Overthinking the obvious? Choosing which platform to publish on.

A few weeks ago I presented Flux to an industry panel at the University of Utah. The panel included representatives from the major game studios in Utah, as well as smaller start-ups, and even a recent graduate of the EAE program. The panel was very informative and it was a great opportunity to get feedback from professionals and peers.

There were roughly 10-12 panelists. After the presentation they all took turns giving feedback on the game. While there was a lot of differing opinions and comments about some of the features, the comment that stood out most and was pretty unanimous, was that this game should definitely be published as a mobile game. The reason that everybody commented on this was because I had pitched the idea of publishing this game on the new next-gen consoles and services, namely Steam, Xbox One, and PS4.

Crazy right? When you look at Flux, this is very obviously a mobile game, it looks like a mobile game, it feels like a mobile game, and it plays like a mobile game. You can see yourself playing this game waiting in a line somewhere, on a bus, or wherever people play mobile games these days (which is pretty much everywhere). So why would I consider publishing this on anything but a mobile platform? And furthermore, why would I target the big 3 platforms where the market on those platforms consists largely of hard-core gamers, who, when they sit down in front of their consoles are usually not in the mood for a casual game? Ludicrous.

I'll keep from spoiling what my final decision is, and let you be the judge as to whether I'm over thinking this or not. Let me spell out my reasons.

Flux was originally a mobile game, particularly an iOS game. It was conceived as an iOS game and designed as an iOS game. Part of the reason I'm attending the Master's program at the U actually is to have the experience of developing an iOS game. The reasons are obvious. The market is huge, these devices are everywhere, the platform has opened up smaller less expensive games that are able to turn a profit, and these games can be made by teams as small as one. Whatever you think of Apple or Steve Jobs or the iDevices, you have to at least recognize that the iPod, iPhone, and iPad revolutionized the way we do a lot of things, and made these devices an inseparable part of our lives and our culture. Reflective of this fact is our toy basket at home, which has become a technological graveyard for dead iPods and cell phones that the kids can play with.

So why did I change my mind and choose to make Steam, the Xbox One, and the PS4 my choice for publishing? I can probably boil it down to 4 reasons:

1) Control Schemes
2) iOS publishing
3) Disruptive Innovation
4) Colin Cowherd

1) Control Schemes

The mechanics of Flux are simple, move the shape around, rotate it 360 degrees, and shoot. This being an iOS game, there a few options for this. What I thought was obvious, was 2 virtual joysticks. One joystick would be used to navigate the player, the other joystick would be used to rotate it, and the red and green fire buttons would appear next to the joystick. The control scheme would look something like this:

This control scheme, or something close to it seemed like the simplest solution. After talking to a few people about it, doing some research, and discussing it as a team, however, it appeared like the decision would not be that easy.

Virtual joysticks, it turns out, are a bit of a controversial topic in the mobile game market, some people like them, a lot of people hate them.

There are various configurations of virtual joysticks. Here's an excellent article on Gamasutra written by Graham McAllister about the pros and cons of various virtual joystick schemes, and their pluses and minuses:

A Guide to iOS Twin Stick Shooter Usability

Another problem with this scheme is the fire buttons. You'd have to take your thumb off the joysticks to fire. This isn't ideal especially for a shooter whose targets are constantly moving. I wondered if I wasn't forcing my game onto a platform that didn't fit the control scheme.

The industry panel gave me some excellent suggestions on how to tweak the design to make it work with mobile, and I can always iterate on it to find a better solution. As I thought about other options, my mind went to the traditional controller, and how nice it would be to just use the old tried and true:

 2) iOS Publishing

 

I knew that publishing on iOS would bring many challenges. That's part of the reason I wanted to develop on iOS, I was interested in cracking that problem. I was interested in finding out how to market an iOS game in the very crowded iOS marketplace. The benefit of iOS is the size of the market, the downside of iOS is the size of the market. How do you get your game noticed when hundreds of games are published every week?

Our Lead Producer, Rody Rodriguez did some excellent research on iOS publishing that revealed just how tough it is to be successful with an iOS game. Here's some of what he found:

● App Sales Figures
○ Total Active Apps: 896,720
○ Total Game Apps: 151,676
○ Games submitted in July: 1,118 (118/day)
○ Average App Price: $1.50
○ Average Game App Price: $0.83
○ “Games is the biggest single iOS app category. In a study earlier this year, Distimo found that gamers
downloaded 5 million games in just one month.”
● Games contribute 62% of all iPhone app sales
○ Free Game Apps 36.25%
○ Paid Game Apps 45.75%
● Games contribute 48% of all iPad app sales.
○ Free Game Apps 35.00%
○ Paid Game Apps 42.75%
● iOS game sales compared to Android
○ iOS games earned in Q4 of 2012 3.5 times more revenue than Android
● Aspects to be Aware of as it pertains to iOS App Game Market
○ 60% of all developers don’t break even
■ “To put his findings in context of dollars, half of the developers surveyed have made less than
$3,000 in lifetime revenue. A quarter have made more than $30,000 on the App Store, and
another quarter have made below $200. Another 25 percent reported that they’ve earned
between $1,000 and $10,000 total.”
○ Top 1% of iOS game developers make ⅓ of all total revenue
○ Bottom 80% represent an anemic 3% of total game revenue
○ Top Earners spent on average 14% of time on promoting and marketing the gaming app
■ However, most developers do not spend much time in promoting their gaming apps.
■ 52% of developers spent 5% or less on marketing efforts

Some excellent statistics, and some daunting facts about publishing. What at first was a challenge I wanted to tackle became enticement to look to the next gen consoles.

With the flooded iOS marketplace, I wondered if the timing was right to jump into indie self publishing on the next gen consoles. It's a new market, relatively few competitors, and I'm curious if there would be many casual games on it (admittedly, there's probably a good reason there's not too many casual games on it.) While the information about self publishing on the consoles is still trickling out, it looks like both Sony and Microsoft at least appear to be committed to indie publishing.  An example of this is that fact that it looks like you can use a normal console to develop your game without needing an expensive and hard to get development kit.

Essentially, after the industry panel, I wondered if I was jumping the gun with the next gens, and should figure out ways to make mobile work. There are a few other reasons why I wanted to jump to the next gen consoles and Steam, but this post is already too long, so I'll pick it up later.