22 ms·

Why I've Said Goodbye to Mobile in Favor of PC

143 points by n3on_net 12y ago

Sonicmouse 12y ago
Apple's App Store is just... Horrendous. That thing needs a massive re-working. There are plenty of us who have released apps, games that were great, only to be buried by apps that were terrible. The cream definitely doesn't rise to the top using the current App Store model. It's just a fricken lottery at this point.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  I'm a bit more pessimistic - I'm not sure if fixing the App Store will fix the mobile gaming industry. IMO the well is thoroughly and completely poisoned at this point. People are learning to reject IAP-everywhere monetization models, but they've also retained the notion that nothing should cost more than $1. Even if we eliminate the discoverability problems, the shitty copycats, all that noise, will the economics of mobile game dev still even work out without stooping to EA's Dungeon Keeper-esque shenanigans?
  - TillE 12y ago
    There's a small but growing number of "premium priced" iPad games like Baldur's Gate or XCOM which have apparently been successful enough. I don't think mobile phone games will ever be a serious thing. The small screen combined with no hardware controls is too limiting. But a tablet can excel in certain areas, particularly anything turn-based. For example, I'm convinced that a full version of Football Manager for tablets would be massive at $15-20. They've actually done most of the necessary UI work for a touch interface with the "Classic" mode, but apparently mobile CPUs are still a limiting factor.
    - potatolicious 12y ago
      This still leaves the market in a state where the only "premium" games that are viable are ones that have already recouped investments on other platforms. It doesn't suggest that mobile gaming will ever be able to afford substantial budgets.
    - x0x0 12y ago
      But Baldur's Gate or xcom aren't ipad games. They're a port, presumably with a complete codebase + assets already made. That must be substantially less expensive than building. So realizing accretive revenue from a port, sure. As a game target, I dunno.
- mmanfrin 12y ago
  Apple's is at least better than Google's Play Store; it is next to impossible to find games that are not those cookie-cutter check-every-five-minutes-to-collect-coins type games.
  - Arzh 12y ago
    That's only if you look at the 'Top' lists. It's pretty easy to find interesting games if you look around. I have a lot of game guys on my google+ account which also help.
    - untog 12y ago
      Right, which is more than you can reasonably expect most people to do. Discovery in most app platforms is pretty broken.
    - endtime 12y ago
      Would you mind sharing some examples?
      - Arzh 12y ago
        There are a bunch of categories in the 'games' section of the play store that allow you to discover games that you might like. Also giving reviews of games, the store will then start showing games of like types.
- benologist 12y ago
  The onus is on the developer to differentiate between "making a game" and "making a game sell". Jumping platforms because you failed is throwing away all the experience and knowledge you now have for an unknown platform. Developers who can't figure this stuff out just don't get to make games for a living. Startups face the same problem and almost exclusively fail for the same reason. And businesses in general. And authors. Musicians. Actors. Artists. Singers. The list goes on and on. You have to be good at what you do to make it your occupation.
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  I think the expectation of free or at most $0.99 in mobile just kills any sort of incentive to build the kind of good and rich games you get on PC and console. The false advertising of "Free to Play" games going away, while a good thing, likely won't help the situation too much.
- sytelus 12y ago
  Or in other words, you have huge marketing problem :). App store looks at trends to find the "cream" to surface. However it's YOUR responsibility to kindle the fire. Once fire starts, Apple can provide plenty of oxygen to get it going. This is most challenging part of any business where you have tons alternatives - whether its books or music or games. People who succeed in these kind of spaces are on top of their game to start the fire.
- coldtea 12y ago
  It's not the App store's responsibility to market your game. It's yours.
- rodgerd 12y ago
  Congratulations: you've discovered what everyone in the music industry knew decades ago! Success in the market is independent of quality! Seriously, sucess is how well you promote what you do. Being a good programmer will have as much to do with your sucess as being a virtuoso guitar player has to do with the likelihood of making a living as a musician.
- zanny 12y ago
  Then don't develop for it.
georgeecollins 12y ago
Games are a hard business. There was a gold rush to the App store. There have been smaller gold rushes to Xbox Live Store and Steam. Long before that there was a gold rush to PlayStation development. Before that, there was a boom in PC-CDROM at software stores. This reads to me like someone who didn't know the business well and failed at mobile. I think he would have failed on PC if he had started there instead. He may succeed at the PC now, but that is partly because he learned a lot. I hope he does well going forward. The low barrier to entry is making mobile casual games like flash games. Nobody wants to pay, and good games are hard to discover in sea of titles. There is still money to be made in mobile.
- exelius 12y ago
  Mobile games suck primarily for three interdependent reasons: 1. There are very low barriers to entry to coding a mobile game. 2. Game mechanics on mobile are limited due to the small screen and lack of hardware buttons. 3. Customers have become conditioned to expect prices that are too low to sustain the market. The three items above have led to an end state where large publishers who can afford the marketing spend hire armies of low-skilled developers to develop hundreds of games in hopes that one or two of them are wildly popular. If the game isn't popular, you can just swap out the pixel art for new assets and release the game as a new product. Free-to-play is the new hotness in gaming, but a successful F2P game is basically a marketing platform in disguise. It's not something a game developer should try to build without experienced marketing/product people driving the overall strategy. But given #3 above, F2P is the only realistic way to grow revenue per user. In other words, #1 can be deceptive to people who think development == coding. Programming mobile games is easy, but building a mobile game development company has significant barriers to entry that most US-based developers simply can't overcome. A software developer in the US is easily $100,000 per year -- a guy living in India with the same skillset makes closer to $20,000 per year. Hence why most successful mobile development companies are NOT coming out of the US or western Europe, but rather out of Eastern Europe, South America or South Asia.
  - vacri 12y ago
    I think your third point is the most overlooked one. Mobile gamers are incredibly tight-fisted, and if you want to make money, you have to build that into the app somehow.
angersock 12y ago
This is one of the most gut-wrenching condemnations of mobile/casual game development I've read, and I think anybody looking to get into that niche should stop here first: "Yesterday 304 apps were released in the App Store. I didn’t bother counting, but about half of them look to be games. 152 fresh new dreams went on sale. How many of those will hit the top 100? Probably 0. How many of those will be profitable? Probably 0. How many will cover their costs? Probably 0. But here is the real kicker: tomorrow, 152 NEW dreams will go on sale. Today's will be old and discarded, for you only make the new lists the day you launch. Apple boasts about hitting 1 million apps. That is about the worst number a developer could hear. It means 999,999 other people are competing with me for a customer’s attention and wallet." Author loses friends, money, and time in pursuit of a super-fickle audience, and realizes that returning to their roots as a PC gamer is the way to go.
