Hello everyone, I am Gnemnij, a developer from China.

This is my first post on GD.N and actually this is my only second day of this forum. I came here with my question which I had hesitated for a while. I read a lot of posts around to see if I can find a similar question raised by someone else but I didnt.

The story is, I finished a CCG(collectible card game) design recently. You can just imagine the game as an Hearthstone-like game but the core game play is semi-real time rather than turn-based, which opens the possibility to create multiple players card game since turn-based game is unbearable when there are more than two players in a game. I also introduced some unprecedented concept to the design while around 50% mechanism were cut from the traditional CCG to spare "room" for new stuff.

I started to looking for technical partners to start this business from last month. The problem in front of me is I can't decide the platform of this game: PC or Mobile? I heard that the marketing plan should be finished even before the programmers step in, and the platform decision will largely determine the whole marketing direction. so, I really hope you veterans could share some thoughts with me. BTW, the game will be published globally.

PC

Pros

· Don't need to sacrifice content for pack size and mobile screen. This is quite important.

· I can show players a complex story with more depth which is hard to achieve on mobile game.

· easier to find core players on PC than mobile(better market).

Cons

· Longer development cycle, technical perspective and product perspective( more details than mobile game), higher budget requirement

· Less easier to find good programmers than mobile game programmers in China.

· I basically don't know anything about PC game publishing! I don't know who to find and how to deal with the payment channel and etc.

Mobile

· Less budget needed ( less time for development and relatively lower salary for mobile game programmers)

The salary is actually higher for mobile devs compared to PC devs.

I'd say just choose a cross platform framework (Unity?) and target both.

Just so you don't forget... these are some important points why you should think twice about going mobile:

Revenue:

If you do not go F2P, expect the money you can charge on mobile app stores to be 10x-20x smaller than what you can charge for example on Steam.

The average paid mobile game to my knowledge hovers around 1$ price at the moment. The average Indie game on Steam asks for 10-15$, some go higher.

Crowded App Stores:

With the incredible flood of new games on most mobile app stores, your game must either be EXTREMLY good (and have some luck), or you need to be EXTREMLY lucky (and have a somewhat good or at least novel game) to make any decent money. For every success story many 1000 will fail. That is actually true everywhere, but moreso in the low barrier to entry world of the mobile app stores.

Steam has also become crowded lately, but with Greenlight, and a little bit higher expectations of gamers, you still will have to compete with far less games coming out every day. IDK how it looks on other platform like desura, but while the amount of potential customers might never reach App store numbers, far less free loaders and far less developers competing can be expected.

Of course going PC brings its own set of difficulties (if you want to reach the maximum amount of potential customers, you need to be on Steam. To get on Steam, you need a big fanbase... so either you excel at marketing and community building, or you need to got to smaller download platforms)...

Still, at the moment for a commercial non-F2P title, mobile sounds like the more difficult platform to me. For a F2P title, it depends more on your F2P model and wheter this is better suited for the mobile or PC space.

CCH Audio's post sound actually like a reasonable way to go... just make sure you have enough time for a real port. Don't try to shoehorn a mobile game unto PC or the other way round.

The control scheme and the gameplay needs to be adapted for the platform even more than graphical and technical aspects.

If you make the game for mobile you can also release it for the PC. If you design it for the PC, it will be more difficult to port it to mobile. Since you already have prior experience in mobile development, I say design for mobile and release for both.

Just so you don't forget... these are some important points why you should think twice about going mobile:
 
Revenue:
If you do not go F2P, expect the money you can charge on mobile app stores to be 10x-20x smaller than what you can charge for example on Steam.
The average paid mobile game to my knowledge hovers around 1$ price at the moment. The average Indie game on Steam asks for 10-15$, some go higher.
 
Crowded App Stores:
With the incredible flood of new games on most mobile app stores, your game must either be EXTREMLY good (and have some luck), or you need to be EXTREMLY lucky (and have a somewhat good or at least novel game) to make any decent money. For every success story many 1000 will fail. That is actually true everywhere, but moreso in the low barrier to entry world of the mobile app stores.
 
Steam has also become crowded lately, but with Greenlight, and a little bit higher expectations of gamers, you still will have to compete with far less games coming out every day. IDK how it looks on other platform like desura, but while the amount of potential customers might never reach App store numbers, far less free loaders and far less developers competing can be expected.
 
Of course going PC brings its own set of difficulties (if you want to reach the maximum amount of potential customers, you need to be on Steam. To get on Steam, you need a big fanbase... so either you excel at marketing and community building, or you need to got to smaller download platforms)...
 
Still, at the moment for a commercial non-F2P title, mobile sounds like the more difficult platform to me. For a F2P title, it depends more on your F2P model and wheter this is better suited for the mobile or PC space.
 
 
CCH Audio's post sound actually like a reasonable way to go... just make sure you have enough time for a real port. Don't try to shoehorn a mobile game unto PC or the other way round.
The control scheme and the gameplay needs to be adapted for the platform even more than graphical and technical aspects.

· Less budget needed ( less time for development and relatively lower salary for mobile game programmers)

The salary is actually higher for mobile devs compared to PC devs.

Steam supports free to play games and micro transactions. Whether or not PC players will spend money to pay for expansion packs is another question.

It may look like you can hire a mobile programmer for cheaper because you can. But that is because mobile is all the rage now from the low barrier of entry and people price themselves cheap to get a job. You will still pay six figures (in USD) for an experienced programmer no matter your target platform. You mention China so I assume that is where you are from so of course salary will be much different but you do get what you pay for.

You won't find something like Paypal that you can implement once and support purchases on any platform you want. Most of the major platforms have their own system that you have to go through. None of them are very hard to implement so that is really the least of your worries.

Steam supports free to play games and micro transactions. Whether or not PC players will spend money to pay for expansion packs is another question.

It may look like you can hire a mobile programmer for cheaper because you can. But that is because mobile is all the rage now from the low barrier of entry and people price themselves cheap to get a job. You will still pay six figures (in USD) for an experienced programmer no matter your target platform. You mention China so I assume that is where you are from so of course salary will be much different but you do get what you pay for.

You won't find something like Paypal that you can implement once and support purchases on any platform you want. Most of the major platforms have their own system that you have to go through. None of them are very hard to implement so that is really the least of your worries.

Steam supports free to play games and micro transactions. Whether or not PC players will spend money to pay for expansion packs is another question.

It may look like you can hire a mobile programmer for cheaper because you can. But that is because mobile is all the rage now from the low barrier of entry and people price themselves cheap to get a job. You will still pay six figures (in USD) for an experienced programmer no matter your target platform. You mention China so I assume that is where you are from so of course salary will be much different but you do get what you pay for.

You won't find something like Paypal that you can implement once and support purchases on any platform you want. Most of the major platforms have their own system that you have to go through. None of them are very hard to implement so that is really the least of your worries.

Thanks. I will decide to release my game on steam first.