
Show HN: I made 22 apps and games this year mostly by myself – here they are - DaveSapien
http://davesapien.com/DaveSapien/2013DaveSapien.html
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velcro
Very nice work Dave - one thing thats probably a more interesting question -
can you make a living on that? Making many small apps?

Have also been toying with an idea to start doing apps for a while now and
rather than do a major idea, instead do many small apps. Like for example if 1
app brings 100$ per month - then making 20 could make 2000$ and so on - but
does 1 app make 100$ on average at all?

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ido
Don't take this the wrong way, but please don't contribute to the flood of low
quality apps in the app store(s) that serves to drown even the better apps out
there.

I know of a person (via one of the local game dev groups I was part of in a
previous city I lived in) that would just crap out a "new" app every couple of
days by making a super simple game (like infinite runner) and then get some
artist in Romania to reskin it 4-5 different ways for $10/hour, then SEO the
title for popular keywords (names like "Runner Game for boys and girls with
cute bunny! Christmas edition!").

If you have an idea for a genuinely useful app or good game, something you
would enjoy working on and can imagine others enjoy using, then go for it. But
don't do shotgun-dev of shit app. We have enough of those already.

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tsunamifury
This is a kind of naïveté. Experimenting at scale to sell apps and find what
might be a viable business is pretty much all the AppStore offers developers.
The lack of custom storefronts or advertising/marketing options makes this the
only viable way to try to make money.

Just waiting til you've made the perfect app and only launching that would
mean you were one of the most brilliant people in tech, having complete
knowledge of your target market even before release.

And relative to your comment about not releasing 'low quality apps', you might
as well tell people not to release their blogs on wordpress because all these
'low quality' websites are just re skinned versions of the same blog engine.

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ido
The value of the blog is not the engine it's the text. If their text is a
blatant rehashing of someone else's content with SEO on top then yes, I would
tell them to not put up crap online & try to find something of value to do.

I'm not saying don't try to release MVPs quicky to test the market, I'm saying
don't log in to itunes, check out the top 10 games and then make cheap generic
rip offs with different skins and optimized titles. The summery of what I'm
trying to say is: do something you care about, in one way or another. It would
be better for your mental health and probably also more likely to be a viable
business. Don't be the ios equivalent of spammers & spyware-laden internet
explorer toolbars.

I should say that I've been making a living as an independent developer for
almost 3 years now so I'm not just talking out of my ass here.

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apalmer
Yeah but that is business. That is exactly how a good business man approaches
business. Study the market, determine what is successful, emulate them but
either more efficiently, to a new niche, or marketed better.

I mean the whole point of business is to maximize the return on your
investment.

Now making absolute garbage may not be the right solution, and making
incredible product that takes 5 years to develop is probably not the right
solution either... finding the right mix is key

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Malcx
That's a good output but a little disingenuous to say 22 when several are just
various themes on the same engine. (E.g. 4 paint apps)

Depending on your aim with these, next year would be a great year to focus
less on dev and more on marketing. Many of these have zero reviews on the play
store but are on par with other more established apps.

~~~
DaveSapien
Yeah, I totally agree. Many failures in marketing this year. Weird thing is,
PooBarr the pooping bear has some great reviews out there but it dosen't seem
to catch peoples attention. Disingenuous maybe, but the painting apps have
changed dramatically through each release, my tech is now 5 times faster than
at the beginning of the year. As I've been pushing ahead with new products
I've been keeping the updates going with my older ones. Also I don't think 20+
illustrations for each one is a meaningless effort. But yes, I really need to
come up with a better marketing strategy for my paint! ta!

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bksenior
Dave, love your productivity. I'd love to give you a few free pointers on the
marketing front. Shoot me a tweet @bksenior and lets talk.

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DaveSapien
Amazing Thanks!!!

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Ryoku
Congratulations Dave, very nice work. I've been toying with the idea of
starting to develop many small mobile and web apps during the course of next
year, not really looking for revenue but for the sake of creating tools and
games that might be useful for someone while helping me not to get creatively
stuck.

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DaveSapien
Thanks a lot! I totally recommend it, a confidence builder if nothing else. My
site is down at the moment so here is a mirror on pastebin
[http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG](http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG)

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DaveSapien
Edit, here is a pastebin link until my site is back online. Sorry about that
guys. [http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG](http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG)

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ktrgardiner
Good for you for accomplishing and creating so much. Congrats on that. But
good god, the background of your site is an eyesore. It literally hurt my eyes
as I read through your list. You're going to deter a lot of people with such a
bright background. Beyond that you're detracting so much attention away from
your content. Feel free to completely ignore this, but I would change the
background to something subtler or at least monotone if I were you. It will
bring the focus back to where it belongs, your content, and it will give a far
better first impression to new visitors.

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DaveSapien
Thanks!! Yeah wasn't sure myself, changed it to something more blue sky.
Thanks again for the feedback!

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ktrgardiner
That's much better. You're welcome.

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fharper1961
Congrats you've been very productive this year.

Concerning making money, I think you need to explore other ways of revenue
streams than just paid apps. For example freemium or ad based. I'm currently
making $0.07/download, with 20,000 downloads/month on Android using an in app
purchase freemium model. I'll be adding more IAPs, so revenue should be going
up in 2014.

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DaveSapien
Thanks! Thats brilliant, I'm very wary of freemium myself and have tried it in
the past. I just don't think its for me. Though I'm going to give it a go next
year with one or two apps next year.

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tlarkworthy
Hey Dave, are you in Edinburgh? You should enter make-a-game-month
(#makgammon) [1] next year. Its hosted at Edinburgh Hacklab. I think you would
really fit in

[http://edinburghhacklab.com/2013/12/make-a-game-month-
result...](http://edinburghhacklab.com/2013/12/make-a-game-month-results/)

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DaveSapien
Hey, yes I am. Sadly I'll be moving on in January though. When is the next
#makgammon? I may drop in and see you lot before I leave!

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tlarkworthy
Urgh, #makgammon is every November :(

The lab has a public open night every Tue and Thurs though. General hacking
then. The game things is a once a year special event. (check out the Doodle
app for this year)

Join the mailing list, or just email me if you want to visit.

Oh there are bitcoin talks on the 3rd of Jan I think. (check the mailing list)

