Tag Games: six tips for young developers
The executive director of Tag Games, Paul Farley, in his article on Pocket Games, told what should be paid attention to by a young studio that decided to take up the development of games for mobile platforms.
Not everyone understands that we live in an era of a kind of gaming Renaissance, a real golden age, where independent and completely non-standard projects coexist with expensive blockbusters, where old genres come back to life from the depths of twenty years ago, and the gaming audience is growing due to mobile and social audiences.
However, even in this happy time, there are enough difficulties for beginners, even if they follow the path of least resistance when developing mobile games. However, many of them are solved quite simply, if you remember, according to Paul Farley, the following things:
1. A lot of young developers do not realize that they need someone who will take care of the business side of the issue. So, if there is no one among the “young and ardent” who loves to count money and understands financial tables, then it is urgently necessary to find such a person.
2. In the mobile industry, it is constantly necessary to think about how to achieve this goal with a minimum of costs. Tighten your belts, guys, at least until your game is in the American top ten box office projects.
3. Mobile devices are far from consoles. Their audience is fickle, the attention of this audience is scattered, and in general, she is used to getting great content for free.
For this reason, when developing a mobile game, it is necessary, first of all, to think about players and platforms. More precisely, how to keep the former (do not forget about proper monetization and constant monitoring, plus convenient management and simple gameplay), and not to mess up on the latter.
4. If you have not been on the moon for the last couple of years, you are aware that the mobile market is dominated by free-to-play and freemium payment schemes. Find out all about how they can be used, and then, already during development, make monetization a logical part of your game, and indeed of the entire game mechanics.
5. The game today is, first of all, a service. If you think that the work ends at the time of release, then you are very mistaken. On mobile devices, it is just beginning with the release. The success of many games, especially social ones, depends on the availability of permanent additions that keep the player in the project. In addition, in order to understand how and what the innovations affect, it is necessary to find a common language with analytical services that will provide you with information about each step of the user in the game.
6. If you can make a game on a PC or console that won’t be a hit and earn money, then a different rule applies on the mobile market: all or nothing. You can’t hold out on the “middle-class” here: either there are good downloads, which means money, or not. It is for this reason that the price of error is so high in the mobile industry.
However, if everything works out, the reward is royal. The already well-known Boss Alien receives $12 million a month with CSR Racing. Such things.
