The realities of mobile game development

For the past few years I have been running a small game development studio, and throughout this time people from outside the industry periodically come to me who “want to give money” and get a project for themselves. At the same time, the idea of ​​these people about what a game industry is, let's say, is far from real. This article is my attempt to tell that making a game costs more than $ 200, making it brighter and making a million is not a business plan, and in general, game room is a high-risk business, not a printer for money.

Articles are written only winners

At the same time, it must be said that if you rely not on reality, but only on publications in the media, then these people are absolutely right, gamedev is a printer for money. Articles and news about the industry are written only by the winners. People do not like to write about their failures. And if, say, in a start-up industry, there are occasional falls and failures in recent successful marketing projects, and everyone immediately sucks everyone up, raising from the depths the thought that failures are a big part of the industry, then in game dev everything is not so . The project has either “gone,” and everyone knows about it, everyone writes. Or not, and he is a gray mouse, which is not interesting to anyone, no one will know about it.
As a result, a major publisher released 20 projects, two “went”, everyone writes about them, nobody knows about the other 18. There are tens of thousands of indie enthusiasts, hundreds of thousands of projects have been released, “gone” 10, they will not remember losers.
All info fields are filled with articles on how to make money easily by making a game. And the bystander believes he wants to believe.

Indie is creativity

And if smart uncles are sitting in publishing houses, and 18 failures for 2 success are part of the business process, the success of one pays for all the costs. All those hundreds of thousands of students, dreamers, and madmen who in the evenings make their killers Angry Birds, hoping to earn millions, are simply in error: the indie that has earned is a miracle. Indy is about creativity, not about money. Just look at the statistics.

But who looks at the statistics, when every month Bob appears with his wife, who made the game and immediately got rich. The myth soars in the air: “Make an application and get a million.” The creators of this myth are obvious: owners of platforms and app stores.
They try to attract as many developers to their store and ecosystem as possible, and developers obviously love money. You have to create a myth about easy money in your side, publish reports about fantastic turnover of a stack, when a successful application from an independent developer appears, launch an agit-machine that tells about this success.
And Google and Apple are able to convince.
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Cemetery applications

Of course, in an effort to maximize revenue, application stores with developers are at the same time, but one does not care about the structure of this income, each developer earns a dollar, or only one, but a sum with nine zeros.
Moreover, with the transition to the f2p model, the owner of the store is interested in redirecting all traffic to one application, to the one that will monetize this traffic most effectively. By maximizing total return.
As a result, the app store turns into a graveyard of apps. The first 10 products of the list earn orders more than any other. The remaining 999,990 applications are not interesting to anyone at all, players are used to watching only the first page, the owner of the store will not redistribute traffic to less efficient applications, top guests spend huge sums to keep it and not let anyone in there. Vicious circle.

Experience in development and marketing determines success.

Here we come to the fact that the only proven way to earn substantial sums on a mobile is to get to the top. You can get into the top in the only proven way: having bought banner / offer traffic, you need to buy a lot of traffic, a lot of traffic costs a lot. You can earn substantial amounts only if you are willing to spend the same substantial amounts on marketing.

But marketing is just the tip of the iceberg, a bad game can be brought to the top for the same money as good, but the top is just traffic that will come to you, and you need to monetize it, and if your game makes it worse than those that you were in the top before you, you will not pay for it. The demand for traffic is huge, and its cost is equal to the revenue from this traffic in a game with very good monetization. At f2p games, only those who know how to make games with excellent monetization earn, and these people have already released a couple of projects with very good monetization, they have experience and understanding of the smallest mechanisms.

Gamedev is primarily a business, and in it, as in any other business, there are those on the ridge who already have a lot of resources and a lot of experience. You should not, as a student, hope to make your project in the evenings and break everyone. These are empty dreams.

For the rest, there is also a place

Is it all so bad, everything is lost, life is over and the world is meaningless. Not at all, mobile game development is not so unambiguous, it has a major league, people who spend a million dollars on launch traffic and hang in tops. And also there is everyone else, they also earn or incur losses, the amounts differ by an order of magnitude. It is foolish to open a doner ball on the corner, hoping to make money, like the entire McDonalds network in Europe. But you can earn. Stor nevertheless allow to earn to independent developers. Good products regularly fall into the new and interesting. With good viral performance, this irregular traffic can be multiplied. An excellent retention will allow you to leave it in the game for a long time. And excellent monetization will pay back the development several times. But do not wait for miracles.