SA developers, which mobile platform to develop for?
Want to get local developers input as to what is a better platform to develop for in SA.
If you at the fork in the road, which way would you go, what are your PROS / CONS?
MXit:
Pros: Not as competitive as Android / an open market.
Cons: Not as globally used, smaller community.
Android:
Pros: Large community across multiple devices.
Cons: Competitive market / community want everything for free.
iOS:
Pros: Large community / Community is happy to pay for apps & games.
Cons: Limited to Apple devices.
If you at the fork in the road, which way would you go, what are your PROS / CONS?
MXit:
Pros: Not as competitive as Android / an open market.
Cons: Not as globally used, smaller community.
Android:
Pros: Large community across multiple devices.
Cons: Competitive market / community want everything for free.
iOS:
Pros: Large community / Community is happy to pay for apps & games.
Cons: Limited to Apple devices.
Comments
WP7:
Pros: Realy awesome to develop for, the API and SDK are really well designed.
Cons:limited to WP7 devices I guess?
Pros: Rock Paper Shotgun covers PC games.
Cons: ?
Also, I don't really think that Android users want everything for free, though I'd like to see research that gives evidence of that either way.
@Elyaradine fragmentation is the largest problem with Android. The want everything for free can be said about PC as well, but Steam still does really well. It's a weird thing, but the saturation of the ecosystem make it really hard to find good new games. I picked up Broken Sword by pure luck of being bored and deciding to browse to paid game 207
The "want" everything for free isn't so much a want as it is a reality. I can google any game name followed by "apk" and "download" and I'll more than likely get it if it has any kind of popularity. You'll get plenty of people to play it, of that's what you want. Whether you'll be able to get paid from it is the question. Ads just suck (in my mind, for games).
Fragmentation is a big pain in the arse when you have to dev the same thing with a million resolutions, memory restrictions, and control schemes, etc in mind.
I don't know how easy it is to copy stuff off of Steam so I can't speak for that.
PC? I can also lug my PS3 around, have on several occasions. Though I don't think a significant enough portion of players play games on a mobile basis on a laptop. Tablets, yes.
As a Pro, lots of people will play your game.
However, you will make very little money. Or at least, less than you would on mobile platforms, perhaps. I think this scares many developers into producing content for mobile platforms.
@Bensonance I hesitate to give a definitive answer on this, but piracy is not really an issue to the Indies I know. Publisher like throwing out number, but those numbers are nothing new. World of Goo had an estimated 90% piracy, and was a very successful game blaming piracy is just making an excuse.
Piracy can help you as a game dev. Say a teenager pirates a lot of games, since they lack the buying power, and as an adult they buy the games of that developer, and even the ones they pirated when they were younger.
I'm not sure if you would really make more money on mobile. Bogost enjoys touting that most iOS devs don't make bad the cost of a developer licence.
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Perhaps the greatest pro of PC is the fact that there is no barrier to entry. I can make a game use a free hosting service, and it's easy to develop and use for games.
The numbers Ubisoft put out of 93-95 % are almost certainly inflated, but it is still an issue.
World of Goo was very successful. However, the developers, 2D boy, haven't released another game since 2008, or increased the size of their development team from two people. This is damning about the effect of piracy. However, I'm sure the developers are happy so many people played their game, they probably just wish they had more money to make another game :).
I disagree, then that piracy leads to buying of your later games. If you can't even afford to create another game, then this hypothesis cannot be tested.
But lets just focus on creating the quality of game that will have this problem, first :).
Not saying I'm right, or that you're right. Just saying I don't think you can use that as evidence.
Hopefully they are just making another awesome game though :).
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Anyway. :P I think piracy is pretty crap regardless of platform. Pure Fun Soccer was on crack sites the day after it was submitted to the App Store (or day after it was released, not sure). Granted, you'd need to root your iDevice, but if people want to pirate, they're going to.
I wonder how MXit handles piracy. Or if it just hasn't been a problem (yet?).
I'm sorry to hear about people pirating your game :(.
I doubt Mxit is completely devoid of piracy. If they are, that would be awesome. Isn't there a head of developer relations at Mxit floating around this forum somewhere? He could fill us in more.
They also just announced the next game they are working on. So they could have just been working on it for a while, and never publicly stated it.
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Ben the comment of buying games that you pirated is something I did. And the notion that piracy is lost sales is actually ridiculous. Most of the new music I buy is only because I can copy music from a friend and find what I like. I believe this can be similar for some people with games. I actively search for new interesting games, I spend a lot of time reading about new games and so on. Some people might find it easier just to pirate, try it, and hopefully buy it.
Piracy is actually really interesting since it is dealing with a post scarcity economy. There is no limit to the amount that data can be reproduced so there is no limit to how many people can play the game. (The limit is from devices, but let's exclude that for the time being.)
The capitalistic economy that we have held to for the past centuries cannot encompass what happens when you can reproduce an item ad infinitum. I believe this is why the successful Indie games grow a community as opposed to selling a product. @dislekcia touched on this notion a number of times. That you want to get people interested in your game, and form a community. That community will care for the game as if it were there own. This is actually something @Nandrew talked about a while ago. That as the creator of a game you cannot exist in an ivory tower, but you need to talk and interact with your fan base.
I think on this point we must agree to disagree and we should leave it there for now. However, I think your notion of generalising about game consumers, from what you personally do, is equally ridiculous :).
If we had one bit of concrete data for every time someone makes a claim that piracy is a good thing or piracy isn't a good thing, we'd be able to stop claiming and start knowing.
