Ringing the Changes - A Gaming Revolution?

04 March 09

How is the ubiquitous iPhone revolutionising the world of gaming? Ceri Thomas reports for BAFTA.

When Apple’s application store launched last year, most thought it was going to be pretty popular with iPhone users. Few realised just how popular. Within the first three days that the online software store was open for business, 10 million applications were downloaded. Even Apple CEO Steve Jobs described that as “staggering”.

With ease of use and, frankly, cheapness helping drive business (some of the iPhone’s ‘apps’ are free and many of the rest cost just a few pounds at most), numbers haven’t slackened off much in subsequent months. Estimates at the end of 2008 indicated that the total number of downloads from the Applications store had passed the 300 million mark.

A sizeable chunk of those have been games. At the time of writing, six out of the Top Ten paid-for apps on the Applications Store are games, with 4,000 of the more than 18,000 applications available falling into the gaming category. That’s nearly 22%.

But who’s creating these games? According to Apple, just about anyone. Developing apps for the iPhone – and the iPod Touch (essentially the same device, only minus the phone bit) – seems tantalisingly easy. Once you’ve bought the software tools from Apple, you can get coding. Then once the game is ready you submit it to Apple. If they approve it, it’s then uploaded to the site. If you decide to sell it rather than give it away for free, they handle all the revenue collection in return for a 30% cut.

“Every customer has the App Store on the device – that means every customer has access to your product,” says Greg Joswiak, Apple’s head of iPhone and iPod marketing. “When talking about physical goods, it’s hard to get shelf space. So not
only are we serving the EAs, the Segas, the Gamelofts, the Hudsons of the world, but we’re also allowing opportunity for the small guy, the one or two developer shops that otherwise couldn’t get any sort of placement in a retail environment.”

There have certainly been stories of ‘hobby’ developers creating successful apps for the iPhone. One is David De Niese, a banker by day and programmer by night – he’s behind a game app called Larry’s Gold. “It took me five days to pick up the basics, and then I just started experimenting with a few very simple apps to learn the platform," he says.

In gaming, the De Nieses are probably in the minority, but there’s no denying that smaller games developers have taken to the iPhone enthusiastically. “It’s a great device,” is the verdict of John Chasey of British mobile gaming studio FinBlade, who’ve released four games for the iPhone.

“It doesn’t actually have any technical features that have not been on other handsets before, but it manages to wrap them all up in such an accessible way that it appears revolutionary, when actually that’s ‘merely’ down to superb execution of standard
hardware. But this is a typical Apple approach. I admire them for their ability to present technology in a user-friendly, non-geeky way, and to make it so appealing.”

Once a game is accepted onto the iPhone apps store, its quality is gauged by the ratings given by those who download it. “That’s the beauty of the democracy of the App Store,” said Joswiak. “If you create something good, it’s going to get good ratings, and if it gets good ratings it’s going to get people buying it, and if it gets people buying it it’s going to end up on the bestseller list.”

Broadly speaking, developers seem to respond well to the flexibility of the App Store – they like the way that it allows them to chart the way that a game is selling, tinker with its marketing and post updates easily – but there are some reservations about the user ratings system. Michael Schade of German-based developer Fishlabs has grumbled that “the 99c games dominate the charts and it’s getting hard to get user ratings if you can’t get the users in the first place.”

Chasey seems to agree – he’s gone on record as saying that maybe Apple need to “vet” gaming content. “I think this may come to pass simply because there is an expectation of quality from consumers, and unfortunately some applications on the
App Store don’t come up to this mark,” he’s said. “While the user reviews are a great way to provide feedback, I think Apple may ultimately come to the conclusion that setting a quality bar is a required step. The big problem with this is that ‘quality’ is very subjective, and it would be hard to have clear guidelines on this.”

The issue of how much it actually costs to develop a professional gaming application for the iPhone seems to be a “how long is a piece of string?” question. “I’ve heard budgets range from £10,000 to £100,000 on the iPhone,” says Chasey, while Schade thinks: “It’s a mid-five digit figure to make an iPhone port look really good. Mid-six figure for a genuine original title.”

All of which makes you wonder just how much money there is to be made from the business of gaming on the iPhone? Joswiak may claim that they’ve “had a number of cases of small developers who have told us that, after a month or two of their cheques coming in, they’ve paid off their mortgage,” but he may be gilding the lily a bit.

Talking about Wordsearch, their Top Ten-rated iPhone game, Chasey admits: “Revenues have exceeded development costs and we’re making a reasonable profit, although it’s not hundreds of thousands!”

Even bedroom developer De Niese concedes, “you could make a living – although, to be honest, it wouldn’t be the best.” This may be the start of a revolution in the way games are distributed, but it’s likely to be a slow one.