Spelunky dev: mobile is "just too scary" for indie teams

Spelunky developer Derek Yu has explained in a new interview why the mobile arena may appear too scary and fraught with risk for indie teams, when compared to the PC market.

Speaking with GI.biz, Yu said, "I think it's tough because that [mobile] market does have so many games that are there to be cheap entertainment and make a lot of money.

"That's just a difficult place to be for a developer who wants to make essentially a non-mobile style game for a mobile platform. It's just kind of intimidating. It's a very finicky business, too, in terms of what succeeds and what doesn't. For a lot of developers, putting games on iOS and mobile feels like a lottery, and that's a real unstable feeling that's hard for developers."

Yu added that the mobile arena was "just too scary" for him to explore further at this time, and added, "You could really just completely tank on mobile, which I don't think is true if you make a good game on PC or console. If you spend a couple years on it, you're going to at least get back what you put in."

This is similar to something I touched on yesterday, where I likened the iOS market to a lottery and suggested that digital store-fronts on consoles could just propose a better prospect. See what you think here.