I disagree. Yes, peoples expections are warped because of freemium but an indie developer should be able to make plenty of money with a small bit of notoriety. It really comes down to if developers expect capture the entire mobile gaming market they are barking up the wrong tree. They need to build an audience and not let freemium practices get in that space. I grew up on the snes and I would put those games head to head against any PS5 AAA game. Sure the PS5 game may be a visual spectical and have all sorts of complexity but the Nintendo developers had to do more with less. End of the day you could have the same amount of engagement with a cheaper to make product and we would all be better for it. Look at deadcells. Look a hollow knight. I know these are platformers but they are best in class and their budgets can't be extraordinary.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The trouble is I could make it truly excellent game and then I could either release it on mobile and make very little money or I could release it on Steam and make a lot of money so what am I going to do?

Sure I could release it on both platforms but then I'm committing to supporting another platform that probably won't net me that much profit. It's the same economics that means that developers tend not to release games for Mac.

[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Certainly. It will take some true pioneers to build mobile as a viable platform but we would all be better for it.