~~~
fit2rule
Maybe you can answer a question for me - why is that the hackerspaces in the
UK are not open to the public all the time? I've been quite surprised at how
difficult it is to get involved in the hackerspace scene in the UK - but I
guess I'm kind of spoiled with the Metalab/Vienna situation. Is there some law
in the UK that makes it difficult for hackerspaces to maintain an open door
policy for the public, or is it more that the hackerspace is not as vibrant in
the UK as it is on the Continent, and there aren't hackers there all the time?

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timthorn
Our funding model relies on subscriptions, and public access all the time
would severely erode the value. In addition, we need to make sure that
everyone using "dangerous" kit is properly trained, which is more practical
with a closed door model.

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fit2rule
Thanks for explaining it to me - I honestly thought it might have been some UK
law or regulation regarding assemblies of people/membership taxes and so on.

The reason I wonder about it though is that the open nature of hackerspaces is
one of the huge selling points. To be honest I can gain access to much better
equipment than exists in your average hackerspace, elsewhere, but the fact
that some random stranger coming in off the street might have something
amazing to contribute is a big reason why I prefer to participate in the
hackerspace scene. The truly open hackerspaces I've been to here on the
continent, too many to list now, have always been very vibrant and alive - but
my experience in the UK was, to put it frank, quite a lot more gloomy in that
regard.

Anyway, I understand - each hackerspace has its own thing, and I'm glad its
not a government-enforced situation, which had me wondering ..

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krapp
I'm starting to teach myself Android development after a semester of Java -
can you recommend any tutorials or tools?

~~~
DaveSapien
Jayway is really good. [http://www.jayway.com/2013/05/09/opengl-
es-2-0-tutorial-for-...](http://www.jayway.com/2013/05/09/opengl-
es-2-0-tutorial-for-android-part-i-getting-started/) But apart from that, the
usual suspects, www.stackoverflow.com and www.gamasutra.com are ace.

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neovive
Very nice porfolio. Do you build all your games in Unity?

~~~
DaveSapien
Some of them, mostly I use Unity on the Me and the Giants(my kids games
studio) games. I build my own engines to power my more quirky projects. My
paint tech is leading to a few games next year for example. (opengl Objective
C/C)

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ErikRogneby
Has the URL changed? I am just getting a 404.

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DaveSapien
No, my site has went down. never had this happen before. cant even access my
ftp.

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iantaylorq
[http://www.davesapien.com/](http://www.davesapien.com/) seems to be 404'ing

~~~
DaveSapien
Yeah, sorry about that. try this link for now:
[http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG](http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG)

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eponymous
Congrats. I hope I can be this productive with my personal projects in 2014.

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DaveSapien
Thanks a lot! It takes a lot of sacrifice, cant say I recommend this volume of
work though.

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AfroDiva
Beautiful and inspiring, great work Dave, keep it up.

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DaveSapien
Thank you very much for taking a look!

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DamagedProperty
Awesome job! Keep it up. Keep firing!

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DaveSapien
Thanks! Slowing down next year, but with much bigger projects!

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macarthy12
can you tell us some technical details of the painting "engine"?

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DaveSapien
Its a bit of a secret sauce kinda thing (feel shitty saying that). Basically
I'm doing a pigment/light equation and a heck of a lot of cheating to get it
run fast.

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presty
404?

~~~
DaveSapien
Damn, My server has been overloaded! Sorry guys, sorting it now.

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notastartup
what was your total profit from releasing apps to this date?

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DaveSapien
Ever? I couldn't say off hand, but its not much.

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notastartup
I hear so many developers jumping in on the mobile platforms but this seems to
be the norm....

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DaveSapien
yeah, but there's still a lot of potential left.

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nanoscopic
This is not item #4 hacker news worthy.

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stupejr
every news site needs it's "feel good" item of the week ;)

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nanoscopic
What you mean to say is that all the hacker news bronies need their fill.

