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Daily iPhone App: Sketch Nation Studio opens up game dev on the App Store
Sketch Nation Studio started out as Sketch Nation Shooter last year, a "game" on the App Store that actually let you make your own shooter game by using scanned-in pictures and a few scripted sets of rules. As creator Nitzan Wilnai told me at GDC earlier this year, he heard from a lot of users that they wanted to make games other than just shooters with the engine. And so he's now delivered Sketch Nation Studio, available as a free download on the App Store. This is a really wild app that you should probably see even if you're not interested in game development. It's almost too complicated to explain in a post like this (there are lots of social virtual currency things set up to make sure you want to trade and play games created with the service), but the basic idea is that there are three ways to make a game: simple, advanced, and standalone. Simple is obviously the easiest, letting you put together a game in one of five genres in just a matter of minutes. Advanced is a little tougher, allowing for more complex scripted sequences and lots more customization (it'll be very interesting to see what comes out of the advanced mode going forward -- this is the kind of thing that very dedicated users will be able to make a lot of magic with). But standalone is the really interesting one. Games created with the standalone mode (which essentially uses the advanced options) are submitted to Wilnai's servers, and he's got a system set up where any games he and his team feel are worthwhile will eventually get reconfigured as standalone iOS apps. He's already got the engine built and everything, so all his team needs to do is check the games out, tweak them into their own, Sketch Nation-branded apps, and turn them back around in Apple's system. The catch is that Sketch Nation will take 50% of the profits they earn (after Apple's 30% cut), but the creators of those games will get the other 50%, directly from Sketch Nation. It's pretty revolutionary and lest you think that it's all theoretical, Sketch Nation has actually already released some of these games on the App Store (Draakon, for example, is a standalone game created with the app). I told Wilnai in March that he could really be shaking things up with a system like this, and he just shrugged -- as long as Apple approves the app, he's ready to take the challenge on. Well the app is now out and free on the App Store right now, so would-be game developers, the future is in your hands.
Sketch Nation Studio allows to make your own game, and sell it
I've met with Nitzan Wilnai at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) several times. His Engineous Games has grown over the years. The group recently released Sketch Nation Shooter to great success. It lets you build a shooter title by uploading or drawing your own art. As of this writing, it has been download over 800,000 times, generating a significant user base. Wilnai's next project, Sketch Nation Studio, has been in development for a while, and I suspect it could threaten how the App Store itself works. While Sketch Nation Shooter lets you build a shooting game, Sketch Nation Studio will allow users to assemble games in any one of five iPhone-familiar genres. Here's the kicker: Sketch Nation Studio offers the chance to release those games to the App Store and earn real money. The app is currently testing in Canada, and it works much like Sketch Nation Shooter did. You start by choosing a genre: Up Jumping (as in Doodle Jump), Side Running (like Canabalt), Side Flying (like Jetpack Joyride), Down Jumping (a reverse Doodle Jump style), and Side Jumping (basically an endless platformer). Next, add the art for your player character, obstacles, and rules for power-ups and other information. Sketch Nation Studio adds your art, creates the necessary objects and controls and manages animation. Your game is ready to play. There are three modes to choose from. Simple mode is the easiest, and runs user-created art around a set of existing rules. Wilnai showed me how to create a custom game quickly, using the app's built-in drawing tools to create simple graphics in about two minutes. The result won't win any awards for originality (it was a one-button flyer featuring a bee who had to dodge flowers), but it worked, and tracked the score, and had a losing condition, which is really all you need for a simple iPhone game. Advanced Mode is more complicated. It lets you use your own art and set your own rules. Maybe, for example, hitting certain enemies increases your strength. Perhaps the player character has lives or collects various score items. The Advanced mode is pretty powerful, offering several control schemes (including tilting the iOS device, which can make for some interesting custom games) and "special effects," which let you use your art to create particles and animations. The interface is easy to use, but again, quite powerful for what it is. And finally, "Standalone App" mode uses the Advanced Mode's