Have you gotten any early feedback or interest from developers to guage the concept’s level of acceptance?
Eli: Concurrent to the release of our front-facing beta, we’re going to be reaching out to all the developers whose IPs we’re parodying in the first release of the game, to show them the content in action. We’re still a comfortable amount of time away from releasing the final product, and instead of building up buzz about what we were trying to do and raise questions about its integrity, we wanted to show these developers the mini-games in action, let them be some of the first to get their hands on the game, and offer them the ability to see how we’re paying smart homage to their content instead of simply cashing in on their hard work.
You’ve already revealed your two first mini games, ‘Office Ninja’ and ‘Office Birds’. Have you already gotten a buy in from Halfbrick and Rovio on these? If not, do you have a backup plan if, despite your best efforts, developers just aren’t interested in having their titles parodied by you?
Eli: It’s crazy to see some of these questions knowing how fast we’ve been iterating on the product! Since the time I talked to Carter (at 148Apps), we’ve switched gears from the latter mini-game choice and decided to use “Office Ninja” and “Officebalt,” a parody of Adam Saltsman’s wonderful Canabalt, as our introductory mini-games. To be clear, this wasn’t as a result of any negative contact with Rovio, but rather based on a team decision about the functionality of the mini-games. Each game has to be instantly comprehensible based on a one line, verb-driven expression (think WarioWare), for example, “Slice the supplies!” or “Tap to jump!” Rovio’s game is a worldwide phenomenon, but to really pay Angry Birds its due, you can’t maintain the kind of pace we were hoping to emphasize – fast, frantic.
To your question: Our goal is first and foremost to show respect to the IPs we’re lampooning, and give these developers their due. We’re creating highly polished mini games that are so obvious in their homage (hence the corny titles!) that we want them to be recognized as shallow parodies. At accords, we’re also taking a stab at those developers who would go out and make games on the back of these IPs, or put direct clones onto the App Store – taking “clone culture” to task. From another angle, we’re creating a fictional world (not so different than our own!) where people are obsessed with playing apps at work; what better apps to choose than the ones that have so defined mobile game culture?
We’re not providing players with the ability to play these games independent of the mini-game function, or establishing an “in-game arcade” space where the mini-games are monetized with ChaChings. In fact, we’re including a full section in our own “more games” area where users will be directed to download the games we’re parodying. All of this goes to say that we feel confident that as we approach the individual developers, they will instantly recognize what we’re doing as fan service. Because first and foremost we are huge fans of these games.
Arctic Empire plans to release OfficeAttacks! as an iPad-only release due to the screen real estate needed to display the game the way you’d like to. For the game within the game to work, you’d like to display Steve’s virtual iPhone in full resolution. Given the casual nature of the game, I would think the iPhone would be a perfect platform for quick, anywhere play sessions. So do you have any concerns that restricting the experience to just the one, larger device will limit your audience? Or will it actually help the game to stand out more?
Should demand dictate an iPhone release, you must have some ideas of how you might port the title to iPhone as well right?
Couldn’t the display just morph into Steve’s iPhone display?
Eli: You wouldn’t believe how much we’ve gone back and forth on this issue (or maybe you would)! The value of a simultaneous release can’t be understated in some respects, as you’re tapping into an audience of many, many more people by diversifying to phones – which are much more common than tablets even despite the latter’s explosive growth. With that said, we’re of the mind that the iPad-only space is an underrated, hugely exciting place to develop in. There are 200,000+ iPad-only applications, which makes getting noticed far more attainable. For certain, the app will be among the app store like the rest of the games/apps, but targeting our game to the one platform puts us in contention – selfishly – for all sorts of promotions targeted at “great games for your iPad,” etc. More and more frequently, as well, we’re seeing two different games picked as Apple’s “Editor’s choice” title, exemplified by this week’s selection of Magic 2013 for the iPad section.
This all goes to say that we feel the iPad as an exclusive launch platform has huge advantages, and a growing market share that isn’t yet as flooded. We want this to be the kind of game iPhone players see their iPad-owning friends playing, only to ask about. And vice versa, with iPad owners telling their iPhone owning friends about OfficeAttacks!. And yet with that said, we want to anticipate demand instead of wait for it. Because of the code base, we’re easily able to start working on a Mac App Store and iPhone version of the title right away, and plan to do so amid managing the community and responding to fans in the outset of the game’s release. We don’t have an official timeline for those releases yet.
Because the graphics were done in vector, scaling the content would not be extremely difficult, and, as you mentioned, simply “sliding” an iPhone screen into view for Steve to play his mini-games would not be hard. For us, the focus is on working with our many different layouts (tower builder, trading system, etc.) to ensure that nothing feels cramped, and more importantly, to prevent users from having to download a second app (which we hate!), we’d be making an update to the existing build to add universality in a way that feels natural for anyone downloading it.
