Helping to improve GS Reputation...

TwistedMech

So this is a great quote:

"We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don't need any more Fart apps. If your app doesn't do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted.
If your App looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or you're trying to get your first practice App into the store to impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have lots of serious developers who don't want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour."

I know by now that the new GS will be free to use but looks like they will get their money by other methods. To help the serious developer and cut out the crap people submit and to also improve the GS reputation, I believe GS should adopt the following….

We almost know for certain that GS will make us use their publishing service in their next subscription period so adding the following may help everyone.

1. Submit your Game to GS for approval. They can check the content and if they feel it was “Game made in an hour while in the bath” quality, then they can reject it and the user can work to improve it and resubmit.

2. If the game is accepted by GS, then pay your administration fee to have GS publish it to iTunes.

What this does is to (A) only people serious about making a good game are willing to pay money to get it on iTunes and (B) GS will vet the crap to improve their reputation and thus have a better body of work in iTunes.

Thoughts?

chosenonestudios

BinaryBiscuits said:
So this is a great quote:

"We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don't need any more Fart apps. If your app doesn't do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted.
If your App looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or you're trying to get your first practice App into the store to impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have lots of serious developers who don't want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour."

I know by now that the new GS will be free to use but looks like they will get their money by other methods. To help the serious developer and cut out the crap people submit and to also improve the GS reputation, I believe GS should adopt the following….

We almost know for certain that GS will make us use their publishing service in their next subscription period so adding the following may help everyone.

1. Submit your Game to GS for approval. They can check the content and if they feel it was “Game made in an hour while in the bath” quality, then they can reject it and the user can work to improve it and resubmit.

2. If the game is accepted by GS, then pay your administration fee to have GS publish it to iTunes.

What this does is to (A) only people serious about making a good game are willing to pay money to get it on iTunes and (B) GS will vet the crap to improve their reputation and thus have a better body of work in iTunes.

Thoughts?

This is good, except if they can't approve your game, they can't get your money. If they can't get your money, there back to square one.

I think to download the damn tool, you should have to pay $50-$100. Then $300 membership for a membership (pro and express combined). Then $50 for each app you upload. Then you can submit your own apps. I know this won't work because they've already abandoned this method, but its still nice to dream about. Anyway, this one is kinda pricey. You can also use GS direct if you want.

Chaser

Personally I think they are not saying anything because they are not going to change their business model. They have room to play with % and maybe how much they charge us to publish. As for branding loss I didn't do this for nothing
DeMentid Apps they need to do something drastic to fix their image now.

scitunes

I wonder if they will have a tiered system with multiple iTunes accounts:

GSpro games
GSgames
GScrap

Obviously they would need different names.

This could alleviate the issue of having good games surrounded by crap. The problem would be that deciding what is great, good, or crap is somewhat subjective. You can usually separate the crap from the rest but deciding good vs great could be tricky.

Chaser

scitunes said:
I wonder if they will have a tiered system with multiple iTunes accounts:

GSpro games
GSgames
GScrap

Obviously they would need different names.

This could alleviate the issue of having good games surrounded by crap. The problem would be that deciding what is great, good, or crap is somewhat subjective. You can usually separate the crap from the rest but deciding good vs great could be tricky.

I think they will let apple be the judge with their new crap statement so GS can say we submitted it (taking your publish$$) then say sorry apple thought you had a crap app

scitunes

But they will need to balance the short term gain of the upload fee against the long term gain of the percentage they take from game sales. If the Gamesalad itunes page becomes shunned by customers, GS will go under. There is no way they can survive on pure upload fees. The reason is that people who hope to do more than just say to a friend "look my shart app is on the app store" will realize that they can't make any decent money and they will move on. So then GS will lose those developer's upload fees as well. If devs cannot get customers to buy their games, GS will fail in the long (or even not so long) term.

Valan

I think in some part they will vet some of the games that are obviously trash. Apple is going to be more stringent in what they allow onto the App store. Maybe this played some part in GS decision. If a designer keeps getting rejected then they will feel they have wasted $200.

Let's think about the genuine people who are turned away by American Idol or Xfactor. If a person spent a long time producing a less than sellable game and then gave money for it to be published we owe it to them to be reasonable. It may be one of us.

Chunkypixels

But doesnt vetting the submissions go against the whole idea of opening up the development process to "everyone".

The main pillar that the new system is built upon is lowering the barrier of development, and bringing development to the masses. If they then start vetting what theyre going to publish, then that goes against that.

I just dont see how they can justify vetting products under their new system without it contradicting their whole mission statement...not to mention it vastly reducing revenues if they do limit what apps they publish.

Again...another reason why I believe they really havent thought out this new system properly, as without any kind of vetting of apps, theyre going to be opening themselves up to having to publish a flood of crap apps.

They currently have a name associated with crap apps which is one thing...but actually being the publisher of those crap apps is gonna be a much bigger hurdle to overcome.

Valan

They have to do some kind of vetting.
If they don't then Apple will get very peeved when they are getting so much crap from one developer/publisher.

chosenonestudios

This just work, overnight GameSalad will become the most hated publisher ever.

AfterBurnett

Hopefully Apple will step up their quality control and GS won't need to.