It's entirely possible to succeed using only honest, community focused methods. But yer competing with a huge pack of other guys who don't use those methods, and have a significant advantage because of it. This isn't hugs and puppies. This is business.

But the advice you're giving here is roughly equivalent to telling a young cyclist in their first pro race, "hey, listen buddy. If you want to succeed, you've got to dope. Everybody's doing it. There's no other way."

And yet, if he wanted to ride in the Tour De France, I think we all know he'd lose unless he did a blood transfusion every single night....

Actually, wait. No I take that back, I do not agree. A starting cyclist will compete in local, small time races. There's only one App Store, and it's Pro's take all. These guys may be just beginning, but they're already swimming with sharks.

And if that's not enough mixed metaphors, I'll edit again!

It's not optimal, but it's the status quo that tens of thousands of developers face: you can't win if you don't employ dubious means.

Okay, that made me laugh. Thanks for adding some humor into this otherwise rather downer discussion!

I used to race (although not on very high level), I know the environment and I would bet my balls that last few Tours have NOT been clean.

My opinion is this: cycling may be a bit cleaner in a sense that maybe doping is not as widespread as it used to be and maybe the effect of doping is more limited because they need to be more careful. But I don't believe cycling is clean now. There are new drugs that are undetectable and mentality has not changed. I believe this is more realistic: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/italian-judge-says-doping-is...

And about SKY team - I have no proof and it's nothing more than just my guess but I don't believe they are clean either. Remember last TdF? They totally ruled, they controlled the whole race. My cycling intuition tells me this is not natural. They certainly compete against some (I would say many) riders who are not clean (some of them even got caught, like Frank Schleck) and they were not even competing on the same level - they were superior. I don't believe it is possible without doping. The fact that they claim otherwise on every occasion means nothing to me - I have seen this too many times.

My guess - and I realize it's nothing more than guess - is that if in 2030 they use their new methods to test today's samples they will find out that there is some substance that is undetectable today.

I would love to be proven wrong on this - I love cycling.

Read more of the in-depth articles about Sky. Their training methods are hugely different, and came from the GB track cycling programme which has taken the world championships and Olympics by storm over the past decade. They're open about what it is, and unlike with others, it's only the performance which makes anyone wonder. Look at the figures, and remember, they're still 10% slower than Armstrong! What they are using is demonstrable physiological science and feedback: a manifestation of the benefits of the Quantified Self approach!

We're almost done with our slot machine game for iOS (lame, I know), but we only have 2 people, and we definitely don't need to be in the top 25 to make some real money (that can fund new, "real game" projects).

http://thegamebakers.com/money-and-the-app-store-a-few-figur...

http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/08/selling-an-iphone-game-the...

Or really, just use this link:

http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-game-revenue-...

Games are top-heavy, but there is an overlooked middle ground of devs who have a decent passive income...

90% of the games that are currently on my iPhone were a) made by dev teams with 1-3 people, b) provide a unique and polished experience, and c) became known mainly based on community outreach. None of them are currently in the top rankings, but as far as I can tell they make enough money for the teams to get by. People keep talking about "hidden gems" on the App Store that failed to succeed despite having an excellent product, but so far, the only ones I've seen were either outright clones, failed to do any outreach at all, or had a poor business model. (Freemium with very little incentive to upgrade, for instance.)

Sure, if you're a hundred-person company, you might need to resort to shady means to be profitable. But I don't think that's at all necessary to make money on the App Store.

Asymmetry is a real problem in the App store.

This equation also works, sadly, when you replace "uniqueness/novelty factor" with "boobs." Look at the top apps and see that this is true.

Simogo has made a couple of very unique and artful games, including last year's Mobile Game IGF winner Beat Sneak Bandit. It's notable that their games are premium priced ($3), but still have hundreds of reviews.

Mika Mobile is a husband & wife team with a number of fantastic brawlers under their belts, including Battleheart and Zombieville USA 2.

Tiger Style is (in their own words) a "distributed collective of independent game developers" that have most recently developed the award-winning exploration/space-gardening game Waking Mars.

Jeff Minter releases a new iOS game what seems like every other week. (Though he once characterized it as "run[ning] frantically on the iOS treadmill".)

Zach Gage has made a number of small, fairly popular games, including SpellTower and Bit Pilot. ("Net Gross for me is probably around ~110k for 3 years of work. but the profits would probably be quite a bit lower than that")

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Notable recent failures include Punch Quest (F2P model didn't yield any income, so they switched to paid) and Gasketball (again, the F2P model they were using was too permissive).

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So, not a perfect ecosystem, but not an abysmal wasteland either. Enough for the kooky hobbyists to get by as long as their products are top-notch and their business model makes sense. (At least that's how I see it.)

Could you explain this logic?

(And that's true regardless of whether it's effective -- it clearly is, though I think mostly in the short term).

Edit: Since I'm being fairly negative here, I want to add that VonGuard's comments on gameplay and adding unique elements seem well-informed and well-intentioned.

My comments on the app store are strictly from the cynical perspective of seeing what works. It has to be said. If you go in not knowing the table stakes, yer at a disadvantage. This is just like search engine optimization: fluid, ever changing, highly competitive, extremely scummy, but EVERYONE does it.

The alternative from the perspective of say, EA or a GluMobile, is to play completely by the rules, but produce 500 games per year. As a smalltime developer, cheating is immeasurably helpful when competing with the giants that can launch 2 new games every week.

I can't help but feel your desire for me not to talk about it this loud amounts to you plugging your ears and saying "LALALALALALA NOT LISTENING!" This stuff happens every day. Ignoring it means losing to it.

Your advice sounds cynical because it is. People don't want to cheat to win - and you're telling them that they have to. Well, who are you to say that? Why should people listen to you? You may be an IGF judge, but that doesn't mean you've ever sold a game (well scratch that, I actually don't know the qualifications required to become an IGF judge, but you catch my drift).

I say this not to be critical of you personally - but if you're saying 'you need to cheat', and then brandishing your status as a judge in a relevant body, then people are going to listen to you. If you're wrong, you've given people bad advice - and this means that you should lose credibility. If you're right, then you'll gain credibility. Simply 'opting out' of the credibility problem makes it very easy for supposedly credible people to give bad advice - which doesn't help anyone in the long run - and in fact can damage a lot of people's businesses and livelihoods.

It's advice, you can take it or leave it.

You're more than welcome to be the guy/team who says, "we're going to do this the right way!". But so do a lot of other indie gaming teams, and they go under. I lived in the social gaming space for a while (Facebook). The biggest discouragement is that the quality of games made little difference to getting noticed and making money. I am no longer in the space.

You can do it the "honorable" way, and that's great, and may work. If you want to make a business of the business, you have to get your hands dirty. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Seriously? You don't understand why not?

I'm assuming this is against the TOS of pretty much any app store and could get whatever apps he is associated with pulled.

It's very simple, which I suppose is way the parent asked the question: I don't want to attach my name to anything I do on the internet, really.

Also you may want to look up "rhetorical question" when you have a spare moment.

But you are right when you say that this discussion is way off topic, so I'll probably leave it at this. Nice seeing ya.