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A Call for Revolution

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by ekhader, Feb 15, 2017.

  1. ekhader

    ekhader

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    I will start by quoting the great philosopher Solid Snake

    The market has changed…
    It’s no longer about art, value or quality
    It’s an endless series of proxy companies bought by large corporations and corrupted market practices.
    The market and its consumption of ads money has become a well-oiled machine.
    The market has changed…
    PAID marketing companies with PAID search optimization use PAID market placements.
    Analytics inside their market enhance and regulate their abilities to control.
    User control.
    Information control.
    Activities control.
    Market control.
    Everything is monitored and kept under control.
    The market has changed…
    The age of app development has become the age of control.
    All in the name of averting low quality indie games and giving a better user experience.
    And he who controls the market controls the success of your app.
    The market has changed…

    When the market is under total control… failure becomes routine.

    We have all been there, we worked hard on our apps, we polished them and did every recommendation there is according to their market specifications in hope of success. However surely not long after releasing the app we discover the bitter truth that there is no real market. It is just an illusion of market, an illusion created by large corporations.

    Your app has been doomed to fail long before writing the first line of code, big companies have already paid for their placement on top of any genius idea you could ever come up with.

    Let me explain briefly what I believe is really happening behind the scenes in the market place:

    A big company let’s call it R promises to buy 1M$ of ads from G marketplace in return of its app being featured, G agrees and the company pays the money and get its placement in the market. This is of course happening under the table in closed deals, in reality company R does not give a rat ass if the ads bring users or not to their app, the whole thing is a legal way to bribe G to place their app on featured list and keep it there for a while.

    While this happening suddenly the marketing guy from this R company and the G editor discover they can do more personal profits if the marketing guy from R quit his job open a 1 person company hire some dude to make a simple app and the G editor will randomly select it for placement somewhere.

    I am not here to try to convince you how bad the app market situation is for indie developers, if you don’t already know that then just give it another year and come back to read this post again. What I am here for is to propose a revolution against these market practices using their own game of monopoly.

    What I propose here is that we the developers’ community create a nonprofit Market-like App that works only as a link to our apps in the store, so we don’t create a parallel market but rather a discovery helper app.

    The idea is that this app will give a static number of visibility for all our apps equally, and this will give the initial push for your app to force its way to the public.

    I also propose a voting mechanism for us to remove totally rubbish apps, a mechanism similar to Steam but voted for by us the developers.

    No ranking algorithms no hot lists nor trending, just featured apps made by us the developers, this way we can assure equality and no manipulation.

    we will release this app to all markets and we all should participate in promoting it by donating to create the biggest marketing campaign we can afford and hopefully it will be our last time we use their ad services.

    Imagine a one thousand developer donating 100$ each will make a 100K campaign and all the fuss around this app could give us the chance to be truly independent of the malpractices of our market manipulators. And this donation is only used to promote this app and not as a membership. This app should be completely free and nonprofit.

    If we all participate in this we can beat the system, if we all participate in promoting the app we can have the effect and the man power to beat the largest companies there.

    Just imagine that once you release a new app you are guaranteed to have your app featured to millions of users.


    I will volunteer to work on the market app so who else is interested?
    We need a core team with me from all specialties to pull this off, I am open for ideas and looking forward for your thoughts.
     
  2. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Your premise was flawed from the very start, but here's the part where you assume that featured apps listed by developers wouldn't be somehow prone to manipulation when people are even more easily manipulated than algorithms. Hell, your entire idea is based around this sort of manipulation.
     
  3. ekhader

    ekhader

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    What manipulation are you talking about? the idea is being featured is guaranteed and all apps will be featured exactly the same amount of time in the same places, for the same amount of views.

    The whole idea is stop this manipulation.
     
  4. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    You really should go read Animal Farm. One of the great problems with revolutions is the result so often ends up looking exactly like the original.

    If this is successful, what's to stop the big boys manipulating it the same way you claim they are manipulating the existing stores? If this is as successful as you claim, it will become a big entity in its own right, subject to all of the problems you claim exist with the current system.

    In fact, just like in Animal Farm, the only thing your proposal can possibly change is who is on top.
     
  5. ekhader

    ekhader

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    The idea here is to make a simple one rule, you register your app in this app and it will be queued to be featured there will be no algorithms to be manipulated the app it self depends on the available market stores so the app would be nonprofit and controlled maybe with an open source code if you will, the idea is no one can manipulate it.

    and big companies will be treated just like the smallest developer here.

    if you have suggestions please do give.

    we have the power to stop this manipulation if we work together, otherwise we will always be the peasants that used as a number for big marketplaces to brag about how many apps they have in their store.
     
