I thought I’d share a little tale of grrrrr…. and wave my pointy stick at the sky…
When I first started learning Gamesalad design software on my patenity leave back in January 2010 I created my first ever ios app ‘Contented Baby Sleep’. An app with about 10 sound effects plus a relaxing pulsating interactive screen to send babies off to sleep (plus scrollable page of info with tips on aiding a contented nights sleep). It featured a wave crashing sound and other white noise sound effects.
Link to my app here:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/contented-baby-sleep/id352256991?mt=8
It taught me the basics of the GameSalad software and introduced me to the process of submitting to the Apple iOS app store. It was by no means perfect and it would look different if I did it again today, but it did work and looked ok at the time.
The app did what I thought was ok, and made around £500 in a year… not bad for a few hours work a night for 2 weeks.
Then this happened:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083166/Weary-father-invents-iPad-app-twin-babies-sleep.html
A man a year and a bit later, created an app, that played white noise sound effects to help babies sleep after seeing a gap in the market (there was no gap… my app and about 20 other similar ones were already there). He went on to make over £60,000 in a year. (Another article says he earns over £5000 a month…. )
I’m not bitter (I don’t think….. actually lets not lie… I’m damn bitter and jealous).
It is amazing to think that perhaps with some better marketing, a better app name, better app, or a bigger bag of luck I could have been in his situation….
Oh well, I guess its a case of the binary gods striking again…. I thought I’d share this tale to help others out there know it happens to lots of developers not just to Castle crushing game designers who now look at Angry Birds and cry into the breakfast when they see how close they came to have millions and millions of gold shiny coins.