Red Ocean Games is a company of three: Jon, Christian and Alex. At first, they survived by creating stuff like games, webpages, and apps for other companies, while trying to make their own games. BeerMaster is one of those, a compact social drinking experience fitted into a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet. Instead of cards or dice, you can just use one device to play a drinking game with your friends. Thanks to being digital, it also features timed events that draw attention to the game even more. Alex shares the experience of creating a company as a result of making a drinking game.
It all started at a party when I was introduced to a drinking game shown on a dim laptop screen that was at the end of the table. We were drinking with friends, getting ready for a great night out in the city. Then someone opened this Flash game he found on the Internet and told us to try it. Shortly after, we were having tons of fun, because we didn’t have to remember who had the next turn and rules.
A few parties later, that game somehow disappeared. We couldn’t find it anywhere, so we ended up finding a downloadable Flash game which had the same features but lacked many of the cool ideas and text the other game had. This sparked the idea: we could make a drinking game ourselves!
The First Prototype
Soon after the initial idea came around, I sat down and programmed in ActionScript 2, getting an early prototype up and running. When it reached a playable state, I asked a friend of mine, Christian, to draw some graphics for it. The first prototype can be found online.
As it says in the URL, that really is an alpha. We tried out the concept and did some field testing: went to a lot of parties with different people and checked if BeerMaster was something they would find interesting. Usually, we’d get messages the day after - about how people hated BeerMaster for making them drink so much, but still, they said it was way too much fun. So the “hate” was in fact an expression of love, which gave us motivation to keep going.
But then our current education was about to end, and we had decided (without each other being aware) to go on with the same education in a university in Aalborg here in Denmark.
Choosing Cards for the Game
When we just started, I tried to get a company up and running creating games, but it quickly spiraled out of control because of poor management from my side. Nonetheless, it was a learning experience, and to get “back on the horse”, I returned to the idea of BeerMaster and tried to improve it. I got hold of Christian again, and he helped me design the rules and do some programming. This time, we tried ActionScript 3. The game evolved to having more modes and introducing a smarter algorithm for choosing the cards, rather than random choice.
I wanted to be able to choose which cards are in the game, how often they appear, and the chance of them showing up. I wanted to give that power to the player, but at that time, we just couldn’t figure out how to do it properly, so ended up with a weird solution that kind of worked the way we wanted. This happened with the help of our friends Oleksander and Pelle, who helped with ideas of how we could solve the problem mathematically- and programming-wise, since they were among the best people at these things that I knew at that time. This updated version can be found here.
The Project Died, a Company was Born
After a long pause in making that game, we tried at multiple occasions to put it back together and actually get to a stage we considered compatible with releasing. Somehow, we decided our drinking game would be perfect for smartphones, and began developing it in native code, with various Flash libraries and some other weird solutions. None of those really gave us what we wanted, and the project kind of died.
Then Christian and I entered the DADIU academy, where we met Jon and Troels and helped make HOTAH and Trail of Regret. Jon was the lead programmer on the Trail of Regret team that Christian joined, and Troels was the project manager for the HOTAH team where I ended up. During their production, we talked about starting a games company together after graduating from DADIU. And so we did. Red Ocean Games was born in January 2013.
We got some freelance jobs which made it possible for us to set an office in a local entrepreneurship cluster. Having accomplished our Master degrees, we sat around in our office and felt we needed to work on a game we could quickly develop and put out there.
The Mobile Version and Unexpected Appreciation
This game ended up being BeerMaster but in a very revamped version. Jon, Christian, and I developed the updated one in Unity3D. We designed it purely for the mobile platform with user interaction in mind. After a month of development, we finally got to the point where we felt quite satisfied with BeerMaster. And on that stage, we released it. We weren’t expecting much from it, since we didn’t spend any energy and resources on advertising. Nevertheless, we now have over 500 downloads from a lot of different countries, the top scorer being the USA.
For a long time, we believed this approach could become so much more - using the digital platform to give that extra social experience to a party! Most people know how card, dice, and social games can bring people together and get them past boundaries. After trying out BeerMaster on numerous occasions, we experienced how this could also be done through digital means. Of course, it’s easier to bring along cards and throw them away, compared to an iPad. But our game was meant as a “having fun before the main party” game.
The team has considered gamifying partying even more, by making BeerMaster a social platform. The social platform would even give them coupons or offers from the local discos. Nevertheless, the team has decided not to evolve BeerMaster into anything more for now and suggests enjoying it as it is on iOS and Android.
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