Tag: mobile game development

Mobile game development has turned out to be a lucrative revenue source for many years now. A great amount of planning and a stroke of luck could bring success to your doorsteps. Casual game is something that many young developers and small scale mobile game development companies find profitable to invest. Find out what gets you to success in casual mobile game development from this article.

What is a casual game?

Casual games are those games, which can be played without advanced gaming knowledge, skills or commitment towards gaming. It has got a wide audience range including women, children, and even elders, since the effort that needs to be put into learning to play them is much smaller than hardcore games. One of the most successful casual games recently had been the most celebrated, Angry Birds.

Read also: First Steps to Successful Mobile App Development – Define a Purpose and Validate Your Idea

What makes a casual game different from other hardcore games?

Talking about casual games, the first thing that draws attention is its simple rules and mechanics. Literally, anybody can play them. There is also the fact that on an average, only a lesser amount of time is being spent playing them. Casual games require inferior skill sets to master the game, as compared to hardcore games which can be mastered only by elite gamers.

Casual games can be played in short bursts and in small intervals. In the producer’s point of view, they typically involve lower production and distribution costs.

Here are some tips for successful casual mobile game development.

1. Offer simple plot: Casual games are known for its simplicity. Twisted plots will tamper with the overall unsophisticated nature of casual games. Complicated story lines are more characteristic of hardcore games.

2. Offer simple game play: The controls incorporated in casual games should also be simple. Use one touch/ single keystroke controls to execute actions such as throw, jump, shoot etc. Usually simple to understand, interesting, and easy to play games can attract a majority of targeted audience.

3. Applaud all victories: Casual games should not fail to applaud even the small victories. Since the plot and game play of casual games are simple, there will not be much chance to honour greater achievements. Players usually get bored of a game, if there is not enough encouragement or successive accomplishment that will keep them interested. The developers should carefully plan the plot to include all possible challenges that can give recognition for triumph.

4. Constant entertainment: Games should always showcase the fun element. Including the right amount of music, instructions, praise, shouts, etc. at the right place is very important to every game’s success.

5. Include a lot of levels: An easy way to make a simple game challenging is by increasing the number of levels included. Having a lot of levels to conquer and victories to celebrate, can build the player’s interest in the game.

6. Don’t forget to consider the hardcore gamers too: Developing casual games shouldn’t give you the idea that you should totally neglect the hardcore gamers. Casual games, by definition itself accounts to those games that are pleasing to all audience groups, irrespective of their talent level and personal interest. Therefore casual games should include greater challenges, focusing serious players.

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7. The game physics should be fun: Casual games should incorporate attractive and fun physics into the game. Since these games lack any serious or sometimes even meaningful plot, they shouldn’t abandon promising features that will raise the player’s interest level.

8. Cuteness attract: Just like cute bunnies please the most of us, cute game characters also have the power to build an emotional attachment with the players. People can easily sympathize with their motives and will wish if they were actually real.

9. Patience, the right strategy: Like in every other field, patience is something that you might need to practice a lot in order to savour victory. All successful ventures have a history to tell of failures and waiting calmly and patiently, before getting there.

These 9 tips can be golden advices while you travel your path to success in casual mobile game development.

Sony takes one more step in the gaming world with its new mobile game development studio, ForwardWorks. The new division was launched on April 1st, and is set in Tokyo, Japan. It will target the Asian markets initially.

Sony says that “ForwardWorks” will leverage the intellectual property of the numerous PlayStation® dedicated software titles and its gaming characters as well as the knowledge and know-how of gaming development expertise which was acquired over the years with PlayStation® business to provide gaming application optimized for smart devices including smartphones* to users in Japan and Asia.”

Similar efforts were taken by the company, back in 2011, when it came up with cross-compatible games developed under the PlayStation Mobile initiative. But these games were only meant to be played on the Playstation Suite and selected Android devices. Unfortunately, the company had to halt the venture last year, due to failure in appeasing its audience.

Sony appears to be following the footsteps of its rival Nintendo. Nintendo’s mobile-game app Militomo had been launched last month, reaching millions of downloads in just three days.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. has also re-branded itself by merging its PlayStation business from around the globe, under the banner Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.

“SIE will vigorously maximize the corporate value and create new business opportunities through the establishment of ForwardWorks”, the company announced.

Indie mobile game development can be a serious revenue source or a side hobby for many. Regardless of why we do it, we all love the taste of triumph in what we do. Here are some simple yet valuable tips that you could keep in mind when you set out to try your luck with mobile game development.

Search! Search! Search!

Before Google came, retrieving information was a lot more difficult task. You had to spend hours in libraries and skim through dozens of books to arrive at some specific information that you had been trying to find out.

Well, times have changed now. It’s a good thing that the internet came into our lives. There is lot of free information available online. From baking a cake to building a robot, no matter what you are looking for, you’ll find one or another article that deals with the subject.

A developer practising indie mobile game development, should tap the resources that one has easy access to and benefit from it. A good research is the key to problem solving most of the times. Best advice – Explore, learn, share your views and get help from communities.

Read also: 9 Mistakes Beginner Indie Mobile Game Developers Should Avoid

Only Hardwork Pays, in Mobile Game Development Atleast

Success doesn’t come overnight. And there is also no shortcut for it. Ideas are diverse, situations are diverse, and individual abilities are diverse. As a matter of fact, there is no universal formula to be victorious.

