Mobile Game | Gamedev Brain

Indie Games – Mobile vs PC

Posted on October 21, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I know this is not a battle, or a war. I’ve just noticed that Indie game developers are kinda stuck reading articles and finding information that is not all that clear as to which area the writer was talking about, mobile or PC.

See this makes a huge different on the information that is presented, as for mobile, different things will work for marketing, and being successful. I read all the time that the market is flooded, but no real information that tells me which market is flooded. I’m making a PC game and read tons of articles about terrible things in the industry that are completely false.

I think that we, as indie game developers and writers, need to start being better at telling people the area we are talking about. If I look at Steam for example, it only has 4500 products on its store. That is far from flooded. The App store
though seems so full of junk, I even stopped looking for things to try on there. So let’s just be clearer about which parts of the industry are harder than which other parts.

If you are coding an app that happens to be a game, I think you are in for a hard road. If you are coding a PC game and think you can market it and get it in to Steam, I think you are fine. There are major differences. There are major differences in definition of the word ‘game’ on the two platforms too. There are also differences in many vocabulary words for each platform.

Everything that I have written is through the eyes of PC development and marketing. I hope that we can all get to be a bit clearer in the future. There are two different industries here with similar skills and tools needed to create the product, but still two different areas of the economy that are drastically different than each other.

If you have not checked out my current project…

Violent Sol Worlds home

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Send a Polite Message With No Url, and Bam!

Posted on September 6, 2015 by magicrat_larry

Ok so I had this message come in from @ambemusic on twitter.

“If you could give a word about my game on your page that would be so amazing and appreciated! Please let me know!”

I ignored it at first. I know, what a selfish prick. Then I remembered it today and it stood out because she did not even give me a url. Interesting, usually people say, hey check out my awesome Youtube Channel and spam a url in there and I ignore it and move on. I looked through the many messages I get and found her. Looked up what she was making and said, oh why not. I already worked enought to find her and her product so, like Leroy Jenkins said, LET’S DO THIS! 🙂

I watched the short trailer both on Youtube and iphone, the game is called Droppy Up. I thought it was a unique looking game and was not like anything I have seen on a mobile device. I did not buy it, it’s 99 cents and I am a cheep dude. So I cannot give it a proper review, but I will give it this much, it looks hypnotic, which is better than most things on a phone. The music seemed to lull me into the short trailer and the game-play seems simple and possibly challenging.

It seems like something you might want to play if you feel like you are about to strangle somebody. It’ll help calm you down and maybe slightly creep you out with the eyes. Go check it out on your mobile device, and visit it’s creator on Twitter here. Also you can go to the DroppyUp Twitter page too.

Again, I have no clue if this is a good game or not, just figured it looked different enough to write about. I mean really, if you are about to rage, just look at the Twitter page for droppy sake, it’ll calm you down alone. 🙂

Twitter, the Best Mobile Game Ever!

Posted on July 17, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I’ve said it to many people and I get the same response of laughter every time. “Twitter is the funnest mobile game ever! ” Why does everybody laugh? To me it is really true, Twitter is a very addictive and fun mobile game.

Why do I call Twitter a game? I think it has all the elements of a game. It has a large open world to explore, multiplayer, goals, rewards, and even disappointments. Twitter takes the game to the next level, where Facebook just touched the surface. Twitter made it fast paced, exciting, and very interactive in nearly real-time. Twitter turned the social networking experiment into a very huge Social MMO where everyone is attempting to contact everyone else and get as many interactions as possible in like 8 minutes or less, how exhilarating.

Let’s take all the game-play elements and explain them.

Open World

Twitter is a massive world, you can sit there and search many different areas of it and see nearly endless content that is quick, and entertaining. You can find anything and not have to read for hours, but just 140 characters at a time, or even just look at pictures. So this world is vast, diverse, and tailors to many kinds of peoples mindsets for gaming.

Goals

Twitter is very much goal oriented. You are motivated to create content, and try new things to reach the rewards that we detail in the next section. It is highly likely that you will end up putting a lot more thought into your 140 characters than you ever imagined.

Rewards

It will tell you in real-time when somebody noticed you and the part of the world you are creating. They can favorite you, which is like telling you that you rock. They can retweet you, which is like broadcasting your content to their part of the world. The holy grail though, is the follower. If they follow you your empire grows in power and strength.

Multiplayer

It is social, every bit of the world was created by another person. So every interaction you have in that world rewards another player, or disappoints them. There is not single player mode on Twitter. You cannot help but reward anotehr player with either a good interaction or a terrible one. You choose what you do to them and how. You can follow others, or gain a following yourself.

Disappointments

Twitter has its highs and its downs. This makes for a great story, not a conventional one, but a great one none the less. Followers bring you great joy. But the negative comments from some can hurt you. The posts that get no interaction what so ever really are a downer. Plus the dreaded unfollow. Oh man there is nothing worse than somebody leaving your tribe of followers.

Conclusion

When using Twitter make sure you see it for what it is. It truly is one of the greatest games created of all time. It is pure, simple, and genius. Play it and enjoy. Join me @magicrat_larry