Mobile Game Development – Platform Research

In this series of posts we are going to build a mobile game from scratch. The mobile game development process should begin with an understanding of the ecosystem where our game will live its life. An understanding of where our game will be released will provide realistic expectations, influence game design decisions, and help give us focus while developing our game’s concept.

At a high level the game development life cycle looks like this:

I’m going to start with some assumptions about the mobile game market:

• The mobile game market is over-saturated
• The iOS App Store generates more revenue
• The Google Play Store generates more downloads

Researching Gaming App Platforms for Mobile Game Development

This is what the iOS App Store looked like at the time of writing this:

This is what the Google Play Store looked like at the time of writing this:

Data is a rough estimate.

These two tables help to paint the picture of where mobile game development currently is. I can see that my first assumption is correct, the market for mobile games is super saturated. Not only will our game have to compete with other types of non-gaming apps and activities the average user engages in but potentially hundreds of thousands of mobile games. This will be a very hard market to get into and be profitable in.

Another thing that I notice is that people who play mobile games generally play similar types of games. I am assuming this is because mobile device hardware lends itself to certain types of play. We see a lot of games with short play sessions that people can pick up and put down with ease. We see games with easy to learn mechanics, simple controls, and very low entry barriers.

There is more that we could look at but, as a small development team with very little in terms of funds for marketing, we are going to be focusing on a smaller more niche area and continuing our analysis there.

The two genres I am interested in are: clicker and rogue-like games. These genres provide the benefit of being exciting to me and that passion will help me grind through the low points of the development process.

Here is your first task list if you want to develop a mobile game:

1. Decide on the platform that the game will be released on
2. Research what the hardware is like for that platform
3. Research how many games are available for that platform
4. Research what the most popular genres are
5. Decide on what genre your game will be
6. Document all of your research and decisions