iPhone games are fun to make as long as you don't care about making money.
I had hopes and aspirations to be able to make a game that would help to support my dream to be a successful iPhone game developer. It seems now that reality has finally caught up with me and that the sea of games and applications is large and saturated.
In order to make a game a profitable success, I realize now that it has to be a virally addicting game. Something that isn't just a mediocre game. It has to be special and it has to be special enough that you would show it to your friends and say, "you must download this game". It's a very "niche" game. Only a few people who play it will actually enjoy it enough to get their friends to play it. Seems that young gamers like it more than the adults which is probably the majority of owners of iPhones.
My first game, Smart Target (Rock Sliders) was suppose to make a small amount of money. In reality, it made almost nothing and continues to make almost nothing. You might say that it's because it has only been a month since initial release or that maybe it's because the game sucks. But now that I play the game again, I realize that there's nothing truly special enough about it that it would be virally addictingly fun. Instead, I realize that it's not particularily cool enough to brag about to someone to get. It's missing a hook. It's missing something of value. It's missing true substance; it has some, but not enough.
I will be re-evaluating my goals now; I will still release an iPad/Android version and do iPhone games, but it will really just be for fun and not solely for profit anymore. I had wanted to test the waters to see whether I could potentially make a living doing original games and it has become clear that my vision was distorted by the whole iPhone goldrush.
In order to make a game a profitable success, I realize now that it has to be a virally addicting game. Something that isn't just a mediocre game. It has to be special and it has to be special enough that you would show it to your friends and say, "you must download this game". It's a very "niche" game. Only a few people who play it will actually enjoy it enough to get their friends to play it. Seems that young gamers like it more than the adults which is probably the majority of owners of iPhones.
My first game, Smart Target (Rock Sliders) was suppose to make a small amount of money. In reality, it made almost nothing and continues to make almost nothing. You might say that it's because it has only been a month since initial release or that maybe it's because the game sucks. But now that I play the game again, I realize that there's nothing truly special enough about it that it would be virally addictingly fun. Instead, I realize that it's not particularily cool enough to brag about to someone to get. It's missing a hook. It's missing something of value. It's missing true substance; it has some, but not enough.
I will be re-evaluating my goals now; I will still release an iPad/Android version and do iPhone games, but it will really just be for fun and not solely for profit anymore. I had wanted to test the waters to see whether I could potentially make a living doing original games and it has become clear that my vision was distorted by the whole iPhone goldrush.
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