The mobile games industry is growing, and independent developers are having more and more problems with it. Big companies with tight wallets come to the market. Chris Gray from TapStar told how to compete with them.
According to our colleague from Pocket Gamer Matthew Diener, Gray compared the confrontation between large and small companies to one of the biblical plots, namely, the story of the conflict between David and Goliath.
It boils down to something like the following. One day the Philistines went to war against the Israelites. The most powerful among them was Goliath, who recklessly declared that if any of the Palestinian people defeated him, the Philistines would become slaves. But none of the Israeli troops dared to fight Goliath, dressed in copper armor, armed with a huge spear and shield.
At that time, a young man David came to the camp of the Palestinian army, who brought bread to his older brothers. He saw Goliath mocking his people, took five heavy boulders and stood up against an experienced war. He defeated him with a well-aimed blow from a sling (you can read more about this here).
In approximately the same way, Gray believes, independent developers should act. In the sense that they don’t need a big spear and expensive uniforms to win. The main thing is an aptly released stone.
What kind of cobblestones can indie use?
- Small production costs lead to greater benefits from the project. In addition, a small budget means less time to find it (as a rule, it is more difficult to find a lot of money).
- Small teams are not faced with the task of making some hits that satisfy the tastes of the impersonal majority. So they can make the games they want. This is a direct road to innovation.
- Social networks and PR are available to any developer. If the game is of high quality and it is intelligently promoted on Facebook and Twitter, the project will be noticed.
- A short production cycle (let’s not think about Fez!). The team is small, active, can quickly make a project, see if it has gone or not, and move on. There are also less financial risks here. Nobody invested millions. You can give up if you fail and start with a clean slate.
- Now there are not only free development tools, but also for analytics. A small team can use many of them for free.