Key points that I picked up is that Android is a bit of a head ache as the devices it supports are very large. iOS is more easier in this regard to develop for as the devices it supports are Apple only.
MXit must then suffer from the same challenge as Android as it too runs on many devices.
So conclusion, iOS has one be pro over the other two, focused device support.
I still would like to know which community is bigger, offering greater exposure, MXit / Android / iOS?
Has anyone developed for MXit, how have you found the platform?
Bottom line don't underestimate the downsides of saturation. Especially on iOS, be prepared to pay top dollar to get your app anywhere (including marketing and paid app installs)
Mxit is much better in this regard, but then the kind of game you're building is going to be rather simple. Think text based/very simple graphics.
And they've got some alternative API, which apparently frees you up to make whatever you want (for mobile, web... standalone...?).
MXit
The API is a payment solution - which means you can have people pay you via MXit, which in my mind is a pretty damn awesome way to unlock purchases from teens that wouldn't otherwise have credit cards. Useful for specifically targeted games here in SA, India and the other areas that MXit has penetration. MXit games need to be played many times and offer earnable progression in order to monetise. I haven't seen anyone try to build a pay-once/upfront game for the platform, but there's a chance that could work too. A MXit game doesn't have to be fantastically complex to produce in terms of resources, but to be successful the gameplay needs to be pretty deep and really well targeted to your audience.
iOS
Considered the best mobile platform in terms of earning potential by every successful indie I know. Caveat is that you have to have some sort of marketing push and/or clout in order to make the initial sales you need to drive word of mouth. Don't rely on being featured by Apple, that's never guaranteed. If your game doesn't generate good word of mouth, don't bother. Getting an Apple Developer license in SA is much harder now than it used to be.
Android
The successor to J2ME in a lot of people's eyes. Hard to monetize unless you get in on a carrier/provider platform (actually the only way to make money in the Chinese and Korean markets) - fragmented quite badly in terms of hardware. Try to build games with central servers or regular patches/content releases in order to convert hacked copies into paying users. If it works on iOS, it'll work here.
2D Boy
The whole 90% piracy thing is very well researched and mathematically sound. Yes, they're aware of variable IPs, that's been taken into account. World of Goo did fucking spectacularly and continues to do well. Ron is incredibly active in the indie scene and is one of the driving forces of the Indie Fund. He's a font of business and game advice, skills and source code, dude is amazing. I have no idea where this "hasn't made anything in 4 years, thus fail" idea comes from. It couldn't be further from the truth.
Piracy and the idea of free/cannibalised sales
People aren't looking at this holistically enough. Piracy happens, strategies to deal with it are necessary. Some games are systems that naturally convert pirates, others aren't. Devs need to find out what works best in each individual situation. As with most things, your best path to not starving is making the best possible game you can make and never, ever have a crap attitude. We "gave away" Desktop Dungeons for free for over a year (heck, it's still free and on our site if you want that version), it's quite possibly the best decision we ever made: It grew the number of people playing the game to the point that it was a recognised name in certain circles; People have said thanks for that by buying the more expensive pre-order option for the full game in droves, we still get emails about that...
BOTTOM LINE
Build the best game you can with the most feedback you can possibly get. That probably means PC for at least the early versions. Then move over to whatever your target platform and control scheme is when you're sure you've got something awesome. Then polish the fuck out of it. After that, hype it to hell and back as much as you can. Then market it from the moment you release it for sale and never stop. Make as many opportunities as possible and you'll have more chances to get lucky and not be the average mobile game ;)
Building for Mxit means you're essentially building a game in HTML w/ REST APIs (or C#/.NET if that's your style), so there's not a "Piracy" problem since a player can't download the game -- it's played live through the Mxit client. You can check out our developer docs at http://dev.mxit.com/docs for a better feel of the platform.
The games that rock on Mxit (especially in terms of building a business on top of the platform) are social games with virtual currency... Moonbase is coining it quite nicely, and based on my past experience in the social gaming world, as well what we're seeing on the platform, there's room for several more Moonbase-sized (or larger) successes.
The advantage to Mxit is that we're really serious about helping indie developers succeed, since our revenues come from the 70/30 revenue share with game developers, and we want more Moonbase-level successes.
You bill users with a single, simple HTTP call (http://dev.mxit.com/docs/billing-api), so it's harder to get much easier than our billing system.
What Mxit means for you as a developer:
* 10 million _active_ users
* Mxit, and therefore your app on Mxit, runs on 2,939 different models of mobile phones
* 1.3 million users *already* spending money ("Moola", our virtual currency) on Mxit over the last 12 weeks
* We're fanatical about helping indie game developers succeed, especially if you're doing social / virtual currency-based games. We work our top game developers 1:1. That's rare in a platform.
* We listen to you and work with you as we grow our APIs (which grow and deploy in weeks/months!)
* We're at the Make Games SA meetups, so you can ask us questions (I'll be in Joburg for next week's meetup, and planning to be at both CT & Joburg each month).
* We shamelessly feed you pizza and cold drinks when we see you.
Rock! Let me know if you have questions, or if you see areas where we can better work with indie game developers...
GB: But if you were to thumb-suck, what do you think it cost?
AF: It cost a couple of million to build.
GB: A couple of million? And have the returns exceeded what you put in?
AF: Well, we could break even at any point. But we continue to invest in further in growth because the South African market for us is hopefully only the start. So, rather than just trying to make money out of it, we are reinvesting further growth on other platforms such as Apple and Android. So it could break even, but it doesn’t because we choose to continue to reinvest in growth.
Which essentially means to me that the game has pulled R2M out of MXit transactions so far and is supporting its own development at this point, which is pretty awesome.