Learning Game Design with Arcade Berg

The iPhone Platform

Is the iPhone the new indie game developing platform? It could very well be.

Indie game development has for a long time been pretty restricted to PC by self distribution via communities and other channels on the Internet. Indies haven't been able to get their games on the consoles by Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony.

This is finally changing with Microsoft's Community games and Apple's AppStore for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

Pic swiped from http://gizmodo.com/5287426/the-iphone-is-a-pretty-damn-big-platform-to-develop-games-for (24/6/2009)

This is how the 40 million iPhones and iPod touches, a figure given by Apple at the WWDC Keynote, stack up against actual consoles.

- Gizmodo (11/6/09)

Sure, the DS has sold way more units but the only way for you to get your game on there as an indie is to create a "homebrew" and hope for people with Flash-cards to download and try it out. And I can tell you that there aren't 100 million of users with Flash-cards. And amongst those who've actually have one, the chances are slim for them to try out your product.

The big thing with the AppStore is that you can distribute your games in a pretty unrestricted manner. You just have to pass Apple's check, basically meaning it shouldn't crash or contain pr0n. When it's out there, it's on the same terms as with all the big companies.

Of course, it's harder for you pump $100'000 into advertisment but it's still there. Try making your game famous on the PC; it aint all that easy either.

In about 5 months I've downloaded and tried 107 apps to the iPhone. 51 of those were games. That's way more than I've done with the Xbox. Why? Because it's simpler, easier access and it's fast.

This isn't the case for most people, but for people like me it's also nice to know that 60% of what I pay for the game goes directly to the developers.

If you want me or other people to try out your game by accident, I think there's a greater chance of that happening on the AppStore than on the PC.

Now, you do as you wish but I want to make games for the iPhone.

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/ (24/6/09)