rules and uploads your finished game to the Engineous servers, where it will then go into a queue for the company to review. Every game that meets its criteria for quality, originality, and fun could become a full, standalone App Store app. In fact, there are already apps like this on the App Store Turkey Run is one example. Wilnai didn't have specifics on how profit sharing would work, but he did confirm that the company plans to split proceeds from these apps 50/50 with their creators. This means that you could potentially create a game in Sketch Nation, upload it, receive approval from Engineous and have them release it to the App Store for US$0.99. You'd then earn 35 cents of real money for every copy sold (half of the 99 cents minus Apple's 30% cut). That sounds crazy, and it probably is. Wilnai says that Apple is in favor of the idea (in theory, at least), and the app is being tested on the Canadian store before being released in the US. "At first we won't release too many games," says Wilnai, just because Engineous will have to figure out what best to put out there and how it would work. But if the plan turns out to be as solid as he expects, Wilnai could basically create a platform-within-a-platform, releasing games users have made with his own app, and filtering the income right through Apple's store. One potential hole in the plan is the users themselves. Sketch Nation Shooter, for example, has 800,000 users, but only 100,000 games have been created with it. That suggests that 1 in every 8 users are actually creating games with it. Additionally, only 10,000 of those games have been shared. While it's easy to make and share a game with Sketch Nation Shooter, not many users actually do so. But Wilnai has a solution for that, too. In addition to the draw of real money, Sketch Nation Studio will also have a virtual currency market. Users will earn SketchBucks (SB) from uploading games, which can be used to download and play shared games. Hopefully, this won't prevent people from just logging in to check the games out (everyone who plays the title will automatically start with 1000 SB), but it should provide incentive to create and share. Art will also be shared in this way, so even if you're not an artist but want to pick up some art for your game with virtual currency, you'll be able to do that as well. The whole idea is fascinating, and it's an example not only of Wilnai's drive to make game development as easy and accessible as possible, but also the power of user-created content, and in this case, its potential to really drive and build up a brand new marketplace. Sketch Nation Shooter should be out in America very soon, and we'll have to see what happens when it finally arrives.
Over 800 Sketch Nation Shooter games created so far on the iPhone
Ever since I first played Sketch Nation Shooter back at GDC, this is what I've been waiting for -- a chance to see what the masses are doing with this wacky little game creation tool on the iPhone. In the app, players can make up their own graphics and assign their own rules to enemies and items within the top-down shooter genre, eventually creating their own full shooter game. And with over 800 games out there in the app, you can see that things are already getting creative in the video above. I love the bug spray one, and the magnet one is pretty brilliant, too. And there's even a "bullet hell" tribute in there -- that kind of game isn't my thing, but it's very interesting that these games are running the gamut from super casual to very hardcore. Creator Nitzan Wilnai says he's been overwhelmed by the response. He says that an update to the game is coming which will allow these games to be shared on Facebook as well, so we'll probably see even more of these come out in the future. If you haven't bought the app yet (it's 99 cents on the App Store), all of these games are both created by and playable in the app, and you can even share them with friends and rate them yourself. Very cool idea -- it'll be interesting to see if Wilnai eventually comes up with some more "Sketch Nation" genres. It'd be wild to use this system to design a game around some dungeon crawler or racing game rules.
GDC 2010: Hands-on with Sketch Nation Shooter
When I was reminded of its name at GDC, I couldn't recall hearing much about Engineous Games. It's the development studio founded by Nitzan Wilnai, a former software developer at EA and Yahoo who's gone to work making iPhone games for himself. But I did recall Engenious' first title, Tatomic, which I wrote about a while ago -- it was a great puzzler that put a new spin on Tetris' falling block gameplay. Unfortunately, despite my purchase, Tatomic didn't sell as well as Wilnai would have liked, so he's decided to "create a game that would sell itself." It's called Sketch Nation Shooter, and he sat down to show it to me last week in San Francisco. He started off the demo by promising that he would make a game for me in two minutes, and sure enough, 98 seconds later, he had a custom spaceship shooter game up and running, as you can see in the photo above.
