Hey, this is the Daily Overpass, my name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, let's talk about app developers vs game developers!
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So today I wanna talk about app developers vs game developers, because a lot of the time
as mobile application developers, the two disciplines are lumped together.
And they're completely different, it's like two different mentalities!
So I've done a little bit of game development, and I'm talking about simple 2D game development,
but most of the time I consider myself to be an app developer.
So I think in terms of buttons and lists and drop downs and all that kind of stuff, whereas
a game developer thinks in terms of the game loop, the scoring, the levels, how the different
objects interact with each other on each iteration of the frame reset and everything like that
- completely different!
So if you're think about hiring a developer, that's something to keep in mind, that you
get the right developer for the job, because I have hired the wrong developer before for
both those situations.
So I had a development team in India and they had done a couple of the business apps that
we started off with, and then I wanted to do a game.
So I said "can we do a game?" and of course they said "yeah! we can do a game!".
And it was disastrous!
They were trying to do everything in native so they didn't have any concept of game loops
or anything like that.
If they can move something across the screen, it was amazing!
We weren't using corona or any of the game frameworks at the time, and it just took a
long time!
And they didn't know - and even I was doing research on my own, I was finding out stuff
that they weren't even thinking to look for, like using tiling engine as opposed to drawing
everything on the screen manually in code.
So you could create new levels and everything like that, and this is just simple, 2D games!
When it comes to 3D games, it's completely different, and it's a completely different
mindset.
And I've also had..so once we did start doing games, we did them in corona, and then we
had a client project come in for another business app, which most of the client stuff we do
are business apps.
I've had a couple of game applications for client work, but I prefer to do business apps,
it's easier to describe.
I think a lot of times I think game development is more suited to the indie developer who
can sit there and just iterate.
It's like writing a novel, they can just take the story where they want it to go as opposed
to describing everything in detail beforehand, which a lot of clients don't really like to
do.
So I had my game developer design a business application using SDK because, according to
their documentation you could do business apps with it and I thought "that's fantastic",
and that went a bit awry too!
All the variables were in global scope, it was done in ...basically what we had to do
is, we had weeks of work on this where it was just full of bugs, and I pulled an all-nighter
and re-wrote the thing almost completely in ionic, and it worked much better!
So there's two different mentalities, and this is something to always be thinking about.
If you're gonna hire an app developer, think about what you need.
This is the first question we ask new clients "do you need an app or a game?"
So, my question to you guys today is - what kind of developer are you?
I'm definitely more of an app developer.
For years, that's mostly what I've done.
I think in terms of API's and databases and form elements.
And doing game stuff is, I think it's a bit more fun, it's also something that I think
is more of a personal thing, doing it for yourself.
That's why I think in terms of indie developers, in terms of games, I think you guys are better
off that way, just my personal opinion, but I don't know!
Anyway, let me know what you guys think!
Are you an app developer or a game developer?
That's it for today, I'll talk to you guys tomorrow!