Lessons for game developers from a lemonade stand

Back in Norman Rockwell’s America, kids weren’t afraid to take a chance on going into business for themselves. Rockwell’s iconic “Lemonade Stand” image showed a whole generation of children that to succeed in business, all they had to do was hang out a sign, and a whole community of lemonade lovers (or sympathetic neighbors) would gather round, happily paying a nickel for a cold cup of lemonade on a hot summer day.

Unfortunately for kids in the lemonade business – or the gaming business, for that matter – things are a lot more complicated today. Mobile game developers may find themselves among the thousands whose apps barely get played, or are never even downloaded. Let’s face it; if you go according to the odds, the chances of success in the mobile game marketplace (which grows by hundreds of titles a day) are not good. Is there anything developers can do to improve their chances?