  6. HemiMG

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    Isn't it a bit weird to recommend a system similar to Steam Greenlight, when Valve just announced that they are dumping Greenlight because it doesn't work? I think, like Greenlight, the idea sounds nice in theory. But as others have said, people will find a way to game any system. If the big guys struggle to get it right, it can't possibly be as easy as it may seem.
     
  7. MisterBlackCat

    MisterBlackCat

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    Maybe that will help get rid of some of the bloat on the Steam marketplace.
     
  8. ekhader

    ekhader

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    the steam like system will be used by the developers community to filter out joke apps, i mean if we feature a meme like app on this market app we will fail to get the users to appreciate the app.

    and Steam might be dumping it because of profitability or to maintain certain quality on their store, however we should have no profit from this app itself , it is not a real store alternative it would be more like a discovery app to show our apps to the masses.
     
  9. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    If everything is featured, then nothing is. Featuring everything is a contradiction.

    Also, I'm not sure what manipulation you believe is happening. With Apple/google featuring is determined by the staff of those market places. They choose games that will best promote thier platform and ultimately generate revenue for them. You can't buy your way into being featured. Though Apple is adding sponsored results.
     
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  10. ekhader

    ekhader

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    So are you saying that the stores are fair? and yes we can feature every app, steam gives every app a million view, the store now give you 0 views.
    what i propose is a view based featuring not a profit based featuring.

    i am not trying to make this app my own, my vision is to have indie developers community be responsible for fair featuring of all our apps. a certain number of views for each app.
     
  11. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Every app getting featured would have two consequences: (a) your game will be buried because there are simply too many apps to feature in small portions at a time giving you effectively zero views if your app isn't at the top, (b) it would feature the shovelware and other drivel that is already poisoning the stores.
     
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  12. LaneFox

    LaneFox

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    Sounds dumb.
     
  13. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    "Fair" doesn't have anything to do with anything. Featuring is done for the benefit of the store, not the developer. It is absolutely fair to all games that will generate them them revenue.
     
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  14. ekhader

    ekhader

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    If they let any other list to show your app then it would be fair enough for them to feature who ever they want, but now every single list is controlled by them, you won't show up anywhere.

    what i am talking about is not a substitute for their store, but to be as platform to show our games on, for games that never make it into their lists.

    lets say we have 1000 developer participated in this, lets say this 1000 developer submitted 1 app each, on a period of 3 months, can't we feature every single one of these app on the period of 3 months to have 1 million view each?

    think of it as a helper for your app on the stores not as a substitute
     
  15. ekhader

    ekhader

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    thousands of good apps are already buried in the store, and the steam like system i am proposing is to get ride of the shovelware apps.
     
  16. Blacklight

    Blacklight

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    How exactly does every app get an equal amount of feature time? Are there not hundreds of apps submitted to the app store every day?
     
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  17. ekhader

    ekhader

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    think of steam, it guarantees a 1 million views for your app when you release, we can do something similar, the idea is to give your app a chance to success on the real store, not to make you a permanent resident in the feature list like in the app stores.
     
  18. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    Thousands.
     
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  19. GhulamJewel

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    Loved the MGS speech. There are many other alternative stores this would just be another. But it is very hard nowadays without paid marketing...
     
  20. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    There are already tons of sites that do this. Go for it. But bear in mind your new list is competing with many other popular existing places that do the same. It's an uphill battle, what would you bring that is new to the space?
     
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  21. Ryiah

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    If an app is failing to appear in any featured list for any store then I would take that more as a sign of an app not being any good rather than the store conspiring against that app.

    Who do you think will want to sit there and view a featured list that is hundreds of titles long?

    A Steam-like system that completely failed for Steam.
     
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  22. Blacklight

    Blacklight

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    I don't believe steam has any such guarantee. And what part of steam were you talking about exactly? The new releases list? The discovery queue?

    If it's more of a targeted system like the discovery queue, then how do you calculate equal exposure? Does a game that has a niche audience get as much exposure as a more mainstream genre?
     
  23. GhulamJewel

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    I would disargree and say this isn't always the case. Time and time again you hear the arguement "your game isn't good enough" etc i been following and checking Apple featured games for awhile now and yes you get high quality games featured but at the same time many garbage shovelware games get featured aswell. Below is a game currently featured on front page of app store. Nothing wrong in making a simple game made in an hour but this shows being featured not really about how good your game is or how high quality it is. But gives you a chance I guess.

