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IOS DEVICES PROVIDE DEVELOPERS with a unique and exciting platform for making games. The
iPhone gives gamers a tiny computer in their pocket that they have with them all the time. The iPad
provides a similar gameplay experience but with a larger screen, more processing power, and more
memory. The devices allow for unique control schemes with their touch-sensitive displays, accelerometer,
and even a gyroscope on the latest devices.
According to Scott Forstall at Apple’s 2011 World Wide Developer Conference, there are over 200
million iOS devices. This represents a huge audience for games. In the fi rst 14 months after the release
of the iPad, Apple sold 25 million devices. Forstall also said that in the App Store’s three years, 14 billion
apps have been downloaded. Developers have been paid a total of $2.5 billion for their efforts.
According to market research fi rms NewZoo and Distimo (http://www.distimo.com/
blog/2011_05_distimo-and-newzoo%C2%A0partner-on-games-data-over-5-million-iosgames-
downloaded-per-day-by-63-million-ios-gamers-in-us-eu/), games are the largest category
of applications on the app store. A full half of all downloads of free and paid apps are games.
According to the National Gamers Survey in March 2011, there were more than 60 million iOS
gamers in the US and Europe.
As you can see, there is a huge fi nancial incentive to write games for the iOS platform. But, there is
more to it than that. Writing games is fun! If you like to write interesting programs and solve diffi cult
problems, you will enjoy writing games. Also, games are a very expressive form of programming. As
a corporate programmer in my day job, I sometimes feel like I’ve built the same three-tier database/
web application a hundred times. But, with games, every one is different.
With the right tools, you can make a game out of just about anything that you could possibly imagine.
Apple provides some terrifi c, and free, tools for building games for iOS. Xcode, the development
environment, is one of the best that I have ever worked with. If you are familiar with Visual Studio,
Eclipse, or any of the other industry standard IDEs, you will feel right at home with Xcode. Apple
also put a lot of thought into creating well-designed APIs to help you to take advantage of the features
of the iOS platform. Once you learn some of the key fundamentals, you should be able to pick
up and run with any of the core technologies and this book will help you to get there. Most chapters
in this book feature real, working games that you will build. I think that the best way to learn is
by doing, and by working along with the game examples in this book, you will learn how to use
Apple’s tools to build games. |