iPhone Game Development - Chris Craft [76]
Analyzing Business Aspects
You have learned a lot about developing action games for the iPhone in this chapter. But there is more to making a successful action game than writing lines of code and designing game sprites. You also need to master the business aspects of making iPhone action games.
While action games can be more costly and difficult to produce than some other types of applications, such as puzzle applications, they can have a greater return on investment. Because a well-made action game can become a world in itself, action games have the ability to generate a lot of attention and excitement. Once you have finished the game engine that your action game will use, you can reuse it either for a follow-up game or for an entirely new action game. If you plan on this early, many times you can design features and functionality that make this reuse even easier.
Tip
Hollywood makes it a point to reuse sets and props. You should consider doing the same with your game's graphic and audio assets, and with any game engines you create. This helps to increase your return on investment and will help your business grow faster.
The action game market is a little less crowded than some of the other game genres. One reason for this is it takes more time, effort, and skills to create a complete action game than it does to create, say, a novelty or puzzle game. Even so, the best action games find a way to stand out in the crowd. The same way players compete to be the best players with the best scores, action games compete with each other to be the best games with the best players. If this sounds like fun to you, consider making an action game for your next iPhone application.
Even though there are fewer action games than some other kinds of applications, there are still tens of thousands of applications on the App Store. That's a lot of apps, and plenty of competition in all categories. You will want to focus on coming up with ideas that help your application rise above the rest.
You will also want to spread the word about your application. Successfully marketing a new iPhone application is almost its own game. To be really good at it, it takes a lot of practice, hard work, and a little luck. It's a little like running for office—nobody is going to vote for you if they don't know who you are, so get the word out there and promote your game. Tell your friends, write a blog post, and contact every iPhone application review site you can find and let them know what they are missing. The better your application is, the easier it will be to spread the word. Have you considered creating a YouTube video for your action game? Action games look great in video, and many people are hesitant to buy an action game without seeing some live video from an actual game.
Don't underestimate the power of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Digg. These sites have been able to springboard many an app into top-ten status. Facebook is a great place for fans of your application to meet and discuss ideas. Make sure you have some way for users of your application to give you feedback about what they liked and didn't like. This feedback can result in a version 2.0 of your application that is many times better than the 1.0 version.
Summary
At the beginning of this chapter you learned from famous examples of action games. Then you looked at how action games create challenges and excitement by using limited time, levels, health, and score. You also reviewed what makes an action game successful, including game balance, attractiveness, being free of bugs, being challenging, and addictive game play. You learned how competition isn't all bad. Next, you learned various techniques for creating game graphics, from home-brewed programmer's art to third-party, royalty-free clip art to professionally created, custom designs. From there you were introduced to various methods programmers use to produce great audio for their applications.
After this you began work on creating