Apples app store is just another Flash game portal
After using Apples app store for manly games and a few random apps here and there I have begun to notice that when it comes to games the app store really is like another low grade Flash game portal. Especially after reading Keith Peters blog post on the app store (and his lovely return to the Flash world!), it has come to my attention that just like with Flash game portals games in the app store get buried pretty darn fast. Even though there seems to be websites popping up giving reviews on IPhone/IPod Touch games the only way I have really known of any quality games is simply either through blog posts/twitter or word of mouth.
Lost in an endless sea of games… That’s pretty much a Flash game portal in a nut-shell, and probably one of the biggest issues in why Flash game developers have such a hard time making a living off of it, one day your game is great and then it’s lost forever never to be seen again! This same sort of thing seems to be happening with games in the app store, except you hear more success stories of people becoming rich, simply because unlike with a flash game you have to pay money for what really essentially is just a higher quality flash game (some times not even that).
Really it seems to be that a lot of the top games you will see in the app store are games that are really simple (as Keith discusses in his blog post), and it’s these very same games that could be made in flash probably faster then it took for that IPhone/IPod Touch developer to make his/her game. Sure you have more powerful 3D possibilities but the type of people who use the IPhone/IPod Touch I am pretty sure are not looking for a hardcore 3D experience… Okay, well I may be wrong with that, I am sure there are many people looking to replace their handheld gaming device with their mobile device as their gaming platform of choice, but I bet a pretty large percent are people who just want something quick and easy to play to pass the time while they are waiting in line or something, hence the reasoning why Popcap’s games are so popular.
Also It seeming like that a lot of the same trends that have been with the Flash gaming community for a while are staring to be adopted in the IPhone/IPod Touch gaming world… The idea of putting your games out for free with ads and that sort… In a way it’s just becoming a dumping ground for just lots of random games. Sure the app store has the “Top 25″, but it seems like if you don’t make it there then why even bother spending time making a game for the app store? I mean really at that point wouldn’t it make more sense to put that same simple game out to a dozen different portals using “flash game distribution“, apply ads to the game and just put it out and get immediate feed back on your game? Why spend all that time working and trying to compete with the growing number of mainstream companies that are putting there games on the app store, and having to wait for Apple to okay your game when you can have your game made in less then a week and get feed back possibly with in minutes of posting!
Money is always lovely, don’t get me wrong! But just seems odd to me that so many are flocking to the IPhone/IPod Touch spending all there time (and money) trying to make a really killer 3D game which will essentially be lost in the shuffle, when they could have made a much simpler game, quicker, gotten instant feed back and possibly made some real money off of it depending on how they approach the marketing/development of the game in Flash. You know now that I think about it why not just prototype your game in Flash, see if it does well then port it to the app store, this seems to work very well with Shift. But yeah, I suppose I am getting a bit off topic here… Basically my point is I really feel the app store is becoming nothing more then a low grade flash portal, unorganized and just a dumping ground for games, sad but true…
This same type of issue is happening with the XNA Community games, but I won’t get into all of that…
Forgive me if this turned out to be more of a rant, but I was searching through the app store and felt the need to express my opinion on it… Anyways, it’s 3am… Time to sleep.
