His point is that certain changes to the Google Market are making it harder for indies to get noticed. That is a legitimate concern that should be of interest to HN app makers. Whether or not you like his apps is irrelevant.
Thanks for the link, heads up. I'm an Indie Game developer as well and I'm sure building a quality game (read as 'not-a-rip-off') will get me more hits than this guy assumes I wouldn't. Probably the app discovery is screwed up as he says, but its not as serious as he claims nor is it the end of the world, you know. Good games can market themselves (word of mouth)...and if they don't, I can still advertise on various other channels (like adwords, admob..etc) to help people 'discover' my app. The same goes for Appstore as well...Marketplace discovery is just one way, there are lots of other ways to market your apps/games...
I'm not sure I completely disagree with his argument--folks I know who are not putting out crapware like this say similar things--but you're right in that it's hard to take it seriously when his products are apps like this.
I'm not sure that's an interesting argument. The author's claim is that _their_ sales have gone down. And of course there will be some customers interested in those sorts of things.
Unless you're arguing that there are better direct equivalents of those apps on the market these days and there's more competition from good apps, I don't see how "your products have always been poor and have not recently gotten worse" answers "our sales have gone down".
That's the thing, though -- nearly every app they release is fairly generic. Not bad in a vacuum, but the apps got a ton of competitors and they didn't differentiate themselves.
It also doesn't help that the exact functionality of their most famous app (EasyTether) has been baked into the OS since ICS (and similar functionality has been in since Froyo), and their second most famous app (WordFeud) relies somewhat on network effects and has been mostly supplanted by Words With Friends.
I wouldn't leap to the thief accusation. The "actual" Easy Tether app you link to says "Mobile Stream" is the publisher in the app store, but the app id is com.mstream.easytether_polyclef. If Polyclef was a thief, why would Mobile Stream use the thief's name in the id?
I think it's the way it is because EasyTether was developed by someone living in Russia (look at the whois for mobile-stream.com), but they had no way of charging for it on the app store in the early days - there used to be a very restricted set of countries. So they got Polyclef to publish it (whois polyclefsoftware.com points to Louisiana). And that's what the description on the first link says - "EasyTether is developed by Mobile Stream and published by Polyclef Software".
After reading the title and then the article I felt a bit sad, but now that you posted this link and I'm confused. As much as I respect hard work of other people, what's the point of this plethora of sub-standard apps? Getting a wider net of possible quick sales?
Going with a publisher should be avoided as much as possible and it's a very ignorant answer, but for the end user, it seems that only these types of games seem to be worth their money.
App stores will never remove the need for other advertising. Why not send review copies to the major Android, tech, and gaming websites, and see if they put something up? Why not put something up on AdMob? Why not do giveaways of the game? Why not put it on a competing app store? There are many legitimate answers to these, but relying on the Google Gods to sell your product for you is just silly. (Whether Google's cut is then justified is a different matter entirely.)
I'd love to give away free copies of my Android game but I don't think Google Play supports promo codes. You also can't start out with a free app and then convert to a paid app later. Of course, a common approach is to have a free version and a paid version (or make your game ad-supported, or add in-game purchases).
Last I heard, Google supported completely discretionary developer-initiated refunds. IIRC, at least a couple of the high-profile apps that left the Amazon Appstore took advantage of that to ease the transition for their paying (i.e. not FAOTD) customers. With that capability, implementing a reasonable functional equivalent of a free promo code seems straightforward enough.
That's why Apple limits the number of promo codes you can issue to 50 per version last time I checked, so you can't sell the codes to users and avoid giving up the distribution cut.
It may be the end for you, but not for me. I see tons of potential for mobile app developers, especially independents.
I hear so many developers complaining about their apps not getting exposure on the app stores, but guess how many of them have put any serious sweat equity into building their business outside of the app stores? Hardly any is the correct answer to that question.
The whole world of internet marketing is open to you. Build a brand for yourself, cultivate a community. You think the only way to get people to download your app is through the app store? The only time I go the app store is when I want something specific. I find ALL the apps I use through search and social.
You need to think bigger to survive. Yes, competition is increasing- nobody gets a free ride in this world. But there are advantages to being small and nimble in this market. You just gotta think outside the store.
If there is anything I've learnt by releasing many "unsuccessful" apps is that "release and wait to get rich" strategy does NOT work. This time round we are spending A LOT of time networking/promoting/pestering reviews etc etc.
They found 34 games worthy of review in a 2 week period. That implies that there are hundreds of others that didn't make the cut. That's a lot of competition.
"For my new app I got 30 downloads on Android, 4,000 downloads on iOS."
That's not remotely the difference between the size of the markets. To me that says yes it is partly or even mainly Google's fault. If anything iOS should be relatively harder to launch in.