- ErikRogneby 12y ago
  I wonder what the release numbers are for 2nd tier markets like Kindle and Windows phone? Sometimes a smaller pond makes a fish look bigger.
- SiVal 12y ago
  realizes that returning to their roots as a PC gamer is the way to go. Of course it remains to be seen whether even that is the way to go. He might enjoy the work more, but that won't matter much if this business turns out to be unsustainable, too.
- personZ 12y ago
  This is one of the most gut-wrenching condemnations of mobile/casual game development I've read Eh, is it? The author was sure that mobile was where it was at in 2010, observing that no one was playing consoles (consoles were and are as hot as ever), with nary a mention of PC gaming. They made a, sorry to say, easily replicated game for a niche market, among what already was 100s of thousands of app. In these sorts of stories it's always a little more complex, and of course someone will be looking out and making broad conclusions about externals, when some of their own decisions were questionable. I'm not trying to be a critic of the author, but given the number of "see?" type posts, people need to be somewhat more skeptical. and realizes that returning to their roots as a PC gamer is the way to go. This is almost too much. Steam greenlight is just overwhelmed with hundreds of entrants, and they're opening the floodgates even wider. And while I'm very likely to try out random little games on mobile (particularly if they're free to play -- not that I like the model when abused smurfberry style, but it is turning into a "try before you buy" tactic that is reasonable), then pay a dollar or so and get an hour or two of entertainment out of it, it's extremely unlikely that I'm going to install anything from a small studio on my PC -- everything is from megastudios where teams of hundreds worked for years, because that's the competition. On the topic of large teams, the baseline on the PC is incredibly high now. Not only the triple-As, of course, but every amateur has a very high baseline of Unity/Unreal/etc. This seems like a godsend ("Yay I have Unity and all of these cool shaders and techniques and seemingly endless power"), but it means that the artistic and technical demands are enormously high and resource intensive.
tsotha 12y ago
>If it isn’t selling on one platform, don’t bother with the others. Maybe you have a fundamental flaw, maybe you aren’t marketing it right. I think this is a good observation. Porting to a dozen platforms is double the work for, say, double the customer base. If the game catches fire that's money well spent, and if it doesn't you've saved yourself a lot of money by not doing the ports. So wait to see what the reception is before you spend. If you just get a few hundred or a few thousand users, take that money and make another game. I agree with his conclusion, too. People who play serious games want more graphics power, a keyboard (or at least a game controller), and decent sound. Mobile game users are looking for the 21st century version of solitaire, and they're not willing to pay much for it. Maybe nothing at all.
- infogulch 12y ago
  Your last two sentences convinced me. > Mobile game users are looking for the 21st century version of solitaire, and they're not willing to pay much for it. Maybe nothing at all. EXACTLY.
  - georgeecollins 12y ago
    But that isn't true. There are mobile games today that make huge amounts of money. They have complicated systems and depend on multiplayer gameplay. They aren't Battlefield 3, but they are a long way away from Solitaire.
- fred_durst 12y ago
  Maybe most people realize that games are not really that important in general. That's why its so important to get them addicted as opposed to making a great game. People will pay a lot more to feed an addiction than they will to be entertained.
- johnchristopher 12y ago
  > I agree with his conclusion, too. People who play serious games want more graphics power, a keyboard (or at least a game controller), and decent sound. Mobile game users are looking for the 21st century version of solitaire, and they're not willing to pay much for it. Maybe nothing at all. Couldn't disagree more. I was a serious gamer. These days I only play some Warsow frag fest every now and then. And yet I am willing to pay for outdated graphics, or mobile graphics level, if the game is story-driven with solid characters. I am thinking of The Dig, Gemini Rue and Super Sword and Sworcery or even Knytt. I am not thinking of David Cage egomaniac pile of manure that was Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy or the disappointment I felt playing Dreamfall (let just make a short and enjoyable novel of your ideas instead of a painful game to play)[0]. [0] And I'll put Grey matter in the footnote because it's where it belongs.
api 12y ago
It's a special case of a deeper problem with mobile: It's a feudal platform with a closed app store model and a "nerfed" OS. It was built this way because it's a lazy, thoughtless way to solve the installability, security, and app isolation problems with desktop OSes. A deeper, more well thought out alternative that did not ultimately neuter the computer and disempower the user would have been much more difficult.
- dsturnbull2049 12y ago
  Couple of problems here. You forgot about battery life, which is the primary reason to lock a platform down. The supposedly empowering aspects of instability and insecurity make the PC a shitty platform, too. None of those have anything to do with games. The 'closed app store model' is a million times more open than the preceding models. Ever try getting a game published on a console, or preloaded onto a pre-iPhone mobile? Or even Steam, right now.
  - api 12y ago
    Battery life is a special case of priority, throttling, and supervision, which with a proper security model is solvable with quotas and queues. The PC's security problems are not what makes it empowering. They're an ugly side effect of the PC's relative openness. A good solution would preserve as much of this positive functionality and openness as possible but would fix the messy interaction problems. This is a solvable problem. It's just harder than feudalizing everything. Instead of solving the problem, mobile OS developers chose to punt on it and neuter the platform instead. I don't understand what you're getting at by comparing the PC to consoles or console-like ecosystems like Steam. Those are more like the mobile app store ecosystem. In fact, I've long seen mobile devices as effectively consoles. It's just a console ecosystem with an app store interface and ranking system that creates a race to the bottom in price, which brings us back to the OP...
    - dsturnbull2049 12y ago
      For the first point, perfect is the enemy of done, and that's (to me) quite evident in the progression of iOS and Android over the years, those platforms having different thresholds for what they think is acceptable for release. I understand that security problems are not the empowering aspect; that was snark. Still, I don't see how these aspects relate to games. The comparison between console ecosystems and app-store ecosystems is meant as a counterargument against your feudalist claim. We've never been freer as we are now on iOS and Android, and as you say, it didn't solve anything. And with me not seeing any restrictions on these platforms relevant to /games/, then that leaves a totally unsatisfying argument.
justjuju 12y ago
I think Tsung should have been the co-founder, not the employee. But perhaps it was impossible since the author was bankrolling their mobile experience.
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  Yup. The art looks better than the concept or gameplay...
rnernento 12y ago
