This is toxic advice and putting it out there makes the ecosystem worse. Giving it anonymously but backing it by appealing to your authority as an IGF judge, etc is bullshit.

(And that's true regardless of whether it's effective -- it clearly is, though I think mostly in the short term).

Edit: Since I'm being fairly negative here, I want to add that VonGuard's comments on gameplay and adding unique elements seem well-informed and well-intentioned.

OK, fair enough. I am not giving the cheating advice as an IGF judge. The advice for improving gameplay, and my compliments on the quality were as an IGF judge.

My comments on the app store are strictly from the cynical perspective of seeing what works. It has to be said. If you go in not knowing the table stakes, yer at a disadvantage. This is just like search engine optimization: fluid, ever changing, highly competitive, extremely scummy, but EVERYONE does it.

The alternative from the perspective of say, EA or a GluMobile, is to play completely by the rules, but produce 500 games per year. As a smalltime developer, cheating is immeasurably helpful when competing with the giants that can launch 2 new games every week.

I can't help but feel your desire for me not to talk about it this loud amounts to you plugging your ears and saying "LALALALALALA NOT LISTENING!" This stuff happens every day. Ignoring it means losing to it.

I can't help but disagree with your approach in principle. I acknowledge that your advice may be sound, and you may well have done the research necessary to arrive at your opinions - but the fact remains that you are giving people incredibly cynical advice without risking using your own credibility to back it up.

Your advice sounds cynical because it is. People don't want to cheat to win - and you're telling them that they have to. Well, who are you to say that? Why should people listen to you? You may be an IGF judge, but that doesn't mean you've ever sold a game (well scratch that, I actually don't know the qualifications required to become an IGF judge, but you catch my drift).

I say this not to be critical of you personally - but if you're saying 'you need to cheat', and then brandishing your status as a judge in a relevant body, then people are going to listen to you. If you're wrong, you've given people bad advice - and this means that you should lose credibility. If you're right, then you'll gain credibility. Simply 'opting out' of the credibility problem makes it very easy for supposedly credible people to give bad advice - which doesn't help anyone in the long run - and in fact can damage a lot of people's businesses and livelihoods.

>"People don't want to cheat to win - and you're telling them that they have to. Well, who are you to say that? Why should people listen to you?"

It's advice, you can take it or leave it.

You're more than welcome to be the guy/team who says, "we're going to do this the right way!". But so do a lot of other indie gaming teams, and they go under. I lived in the social gaming space for a while (Facebook). The biggest discouragement is that the quality of games made little difference to getting noticed and making money. I am no longer in the space.

You can do it the "honorable" way, and that's great, and may work. If you want to make a business of the business, you have to get your hands dirty. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

But this is the point - it's fine to say these things if you're not going to put your own credibility on the line and say 'this is me, these are my credentials, this is the reality'. I'm not denying that the game is skewed, that you can only compete if you cheat. All I'm saying is that if you're claiming some kind of expertise in this area, then you should attach your name to your words. Otherwise you're just a cynic and you're making the world a worse place by propagating the idea that you can only succeed if you cheat. It's not healthy, and it stops people even looking at ways of making it easier for the little guy to compete.