Agreed about using other channels. But I think his main point remains, finding something other than top 100 on Google play is near impossible. I mean, I've pretty much given up completely. Separating the wheat from the chaff is quite difficult.
I rely on places like /r/gamedev, and /r/android for finding new apps. If someone could aggregate all of that data into something that actually usually it be freaking awesome. As it stands now, the playstore is horrendous. Google is doing a pretty overwhelming job in my opinion.
Somewhat related to this is how staggeringly awful the Google Play search is.
My app is called "My PlayHome" (the wisdom of that branding decision is another matter). Let's see what happens if a potential buyer (quite reasonably), adds an extra space and searches for "My Play Home"...
To save you time, my app is at the bottom of page 3 of the results. To make matters worse, Google autosuggests "My Play Home" as you type. "My Play House" does rather better, appearing in the bottom half of the first stage, even though that's not the name of the app.
Add to that Google Play doesn't have keywords or indeed a Kids section.
Now, I should probably mess around and add some spammy keywords to my app title on Google Play but my point is that Google hasn't even bothered to get search right on its app store. That's some hardcore irony.
[EDIT] I just changed the title on Google Play to "My Play Home" - that immediately drastically improved the search results for the incorrect name even before the name is being shown as changed on the search results or the actual app page. This is not exactly optimal, as the app has 10s of thousands of paid downloads on iOS as "My PlayHome" (iOS app search also compensates for extra spaces...) as well as all the reviews on the web using my original spelling.
I don't understand the negativity towards this article. I don't think Derek's message hung solely on the removal of the 'What's New' section, but it being the final straw in series of issues for indie devs. Yes, there are other channels for promotions, but this was (or had the potential to be) and important one.
I'm an Android user, so I hope that if this experience is indicative of many, that there will be new tools for indie devs, to help them get that initial bit of momentum.
I'm very interested to see if the OUYA can deliver on promise. It looks like a fantastic machine and at its price point, there will be no reason not to have one on every tv in the house. That will be an exciting new frontier in game development.
But don't tell me that if your game was super awesome it would still do bad. Good work always floats to surface, yes it's more difficult but why would you do a mediocre game anyways.
Tiny Wings is a brilliant, fun game. It is one of those near perfect mobile "pick up and play quick" experiences. It all has good graphics and sound. It also is slightly derivative of Angry Birds without being a ripoff.
In short, it's a very well made game that is worth talking about. Marketing something brilliant is easier than marketing something that is average. Let's face it, most Android and iOS games are mediocre.
The angry birds never seemed struggling to me. They seem determined and aggressive to me, the furthest from the tiny wings bird you can get. Plus the art style is completely different, I wouldn’t ever get the idea to call angry birds adorable.
The game also had the advantage of free ideation and fun-testing; Tiny Wings is a zynga-style copy of the best flash game from a small flash dev's one-experimental-game-a-week-for-a-year personal project. Tiny Wings' contribution was mostly brought art and a few extra weeks of development.
Woah! It's flat out wrong to characterize Tiny Wings as a zynga-style copy[1]. 1) Wave Spark was relatively well received, but nothing like a hit, 2) Wave Spark was not available for iOS devices (despite requests that the game be polished and ported), 3) The art and "a few extra weeks of development" is a night and day difference in Tiny Wings compared to Wave Spark, 4) Tiny Wings is also a personal project by a one-man development studio, and 5) Wave Spark is publicly aknowledged as an inspiration for Tiny Wings.
Compare to Tiny Tower, a hit, polished iPhone game made by a two-brother development team that is then carbon copied due to its success by mega-corporate Zynga with exact gameplay systems ripped off wholesale and yet a claim of originality.
McCoy doesn't begrudge Illiger his success with Tiny Wings... Why do you feel the need to hurl a vicious, unsubstantiated attack against him?
[1]As far as I'm concerned, that's an incredible insult.
True, there are mitigating factors. I just got annoyed when Tiny Wings was used as an example of a great game, particularly when the explanation of its success started off by citing its mechanics, and even more particularly when McCoy's focus on games is entirely about mechanics. Tiny Wings may not have copied much, but they copied everything that there was to copy. Tiny Wings is a better game than Wave Spark, but people keep citing it as an example of a well-developed game without realizing that Illiger didn't need to do any playtesting, didn't need to do any focus groups, and didn't need to actually have the big idea.
I'm sorry if that came off more aggressive than I intended. I don't like writing long posts. I think that my perception of the situation might also be skewed by my preference for gameplay over art; I play Dwarf Fortress and Aurora, for pete's sake. I was also following the game-a-week project while it was in the process, so there's that.
>Let's face it, most Android and iOS games are mediocre.
"mediocre" seems generous; I'd say most are complete crap.
