Development Blog

I think the mobile market has a short attention span. Because of the limited interface mobile has, most games are probably played for a very short total time on average (there will be exceptions of course).

 

Things that I have read is that it's a pure numbers game, which would make sense given the statement above. Your best bet to survive (if you aren't the lucky big hit game) is to turn out a new game every month or so. You track performance and ignore the bad selling ones and put your attention towards the ones that are selling, while still putting out new games and marketing.

 

I think this goes against what a lot of game developers want to do, which would be to put time and energy into a game they really believe in, vs turning out a lot of smaller games. Different market, different strategies.

I agree with Rick. The most interesting niche I have seen in mobile gaming devices has been motion controls (tilting the phone), but aside from that I have never seen somebody play a serious game that is not Angry Birds on a phone or tablet for longer than 5 minutes. Not that there is anything wrong with that by itself of course.

 

I do think that the mobile's app market is going to expand a lot more in the future though, but just not exactly in gaming. Or at least, not yet to the degree that we know of in the PC and console gaming communities.

 

Also: I'm really looking forward to seeing that landscape editor!

What I think an end state could be for mobile gaming is not all that mobile. I would like my phone to be a console that could wirelessly link to any TV, projector, or monitor. I would also want to be able to play my game and do anything else at the same time on my phone. My phone wouldn't even need to show anything on it but have it running in the background and shown on my TV/monitor. Of course all this needs to be smooth and flow nicely where phone calls don't cause any slowdown or interruption. Then I can just use my wireless keyboard and mouse or controller to play the games. With internet enabled TV's you would think this could work.

OUYA is probably what your looking more for rick. using your phone account as the managment account for purchasing games and content.

I'm not really looking for anything really. I just think this is the way mobile will go eventually.

Gamers are not gamers anymore, they are walking meat wallets. That's the take-away I get from industry journals and sites. Still, you've got to earn a living. Producing middle-ware or content seems to be the safest part of the food-chain.

 

Having said that, the one device that's had the biggest impact on how I do things today has been the pocket sized tablet. Office, mail, social awareness, gaming is something that happens on the toilet. More than you wanted to know.

On one hand I don't think mobile should be our primary focus, but on the other hand I'm seeing a lot of creativity coming out of Leadwerks 3 developers, so that's definitely cool.