Cocos 2D and Me

I have been developing iPhone applications on and off for around half a year now, and it is one of the most enjoyable development experiences I’ve had. The supplied controls look great, and the marketplace is huge and easily accessible. There’s been a few successes for me along the way, in particular PhotoCaddy, a guide for DSLR photographers which was featured by Apple in the “whats hot” section and made it to #8 on the charts.

For the last few months I’ve been considering jumping into the games arena. In my mind, this is a fairly big move, as it means departing from the standard Apple controls, and entering a very competitive arena. I’ve already made my decision, but you might not have made yours, so let’s look at a few reasons for and against developing iPhone games.

Reasons For Developing iPhone Games

• The market is huge. While it’s difficult to get reliable figures on how many people actually own iPhones, there have been over 2 billion apps downloaded from the App Store. That’s a very big number!
• Games are fun. I like playing games, especially small fun time wasters, which just happens to be the sort of game the iPhone is well suited to. Will developing games be as fun as playing them? More so, I think.
• The challenge. I don’t expect writing a game to be easy, in fact I expect it to be considerably more difficult than anything I’ve written for the iPhone thus far. But, overcoming a challenge leads to great satisfaction.
• Chance of success. Everybody loves games, and the idea that people will be playing my game on the bus, telling their friends about it, and writing blog entries on how to get the best scores, really excites me.
• The Apple iPad is coming. Whether or not you like the product, it is going to sell, and people are going to play games on it. Personally, I believe it will be a great platform for some games, and those that take advantage of it’s capabilities could do very well.

Reasons to Avoid iPhone Games Development

• The market is saturated. There’s 140,000 apps in the App Store at last count, and a large proportion of these are games. There’s a lot of competition, and it will be hard to get noticed.
• Complexity. Making a game is a lot more difficult than dropping a few UITableViews onscreen. There’s frame rates to worry about, mathematics and physics, and complex object interactions.
• Higher expectation of quality. There’s some really great apps in the App Store at the moment, but often the highest quality ones aren’t the highest selling – it’s usually the ones that have marketed themselves well, and do some job in a reasonable manner. This strategy is unlikely to hold up with games.

So why develop games? For me, the strongest motivator is that it’s always something I’ve had an interest in, and now seems like a great time to get started. iPhone sales are booming, the iPad is coming, and I’m fortunate enough to have some free time on my hands.

If you’re new to iPhone games development, or you’re still trying to make up your mind, this blog will be your friend along the way. This is a completely new area for me, and I want to provide a resource for those who are getting started. I plan on posting samples of code, links to anything I find useful, as well as discussions and screens on development progress as I build my first game. I’d love for you to join me.