general musings: / the App store

Thanks to the App Store, attention spans are extremely short - a game has to have serious sticking power to keep in the user's mind for over the course of even weeks. Somehow this is a problem with only iPhone games ... small-console games like DS or PSP don't have this problem, because you have to go out and buy these games, physically: they are more of an investment, it takes more effort, so you buy something you feel lasts a long time. An iPhone game takes next to no effort to get; likely the user is likely to jump to the next game without nary a forethought. It's the investment of monogamy versus the free-for-all promiscuity of the App store.