zamie:
First of all, let me commend you on taking on the task of building a startup. From my experience, the gaming Ecosystem in Nigeria is very weak. Most startups in Nigeria are hardly into anything gaming related. The problem you are facing is a global problem, Game App Monetization.

I would say that if you want to continue in this line, you need to develop games and market it outside Nigeria. Develop games for an international audience. That's how you can solve this problem a bit. Successful games like candy crush are the ones that really make money. The rest don't. Probably $1-5 a day and this reduces after few months and is in no way commensurate to stress and difficulty in developing a game especially you with limited resources. Some games you see on playstore are built by gaming companies with up to 200 employees.

Nevertheless, From my experience as a business developer and researcher, I tend to see markets change a lot. One of the reasons why it's hard to make money from gaming is because there are millions of games on playstore and yours stand a low chance of being recognized. If you had intention of putting your game on playstore or Apple store, I'll say just resist and forget about it.

Try a new market and what do I mean. I'm sure you should have heard about VIRTUAL REALITY AND AUGMENTED REALITY. These are emerging markets that have the propensity to disrupt existing markets. Start building VR/AR games with an AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE. I bolded African perspective because that is what will make you stand out in the international market. At this level, you can actually sell your games because the VR audience right now are rich and there are not enough VR games. What I just stated is how you enter into a market, by disruption. Occulus, Gear VR, Cardboard and Vive should be your real friends. It's cool you already use Unity 3d so u are hardly learning anything new. Just get convenient with different VR and AR sdk.

On the other side, you can decide to go outside gaming. I'm into SAAS Software As A Service. Here you simply collect monthly charge of $9 to $25 to $99 or whichever way appropriate. And you need fewer customers. Simple and precise. Just get the customer 2 love the product.

Kudos bro. Keep on the good work.

chingle5:



Tank you Sir for your comment, regarding your comment I have been able to gather that the idea of marketing game app on major stores is really a bad idea but Sir does that also apply to app development and marketing it on major markets ?

And this new VR reality of a thing and SAAS Software thing can you please expound on such topic for the sake of other developers though I have hear of VR Reality but I haven't really given it any sort of attention.

Since it is better to hear it from someone that is already in that field .... THANK SIR

zamie:

VR is better experienced than explained. GOOGLE is your Friend. Ask him about VR not me. It's time consuming to start explaining a fresh What VR is.

zamie:


As far as any business is concerned, Don't go for saturated markets. You should go for markets that still has a high demand for what you are offering.

VR is better experienced than explained. GOOGLE is your Friend. Ask him about VR not me. It's time consuming to start explaining a fresh What VR is. But this will definitely excite you. How I can help you is to give directions on how you can enter the VR market? But Research comes first

chingle5:


OK shoot away SIR on how to enter the VR market

DanTheGeek:
No matter what you do, there's always a tendency to fail. The moment you acknowledge that, the higher your chance of success.

I also explored the gaming industry, i thought having a big enough team will help make things work but i was wrong. I had a team of programmers, enterprise web engineers, music composers, voice actors... You name it, the team was made up of up to 20 talented individuals from more than 4 countries of the world. It was a remote team.
Initially we moved with pace, had a basic level of our "crazy" game in the works which lacked some core functionalities... Long story short, everyone lost the vibe and commitment was close to nothing... Rome was not built in a day, but our Rome got destroyed half way. The fact that it was a remote company led to the problem.
Remote doesn't really work for game dev except if y'all have a previous working experience and understand each other. We had a great team, with a guy that previously worked with industry veterans like EA and co but that didn't guarantee our success. If you ask me, I'd say without a second thought that skill (which we had) and commitment (which we didn't have) are needed to launch a successful tech startup, in some rare cases, money will be necessary, but i doubt that because most things are "free" (or so they claim) these days.

