It's crunch time at Appy Entertainment. In a small office in the heart of Carlsbad Village, employees of the company, which celebrated its third year on Halloween, are putting the finishing touches on a product that, once it goes live, will be instantly available to people throughout the world with a swipe or a tap of the finger.
Theirs is a relatively new industry, one created when Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be opening its App Store to third-party developers. It's an industry that's rapidly changing, and requires constant adjustment.
Appy makes video games for handheld devices, primarily for iOS, Apple's mobile operating system, which runs on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
The company's games include Face Fighter, a game that allows players to upload photos of themselves or their friends and instantly "fight" against them, inflicting black eyes and other exaggerated battle wounds with each strike, and Trucks & Skulls, in which players launch monster trucks (a "physics-puzzler" similar to Angry Birds, but edgier) toward structures to try to take out animated skulls with explosive flourishes.
According to Paul O'Connor, Appy's brand director, the company's games have been downloaded more than 11 million times and have 1.5 million monthly users. They are also highly-rated by gamers, who give the games high marks for their use of humor and playability (both Trucks & Skulls and Face Fighter have nearly perfect five-star ratings in the App Store).
The company, which has 10 employees, was founded by veteran game developers, who have led multiple video game companies through founding, scaling and acquisition, most recently Carlsbad's High Moon Studios, which is now a part of Activision-Blizzard.
O'Connor said the founders instantly saw the potential that the iOS system had to transform gaming by allowing smaller studios to be competitive with larger companies by creating short games that people could play a couple of minutes at a time.
The games could be high-quality, even without the large resources required for producing games for video game consoles.Working on smaller budgets, companies take chances, creating games that seek to engage the imaginations of game players.
"With videogames now, it is too risky to do new stuff, thus the proliferation of sequels and games that build upon existing properties," O'Connor said.
The integration of a camera and touch-screen, along with the social aspect of owning an iPhone, created the ideal environment for game-sharing. Thus, Appy's games are social in nature. The goal of each game is to entice the user to whip out his phone and show off the game to his friends.
Appy's latest game is SpellCraft School of Magic. It's a role playing game set in a wizardry school. It enables you to craft spells to fight monsters and rescure your teachers. It also features a social components, allowing users to play with their friends.
The game will be available for free from the App Store, though purchases can be made to give players an edge, or to help them progress faster through the game. The game is fully functioning whether one pays or not, but Appy is counting on people liking the game so much, they'll spend money to enhance their playing experience.
These so-called "freemium" games are the trend in smart-phone gaming, and illustrate just how fast the mobile gaming industry changes.
The move toward freemium games gained momentum this year, and almost overnight, upended the way games in the App store were sold. Before that, makers charged a per-download fee (Appy first started selling their games for 99 cents).
SpellCraft is Appy's first forray into a full freemium game, although it took steps to make freemium versions of its popular games earlier this year in response to the trend.
"What we're looking at now is to engage our customers," O'Connor said. "We want them to download the game, to play the game and like it so much, that they'll be willing to spend a dollar to help them achieve a better score, or progress through the game levels faster."
Because more people download freemium games than those that have a price, the shift may address a challenge that all game makers have: bringing enough attention to a game to make it a commercial hit. That level of critical mass is hard to sustain, a fact that the folks at Appy have experienced first hand.
Last Thanksgiving, Trucks & Skulls received the push of a lifetime, it became a "Feature App," receiving a prominent banner ad every time someone accessed the App Store. The advertising for their game was so prominent, it overshadowed a banner for a product from Oprah Winfrey.
"It was like getting an ad in the Super Bowl, without having to pay the millions" O'Connor said. But even that exposure was not enough to sustain the momentum. After the spot came down, so did the download numbers.
O'Connor said Appy is currently working to expand its staff. This, he said, would allow it to speed up its development time and have more games out on the market over the course of a year.
For more information about the company, visit www.appyentertainment.com.
Theirs is a relatively new industry, one created when Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be opening its App Store to third-party developers. It's an industry that's rapidly changing, and requires constant adjustment.
Appy makes video games for handheld devices, primarily for iOS, Apple's mobile operating system, which runs on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
The company's games include Face Fighter, a game that allows players to upload photos of themselves or their friends and instantly "fight" against them, inflicting black eyes and other exaggerated battle wounds with each strike, and Trucks & Skulls, in which players launch monster trucks (a "physics-puzzler" similar to Angry Birds, but edgier) toward structures to try to take out animated skulls with explosive flourishes.
According to Paul O'Connor, Appy's brand director, the company's games have been downloaded more than 11 million times and have 1.5 million monthly users. They are also highly-rated by gamers, who give the games high marks for their use of humor and playability (both Trucks & Skulls and Face Fighter have nearly perfect five-star ratings in the App Store).
The company, which has 10 employees, was founded by veteran game developers, who have led multiple video game companies through founding, scaling and acquisition, most recently Carlsbad's High Moon Studios, which is now a part of Activision-Blizzard.
O'Connor said the founders instantly saw the potential that the iOS system had to transform gaming by allowing smaller studios to be competitive with larger companies by creating short games that people could play a couple of minutes at a time.
The games could be high-quality, even without the large resources required for producing games for video game consoles.Working on smaller budgets, companies take chances, creating games that seek to engage the imaginations of game players.
"With videogames now, it is too risky to do new stuff, thus the proliferation of sequels and games that build upon existing properties," O'Connor said.
The integration of a camera and touch-screen, along with the social aspect of owning an iPhone, created the ideal environment for game-sharing. Thus, Appy's games are social in nature. The goal of each game is to entice the user to whip out his phone and show off the game to his friends.
Appy's latest game is SpellCraft School of Magic. It's a role playing game set in a wizardry school. It enables you to craft spells to fight monsters and rescure your teachers. It also features a social components, allowing users to play with their friends.
The game will be available for free from the App Store, though purchases can be made to give players an edge, or to help them progress faster through the game. The game is fully functioning whether one pays or not, but Appy is counting on people liking the game so much, they'll spend money to enhance their playing experience.
These so-called "freemium" games are the trend in smart-phone gaming, and illustrate just how fast the mobile gaming industry changes.
The move toward freemium games gained momentum this year, and almost overnight, upended the way games in the App store were sold. Before that, makers charged a per-download fee (Appy first started selling their games for 99 cents).
SpellCraft is Appy's first forray into a full freemium game, although it took steps to make freemium versions of its popular games earlier this year in response to the trend.
"What we're looking at now is to engage our customers," O'Connor said. "We want them to download the game, to play the game and like it so much, that they'll be willing to spend a dollar to help them achieve a better score, or progress through the game levels faster."
Because more people download freemium games than those that have a price, the shift may address a challenge that all game makers have: bringing enough attention to a game to make it a commercial hit. That level of critical mass is hard to sustain, a fact that the folks at Appy have experienced first hand.
Last Thanksgiving, Trucks & Skulls received the push of a lifetime, it became a "Feature App," receiving a prominent banner ad every time someone accessed the App Store. The advertising for their game was so prominent, it overshadowed a banner for a product from Oprah Winfrey.
"It was like getting an ad in the Super Bowl, without having to pay the millions" O'Connor said. But even that exposure was not enough to sustain the momentum. After the spot came down, so did the download numbers.
O'Connor said Appy is currently working to expand its staff. This, he said, would allow it to speed up its development time and have more games out on the market over the course of a year.
For more information about the company, visit www.appyentertainment.com.