[josephferano]

I'm the tech lead at a small mobile game studio, the best advice I can offer is pick a role and start developing your skills in this capacity. Main roles are tech, art, or business. If someone says design, don't listen to them, for good reason.

If you pick the business side, please be aware that you're only as valuable as the money you can raise. Of course there are other important skills, but just having good ideas isn't enough, you need to have the funds to sustain a team for the long haul.

Be prepared to survive for a few years. Game dev is an art form and like any craft, it takes years to get it right. However, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is picking one large project for the course of this time. What mobile offers is at least the ability to publish small games you can complete in just a few months. This will ultimately be way more valuable to you and your team as each successive project allows you to build upon the mistakes of the previous. If you're stuck with a large sucky project (it will be cause it's your first), you won't get the chance to do it better before it's too late.

There's so much more stuff... It would help if you were certain about the role you wish to pursue

[all2]

Thanks for the heads up; I hear 'iterate as fast as possible'.

How would you recommend developing cash flow? Aside from ads, I mean. Do you have any experience with in-app purchases? Other methods of generating cash-flow?

[josephferano]

In all honesty, most options will probably be out of reach for someone with lack of experience. For-hire work is one; a lot of smaller studios will do 70% for-hire and 30% in-house projects, but it will take years to build to that level where anyone will trust you with hundreds of not millions of dollars to create a game.

There are mobile publishers that will gladly work with you even with just a few months to a year of experience, provided you can deliver a product. However, the terms will usually be way more favorable for the publisher. What you get though is valuable experience.

"Aside from ads" - be careful not to downplay ad revenue. Many studios live on it. Of course it might be difficult to get enough players without spending a lot of money on User Acquisition, but you just gotta pump more games out.

The reason I mentioned that a game designer is not a "main role" is because they are a luxury that only the more established studios can afford. The kind of design you should be doing is the monetization kind; design your game to generate revenue. This may sound obvious but it's quite involved. There are books on Amazon about the Freemium model that you can read up on.

[josephferano]

In regards to in app purchases, yes I have a lot of experience with them. It will depend on the game design how well they do. There's also the difference between durables and consumables, which you can research when designing your core game loop. You should have a combination of ads and IAP anyway. Even if it's just a "Remove Ads" durable. Virtual currencies are also all the rage and allow for consumable IAP.