Sure, when you think Apple, you think hype. iOS 11, the latest update to come down the pipeline, is heralded by Apple as setting a “new standard for the world’s most advanced mobile operating system.” So what makes iOS 11 any different from previous updates, and are the headlines we’ve seen to date praising the operating system on point? That’s still to be determined, but Apple’s latest does promise to arm developers with a bevy of new tools and customizing options. For developers looking to take advantage of iOS 11’s strongest features, here are three ways to power up.
Eforb was founded almost two years ago and started as a small team… Today there are around 50 people on board including freelancers. Everyone recalls the time when Eforb just appeared in the world with smiles on their faces. What made them a self-sufficient startup with a clear vision of the roadmap and the products that they’re proud of? The team’s product manager Nika Paramonova shares the story of their new and cute game Let The Cat In, that turned into a social action project.
“Amateur - a person who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons. Compare professional. First things first. Let’s start with who I am, to provide enough background for what is to follow”, says Mariusz Szypura, the creative director of the Telehorse studio, as he shares the story of Steampunker.
Childhood Studio was started in September of 2012. Their core members used to work for the same employer, but that development house ceased its operation back in July of 2012. Sharing the same creative vision, they decided to form their own studio to carry on their passion for games. Childhood Studio’s CEO Believe Liu shares the story of Sliding Angel.
Loud Panda Games is a year-old mobile games studio from the Philippines. Critter Camp is their first game, which is currently in soft launch on iOS, and the company’s Product Manager Jon Roque shares the story.
The explosion of indie gaming in the past decade has not only allowed for smaller companies to enter the gaming market, it has allowed for people from various background and unique games to have a place. One such person and game is Erin Robinson and her game, Gravity Ghost. To learn more about Gravity Ghost, Gamesauce has talked to Erin Robinson about her background and developing games.
From Researcher to Game Developer - Leaving the Academy for Games
“If you want to get fans and create fans from your players, its about treating them like a fan,” Morgan Hall summarized during a panel she moderated at Casual Connect USA 2014. “It is about being accountable to these people.”
Morgan Hall, Co-founder and Creative Director, Hidden Door Interactive
Morgan Hall, co-founder and creative director at Vancouver-based mobile app studio, Hidden Door Interactive, has been involved with games since she was first introduced to them at the age of five on her father’s work computer running DOS. She believes this experience has shaped her social life, her hobbies, and her career.
While at university, she had an internship with Electronic Arts, and has been in the industry ever since. She considers herself fortunate, saying, “I am encouraged by the way it allows me to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities as well as remain in a constant state of learning. My favorite part of the industry is that it is never boring!”
Paying It Forward
Hall feels the greatest satisfaction in her work when she is able to pay it forward to others in the games industry. Her opportunity came when, on behalf of her company, she sponsored a women-in-games event in Vancouver.
With her partners, Hall founded Hidden Door Interactive to make their game, Happy Flock!.In the process, they discovered how well they worked together, and since they have enough ideas to last for a lifetime, they are on to their next project.
With her partners, Hall founded Hidden Door Interactive to make their game, Happy Flock!
Hall is also a producer/designer at East Side Games, a mobile games studio in Vancouver. Prior to that, most of her experience had been with console games, starting with the internship at Electronic Arts. From these experiences, she has learned what it means to be a professional game developer and the amount of hard but rewarding work it takes to create ‘fun’.
For her own gaming, Hall is currently playing Tiny Town, saying she loves the art style and is intrigued by its design. Her first choice of platform is divided between her iPad and her 3DS. Besides these, she also owns Xbox 360, a Steam Box, and a PS3, and she plans to purchase a PS4 soon.
Hall finds that iOS has the right combination for Hidden Door Interactive’s skill set, size, and budget.
She appreciates both Android and iOS, enjoying the power of holding the internet in your hand that both offer. But for her work, she finds that iOS has the right combination for her team’s skill set, size, and budget. She stresses, “We’ve had nothing but good experiences developing for Apple’s platform.”
And when she is not spending her free time gaming, she loves skiing and snowboarding in the winter, and fishing and hiking in the summer.
A Fuzzy Future Ahead
When Hall considers the future of the games industry, she points out that it is particularly hard to predict. Today looks completely different from only two years ago. But she expects the current mobile-first trend will continue getting stronger, pointing out, “You can’t be successful without a first-class experience on a device you hold in your hand.” She also believes VR could be big if the technology improves, explaining that a device more like Google Glass than a fighter pilot’s helmet will be needed before VR can succeed.
She emphasizes that whether or not her predictions are correct, there is an important lesson in making them. “Thinking about the future teaches me to be nimble. We have to see the trends forming and respond to them, even if this means drastically changing plans. We’re in an industry where taking risks is a necessity.”
At Casual Connect USA, Hall announced the worldwide release of her game Happy Flock! It is an adventure and animal-collection game for all ages, available on iPhone and iPad. The game came about through a lot of hard work and long hours by the team at Hidden Door Interactive.
