Kai Hitzer, Marketing Director at Deep Silver FISHLABS, spoke about the features of hardcore games on the mobile market.
There is an opinion that games in the genre of science fiction are not very suitable for the mobile games market, which to a greater extent still remains focused on a mass audience. But Fishlabs has gained fame by making games in this genre. What do you think about this?Maybe science fiction is not as popular among gamers as, for example, fantasy, but this does not mean that space games do not have their own huge audience on different platforms.
For example, the first two parts of Galaxy on Fire received more than 15 million downloads only on iOS and Android, and our mobile MMO strategy Galaxy on Fire – Alliances is now played by hundreds of thousands of players around the world.
In general, if we talk about why we decided to make an open space setting for our game, then everything is simple: those who made the first Galaxy on Fire were big fans of the sci-fi genre and really wanted to make a mobile game based on such classic PC games as Elite, Wing Commander, Freelancer and X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter.
However, there was another reason. When we started working on the Java version of Galaxy on Fire 3D, mobile devices were many times weaker than current smartphones and tablets. In conditions of very limited resources, setting in outer space gives the main advantage: there is no need to create a rich game world and complex locations. What is a galaxy? This is, in fact, a boundless space in which planets, asteroids, stations and ships move. Unlike, for example, from the jungle or desert, a not very powerful processor is enough to create such a setting.
Give some advice to developers who are going to make a hardcore game for mobile platforms.Despite the fact that casual games enjoy incredible success on mobile platforms, midcore and hardcore projects have also become popular recently.
And as technology develops, they get better.
If you are going to make a hardcore mobile game, first of all, do not underestimate the amount of work that will have to be done. Every detail should be carefully polished: graphics, sound, gameplay, technical side, and in general all aspects of user interaction with the product.Now it will take almost as much time, effort, resources and people in a team to develop a hardcore game for mobile platforms as it will take to develop a similar game for PC or consoles.
What is the specifics of interacting with gamers who play hardcore games on smartphones and tablets?The main feature of hardcore gamers is that they are much more passionate about games than casual players.
They pay close attention to every detail, organize themselves on forums and in chat rooms (for example, in LINE), write articles, regularly contact developers and absorb all the news about their favorite games. If you have launched a hardcore game, then you will need an experienced community management team to communicate with the fans, which will answer all the questions of the players and constantly communicate openly with them.
Now Fishlabs is also porting old games to mobile platforms. Why are you doing this?After we joined Deep Silver Holding in early 2014, we started to engage in all their activities in the mobile direction.
Deep Silver, Europe’s largest game publisher, has a strong portfolio of top IP’s popular all over the world, and none of these games have been released on smartphones or tablets yet.
In the future, we plan not only to make completely new games, but also to perform publishing functions for existing Deep Silver products, which, albeit belatedly, will appear in the App Store and Google Play. Such games include, for example, the adventure game Secret Files Tunguska, the iOS version of which will be released soon. It was very successful on PC, and now it will get a second life on mobile devices. The graphics and gameplay of this game are great for touchscreens, so we are sure that additional porting efforts made by the original developer of the game company Animation Arts, they will pay for themselves.
What to expect from Fishlabs in 2014?We have quite ambitious plans for 2014.
Together with the others, we will move to a new large office in the center of Hamburg, increase our team to 90-100 people and announce completely new projects that will combine the existing Fishlabs and Deep Silver titles. A lot has happened in the last couple of months, and very soon we will be able to enjoy the first fruits of these changes. Unfortunately, I can’t reveal the details at this stage, so be prepared for surprises!