Today Chris Steven posted an essay (or rather, a marketing piece for his book) on the randomization of success rates in the App Store. As a current and former App developer, as well as a long time commercial software developer, I do not like his Casino analogy. As a long time gambler, I also don’t like being reminded that there isn’t a way to “beat the casino”.

Chris has been involved in successful consumer software, and his post can be taken as being “from the horses mouth” in that regard. Successfully making a living via mobile software is a very challenging niche. But to equate success to anything inside of a Casino is just silly, as mobile games don’t provide free drinks. It doesn’t matter if you are selling nails, books, art or video games. Perhaps luck can help you shortcut a path to success. But hard work, intense research and development of your product are fundamental to success.

Rovio. Overnight they became one of the biggest franchises in the world of mobile. Overnight. Of course you must ignore the previous 6 years of experience the company built on. The principals started a path in 2003 together that led to 51 dismal failures. Poor character design, ungainly gameplay and hardware platforms that nobody used all conspired to create repeated failures. Read that again. 51 games that failed to be “huge”. The fortitude to push forward again and try number 52 is what separated them for the other slot machine players in the casino. By the time Angry Birds hit big Rovio already had Platinum Players Club status.

Rovio had to develop an understanding of their market. Indeed they had to develop this understanding while the market was being ripped apart and redesigned by Apple. They honed their personal identity, game concepts and business processes over these repeated failures. They sought and achieved angel funding to keep the lights on while driving forward. Hard work. Long days. Short weekends. Iterate, iterate and iterate some more.

Did this hard work and iteration guarantee success? Hell no it didn’t. Not even close. Did it guarantee that when a little bit of luck did happen that they would be in the right position to turn that into maximum success? Hell yes they did.

This is where the analogy to a casino is flawed. In a casino, you can walk in and hit a jackpot on the very first spin of a slot machine. Drop in your $5 bill and win big. You cannot do that with software. Winning big means you have iterated on a product over and over and over again. You have honed the details, worked with your customers and developed a core following.

When the first time a developer enters the casino (publishes a product), they might get a little win. If they are lucky. That same first-time developer will have a buggy product that is very likely incomplete or short on content. It will be ill marketed and ill supported. It will be bargain-basement priced. They have stacked the deck against themselves by trying to sell a poor product in a poor manner.

The next time a developer enters the market, he will carry the weight of that failure. He will know to have a better tested product. His product will be complete and flushed out. There will be a nice website and support system in place. It will be priced off of the floor level. They have begun to stack the deck in their own favor. A great product requires more than just itself to succeed. It needs all that support surrounding it to stand upright and live.

Even though I don’t like the Casino analogy, I’m still going to read his book. Chris has been on a side of the market (massive success) that I have not been on. Some day I would like to see what he has seen.

Interested? Amazon has it for both kindle and tree.