Creative Mobile on fun, success and ground-breaking ambition

ok so it's pop gamer and we're in our talent in Australia going around the world seeing the best game companies and now we've created mobile so you've got your brand new teacher undo it introduce yourself and so that's what you do it created over I'm glad from cage mobile i'm one of the co-founders and we'll make up some games for mobile phones and our best-known title is a drag racing yes having a bit of a chat efficient economy its kind of even it's lovely office of a little town is really kind of a house so it's not this really present but we said what you say when you start out there's a five years five years ago you were studying qg wow it is less than that is three years by pretty good morn percentage fogies driving games yeah yeah so so three years ago style did three yeah three of us former co-workers just sitting down and think

about what can we do for well for the players on android so they start out all the games and have this awkward phone the first 100 phone the team about g 1 and g was very well nobody's making earrings own yeah it is but well compared to the kind of stuff that gets shipped today it's a little bit you know it's the first of its kind we can't blame anyone but i guess i bleep interesting thing is you guys anything out for the dome this in a big Android photos beside your first plus games what kind of you there kind of yeah when was that and have it how's that long experience like a language it wasn't very exciting back then well we had an opportunity to be one of the first game drops on the platform and we consciously decided to focus on this new android thing because

we were not a very strong team back there on this face it but just a bunch of guys with some technical skills no idea about how games are made no connections in the world of game development no budget nothing so that maybe if we start early and we'll make some games very simple games now nothing spectacular just you know good gameplay pure experience then maybe we can be win so fast and you know just find a niche on the market and go from there you can when you first get some successes with a 3d possible game is mess yeah it was well it's complicated process game development and especially when you have no idea about the business side of things initially we started trying to sell games 40 99 like on the app store because we thought if that strategy works there then one trial androids you know smartphone apps row it should work it didn't so we spend about here

figuring out the business model selection switch to as we discovered that if you don't have a marketing budget you have to think of some creative ways to use the free tools available so we started experimenting with icons titles description screenshots and eventually so got together in the right way and we made this 3d basketball game which took off and start making some money and getting some a ten thousand dollars a day which was biased and back then an amazing success then next about them is able to tip you health experience that strong brightness from her 92like simple game playing keep up with graduates again yeah give me the you're still the petrified of the company so this is kind of the two-degree we see this up on drag races over to pursue that process and how that was spontaneously as many many good things and when we sublet results of best for saw 3d we came up with a strategy that

we are going to make very simple games once in 4-6 weeks thinks that don't take off get killed off what takes off gets some more time invested in this game and if you make successful game every two months more or less successful game this is the way to scare of the business and you're gonna look at it with all these dangerous used with a lot of people who've been very successful because nobody things that were really nice wide actually made you pretty be quite small coming you're lucky or being smart either you lucky to work out to be lacking something baby there's tons of interesting things say it wasn't really said there wasn't a racing category or either just the race kappa you've just started yeah just just added it on android market and we're closely watching the market my clan and there's a lot that's doing that wow it's always a degree of luck involved it's like liking you know poker if you do things

the right way eventually you win but this can come later earlier there's always luck involved and we could have made like 10 or 20 games without seen any success this is always possible it's a it's a very difficult market to be in so they added racing on android market and we looked at the racing category and what kind of games are there what kind of racing games are available and there was this game where we had to kind of roll the toilet paper and that was called raise people's in the top five in the category and that was it basically all the other games were unrelated to cars just you know some guys that jumped on the opportunity to get into the new category ranked high so that maybe if we make a decent racing game we can secure ourselves a good spot in the rankings while there is the opportunity so we spent six weeks it was five of us back man none of us having any you know any successful experience

in the game ends with before that what our artists used to work at the construction worker our market and exposure as an intern from the University for free or a team of misfits and we saw an opportunity with quickly within six weeks slap together a free game put on the market and it took off to ya to forty thousand dollars in the first full day than 80,000 downloads and lots and lots of feedback and feature requests and bugs surfacing and back-end problems we have this $24 per month server infrastructure which was a bunch of PHP scripts and it collapsed immediately and then we rebuilt it with something stronger and it collapsed and when we rebuilt it again and again and again and from that point six months is a blur I don't remember anything it was just struggling with the truck came the other night was a nice that's nice voluntarily success but you were again you were kind of in the right place the right timing with in-app purchases which were to enable the roughly around the

same time as well yeah they were an emblem in about two or three weeks after drag race in what life now we jumped on this opportunity to well as always experiment yeah we didn't really believe in in well the financial impact of in-app purchases without okay we have the side supporting gay men douche can somehow know integrating the purchase and see what kind of impact it has as a part of our you know learning process and well the impact was positive we grew our revenues from 3-4 times almost immediately and yeah that's what I'm we're always that when our different company and we have to do things differently and 180 HP Gina so we have helping you guys now around 75 sellers brief over in a new we're going to talk about the new getting moving quickly but you please specify up games kind of now you say usually something a drag racing kind

