I'm losing my favourite game

[venta]

I don't post about work here much. But just for once...

I work for a company that's been building a cross-mobile (and indeed cross-device, should you wish to play games on an internet-enabled telly or a high-powered toaster) platform for casual games. And our game store is now up and running:

www.antixgames.com

This is what our marketing department is calling a "soft launch", which appears to mean largely un-publicised. We support only a couple of phones[*] at the moment, and don't have a large range of games. But if you're willing to install a plug-in, you can pop along and try the games out in your (Windows) web browser.

Those of you who've heard me on the topic of work recently will instantly identify the actual bits I've actually been involved with :)

[*] Number of phones our software runs on: big. Number of phones our software runs on which have been properly tested and exhaustively verified and can be considered market quality: small.

Comments

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Glad to see cross-platform, especially for mobiles (as opposed to the usual "Let's support IPhone ... and maybe this new Android thing, that's everyone right?")

I've already seen (though not played) Toonwarz for Symbian phones, I don't know if that means they're shipping on the untested platforms already, or it's been ported to your game engine.

I tried out the browser plug in and it works fine in Opera. I was curious to see if "Four In a Line" really was just four in a line. Honestly, if there's money to be made writing stuff like that, I'm in the wrong industry. I even see they have a Windows PC version for £11.75 (surely on the desktop, there's even more competition from loads of free versions). I do love the long-winded description they give - I never knew the history of "four in a line" was so rich! Not to mention their extensive feature list that lists things like "help file" :)

(No reflection on your company or game engine - I realise this is a separate developer.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I've already seen (though not played) Toonwarz for Symbian phones, I don't know if that means they're shipping on the untested platforms already, or it's been ported to your game engine.

If it's on a Symbian phone, then I imagine it's running native there. It was subsequently ported to our platform.

Four in a line

Like I said above, the policy at the moment is to try and look well-populated. Quality will take longer. I'm not sure we expect to *sell* any of these!

(Actually, as it happens, it's only technically a separate developer. They supplied the engines, all the actual GUI stuff has been done by me. Purely to get the numbers up!)

I have been staggered recently by the amount some developers think they can charge for games - and also the huge variety in pricing. You can buy a branded Tetris on an iPhone for some small sum, but on my 2-3 yr old Sony Ericsson it's £5.95! I'd have bought it if it'd been a couple of quid, but am now avoiding it on principle.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure we expect to *sell* any of these!

Where by "these" I mean the board-game-a-likes. Some of the other games are fun. I've played a lot of ZooCube under the guise of testing :)

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Ah right, I was confused by AI Factory also having the product for PC and assumed it was entirely their work. It makes sense as having it as a showcase. No criticism on the GUI, it looks very nice :) I was just curious whether a separate company was making money from such games or not. And I agree that the non-board-games on there seem to offer more.

Yes, it does seem to be that on mobiles it's still possible to charge for even trivial things (though it wasn't too long ago we had even ringtones selling for several pounds, I don't know if that still happens). Perhaps part of the problem is that even if free equivalents exist, it can be harder to search them out (people may just go with whatever floats to the top of the app store rankings). Possibly also not helped in that the app stores make it very easy for developers to charge, so it must be tempting to think "why not try selling it".

[venta.livejournal.com]

AI Factory made the engine. They do also sell the game, including that one for PC you linked to. The game on our store, though, is our version using their engine.

Where by "sell" I do admittedly mean "offer for sale". Even allowing the effects you mention, I'd be truly staggered if anyone wanted to pay £12 for a PC version of an OEM Connect4!