Steps to becoming successful in casual mobile game genre?(with no starting money)

I'm trying to figure out what it takes to have my own casual-mobile-game business

I like games like:
Neko atsume,
klepto cats,
platypus evolution
tiny rails.
(simpler 2d games, but still hard for one person to make)

I want to make something in this genre, with a similar IAP. (I have lots of ideas)
Ive made my first game over the last 8 months, it was challenging and way more tough than I thought. So now Im thinking whats next.

This is my plan(i have no start money, just time):

Year1
1.Make a few more games i'm proud of.
Year2
2.Use games as credibility to find teammates living in my city
3.make games over and over
Year3-5
4.Make $500 a month
5.Hire an artist
6.Keep increasing profit and hiring more people.

Is this a decent plan?
Any tips or advice would be super appreciate
Thank you

 

Ya if it was only that easy it would be a great plan. Considering the apple store receives over 800 app submissions A DAY your going to be hard pressed to make game clones work to make that goal. The only way app developers who just throw stuff up on the app store succeed is if Apple decides to put their app on the featured front page. Don't be discouraged though there can be other ways to succeed, but you'll need to add more to your list of objectives, such as marketing. You'll find promoting your game is a full time job too. The truth is as an indie developer your a small fish in a giant sea of other small fish and giant sharks roam those waters too, all looking for those crumbs. Not that breakouts don't happen, finding a niche or something that gets people talking about your game can work, so keep that in mind when deciding when you're about to start a new project. I rarely see clones do well unless they do a he'll of a better job then the original, even then people got to know about it. Good luck.

 

I dont want to make clones though, i mean i want to focus on the genre of 'casual-mobile-games', but im confident i can have original ideas.
Don't most people think they have tons of original ideas though? I cant imagine going into it with the desire to make clones.

Where do people learn about the marketing world, just forums and blogs i suppose

 

You will need luck every step of the way. And there is little you can do to mitigate for this need for a ton of luck.

Again, you are dealing with app stores literally drowning in a flood of new games every day. How original can your ideas be? How much more time will it take you to make a non-clone, non-shovelware game actually worth is space in the app store? And will you see an increase in downloads for all this work, or will it just rot in the app store like the clone games?


The sensible plan is to not treat mobile app development as your one and only source of income until you actually have PROVEN that it can be (meaning a day job, or paid gigs to pay the bills until you manage to hit a gold mine with your tenth, 50th or 999th game).
If you don't need money to survive skip this step (altough in this case you need to tell me how you manage to do that)... your plan still most probably will not work out.
a) Without luck, none of your steps will work as planned.
b) Good luck creating multiple games you are proud of in a year all by yourself. Unless you have a ton of expierience and/or are easely satisfied with your results, creating a quality mobile game can take 6 months and more, especially when you start adding all the marketing to get your game noticed without the money to pay for the ad campaigns needed today to get noticed in the app stores.
c) you don't need games as credibility to find teammates in your city... you need money to pay them. Unless your game(s) produced in the first year are highly successfull (or you have another source of income), you will not have that kind of money. Nobody works for free, unless they follow their own dreams (exceptions are just reinforcing the norm here).
d) making 500$ a month sounds not overly ambitious, but could be hard to achieve with mobile games unless you hit a goldmine, or have a ton of games dripfeeding revenue into that amount.


TL;DR: mobile game development has become VERY expensive BECAUSE the top 10 games will make the lion share of profit in the app store, and to get there usually involves multiple millions of $ in marketing.
Everyone else either has a ton of luck (flappy bird), has a very good game and still some luck, or has dozens of shovelware games in the app store all drip feeding revenue that adds up to a usable sum.

Sad thing is, the least risky way to do business as an Indie mobile dev is the last option. So if you are not ready to flood the store with your own low quality shovelware, you will need more luck than I would bet my professional career on to succeed.

 

You don't have to build clones to be successful but at the same time original ideas are not that easy to come by and even if they were people have already proven they will continue to buy the clones and games that borrow heavily from other games.

 

IMO - marketing is something that won't be helpful to your situation - unless you are completely in a under valued/addressed genre, and at this time in game dev - I couldn't tell you what that genre is.
Casual-mobile-games - is a saturated area to get into, and it is dominated by all the top 100-200 earners. This area of the industry is where the money is at on mobile and it is also where the money is spent by marketeers in the industry.

Again - IMO - indie marketing is probably the only push you can perform here unless you find someone willing to spend large sacks of cash to 'make any sort of difference'.
Marketing research and learning (is prevalent all over the web) is always good to perform, however you are going to have to get completely up to speed on all the catch phrases, buzz words, and there meanings, while still trying to develop games. Things like DAU, CPM, D1=W soft launch and are all tied into in game ads and IAP.

Check out this talk I just listened to
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021960/Epic-Fail-Microtalks-Four-Mobile
Blegh! If you don't know exactly what these guys are talking about and understand intimately the code-ish ways they talk about retention and revenue, focusing on casual-mobile is not an area to be targeted - unless you plan to not compete with teams like these and bigger fish = under valued genre.

Special note: I think the game I'm working on falls into this semi-casual-mobile realm, although we are going premium and do not need high active daily users to meet our own measurement of success.

 

Thanks a bunch for that video! theres a lot of great stuff on this site. I didnt realize casual is where all the money is, i just really love designing for that genre. I just need to learn more and find other wanna-be casual-mobile-game devs to collaborate with

 

Good luck
Personal opinion - To be honest - I think "casual" isn't really a 'thing' much any more. Unless you are talking about the overly passive experiences of bubble poppers, some match3 with no story elements, Angry birds 1.0, plant farmer sim, clickers and other games that revolve around simple core mechanics without much meat on the bone.
If you haven't - check out casual connect vids on youtube. Some great talks, if you can wade through the IAP, in game Ad placement, and freemium discussions.

@funianrun how do you define/classify a casual game compared to a 'not' casual game?

 

Just keep throwing up games and building a following