Thus was born the PocketGamer.biz Mobile Game Developers survey.
No doubt, we'll be digging deeper into industry perspectives in future, but to kick off the initiative, we stuck to some fairly tried and tested concepts.
Happiness flows
Perhaps the most surprising, and pleasant response was to the question of future company performance, with the vast majority of respondents either positive or very positive about their future.
Less than 15 percent were neutral or negative.
More expected was the response to the breakdown of game budgets, with a fairly even spread, although the lowish ranges $50-100,000 and $150-200,000 being pre-dominant.
That said, there were almost as many projects coming in at more than $500,000 as there were less than $50,000.
The relatively small size of developers - or at least those in our survey, which it should be said can't be considered a statistically diverse data set - was demonstrated in the development team size question.
Around 85 percent of companies said their teams consisted of six or fewer people.
Next up, we attempted to consider why our survey was so positive. What were the big opportunities?
The underlying growth of smartphones and tablets, partly from emerging markets, combined with new business models - notably freemium - were those reasons.
However, more innovative monetisation options such as advertising or incentivised actions were viewed as less important.
As for threats, the sheer competition in terms of the number of releases, compared with price deflation and OS fragmentation - i.e. the rising price of development combined with a lowering of potential upside - were cited.
But with respondents able to click as many options as they choose, the amount of free content, lack of competition to iOS and piracy were also highlighted.
When it came to business models, pretty much everyone is using both paid and in-app purchases, with the majority also employing in-game ads. Other freemium monetisation options are also well established.
And when it comes to platform support, theres a clear iOS-Android one-two, with Windows Phone coming in third, quite a distance behind. Interestingly, web technology HTML5 is already finding fans - more so that other emerging and legacy mobile platforms.
As for what was judged to be most important for a games success, critical acclaim was ranked highest, closely followed by brand and marketing.
Our final question asked developers to rank what they considered the most important attribute behind a games success.
Surprisingly, critical acclaim was ranked highest, with brand and marketing close behind.
Let us know
And to finish off, we had an open comments box for respondents to provide feedback on PocketGamer.biz.
Things people wanted more coverage on included; insight into the retailing of games; future bets such as cross-platform socially connected gaming including smart TVs; more on the best practices of games promotion; gamification include games for causes; a section for young indie devs "who want to make special things, and have yet to be dirtied!"; and the exact opposite - more pictures of Megan Fox....
Actually, we did have a picture of Megan Fox once.
So thanks to everyone who took part in the survey, and if you're a mobile game maker who wants to be included in the next one - due before the end of 2011 - please email jon [at] pocketgamer [dot] co [dot] uk.