Brutally honest, great read, great article. The site for Archmage Rises (the upcoming PC game) makes me a little nervous. This is a very ambitious project for a small dev group.
jiggy2011 12y ago
I'm often shocked by how awful mobile games are, at least on Android. Whenever I look for games, all I can find is. 1) The popular casual F2P games, candycrush, angry birds etc 2) Endless clones of 1 (this is at least 50% of the market). 3) Low quality games that were made to cash in on some trend like zombies , military shooters etc. In contrast , on Steam I could buy almost any of the cheap indie titles and find something original or fun. So I've basically given up on mobile gaming altogether. I wonder if this is a product of the app store model or something intrinsic about the form factor? Perhaps there just isn't any demand for good games on mobile because anybody serious about games uses PC or console?
- panic 12y ago
  People expect mobile games to be between 99 cents and free. The same game on PC might sell for $15. Why spend time making a quality game if no one is willing to pay?
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    But a good game is a good game surely? Why does the platform affect willingness to pay so much?
    - bunderbunder 12y ago
      The platform doesn't but the store sure does. In iOS, your game is sharing shelf space with: * Cribbage games that cost next-to-nothing to develop. ($1.99) * Hobby projects where the dev isn't looking to make money. ($0.99) * Free-to-play casual games like Candy Crush. ($0.00) On PC, all the Candy Crush and whatnot is relegated to Facebook, and your game is theoretically selling on Steam alongside games like: * AAA titles like CoD:MW3. ($39.99) * AA titles like Lego [INSERT_FRANCHISE_HERE]. ($19.99) * Re-releases of classics like Myst. ($5.99)
      - jiggy2011 12y ago
        That's what I feared, it seems the answer is to have either highly curated stores (Steam, traditional gamestores) or sell directly from your own website (Minecraft). I wonder if iOS had launched without being locked to a single store if things would be better?
sytelus 12y ago
While author is probably getting the point of mobile gaming, it should be obvious that it's not about big banner games that you work on for months and hope it to be hit. It's about very quickly churning out dozens of games a year and see what sticks. People I know in this business haven't become millionaires but they don't feel this is a lost cause as business (whether this is also tasteful or not that's another question). They usually weep out a game in a weekend, sometime very silly stuff that is just made out of "template game" replaced by stock graphics. In other words, they write little or no code, design little or no graphics for most of the time. Once in a while they might make a game with some original code and graphics but that's not typical. When they do this, they have offshore people doing much of the grunt work. Sometimes these offshore people are "permanent" employees of their little company but they don't get salaries. Instead they are offered stack in the company. All these keeps net costs down when it comes to cash flow. Most mobile games that have succeeded aren't earth shattering graphics or code. So their hope is that one of their silly things would eventually work out and become a huge hit to pay off year or two worth of weekend work.
notjustanymike 12y ago
Meanwhile, I looked at my Steam library and realized that I've been playing exclusively Kickstarter, Alpha, and Greenlight games. I think the PC gaming revolution is quietly happening.
- Yizahi 12y ago
  For me this hype passed very fast. I now never buy alpha, beta, pre-pre-early-alpha-candidates-please-buy-me-I-promise-it-will-be-good, preorders, 0day dlcs, early accesses etc. I play lots of old games through GoG, I might as well skip all the buggy incomplete "games" and wait until they either fail or live. My backlog is so huge that there is no need now to run for next hyped game.
  - vacri 12y ago
    I'm in the same bucket, Alpha games are worthless. Some have been in alpha so long that you see them in sales. I wish there was a filter on Steam to block them. Edit: Case in point - I just opened my email and saw: "Project Update #89: Planetary Annihilation Now $29.99". It's drifted all the way down to $30 from $90 in several stages, and still isn't 'finished'.
    - zanny 12y ago
      It is a false alpha. Twenty years ago, the "alpha" of today would be the release of yesteryear. If your game shipped with bugs, well, I guess its buggy. Because its never getting patched or fixed. The fact you can endlessly patch your game remotely forever automatically is a blessing and a curse. It means many games continue to improve over time, while also meaning many games enter the market in shitty conditions and alpha state with a promise to see them improve over time. In reality, I think it is more that it isn't a sensible business model to self-finance development, spend the years it takes to make a competitive product in the current market (versus Doom or Wolf3d being made in months) and then pray the sales are enough to not only cover the expenses of that game but fund enough of the next title to last to its release. Its too unpredictable. Instead, people like continuous income. Alpha early, release perks, gating the community, and your release notes become your advertising. New players are attracted as you improve the game over time. And there are benefits - you can find out early on what mechanical systems don't work, and what features not to pursue because their early releases are rejected by the community. You can do Agile games rather than Waterfall ones.
m3mnoch 12y ago
i keep seeing posts like this: "we made a quality game and it's not selling" "the app store is a disaster" "it's a lottery" no -- none of that is the problem. the issue is that all of the easy, low-hanging fruit is gone and to get workable revenue out of a game, you need to make a quality game. that's quality without the quotation marks. and, i'm sorry, but the games in the original post are nothing compared to the likes of papers please, don't starve, or guacamelee! -- much less amazing upcoming indies like no man's sky or ori and the blind forest. you are kidding yourselves if you think something like "catch the monkey" is going to sell. i was floored to see it actually made $7k in revenue. i would have guessed $1500. you -- yes, you with your fresh copy of unity and an mvp-fail-fast-idea -- are not going to cut it on the app store. you need to put out a real, honest-to-god, high-quality game. catch the monkey or a is for app? really? your game is going to be in the app store next to ori and the blind forest. your game is going to be in the app store next to white night. the player is going to look at both of your games and spend their money on those -- not yours. the app store is not a disaster -- your game just looks like a disaster sitting next to those titles. and swapping to pc? have you browsed through the greenlight options? you think your game is going to make it there when you couldn't cut the quality bar on the ios store? let me help you with that decision: http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight?appid=765&browsesort=pending&browsefilter=pending&p=1 http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight?appid=765&browsesort=pe... is your game more amazing than anything on that list? better than jotun? better than bounty hounds? probably not. sure, there are some mediocre games that catch fire and shoot to the top. that's where the lottery is. chances are those 304 apps released on the app store are all crap and don't have a chance in hell of real traction anyway so their only option is catching hold of the lottery tail. if you want to be part of that viral-dependent circus, more power to you, i suppose. quality games -- real quality, not monkey quality -- are getting written up in indiegamemag.com or the like. they're thirsty for real, quality games to write about because people keep submitting monkey-catching games or yet another boring, pixelated, hero's journey rpg to them. you can't expect spending 3 months of nights and weekends on a game and it'll beat out all of the awesome stuff indies are producing right now. however, if your game is legit, you'll do just fine. that's the key takeaway, make a real, value-for-the-player, interesting game and you'll do just fine. if you can't do that, accept it as a hobby or get a different job.
