Hi there, I am an app developer - iPhone for a couple of years, and new to the Android scene. We've recently released our first title, and a couple more are in development at the moment. Here's my take:
Initially, I was fairly adverse to developing for this platform (as many iOS developers are). Some things happened which changed my mind, and rather than simply port our top iPhone game we actually rebuilt it from the ground up and enhanced it specifically for Android. The release came and went, and I knew it would not go to smoothly - but I did get hit with some harsh reality!
The iPhone scene is much friendlier to the average app developer than the Android scene is. This is understandable for many reasons, but to be honest some things DO need to change around here if you guys want to entice more devs to come over here. It's going to take a lot of support from the customers, the websites, and even other developers. Right now, when I come to a forum like this, the "games" section is a wasteland. New titles pop up every so often, but most of the threads seem to sink like a brick immediately. To a lurking developer, this equals no support or interest (and there's already the stereotype that "Android gamers don't want to buy ANYthing"). Due to this "weeding-out," you end up seeing a lot of low-quality-looking games getting lackluster thread posts instead which in turn don't even LOOK like the devs care if anyone posts in there.
During my dev phase, I joined up in here and several other decent-to-high traffic forums. I posted pre-release (and post-release)
threads showcasing my game, but as you can guess I got little to no response at best, if not outright gut-checked by mods (not in this particular forum, might I add) who said I was not allowed to "try and spread publicity for my app."
whaaaa? What crazy planet?
It goes up to the top - clicking on the splash page for Phandroid.com (or similar sites) they have lots to report but hardly a word about any game news except the latest Angry Birds update. If this was TouchArcade - not just now, but even years ago - they'd have consistent coverage and buzz showing what's in the works for games and apps, and why gamers should be excited. Instead, it just feels like "Android gamers are techies who like to root their phones and play Solitaire," which seems like a pretty awful waste of some powerful hardware that you just spent a lot of money on..
I am new to this scene, as I said, but I am going to stick around for awhile. I have an existing game to support, and new ones to put out. I also have lots of other developer friends who are frustrated from competing on the oversaturated iPhones App Store and would love to try to sell stuff over here, if they thought they could get some real support.
The reality is, iPhone has a huge boost and a very solid foundation - and that's great, I love iPhone gaming - but Android has sheer numbers and enormous, unlimited potential. Even a tiny guy like me has a chance to make a dent in this "no man's land." Let's work together and make it a happier and friendlier place that is more welcoming to struggling, hungry, and
passionate developers, and I think after some time you will see an about-face in the amount of devs/software showing up in this part of town
Anyway, I hope you'll forgive a little plugging, but this is the point I am trying to make. Let us developers plug,
help us plug, in this forum and in others. Tell us that we are welcome and that you will support us and at least try the apps we make, and it won't be too terribly hard to change the environment. Here's some steps to get started:
1. Go to threads (like
mine) and start downloading the games and talking about them. Get some conversation happening. Even if you are not a fan of the games in question, try to at least discuss things constructively, maybe this will help the developer better understand what this particular audience would like to play.
2. Email mods, email editors, this only takes a moment - tell them they should do more to support app developers. Suggest some games that you like on Android and that maybe they should give some coverage to them. If they hear just a few people asking for some support on the matter with any frequency, it's enough to get a few gears turning..
3. go hit up some of the iPhone-centric sites (there's... LOTS of them) and email the editors over there asking for more android coverage. Go one some iPhone forums where devs hang out (TouchArcade) and start posting "we need devs to come make games for us too!" Tell them what forums are good, what type of games you;d like to see, and of course what kind of numbers(visitors) you have certainly helps
This is just for starters, but again, we are also really at the beginning of this. Like the title of this thread says - "the Future of Android Market depends on YOU." Get busy!
) was reusable from iPhone, everything had to be rebuilt from scratch, completely different engine, etc. Our gamw was originally written using the extremely popular and versatile cocos2D framework (I'd suspect at this point there's thousands of iPhone apps written with this) and that is not compatible with anything other than iPhone, and of course the app also is written Xcode (Apple's proprietary toolset). Fortunately we had very exhaustive design documents to work from, all the art assets were reusable (although we uprezzed everything, it make it easier to "rough draft" the game early in the process). So bear this in mind when hoping for a port of your favorite iOS game, more often than not it's pretty much like tackling an entirely new project in many ways (with the benefit being, "the designers have a clearer vision of how things should turn out")
