Let's make a game.

I have nearly twice the number of Endorsements for Game Development than I do Web Design.  Games, are my passion and anybody who has met me knows this.

I've personally created and released content for a range of games and engines.

Barring some exceptions.

Click here to check out one of my Android games right now.

The goal is fun, profitable software

I've been designing a game for the past month that mixes simulation, rpg and action together for a robust mobile game intended for players of a broad demographic.

The game design puts the horse in the cart and rolls it down a hill.

In other words, it puts the fun ahead of the commerce.  Time investment means monetizing, so a game must be fun before it can be anything.
Players will always pay if they feel it's worth it.

It's simple math.  More time, equals more dollars.

Statistically Speaking

The red line is profit.

So let's talk numbers.
Conversion is the number of users who spend money.

The average mobile app can see as much as 2% conversion.
The average mobile game can see as much as 10% conversion.

Now to put this in perspective:  This includes the scads of other games with in-app scam purchases (ain't nobody monetizing there).

According to Rovio's CEO, Angry Birds has an average 40% conversion rate!

Conversions spend about an average $3 per month.

There are stats per country, for repeat purchases and this may include monthly memberships which people enact via in-app purchases.

Marketing to Release

You release your app amidst a storm of paid reviews and PPC ads.

You get 50,000 users inside of a month, sound fair?
Let's take that 50,000 through the conversion rates.

10% of 50,000 is 5,000 at $3 per is $15,000 average per month.

If the game is good and the economy is properly designed, you can expect much higher results, but for the basics like unlocking new content, and refreshment gems, that's not too shabby.

Cost per Player/Acquisition

Remember I stated Pay per Click up above?  Now we're talking about cost per player.  How much does it cost to attract a player?  Depends on the marketings avenues you take.

If you're paying out $5k in PPC at $0.05 per click and you sign up 500 people out of 100,000 clicks, you're paying $10 per player at a 0.5% sign up rate.
Your sign up rate can be increased by offering rewards for those who click through or share your game which ultimately costs you nothing.

Through any marketing route you will encounter variables.  Eg:  Paying for reviews?  What is the site traffic like?  Is the review any good?

Cost to Release

"--it's so (relatively) cheap to develop and release the first version of a game these days."
~ Rafael Corrales

This is ridiculously true.  The ROI aside, the development and marketing costs to release a successful game are sit around $100k for a grade A title through a western studio like Digital Forge.  Conversely, cheap thrills like Flappy Bird would cost $10k; I don't think I need to remind anyone that Flappy Bird affected the GDP of a third world country with in-app ads.

Addiction incarnate.

Timelines

Developing a title means setting milestones for features and budgeting solutions to inherent situations that will crop up (planning ahead).

The timeline for each game is different for the list of features and functions designed.

zSmiter consumed three weeks of crunch (8 - 16 hours per day) to release.  It is a frenetic single player tapathon with a slap dash balance of elements, limited content and programmer art.

A game that included multiplayer or required careful balancing of statistics across dozens of creatures would take longer to hammer out.

It's important to remember that a robust experience does not mean endless reams of content.  Also, content in the mobile world can be as low tech retro art, or vector art so the size of your game will be tiny compared to say a 3D game.

A 3D game will take longer to generate for extra amounts of code, will limit your market with rendering limitations across devices, and require more storage, perhaps even a tertiary download mechanism built into the game to download content after the user has downloaded the game from the market (annoying).

Art wise, it's a toss up.  If the 3D is simple, then you're saving time on creating multiple sprites for an element.  If it's high resolution art you're going for, texturing alone will consume any time saved and then some.

I would round out that a well engineered and marketed game should take between 3 (simple) to 9 (robust) months to release.  The more robust the experience, the longer it will take and the greater the return.

Saturation and Strategy

Marketing is important to get above the competition but what sorts of strategies would be effective?  With so many established IP's, it can be hard to snag a piece of the pie.

Niche markets are a terrific start.  A piece of pop culture, for example, is just such a niche.  If you're manufacturing Transformers and Lego games like my buddy Remi, you've got an established market you're seeking.  It helps when you're good at what you do too, and he's one of the best.

Paid reviews are okay but the best sites are doling out a lot of reviews each day so really, you're going to be one of the herd there as well.  Still, a paid and quotable review on a third party site stating "This game rocks!  5 stars!" next to the download link is going to reap a good return if the game is properly developed.

Developing for Advertising

What if you're not interested in developing an app for profit right off the bat.

What if you're an oil exec looking to make waves with folks.  Why not develop an oil drilling game?  Something simple, but fun that features your name as the good guy.  You could do something robust, where players build a drilling rig, hire and fire crew, manage parts and fleet that delivers the oil; then you build an economy into it, where players can buy and sell vehicles for the fleet, trade parts back and forth and all you sell is a currency used to buy these parts, vehicles, etc.

Whoops, you made a profit.

How to get started?

It's easier than you think.  Establish communications, discuss the plan and intent behind the software, then put it on paper.  Once the budget and milestones are established, hit the whistle and start the train rolling.  Next stop, success!

Dooley P. is a passion cannon constantly targeting new goals.  He has developed multiple applications and websites across multiple platforms in multiple languages.  He is an accomplished games developer, graphic designer and CG visualizations artist.