- 12y ago
dminor 12y ago
> I had a playable alpha of Catch the Monkey in six weeks. It took us another eleven months to complete... In total, across all these platforms, we made around $7k. $200k and 12ish months of our lives for $7k. > A is for App, on all platforms, was finally complete Fall of 2013. A year from when we first started it, and 9 months after we had a stable playable (store purchase-only) version. Our project cost went from $25k to $200k. > That weekend I gathered up the family for a family meeting... I estimated $12,000 - $20,000 to get a playable prototype of the game, then we can decide what to do next... I have assembled a distributed team of 9 to help in varying capacities to make Archmage Rises a reality. Each one is being paid, with me as lead designer with full creative control. "Family meeting! I'm about to make the same mistake for a third time! Who's in?"
- ak39 12y ago
  It's a tough call. :-) Of course he recognises that talking to his family isn't about deciding whether he will hit the financial jackpot with his new gaming idea. It's not a business strategy meeting. He is meeting his family to tell them that he is about to embark on another "Jackson Pollock" journey in his career where he'll likely lock himself in for days at end, throwing paint on the floor. This, without having anything to show on the proverbial "bacon front". He is firstly preparing his family for this interpersonal and social change ... but most importantly he is asking them permission to fail. Yep, fail - not succeed. Full respect for him. And for his family for understanding him. Wish him all the best!
pettersolberg 12y ago
A very interesting read. Subjective yet profound
fred_durst 12y ago
The author of this post made some terrible business choices. The constant multi-platform time and money sink is what tanked his company. But who paid the price? The lowly worker, who had little to no say in those choices. How is the author surprised he is upset with him? When you work for a single employer you put all of your eggs in a single basket. You place an enormous amount of trust that your employer will make the right decisions that ultimate decide your future. And by reading this article it appears that those choices were awful. If he had any honor he would have given him 2 months severance and let him go, only to try an make up for the incompetence he showed running the new company into the ground.
- zanny 12y ago
  Yea seriously, he was commenting on how it sucked he was paid 2 months and was not working, but it isn't his fault his boss didn't balance the books and went bankrupt, and that he had to seek alternative opportunities. That was the death of his dream as much as the authors, but it died due to someone elses mistakes, not his own. I think his art assets look great, since I imagine they are to the authors vision and spec in the first place.
chillingeffect 12y ago
Excellent article, but needs a Call-to-Action. Keep people like me who are casuals but might respond to the ernstwhileness in the loop. Give us a once-a-month update on an email list with the same introspective and honest passion. IOW, he's learning his lesson about the game itself, but hasn't quite picked up the concept of the marketing around the game. Still, I think his fervor may be leading him slowly and steadily toward success.
dyarosla 12y ago
I cannot believe that even though his 2nd leason taken from game 1 was 'Making it too good... We added too many features and created too much content.'-that the next game branches in a billion ways and has open content and open world and huge scope. Are you kidding me?!! I think deep down he's hoping on crowdfunding the game dev after doing a proof of concept here- but if you're this much cash down the hole, why not heed your own advice, make a SMALL game, one in a genre you DO enjoy, recoup the initial investment and then do more? He's setting himself up to get shot in the foot again. Even though he's getting exposure here for the next title, he so far has two failed titles and is working on a huge-scope third(which from what I've seen becomes too time heavy/resource intensive to build to completion for most devs to complete) and still, not an ounce of proof itll work out aside for two people, a friend and musician, saying theyd play the finished version. To the dev: This is just crazy. Learn from your own mistakes!! Prove that you can actually make money for yourself in making games before of going down this third slippery slope- thus far you have not proven yourself as a good game developer. This is a go big or go home project for sure, and as much as I would like you to succeed after your failures, my bet's still on it hitting a 'go home' result.
jamesbritt 12y ago
Making it too good. Sounds silly, but as a self-funded indie developer there was no one to tell us to stop, or not to add that feature. You get caught in a loop of “if I add this feature it will be more awesome, and more awesome games sell”. I learned this the hard way. My business partner at the time summed it up as, "Every feature is a support call." More stuff, even if you think it good, is more stuff that can go wrong, or introduce a subtle bug, or just not work correctly for someone, somewhere,
bigtunacan 12y ago
From the article "After all the lost money and time I still think Catch the Monkey is a good game. It isn’t very fun at first, but it is very fun and challenging in the later levels. Problem is no one gets there" If "no one gets there", it's not fun, end of story! This has nothing to do with mobile VS PC. I spent close to a year creating my first iOS game. I completed the project and then I NEVER shipped. I spent a lot of time working on the game, and it looked nice enough, but it SUCKED. The game was good for a laugh once or twice, and then it was just boring as F. So we didn't ship, mostly because I didn't want that trash on the app store associated with me. I've released other apps since, no games but am working on another game now, and some have done fairly well but not well enough to quit my job. So I work a day job and then I go home and work on my apps. If one of them hits it "retirement big" then I'll quit. That's a risky move; time for this guy to put on his big boy pants and get back to work.
fit2rule 12y ago
I've decided not to be a native developer, but instead focus only on cross-platform tools. Right now, I've settled on Lua, as I believe its a really powerful, yet simple technology, that has a lot to offer. Of course, I still need to do some native development - extending the Lua host, and so on - but the meat and beef of my applications is only going to be done in the Lua VM .. its finally delivering on the promise of Java (write once, run anywhere) and is just enough of a challenge to keep things interesting. I have to switch between "Host developer" and "App developer" mode, but I'm finding that context switch to get simpler and simpler as time goes on .. It means the only real native effort that has to be made is just enough to get things working in the Lua side of things, of course - this has its challenges. But, being responsible for the full scope of the framework that supports my app has really made for a more rewarding experience. It has its ups and downs - certainly its not very easy to convince other developers of the merits of this technique - but it definitely results in a sharper, more consistent focus. I feel that the wall-garden effect of other frameworks/environments is no longer an impacting event in my developer chops - I have to understand the native way, but I don't have to use it for the full scope of my implementation. Plus, there is something very satisfying about deploying on multiple platforms with the same code-base.