I'm currently venturing into the SaaS industry with a startup i hope scales after product launch. SaaS is more feasible for me because it's quicker and easier to develop and get into the market.

chingle5:
Hello Developers, my name is Charles, a student of Unilag and also a startup developer currently working with some group of like-minds (4 in total ) who haven't been showing much commitment and dedication which has also in one way or the other have been affecting me but that is by the way.
So I and my group are into app and game development for different platform but mainly android and the window platform, we make use of software such as android studio,eclipse, vs code, coreldraw , Photoshop, unity 3D, blender, maya and many other software. ( plz don't get me wrong, we are startups it is not like we are gurus or any thing. We are still in our learning phase, it is the little things that we know that we are trying to use to build something )
So guys the main reason that I am creating this post is that :
(!) I will like to connect with other startups or developers through Q & A, hear their achievements, try to answer their questions to the best of my knowledge, view each other works and try to improve them by pointing out the flaws, try to solve challenges most of us face etc......
I have seen a lot of great works on this nairaland and I believed we can help eachother out
So here are some of the challengs I and my group are facing
(1) The issue of PHCN aka NEPA --- Well the issue of light is one common issue that people like us face because most of us use laptop or system that don't have backup but we have been able to combat that problem by using public libraries and universities or public hub like CCHub at yaba

(2) The issue of internet --- That one we usually use free internet in UNILAG and night plan which MTN and AIRTEL offer to carry out our research and downloadings but we have been able to get a swift router and Ntel 4g modem

**Now there is this serious question that have been bothering me which I believe that you guys comment might be able to provide me with the answer

(!) Here in Nigeria as a developer if you create an app that solve a particular problem or a game that is very entertaining and you are like, OK let me think of a monetization system that I will use to at least get a fortune out of it and you decided to use the advert-base type ( where you display some advert in your app ) because Nigerian don't like hearing anything PAID they like FREE things... So the question is how to generate a little INCOME when most Nigerian don't even ON there Data

I don't know what methods some of your have been using, do feel free to input some ideas or methods you have been using because I believe that a problem shared is a problem solved...... THANK YOU

chingle5:
Hello Developers, my name is Charles, a student of Unilag and also a startup developer currently working with some group of like-minds (4 in total ) who haven't been showing much commitment and dedication which has also in one way or the other have been affecting me but that is by the way.
So I and my group are into app and game development for different platform but mainly android and the window platform, we make use of software such as android studio,eclipse, vs code, coreldraw , Photoshop, unity 3D, blender, maya and many other software. ( plz don't get me wrong, we are startups it is not like we are gurus or any thing. We are still in our learning phase, it is the little things that we know that we are trying to use to build something )
So guys the main reason that I am creating this post is that :
(!) I will like to connect with other startups or developers through Q & A, hear their achievements, try to answer their questions to the best of my knowledge, view each other works and try to improve them by pointing out the flaws, try to solve challenges most of us face etc......
I have seen a lot of great works on this nairaland and I believed we can help eachother out
So here are some of the challengs I and my group are facing
(1) The issue of PHCN aka NEPA --- Well the issue of light is one common issue that people like us face because most of us use laptop or system that don't have backup but we have been able to combat that problem by using public libraries and universities or public hub like CCHub at yaba

(2) The issue of internet --- That one we usually use free internet in UNILAG and night plan which MTN and AIRTEL offer to carry out our research and downloadings but we have been able to get a swift router and Ntel 4g modem

**Now there is this serious question that have been bothering me which I believe that you guys comment might be able to provide me with the answer

(!) Here in Nigeria as a developer if you create an app that solve a particular problem or a game that is very entertaining and you are like, OK let me think of a monetization system that I will use to at least get a fortune out of it and you decided to use the advert-base type ( where you display some advert in your app ) because Nigerian don't like hearing anything PAID they like FREE things... So the question is how to generate a little INCOME when most Nigerian don't even ON there Data

I don't know what methods some of your have been using, do feel free to input some ideas or methods you have been using because I believe that a problem shared is a problem solved...... THANK YOU

Humchi:



my advice to you is that if you really want to earn income from your app whether it is a gaming or a problem solving one, take the product off shore. I mean you should base your idea internationally.

In nigeria, only a handful would want to buy a game app.
Even to find adverts to earn income is a way too hard.

Though you can use AdMob to earn cash but the amount you would get wouldn't be encouraging if you base your product only in Nigeria.

Take your product to those, who would appreciate it by being ready to buy it.

Worst is having a game industry limited to Nigerians only.
You won't make enough money.

That is it.

chingle5:



Yes I have really though about it !!!!!! It just really hard and piracy is not really helping .......