Too many ports, too few publishers - how studios are coping
Four years ago, when ME was preparing to launch, gaming was buoyant and we had a host of (UK) developers – Morpheme, Iomo, Kuju, Rockpool, Hailstorm, Affinity, Ideaworks3D, Elite and Distinctive – that we could rely on for comment and insight.
Today, the first six of this group have either exited mobile or disappeared completely.
Yes, these are unforgiving times to be a Western games developer. And yet, by some reckoning, mobile gaming has never been healthier. It remains the most popular content category outside of ringtones, and has been given a fillip by the arrival of iPhone, Blackberry and other native formats. The fact that these new devices support app stores removes some of the traditional barriers to distribution (the publisher, the aggregator, the operator deck) is an extra bonus.
So what went wrong? A bunch of things. First off, existing barriers got higher: fragmentation made porting an increasingly expensive and time-consuming distraction. Then, publishers kept buying each other or folding to shrink the number of available distribution partners. Finally, the D2C sector collapsed to increase the reliance on those limited operator decks.
“There just aren’t any routes to market for us any more. There are fewer publishers than ever, and they’ve all got their own developer teams,” says Brian Rodway of Affinity, which is now focused on the casual console market.
The mounting hurdles may have squeezed out developers like Affinity, but created an opportunity for codeshops with a lower cost base. And in from the East they came – from Poland and Ukraine and India. It’s probably true to say that, numerically, the majority of mobile games development is now being carried out by studios like Spiel (India), Gamelion (Poland), Herocraft (Russia) and many more. The cost of labour and rent just makes it more economical for them.
Where does this leave the Western European base? Well, the fact is that the long history of games development in a country like France and the UK (home of the Amstrad and the Sinclair Spectrum) commands respect and means that, where costs can be controlled, publishers will still come knocking. This explains the success of Scotland’s Tag Games and Dynamo, the latter of which was selected to develop the long awaited mobile version of Championship Manager.
Where a developer can secure their own IP, even better. Hence the endurance of one of the world’s oldest indy studios, Elite Systems, which has built a solid mobile business on the back of classic eighties home computer IP like Paper Boy and R-Type.
Niche platforms are another area of opportunity. Developers like Germany’s Fishlabs see high-end gaming on the iPhone as chance to break out from the Java pack. At the other end of the scale, ultra-casual platforms like Flash present a similar escape route. It’s why Zed bought French Flash specialist Mobitween last year. And it’s what keeps Fluid Pixel plugging away from its UK base.
Finally, there’s the big budget high profile stuff where quality is all. Here, the big publishers keep it in-house – or they go to studios like Distinctive Developments and IdeaWorks3D.
Distinctive has been developing wireless games for EA, Konami and others since 2001; its CV lists FIFA Football and Metal Gear Acid. The UK firm is one of the few ‘originals’ still in the space, and has even built its own testing base. And guess where its located? Poland.
To read Part Two of our Game Developer Special, click here.
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