The Fun and Challenges of Starting a Mobile Game Studio

Starting a Mobile Game Studio within a bigger studio

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/cc-pik-pok.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]VXq-Mfkgkeg[/wp_youtube]

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

Interviewee: Hi.

Interviewer: What studio are you with?

Interviewee: So, I’m with a studio based in Wellington, New Zealand called Sidhe. We’re an independent console development studio. We’ve been going for 13 years.

Interviewer: And you’re also doing some iPhone games. What group is that with?

Interviewee: So, last year we set up an iPhone team which we call Pik Pok. We wanted the iPhone team to be able to put out games that are slightly different, different things than we do at the Sidhe studio. And so, we went with the name, Pik Pok, something playful.

Interviewer: I wanted to point out in a pre-interview you mentioned that you just named your whole iPhone group a different name. Are you guys located in the same location then, or do you then have separate locations for your iPhone groups so that the culture can be developed on its own?

Interviewee: That’s a good question, and we do actually house the iPhone team on a different floor of the building that we’re in. So, Pik Pok has its own little environment that it can dole its culture out. It’s a smaller team than the rest of the studio, but the great thing about being part of a larger studio like Sidhe even though it’s a independent studio, we do have resources which sort of steal, beg and borrow and use the concept design, art direction, in-house audio, animation, the Q/A team. And we do a lot of usabilities and [?] as well.

Interviewer: Now, you said this studio has been in business for 13 years, and you came in about, maybe, 6 years ago or something else. You came in when it was still relatively small. You guys are relatively like a bigger studio than when you first came in. What have been the changes in terms of the feel or the personality of the company as it’s grown from a smaller studio to something that’s a little bigger? You guys are still self-publishing in indie, right?

Interviewee: Yeah. People are often surprised to learn the size of the studio. We are still very fiercely independent. The studio has taken on [?] and has really grown out of a lot of hard work and personal determination. It is a lot larger now, but the exciting part is that it just means we’re able to do more type of things, the type of games we really wanted to do from the outset, and we can do them a lot faster now.

It means that everything is just a much higher quality. So, we have the luxury of having a really strong pre-production team process and a fantastic infrastructure so we have people really working on the tools and technology and making sure that it’s in the right place and then right through to the post-production and the marketing we have people who can put on trailers or fantastic musicians to work on the sound tracks for our games.

So, it is definitely a lot larger, and we travel and come to these conferences and come back and there’s a new person or a couple new faces right off the bat. It does take a while to get back up to speed. It’s only positive things at the moment. It’s pretty much stayed the same.

Interviewer: Now, you guys have decided to do a lot of self-publishing of your titles. How has that worked out, and as a studio how do you manage that? Is that something that a lot of indie developers don’t follow through on, and that’s usually what kills them, but you guys are obviously growing. So, how’s that working for you, and what suggestions do you have?

Interviewee: We’ve always had a strong desire to do original games and original content. Because the studio is based in New Zealand, it did take us a while to get going, especially in an industry that’s so global. And you really do need to be in North America or Europe where a lot of the action happens.

It did take us a while to get up and running. New Zealand is about as far south as you can get. Next stop is Antarctica. So, that’s become a really strong advantage now. We’ve a very focused environment to run the studio from there. Doing an original IP and self-publishing, you do need to take on the same sort of view that a publisher would have if he was working with you.

You need to be very thorough in your design and IP selections, so making sure that you’re going after a game for a very specific reason. You know there’s an audience for it or a customer or a book. Having focus on what it is that is going to make the game stand out, having fun making it, do a lot of iteration and a lot of design. Try a lot of games but do focus so you know what’s unique about it.

And make sure you follow through on marketing and PR. Try and build a community up around your games, so we’ve got a forum on the studio which has about 9,000 people. They’re very active users who have posted about a million times at the studio. So, it’s a very active forum. It doesn’t have to be very [?] driving attention to your game, things like the Shatter game for the Playstation and the PC. We build a good sound track around it and use that as a hook to draw people into the game.

So, the music is basically free online on the stream. These things we’ve worked out for the iPhone machine.

Interviewer: You talked about having fun while you’re developing. Since you guys are self-publishing and you’re kind of acting as your own publishers. Can you talk about the design process? You talk about iteration, and you talk about having fun. Talk about that. Do you guys have to be serious to develop the kind of quality games that you’re doing, or are you just having a ton of fun every day, or how’s that work?