143 points by n3on_net 12y ago

Apple's App Store is just... Horrendous. That thing needs a massive re-working. There are plenty of us who have released apps, games that were great, only to be buried by apps that were terrible. The cream definitely doesn't rise to the top using the current App Store model. It's just a fricken lottery at this point.

potatolicious 12y ago
I'm a bit more pessimistic - I'm not sure if fixing the App Store will fix the mobile gaming industry. IMO the well is thoroughly and completely poisoned at this point. People are learning to reject IAP-everywhere monetization models, but they've also retained the notion that nothing should cost more than $1. Even if we eliminate the discoverability problems, the shitty copycats, all that noise, will the economics of mobile game dev still even work out without stooping to EA's Dungeon Keeper-esque shenanigans?
- TillE 12y ago
  There's a small but growing number of "premium priced" iPad games like Baldur's Gate or XCOM which have apparently been successful enough. I don't think mobile phone games will ever be a serious thing. The small screen combined with no hardware controls is too limiting. But a tablet can excel in certain areas, particularly anything turn-based. For example, I'm convinced that a full version of Football Manager for tablets would be massive at $15-20. They've actually done most of the necessary UI work for a touch interface with the "Classic" mode, but apparently mobile CPUs are still a limiting factor.
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    This still leaves the market in a state where the only "premium" games that are viable are ones that have already recouped investments on other platforms. It doesn't suggest that mobile gaming will ever be able to afford substantial budgets.
  - x0x0 12y ago
    But Baldur's Gate or xcom aren't ipad games. They're a port, presumably with a complete codebase + assets already made. That must be substantially less expensive than building. So realizing accretive revenue from a port, sure. As a game target, I dunno.
mmanfrin 12y ago
Apple's is at least better than Google's Play Store; it is next to impossible to find games that are not those cookie-cutter check-every-five-minutes-to-collect-coins type games.
- Arzh 12y ago
  That's only if you look at the 'Top' lists. It's pretty easy to find interesting games if you look around. I have a lot of game guys on my google+ account which also help.
  - untog 12y ago
    Right, which is more than you can reasonably expect most people to do. Discovery in most app platforms is pretty broken.
  - endtime 12y ago
    Would you mind sharing some examples?
    - Arzh 12y ago
      There are a bunch of categories in the 'games' section of the play store that allow you to discover games that you might like. Also giving reviews of games, the store will then start showing games of like types.
benologist 12y ago
The onus is on the developer to differentiate between "making a game" and "making a game sell". Jumping platforms because you failed is throwing away all the experience and knowledge you now have for an unknown platform. Developers who can't figure this stuff out just don't get to make games for a living. Startups face the same problem and almost exclusively fail for the same reason. And businesses in general. And authors. Musicians. Actors. Artists. Singers. The list goes on and on. You have to be good at what you do to make it your occupation.
JohnTHaller 12y ago
I think the expectation of free or at most $0.99 in mobile just kills any sort of incentive to build the kind of good and rich games you get on PC and console. The false advertising of "Free to Play" games going away, while a good thing, likely won't help the situation too much.
sytelus 12y ago
Or in other words, you have huge marketing problem :). App store looks at trends to find the "cream" to surface. However it's YOUR responsibility to kindle the fire. Once fire starts, Apple can provide plenty of oxygen to get it going. This is most challenging part of any business where you have tons alternatives - whether its books or music or games. People who succeed in these kind of spaces are on top of their game to start the fire.
coldtea 12y ago
It's not the App store's responsibility to market your game. It's yours.
rodgerd 12y ago
Congratulations: you've discovered what everyone in the music industry knew decades ago! Success in the market is independent of quality! Seriously, sucess is how well you promote what you do. Being a good programmer will have as much to do with your sucess as being a virtuoso guitar player has to do with the likelihood of making a living as a musician.
zanny 12y ago
Then don't develop for it.

georgeecollins 12y ago

Games are a hard business. There was a gold rush to the App store. There have been smaller gold rushes to Xbox Live Store and Steam. Long before that there was a gold rush to PlayStation development. Before that, there was a boom in PC-CDROM at software stores. This reads to me like someone who didn't know the business well and failed at mobile. I think he would have failed on PC if he had started there instead. He may succeed at the PC now, but that is partly because he learned a lot. I hope he does well going forward. The low barrier to entry is making mobile casual games like flash games. Nobody wants to pay, and good games are hard to discover in sea of titles. There is still money to be made in mobile.

exelius 12y ago
Mobile games suck primarily for three interdependent reasons: 1. There are very low barriers to entry to coding a mobile game. 2. Game mechanics on mobile are limited due to the small screen and lack of hardware buttons. 3. Customers have become conditioned to expect prices that are too low to sustain the market. The three items above have led to an end state where large publishers who can afford the marketing spend hire armies of low-skilled developers to develop hundreds of games in hopes that one or two of them are wildly popular. If the game isn't popular, you can just swap out the pixel art for new assets and release the game as a new product. Free-to-play is the new hotness in gaming, but a successful F2P game is basically a marketing platform in disguise. It's not something a game developer should try to build without experienced marketing/product people driving the overall strategy. But given #3 above, F2P is the only realistic way to grow revenue per user. In other words, #1 can be deceptive to people who think development == coding. Programming mobile games is easy, but building a mobile game development company has significant barriers to entry that most US-based developers simply can't overcome. A software developer in the US is easily $100,000 per year -- a guy living in India with the same skillset makes closer to $20,000 per year. Hence why most successful mobile development companies are NOT coming out of the US or western Europe, but rather out of Eastern Europe, South America or South Asia.
- vacri 12y ago
  I think your third point is the most overlooked one. Mobile gamers are incredibly tight-fisted, and if you want to make money, you have to build that into the app somehow.

angersock 12y ago

This is one of the most gut-wrenching condemnations of mobile/casual game development I've read, and I think anybody looking to get into that niche should stop here first: "Yesterday 304 apps were released in the App Store. I didn’t bother counting, but about half of them look to be games. 152 fresh new dreams went on sale. How many of those will hit the top 100? Probably 0. How many of those will be profitable? Probably 0. How many will cover their costs? Probably 0. But here is the real kicker: tomorrow, 152 NEW dreams will go on sale. Today's will be old and discarded, for you only make the new lists the day you launch. Apple boasts about hitting 1 million apps. That is about the worst number a developer could hear. It means 999,999 other people are competing with me for a customer’s attention and wallet." Author loses friends, money, and time in pursuit of a super-fickle audience, and realizes that returning to their roots as a PC gamer is the way to go.

