It has been fine for me. I've been using things like Xcode, sublime text, mamp, codekit, git, mail. Haven't used virtual machines much though so can't comment on that. I typically find the OS X betas easier to work with than iOS
We did, but in the end this has to be treated as a business. All aspiring game developers have a fear of quitting their jobs, so money is probably the most important benchmark for anyone else who would try this out. And we have an agreement not to go into shady/unethical IAP territory, so we should still be proud of the final products.
Not at all -- they are a necessity. I just feel that some developers implement them tastefully (map packs, new characters) while others are only focused on money. I'd like to offer IAP's that look like a mini expansion where at least a solid amount of dev effort is recognizable.
This is nice in theory, but the masses (aka mobile game players) have mental space for three game types: free, paid, and scammy/clone/ripoff.
You will put a sizable dev effort into a 5.99 IA purchase that statically will not sell nearly as much as the game itself. Maybe that's not the exact case but this is the balancing act.
Personally I'd like to see the brothers produce concrete milestones. For instance, in the first month you have to ship the first paid version. Or whatever. So far, they haven't put their butts on the line for anything less than a year.
Some things i really loved about the devs of BADLAND are that not only did they provide a huge amount of free content before the paid expansions, but the expansions were absolutely worth it! Further more they recognized the existence of a particular audience segment that would get absolutely hooked to their game and would aspire to be the "hard-core" ones. They rewarded them by providing challenges that would unlock the premium content. And while these were reasonably tough, they were also doable.
If you come in under budget it won't help. The reasoning is that we should each be encouraged to experiment. One of us may go heavy on the art while the other focuses on marketing. Either way, there should be no punishment for trying as much as you can within the rules.
If one of us goes over, that will count against the final profit.
I'd personally love to see a weekly recap hosted on youtube and embedded in your site. You could do a 2 minute interview each, and further down the track start including screencaps.
If I had to pick one of those, it would be reducing work. People will pay for something that makes their job easier / efficient. Knowing what people want is hard though. I personally attribute it to day after day of paying attention to the details in support, design and all other areas of a business, which slowly builds trust and paying users.
Of the three, my guess would be making web-form creation accessible to people who could not do it before. While it's great to save time, that's a percentage improvement; whereas making the impossible possible is of a different order altogether. It's also to get people to adopt if they haven't already invested in a way of doing it that is already working for them (even if it is inefficient etc) - change is hard when you have bigger problems to worry about. But that's just my guess - I'd love to hear from the wufoo team...
But I agree with you about the support, design etc. There are a few companies providing online forms. Technically, it's not that hard to do; and I had a quick play with a competitor, that seemed pretty good. So I guess the "what people want" above just defines the mini "industry" of online forms - if Wufoo's is within an industry, its success must be based on additional factors, like the ones you mention.
If you actually need to change the markup on the form, then your only option would be to use our API to submit the data to our servers. Joe is correct in that we do have embedded methods that reduce the load on our server and allow you to handle the initial page load, but we do not have a method that allows you to use your own HTML (but you can use your own CSS). Posting to our servers DOES work, but if there are errors on submission they would be shown to the user on the hosted version of your form.
OK. I didn't see any mention of the API in the 'Code Manager' section and didn't think to search specifically for it.
In any case, it looks like it's best if I stick with what I've got if I want to maintain error display... I have functionality in the form that's not possible to add with CSS, I'm using jQuery to set up ajax form submission / error display, and XPertMailer sends my messages through a gmail account on the back end.
If our team is going to be away for a few hours, we usually do have a laptop on hand. Otherwise, we just do it through our phones (which is slow and painful), or ask another team member to cover for a few hours.
Side note to parent comment -- we do offer the same support to free and paid plans right now.
You bring up a good point. Right now, we're still small so everyone has a support day and talks to users almost daily. At this size, we all appreciate the close communication with the people using our product and we write those cards out of free will (not just a job description). Chris wrote more about it here:
Now, as the company grows, this may have to be adjusted. The cards did not start as some marketing stunt, and we never want that message to be sent to our users. When cards from developer X don't feel personal enough, we'll have to brainstorm some more creative ways to thank our users.
