch as is. Can always update the game to v1.2 with the tutorials.

    • humdogg on 26/10/2015 - 13:52

      not sure if that stat is quite accurate. won't be a problem for me because I'll at least make a dozen or so friends DL it. =P

  • altomic on 26/10/2015 - 12:38

    Tldr.

    What are you saying?

    • Diji1 on 26/10/2015 - 16:46

      TL;DR: OP is successful with an above average wage and some solid investments already. He wants to make a "good" mobile game (read: money isn't the only objective) but he has no experience in dev work. So he is paying others to do the things he cannot do and it seems to be going "OK" as far as he knows. But he would like some other people's views on game development and whether he's doing the right thing.

      Thoughts: sounds like it's going well and well done, keep going.

      It's true that the odds of having a "successful" app are well stacked against you however it sounds like you are in a good position to make that play and the rewards if it pays off may be large.

  • indium on 26/10/2015 - 12:43

    How long does the game take to play through? How's the replay value?

    • humdogg on 26/10/2015 - 13:40

      Mmmz about 10-15 minutes. If you replay and have seen the questions before maybe half of that. i'd say replay value is medium. You can try and get a higher score but the results are the same. Achievements to get highest social score or highest money might give it some higher replay value.

  • FrankMcFuzz on 26/10/2015 - 12:58
    +3

    The app market is a beast. I've been analysing it for a long time, and have a few things to say.

    • The market is impossible to predict, but leans towards trends. Quick , one-hit-chance score attack or grinding 'level up' games do the best in terms of 'actual games', and if you wanna make some shovelware, Casino and candy crush clones are almost guarenteed a few installs.
    • The financial model has to be just right to a microscopic bullseye. If it's paid, even at 99 cents, the chance of someone downloading it is 10% of the chance if it were free. But if you lock players out of content, they also get moody. The one I've seen work the best is the 'addiction method', where they can only do a certain number of things in a certain amount of time and the grinding method where progress slows to a crawl also works, but I disgress.
    • A lack of graphics is a lack of downloads. That's the unfortunate truth. I am a believer of "Gameplay is more important than graphics" (my favourite game is Dwarf Fortress!) But the stores gravitate to cool art styles, and with phones getting better and better graphics, they're expecting crispier 3D models or more particle effects every year.
    • If it takes more than 5 minutes to lean or 20 minutes to play, most people are going to gravitate away from it.

    From your predaciment and having an understanding of your game and the genre as a whole, in my opinion, a tutorial wouldn't be wholly necessary, but perhaps I'm forgetting the state of players in this era of "please hold my hand, I'm scared" dumbed down AAA next generation titles. Of course, that audience isn't your primary target audience, lol. I don't think you should have a tutorial, because I have a strange feeling that the returns for the game aren't going to be astronomical.

    To be quite honest the game would be better suited to steam, as CYOA text games have a niche following there. In my own opinion, it's not the right platform, as the main consumers of the medium are young kids, middle-to-late aged women, and people who spend a lot of time in public transport, and the target audience for CYOA games have dwindled severely in the past decade.

    I wish you luck regardless. At least you didn't contribute to the oversaturation of Crap of Clans or Crappy Bird clones. Ahem. I mean Clash of Clans and Flappy Bird.

    • twocsies on 26/10/2015 - 13:35

      If it's already Android and iPhone then maybe a Windows/Linux port for Steam would be straightforward.

      I'm wondering how to make money from this app. Is it ads or app sales?

    • humdogg on 26/10/2015 - 13:47

      Thanks. This is really good advice in general and pretty consistent with what I had though.

      I will put some more thought into steam.

      It's not your classic CYOA game but not far off either. Text games aren't the most popular on the platform but from time to time a few break through: lifeline, a dark room, dictator outbreak/revolt to name a few.

      • FrankMcFuzz on 26/10/2015 - 14:26

        Not to mention my personal favourite, and so good that it's an actual item on my bucket list for realsies, King Of Dragon Pass. It really goes above and beyond a CYOA game, and has stood up exceedingly well. You should check it out for ideas.

        Of course, even it had a tablet/mobile device port recently… which sold incredibly poorly. Ah well.

  • DeafMutePretender on 26/10/2015 - 22:52

    All I know is that the mobile game market cannot possibly be more saturated than it already is.

    Also lots of clones and plagiarism going on from Chinese developers (stealing of art assets etc)

    • FrankMcFuzz on 27/10/2015 - 10:25

      Not to mention the infamous "Five Nights at Freddy's 4"

      A 2D platformer with the description that read "This is the official Five Nights at Freddy's 4"

      Needless to say, Scott Cawthon won that case.

  • roadsign on 27/10/2015 - 14:10
    +1

    Good luck! I have to say, I when I read the thread title I assumed you were trying to program a game yourself even without any experience (maybe a wild idea!).

    You seem to be very passionate about this, and have put a lot of thought into your ideas. It seems you are doing this more for the thrill of having your own game out there rather than potential profit.

    That said, do you feel you'll get the same satisfaction in paying others to write this than you'd get from a 'zero to hero' writing-it-yourself scenario?

    • FrankMcFuzz on 28/10/2015 - 08:16

      Programming a game without any experience is possible using Unity! Of course, you have to try VERY hard to make something with the game building tools as good as even the most basic of coded games. There are dozens of tutorials on how to create flappy bird clones in case anyone needs a start to coding using unity.

      Personally, I have 2 unity udemy courses…. For a rainy day :3

    • humdogg on 28/10/2015 - 22:47

      Thanks for the encouragement! You're spot on, it really is just for a bit of a thrill.

      I think i would get the same amount of satisfaction. Despite not programming it, it will soon go from an idea to something tangible. It's not the biggest achievement but it is something.

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