1. I’m working alone. Which means all the coding/visuals/marketing have to be done by 1 person, although there are things which I can do to help that (buy in code etc, get some of the visuals done by a 3rd party). This might seem like lunacy but a) I’m a half decent graphic artist, and b) there’s no budget for lots of graphics.
2. I’ve allocated 6 months for start to release, so it can’t be a “big” project from a time available point of view, although I will be working on it full time. I’ll go into why 6 months later.
3. The game has to be “simple” from a technical point of view. I don’t want to have to spend 2 months trying to figure out how to do some new amazing effect on the iPhone, the actual coding needs to be straightforward. That doesn’t mean the game needs to be a simple “tap the screen” arcade game though. Also the simpler the game, the easier to debug/play test. It also has to be relatively simple because it’s my first iPhone game!

Now against the above, is the fact that the whole point of this game project is that I want to make something which makes a decent amount of money. When I say “decent” I’m not talking about a game that makes $10k per day, I’ll be happy with $60 per day during the first few months. So what we have is development time/difficulty Vs required quality to make it a success.

Current games on the app store

I’ve found this great web service called AppAnnie which shows me the iPhone charts and I can even break it down into categories and countries etc. I’ve looked at the top games for some time, and certain patterns emerge, especially when you compare Paid, Free and highest grossing games. Looking at all games, for the USA. First I want to break the kinds of games into categories, these are not the standard categories you might see around, but my own personal take on different genres (i.e no bullshit).

1. Grow/Manage cute puppy/animal/monster game.
2. Casino games (card, slot machines etc).
3. City building.
4. Strategy games, managing various resources, mobster and war games fall into this.
5. Female targeted games (these would be dress up type games)
6. Arcade games (3D/2D, generally, swipe the screen and something snazzy happens)

The above pretty much covers all game types that are at the top of the app store. Looking at the charts, this is what I’ve deduced.

1. There’s so few word games on there, that they pretty much don’t merritt a mention. That doesn’t mean there aren’t 100s of word games, there certainly are, it’s just very few seem to be making money.
2. Also all the top grossing games use IAP’s (in app purchases) and are mostly free to download.
3. The top grossing games have a high quality of visuals (although the exact quality varies, from not bad to impressive, but there’s no games in the top of the charts that have bad visuals)
4. Lots of nice looking fun to play arcade games in the top of the free to download chart, but most of them are not high up in the grossing charts. My take on this is that quick reaction/arcade games appeal mostly to men. Men by in large will not spend money on an “arcade” game, but they love playing them, so lots get downloaded, but they don’t make much money. Which is a shame because they are usually easy to make and the graphics work is fairly low compared to other game types. I also think arcade games don’t monetize well (Temple run being an exception to this, to their credit) because they tend to be goal/level orientated, they are proper “games” and not what I would call virtual toys.
5. I would say the genre that is represented the most in the highest grossing, is the “Grow/Manage cute puppy/animal/monster game” genre. What are the reasons for this? I think it’s because this type of game appeals mostly to the biggest spending demographic who use iPhones/iPads i.e women. Also this type of game is perfect for monetization as you can easily add new items to the game.

So what game do I do?

First let me start by giving you a link, go here and read this before progressing (if you havn’t already read it).

That really is a great article and gives any budding iPhone developer a good grounding in reality. My first idea for an iPhone game was to do a word game. I had (and still do) a great and fairly original idea for a word game, it seemed easy to do and a good first iPhone project. I thought maybe 3 months to get it done, and then once that’s out of the way I’ll get started on the REAL iPhone game project! but after a little research, it become obvious that there are LOTS of word games and not many really make money. I think the reason for this is that there are so many, and it’s hard to make a word game look that impressive and/or appeal to the demographic that spends money in iPhone games. Add to that, by doing this smaller project first I was basically delaying starting on the main project by 3 months, so eventually I just thought, why delay? just get started on the actual main project.

So I set about reading every article, every news story, every tutorial, every forum debate, every scrap of information relating to making iphone games I could find, bookmarked and absorbed them best I could. I didn’t buy any books. To be honest even though I’ve spent a few k on books over the past 10 years, I tend to buy them thinking they will be useful and then end up finding more useful (i.e up to date) information on the net, I’m not saying books are not useful, they can be its just always start with researching online first before reaching for amazon.

Taking everything into account, these are the criteria then for the game type…

1. A game which is of the type that is already very successful on the app store and people can identify with.
2. A game that appeals to the biggest spending demographic on the app store.
3. A game that is easily expandable, and lends itself well to monetization.
4. A game that does not require hugely complex coding.
5. A game that easily lends itself to high quality visuals and high production values even if there’s only 1 person working on it.
6. A game that allows players to emotionally connect to it.
7. A game that lends itself to a community being built around it.
8. A game that allows players to be social, so hooks into Facebook, Twitter and GameCenter.

That to me is the game type of “Grow/Manage cute puppy/animal/monster game”, so that’s the kind of game project I’ll be working on. Although I’m not into reproducing what’s gone before just for the sake of it, so I’ll be introducing some interesting, dare I say quirky ideas into the mix to keep things original.

“But this type of project is a lot of work for 1 person within 6 months, why not choose something simpler?” Because games are all work and time, even a supposedly simple game will still take time to code, design, launch etc and in my view stand a smaller chance of being a success, because a) there are lots of simple games on the app store, so you need to go that extra mile to produce something special and b) as I’ve already identified certain kinds of games (generally ones with more depth) monetize better.

In 7 months time we will know if this approach was a good one or not.

