BETA | THE £150,000 APP
Blazing a Trail
Having never made a game before, design studio Ustwo spent £150,000 making a 69p app called Whale Trail. What were they thinking, asks Will Freeman
WHEN LONDON-BASED design studio Ustwo set out to make iOS game Whale Trail, it took a big risk. How big? The game’s budget hit £150,000. And the gamble didn’t stop with a daring financial plan for a title that would, like so many other drops in the App Store ocean, retail for 69p. Ustwo, which typically works on branded apps and user experiences for high profile clients like Sony and Intel, devoted an astonishing 1,500 man-hours and a sizeable chunk of its studio headcount to developing Whale Trail, in spite of the fact that it isn’t a game developer by trade. What’s more, at least 300,000 sales will be needed for the game to edge into profitability; no easy feat in the unpredictable App Store. At time of writing, it is well on the way, having been festooned with positive feedback, but Whale Trail is not guaranteed success to the point that it will return on its investment. In fact, the cheerful
side-scroller is the third production from an
internal collective of ten Ustwo staff that go under the enigmatic name of CWA.
Established and led by the Ustwo co-founder primarily known as Mills, CWA was granted £650,000 to make three titles over a year,
18 | DECEMBER 2011 / JANUARY 2012
with Whale Trail serving as the final, most high profile project. “CWA stands for ‘Content With Attitude’. I mean, that’s just so bad,” admits Mills, real name Matt Miller, who is the kind of characterwho could easily mean ‘good’ when he says ‘bad’. “We were coming up with the worst name we could, and when we got to that we decided we had to have it as our name. I mean, come on; Content With Attitude? It’s just dreadful.”
The whole thing was set up on the
premise that if we don’t make any money it’s not going to break the business.
NeilMcFarland, Ustwo That kind of playful, self-deprecating
remark is typical of Mills, and of Ustwo as a company. As an organisation, it is also hugely transparent, happily making sales figures public, be they good or bad. Mills doesn’t appear to mind ruffling feathers with remarkably frank opinions, and inside the walls of Ustwo’s hip East London home in the
Tea building –which also houses Moshi Monsters outfit Mind Candy – a hugely talented team project a sense of eccentricity that somewhat contradicts their austere work ethic.
CONTENT WITHOUT PRESSURE The CWA’s enviable annual budget was written off from the start. There is no need for the collective’s output to turn a profit, and it is free from the confines of client-based work. Quite simply, if the games and apps it makes flop commercially, it really doesn’t matter. So what’s the point? Why pour so much
money, time and talent into what cynics might well suggest is a self-indulgent vanity project? “There’s never been that pressure on us to make money,” confirms Ustwo ‘idea engineer’ Neil McFarland, in an attempt to answer that most pressing question. “The whole thing was set up on the
premise, which is true, that if we don’t make any money, it’s not going to break the business. That gave us a real chance to make the best quality releases we can, free from that kind of constraint of having to make money back on it. “If you’re a small studio that’s a big worry, and if it was about making a profit, we wouldn’t have taken this chance. The CWA work has been a real eye-opener too, and I don’t think we would have been able to put in the quality in that we did, because we’d
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