Mobile Entertainment

Every mobile developer has seen headlines about Trism creator Steve Detemer earning $250,000 in just over two months on the Apple App Store. Not surprisingly, they want a piece of the action. But what is the experience of developing for the iPhone really like?

Here at FinBlade our first title was a purposefully simple game WordSearch. The aim was to go through the full development phase – taking in conception, development, the Apple submission process, preparing the appropriate marketing materials and getting contracts in place.

We thought this would be an education process for us, that that we could apply to future projects. Also FinBlade’s strategy is to be a third-party developer for publishers. Clearly, having live titles on the App Store would be a good testimonial for potential clients.

Our first decision was to use the Bedrock technology from Metismo that we already work with. This allows Java code to be converted to native platforms such as the iPhone, so our developers could use their existing environment, tools and even codebase if required. It also reduced the development costs, and gives us the ability to target other native platforms such as Android.

However, it was important to make sure the title played like a true iPhone experience, rather than something quickly or ported from mobile. Very quickly it became  apparent there were two key differences from our usual development experience: the huge amount of space available for resources and the impact of the touchscreen user interface.

We saw this especially with Tennis Slam, a Wii style game which we had made for J2ME as part of a ZeeMote controller demo. It would clearly work well with the iPhone tilt functionality and we quickly had the prototype up and running. The most significant changes were to completely rework all the graphics at a resolution appropriate to the iPhone, change the fingertip button sizes and amend the UI and menu structure.

Once the hard work of developing is done, there’s still the process of getting the title live on the App Store. First, you need to get paperwork from the IRS in the US (even if you are not US based) before your contract can be submitted to Apple.

On top of this you then need to apply for exemption under various tax treaties unless you are happy for a large chunk of your revenue to disappear due to withholding taxes. Each of these steps is relatively straightforward, with excellent documentation supplied by Apple, but the volume of applications and number of steps means that the overall time scale for the end to end process is measured in months – a frustrating wait if you have an application that is ready to go.

It’s hard work, but once your product is live the ‘retail’ experience compared to traditional carriers is a dream! On a daily basis there is access to sales numbers, plus full control over updates to the price point, marketing descriptions and screenshots.

Updates to an application can be submitted with automatic notification to the user so they can download enhancements or fixes. This is a sea change from the normal carrier model of fire-and-forget. Content providers can genuinely monitor sales and user feedback, and act upon them.

Today we have four titles live with many more on the way. We’re actively discussing opportunities with publishers to do more.

So is everything rosy? Well, in the rush to launch new titles, some great games can get lost among the dross. Similarly the spend of consumers is spread over a greater number of titles. As the months go on, deck placement within iTunes, brands and consumer marketing will become more important to success.

Sound familiar? Elements that established publishers are best positioned to supply.

That’s not to say that making money on the iPhone is not possible – it is. Opportunities are there, but not everyone will strike gold.

John Chasey is President of FinBlade, a mobile games developer established from members of the original IOMO team.