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819

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Hi!

I'm currently developing a small non-commercial game for Android which is based on OpenGL ES. Except for some minor issues (slow as crap emulator being the biggest) I've really enjoyed it so far and would love to continue developing for it. The question is: What are your thoughts on the future of Android as an environemnt for the game market? I read an article somewhere that said that the IPhone is the preferred platform for games, but since I don't own a Mac and won't bother with some complicated work around to get it to work on Windows I'm currently not interested in it. So, what do you think? Is it worth spending alot of time (and potentially money) on a larger Android game project?

+6  A: 

Short answer: it's too early to tell. Technically this platform is neither better nor worse for games developer than iPhone. Both have some support for 3d graphics, both have good support for multimedia - just the language differs ObjectiveC or Java.

The problem is not in the technical capabilities though, but in the popularity of the platform and purely business decision if Android is a good gaming platform. iPhone certainly is and many people are making money on it already. Will Android be as popular and will people be willing to buy the game for some money is a good question.

There is some difference Android and iPhone users and developers. Android is more open platform and more software is free (or even open source). For iPhone most apps cost 1$.

So the expectations in the audience is different. Android users expect more apps to be free and will (most likely) pay only when software you give them is really worth spending any money at all. iPhone users are willing to pay this $1 even to try an app out, after all they bought Apple product that was expensive to begin with.

Will that trend continue? Or will the audience types converge as more paid apps appear on Android market is an open question.

Finally -- there will be some millions of users of the Android platform eventually. So if you develop a kick ass game it will have its audience anyway. And if Android does not become a platform for games - that may even be beneficial for you, because you'll have no competition.

Marcin
Dimitar Dimitrov
+5  A: 

In my opinion it is worth it.

As @Marcin said, Android is more of a open platform then iPhone. And it's easier for developers to start with developing applications and putting them on the market.

But it means the market is populated with a lot of crap applications. And then, there are really shiny jewels too. They get good scores, are blogged/twitted about and are popular.

So, in my opinion, if you got an idea for a good game, go for it. If you put it on the market though, consider putting (at least a 'lite' version) in the free area (people in some countries are unable to even access the paid applications market).

the below part is completly my own opinion and you can simply skip it

There are some 'cool' games on mobile platforms that I love to play. As for me, there are few important things to watch for when developing such a game, that aren't this important in more 'traditional' gaming, on a console or PC:

  • it should be easy(fast!) to start and stop. If I play it at a bus, it could be just 1 stop. If it starts right away and then doesn't take 5 minutes to stop it, it's a +
  • one more thing about rapid start/stop. If I quit the game, then come back, give me a chance to continue where I stopped. No need to ask if I wanna save/load last game. Make it default, I can always start a new game if I want, can I?
  • controls - even that accelerometer-using games are fun at times, try to play it in a crowded place. like a bus. Touchscreen elements should be large enough so even the thick-fingers can use it. If they are - it's a +
  • for long time I was trying to realise why playing Bejeweled, or Puzzle Quest, was fun and enjoying, while many of their clones were simply irrytating. The diffrence was a tiny piece of user interface - in Bejeweled the pieces you got are both diffrent colors and shapes. They are much easier to "operate" (in a Bejeweled way) then, say, screen full of diffrent color triangles. If you make a game like this, make the diffrent pieces differ in many ways, not just one (diffrent shapes with same colors would suck even more; red triangles, yellow circles, blue squares and black skulls is a way to go - in my opinion)
  • it's a mobile device, connected to either WIFI or 3G network, you can use the internet to at least show/save highscores. But - remember - sometimes there's no network, we're in a diffrent country with roaming turned off or on the bottom of the ocean. Make the game work even there
kender
+1  A: 

Thanks for the replies!

I myself believe that the marketplace will gain momentum once there are more Android phones on the market, though my biggest fear is that it'll end up like Xbox Live Indie Games were 90% of the games are of below avarage quality, which of course affects it's reputation in the gamer community. One thing I don't understand is why there isn't some kind of pre-approval before letting the application or game onto the market place. I understand that they want the people not the company to decide what should be allowed to be uploaded, but then they could let the users be the reviewers so that there is atleast some quality checks before release.

shakazed
users are revieweres - I always browse the reviews before installing anything :)
kender
+1  A: 

The iPhone has the advantage of a huge market (approximately 10x the android one at the moment) and even better most of those users have already given apple their credit card so they are ready to buy. Getting android users to spend .99 is hard. Depending on the game, you can make decent money (50-100/day) off of ads. The first is likely to change with more android phones and more android carriers(Verizon would be huge for the US market)

Technically Android is a bit slower (Java versus Object C) but with the NDK you can get decent performance. The iPhone has better opengl support (1.1 and 2.0 on the GS) while android is more of a 1.0.

hacken
A: 

im yet to find a good game on android yet. i mean there are some fun games but not that are as nice looking at what i have seen on the iPhone but. i really want to see something good on android but maybe we will have to wait for Android 3.

p.s. i don't mind paying for apps but maybe that's because im just interested to see whats out there. i think other people expect them to be free because there is alot of crap apps on the market place that you would not get on the iphone market

aaron
+1  A: 

There is an interesting article about Android as a games platform on Gamasutra.

Developing Games for Android

Randaltor