In the mid-19th century, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world traveled great distances and endured unimaginable hardships to get to California and Alaska after hearing about “gold nuggets lying around on the ground for the taking.”
Last week, while browsing Barnes & Noble, (the actual store, not the website….that’s right, no Nook), I saw a book entitled “Make Millions Developing iPhone Apps!” Subtitles told me that “very little cost and no programming skills or technical experience” were required for me to embark on this sure path to app wealth.
Is developing apps the latest version of the Gold Rush? As I recall from elementary school history, when the world’s masses flooded to Sutter’s Mill and the Klondike, very few ever actually found anything of value. Too many people, too late to the party with too little real estate yielding up precious metal kept gold mining fortunes to a minimum and made one’s actual chances of striking it rich a massive long shot. By way of comparison, as of September 1 of this year, the iTunes App Store exceeded 250,000 iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad apps from over 50,000 unique publishers. Nearly 37,000 of them were games.
Got that? Thirty-seven thousand games. A high percentage of them could be classified as “shovelware” or products that couldn’t find shelf space at a garage sale unless they paid for it. And yet, hundreds of new apps are launched daily, making it more and more difficult to make fortunes developing games for iOS, Android and such.
And now, new data is showing that consumers’ ‘app-etites’ are quickly changing. Most downloaded apps are going completely unused on most consumers’ devices. Less and less time is being spent perusing app store shelves. Fewer free trial versions are being downloaded and consumers are now more likely to only purchase apps that have been recommended by friends or trusted reviewers. Basically, what’s happened is that apps – especially games – are now firmly entrenched as just another one of the many, many choices competing for our precious free minutes each day.
With these clear obstacles facing developers, is it safe to say that we’re past the land-grab stage of the app and have now entered the time when we see a thinning of the herd, when “crap apps” stop appearing on “New and Noteworthy” release lists, and the major players outside of Electronic Arts, Gameloft and a few others finally make a serious move into this space? In other words, is the App Gold Rush over? And if it is, what can smaller companies, new players, and even individuals do to reap what riches that are still out there to be mined in this still growing and evolving industry?
Remember Your Audience
The major thing that most app developers fail to remember when spitballing new ideas is that not everything they think is fun is actually fun. Always ask yourself “am I my target market?” Most game developers are gamers. Most app purchasers are not. As such, your app has to appeal to the casual gamer, the novice and the social game player. When developing game apps, the golden rule of game design – easy to play, difficult to master – is more relevant than ever:
- Make it easy as hell to start playing. There is a reason that mobile gaming was based on the principle of “pick up and play.” If it takes more than a minute to understand the basic mechanics of gameplay, you’re hosed.
- Make it worth the money. Several years ago, a mobile game developed by a major media company launched initially free as a promotion on Sprint. A prominent reviewer remarked, “Even though I got it for free, I still want my four bucks back.” This is the second half of the golden rule. Once you get them in, make them want to keep playing. Increase the skill level and complexity, offer rewards, hint at better things to come. Every top-grossing game on iTunes right now does that expertly, particularly Cut-The-Rope, Angry Birds and Trainyard.
Be Relevant
Back in June of this year, Scott Steinberg wrote an article about the gaming’s hottest new trends.
Relevance means being up-to-date in your development efforts and taking advantage of the latest successful trends and directions in the industry. From relevance comes inspiration which leads to pushing the envelope which leads to newer trends.
Trip Hawkins, a gaming industry founding father and icon has written multiple articles about success in game development. In his piece titled Ten Things Needed For Mobile Game Success, Mr. Hawkins pretty much lays out a blueprint for what a developer can take advantage of to help put his game in the top tier of relevance. Although not articulated at the time, AFK Interactive, where I’m currently employed, was started last year upon belief in several of those ten things, particularly #10 – “Social Networks Will Be Mobile Apps but Not Mobile Portals.”
Be Original
Creating commercially successful original IP is the holy grail of game development. It’s also the most difficult thing to do in game development. There are a lot of original games up on the app stores now, and by ‘original games,’ I mean anything that hasn’t seen a life previously in another medium like a movie property, console title, or MMOG. But to really ‘cash in’ on this current gold rush, wouldn’t an app IP have to reach the iconic status of previous franchises born in the world of interactive media? I mean, have we yet seen anything born of app that has the potential to be a Tetris, Doom, Civilization or even Grand Theft Auto? Maybe this is a discussion left to another day and probably examined by others more knowledgeable than myself, ,ut I feel that we’re not there yet and, if one is to make the absolute most of the current landscape of app mania, original IP (as opposed to licenses) is the way to go. The greater the risk, the greater the reward.
Let’s face it, having your original idea adopted by other mediums is the signal that you’ve imagined and created something enduring and noteworthy. Has that happened yet in the world of game apps? I’d love to hear opinions. Look, if a TV series can be created from a Facebook page (#@&% My Dad Says), then there is a very good chance that sometime in the near future we’ll be seeing the theatrical release of a film based on an IP originating in an app. Hell, I’m the first to admit my finger isn’t on every pulse of this industry, so there might already be one of those in the works.
Be Useful
As gamers, we all want to make great games that are downloaded by millions, become globally known and spawn an ageless, evergreen franchise upon which we can build an empire. But if your efforts aren’t working out as planned, maybe it’s time to take a different tack. Maybe it’s time to look at the app experience from a new angle.
Back in the gold rushes of the 1800s, the vast majority of would-be gold tycoons ended up making money – sometimes fortunes – in other ways: Provisioning, transportation, brothel owner…”miner support services” as it were. Think “Levi Strauss” as a perfect example back then. Think OpenFeint and AdMob as today’s equivalents.
Again, an example is AFK Interactive where we’ve made the conscious decision to take an enabling role in the industry. We’re building technology and making it easy for PC, online, and console developers to take many features of their MMOGs, virtual worlds, and social network games to mobile devices via apps. While we’re not making games, we’re helping extend games to new platforms and operating systems, opening up new revenue streams, monetization opportunities and increased user engagement opportunities to non-mobile publishers and developers to. By taking this course, we’re confident that someday soon we’ll be a player in this century’s first major gold rush.
So to answer the question as to whether the App Gold Rush is over or not, I say, “Not by a long shot.” Like every revolutionary discovery, technology, or product that seems to appear out of nowhere and take the world by storm, apps and the industry they’ve spawned are just evolving and maturing. We’ve reached that stage in the growth of an industry where the bars are being set and expectations continually raise them. We’re at that point where a true landscape has gelled from the chaos and the players are defining their roles within that landscape’s ecosystem. There are tons of motherlodes still to be mined out there – you just have to work harder and smarter to get to them.