     
  24. ekhader

    ekhader

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    I will ask you all then, @Ryiah @Blacklight @GhulamJewel don't you all agree that we have a serious problem with marketing and discovery, i mean a crippling problem i might say.

    I am at least trying to imagine a solution to get us out of the mercy of the stores, why don't you suggest something that might actually help, instead of us laying down and surrender to the big companies.
     
  25. Ryiah

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    Right, there are games that do slip under the radar.

    Yes, and the OP is suggesting a system that would allow every game including the shovelware to be featured.

    Nothing about that game stands out to me.
     
  26. Ryiah

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    How would bringing a new site into the mix be any better? There are already far too many places for people to look at.
     
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  27. ekhader

    ekhader

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    I am not suggesting a site I am suggesting an app that would link your app to the store, so if you click on any game inside the proposed app it would open up the actual app on the store whether it google play or appstore and so on. And I did not say I want shovelware to be featured and that's why i was saying we would need a voting system to filter the garbage out.
     
  28. Ryiah

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    Same difference. There are tons of apps for purposes like this too.

    A voting system that didn't work for Steam. You mentioned earlier about restricting it to developers but unless you plan on verifying every single developer through an exhaustive means you have no way of knowing if the person signing up is an actual developer or someone who simply wants to game your system.

    By the way for an example of an exhaustive system that does work check out the process for becoming a Debian dev.

    https://www.linux.com/news/becoming-debian-developer

    Briefly put a Debian developer needs to (a) have an advocate (a sponsor) recommend them, (b) prove they can do the work, and (c) have their access keys signed by other Debian developers. It's a process that can take between six and ten months.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2017
  29. zombiegorilla

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    Everyone is in the same boat. You are competing with tens of thousands of others in the exact same space. It's not really a crippling problem, it's just competition. You have to get better promotion (or pay someone to do it), and/or improve your game. With that many competing titles a solution for everyone is impossible. A player or potential player is only going to browse a certain amount of titles.

    It is simple numbers. For example, I may check the store a couple of times a week, and maybe look through 10-20 titles tops. Easily less than a hundred titles a month. That is it. There is no solution for "discovery". At over a 1000 titles games released a day, there is no way that a developer can ensure their game will ever be seen by me. It is simply impossible. You can do marketing and promotion to increase the chance that your game will be seen, but if you create a solution that will ensure every game will be seen. At best you can create a system to promote "some" games, but all you are pushing other games out of a different loop. And more importantly, if your new list doesn't exclude games based on quality or popularity, then your list won't even help those on it.
     
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  30. Billy4184

    Billy4184

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    When you have a winning horse, all the stores will bet on it.
     
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  31. ekhader

    ekhader

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    @Ryiah @zombiegorilla I think you guys are either have been extremely lucky with the stores or you just have not reached the ultimate conclusion yet.
     
  32. ekhader

    ekhader

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    they create the winning horse and sometimes they make a lottery for a random game to keep the indie developers dreaming.
     
  33. Murgilod

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    Or, you know, your conclusion is ridiculous and way too open to exploitation. You haven't reached the "ultimate conclusion" at all. You've come up with a system that takes the worst aspects of Greenlight and modern advertising and mashes them up into one giant mess.

    Notice how nobody's really agreeing with you here? Maybe you should take that as a hint.
     
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  34. ekhader

    ekhader

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    so are you criticizing the conclusion or the solution?

    if you came a cross some magical formula that make your apps work on the store as it is then please do share with us your success story to see why you think that, perhaps a link to one of your successful apps?
     
  35. Murgilod

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    I'm criticising both because they both stem from the same root problem.
     
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  36. ekhader

    ekhader

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    ok then just tell us about your success story, your best selling app for example?
     
  37. HemiMG

    HemiMG

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    The easiest way to settle this is to make the app and prove everybody right, or prove everybody wrong. Most of see the problem as there being too many apps released in a given day for all of them to be given exposure. If you think you've found a way around that, prove it.
     
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  38. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    No? Steam discovery service displays plenty of titles that fit my interests... and that I'd like to play if I had the time.

    Seems fairly efficient to me, especially if you take bought and unplayed games into account.

    To illustrate, the problem further... here's ludum dare 37 games:
    http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-37/?action=preview
    All this stuff was submitted during 2 days during competition and was made from scratch.

