Dyack: Fart App Flood "Disrupting" Entire Videogame Industry

[Tom Goldman]

Dyack: Fart App Flood "Disrupting" Entire Videogame Industry

Denis Dyack believes that the iOS App Store and its overabundance of cheaply priced replicas are bringing the videogame industry down.

Nintendo has taken a certain amount of heat due to its official stance [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108581-Nintendo-Praises-Independents-Devalues-Garage-Developers] that cheap games like those found on the iOS App Store are devaluing the videogame industry as a whole. Sticking up for Nintendo's view is Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack, who believes that the flood of more useless apps than anyone could ever consume is the main issue.

"As an example, my understanding is that there are 17,000 fart apps right now," Dyack told Industry Gamers. "Those are more fart apps than anyone could possibly ever consume. What that does, when you start having performance oversupply, it accelerates the commoditization that drives the value of games down."

Dyack goes on to note an EEDAR study that put the average gross for an iOS game at $700. "I can guarantee you that a company like ours and most people cannot survive on a $700 gross," he adds. "So what's happening is you have a lot of people going into this hoping that they're going to get this smash hit like Angry Birds and you have a lot of investment in this industry and it's not clear if that's a viable industry."

Dyack says that the app market "seems to be eroding the handheld market," where there are actually a good number of quality games. "I'm not saying there aren't quality games on the iOS," he continues. "Because there are; there are some good games there, but there's so much performance oversupply and so much commoditization, that it actually is affecting, in my opinion, the industry in a very negative way."

He agrees with Nintendo that the industry has to be careful with apps due to the "dramatic disruption" they're already having. Dyack previously made similar comments on X-Men Destiny [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109934-Too-Human-Dev-Predicts-Social-Gaming-Crash] fart app anytime soon... *sigh*.

Source: IndustryGamers [http://www.industrygamers.com/news/nintendo-is-right-about-iphone-apps-hurting-industry-in-very-negative-way-says-dyack/]

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[vxicepickxv]

Analogy to 1982 gaming market in 3,2,1...

 

[Sixties Spidey]

It's such a shame that anything this man says is immediately tossed aside when one remembers that he was involved in making a ten year in production that turned out to be worth less than a fart app.

 

[Hungry Donner]

Wasn't Angry Birds itself a knock off? You could find free launcher/knock-down flash games all over the internet before it showed up. I've never played AB so maybe it added something new I'm unaware of.

 

[LeeshaJoy]

Wasn't Angry Birds itself a knock off? You could find free launcher/knock-down flash games all over the internet before it showed up. I've never played AB so maybe it added something new I'm unaware of.

Yeah, it added the aspect of not being able to friggin' see what you're aiming at. How the game ever got so popular is beyond me--I played the free demo for two minutes and got fed up with it.

 

[Quellist]

17k fart apps? words fail me...

I mean i know a lot of us gamers are childish but still, 17000? why, just why?

On a more serious note, if profits for apps are so low that's a bad thing, i've seen some really revolutionary games in the Android Market and i don't want to see that end.

 

[RoboGeek]

when i read the title i thought it meant loads of people in the video game industry had downloaded a fart app and "disrupting" the game development process by making fart noises all day

 

[Armored Prayer]

17,000 fart apps? Is like people who make these believe that they are the first ones to come up with it. Reminds me of that one stupid developer that keeps making shitloads of that "Talking _____ the talking_____" apps.

Makes me wish the App Store had a strict set of rules to reduce cheap knockoffs.

 

[cynicalsaint1]

When he mentions most apps only making $700 - what I'd really like to know is whether we're talking about those made by real software studios, or are the overwhelmingly made by some dude in his spare time? Because there's a big difference there - I mean obviously a serious game studio isn't going to be able to survive on a $700 gross - I mean that's obviously not enough to run a studio on, but if you're just making silly games in your free time, then you really don't have to worry about how much you're spending making the game because that amount is essentially $0.

Also I get the feeling that most apps make their money on adds. Still he raises a decent argument, I'm just not sure I buy it. Especially coming from someone whose business strategy seems to be "Make a Too Human sequel instead of an Eternal Darkness sequel" and suing Epic because they apparently couldn't get the Unreal engine to work for them despite the fact that no one else seems to be complaining.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

The cream rises to the top DD. If you can't compete with fart apps then maybe you are in the wrong business. The best games will have word of mouth promotion and will be searched for directly instead lost in a directory sea.

 

[Bretty]

It is funny. When I look back at the app stores I basically see flash games for the last ten years.

There have been millions. Way more than 17,000 fart flash games I am sure. What is my point I hear you say? Well now people are making money of this crap.

 

[similar.squirrel]

What a killjoy. Fart-apps are the opiate of the people.

But yeah, this is a supply & demand thing. Which makes me wonder how people who are amused by flatulence to such a degree can afford, let alone operate, a smartphone.

 

[mjc0961]

It's such a shame that anything this man says is immediately tossed aside when one remembers that he was involved in making a ten year in production that turned out to be worth less than a fart app.

Yeah, I have to be honest, my mind instantly went into "he's talking about crappy games?!" mode as soon as I read the part where he's from Silicon Knights.

Although he is right, so I can't be too harsh. It's like the Xbox Live Indie Marketplace: I never bother going in there to try and find the good games because so many of them are awful fart, "the controller is now a massager", or other crappy titles that it's not worth sifting through. I've heard a lot of other people say the same thing, so on some level, all the crappy games are hurting the good games. I don't know on how large a scale, but it's there.

 

[Chibz]

Yeah. I've seen the end of the ios store coming for ages now. Mostly because of the hundreds of clone games without any real quality in them.

17 THOUSAND fart apps. What the...

 

[HBaskerville]

According to Asymco Apple has paid out over 2 billion dollars to app developers. Seems like this is where good money can be made. Some of that 2 billion goes to games devs. Perhaps this will help drag game developers down from the 50-70 dollar price gouging for some of crappy AAA games these days. Any time game studio developer (like this guy) bitches about affordable games/apps with a complaint of "poor quality" it smacks of crocodile tears.

link to Asymco article:
http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/17/itunes-has-paid-over-2-billion-to-app-developers-and-12-billion-to-record-labels/

 

[Quellist]

17k fart apps? words fail me...

I mean i know a lot of us gamers are childish but still, 17000? why, just why?

On a more serious note, if profits for apps are so low that's a bad thing, i've seen some really revolutionary games in the Android Market and i don't want to see that end.

The average profits for apps are so low because there are things like 17000 fart apps. Good apps are actually far more profitable then this guy thinks. Since there is basically no restriction on what you can put on the app store, there is obviously going to be an extremely large number of rather useless stupid apps that bring down the average sales of all the others.

Heh, good point, i should have thought of that. I feel a little better about the future of gaming apps on my phone now