Interviewee: Like anyone making games, you are into it to have fun, but it’s a very focused process we have to make sure that when we start an original title, we know what it is that we want to achieve with it and thave a process in place for iteration and design at the very early stages.

We have a process that’s taken several years to build up around selecting IPs alone and putting them into production. So, we do try to start with a wide set of ideas from anyone on the team. We select them down. Give them a little bit of formal resource and start seeing what might be promising. And then, we have another round of culling. Stick in a little IP and also be willing to let something go if it’s not working. We’ve had prototypes that haven’t clicked, and so we move on.

Interviewer: Can you talk about the user, testing the user at the ratio that you also mentioned. How does that play into your design process?

Interviewee: So, we’re very focused on usability in the studio. We’re fortunate to have a fantastic woman, Tracy Seller, who’s in the research lab and [?] It was a very interesting process. We learned a lot of lessons. Straight after doing that lab, Tracy was actually recruited to Microsoft Game Studios. So, she’s very talented. She’s still there today.

We’re not trying to see if people like the game. We’re just trying to see if they can comprehend what they’re supposed to be doing and try to see if there are any barriers to the enjoyment of the game. And if there are, we want to move them because there’s so many games today that people come across a barrier, they get frustrated and they put the game down and they go find another one.

Interviewer: So, is this testing done on a daily basis, or is it done on a weekly basis? How’s that work?

Interviewee: So, we run labs through the development, and we try to bring in the example of three to five people. We sit them down and they play the game, and we observe them and we ask questions about it and have them verbalize their experience. We’re not really prompting them or try to lead them on.

We don’t do it daily because we do need to identify the issues and then resolve them. If you’re doing it daily, you might not have time to make any changes in the game. We start to build an awareness from the outset at what might be an issue, so we can actually identify the things to look out for, even if we’re in the design phase.

Sometimes, in a game if you have extra tutorial a guy player will skip over it, and then later he’ll get frustrated because he doesn’t know a very key thing he needs to learn.[?]

Interviewer: Since you guys are also self-publishing, what about the marketing? It seems like you’re actually doing a decent amount of marketing online. How’s that working out for you, and what are the techniques you’re doing to get your name out and stuff like that?

Interviewee: Additional distribution is no different to physical retail. Just because it’s available online it doesn’t mean people are going to be able to find it. You may be a digital product, but you still [?] Yeah, we view marketing as very important. We put a lot of effort into the games, and if we don’t follow up with marketing support and everything that’s possible, we’re really doing the development team a disservice.

We try to do a number of things and very standard things from the [?], such as engaging our viewers. We have trailers to show to you. We try to find hooks that we can build into the game so, like Shatter, have a great soundtrack. Seeing that it was resonating, building out the music videos and making the CD available for purchase. Just trying to find as many ways to keep the people into the game as possible.

The very thing we’re enjoying about the iPhone is we’ve gone from having a game come out every 18 months to now it’s down to every five, six to eight weeks. And the games keep changing through updates as we react to fan feedback who want to see the games. So, the marketing is this ongoing daily thing where we’re trying to work out each day, what do we do to make the game stand out and get attention? Getting out reviews and that sort of thing.

Interviewer: Let’s transition then into Pik Pok and the iPhone games. You’ve seen this mini studio within your main studio. What is the cultural difference? What would you explain is the cultural or development difference between developing for iPhone games versus even the Sony Playstation or something else, those type of games?

Interviewee: I think the main difference is you just have to be a lot more nimble. You have to be willing to update your apps. Financially, it was a big shift in culture to go from a point where when the game was done, the game was done and everyone congratules themselves and watches the reviews flow in.

The iPhone game, when the game’s done, it’s not done. When you first release it, it’s just beginning. If it succeeds for you, you want to support it. You want to update it. Apple makes it very easy to put in new updates So, that was a big shift.

Long-term planning is also very difficult on an iPhone because you just don’t know what’s going to happen. We’ve had many plans of actually what we’re going to do. And then suddenly, an opportunity has arisen where we want to capitalize on it or the game started to do particularly well and we want to double down on it.

