Interesting how median lifetime revenue increases with the number of developers on a game up until 20+, where it dips.

From this it would seem 10 to 20 person teams are the sweet spot for mobile game development.

Now I just need to find 9 to 19 more developers for my project :)

The median revenue per developer per month is an indicator of profitability and probably a better metric to decide the right team size.

So if you look at figure 7b, the sweet spot seems to be a team size of 6 to 9 people (where the median revenue per developer per month is $550 to $820. In contrast, the median revenue per developer per month for 10 to 19 person teams is $320 - $620).

If you can hire 19 people, you should probably split them to run two projects of 6-9 people each. :-]

If you consider what a capable developer can bring in just in salary in a month you realize what a ridiculous chicken-scratch game this is. Making indie apps may be fun but it's a dumb way to try to earn money.

Well count me in for somewhere between #3 and #9 then :-P

Yeah, one is truly a lonely number especially when you consider there needs to be game design, art, sound, music AND code.

Luckily, we've found that if you start, Fate will lend you a hand and deliver some needed help.

As a single indie dev, I couldn't agree more. It can be a long road! Games (as opposed to say, utilities) are challenging because of the additional art/sound/creative requirements, IMO. And I think one important reason for why > 1 is better is that two founders can push each other along when times are uncertain (and they often are!)

That said, keeping momentum, coding away, and most of all greatly enjoying the process of creating something will really help you.

Any idea where a lone programmer can go to find other people to work with on a project?

Game jams and conferences are good places. Ludum Dare is an online game jam/challenge while 360iDev has a great in-person game jam.

Take-home lesson:

To be successful,

    (1) Practice.
    (2) Network.

And, if you look at the games that are really doing well in the store, write gimmicky, addictive games and make a fortune selling virtual coins/tokens/badges/clothes to people psychologically locked in to your scheme.

Freemium is king in the app store now.

I think is better to try to go for quality rather than gimmicks. In the long run it will succeed more often than not. Anecdotal Example: Apple

Going for gimmicks is like going for get rich quick schemes.

I have to agree with you. Our company briefly contemplated freemium, but have opted against it. It's still early in the freemium era and I already see a backlash in the reviews and within myself as I play games.

So yeah, while it is currently king, I don't think it's one whose rule will last forever. And if you've committed and positioned yourself to survive on freemium alone, you'll find yourself in a world of hurt.

I'd like to agree with you but if you look at the top ten games right now they're all freemium gimmicks. Maybe this won't last but that's clearly where the money is right now.

Apple started out as a get rich quick scheme, not a "lets change the world" scheme.

I don't know if that is true but it is irrelevant since they became successful NOT by using gimmicks or schemes but focusing on quality, which is the point I was trying to make.

(3) Be lucky

To me, this just shows that the iPhone app is totally hit based

The medium lifetime revenue is right beside the 90th percentile, which means those top 10% earn the vast majority of the revenue

It's not just games. I'm pretty sure nearly all markets work like this, and it makes sense. The good apps sell, the bad apps do not.

Even in my little niche, there are dozens of hiking apps and just a few make all the money.

I also think the word "hit" is misleading. The people making the money are often the people who released an unsuccessful app, then kept trying, and eventually it was a hit. The people who don't make any money mostly give up before they succeed.

It took me years to make a profitable software company, and I think people expecting to get rich off their first iPhone game just have silly expectations.

This has been my experience too. I have one fairly successful app, with good reviews and a long stint on the featured page in its category. It's still not even close to paying for the time it took to develop it. I would have been much better off financially if I'd spent that time consulting.

Writing apps is appealing because it's so much easier than bootstrapping a software business from scratch outside the store but I'm not convinced it's a good bet for the average developer.

Am I reading that right? 100k lifetime value seems to be near the top end of what you can expect from one app. A reasonable salary at a normal job for a senior-level developer is near or a little better than that. If you want to succeed better than you could by working for someone it seems like you either need to be completely serious about releasing new games every 3-6 months(and release hits constantly), or, maybe, not write games (do business apps fare better?)

Has anyone tried the minecraft approach on the app store?

That's what I'm saying. If you make half of what you'd make in salary at a full-time job you're doing much, much better than most indie iOS devs. Hacking on apps may be fun but it's not a smart way to make money.

Most people are barely recouping their investment in hardware and the iOS developer fee. It's like one of those mail-in schemes in the back of old comic books.

This assumes you only care about money and don't care about creative control and the satisfaction of running your own business. For a lot of indie developers making equal to or slightly less than they would as a salaried developer is doing well, even if you don't have a massive hit that makes $1M+.

I admit that's the way I phrased it, but I meant to say "Why iOS when you have other avenues if you want to work on your own thing?"

In other words, iOS seems to be a very bad choice for someone who wants to make money, when you could do a, say, SAAS web app, or a traditional app. Sure, you probably won't START making the same money as a traditional job with those, but the cap is much higher.

I'm making half of what I did when working as a "hired gun".

I consider this wildly successful - I get to work on my games (which I would have done for free anyway) and earn enough to pay the bills.

I'd be interested to see the distribution of revenue from sales vs ads.