I say, there should be a limit of say 2-3 apps per month (something like that) and for every submission after the limit has been reached, include a fee.
It's a hybrid system.
~ Natanavra.
Success on the App store
(41 posts) (17 voices)-
Ok, we have good ideas.
I will call Steve Jobs now and tell him what to do! Don't worry anybody, we're safe nowPosted 2 years ago # -
Codemattic
Moderator@Natanavra, that works!
@crmagicxxx, glad to know you are so connected! Yeah, this is kind of a frustrating discussion bc its about things we cant change.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I've been in contact with an Apple dev 'liaison' guy, that I chatted to a few times over one of our app submissions recently (that doesn't look like it can get past the Apple censors).
Not sure if he'd have time, but I could send him a link to this thread, as he did mention their trying their best to communicate with developers, and make the process more open and refined. It may not be Steve Jobs (unfortunately ; ), but it might help having some Apple staff get some of the community feedback.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Just one more quick comment -- I was thinking of a system a while back where the developer/company is charged if they want additional submissions/reviews per month as well, but I decided that prob. wouldn't end well (that the per-account submission limit would prob. be better without exceptions). The problem (imo) with allowing extra paid submissions is that it introduces "pay-to-play" aspects into development (inevitably adding to the list of problems what would prob. only end up being a headache for indie's anyway -- that is, not having funds to blow for additional submissions). As someone else pointed out, we really have no ability to change any of these things (with exception of adding to collective whining that might eventually be heard). :-P
Posted 2 years ago # -
Juntaou
MemberI'm gonna agree with Codematic's idea about paying per submission. The problem is that this will really only effect indie developers, because for us 20-30 dollars per submission adds up, but for the big boys 20-30 dollars is nothing. So the only thing it would do is discourage smaller guys from releasing the "crap apps" or whatever you want to call them that flood the store. For the most part the large companies aren't pumping out crap apps daily its usually the little guys. Also sadly the app store isn't about being fair to all of the developers, it's about making money. From Apple's perspective at least, so they will do whatever it takes to profit the most from it and sadly that will probably favor the big guys over the little more often than not.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Juntaou
MemberA quick edit, I'm not saying that all games made by Indies are crap or that all games made by bigger guys are not crap, just that you don't see companies like gameloft flooding the market with quick games they threw together in a day. That is actually part of the hard part of being an indie dev is that companies like gameloft will put together a good game, sell it for 6 or 7 dollars to start then drop the price to 1 dollar. Its harder for our games to get noticed when people can choose to 1 dollar for a game like hero of sparta or 1 dollar on app made by an indie. Not saying the Indie game isnt as good or better than Hero of Sparta, but Hero of Sparta had a full team working full time on it.
Posted 2 years ago # -
This is a really interesting thread. I'll post a bit about my own experience.
My company (well, there's really just 2 of us full time -- gameloft we are *not*) has been doing web games for 7 years now. We've done games for kids of all ages and adults. Mostly for TV channel web sites.
When we set out to do an iPhone game, we settled on a prechool game ( Monkey Preschool Lunchbox: http://thup.com/preschool/ ), for a number of reasons. Both of us have kids in the age range, so we had free beta testers, so that helped. But a lot of it had to do with identifying what we saw as a weak spot in the market. We knew the "iphone parent" audience was fairly big. The market was crowded (around 3 or 4 hundred apps), but we knew we could do better. None of the apps had any real animation (which we know this audience loves) and they all were terribly designed for preschoolers with clunky navigation and poorly pieced together clip art. We also knew we could complete the game in a relatively short time frame (~6 weeks or so, not included the iPhone/xcode ramp up time).
The game has been out for 3 weeks and has been the top preschool app and #2 in the Games > Kids subcategory the whole time (#1 is "Mr. Aaaah" which is kind of BS because that is not a kids game) and usually around #70 in the top 100 games. We did no special marketing other than some emailing, twittering, and a few blog posts.
That said!... It's still frankly not that much money for the number of hours spent. Keep in mind this is our full time job. Sure, if we maintain this spot for 4 months we'd be doing great, but that seems unlikely to me. I don't know when we'll saturate the market, but it seems like it has to happen at some point.
The only advice I can give from our limited success is to say: know your market and your competitors. Who are you making the game for? What kind of people do you expect to buy it? What other games are like the one you are making? What makes yours better?
That's most based on hunches on my part btw, we've only got 1 game out so far.
Anyway, I like some of the suggestions here for avoiding the flood of new garbage apps ( I think a $25 fee for a new paid app would be reasonable ). But I think the best solution would be for Apple to not have such a godawful design for the app store. Seriously, for a company that prides itself on design the situation is embarrassing. There should be a much more robust browsable tagging system (not this old school keyword thing), better search terms, a more developed "related games" feature. OH, and let people comment on reviews and stop asking people to review only when they delete an app-- sheesh.
Maybe this will all come when they get Genius working well with apps, but I'm not optimistic.
Anyway, sorry for the long post, just wanted to share my thoughts.
Posted 2 years ago #
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