Slant Six Games, an independent developer based in Vancouver, BC, was founded in 2005. They have released many titles on various platforms such as as SOCOM: Confrontation on the PS3, SOCOM: Fire Team Bravo 3 on the PSP and Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City on multiple platforms. They made the switch to mobile and released 2012’s The Bowling Dead on iOS and this year launched Galactic Reign on Windows 8 devices, and Max’s Pirate Planet on iOS, Kindle Fire and Android. Peter Doidge-Harrison, one of the founders of Slant Six Games, as well as a Technical Director, and Executive Producer, talks about the switch.
The story of how and why we made the switch from AAA console to mobile started at the end of 2011, while we were finishing Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City for Capcom. It has always been somewhat of a challenge to find publishers willing to fund independent studios to build large console games. There are only so many publishers with the resources to make these investments, and they are understandably conservative and risk-averse with their money and IP. Despite these challenges, Slant Six Games has always managed to find really cool projects for more traditional handheld and console systems. As a result, our company DNA is built around a solid background in third person shooters, graphics and networking technology that puts us in a prime place to build great games for incredible global franchises.
However, key shifts in the industry were underway and over the course of 2011 and into 2012, publishers were beginning to restrict their work with independent devs, to focus on building their major games internally. At the same time, many of them were talking about the mobile space, and were interested in teams with experience in touch controls, social features, analytics and Free to Play (F2P) design – all of which were brand new to us. We had experimented with F2P ideas on PC as far back as 2009, but we had never released a F2P title, and our mobile development experience was almost zero.
Yes – we were late to the party, but we had some important advantages that we brought to the table. Whereas many mobile games had 2D experiences built by small teams, our strength lays with multidisciplined, talented teams, AAA 3D art quality, the know-how to craft characters and a story, and our own proprietary technology, which stands up to the best in the console world. Our plan was to work to our considerable strengths, and learn what we were missing quickly.
Our First Foray into Mobile
With the Resident Evil project wrapping up, we had a big team of over 140 people that we needed to keep busy. About half the team was working on DLC content for Resident Evil, and it was around this time that we got a contract to work with Microsoft Game Studios to help them build the cloud-rendering systems for Galactic Reign. This was a huge opportunity for us to step into the new mobile space utilizing our proprietary game engine: Hexane™ and test the waters for ourselves.
Our background in real time graphics, shaders and geometry pipelines were key to getting Galactic Reign completed. We did some really innovative work building a new automated Scene Director which takes game events and turns them into a fully animated cut scene movie which can then be rendered in the cloud and pushed down to your Windows 8 device on-demand. This kind of cinematic procedural rendering was a first in games and a huge achievement for our studio. With that experience under way, it was time to take some risks and start working on our own new IP.
Zombies & Pirates, Bowling Balls & Beer
In the spring of 2012, we held a series of game-jams. These were some of the most fun I’ve had working at a game company, and if you’re working at a studio that is not holding these, then you (and your company!) are definitely missing out! The mandate was to come up with designs that could be built in a short amount of time (a few months) and with a small team (<10 developers). F2P and Mobile were preferred, but nothing was rejected out of hand, and anyone in the company could pitch any idea. Most importantly, the ideas had to be cool.
These ideas were turned into quick demos – proof of concepts often delivered just on paper, in a spreadsheet or thrown together in XNA or Unity. The best were chosen to receive further love, and the rest were shelved. We got dozens and dozens of ideas thrown at us – racing games, strategy games, platformers and shooters, but many didn’t fit with our new mandate. Finally we settled on two that fit the bill – they were achievable, and both got everyone excited.
One of those pitches was Max’s Pirate Planet, a children’s mobile board-game style idea that got people smiling right away. A small team put together a quick demo of the rotating globe that serves as the game-board, and everybody loved the feel of the game. Although it didn’t lend itself to F2P, we decided to give it a go anyways. It was one of the smallest ideas pitched, and should have been quick to build. It did expand in scope quite a bit from its modest roots, and ended up being a very polished experience which we’re all very proud of, but this scope-creep underlies one of the major (and ironic) challenges we face as a console-oriented developer moving into the mobile space: our internal quality bar!
Pretty much everyone on the team had a hard time cutting frames of animation, going for 2D rather than 3D assets and not designing deep complex features to support what is essentially a board game aimed at kids and families. The leadership group had to keep a laser-focus on keeping the timeline short and the scope to the right size. While the game is praised for its high production values and Disney-style characters, it has not yet been the financial success we hoped it would be. Mainly because it is very hard to push paid apps and get discoverability without an existing brand identity or serious marketing budget. There will always be occasional paid games and apps that break through, but most will not.
The Bowling Dead
The other title we greenlit was The Bowling Dead, an off-beat mashup that could be described as “Kingpin meets Zombieland – the game!”. You bowl crazy super-powered bowling balls at zombies of varying whackiness, and use cans of beer as health potions. The Bowling Dead was on the larger end of our mandated project size, but it received such positive feedback that it soon became everyone’s favorite game to pitch to publishers. We built the game over the course of six months with a team size around 12 developers, and on this particular project, we really had a hard time restraining ourselves. We built 3D assets and animations, multiple environments, gorgeous shaders and lighting, dozens of levels, upgrades and character styles to choose from, and to top it all off, a story chock full of animated cut scenes and professional voice acting. The mechanics are intuitive and fun, and we had every reason to feel confident that had a hit on our hands.
We released in the fall of 2012, and earned critical acclaim from the gaming press. The game was downloaded over 100,000 times in its first week, and received really positive responses from all directions. For our first original title, we were glad for the opportunity to uninhibitedly demonstrate our creative talent and production values. This risk paid off for us when Apple decided to feature us in their New and Noteworthy section in many major territories.
So…What’s Next?
The mobile industry is at an inflection point. In the past, it was fairly easy for quality independent studios to iterate quickly on games and make a big impact with their releases. More recently, the app market is becoming dominated by a few large industry players with deep pockets and the ability to drive up the price of user acquisition. This makes it extremely hard for indies to be successful without the backing of a publisher with those financial resources. Games must be able to guarantee minimum revenues per user (LTV) of around $2 to make it worthwhile even beginning a serious marketing campaign, and that barrier is going to stop a lot of indie studios in their tracks.
Broken app discoverability systems aside, there have been very few games with traditional shooter or competitive online mechanics that have made it big in the mobile world. This gets us very excited! The mobile user base is maturing, and people are increasingly expecting deep and engaging experiences like those found in traditional console games. There may not be a major competitive shooter taking over the mobile world today, but at Slant Six Games, we believe that someone will soon figure out how to put these AAA experiences on tablets and phones, and the mobile game market will change forever.
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