    In 2 days. One hundred pages of games. Now, let's say all this gets "featured" for you. Will you ever even finish looking through all this stuff?

    ------------

    The way I see it, if you want a revolution, lead by an example. Make whatever system you're proposing and prove that it works.
     
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  39. Billy4184

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    That's right, make sure it's your horse...
     
  40. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    There is no magical solution. If there were one, it would instantly break, as everyone would use it. Again, its just math. You have many, many more people selling many more things than there are people buying them. You can't fit a million marbles in a tea cup. People are going to get left out. You have to make a game that people want more than the other games, and tell those people about in a more compelling way than everyone else is. There is no way around that.
     
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  41. ekhader

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    I agree steam is the best from all the markets and i was mainly speaking about mobile stores, anyway my idea won't work without everyones participation, it is a revolution not a coup d'etat :p
     
  42. dogzerx2

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    The Market is bad? Naw man ... you got it backwards. It's too good. Too easy. So easy everyone wants a piece, that's the problem. Puts you in contact with the whole world so you can promote and distribute your game! It's not perfect somehow? Sure. Blaming a flawed market is the easy route, but it's not the route that fixes your problem. There's always a lot that can still be done from dev side when a game doesn't sell. Good things take time and work, if they don't we just take them for granted anyway.
     
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  43. Ryiah

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    Right, and that's the biggest flaw with an app of this sort. You need participation from both developers and customers. After all simply having developers on board with it doesn't guarantee any sort of success since you need customers to view the entries on the app.

    How were you planning to go about attracting customers to your app?
     
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  44. imaginaryhuman

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    Money talks. Look at how the not-all-that-amazing recent Mario game was totally plastered all over ALL of the homepage featured images when it came out on the app store. You think Apple just did that cus they liked it so much? I bet it cost some big $$'s and some telephone calls by some special people.

    You want to compete with that... you need some big $$'s and a famous brand too.

    Not sure whether to say that is necessarily 'unfair', Nintendo came up with a superhero franchise and are milking it for all its worth. So, probably, good for them. If you want to compete with that, do the same.

    And one silly little app is not going to be able to become so popular that it funnels huge amounts of traffic through to other games. That's like saying, take a tiny slice of app store traffic and divide it up even more among thousands of other apps. ... like... thanks for the tiny slice of cake.
     
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  45. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    ROFL. I lost my S*** at this.

    Pretty sure developers and publishers are the ones responsible for most of any market manipulation on asset stores / etc. Gamers after all just want to buy and play games. You're not going to get anywhere with this ill-fated manifesto.

    I appreciate the sentiment behind it but it's not going to work because developers (me included) don't want fairness. They want more money than their competition. Everyone puts in different amounts of work too, and expects different return for that.

    Equality doesn't make sense.
     
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  46. dogzerx2

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    You can't just say 'hey I want to be a juggler for a living', go out there, and be mad if there's not a solution laid for you. Because being a juggler simply put is not essential, and you shouldn't expect the world and the stars align to your needs.

    We could establish something more important, like a doctor, is in everyone's best interest that we spend resources to facilitate it for whoever wants to be one, in an 'equal' manner, so we ensure applied people can become good doctors, and in return they save our lives.

    But game development? That's on the juggler category ! It's a caprice to want to do it. And on top of it ... there are really good layed out solutions, things that developers wouldn't have imagined 10 or 15 years ago. If that's not enough, perhaps it's true that human nature is to never be satisfied.
     
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2017
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  47. zombiegorilla

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    Featuring on the App Store isn't paid. It is selected by store staff/marketing and editors (depending on the section). Certainly featuring (how and when and other details) are discussed, but Apple leads and controls that discussion. They don't charge for it. Remember they take a cut of the sales, so they are going to feature (main featuring) heavily games that are going to generate sales.
     
  48. zombiegorilla

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    There is certainly nothing preventing you trying what you suggest, it is not going to be disruptive (the market is about players, not developers), but if you made it highly focused, like indie titles, quality, etc. it could still be a benefit to those developers. I think you should do it.
     
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  49. ippdev

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    Sounds like a left wing commie argument to espouse a scenario where everyone gets a trophy. The capitalist reply is "earn your way by merit".
     
  50. ippdev

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    And the marketplace will decide. Capitalism is a great leveler of the playing field where merit and value are the key drivers. You give the marketplace what they want and nothing more..like ESPN which is shedding subscriber at 10K a day for not sticking to its target audiences interest..pure sports with no social commentary...and make a bank deposit.