对于那些“独立开发者”以及没有多少专业背景的“草根企业”来说，iPhone给他们提供了一个很好的平台，帮助他们迅速开发并推广游戏。但是即使他们能在几个月内推出一款游戏，也并不意味这款游戏就能像《Angry Birds》或《Tiny Wings》那样成功，或者能在拥有无数应用程序的App Store中大放光彩。

前苹果游戏设计师格雷姆·迪瓦恩（Graeme Devine）非常了解iOS生态圈。以下是他对iPhone开发者所犯的错误以及他们该如何取得成功的看法。

Graeme Devine

迪瓦恩表示，“iPhone和iPad上的游戏之所以取得成功，原因在于它们能够真正根据这些设备的功能来开发产品。这是个很简单的道理，但是很多游戏开发商却忽略了这一点。他们只是盲目地把虚拟方向盘安装在屏幕上，在其中加了些东西让用户体验。但是如果看看苹果应用程序，就会发现不管是图片应用，天气预报应用还是股票应用，都与用户正在玩的东西没有直接联系，用户可以直接操作这些应用。而《Angry Birds》在这方面做得最突出，它能够真正与触摸屏环境融为一体。”

迪瓦恩同时也提到了一个很严重的问题（游戏邦注：这也是很多iPhone游戏都存在的情况），即游戏制作过于粗糙。据他所称，“App Store中99%的用户其实并没有兴致将这些无聊的游戏玩到头。因为绝大部分游戏的制作都很粗糙，也没经过任何游戏测试，这些游戏开发商甚至一点都不想认真把游戏做好。他们只是想当然地把游戏开发出来并投放到App Store。可是要清楚，要赚到一百万美元并没有这么容易。我想在不止10万个应用程序的App Store里，可能只有不到1000件，甚至不到100件的AAA级产品。”

可能有些游戏开发商是刚刚接触这个领域，并不知道怎么做才能顺利获得成功。迪瓦恩补充表示：“在这个领域里有很多新手。对于他们来说这里很神奇很不可思议。但是事实是，这个领域并没有那么神奇。你可以在业余时间就开发出一款游戏，并将其投放到iTunes应用商店，由此出击90个国家的市场。但我认为如果游戏开发者能够静下心来一步一步地开发产品，他们还能做得更好。”

另外一个主要问题是，很多开发商只是被动地等待苹果App Store推荐自己的产品。迪瓦恩表示，这是个大忌。

他表示，“如果你的市场营销策略就是寄希望于苹果推荐你的产品，那么你可能会走上绝境。如果你不能好好制作产品并突出它的特点，而只是将它推向App Store，如果你不能好好思考玩家会在哪体验你的产品，那么你的应用程序就算登上了榜首，但是也很快就会陷入沉寂。App Store里的每个应用的平均生命周期是10天，这听起来很可笑。但这种方法绝对不可能盈利。”

迪瓦恩总结到：“应用如果很有特色，并且拥有较好的游戏玩法，那么它将吸引许多随时关注它更新情况的用户。我想说，只有这样的应用，才有可能保持旺盛的生命力，并创造大量收益。开发商首先必须要有一个良好的项目计划。很多开发商的计划只是‘完成游戏’而不去思考完成游戏后要如何将其推广出去。他们必须好好思考如何进行营销，如何制定社交网络营销方案，如何在Facebook上推广产品，如何为用户更新产品，如何倾听用户的意见，接收他们的反馈并有针对性地进行修改。我认为如果开发商能仔细思考这些问题，他们就有望在这个市场上取得更好的成绩。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

iPhone Success – An Insider’s Guide to Game Development

iPhone is a great platform for indies and garage developers to quickly get games up and running and available to consumers, but just because you can build a game in a couple months doesn’t mean you’re going to succeed like Angry Birds or Tiny Wings, or even get noticed among the thousands and thousands of apps available on the App Store.

As the former Apple games guru, industry veteran Graeme Devine has first-hand knowledge of the iOS ecosystem. IndustryGamers picked Devine’s brain on what mistakes iPhone developers make and how they can succeed.

“One of the things that makes a successful iPhone game or iPad game is to actually use the device in a way that was meant for it to be used. It seems simple enough, but most game developers forget that. They immediately rush to put a virtual d-pad on the screen, put something in between the user and the world that they’re playing in,” he began. “If you look at every Apple application, from the photo application to the weather application to the stock thing, there’s no interfacing between you and whatever you’re playing with… you’re directly manipulating the world. The games that do the best, Angry Birds in particular, really pay attention to that. They really use that touch environment really, really well.”

Devine noted that an even bigger problem, however, is a general lack of polish that many iPhone games suffer from.

“The other thing that 99% of people on the store, I think do, is they don’t finish the damn game. There’s no level of polish, there’s no level of play testing,

there’s no thought to progression, peaks and valleys, or any kind of ramping. They get the thing done, and they get the thing out and onto the store. ‘A million dollars please!’ It’s not going to happen that way. There’s probably less than a thousand great apps on the store, probably less than a hundred which are absolutely triple-A, first class. And yet, there’s more than 100,000 apps on the store.”

Some of these developers are completely new to the business and simply don’t know any better. “I think there’s a lot of first time people out there. I think that’s fantastic; I think that’s awesome. The fact that you can be in a house making a game part time and you can be out in ninety countries when you put something on the iTunes store… it’s incredible the day and age that we live in where we can do that. I think people would do better if they didn’t rush to get it out there and make their million dollars. If they would actually polish the thing for a little bit, it would make a big difference,” Devine continued.

Another major problem is that many developers simply hope to be featured by Apple on the App Store. That’s a big no-no, according to Devine.

“I would say if your entire marketing plan counts on Apple featuring you, then you’re dead,” he remarked. “If you haven’t polished your app and you just want to get it out there, and you haven’t thought about where people play the game or what people are doing with the level of polish, then your app might rise to number one, but it will quickly fall. The average cycle of an app in the App Store, I read, is ten days. That’s ridiculous. There’s no way that’s ever profitable.”

He concluded, “But apps that are polished and have good gameplay that ramps, and people pay attention to them putting out updates, those ones tend to stay there for much, much longer and are probably profitable. You have to have a plan. I think most developers, their plan is, ‘finish game,’ and there’s no plan post-’finish game.’

I think if you have a plan post-’finish game’ … how you market it, your social marketing plan, your Facebook connection into the game, your plan to update your users, your plan to listen to users, to get feedback from them and improve. [If you do those things] I think there’s a modest market there that does well.”（source:businessinsider）