ErikRogneby 12y ago
I wonder what the release numbers are for 2nd tier markets like Kindle and Windows phone? Sometimes a smaller pond makes a fish look bigger.
SiVal 12y ago
realizes that returning to their roots as a PC gamer is the way to go. Of course it remains to be seen whether even that is the way to go. He might enjoy the work more, but that won't matter much if this business turns out to be unsustainable, too.
personZ 12y ago
This is one of the most gut-wrenching condemnations of mobile/casual game development I've read Eh, is it? The author was sure that mobile was where it was at in 2010, observing that no one was playing consoles (consoles were and are as hot as ever), with nary a mention of PC gaming. They made a, sorry to say, easily replicated game for a niche market, among what already was 100s of thousands of app. In these sorts of stories it's always a little more complex, and of course someone will be looking out and making broad conclusions about externals, when some of their own decisions were questionable. I'm not trying to be a critic of the author, but given the number of "see?" type posts, people need to be somewhat more skeptical. and realizes that returning to their roots as a PC gamer is the way to go. This is almost too much. Steam greenlight is just overwhelmed with hundreds of entrants, and they're opening the floodgates even wider. And while I'm very likely to try out random little games on mobile (particularly if they're free to play -- not that I like the model when abused smurfberry style, but it is turning into a "try before you buy" tactic that is reasonable), then pay a dollar or so and get an hour or two of entertainment out of it, it's extremely unlikely that I'm going to install anything from a small studio on my PC -- everything is from megastudios where teams of hundreds worked for years, because that's the competition. On the topic of large teams, the baseline on the PC is incredibly high now. Not only the triple-As, of course, but every amateur has a very high baseline of Unity/Unreal/etc. This seems like a godsend ("Yay I have Unity and all of these cool shaders and techniques and seemingly endless power"), but it means that the artistic and technical demands are enormously high and resource intensive.

tsotha 12y ago

>If it isn’t selling on one platform, don’t bother with the others. Maybe you have a fundamental flaw, maybe you aren’t marketing it right. I think this is a good observation. Porting to a dozen platforms is double the work for, say, double the customer base. If the game catches fire that's money well spent, and if it doesn't you've saved yourself a lot of money by not doing the ports. So wait to see what the reception is before you spend. If you just get a few hundred or a few thousand users, take that money and make another game. I agree with his conclusion, too. People who play serious games want more graphics power, a keyboard (or at least a game controller), and decent sound. Mobile game users are looking for the 21st century version of solitaire, and they're not willing to pay much for it. Maybe nothing at all.

infogulch 12y ago
Your last two sentences convinced me. > Mobile game users are looking for the 21st century version of solitaire, and they're not willing to pay much for it. Maybe nothing at all. EXACTLY.
- georgeecollins 12y ago
  But that isn't true. There are mobile games today that make huge amounts of money. They have complicated systems and depend on multiplayer gameplay. They aren't Battlefield 3, but they are a long way away from Solitaire.
fred_durst 12y ago
Maybe most people realize that games are not really that important in general. That's why its so important to get them addicted as opposed to making a great game. People will pay a lot more to feed an addiction than they will to be entertained.
johnchristopher 12y ago
> I agree with his conclusion, too. People who play serious games want more graphics power, a keyboard (or at least a game controller), and decent sound. Mobile game users are looking for the 21st century version of solitaire, and they're not willing to pay much for it. Maybe nothing at all. Couldn't disagree more. I was a serious gamer. These days I only play some Warsow frag fest every now and then. And yet I am willing to pay for outdated graphics, or mobile graphics level, if the game is story-driven with solid characters. I am thinking of The Dig, Gemini Rue and Super Sword and Sworcery or even Knytt. I am not thinking of David Cage egomaniac pile of manure that was Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy or the disappointment I felt playing Dreamfall (let just make a short and enjoyable novel of your ideas instead of a painful game to play)[0]. [0] And I'll put Grey matter in the footnote because it's where it belongs.

api 12y ago

It's a special case of a deeper problem with mobile: It's a feudal platform with a closed app store model and a "nerfed" OS. It was built this way because it's a lazy, thoughtless way to solve the installability, security, and app isolation problems with desktop OSes. A deeper, more well thought out alternative that did not ultimately neuter the computer and disempower the user would have been much more difficult.

dsturnbull2049 12y ago
Couple of problems here. You forgot about battery life, which is the primary reason to lock a platform down. The supposedly empowering aspects of instability and insecurity make the PC a shitty platform, too. None of those have anything to do with games. The 'closed app store model' is a million times more open than the preceding models. Ever try getting a game published on a console, or preloaded onto a pre-iPhone mobile? Or even Steam, right now.
- api 12y ago
  Battery life is a special case of priority, throttling, and supervision, which with a proper security model is solvable with quotas and queues. The PC's security problems are not what makes it empowering. They're an ugly side effect of the PC's relative openness. A good solution would preserve as much of this positive functionality and openness as possible but would fix the messy interaction problems. This is a solvable problem. It's just harder than feudalizing everything. Instead of solving the problem, mobile OS developers chose to punt on it and neuter the platform instead. I don't understand what you're getting at by comparing the PC to consoles or console-like ecosystems like Steam. Those are more like the mobile app store ecosystem. In fact, I've long seen mobile devices as effectively consoles. It's just a console ecosystem with an app store interface and ranking system that creates a race to the bottom in price, which brings us back to the OP...
  - dsturnbull2049 12y ago
    For the first point, perfect is the enemy of done, and that's (to me) quite evident in the progression of iOS and Android over the years, those platforms having different thresholds for what they think is acceptable for release. I understand that security problems are not the empowering aspect; that was snark. Still, I don't see how these aspects relate to games. The comparison between console ecosystems and app-store ecosystems is meant as a counterargument against your feudalist claim. We've never been freer as we are now on iOS and Android, and as you say, it didn't solve anything. And with me not seeing any restrictions on these platforms relevant to /games/, then that leaves a totally unsatisfying argument.

justjuju 12y ago

I think Tsung should have been the co-founder, not the employee. But perhaps it was impossible since the author was bankrolling their mobile experience.