of that vehicles bears monthly as well so thanks a question the most important stage you're really successful with drag racing whyteleafe release your least one can a vampire RPG you've released about the other quite different types of games we thought at the time that okay we have this great game on our hands but this is a very volatile market and we're still in the early days but maybe tomorrow guys with much bigger budgets much more experienced skilled and talented teams come to the same racing category with much more polished much more attractive stuff and just push us off the market so we have to be prepared for what that happens have to be in touch with other signals on the market try different game design decisions try different you know monetization tools see what else is there what works for different segments

of the audience and yeah it was very tempting to just focus on drag racing because we saw this shining example in the rovio and how they converted a successful game into global brand which is you know outstanding achievement and of course we're thinking all right we're one of the most download games on android and enjoy it has become a really really big thing so maybe we have this opportunity to focus on it and it develop a brand but we didn't really believe in that with that yeah we have a good opportunity to grow the company but let's not become delusional it's a very simple game it doesn't have the production value of you know many other titles the the name of the game is difficult to convert into a strong brand because of so generic and in-service pulpit purpose by driving lots of traffic to the game that's why we chose this name in the first place but for the purpose of great global brand not the best title and we didn't have a likeable

characters in the game either so what do you connect with the brand what do you start promoting how to deal you this recognition it seems like well a very difficult challenge and probably unrealistic so I said okay we're going to support this game if it lasts six months great then we have six months to transform the company into something that's capable of producing good original games in the frontal plane might as well and so on so such trying different things so we raised the iris part of drag racing on the app store and at the same time released a completely unrelated game about trading cards and vampires and demons and stuff or on Android and it was all happen at the same time and not not all of these things worked for us but it's process of learning we didn't have a superstar team with ten 10 million VC money at the

beginning I have a bunch of people from other industries just learning how to make games and it doesn't matter if this this other gives failed or succeeded it's part of beginning to understand what players want my guess is you say when you when you go from a team of five hundred 0 75 universe a lot of hiring lot kind of kind of create that kind of a kind of an ethos of it what the company is is about people from all different yeah it's like it's very difficult to just you know put 70 people speed hired over two years in one room and come up with a mustard base they have to learn have to click with each other they have to understand the requirements of this specific segment of their game development industry right so this is your big big hit with a drag racing southie years ago now so how do you have you taken experience like that

I thank you on this because because a reputation on the line it's not really i mean people talking badass equal to drag racing but you can't see it something bigger than that yeah where we've we've been really ambitious without game last year were listed by condition and the biconditional simple spin-off of drag racing players have been asking for bikes and the game for a while so we said here you go have the bike racing game and wouldn't invest into promotion at all would just cross promoting our existing audience posted on facebook and that was it at the game went to top five in the gross and charles in the top games charts and group way almost immediately it was a major major success for us and we looked up this whole and thought what next no we have we have a big audience it's super easy for us to promote new drag racing games so we can do this over and over again it sounds like a very viable business model we can just continue doing what we do best and you know make money be a successful company and yeah but that's not fun how

that doesn't you know don't excite people who work on games people who come in to game development most of them they want to create groundbreaking stuff something fantastic they want to grow they want to belong to innovation and that's the kind of spirit once you have in the office so we said okay let's make a much more vicious game which is in the barometer every department and see if it makes us a different company takes us to the next level or chaos that sounds fun yeah so we so basically took drag racing apart and okay let's make the best visuals in the market let's make again with the best physics on the market let's make a game with best social component in the drag in the racing segment which has all their know in drag racing have unofficial teams in the game there's no framework for teams but they play the place a organized teams offline they organize some fun competitions they get together physically in some places they announce them on facebook and you

know they have had real prizes and few occasions the degree of dedication is just went stick so I thought okay let's give these people the fantastic playground where they can in the game organized team have team property build cars together compete without teams for domination and different regions and that that kind of stuff so yeah that's basically took every aspect version game said what can we do to really take it in this aspect to the next level and that's what we've been doing for the past few months you're staying here we're hoping we're hoping to lunch closed beta in late may early june but that's going to be just for our most dedicated bunch so guys who have spent lots of time playing drag racing they can get a preview of the new game and see you if if you like new

physics if they can understand and get get used to the new upgrade system so they can what for them this is serious stuff they want to get preview so that when the game comes out they have you know they're prepared to do yeah we're jamming that's for them the launch the big public launch I cannot say late summer it's unlikely that oh it's a question of how many features go into the this version 1.0 because we have yeah that's assault by this weekend released right now but it's not quite what I want it to be we can revisit them in two years and it's going to be fantastic year but that's a little bit too late so it's a question of well we decided that we have the right set of fishers to go life and this time will be lost Travis view of the Android and iOS this time you'll cross platform right what happened yeah we are we're right

now we're designing primarily for Android and iOS yeah include an iPad well all the racial device with an iPad layouts and you know this time we're doing this the right way technically we can release it on almost any platform out there Windows Phone winner T desktop Xbox it on the you know depends on the market opportunity and how much yeah on the business aspects technically where we've designed this game to be compatible with almost anything