It seems like if what you’re showing is what you understand they find appealing and fun, then surely that’s what should be in the game. You give them that.
But instead, you give them something else that is unrelated to what they’ve seen on the ad? A gem matching candy crush clone they’ve seen a thousand times?
How is that model working? How is that holding up as a marketing technique???
this makes so much sense, how do you know all this?
I’m a software dev and have worked with some of these companies. It’s kind of sad because I liked the idea of mobile games and working with them was a bit like seeing the devil behind the curtains. I dreamt of making cool little games based on fun and unique ideas and quickly learned it’s all a huge well oiled machine chugging through market data to find the most effective money extracting methods they can come up with.
For every bit you think these companies are grimey money chasers, I promise you it’s at least 5 times worse.
ooph, I just started trying to make a mobile game in Jan 😬
Make it a good one. Then tell me about it, because I know I’ll never find it on the play store.
I hate to be discouraging. I wanted to do the same up until these interactions. Depending on what is a livable wage for you, or if you’re doing it on the side, it could still be possible. But I’m in high cost of living areas in the US and it seems totally unfathomable to me. I watched companies spend literal millions of dollars on just advertising to gauge interest in games they then shut down because they couldn’t make the game profitable enough to pay for the ads and their bills etc.
There are definitely success stories, and you can definitely get games released and get players. But I just want to point out that many of the games are simple and just have absolutely astronomical amounts of money behind them. Mobile is fucking crazy and I feel like it’s much harder for smaller devs to get their name out through typical advertising channels.
IMO, which is mostly just guessing based off what I’ve seen, I’d think your time is better spent finding small communities that may be interested in your game and posting about them, as opposed to buying ads etc. Indie dev subreddits and other gaming communities have propped up successful games before, and it may cost you more time and effort, but it just looks extremely hard to compete on the mobile ads playing fields against these huge companies these days.
I’ve been mostly making games for fun and am fairly risk adverse so am planning on sticking with a stable job and making games in my free time.
It’s discouraging, but it is reality. I still want to try, but definitely not putting more than one egg in this basket.
I’ll admit I’m knowingly doing the following haha
hopefully it’ll at least be a positive experience and I learn something from it
Sounds like you’ve got the right mindset and sounds like you have your head on your shoulders. Best of luck!
This has kind of discouraged me from getting into game development. I’m not creative enough or talented enough at game design to do it myself, and I feel like the likelihood of getting onto one of the few teams we see out there today who aren’t willing to sacrifice every last bit of humanity that their games and software have for revenue… is slim.
What are you on about? Why does any dev in the mobile need to deal with companies like this?? Unless you’re looking to work for Niantic, EA, Ubisoft/Gameloft etc you can just self publish and that’s what people do daily. Lots of self published games and apps exist and more are available every day.
I am concerned with the larping you’re doing here. Why are you trying to scare people ?
I didn’t say I “needed” to. And my job did require it at the time. The circumstances of my employment are kind of out of the scope of this discussion and it’s pretty much entirely irrelevant. I was just stating where I got my information from.
Sure. You can. People do. Mobile it’s way less successful though. And I didn’t say anything about what an indie devs options are. You’re reading something very different out of what I’m saying and I don’t know what it is or where you’re getting it from.
Exactly. That’s part of what’s going on here.
Larping? What am I role playing? And we’re on the internet, so this definitely isn’t “live action” by any means. I don’t understand what you think is going on here.
Me stating what goes on inside the industry is not “trying” to do anything. I’m just explaining what I’ve seen in it. Whether they choose to be “scared” or not is their own perogative. Would you say I’m trying to scare people if I said many people have died in Gaza in the past few months? It’s just stating what’s happening.
No
https://maf.ad/en/blog/fake-mobile-game-ads-advertisers/#:~:text=This happens because some companies,that resemble movies or series.
These are all examples of exaggerated and misleading ads. Hell, the heading you linked to is literally called “exaggerated ads”. That’s not “this game does not exist at all” ads, it’s “this isn’t how the game actually plays” ads. The examples this article gives are the like weird “Omg he got me pregnant” ads that then link to a match 3 game and the like. These are a different thing than things like the OP linked which are entirely irrelevant and link to random unrelated games.
The article is from and advertising company that is selling customers who have an existing game who want to improve ad conversions and then lists techniques for doing so. They do not explain the outcome the OP is asking about. Not would they outline the strategy I’m talking about since what in referring to is a process by which you would test new game ideas. That’s not something the company you linked to would be involved in.
There are many many many types of advertising campaigns in mobile gaming. And they serve different purposes. The stuff your outlining is different than the OPs question and my response. They exist in the same market and one existing doesn’t mean the other doesn’t.
You didn’t read the article at all. My god you’re full of it.