Working with I-Play to Develop Mobile Games

Scott I-Play Mobile, discusses publishing games from indie game developers

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/cc-i-play-interview.mp3

Or listen to it here…

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at Casual Connect and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Scott: I’m Scott Prather of I-play Mobile.

Interviewer: You guys do publishing of mobile games from indie game developers from your studios. How does an indie game developer actually work with you guys to get a mobile game out?

Scott: Well, it’s real simple. A lot of times I’ll get emails from people where they just have a concept or they have an early alpha or a beta. They’ll throw it over to me and say, this is something I’d like to bring to the mobile market. What are your thoughts? I’ll take a look at it and bounce back and say, Well, maybe, we should make these changes, or I don’t think at this time it makes sense because there’s a number of other titles that are very similar. So, there’s a lot of different ways that you can do it. By all means, just let us know.

Interviewer: That seems really different. I thought the concept was that developers should actually have a demo or something else up front to give you guys. Can they actually bounce ideas off you? Have you seen that process work well with some of the other developers that you’ve helped?

Scott: Yeah, absolutely. I think the advantage of having somebody in a place where you can bounce ideas off of because a lot of times as a developer you can see what you’re working on, but you don’t really have insight to what the rest of the market is doing.

I worked with 13 carriers and see every product that goes out there. If your title is similar to another title, I can tell you that this one has already been done. Here’s where it did well. Here’s where the faults are, and you can learn from that.

Interviewer: So, you have a good understanding of the different mechanics and different things that are working well on the different platforms which helps.

Scott: Absolutely. I had a technical background initially, so I am well versed in it as far as the way the engines work, and I think that helps out as far as… If I see a title, I can tell you the reason this works well on mobile in this instance, and it doesn’t work well in another instance.

Interviewer: The hottest thing right now is iPhone. How and what do you suggest developers do to get a successful iPhone game?

Scott: I compare the iPhone to the lottery system. Everybody buys a ticket, and only one person wins. There’s thousands upon thousands upon thousands of games. I think the thing that differentiates I-plays is the level of marketing that we bring to the table. Apple knows that what we bring to the table is going to have good support. It’s going to offer unique concepts that there aren’t already titles. That’s what gets us good placement and that determines what sells.

Interviewer: Can you talk about some of the unique concepts that you have and some of the titles that you’ve released to the iPhone?

Scott: Yes, absolutely. One of the latest we just released was Fast and Furious. One of the features that we put in there that we really hadn’t seen anywhere else was the ability to record your race and then upload it straight to YouTube from within the application. That’s been pretty huge, and there’s a pretty large number of uploads. In fact, so much so that we added, what we call, ghost racing. That’s a recent update, and you can actually download another race that somebody else did and then race against them.

Interviewer: Oh, wow. Cool. Any other upcoming titles that you guys can talk about that you’re going to release?

Scott: Not that I can speak to now.

Interviewer: Sounds good. Where can developers find out more information about getting feedback on their games and also just about what I-play does?

Scott: Well, iplay.com is a great resource you can go to. If you go to that site, there are a lot of feedback options. You can get in contact and shoot them an email, and they’ll either put you in touch with me if you’re looking for mobile or put you in the right place for PC.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.