I’m coming to the end of developing War Droids 2, and it’s time to get stuck into what this year will really be about, and that’s iPhone game development.

I’ve enjoyed creating Flash games for all these years, and as I’ve previously stated they have paid the bills and given me freedom to work on what I want, which is really important, but what it hasn’t done is taken me to the next stage which is for me to have my own little development team.

The goal for this year is make an iPhone game that makes money, and is a success, and from that success build a team.

I’ve spent the last 2 months researching iPhone games, both the the technical aspects and the app store itself, and from all I’ve read, acheiving that goal is now more difficult than it has ever been. The main reason for that of course is competition, but in the early days as Jeremy Alessi said here “Initially, almost anything would sell. People were simply ecstatic to pay 99 cents for a game.” Times have mostly definately changed, but there’s still money to be made if you create something which is right for the market.

So the 2 main questions that have been on my mind for the past few months are…

1. What type of game to do?
2. What tools should I use?

Tools options

The options for 2D games seem to be…

Xcode/Obj-C on a Mac ($99 per year)

Cocos2D (Free)

Corona ($199/$349 per year)

Adobe AIR (Flash CS5.5 £70 per month)

So as you can see developing an iPhone game is actually not that expensive, that’s the first bit of good news.

Xcode/Obj-C. This is what I call the “hardcore” option, as your coding in C with no “helper” libraries, so you’re coding the iPhone directly. Nothing inbetween you and the hardware to make life easier.

Cocos2D. As far as I can tell this is C again, but a series of libraries that take care of low level things, such as game loop, sprites, collision etc. Seems to me that one of the best things about Cocos2D is the wealth of online help and support there is, and of course that it’s free.

Corona. I’ve liked the look of Corona for a while. Setup buy ex Flash guys, and developed with Flash devs in mind it hits the right spot in a lot of ways. It costs of course, but I from what I’ve seen of what you get for your money it seems worth it.

Adobe AIR/Flash CS5.5. I have a subscription to the Adobe suite of software, which means I have Flash CS5.5 and therefore can use AIR to publish to iOS. I get to keep on using my AS3 skills, and keep using a program I’m used to. The only thing I would say about this option, is that even though they have greatly improved the performance of the eventual exported iOS file, this is probably not the best option for a really graphically extensive game, but then the iPhone is not really the platform for that anyway (that’s changing with every new iPhone though). Using AIR to make iPhone games is a relatively new process, so because of that there’s not the community behind it, that perhaps Cocos2D or Corona has, but there is this forum on the Adobe site.

So as Iong as I’m not trying to re-create Call of Duty on the iPhone Adobe AIR/Flash CS5.5 is probably the tool for the job. So that’s tools sorted, but probably a harder question….what game should I do that stands the best chance of some kind of financial/player success? That’s coming in the next part…

1. Mobile
2. HTML5
3. Facebook

Those 3 words basically describe the entire game development universe for small-ish game developers over the next 5 years. Unfortunately even doing this full time, there’s still not enough time in the day for me to be able to develop a quality game on all 3 platforms, so I have to choose. This is the criteria…

1. Roughly 3 months of development time. This has to include time spent learning a new platform.
2. I’ll be doing most of the visuals and all the coding.
3. Has to at least have the possibility of monetizing well.

Mobile

For “mobile” see the iPhone primarily because even though Android has a bigger share of the market, the iPhone is where most of the money is made. Windows 7 isn’t really anywhere yet. So for the next 2 years it’s basically the iDevices. You used to need a mac to develop for the iPhone (I’m all PC), but with Adobe AIR you can create games for iOS and Android, and I can keep my current AS3 skills. Mobile games also tend to be “smaller” i.e there’s not many Full blown 3D extravaganzas on mobile devices. It’s usually 2D games, which again fits in well with my skillset. Those 2 things combine to equal a reasonably short development time. Lastly, there’s the app store, which even though has become a much tougher place to earn revenue from, still is a good place to try to earn from your game.

HTML5

Lots of potential, in a few year time I think most 2D games will be HTML5. The code is obviously JS, which from what I’ve seen is basically AS1, so not too difficult to learn. There are a number of frame works to make life easier in that respect though. The biggest drawback currently is the complete lack of having any way to monetize your game.

Facebook

By Facebook I mean, a game actually on Facebook.com. The good news is that I can use AS3, so don’t really have to learn anything new, apart from Facebook integration, which I’ve already done some work with (Christmas Crunch Deluxe ), now the bad news, monetization. To make good money on Facebook, you need in app purchases, which means 2 things, LOTS of DAU’s (Daily Active Users) and (this is crucial) the RIGHT KIND OF GAME. There are lots of different kinds of games on Facebook, but certain types of games monetize a hell of a lot better then others, and we all know what kinds of games they are, city building and farm games. The problem here, is that these games take a lot of time to create. Not so much from a technical point of view but certainly from a graphics point of view. They need lots of high quality visuals, which I simply don’t have time to do, working alone.

Conclusion

Looking at the options, doing a “simple” game on the iPhone seems the way to go. Which is good because I had a great idea for a “word” game some months back, which will sit perfectly on the iPhone. I’ve not done Adobe AIR development before, but I can mostly use my AS3 skills. Also being a word game, I can do the visuals myself. I’m still deciding how to monetize the game (paid/freemium/IAPS’s) but I’ll go into all that some other time. Oh and I’m writing a game diary of my first iphone game (which I’ll publish when the game is released), so you can all see what went right or wrong! I’ll be starting development in a weeks time…