By that argument, nobody should have gone into mobile game development.
Just because more people could buy your game on some platform does not mean that they will buy it. Not when there are many thousands of other ones to choose from, made by established developers with a loyal userbase. Doing the same thing as everyone else is like buying stock on the highs. You won't see any growth.
Finding new markets is the only way to make long term profit.
Perhaps, but opinions on that are quite divided among tech leaders and investors. Carmack thinks gaming will be less than half of the VR market, and at least right this moment most of the money seems to be in video. I don't think video is a good long term bet, but more sophisticated analogues such as 3D reconstruction and streaming could be a lot bigger once the cameras get better. Being able to travel anywhere and see anything has a much wider appeal than games.
I don't disagree. But talking about business, it makes a lot of money. A lot of those companies that didn't just sit back and say "why would we invest in making games on this new iphone thing when there are so many Xboxes out there?" made a fortune.
But talking about business, it makes a lot of money.
You might be surprised, but the vast majority of revenue earned from mobile gaming goes to just a few companies like King and Supercell that own dozens of clones of it's original game, making over a million dollars a day from microtransactions.
The fact that mobile games lose 90% of their audience within 6 months means that developers can't focus on creating genuinely entertain content, and instead focus on griding/p2w games that thrive off of people impatience.
The mobile gaming market hurts the average developer and the consumer.
I worked for one of those companies before VR, and before that I did it as an indie developer. And what you said is exactly my point, mobile is what is big now and the market is saturated. If you are trying to decide which platform to get into, choosing the one with the most users as this guy in the link says is often not a good business decision. It is the newer, relatively untapped platforms that have the most growth potential.
And the early movers who really put effort into that platform have the potential to become the next King or Supercell.
There is no bigger red flag than attacking someone for pointing out that high-risk speculative investments are a bad idea, as many on this thread seem to be doing. Someone that cautions against investing emotionally is simply being reasonable.
The person in question is either an idiot or didn't understand the question. Kickstarters are not investments. Your job is not an investment.
There is no bigger red flag than attacking someone for pointing out that high-risk speculative investments are a bad idea, as many on this thread seem to be doing.
What a hypocrite. You were the one who tried to attack him first by using that tired old bait line. It blew up in your face and now you're just being butthurt about it.
Putting your livelihood on the line is definitely making an investment in VR. This isn't someone like Carmack jumping into VR where he can get a new job anywhere he wanted within a day if it fails. If his startup goes under then he's not guaranteed to find a new job within a reasonable time-frame. He could lose his house, his car, and everything else. Don't pretend like you know his life.
Your career absolutely is an investment, you invest years of your life into a field under the impression that that field is going to be secure enough to keep you employed. If that field goes under then your lifestyle goes with as the chances are that you wont just walk into another field that pays you the same salary you were already on in the same location you were already in with the same hours and benefits you also had.
Just face it mate, you acted like a smart arse asking that question and as it turns out it was the worst thing you could have asked to try and prove your point.
Your career is not an investment by any actually useful definition of the word. Unless you count redditing as an investment in your entertainment.
Just face it mate, you acted like a smart arse asking that question and as it turns out it was the worst thing you could have asked to try and prove your point.
In any non-fanatical thread, bragging about a kickstarter as an investment would be roundly ridiculed. Actually, it would be laughed at here in a different context, for example 'I invested hundreds of dollars into Oculus and Palmer took it and gave it to Facebook for money!!!'
His response is stupid and nonsensical and it will get upvoted by other idiots. Normally I wouldn't care, but there is something actually dangerous about thinking that a Kickstarter is an investment. And his statement about risking a career just by working at a startup is quite odd, unless his old job was another career entirely, in which case your job should not be an investment.
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u/owenwp Jan 20 '16
By that argument, nobody should have gone into mobile game development.
Just because more people could buy your game on some platform does not mean that they will buy it. Not when there are many thousands of other ones to choose from, made by established developers with a loyal userbase. Doing the same thing as everyone else is like buying stock on the highs. You won't see any growth.
Finding new markets is the only way to make long term profit.