Whatever.
Got into an interesting discussion on FB about game prices and sales on iOS, leading to the conclusion: you need to do F2P to survive.
I don’t like it because it goes toward a polarization where you either make AAA or free to play mobile games. This article just compares the two where obviously, F2P resonates as smarter development.
We need a middle ground. I think a middle ground is healthy. You want to let things slip to “what people want” fine, we developers and consumers have everything to lose in this equation and platforms everything to gain from. Consumers don’t know what they want, don’t know game production costs and if you just let them go for free, they’ll choose free. It doesn’t mean they’re right. Saying we don’t control nothing is BS. We have impact, we make and sell these games. We set that shit up.
People selling things have an impact, can change things around. Apple entered the smartphone market and said “this is how we think this should work, we don’t give care about what you are used to, you’ll like it”. Mojang did the same with a $10 alpha game.
Don’t focus on the fact that they are exceptions, look at the odds: who would have thought they would be so, so massively successful to the point of being that iconic? Fucking no one, not even them. So with odds so bad and tremendous success, I think that there’s room for games with better odds and not that crazy of a success but enough to sustain their stuff and make people happy.
This is what we should aim for. It’s super hard, I’m aware of that but it’s slowly coming. I’m glad Gone Home or Kentucky Route Zero or many others have a fair price and I hope they will be successful enough to sustain those teams and prove the model.
I hate this “me too”, “follow the herd” mentality. It’s not because it’s popular that you should do it. You don’t have to go F2P as you don’t need to make a Super Mario clone just because “people like platformers!”. On the question of joining iOS game development, just censorship should push people to ask themselves why would they develop for Apple. We have internalized it, by design we will not think different. We’re sacrificing freedom of speech for convenience and brand loyalty. It’s “cool” to do stuff for this platform that doesn’t make anyone live but a ridiculous minority and these questions about freedom of speech are so annoying and serious!
Fair enough, it seems like society doesn’t want any middle for anything either and also, relegates freedom or respect as artifacts. It’s matching.