2010: How your predictions fared

Last January we asked readers of this blog for their 2010 Game Maker predictions.  202 of you took part and gave your opinions on a range of matters relating to the future development of Game Maker and YoYo Games.  Now the year is nearly up we look back to see which community predictions came to fruition.

A Game Maker game will be shown working on a portable gaming device
With 62% of poll participants believing that this would be the case this was the mostly strongly made prediction. And true it came, we’ve seen videos of Game Maker games running on the PSP and Android and several games are available to download and play in the iTunes store for iPhone and iPad.

YoYo Games reduce their annual loss
42% of you thought so and it happened. In the year to October 2009 YoYo’s losses were just £12,000 compared to £180,000 in the previous year.  Things look good for the future too – although YoYo Games have taken on staff throughout the year they also received a £220,000 grant and they now have ambitious expansion plans.

Game creators will be able to play their Game Maker games on a portable gaming device
(39%) For a lucky few developers this has been the case but this poll option was referring to the general availability of the feature to mainstream Game Maker users. This hasn’t been the case as YoYo Games are yet to open public submission to their Game Store. Interestingly there are now multiple attempts underway by community members to create ‘compilers’ which would enable .gmk files to be converted so it is possible to play them on iPhone and iPad.

YoYo Games’ Instant Play can be used on sites other than YoYoGames.com
(39%) Nope.  The entire site has been neglected as the focus has been on porting games to new platforms and the YoYo Game Store.

An official Game Maker IDE for Linux and/or Mac is released
Only 35% of you thought this would be the case despite the fact the first betas were released in 2008 (53% of voters had previously said a Mac version would be released in 2009!).  Development was “delayed indefinitely” at the end of 2009 but the full release of Game Maker 7 for Mac finally came in August.  There have been some criticisms that the Mac version was released without the necessary support and then abandoned but a new ‘Lite’ distribution version was recently released. Unification with Game Maker for PC now looks unlikely until at least 2012 as Sandy recently posted that they did not plan to release a major new version of Game Maker next year.

YoYo Games introduce a method of developer compensation (e.g. ad-revenue share, able to sell games)
(35%)  The ad revenue share plans seem to have been shelved (will be interesting to see if they make a comeback as in-game ads on free games published by YoYo Games) and instead selected games have begun to be published on iOS with the creators receiving a revenue share. Sales of desktop PC based games will start early in the new year as the submission process is made open to all.

There is at least one regular decent quality Game Maker magazine for much of the year
Rekame Mag launched and released 3 issues but there was no regular Game Maker magazine. Wonder if we will ever return to two quality monthly releases? Looks like lots of you don’t think we will as only 21% of voters thought this would be the case.

Of the 7 statements 3 definitely came true, 3 did not and I’ll leave ‘developer compensation’ in the middle for now since it is available but it is not currently open to all.

We’ll be asking for your 2011 predictions soon.  If you have any suggestions for items we should add to the poll please post them in the comments.

Photo: snowy sunset by Liz West (cc)