My girlfriend finally made the jump into the smartphone world by getting an Android device. After excitedly poking through the app store, she disappointingly asked where people are remaking the same exact game over and over again. In the end, she downloaded Angry Birds, and Word Hero.
Finding great --or at the very least mediocre -- apps should be at least somewhat easy and fun.. but it's not. It feel like a chore because to get to one good items, you have to sift though hundreds of items that, honestly, shouldn't have been made in the first place. The last 4 apps I've downloaded, I've instantly uninstalled after the first run. There's rough around the edges, and then there's shouldn't have ever been released.
To an extent, winning the lottery.
For every big hit indy game on the app stores, there are probably lots of similar quality which don't see the top lists.
as a user its hard to disagree. so here i go looking for "new stuff" in the google play ... and its always the same tops. in searches or anywhere else.
So i go on the web making random searches for new games & apps but it's neither convenient neither all that successful either (its mostly spam sites as in sites made to rank high with crappy content)
Personally I don't spend a lot of time browsing the markets on either platform.
I download my apps by necessity or recommendation. I suspect many others (if not most) are like that.
I'm with 'mirsadm' and in future I will not follow the "release and wait to get rich" strategy. I will properly sell my next product!
I can't understand his whining about the removal of the What's New section. Google obviously removed it because it disproportionately helped the spammers. If you released a good app it only got a few minutes on the list anyway before the spam apps pushed it off.
There is no miracle. All marketplaces work the same way. If you are going to make a lot of money, you are going to quack like a duck...huh, I mean you are going to evolve towards businesses that makes a lot of money.
For people who think there is nothing wrong with the Android Play market, just think about what's the last "just released" app/game you downloaded in recent months?
I can't think of anything.
The idea that if your product is good, it will float to the surface is very true, well for some apps/games. The truth is that the developer need feedback to improve his product. Before it gets there, not after. The "Develop for a year and wait to be rich" really just works for big brands, who already know the market well.
I don't believe I've ever bought a "just released" app/game -- certainly never one I discovered through the Android Marketplace. I don't think I ever went looking for one, either. Do people really shop for apps this way?
I know not everyone gets their PC indie games from Steam, but their very pro-indie store design certainly helps keep the market vibrant. They often feature games from tiny companies in front-page promo spots, they promote indie packs in their sales, and their 'you may also like...' suggestions don't seem to shy away from obscure 'long tail' titles. All in all, discovery is pleasant and easy.
I buy very few games on Steam these days. I dislike DRM, so I vote with my wallet, and spend most of my gaming budget supporting DRM-free games on Gamersgate.
Yeah, perhaps I was wrong to focus so much on Steam in my comment. Gamersgate, GOG and Green Man Gaming (to name a few) also do a fine job of drawing attention to less mainstream titles.
* PC games can charge a lot more. On mobile, users will balk at anything that costs more than .99 cents. If you want to charge $5, you have to have a pretty amazing game (like, Zelda-level), and even then people will complain.
* Lots, lots more competition from crappy spammy games that flood out the good ones.
I love it when people still cite The Long Tail, years after every bit of data it was based on turned out to be false. It's the tech industry's favorite pipe dream, but digital distribution simply does not change the 80/20 rule.
I always understood the long tail not as a fat tail, but rather something that enriches middlemen who can afford to "stock" a much wider range than a brick and mortar store. That is, the only way to get rich off the long tail is to aggregate over it. You won't get rich by being a tiny slice in it.
i think what the OP meant was the end of indie game dev for great devs who don't want to do any marketing.
in that case, partnering with a publisher makes a lot of sense. For example, Flight, the iOS game heavily promoted by ArmorGames could have gone it alone, but decided otherwise.
If you were at Google in July-August 2011, you'll understand this: Google just does not get Games. The leadership DNA to understand the space is not there. There are people who understand the problem and could make Google Games great, but they are not in decision-making positions and probably never will be (design paradox).
If you think about it, the mismatch is easy to spot. Google made a great product (web search) by being ideologically non-editorial, but you need to be editorial in the gaming space, and you need to support the indie developers who are where quality comes from. The problem, at "Google scale", is that you also need to figure out a process and strategy that enable you to be editorial without micromanaging every decision (because you can't).
Oh, don't get it wrong. The long tail market is there. But what many people get wrong is that you don't make meaningful money as a producer in a long tail market. The guy owning the store with all those obscure niche titles in it will make the money.
Yes, you can produce obscure apps (and music) and find customers. But it won't be many customers. You as the producer will be making only cents. The app store owner on the other hand will be making the big money because he can monetize the whole long tail with his indefinite shelf space.
I think the search function is biased pretty heavily toward more popular titles. Even if you put an obscure word in your app's description, if it is not very popular it will be behind pages of approximate matches.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Polyclef+Sof...
Speaks for itself.