3 ms·

It also seems the author glosses over the fact that the App Store is dominated by the "hit" model. For every Candy Crush, there are a dozen very similar games

• pavlov 11y ago
  For every Candy Crush, there are a dozen very similar games also priced at $0 Dozen isn't enough because there are hundreds of thousands reasonably well-made games on app stores. For every Candy Crush, there are thousands that go nowhere. So, the odds are really bad. You're more likely to get theatrical distribution for your self-financed indie movie than to make a mobile game which will become a hit. The big companies like King (Candy Crush) and Supercell (Clash of Clans) have been spending about half a billion dollar yearly on marketing. That's way more than a Hollywood hit marketing budget.
  • erikpukinskis 11y ago
    The odds are bad because most people don't know how to design gameplay at all. They're just trying to copy a some combination of other games they like, adding with some random completely untested hypotheses on top of that, and hoping the result has gameplay that can be tweaked during playtesting into something that doesn't suck. It's really hard to actually find fun games amongst the sea of $3.99 and $13.99 garbage. If everyone was making good games, I think the market would grow and there would be lots of hits.