There are so many different paths available when college is on the table. Even for software developers, it starts you with a very strong base and gives you the ability help and contribute to research that is happening on campus. My computer science degree was not cheap, but it was so important in my personal life and my career. I agree that college isn't perfect, but was well worth my investment in it.
I personally want to make sure my children have as many options on the table. I would value their education as a much more important investment than any other luxuries.
PHP frameworks have come a long way, and so has the language. The big thing that stands out, is that three of the best frameworks in the space (Laravel, Symfony and Slim) work together and feel a friendly/healthy sense of competition. They are reusing each others components and building a much more promising future for PHP.
Drupal 8 is based on Symfony -- things are really moving in the right direction.
Personally, I was a huge fan of Zend Framework + Doctrine, but these frameworks are all mature and great to use.... almost as good as Rails (lol, OK, OK, don't mention Ruby within earshot of PHP fans ;)
[edit] down voted for my opinion! Argh my tiny karma is depleted -- damn you ruby, damn you to hell!
Drupal is becoming more and more insane with each release (especially 6 -> 7). The database structure is really getting out of hand. It's becoming harder and harder to deal with the performance issues.
Yeah... I don't know what to think about performance. We tend to be careful with page design and cache everything so once the cache is built the site flies.
But developing a drupal site is painful. Clearing the cache every few minutes takes forever.
Thanks for writing this up, it is always interesting and saddening to getting a deeper look at indie development on the app store.
It seems like more simplistic puzzle games like these have potential to completely blow up, but the market is also completely flooded with them. And I have found that it can be difficult to find quality in the genre. I would imagine that games that have heavier focus on art and polish can make a world of difference. It seems it gets attention from blogs/review sites and more probable for Apple to feature them.
Regardless, it is frustrating that your hard work that goes into these games didn't get the attention they may have deserved. Keep up the great work and hopefully we hear back from you soon about a monetarily successful game, whether that be in the app store or elsewhere.
Congrats on putting out such a great looking game so quickly! Solid polish and fits right in on the app store. I bought it an gave it a try and it was pretty fun. I was able to figure out a trick pretty quick that took most of the challenge away, but for the six weeks, very impressive.
A couple pieces of the article did bother me though:
I think all the planning you did helped you stay on course, but I also think it is important to constantly question your game and take time where needed to make sure it is fun. Creating a game that is fun is not usually an easy and quick task.
"Users never like what you like" - I beg to differ. While it is important to make sure that you are not the only one that likes the game (if you want it to sell), most indie game developers focus on making something they love. This concept has lead to an amazing revolution of really original and amazing indie titles.
Honestly my product is more of a vitamin that a pain killer. But I am striving to make the it a product that enhances something that they already do. It is mostly built out, but I am finding that this is going to be a great way to find good beta users as well.
With solutions like Heroku you can quickly scale your site and only be charged by the hour. Same story with a more hands of approach like EC2, although it probably will take extra work.
I am leaning towards the demo with the full game unlock as an in-app purchase. I feel it is a great way to reach a large audience, make sure the user enjoys the game before buying it, and keeps the user from being constantly annoyed by attempts to sell micro-transaction items.
I personally want to make sure my children have as many options on the table. I would value their education as a much more important investment than any other luxuries.