
The state of iOS game development, according to the creators of Alto’s Odyssey - tolien
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/the-creators-of-altos-odyssey-on-how-to-make-a-mobile-game-thats-actually-good/
======
makecheck
The problems on iOS have never been with the market but rather with Apple’s
developer tools and store software and the fact that you _have_ to put up with
those sub-par experiences in order to publish at all.

It’s quite frustrating when, despite having a great experience _developing_ a
game (good APIs, solid technology, etc.), one finds that the entire process
for building/releasing/updating the game is horrible and one finds that the
App Store is just about the worst imaginable way to expect anyone to find and
buy a new product.

When I first published a game, I literally couldn’t _find_ it on the “new
improved” App Store after typing in _THE APP NAME_ , and I sure as heck wasn’t
going to find it with their absurd browsing interface. To this day, I have
been wasting limited space in my search-keyword list to include the app name
because I’m not convinced that their search will be able to find it otherwise.
There is also absolutely zero useful filtering; why for instance can’t I
simply get “things published in the last month” or any of a dozen other very
basic searches?

Also, the slow and manual nature of the app build and update tools is insane.
Every single update requires unnecessary GUI-based questionnaires in Xcode,
_and then_ unnecessary web-based questionnaires in Safari, through an
abysmally-slow web interface that for some reason is completely incapable of
even _finding_ your Xcode builds for a painfully long period of time after
you’ve already uploaded them. It’s been 10 years and there isn’t so much as a
terminal command available for scripting; all I want is a "publish_app_update
--id=com.something.myapp --yes-for-the-40th-time-my-ad-identifier-did-not-
change --yes-my-encryption-did-not-change-dammit filename.app".

Apple charges way too much considering that they are not investing noticeably
in many of their most critical tools (or investing less than nothing, if you
consider depreciation over time from tools that have been terrible for years).