Mikeb85 12y ago
Yup. The art looks better than the concept or gameplay...

rnernento 12y ago

Brutally honest, great read, great article. The site for Archmage Rises (the upcoming PC game) makes me a little nervous. This is a very ambitious project for a small dev group.

jiggy2011 12y ago

I'm often shocked by how awful mobile games are, at least on Android. Whenever I look for games, all I can find is. 1) The popular casual F2P games, candycrush, angry birds etc 2) Endless clones of 1 (this is at least 50% of the market). 3) Low quality games that were made to cash in on some trend like zombies , military shooters etc. In contrast , on Steam I could buy almost any of the cheap indie titles and find something original or fun. So I've basically given up on mobile gaming altogether. I wonder if this is a product of the app store model or something intrinsic about the form factor? Perhaps there just isn't any demand for good games on mobile because anybody serious about games uses PC or console?

panic 12y ago
People expect mobile games to be between 99 cents and free. The same game on PC might sell for $15. Why spend time making a quality game if no one is willing to pay?
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  But a good game is a good game surely? Why does the platform affect willingness to pay so much?
  - bunderbunder 12y ago
    The platform doesn't but the store sure does. In iOS, your game is sharing shelf space with: * Cribbage games that cost next-to-nothing to develop. ($1.99) * Hobby projects where the dev isn't looking to make money. ($0.99) * Free-to-play casual games like Candy Crush. ($0.00) On PC, all the Candy Crush and whatnot is relegated to Facebook, and your game is theoretically selling on Steam alongside games like: * AAA titles like CoD:MW3. ($39.99) * AA titles like Lego [INSERT_FRANCHISE_HERE]. ($19.99) * Re-releases of classics like Myst. ($5.99)
    - jiggy2011 12y ago
      That's what I feared, it seems the answer is to have either highly curated stores (Steam, traditional gamestores) or sell directly from your own website (Minecraft). I wonder if iOS had launched without being locked to a single store if things would be better?

sytelus 12y ago

While author is probably getting the point of mobile gaming, it should be obvious that it's not about big banner games that you work on for months and hope it to be hit. It's about very quickly churning out dozens of games a year and see what sticks. People I know in this business haven't become millionaires but they don't feel this is a lost cause as business (whether this is also tasteful or not that's another question). They usually weep out a game in a weekend, sometime very silly stuff that is just made out of "template game" replaced by stock graphics. In other words, they write little or no code, design little or no graphics for most of the time. Once in a while they might make a game with some original code and graphics but that's not typical. When they do this, they have offshore people doing much of the grunt work. Sometimes these offshore people are "permanent" employees of their little company but they don't get salaries. Instead they are offered stack in the company. All these keeps net costs down when it comes to cash flow. Most mobile games that have succeeded aren't earth shattering graphics or code. So their hope is that one of their silly things would eventually work out and become a huge hit to pay off year or two worth of weekend work.

notjustanymike 12y ago

Meanwhile, I looked at my Steam library and realized that I've been playing exclusively Kickstarter, Alpha, and Greenlight games. I think the PC gaming revolution is quietly happening.

Yizahi 12y ago
For me this hype passed very fast. I now never buy alpha, beta, pre-pre-early-alpha-candidates-please-buy-me-I-promise-it-will-be-good, preorders, 0day dlcs, early accesses etc. I play lots of old games through GoG, I might as well skip all the buggy incomplete "games" and wait until they either fail or live. My backlog is so huge that there is no need now to run for next hyped game.
- vacri 12y ago
  I'm in the same bucket, Alpha games are worthless. Some have been in alpha so long that you see them in sales. I wish there was a filter on Steam to block them. Edit: Case in point - I just opened my email and saw: "Project Update #89: Planetary Annihilation Now $29.99". It's drifted all the way down to $30 from $90 in several stages, and still isn't 'finished'.
  - zanny 12y ago
    It is a false alpha. Twenty years ago, the "alpha" of today would be the release of yesteryear. If your game shipped with bugs, well, I guess its buggy. Because its never getting patched or fixed. The fact you can endlessly patch your game remotely forever automatically is a blessing and a curse. It means many games continue to improve over time, while also meaning many games enter the market in shitty conditions and alpha state with a promise to see them improve over time. In reality, I think it is more that it isn't a sensible business model to self-finance development, spend the years it takes to make a competitive product in the current market (versus Doom or Wolf3d being made in months) and then pray the sales are enough to not only cover the expenses of that game but fund enough of the next title to last to its release. Its too unpredictable. Instead, people like continuous income. Alpha early, release perks, gating the community, and your release notes become your advertising. New players are attracted as you improve the game over time. And there are benefits - you can find out early on what mechanical systems don't work, and what features not to pursue because their early releases are rejected by the community. You can do Agile games rather than Waterfall ones.

m3mnoch 12y ago

i keep seeing posts like this: "we made a quality game and it's not selling" "the app store is a disaster" "it's a lottery" no -- none of that is the problem. the issue is that all of the easy, low-hanging fruit is gone and to get workable revenue out of a game, you need to make a quality game. that's quality without the quotation marks. and, i'm sorry, but the games in the original post are nothing compared to the likes of papers please, don't starve, or guacamelee! -- much less amazing upcoming indies like no man's sky or ori and the blind forest. you are kidding yourselves if you think something like "catch the monkey" is going to sell. i was floored to see it actually made $7k in revenue. i would have guessed $1500. you -- yes, you with your fresh copy of unity and an mvp-fail-fast-idea -- are not going to cut it on the app store. you need to put out a real, honest-to-god, high-quality game. catch the monkey or a is for app? really? your game is going to be in the app store next to ori and the blind forest. your game is going to be in the app store next to white night. the player is going to look at both of your games and spend their money on those -- not yours. the app store is not a disaster -- your game just looks like a disaster sitting next to those titles. and swapping to pc? have you browsed through the greenlight options? you think your game is going to make it there when you couldn't cut the quality bar on the ios store? let me help you with that decision: http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight?appid=765&browsesort=pending&browsefilter=pending&p=1 http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight?appid=765&browsesort=pe... is your game more amazing than anything on that list? better than jotun? better than bounty hounds? probably not. sure, there are some mediocre games that catch fire and shoot to the top. that's where the lottery is. chances are those 304 apps released on the app store are all crap and don't have a chance in hell of real traction anyway so their only option is catching hold of the lottery tail. if you want to be part of that viral-dependent circus, more power to you, i suppose. quality games -- real quality, not monkey quality -- are getting written up in indiegamemag.com or the like. they're thirsty for real, quality games to write about because people keep submitting monkey-catching games or yet another boring, pixelated, hero's journey rpg to them. you can't expect spending 3 months of nights and weekends on a game and it'll beat out all of the awesome stuff indies are producing right now. however, if your game is legit, you'll do just fine. that's the key takeaway, make a real, value-for-the-player, interesting game and you'll do just fine. if you can't do that, accept it as a hobby or get a different job.