All successful devs and startups have gone through ups and downs and have faced many obstacles before making it there. Times of difficulties are common when you try to get established in every scenario. Things could go intractable and overly messed up. But that’s how you learn to solve them and take steps to prevent them. Every failure adds to your experience and knowledge.

“The way anything is developed is through practice practice practice and more practice.” – Joyce Meyer

It is worth noticing that as a general rule, we learn everything by practice. And with much practice and persistence there comes perfection. A good indie game developer should keep playing until he/she gets it right.

Beware of the Deceptions

Sadly, we all should admit that we live in a corrupt world. There are people who are trying to take advantage of you out there. Thousands of devs are being deceived every year around the globe. Being too honest to everyone whom you meet in the first place may put you and your work in great danger.

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Always be careful when dealing with people whose whereabouts are unknown to you. Be aware of the common tactics and schemes used by crooks to trick people. Look out for any fraudulent behaviour or unusual declarations made by the other party. Do a thorough research on the identity of a stranger before you give out any critical information about your project to them.

Socialize

In businesses, interaction is very important for growth. In today’s rapidly changing development environment, social skills matter more than anything. It helps you to keep updated about what’s new and trendy in the industry. Following people with similar interest is a great way to discuss ideas, share views, stay up-to-date, and get support.

Indie game devs with smaller budgets could improve their game’s visibility by actively participating in gaming events and festivals. They can meet potential customers, publishers, other professionals and even get noticed by the media this way. Another major advantage of attending a public gathering is that you get a chance to playtest your game and collect feedback for improvement.

What experience does to your career is amazing. But it doesn’t come without its challenges. You fail more times than you succeed. Yet, every failure is your stepping stone to success.

Nevertheless, it will save you a good amount of time and money, if you stick by these golden advice for beginning with mobile game development as a career. Otherwise, you might learn it the hard way.

1. Don’t be Biased

We are easily motivated by success stories. It will make you optimistic. The more you hear about them, the more you want to get out there and achieve it yourself. Well, this temptation is at the same time good and bad for you.

We already saw what’s good in it. The bad thing is that you are blinded from perceiving the reality. You wouldn’t stop to analyze the failure stories or associated risks. Ultimately, things might turn out very bad for you.

For a beginner in mobile game development, the first few years are very important. It is the time to take advice, learn from own and other’s experiences, and reflect on oneself and one’s work. But most importantly, it is the time to practice patience.

2. Avoid Too Much Expectation in the Beginning

The beginners in mobile game development often only have the few basic skills that is needed for game development, combined with lack of any significant experience. They start their career with high hopes and great expectations.

Conversely, what actually happens is that soon after they start, they get defeated too easily and too frequently. This is because the awareness they have regarding the effort that is to be put behind the actual process is too little. Often, these successive failures will lead to disappointment and drain confidence.

It’s always better to start on smaller projects or concentrate on a certain division of a large project in the beginning. This way, it is easy for a beginner to tackle the problems that they come to face and progress forward.

3. Don’t Make a Simple Idea into a Complex One

The subheading speaks for itself. Never try to add inappropriate and useless content to your game. For example, do not complicate a kid’s game by adding too many buttons or violence and horror elements suitable only for the adults. The logic behind including the different components of your game should be to improve the user experience in the end.

4. Don’t Keep Prototyping Outside of Your Big List

Prototyping helps to save your valuable development time. Before starting anything, you have a complete working model on your hand.

It is a phase is where you can try out all your wild and creative ideas from your imagination and see if they fit into your game like a jigsaw puzzle. You can invite others to play your game and have their say. This feedback will be a useful resource while making improvements to your game.

5. Document Everything

Getting agreed upon an idea finally is a fairly complex task- you spend hours discussing, researching, experimenting and just in plain thought. It is not easy to remember everything that you’ve come across.

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Sometimes, even losing a single solution may disrupt your entire work. Also there is the risk of losing important information while the idea gets transferred from one person to another. This is where the importance of a proper documentation lie.

6. Don’t Skip Planning

Good planning is unavoidable to maintain the pace of your project’s progression. Planning allows you to allot specific time for all the things that needs to be done. You can focus on writing codes or fixing bugs at the right time.

Absence of a plan can get things messy and eventually you’ll end up taking too much time and spending too much budget on your project.

7. Market Early

Marketing should not be set aside for the last month of the release. It is never too early to start getting some good fans for your game. In fact, you can begin with basic marketing steps even before you actually develop any codes. Take the word out as early as possible, and you’ll save some bucks here.

8. Generate an Early Feedback

Most developers are of the habit of seriously thinking about play testing their game only by the end of their project. This is a very bad idea.

Show your game to people outside of your team and friends circle from the beginning itself. As soon as you build the prototype, it’s time for your game to get some attention and feedback from a large audience. You may even attend events and festivals and show your game to folks there. People can find out mistakes in your game that you can’t find for yourself. And the end result – scope for improvement and success.

9. Follow People with Similar Interests

As always, networking is an important part of the game. After all, you need your connections to get to know what’s happening in the industry. They help to know what’s trending and new, different views, ideas, and options and thereby benefits mutual growth.