Your comments please

OZApps

It gets me worked up on a couple of things specially related to development,

These get we worked up, not because they relate to me but for the simple reason that one of these gets away with it and starts a precedence with others. The industry is growing but also getting muckier due to to these things

1. Clients that have never developed before but are armchair experts
2. The same suggesting how to resolve an issue
3. The same estimating times and boasting that they can do it faster than a developer
4. The entire knowledge they are basing their boast on is some copy/paste snippet on a web site or a quick Udemy tutorial

1. Devs that work for next to nothing - They spoil the marketplace rates (to start with)
2. Devs that blotch jobs, thereby scaring client away from custom solutions
3. Devs that fleece a client to the extent that the client would never spend on development again
4. Devs that are like the client above, read a udemy tutorial and jump onto large projects
5. Devs that do not take the time to learn principles of anything (Did you see he programs that were made in the VB boom, horrendous colours and sizes of the buttons and let's not talk about placement)

It does not affect me directly, but when you read articles where there are visible versions of the stretched truths, like one *expert* that has made over 200 apps in less than 18 months after having learned how to re-skin an app on Udemy. Best part of it is that several of their aps have reached #1 positions on the charts.

Calculations:
200 apps / 18 months = 11.111111 apps per month / 4 weeks = 2.7775 apps per week or 1 app every 2 days.
What sort of app and what quality would you expect out of this?

The person advertises themselves as an expert authority on Apps and is a speaker (how successful, no idea. Had not heard till I got a link to their website, cannot recollect how and in what context)

Most of you must have also gotten spam mails or marketing mails from companies that would like to "work with you" regarding "why your app is not doing so good" or companies that "can develop apps for you". The ones that tell me that they can have seen my app on the app store and would like to work with me and offer their skills to develop further apps, makes me think

1. Are they commenting on the quality of my apps - FAIL, I would not work with someone that insults me
2. Are they assuming that I subcontracted this app - FAIL, they are again insulting me assuming that I can't develop
3. Do they think I am unhappy with my current developer - That is what devs above have achieved, unhappy clients

Plus when I have a look at their portfolio on what have they done... oh boy, this is the interesting part, most have wild portfolios, with the best hand picked examples and you know instantly that it is *NOT* their work. In fact one dev had written an article a while ago when he got such a mail and one of the apps they claimed as their work was in fact his app. Imagine his surprise.

Lastly, the unethical behaviour of some devs spoils it for all
1. Sample source code is provided for people to study and learn from, not recompile and post on the app store
This has happened so many times that it is not funny.
2. Bot networks to promote an app and drive fake downloads to get apps into the charts visibility
3. Fake reviews from developers, family and friends and more recently Bot Networks (again)

So, you tell me where has that satisfaction of development, the joy of achievement gone? It has all gotten down to commercial gain thereby spoiling it for all, like the bankers did and then caused the GFC.

Harrison

The idea of bots promoting a app drives me insane! If the app is good, it will rise to the top... or that's what the app store devs thought would happen. But no, we are forcefed trashy apps...
also, people in the PC gaming community think call of duty is getting repetitive (from what i have heard) but they have obviously never browsed the app store. It is infested with trashy duplicates of Farmville and infinite runners- of all the apps to clone, they pick FarmVille?!! And 90% of apps now have IAP's and a wait to play system implemented ~X( They even get 5 star reviews!
Then again... what would happen if somebody actually released a decent app and managed advertising well...

absinthe

I think the casual game field is just going through a natural process of democratization. As the process becomes more easier to complete and the barriers to being published are lowered, a lot more crap is mixed in with the gems. Eventually channels develop to winnow the grain from the chaff and the consumer becomes more savvy. And the mindset develops for the consumer that price equals expectations -- I've read many reviews that say something like, "this game was great for a free game" or "if I had paid more than a dollar I'd be mad about the quality".

I suspect the spammers aren't targeting you, they're casting as wide a net as possible to get poor Jim, who wants to make a better game than his crappy Pong clone on the Play store and knows his open world MMO idea would totally be a hit if he could just get someone to help him build it. When it becomes easier to get your foot in the door, people who are inexperienced (or sometimes simply untalented or just unrealistic) become desperate for a quick fix, "guaranteed for the low low price of whatever we can milk out of you".

When I see stuff like Flappy Birds at the top of the charts, I have to remind myself that here are always outliers who win the lottery for baffling reasons. It's also not a zero sum game -- there's always room for one more fun game on my iPad!

I firmly believe quality and integrity will succeed. I've seen it happen in other fields, it happens in this one!

But I totally get where you're coming from. I looked up a genre I haven't played in years the other day and someone had made a super easy engine for it in the meantime. The archive is FLOODED with stupid, careless demos now, that I'll have to wade through if I want to find something worth trying. I'm definitely of mixed feelings -- love the idea that someone with good writing skills but lacking in programming could create something wonderful, hate that some people feel like "dumb" and "poorly executed" is the same as "humorous".

john26

I hear you! I think the app store is a great place if you can get into the top 100. There's money to be made which you can reinvest in making quality product. From the buyers point of view the top 100 games (the only part of the store most users ever see) are pretty good and very cheap.

But if you're an Indie dev starting from scratch its very hard to get into the big league. You'll have the humiliation of rubbing shoulders with "hello world" apps, ripoffs, apps that don't work, apps with similar names to famous apps etc. To me it looks more and more important to get a publisher... In a way games have gone full circle back to how they were in the 80s and 90s where publishers acted as gatekeepers and quality control. Now anyone can self publish but it's really only theoretical until one of the new gatekeepers (review websites, bloggers, Youtubers, Apple and Google) decide to feature your app. Getting them to do so requires contacts which is what a professional publisher can provide.