12y ago

dminor 12y ago

> I had a playable alpha of Catch the Monkey in six weeks. It took us another eleven months to complete... In total, across all these platforms, we made around $7k. $200k and 12ish months of our lives for $7k. > A is for App, on all platforms, was finally complete Fall of 2013. A year from when we first started it, and 9 months after we had a stable playable (store purchase-only) version. Our project cost went from $25k to $200k. > That weekend I gathered up the family for a family meeting... I estimated $12,000 - $20,000 to get a playable prototype of the game, then we can decide what to do next... I have assembled a distributed team of 9 to help in varying capacities to make Archmage Rises a reality. Each one is being paid, with me as lead designer with full creative control. "Family meeting! I'm about to make the same mistake for a third time! Who's in?"

ak39 12y ago
It's a tough call. :-) Of course he recognises that talking to his family isn't about deciding whether he will hit the financial jackpot with his new gaming idea. It's not a business strategy meeting. He is meeting his family to tell them that he is about to embark on another "Jackson Pollock" journey in his career where he'll likely lock himself in for days at end, throwing paint on the floor. This, without having anything to show on the proverbial "bacon front". He is firstly preparing his family for this interpersonal and social change ... but most importantly he is asking them permission to fail. Yep, fail - not succeed. Full respect for him. And for his family for understanding him. Wish him all the best!

pettersolberg 12y ago

A very interesting read. Subjective yet profound

fred_durst 12y ago

The author of this post made some terrible business choices. The constant multi-platform time and money sink is what tanked his company. But who paid the price? The lowly worker, who had little to no say in those choices. How is the author surprised he is upset with him? When you work for a single employer you put all of your eggs in a single basket. You place an enormous amount of trust that your employer will make the right decisions that ultimate decide your future. And by reading this article it appears that those choices were awful. If he had any honor he would have given him 2 months severance and let him go, only to try an make up for the incompetence he showed running the new company into the ground.

zanny 12y ago
Yea seriously, he was commenting on how it sucked he was paid 2 months and was not working, but it isn't his fault his boss didn't balance the books and went bankrupt, and that he had to seek alternative opportunities. That was the death of his dream as much as the authors, but it died due to someone elses mistakes, not his own. I think his art assets look great, since I imagine they are to the authors vision and spec in the first place.

chillingeffect 12y ago

Excellent article, but needs a Call-to-Action. Keep people like me who are casuals but might respond to the ernstwhileness in the loop. Give us a once-a-month update on an email list with the same introspective and honest passion. IOW, he's learning his lesson about the game itself, but hasn't quite picked up the concept of the marketing around the game. Still, I think his fervor may be leading him slowly and steadily toward success.

dyarosla 12y ago

I cannot believe that even though his 2nd leason taken from game 1 was 'Making it too good... We added too many features and created too much content.'-that the next game branches in a billion ways and has open content and open world and huge scope. Are you kidding me?!! I think deep down he's hoping on crowdfunding the game dev after doing a proof of concept here- but if you're this much cash down the hole, why not heed your own advice, make a SMALL game, one in a genre you DO enjoy, recoup the initial investment and then do more? He's setting himself up to get shot in the foot again. Even though he's getting exposure here for the next title, he so far has two failed titles and is working on a huge-scope third(which from what I've seen becomes too time heavy/resource intensive to build to completion for most devs to complete) and still, not an ounce of proof itll work out aside for two people, a friend and musician, saying theyd play the finished version. To the dev: This is just crazy. Learn from your own mistakes!! Prove that you can actually make money for yourself in making games before of going down this third slippery slope- thus far you have not proven yourself as a good game developer. This is a go big or go home project for sure, and as much as I would like you to succeed after your failures, my bet's still on it hitting a 'go home' result.

jamesbritt 12y ago

Making it too good. Sounds silly, but as a self-funded indie developer there was no one to tell us to stop, or not to add that feature. You get caught in a loop of “if I add this feature it will be more awesome, and more awesome games sell”. I learned this the hard way. My business partner at the time summed it up as, "Every feature is a support call." More stuff, even if you think it good, is more stuff that can go wrong, or introduce a subtle bug, or just not work correctly for someone, somewhere,

bigtunacan 12y ago

From the article "After all the lost money and time I still think Catch the Monkey is a good game. It isn’t very fun at first, but it is very fun and challenging in the later levels. Problem is no one gets there" If "no one gets there", it's not fun, end of story! This has nothing to do with mobile VS PC. I spent close to a year creating my first iOS game. I completed the project and then I NEVER shipped. I spent a lot of time working on the game, and it looked nice enough, but it SUCKED. The game was good for a laugh once or twice, and then it was just boring as F. So we didn't ship, mostly because I didn't want that trash on the app store associated with me. I've released other apps since, no games but am working on another game now, and some have done fairly well but not well enough to quit my job. So I work a day job and then I go home and work on my apps. If one of them hits it "retirement big" then I'll quit. That's a risky move; time for this guy to put on his big boy pants and get back to work.

fit2rule 12y ago

I've decided not to be a native developer, but instead focus only on cross-platform tools. Right now, I've settled on Lua, as I believe its a really powerful, yet simple technology, that has a lot to offer. Of course, I still need to do some native development - extending the Lua host, and so on - but the meat and beef of my applications is only going to be done in the Lua VM .. its finally delivering on the promise of Java (write once, run anywhere) and is just enough of a challenge to keep things interesting. I have to switch between "Host developer" and "App developer" mode, but I'm finding that context switch to get simpler and simpler as time goes on .. It means the only real native effort that has to be made is just enough to get things working in the Lua side of things, of course - this has its challenges. But, being responsible for the full scope of the framework that supports my app has really made for a more rewarding experience. It has its ups and downs - certainly its not very easy to convince other developers of the merits of this technique - but it definitely results in a sharper, more consistent focus. I feel that the wall-garden effect of other frameworks/environments is no longer an impacting event in my developer chops - I have to understand the native way, but I don't have to use it for the full scope of my implementation. Plus, there is something very satisfying about deploying on multiple platforms with the same code-base.