Eli Hodapp

Great Expectations

Something that I’ve been noticing more and more as I get deeper in to the iPhone “scene” is the increasingly unrealistic expectations in what some gamers come to demand for their money when buying something from the App Store. I realize this could entirely just be the extremely vocal minority, but a shocking number of people all seem to be looking for the same thing: A phenomenal gaming experience at a rock bottom price supported via free updates for the foreseeable future. If this really is what the market as a whole is looking for, I really don’t know how the current state of the App Store economy is sustainable.

Just for fun, let’s throw out some numbers. Say your average game development company is employing a team of three people for an iPhone game, one artist, and two programmers. These three guys all are making a $40,000 a year salary which is hilariously low especially if this imaginary game company is in any major metropolitan area. Costs for raw salary alone for this team to work on a game amounts to $10,000 a month. This isn’t taking in to account any benefits they have, the cost of the computers and software they’re using, the electricity to power them, rent for the office they’re working out of, taxes or anything else you have to pay for to run a business.

Your average iPhone game seems to be in development for 2-3 months, so for bare payroll alone we’re looking at $25,000 invested for our hypothetical game. It has almost become expected for a game to launch at a “promotional” price, and it seems the gaming community as a whole demands this price be as close to 99¢ as possible. At that price point, after Apple’s take, they need to sell just under 36,000 copies to break even for salary alone.

What am I getting at here with all this scary financial talk? Well, earlier today a review for Pixel Mine’s Underworlds was published on Touch Arcade. I really enjoyed the game, I’m even casually working on my second play through in my spare time currently which is really pretty rare for me. I’m proud of my review in that I felt that I provided a detailed analysis of the game while mentioning some of the flaws and providing a conclusion that even though the game wasn’t perfect, it still was a really fun hack and slash RPG.

It didn’t take long for this comment to come rolling in-

“The art and sound design of Underworlds is top notch”

Compared to what? 1993 Lands of Lore on the PC? This game looks extremely cheap and hammered together quick and dirty. A commenter already mentioned the lack of story.

What does it take here to get a good review? Eye-Candy only?

The iPhone has shown that it is capable of showing a lot more than shabby conversions. I for one would love to see this idiocy end and game companies start to finally put real polished games on this platform. What does it take? I mean seriously. The iphone is becoming a 99 Cent platform with anything that looks remotely better being called “polished”.

Yeah right polished. With a 16 year old dirty rag.

I’m probably taking this way too seriously, and should probably just write the comment off as flame bait. Regardless, he does raise an interesting point. Have our expectations been compromised because of the sheer amount of shovelware on the platform? With gamers clamoring for more and more titles at rock bottom prices, I really can’t blame developers for churning out endless 99¢ apps. And really, grading on a curve in a sea of games which range from terrible to mediocre, games like Underworlds do stand out as something I would call “fantastic” in comparison.

But how does Underworlds rate against DS, PSP, or other “real” handheld console games? Pretty poorly, but the same can be said for nearly any iPhone game I can think of. I really don’t think it’s a fair comparison at all to make. DS games are generally bankrolled by publishers who throw out buckets full of money to finance a decently sized development team working on a reasonable schedule for the project. When they’re finished, their product sells for at minimum $29.99, but often anywhere between that and $39.99. Given an average price of $35, selling the same amount of units that the previously mentioned imaginary iPhone game company has to sell to break even, the competing DS game grosses $1,260,000.

Obviously with physical media distribution, Nintendo licensing fees, the publisher’s cut, and everything else what the developer actually sees is a fraction of that amount but even so, given the massive disparity in the realistic financials between a DS and iPhone game… How can an iPhone developer ever afford to provide a DS-like experience unless gamers as a whole begin to accept that better games won’t come out of a market where developers need to price cheaper than any other platform in history to remain competitive?

They really can’t.