“Along with the in-app purchase benefits of minigames, there is a big retention component,” Ilya Nikolayev said during his session at Casual Connect USA 2014. “Essentially, you can use minigames to drive users back into your products.”
Ilya Nikolayev, Co-founder, InAppFuel and Tapinator
Ilya Nikolayev is the co-founder of both InAppFuel and Tapinator. InAppFuel is the minigame SDK for mobile developers, powering the casino layer for mobile developers. It allows developers to quickly integrate minigames that increase revenue and engagement, while working seamlessly with their existing virtual currency. At present, InAppFuel offers slots and scratch-off games since these are the best monetizing types, but a number of other minigames are in the works. Nikolayev founded this company about a year ago. The need he saw for minigames as a developer himself inspired him to create a product to help other developers increase IAP revenue and retention.
Introducing Tapinator
Tapinator was created in 2013 to take advantage of the opportunity in mobile games. They are focused on operating their own titles, publishing properties where they have substantial ownership positions and making strategic investments in promising mobile companies. They have quickly become a leader in the mobile game industry, with more than 40 mobile titles and over 20 million users.
Nikolayev became involved in the application industry when he launched Family Tree in 2007, when Facebook first launched its platform. One of the greatest moments in his career was seeing this application reach 45 million users. But when he saw the transition from Facebook applications to mobile apps, he was inspired to join the games industry. Watching someone pick up a product he has designed or built is what gives him the most happiness in his work.
Watching someone pick up a product he has designed or built is what gives him the most happiness in his work.
Fast-paced Changes
The games industry is fast-paced and fast changing, a situation that offers plenty of opportunity. If he were not finding these opportunities with games, he would still be building a tech startup in a different space.
He believes the industry will soon see increasing prominence of IAP and the need to improve retention. Their goal with their minigames is to help developers with both these challenges.
When Nikolayev is not involved with work, he enjoys a variety of activities, including auto racing, billiards, tennis, mountain biking, and gaming.
He plays everywhere, even in a race car at Watkins Glen, although he admits they were moving slowly at the time.
Currently, he is playing Balance of the Shaolin and Impossible Road on his iPad. He has been an iOS user since the first iPhone, and finds the platform, overall, more polished than Android. He plays everywhere, even in a race car at Watkins Glen, although he admits they were moving slowly at the time.
He also plays on consoles, owning both PS3 and PS4, because he enjoys racing simulators. He hopes to set up a racing rig soon.
At Casual Connect USA, Nikolayev announced that InAppFuel’s Unity plugin is now available on Prime31.
“Humans are storytelling creatures and we all seek to amuse ourselves through the means of stories,” says Himanshu Kapoor during Casual Connect Asia 2014. “They are a great form of entertainment, and they have the ability to resolve anxiety or tension by making use of invoking emotions. They have the ability to inspire us, it can heal us, and it can transform our thinking.”
Himanshu Kapoor, a game developer at Fleon Labs, has become so busy that free time is something he can only dream about. Usually, he spends any extra time thinking about new game ideas and refining the ones he already has. And free time is not the only thing he dreams of; he claims some of his best ideas have come to him in dreams.
Kapoor presenting at Casual Connect Asia 2014
Call Me A Dreamer
So perhaps it is not surprising that he describes himself as a dreamer. In fact, one of his most ambitious game ideas is called “Dream”. He calls it an abstract experimental thought with a simple premise: “What if dreams and reality switch places? What you thought was real suddenly becomes a dream, and your dreams become a reality.” And sometime in the future, he would like to execute it.
Kapoor started in the games industry in 2009 when he made his first flash game and submitted it to Flash Game License for sponsorship. He was very excited to find himself actually making money doing what he loves the most. He says, “The best part about making games is the feeling you get when you see someone playing your game and it evokes emotions in them based on the content in your game. It’s a feeling that can’t be put into words.”
At this point, Kapoor works part-time developing games and does not yet have a company set up; his full-time job is Front End Engineer at Wingify, the makers of Visual Website Optimizer. He feels working at this startup and facing challenging programming tasks every day, even though they are not directly gaming related, has given him valuable experience.
Kapoor’s Spellbound was part of the Indie Prize Showcase for Casual Connect Asia 2014
For his own gaming, Kapoor is currently playing Pokemon X. His preferred platform is Nintendo 3DS; he owns two of them. So he hasn’t invested in either Xbox One or PS4 because he is such a Nintendo fan.
In the race between iOS and Android, Kapoor comes out strongly in favor of iOS. He notes that, although Android has sold more devices, the number of paid apps and paying customers is higher on iOS. He has also found that the best and most creative games are iOS only or are launched on iOS long before they are available on Android. His best experiences have definitely been on iOS.
A New Reality Ahead
He tells us the proudest moment of his career is presenting at Casual Connect Asia, addressing an international conference for the first time.
Kapoor believes the next big trend coming in the games industry will be virtual reality, especially since Oculus VR has been acquired by Facebook. He says, “I’m very interested in discovering how this will turn out.”
