BETA | MOBILE
One of the first games Kerosene is to publish is Bladeslinger, itself built in Unity, and a new poster child of triple-A on mobile and tablet
Facebook gaming, when studios were faced with a new realm in which to master their craft. And he believes his time at Unity can help turn that hostile frontier into fertile land.
A NEW FRONTIER “As a company we were trying to think of game-agnostic ways to help all that content we were seeing excel in the market,” says Seyler of Unity. “We came up with some technical solutions and some service solutions, and I did a lot of research for Unity in the space, so it became pretty natural that when I left I knew what the best third party solutions were, the problems for which there were no third party solutions and roughly how much work it would take to build those.” From then for Seyler it was a matter of building what he calls a ‘unified stack’ for the likes of analytics, user acquisitions, social plumbing and a game-agnostic back-end, mixing third party tech with an amount of proprietary tech. Like many other digital publishers,
Kerosene will deliver the game in the typical manner under its publisher’s App Store account. Where it differs is in the distribution of the game, where it will help secure the title chart-boosting attention outside of the remit of the tools provided by the App Store. “There are all sorts of crazy tactics involved
in increasing visibility, and they change every three months, and developers have to work with so many different advertisers – which also have models that change frequently too,” Seyler says. “Economies of scale matter so much when you work with those kinds of guys, and there are so many other things to consider.” The Android space, for example, is one
Seyler describes as very ‘Wild West’ in the way it allows devs to merchandise their games without them having to rely the rankings of the Android Market. Then there are the numerous distribution services for different global regions, including networks like Papaya, and the carriers and OEMs with which direct deals can be negotiated for featured spots. “There’s a lot you can do, and its getting
harder to bottle a successful approach, even just for iOS, down into something simple, especially when things move so fast. It’s so tough,” admits Syeler. “From what I’ve seen with the developers I’m working with, it’s just too much for them individually to make great
32 | MARCH 2012
games successful on their own budget, build cool IPs, manage their customer bases and then have to figure out the latest and greatest tactics to get noticed.” Kerosene also hopes to serve as a counter
to what Seyler describes as ‘consolidation’ in the mobile space; that being the process prevalent in the App Store – and further afield in Facebook – whereby giant organisations like Zynga dominate such large networks of users, the playing field is anything but level.
We may have seen the last of the games
that can succeed on the effort of one guy with no publisher and no infrastructure.
Brett Seyler, Kerosene
“Zynga can move existing users around so much less expensively to feed their new games,” explains the Kerosene boss of the process of consolidation in the social networking space. “They can easily acquire a new critical threshold userbase for those games that means it is really hard to compete. It’s not impossible, but it became very difficult in that space.” Seyler even subscribes to the school of thought that moves like Zynga’s acquisition of Words With Friends developer Newtoy for a reported $53.3 million in November 2010 are possibly primarily about the procurement of users to move between other games held by the purchasing company. And he sees that the same process is
starting to spread in the mobile space, where he predicts either a dominating rise by ambitious publisher-independent studios like Backflip or Halfbrick, or by the few existing publishers in the space. He does, however, recognise that the space
may grow at such a rate it will be hard for any entity to consolidate the space completely. “Even so, I think we may have seen the last of the games that, like Tiny Wings, can succeed on the effort of one guy with no publisher and no infrastructure or userbase management to lean on. If and when he makes another game
he’ll be starting from zero and hoping that the App Store treats him well again, but I think that will become rarer and rarer.” In that context, Kerosene offers a more
attractive ecosystem, in that it presents independent spirits like Tiny Wings room to get noticed without having to make huge investments or have to sign away IP or equity to a traditional publishing giant. With Seyler at the helm, Kerosene has every
chance of becoming a success. And if you were in any doubt that the
departure from Unity wasn’t amicable, consider this; the first Kerosene published game is one of the games currently cited as an key example of what Unity is capable of as an engine. Announced at Unite 2011, Luma Arcade’s Bladeslinger will be arriving soon, fuelled by Kerosene.
www.kerosenegames.com
QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY
Kerosene boss Brett Seyler describes the like likes of Zynga, TinyCo and Pocket Gems as ‘true pioneers’ of user acquisition, but he isn’t afraid to criticise the giants of social, mobile and browser gaming, and believes there is much to be learned from what he sees as a significant shortcoming. “My criticism of those kinds of places is that they are creating the kind of content that is designed to optimise for local maxima,” he says. “In other words, I don’t think that they are creating content that can form any surviving bond or memory with gamers.” Seyler makes it clear that he doesn’t
have a problem with what he calls casual content, and says that succeeding with vast, mainstream audiences can absolutely be a good thing. But what is missing today from his vision of what the mobile space can offer is the equivalent of Pixar movies; entertainment giants that strike a chord with the masses and boast the quality needed to continue to charm in years to come. In a world of design by compulsion loop and click-addiction game mechanics, Seyler hopes Kerosene will – by focusing on originality and less casualised product – put quality gaming at the forefront of the mobile space.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84