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Patrick Curry Meet Up
Patrick Curry has been developing mobile games since 2001. While mobile game development tools and distribution have improved dramatically, the industry has also become much more competitive. Developing mobile games is easier than ever before due to advanced game engines and tools, but it is also harder to succeed financially due to vast choice and short fad cycles. Curry focuses on rapid iterative development with small teams, outsourcing non-core work, and automating processes to stay efficient. He aims to help other developers by open-sourcing the tools and knowledge his company has gained.
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Patrick Curry Meet Up
- 1. Mobile Game Development Lessons,Challenges & What’s Next? Patrick Curry @patrickmcurry October 23, 2013
- 2. My History inGames 1994: Web content for game companies 2001: Full-time mobile game developer 2003: Making games for Xbox, PlayStation, Wii 2007: Teaching game development part-time 2011: Back to making mobile games 2013: Focusing on making development easier
- 3. Guilty Party GridBloc Devil’s TuningFork Stranglehold Avengers Initiative Wheelman Stubbs the Zombie Wizard of Oz Awesome Eats Octodad
- 4. How Far MobileHas Come 2001: 2011: Screen Size: 60x96 px 640x960 px Framerate: 1 frame a sec. 30+ fps Devices: Low millions 1 billion Technology: WAP, J2ME Your pick... Distribution: Good Luck! App Stores!
- 5. LAUNCHED APPS Helped createbig mobile games for big companies. Avengers Initiative Wizard of Oz Whole Kids Awesome Eats
- 6. What can Itell you about mobile game development?
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- 9. Making games hasnever been easier than now...
- 10. TOOLS Everything you needis at your fingertips. • More game engines than ever before: • • Unity, Unreal, GameSalad, GameMaker Great cross-platform development tools: • • HTML5, JavaScript, Flash, C++, C# If you know code at all, you can make a game.
- 11. COMMUNITY There are amillion people making games & apps. • People love to help each other make games • • • Developer forums Stack Overflow Not just online, but in-person too! • Meet Ups, IGDA, Juegos Rancheros
- 12. ACCESS Anyone can publishan app. • You don’t have to know the right people anymore • • To put out a DVD-based game, you need a publisher, a distributor and a retailer On mobile you only need Apple or Google... • And be willing to give them 30% of each sale
- 13. COST Your devkit costs$300. You already have one. • $200 for an iPhone. $100 for a developer account. • • • Most tools have a free version Open source software can get you far Everyone you know can be a beta tester • Use TestFlight to send them your app
- 14. Making money withgames has never been harder...
- 15. CHOICE There are 2million other apps out there. • 1,400 games come out on iOS each week • • • Apple only features ~20 of them If you’re not in the top 1%, hard to get noticed The competition is spending $100k+ on ads • How do you cut through the noise?
- 16. DEVICES 20 different iOSdevices. 4,000+ Androids. • 5 different screen resolutions to support for iOS • • • Devices that look nearly identical AREN’T Apple makes it difficult to target specific devices Don’t even get me started about Android • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Android_devices
- 17. BIZ MODEL The traditionalpublisher model is dead • Used to get funding for a game with just a design doc • • • Be prepared to pay for development yourself... Or raise money from investors. Work-for-hire in console was long, lucrative contracts
- 18. FADS Every month thereis a new winner to copy. • Angry Birds... • Infinity Blade... • Candy Crush... • CSR Racing... • Clash of Clans...
- 19. HOW DO YOU MAKEIT EASIER?
- 20. Hard lessons learnedfrom years of mobile game dev... ... that I wish I knew three years ago.
- 21. SMALL TEAMS Two peoplecan make an awesome game. • Team-size is not a measure of quality • • Get the right people for each role You don’t have to sit together • Use the magic of Skype and GitHub
- 22. RAPID DEV Don’t getstuck. Don’t stop. Don’t waste time. • Every month that you don’t ship, the world is changing. • • • Apple will release a new device or rev of iOS Kill your sacred cows and SHIP THE GAME. You can’t learn until you $%&# up bad.
- 23. THE CROWD Get theaudience involved early. • Make something that people want. • • Get feedback on the game as soon as possible Kickstarter lets you fundraise AND get an audience • Get your audience invested in the idea
- 24. OUTSOURCE Don’t do anythingyou’re not great at. • Easy to outsource... • • • Large amounts of your content ALL of your IT hosting & operations Hard to outsource... • Vision. Game Design. Lead Engineer.
- 25. What we focusedon at Fun Machine... ... is what we’re good at and enjoy
- 26. PROCESS We’re the processgeeks in a room of geeks. • There’s almost always an orderly way to do something • Once you’ve made most of the big mistakes, you learn how to avoid them • We use software to track our processes and progress: Google Docs, Jira, etc.
- 27. AUTOMATION Please don’t makeme think about that again. • • • No amount of process will avoid all human error The app store is rife with opportunities to screw up We wrote software for as many steps in the development process as possible. And then automated that software.
- 28. ITERATION The more youtry, the more likely you are to get it right. • If it takes 20 minutes to “try something out” • • If it takes 5 minutes to try it out... • • You get 3 tries an hour You get 12 tries an hour We focused on empowering our team with tools
- 29. HELPING We enjoy helpingour friends make their games • • • It feels good to be trusted enough to help Teaching, solving problems & shipping is rewarding Hard to turn down work, especially from friends
- 30. What we’re focusedon moving forward... ... still what we’re good at and enjoy
- 31. HELPING We want toclone ourselves... as robots • Offering our tools to the community to help them automate the workflow • Creating a knowledge-base of the common “gotchas” in mobile game development • Building a community of app developers that also like robots (and zombies, of course)
- 32. TOOLS When our friendsasked for our tools, we listened • Awesome to hear: “Hey that thing you made, can I use it when you’re not around?” • Spent the last several months making our tools useful without us in the room • Juuuust about to release them to the world...
- 33. THE BIG IDEA Howwe’re trying to help • • • Free your engineers from repetitive grunt-work Empower non-programmers to test their work Let you focus on making your game
- 34. COMMUNITY Let’s stay intouch and help each other • • • We still don’t know everything about apps The rules change every day (iPad Air?!?) Small teams survive with the help of friends
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