Distribution Should I convert my game to the mobile market?

[Deleted member 16767]

Do you earn a nice amount of cash from the mobile market to continue your games development? And how do you actually test your game on iphone with GMS2?

 

[Toque]

Depends on the game. Most games don’t make any money. No secret riches as far as I can see.

do you have an Apple dev account?

 

[sitebender]

I think the true way to make money with ads is to either force people to watch them for your in game currency, or have a game so trashy that players will instantly like the ad more than your game. Or just put in micro transactions, but have a grind mechanic so players can work for an hour or just pay $5 for that hour. Or target to kids whose parents don't have to confirm payments.In the early days of microtransactions, there were all kinds of lawsuits of families being ruined because their 3 year old racked up $10,000 in charges without anyone noticing until they check the monthly bill and a lot of people are too lazy to check the bill and don't want payment protections put on their cards.

I have yet to earn money from mobile and my friends will tell me they click the ads. Using Google Play Services has always been a pain. Now it's worse since Google lost some court case for harvesting data from children so now app users have additional guidelines if their games even look like they appeal to children.

People have felt I was data harvesting for forcing people to log into Google Play Services just to use their leaderboards and achievements. I know nothing about data harvesting, but people seem to be protective of their phones more than their PCs. So that backlash hurt my smaller games to the point I just don't bother anymore.

Then there are people who complained my games don't have a mobile enough feel to them. There need to be swipes and a button to tap rather than a system like a more controller like scheme that players can tweak. All kinds of headaches I'd never near about without being mobile.

With this all said someone will swoop in and tell us about the millions of dollars they made on porting a game to mobile.

 

[Rayek]

Nowadays you have more chance winning the lottery than earning a reasonable amount of money on the mobile game markets, it seems.

I tested the waters a few years ago with a free game for iOS. Took a lot of effort to get it working right, and while the game itself was received well by our test audience (kids of various ages), it had perhaps 20 downloads. This for a fun original game with good custom made art.

It was then that I decided that it just isn't worth the effort without spending a lot of time and money on advertising and social media. Unless you are as lucky as a lottery winner, that is ;-)

 

[Toque]

I have yet to earn money from mobile and my friends will tell me they click the ads. Using Google Play Services has always been a pain. Now it's worse since Google lost some court case for harvesting data from children so now app users have additional guidelines if their games even look like they appeal to children.

People have felt I was data harvesting for forcing people to log into Google Play Services just to use their leaderboards and achievements. I know nothing about data harvesting, but people seem to be protective of their phones more than their PCs. So that backlash hurt my smaller games to the point I just don't bother anymore.

Then there are people who complained my games don't have a mobile enough feel to them. There need to be swipes and a button to tap rather than a system like a more controller like scheme that players can tweak. All kinds of headaches I'd never near about without being mobile.

With this all said someone will swoop in and tell us about the millions of dollars they made on porting a game to mobile.

I couldn't agree more.

I think a lot of desktop games are difficult to port to mobile that make sense. I started with mobile and published mobile. Game design and dev is all mobile. So when I do the GM game jams I get "kind of simple mobile style game". So a more complicated game designed for desktop may have to be totally redone to get it to work well on mobile. A lot or work for a small financial return...........

 

[Yal]

The mobile market is dead after all predatory companies moved there realizing there were so many non-savvy people to harvest on it, and even now when quality control is a thing, the big players change APIs constantly so you get a ton of upkeep you don't really need to bother with on PC. Only bother with it if you've got a proper monetization strategy.

 

[Catastrophe]

Looking at a developer talk in GDC about price breakdown, they made about 60% of their revenue on PC and the rest on all other platforms combined (at a reduced sell). It makes sense if your PC name is strong, but I wouldn't bother until you've made a few thousand bucks, personal opinion.

That said, porting to mobile usually means sacrificing some elements of your game's complexity, so it makes even less sense if you're game is super complex, like an RTS or something. But a space shooter or something? Go for it.

Then there are people who complained my games don't have a mobile enough feel to them. There need to be swipes and a button to tap rather than a system like a more controller like scheme that players can tweak. All kinds of headaches I'd never near about without being mobile.

^ basically this. If your game is already simple and easy where cruddy mobile controls won't hinder it, it's probably worth porting.

 

[Mert]

Never use Banner Ads.
Rarely use Interstitials.
Use Rewarded Ads wherever you can.
Use IAPs.

2019 monetization schema.