It can be quite tricky for a team going from a long-term planning spectre to suddenly have this mentality that they need to be able to be very nimble and jump around from task to task. Those are the main cultural differences.

Interviewer: You know, when you talk about updating the game, updating the community even after the game’s released, what are you doing with the iPhone games to keep the community going, building momentum, building fans?

Interviewee: So, the fantastic thing about iPhone that’s really a new shift as well, is there’s a whole new generation of games getting [?] with the expectation that they can influence the game and they can be vocal about the changes they would like to see.

So, when you read the reviews on the App Store or on various forums, you do get a lot of feedback which we can take into consideration, and we can start to build a picture of what it is that people really want to see. And then, it’s a careful balance between making the game better, adding new modes or improving it, but at the same time not wanting to put out an update that detracts from something that people love about the game as well.

So, we’ve had experiences where we’ve changed very subtle things and had a big backlash against it, and we’ve had other situations where we’ve added new modes and we’ve had a huge joyous reception.

Interviewer: What about business models? Are you going to experiment with iPhone? There’s this talk of charging up front and then they’re free to play and then charging after that for virtual goods? Is that even relevant for the games that you’re making?

Interviewee: Absolutely. We know that our games are of a high quality, and we can make games that are published. A great example of this is the Bird Strike Game. We released that at 99 cents. We generally stick to 99 cents as the price point, and we did a free promotion with our fans and in the space of three days we had 1.3 million downloads and we were the number one free app on the U.S. survey.

We know that people like our content, and we’re going to start exploring a free to play model. So, we’ll see if we can draw in as many people in with the quality of the experience and see what we can do there. I think it’s a new, exciting place when you can just remove those barriers to entry. It’s free and if people really love your game and really like it, we’re going to find a way to monetize it and make it work

Interviewer: Any other surprises with iPhone, any other suggestions then for people who are going to do iPhone? Have you looked at Android? What are your thoughts on Android versus iPhone? Since you’re outside the U.S., it’s a different perspective.

Interviewee: When we started iPhone development, we were really attracted to the simplicity. There was one skew to speak of. There was one platform to make the games work, and it has quite [?] now, so that’s good. You’ve got iPod Touch, iPhone, 1G, 2G, 3G, 3Gs, iPhone 4, OS3, OS4. I think it’s getting more complex as a landscape.

We are looking at how we can bring out quality platforms that are similar [?] hardware and prices, and we are going to bring our games to Android. We made an announcement a couple weeks ago that we’re going to partner with [?] again to bring our games to [?]. I think it’s very exciting, the speed at which it’s been growing in the market. It’s obviously a bit more [?] than Apples, but just with the number of manufactuarers and people making Android devices. I think it’s exciting the growth of the scene, and it seems like there’s new ways in which you can create apps that tap the functionality of the phone when Apple doesn’t quite [?].

Interviewer: Sure. So, what’s next in store then for Pik Pok either in terms of new products you can talk about, and what suggestions do you have for other indie game developers who are trying to set up their own studio, trying to ride the wave of the mobile gaming or these online games?

Interviewee: So, we’re going to keep supporting and updating the games that we have on the store already. Our Flick Kick football game is getting a great reaction at the moment, and we’re going to keep putting out new modes and updates for that. We’re bringing our games to iPad and to iPhone 4 with the displays of the HD graphics. We’re working on a fairly substantial free to play game which we’ll announce just as soon as we possibly can, but we’re not quite ready yet.

Interviewer: What are the last words that you have for indie game developers out there?

Interviewee: So, I guess my advice for indie developers would be get a plan in place, have a really clear plan. Really find out who it is that you attract to your games. There are so many games out there. What’s unique? What’s different about them? And also, look for people to partner with to help promote your game. [?] is very new. And even look at working with another indie publisher. There’s a lot of value in launching your game with a portfolio of like-minded content, just haviang one game on the App Store or one additional store front. It can be very hard to make yourself stand out. If you publish into a portfolio existing from [?], it tends to be a great way to help [?] faster.

Interviewer: Thank you very much. And where can people find out more about your games?

Interviewee: We have websites up at Sidhe.nz It’s S-I-D-H-E.nz. PikPokGames.com and we’re on Twitter and at PikPok games and at Sidhe.nz.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.