Why I’m Developing for iPad

I have been pretty vocal in the past about my issues with the app store, Apple, Apple’s development tools, the app market, and so on.  Leading up to the release of the iPad, I goofed on it with everyone else, and scoffed at the idea of developing anything for it.   And yet, here I am, developing apps for it.

I now have 3 (well, technically, 4) iPad apps out.  One of them, mentalBlock for iPad, reached the top 100 apps overall, the top 50 in games, and top 10 in Puzzle Games and Simulation Games.  It was successful enough that I finally feel qualified to sit back and explain myself, and why I decided to do this.

I also have somewhere around 30 iPhone/iPod apps out, either through my company (Glowdot Productions, Inc.), for other companies I contracted with, or one-off projects I’ve been hired to do.  After over a year of Apple device development, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to navigate this, even if I haven’t yet had the kind of break-out success you hear about all the time.

I’ve done alright, you could say.  But nothing to write home about.

What is the iPad?

Sounds like a silly question,  but people are seriously asking this. Someone else very accurately said that Apple has gone to much trouble to release a very interesting product without bothering to let us all know what we’re supposed to do with it.  And yet, 2 million people have already bought one.

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I stopped off in San Luis Obispo to have a walk around, and popped in to the Apple store.   I needed a good laugh, and wanted to have one at the iPad’s expense.

“Haha, look at that huge iPhone”, I said as I picked it up.  I remember the game I loaded up in the store: Diner Dash.

Now, at the expense of my own dignity, I’m going to let you know that my favorite game on the iPhone last year was Sally’s Spa. I was unfamiliar with the Time Management genre until that game, and I find it utterly fascinating and, more importantly, fun.

Fumbling around with Diner Dash, my whole perspective changed.  The iPad, I thought, is going to be absolutely brilliant for casual games.

When I returned to LA a few days later, I got myself one, and immediately started developing apps for it.

Like a Big iPhone?

Yes, it is. Only it isn’t a phone.  Oh, and no GPS.  Oh, and no camera.  Oh and it doesn’t fit in your pocket. Oh, and mine is wifi only.  No 3G.  So it’s a big, fat, bloated, broken iPhone, right?

Well, not really.  For a moment, forget the iPhone and iPod never existed.  Just the iPad.  Without the obvious comparison, it has to stand on it’s own.  So what is it?

Here’s my take:

An iPhone is a phone, and iPod, a camera, a GPS device, and an app “player”.  But for most people it’s a phone/ipod.

An iPod is an mp3 player, video player, mini Internet device, and an app “player”.  But for most people, it’s an ipod.

An iPad is NONE of those things listed above.  It is nothing more than an app “player”.  Without apps, it is useless.

Sorry for putting player in quotes so many times.  As a developer, I hate the idea of my applications being “played”, but that’s essentially what the iPad is doing.  More on that later.

So if the iPad is an app player, what does that mean for us?

Well, as a consumer, I have to say I think this is a bad thing.  If this device can’t do much other than play apps, I’m going to be fairly limited as to what I can do with it.

As a developer, on the other hand, this is great news.  Because the more of these Apple sells, the more people who will be sitting with a $500-900 brick until they start paying money to buy what you create for it.

This is a HUGE difference from the iPhone/iPod, where getting people to spend money making their phone or mp3 player do amazing things was and still is incredibly difficult.  On the iPad, it’s almost too obvious.

The Market

This means the iPad app market is a whole lot more sane than the iPhone/iPod app market.  It makes sense to jump into this one, from a business point of view.

Already, we are seeing games priced at $5-10, rather than the .99 forced on us on the iPhone/iPod.  We’re also seeing better sales (relative to the number of devices out there, anyway).  So we can charge more for something that more people are going to be willing to buy.

And, as a bonus, we can easily back-port our products to the iPhone/iPod for a little extra revenue.

Gimme The Numbers

Ok.  So how much does a top 50 game make?  Well… not a lot. But I see huge promise here.  I don’t see the iPad as a “get rich in 2 weeks or languish in obscurity” contest like the iPhone.  Which means we can take some time to let our apps find an audience.  Top 50, top 10, etc are going to be nice for exposure, but I don’t think they’ll be as critical here as before.

But this is going to depend on us developers.  Are we going to allow the market to quickly force us to price our apps at a dollar in order to get that exposure?  Or are we going to insist on a price that fits with what we think our work was worth?

This is a very important issue here.  I am already seeing apps dropped down to .99 in order to get rank, then dropping off the charts when the price goes up to a modest 2.99.  I did it this weekend.  I dropped mentalBlock to .99 after Apple featured it in the New and Noteworthy section, watched it rise to #47 on the game charts, then set it back to 2.99 and watched it fall right off the charts.

Should I set it back to .99?  No, and here’s why: it’s worth 3 dollars.  It really is.  And if someone wants to play it, that’s what they should pay for it.  I put a ridiculous amount of time into it, and 3 dollars is hardly asking too much for a couple hours of gameplay.

If no one buys it at 3 dollars, that’s ok. I have my pride to protect here, as well, and I’m not going to let a young market undervalue my work.  Neither should you.  The good news, though, is this: if your game is good, people will buy it for 3, 5, or 10 dollars.  They really will.  They just won’t buy it on crazy impulse.

That’s the key.  People will spend a dollar without thinking.  As you increase that amount, they require more thinking.  Even if it’s only 2 or 3 bucks.  They will need a couple hours, or a day, or whatever to mull it over.  But eventually they’ll buy it.  If it’s good.

So be patient!

But What Do I Make For It?

So here’s the big question.  What should I make for this thing?

Remember I called it an app “player” before?  That’s what it is.  It isn’t a computer, so stop acting befuddled when it doesn’t behave like one.  Stop getting upset when Apple makes it incredibly hard to do some thing you want it to do.  If you want a device that does all the great things computers in 2010 are capable of, go buy a tablet PC running Windows or Linux.  You shouldn’t be buying Apple products if you want power or flexibility.  That’s not what they do, nor have they ever.  That’s why Microsoft is a giant in the industry, and Apple is only now making waves.  Apple is doing something completely different here.

It is an app player. It doesn’t even run applications.  It truly plays them.

I think I have a slight advantage here, since before I got into software and game development, I was a musician and aspiring filmmaker.  I understand how those products are consumed: they are consumed much like fast food.  It gets you through the day, until you are hungry again.  But it doesn’t provide a whole lot of benefit.  Cheap, easy, does the trick, but you don’t remember a McDonald’s hamburger 3 years later.  Unless it makes you violently ill, but that’s another story.

An app that is going to do well on the iPad is probably going to be a lot like fast food.  Or a movie.  Or a song.  It should keep the user entertained and/or amused for as long as it needs to.  Like a game.  More specifically, like a casual game.  Or an interactive book.  Or some kind of social networking app.

Apple users don’t want Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, so you shouldn’t put massive amounts of time and money giving it to them.  They want Angry Birds (a great game, by the way).  They want Ragdoll Cannon or whatever.  Simple, cute, fun, disposable.

I never thought I’d say this, but I love my iPad.  I love making things for it.  I’m excited about getting to my big list of ideas for it.  But it took me getting my head wrapped around what it actually is first.