So I wrote this big long response to this post and somehow managed to swipe back a page and lost everything I wrote *sigh*
Now for take two.
Before I get started, all of the comments here are great and keep them coming. I wish we were discussing this on the thread we created to discuss the changes, but alas we are here…
Age: So I’m not the old guy here… I started programming on a TRS-80 in 1979 and a DEC-10 mainframe. My first PC was an Atari 800 with a whopping 16k of RAM but I added a memory card to get to 32K. That didn’t last long before I got an Apple IIe with floppy drives and a CPM card (didn’t like Apple’s OS)
Mobile is a dirty word: Unless your pushing DVD’s through Walmart or BestBuy, the only real way to make money on the desktop is to get on Steam. We’ve had quite a few games make it there with success. Mobile is a growing segment. But I understand the perception. Unity and Unreal are “we build big major important games and oh by the way you can do mobile” is a different message than “We rock the mobile world and oh by the way you can do desktop” and I can see where that can be an issue. Unless you’re a AAA studio, mobile is the profit zone right now. I’d rather have a framework that lets me make great mobile games and then port to desktop/TV. It’s perception vs. pocketbook. But I understand what you are saying.
Showcase: This is challenging page. Previously it was a pure HTML/CSS page that we have to write code, gather links and download artwork. It was a painful manual experience and we simply didn’t have time to update it. One of my requests was a way that page could be generated from existing data. We showcase many really good looking games on the blog and I wanted an automated way to take those posts and generate the showcase page from that. We may get there still, but for now we have a source that finds the current hot games made by Corona and that’s what’s feeding the page. This is really cool. I learned about many new Corona apps I didn’t know about. We are talking about changing the name from “Hall of Fame” to something more descriptive to what’s there. We are also talking about adding an additional carousel that could be our featured games or a true “Hall of Fame” best of the best/well known games.
Platform based on ads not premium: I’m guessing this perception comes from our large ad plugin library. But we have In-App Purchases for every platform in some form. We provide iOS, Google Play, Amazon and Steam micro-payments. Community plugins support macOS and tvOS. And there is nothing preventing you from releasing your game for a fee. That said, we do encourage ads as a way to monetize your app.
And finally… no one knows about us/growing our community: This used to not be true. Four to five years ago in the framework world we were quite well known. But we were one of the very few people in the market. It was easy to stand out. But over time the competition has increased. We have not done nearly enough public relations and advertising and now we are way behind the curve with regards to popularity. We are quite aware of this and have to fix this. We have access to Appodeal’s great PR team and they are helping work with us on this. We are working to be more active in game development communities outside of our own. It’s critical that we be more successful in this area. I have a good feeling working with Appodeal that we will improve our visibility.
Rob
