
So You Want to Make Games - szafranek
http://szafranek.net/blog/2017/05/04/so-you-want-to-make-games/
======
madshiva
Mobile industrie are not the same than game for PC, they are really focused
more on money than the game itself, they are for dumb users (sorry I don't
have other word for, and it's not even casual) making game like this is more
commercial than a passion for gaming.

There's plenty exemple of sucessful game that have only few developper and are
better than AAA.

I personnaly have started to make game because I like it to try other approach
of programming and I want try to do things that other don't do more or don't
focus. Like choice, cooperation, rewards on cooperation, etc.

Just focus on doing things that YOU would play, that make fun and people will
talk about it, pay for it (I'm not even close to this but finish something
always give reward.)

~~~
ungzd
Mobile games are focused on exploiting addiction on people vulnerable to them.
There are no interesting gameplay process, no nice graphics, no art.

Traditional games vs mobile is the same as journalism vs clickbait. Mobile
games are in the same league as downloaders, browser toolbars, doorway pages.

~~~
swsieber
I would say that the top games have good gameplay process, nice graphics and
good art.

I've played some where I've thought - "oh, this game would be so much better
if it wasn't stuck in a IAP addiction mode".

I never get very far in these games due to the artificial IAP barriers.

~~~
MrMember
I've pretty much given up on mobile gaming. People just aren't willing to pay
money for a quality game. These days if I play a game on my phone or tablet
it's usually a board game (one of the few genres that's mostly free from
exploitative IAPs) or an emulator.

------
JabavuAdams
One thing I would strongly recommend _against_ is going to a private game-
development school. These tend to market very aggressively and be _very_
expensive. The education provided is hit-or-miss, largely dependent on the
specific high-turnover instructors you get.

In my province, you can pay > $25k for an 18 month program. At the end of that
program, only the top handful of programming students will actually know how
to code vs. copying and pasting.

If there's any way you can get into a college or university CS or engineering
program, do that instead. Four years may seem like a long time, but if you
include the time spent looking for a job after your 18 month program, it could
easily be 4 years before you get your first reasonably paying game gig. Also,
you can do a four-year engineering degree for about 8-10k a year in Ontario.
Co-op can help defray those costs further and make you more attractive for
that first full-time job.

Universities all have game-development clubs. Also, these are the people
you're competing with for that first job. I would much rather hire a CS grad
from University of Toronto, or University of Waterloo than someone who barely
knows C# from a game school.

The flip-side is that there are exceptions. It's possible to find those
diamonds-in-the-rough who weren't able or willing to go to university.

------
animal531
Focusing only on for example the Apple app store in deciding whether to go
into making games or not is not a great idea, since it's by far the most
congested (as the article also shows).

But for the moment other markets also exist, such as desktop where one can
still be very successful (as long as you can hit a certain level of word of
mouth).

~~~
supercoder
What evidence do you have that your game will make any more on the desktop
than it would on the App Store ? (Given the same amount of word of mouth)

~~~
LoSboccacc
Top paid app on the app-store show games that are of significant age
(minecraft, plague inc) or with significant name recognition (monopoli, risk,
etc) hinting at a stagnant market for independent, paid for games.

Now, evidence is a hard word, but I've the hunch that unless your game is an
addictive style freemium incremental, all other genres are as of today more
suited to desktop, because of user disinterest on paying a mobile game
upfront.

~~~
animal531
Pretty much this.

It's far more difficult to gain recognition and get word of mouth going on the
app store (due to volume), combined with the lower selling point as compared
to desktop (for example $1 vs $15). People don't want to pay up front for
games and the race to the bottom on prices have really hurt the little guy.

All graphs I've seen of sales on the app store show an inordinate amount of
sales for the top sellers, whereas the tiers in the middle and below don't
make anything significant at all.

Then go look at steamspy etc stats, even games 2/3rd's down the lists for a
year's releases would have made a few thousand $ (as compared to app store
where they might have been sitting on tens of $).

Either way, learning to code via writing a game is something I recommend for
anyone, anywhere.

~~~
clarry
And then I guess mobile gamers don't feel so excited and invested in their $1
break time distraction that they would talk about it on chats, streams,
forums, or with friends. Heck I don't think I've ever seriously heard people
discuss a mobile game, whereas discussions or passing mentions of PC & console
games (both old and new) happen all the time on various media.

~~~
lfowles
The only two examples of that I can think of are Puzzle&Dragons and Clash of
Clans. I suspect it definitely contributes to them being so large.

------
drops
This video will always stay relevant:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGar7KC6Wiw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGar7KC6Wiw)

