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Show HN: I made 22 apps and games this year mostly by myself – here they are
- ktrgardiner 13y agoGood 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.
- DaveSapien 13y agoThanks!! Yeah wasn't sure myself, changed it to something more blue sky. Thanks again for the feedback!
- ktrgardiner 13y agoThat's much better. You're welcome.
- tlarkworthy 13y agoHey 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-results/ http://edinburghhacklab.com/2013/12/make-a-game-month-result...
- DaveSapien 13y agoHey, 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!
- tlarkworthy 13y agoUrgh, #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)
- DaveSapien 13y agoArgh, blast. I did see it this year, but was a bit too busy to jump in. I'll endeavour to come along on the 3rd. Awesome, ta!
- fit2rule 13y agoMaybe 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?
- timthorn 13y agoOur 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.
- tlarkworthy 13y agohello Tim! lovely to randomly encounter you in cyberspace.
- fit2rule 13y agoThanks 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 ..
- thenomad 13y agoAlso in Edinburgh. Interesting - thanks for the link! For anyone in/near Edinburgh, the Hacklab is fantastic in general - if you haven't checked it out, you should. It opened my eyes to the potential of laser cutters amongst other tech last year.
- Malcx 13y agoThat'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 13y agoYeah, 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!
- joshowens 13y agoI would love to see more on how you do marketing, for sure.
- bksenior 13y agoDave, 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.
- DaveSapien 13y agoAmazing Thanks!!!
- velcro 13y agoVery 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?
- shuaib 13y agoAgreed. Dave, can you please share your income statistics if any. That would be interesting insight.
- DaveSapien 13y agoI average two sales ($.99) a day, minus a few spikes here and there. So as the say in Sunny Scotland 'pish'.
- velcro 13y agoIs this an average of all of your apps? Or a minimum per app? I've also noticed that you started doing more iOS apps towards the end of the year. Is this because (as some people previously reported) iOS apps tend to generate a lot more sales currently? i.e. could you compare different stores in terms of the number of sales? Thanks!
- DaveSapien 13y agoYeah an average on Dave Sapien ltd. Me and the Giants (my other studio) is about the same again. The reason I was releasing more iOS apps towards the end of the year was simply todo with my development schedule. The painting apps took a lot more than you would assume.
- SilkRoadie 13y agoDo you feel that making half as many things and spending twice the time on each app would lead to better sales? Presumably the extra time would allow for more content / polish / marketting before release?
- AfroDiva 13y agoBeautiful and inspiring, great work Dave, keep it up.
- DaveSapien 13y agoThank you very much for taking a look!
- macarthy12 13y agocan you tell us some technical details of the painting "engine"?
- DaveSapien 13y agoIts 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.
- nanoscopic 13y agoThis is not item #4 hacker news worthy.
- stupejr 13y agoevery news site needs it's "feel good" item of the week ;)
- nanoscopic 13y agoWhat you mean to say is that all the hacker news bronies need their fill.
- neovive 13y agoVery nice porfolio. Do you build all your games in Unity?
- DaveSapien 13y agoSome 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)
- presty 13y ago404?
- DaveSapien 13y agoDamn, My server has been overloaded! Sorry guys, sorting it now.
- iantaylorq 13y agohttp://www.davesapien.com/ http://www.davesapien.com/ seems to be 404'ing
- DaveSapien 13y agoYeah, sorry about that. try this link for now: http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG
- ErikRogneby 13y agoHas the URL changed? I am just getting a 404.
- DaveSapien 13y agoNo, my site has went down. never had this happen before. cant even access my ftp.
- DaveSapien 13y agoEdit, here is a pastebin link until my site is back online. Sorry about that guys. http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG
- Ryoku 13y agoCongratulations 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.
- DaveSapien 13y agoThanks 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
- fharper1961 13y agoCongrats 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.
- DaveSapien 13y agoThanks! 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.
- DamagedProperty 13y agoAwesome job! Keep it up. Keep firing!
- DaveSapien 13y agoThanks! Slowing down next year, but with much bigger projects!
- eponymous 13y agoCongrats. I hope I can be this productive with my personal projects in 2014.
- DaveSapien 13y agoThanks a lot! It takes a lot of sacrifice, cant say I recommend this volume of work though.
- krapp 13y agoI'm starting to teach myself Android development after a semester of Java - can you recommend any tutorials or tools?
- DaveSapien 13y agoJayway is really good. http://www.jayway.com/2013/05/09/opengl-es-2-0-tutorial-for-android-part-i-getting-started/ http://www.jayway.com/2013/05/09/opengl-es-2-0-tutorial-for-... But apart from that, the usual suspects, www.stackoverflow.com and www.gamasutra.com are ace.
- notastartup 13y agowhat was your total profit from releasing apps to this date?
- DaveSapien 13y agoEver? I couldn't say off hand, but its not much.
- notastartup 13y agoI hear so many developers jumping in on the mobile platforms but this seems to be the norm....
- DaveSapien 13y agoyeah, but there's still a lot of potential left.