When he takes time away from developing and thinking about games, he writes random thoughts on his blog. And because he appreciates the language and culture of Japan, he spends time teaching himself Japanese.
He tells us the proudest moment of his career is presenting at Casual Connect Asia, addressing an international conference for the first time.
Incuvo is a game development startup created in 2012 by Wojciech Borczyk and Jakub Duda. Previously, they bootstrapped an indie gaming startup and successfully exited to lead a large console development studio for a major Polish publisher. However, they decided to get back to their roots and start something completely new. Jakub shared the story about its flagship project, Createrria.
It’s Always Been Games
I knew who I wanted to be in life when I was ten. This decision came shortly after I got my first 8-bit computer and started playing games. I didn’t have this “firefighter or policeman” dilemma. I wanted to create games – these magical windows leading into different realms. Their creators were giants to me. But at that time, I couldn’t fulfill my dream. Something scary, called 6502 assembler language, stood between me and my desire to create games. I eventually learned BASIC language, dropped the game developer idea for some time, and returned to it a few years later, sometime around 2004.
When we were looking for a new idea, I discovered that Wojciech and I share the same childhood experience: fascination with early computer games and frustration with the development learning curve. At the same time, we started looking at the rising popularity of tablets and amazing possibilities of touch interfaces. That decided us. We wanted to bring the fun of game creation to millions of mobile players who have no time or desire to learn game programming and master all the other skill necessary to create a game now. They could already create great photos, music, and even shape virtual pottery on tablets, but mobiles were still missing a great game creation app.
Thus, Createrria was born.
Createrria was born!
We wanted Createrria to be an easy-to-use, fun, no-skills-required game creation app for mobiles. From the beginning, we wanted it to be 2D experience designed for touch screens, not controller/mice/keyboard input. Also, it needed to be social – everything created should be instantly shareable with friends.
The Challenges
When we started Incuvo, everything was new: the company, the office (We worked without walls during the first week), the team (with some long time friends who decided to share this adventure with us), the platform (we were purely consoles in the past), the engine, and even the genre. The first few weeks were crazy. Things took shape slowly. We started with a cross-platform engine evaluation (Unity3D won!), then started working on a playable prototype. This prototype was to determine if our idea was at all achievable. We were afraid of ending up with something overly complex and hard to use, just another developer tool masked as a user app. Fights over game details went on for hours and were fierce. Then we started having our first moments of triumph (“The physics engine is working!”) and despair (“it crashes every ten seconds!”). But finally, our first tech demo appeared. With four graphic themes, several different gameplay types, initial cloud sharing (added as a last-minute hack), and early iOS and Android support. The biggest success was a lack of an external game editor. We initially planned it as a support for an in-app editor – but first attempts were successful enough that we could drop this idea entirely and design everything inside our app. This was a breakthrough and our first milestone.
Eventually, we managed to work out our own recognizable style: humanoid avatars, with detached limbs, based on one shape, but extremely customizable.
Createrria was growing fast. Still accompanied by fierce and passionate fights over every feature, we iterated over every single thing. Long live agile development! The biggest challenges proved to be character design and cloud backend. The first challenge was strictly a design one. How could we create likeable, customizable and universal characters, also meant to be used as avatars, without copying existing games? We went through dozens of options, ranging from hamsters running in balls (easy to animate) to fully customizable avatars with exchangeable mustaches. Eventually, we managed to work out our own recognizable style: humanoid avatars, with detached limbs, based on one shape, but extremely customizable. Yes, we love them, and yes, we want to have more. Luckily, one of the cool things about mobile games is the easiness of updates – we can always add exchangeable mustaches later.
The other challenge was purely technical. We had painfully discovered that a world of server-side cloud-based backend development was seriously different from what we used to do in games. Server-side javascript? No-sql sharded databases? SSL certificates? We didn’t even have tutorials for this. This one required quite a lot of social skills and persuading to solve. One of our old friends who coded games with us in early Nintendo DS days, and has since that moved to enterprise scale cloud-based business software development, had all the skills. Now all we had to do is convince him to abandon the boredom and safety of a corporate job for a rock-style life of a game developer.
F2P or not F2P?
Free to play seems to be a very controversial topic these days. For most developers, free-to-play means robbery. Is it really that bad? Of course not! Createrria is a pure free-to-play game designed in our way: “Game first, money second.” Don’t blame the sales model - blame those developers who abuse it. We believe that well-balanced free-to-play games may bring pure joy to the players and pay our bills by the end of the day. Still, I sometimes feel like a dinosaur when I look at how much the business model has changed since we developed our first console titles.
The Journey Ends
Createrria‘s development was a long journey and great adventure for us. Now it is ready! It will be released for iOS in the second half of October 2013, with Android following shortly afterwards. We hope you will share the fun and adventure with us – playing the games we created with it and creating new ones we could never have imagined.
Find out more information about Createrria on Facebook!
