State of the (gamedev) world nation
The official line from GDC:
So what's weird and interesting was that there's no African representation AT ALL, I'm not sure how they did the polling, but I'm guessing very few of us went to GDC last year, and/or we weren't in big enough numbers to have been sampled by some random sampling method. Or something.
http://reg.gdconf.com/GDC-State-of-Game-Industry-2018We polled nearly 4,000 game developers to shed light on the game and VR/AR industries leading up to the Game Developers Conference 2018 and VRDC@GDC in March 2018.
Significant trends revealed by the survey results include:
Notable uptick in interest in the Nintendo Switch
Game makers’ waning opinions of VR
Move away from mobile to focus on PC and home consoles
There are also interesting findings on topics like “loot box” monetization schemes, the business of eSports and more. Get the latest insight and full analysis of game industry trends.
So what's weird and interesting was that there's no African representation AT ALL, I'm not sure how they did the polling, but I'm guessing very few of us went to GDC last year, and/or we weren't in big enough numbers to have been sampled by some random sampling method. Or something.
Comments
Mostly people find they need the new phone generation for everyday life. PCs are there aswell however the phone could potentially be seen as a "toy" where the average person only sees the PC for work, hence slowly the mobile devices numbers would climb (and are, though this isnt a guarantee really).
In the monetization I unfortunately see it all as a scheme the platforms brought up to male more money. SokoBomber was $3 at the start but there were only 3 sales then it got hidden behind the first 100 "new games that look good" where it had decent reviews. That was within 48 hours, if thats not fitting their schemes the dont care you cant build it up. Hence making it free and ignoring it. (I also cant get the ~$6.5 from the 3 sales, they had to close the account and remove it on their side but cant pay less than $100 out to me. Platforms can destroy games, androids market has at least attempted to help where the other options are death traps)
Another explanation might be that, while mobile is definitely growing, the majority of that growth is going to a relatively small number of companies. Mobile is much more top heavy than PC currently, so while the numbers keep climbing that money is going into the hands of fewer people. And along with reasons like what @edg3 mentioned, that could be causing diminishing interest,
And if mobile developers on average are struggling more financially, then they may not be able to afford the luxury of two weeks in San Francisco.
Having been to GDC, the mobile development part seemed to focus on the kind of mobile development where relatively few companies are actually able to compete (i.e. in free to play games), so despite the mega bucks that are possible, the risk of the strategy GDC was advocating was phenomenal, and I suspect GDC helped mislead a lot of developers. (i.e. my opinion is that the mobile part of GDC was pretty bad if you were an indie).
(Though maybe I did'nt look deeply enough into it?)
There you would not be able to see a new developer that didn't have money to take the risk of being there. Especially if they are attempting to grow in their biggest option (which is currently mobile). Like you shared, the content is very dependant on platforms, hence it looks odd as a mobile developer to get into the show.
I suppose that it's also roughly what the GDC has shown off over the last years? It isn't that they're trying to hide mobile but usually, it was gaming on consoles and PCs. People get bound in their thoughts and expectations of what they can find at shows - the developers also get bound into what it has shown in the past.