Where can I find a mobile-game developer?

Ask the team. What do they think is a good use of their time? No one likes to sit idle. If they were on a heavy schedule to meet the product launch, some downtime is useful to regenerate creativity, energy and focus. Have they documented all the processes used? Have you conducted a post-project review of what worked and what didn't and what could be improved next time? These are some things for a temporary lull, however, the bigger question is how to engage your team when there isn't work to do. Can the team handle more projects? Good luck!

The quick and honest answer is - you don't. In games, as in many places in the software industry, ideas are worth nothing, only the implementation counts. In addition, ideas tend to evolve during development and the design you end up implementing in the final game is quite often very different from the one you started with. To be even more honest - it's likely your idea is not as original as you think. I'm not trying to suggest you're not creative, just that there are a lot of other creative people in the industry and we all have tons of ideas. I have written several game designs in the past, then found that other people implemented the same ideas a while later without knowing me. Sometimes I even discovered my ideas were implemented years before I had them by people I never heard of. That's the life in our business. Another tip - don't try to sign people on NDAs just for hearing your idea. NDAs are fine if you expose them to code, art and data you have already prepared/collected. These are "implementation" products. Trying to sign people on NDAs for hearing your idea is a newbie move and no industry professional / investor will do it. It will make you look like an amateur. Ok, so this was the discouraging part, now the encouraging one... If you have a game idea that you think will rock - just go and try it. You don't need developers to try out a platform game idea, just use one of the MANY quick-builders tools out there. Game Maker is a good option as well as GameSalad Creator. Often you'll find that what you imagined to be a cool idea might not be as fun to play. Sometimes you'll find that combining two genres into one game, as many ideas tend to be, misses the fun factor both genre had. Games are about finding a fun factor. Identifying a pattern players enjoy recognizing and following over and over. This is immensely hard, but so rewarding when accomplished. I was in charge of the final project workshop of the Game Studies program in collage for 6 years. I went through this process with many students (including the fear of 'idea theft' at the beginning) - it is worth it every time a new game is born. As to finding developers - look either between your friends or on internet forums (gamedev.net, indieteamup.com). Both places are good, but projects done with friends have higher success rate by far. You can also locate the nearest IGDA Chapter / Game Hackathon (like Global Game Jam) and befriend people there. All in all, I hope you proceed with your game project. Feel free to contact me if you feel I could help in any way.

I'd start with messaging the admins of the various Facebook groups dedicated to mobile game development and asking if they'd be willing to 1) enable you to put up a post about the SDK, and 2) pin the post for a week so that you get a bit more visibility within those communities. You can also find the appropriate thread on the various mobile gaming forums and chime in there. I would recommend trying to be helpful 9 times before you ask for something once. You'll notice a much better response if you've become an active contributor to each community before you start selling your stuff, no matter how soft the sell and no matter how valuable the stuff. Hope this helps, Austin

There are three types of metrics that you want to collect. 1) Aggregate metrics 2) Cohort metrics 3) Funnel metrics A tool like Flurry is OK for aggregate metrics. Google Analytics for mobile is probably the better choice depending on your needs. For cohort and funnel metrics, I prefer using Mixpanel. And for tracking App installs I prefer Tapstream. For a deeper dive into the above analytics types above, I recommend reading Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz.

It's tough working with freelancers, but as you mentioned, it's sometimes necessary at early stages due to a lack of funds. You can either 1) Learn to code yourself 2) Find a software engineer co-founder 3) Learn a better system for working with freelancers So I'd recommend the 3rd option, and you can always work on the other two in parallel. There are certainly specialized techniques that will let you work more effectively with freelancers (either foreign or local). A good, concise summary of these techniques can be found in a free e-book by Amol Sarva (http://knote.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Ship-While-You-Sleep-Final.pdf). Skip to chapter 2 (page 18) if you want to jump into the meat of it. I co-founded two companies with Amol using the methods discussed there. If you have any further questions about anything you read there feel free to give me a call, all the best, Lee