Things You Need to Know Before You Start Making a Mobile Game

Being the Executive of a mobile game development company, I am frequently buzzed by lot of people with game ideas ranging from as simple as a copy of Flappy Birds to something as detailed as next Clash of Clans. But I always ask them one thing.

An idea is just the beginning. Are you motivated to go all the way?

Let me share something with you. Towards the fag end of 2013, one of our client Mike Bloom got in touch with me with a fairly detailed idea of a card battle game. Before that, he was working with another mobile game development company for 18 months. But, unfortunately, everything fell apart and he was left midway with an idea on which he had invested years. Since I knew that he was onto something big the minute I laid my eyes on the preparation Mike had already put in. Today, his dream Mario Italiano is about to go live soon.

Another story worth sharing is that of our client Brian Davis. Encouraging words of creating rather than only consuming to his son Josaih Davis, a 15 year old High school freshman, led him to design PaperChase, one of the best designed games that we have developed so far. We also learnt a lot from Josaih’s insights to get every minute detail right at every step.

Hence, all you need is a lot of passion and patience to deal with everything that is thrown your way while you embark for this mobile game development journey.

Another thing you need to ensure is that you have the budget to get the game developed if you don’t have an inhouse team. It can be taken as a rule of thumb that you cannot develop the next big Candy Crush Saga in anything under $10,000. So you will be forced to either dig in to your friends and family pool or present your pitch to Venture Capitalists, if you are on a tight budget. I am happy to announce that we have already expanded our successful Startup Subsidy Program for utility/consumer side apps to games, and our first set of subsidized games are launching in June.

It is crucial to note that mobile game development requires a varied set of specialized skills. If you are not ready to invest in these skills, your half-baked game will get lost in the hyper-competitive crowd of hundreds of new mobile games that are launched in the App Stores everyday. Besides, when it comes to the learning-from-mistakes part, you can either make all the mistakes in the first mobile app (or game) and/or leverage the experience of someone who has already made these mistakes.

So if you find yourself constantly asking these questions..

“Where does it all start? Do I have the budget? How will everything fall in place? Do I have the team to develop the game for me? If not, how am I going to select the team? How will I acquire users, monetize the app, get the artwork done, ensure that the game is launched bug free? How will I collect feedback and reviews from my audience to further tune the game parameters?”

…then I urge you to download this free game development guide on outsourcing & launching a game app, which answers all these queries from the experience I have accumulated thus far.

Happy Reading!