A changing market
I recently got in touch with Andrew Smith of Spilt Milk Studios to talk about his experience in mobile development, and I wasn’t anticipating that he’d given up on it completely. Previously responsible for mobile titles like the highly rated puzzler Hard Lines for iOS, Smith is now working on Tango Fiesta, an ’80s-themed twin-stick shooter for PC — again, in Early Access on Steam — which he’s also bringing to consoles.
Smith explained in an email how much the mobile market has changed since he first got involved.
“When I first started making mobile games, it was a relatively new market,” he said, “with low enough technical and administrative barriers that a tiny team of people could make something fun in a few weeks or months … and with luck make their money back.
“As time went on, a combination of the millions of people playing, the open nature of the various app stores, and the inevitable rise in production values meant that the equation changed.”
Above: Tango Fiesta channels the spirit of classic action movies.
For the love of games
Smith also realized that, in trying to keep up with mobile trends, he’d no longer be making the types of games that he actually wanted to play.
“The kind of games I wanted to make were the kind of games I grew up playing and falling in love with,” he said. “And that just didn’t gel with what was popular on mobile at the time. I realized I needed support — money, marketing, production, contacts — if I was to carry on, but I’d also need to force myself into making the kind of games I don’t necessarily love.”
Smith decided to move to PC and Steam with Tango Fiesta, given the relatively low bar to entry and the interest of smaller publishers who “do great deals with indies.” He partnered with Mastertronic, and he’s super positive about how things are going. “Once we’ve shipped this summer, we’ll move onto our second project for PC while also getting Tango launched on consoles,” he said. “It’s all very exciting, and we get to make the kinds of games we love, too!”
Smith’s advice for developers is to pick the path of least resistance, which right now — for him, at least — is to focus on PC.
“Basically, it comes down to this – running a business and making games are two very hard things to do right … or do well,” he said. “Making enough money to carry on doing so is almost impossible. So at every turn, the sensible developer takes the route that sees them face the fewest, smallest, or most easily surmountable challenges. Pick your fights. And pick very few.”
After the gold rush
I met Steven Verbeek at the Casual Connect gaming conference in Amsterdam back in February. Surrounded by mobile games and advertising firms, Verbeek’s team — dressed as 1920s gangsters — were showing off Guns, Gore, & Cannoli, a side-scrolling zombie shooter that picked up the Best PC Game award at the show.
Verbeek told me that his company, Crazy Monkey Studios, shifted quite recently from mobile to PC development. It wasn’t until I caught up with him by email this week, though, that I realized how big a move that had been and how much trouble mobile development had caused for the small team from Belgium.
“My company started in 2011 with our main focus on mobile development,” said Verbeek, who was “thrilled by the app gold rush on iOS and Android devices back then.”
Despite significant investments of between $56,000 and $112,000 in their mobile games, the team struggled to make a decent return.
“Unfortunately, all our projects ended up being unprofitable due to lack of visibility and big competition on the stores,” said Verbeek. “I can still remember selling 1,000 copies a day during the first week, and from one day to another it switched to five units a day because we went out of the spotlight.”
Above: Gangsters meet zombies in Guns, Gore, & Cannoli.
Switching direction
The studio’s mobile games ended up in what Verbeek describes as the “never-ending app universe, where 99 percent of all apps are and nobody cares about.”
Verbeek said the team couldn’t stomach making free-to-play mobile titles, which none of them enjoy playing. “It’s suddenly not about building a great gaming experience for your audience but implementing features to get as much money as possible out of their pockets,” he said.
Instead, they decided to focus on PC and console development, and Guns, Gore, & Cannoli was born. Verbeek told me that his team “absolutely” prefers building for PC and console.
“We just get to work with a lot more CPU and memory to build larger environments and special effects,” he said. “This is what we all wanted to do.”
Verbeek has no plans to go back to mobile development right now. “We will definitely stick to console and PC development,” he said, “although we don’t know what the future might bring. Several new concepts are on the drawing board; for now, we have nothing scheduled for the mobile space.”
He told me of several other indie studios who’ve made the same move. “I hear them all complaining about the difficulties on mobile,” he said.
It’s an all too familiar story.