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Spacetime Studios' games hit 100 million play sessions
Spacetime Studios has hit a pretty crazy milestone, even in the ever-more-massive world of iOS and mobile gaming. The company's MMOs on the iPhone, Android, and Chrome platforms have hit a total of 100 million play sessions, which means people have loaded up and logged into Spacetime's titles more than 100 million times. They're not just checking them out, either: Spacetime says their players are in the game for 25.2 hours a month, which is twice as much as the average gamer plays total. Pretty amazing. I've said this before, too, but Spacetime really has done all of this way under the radar. The company was originally set to make full MMOs for PC, but after running out of funding, had to spin its scope back down to the mobile platforms. That hasn't stopped Spacetime from creating full massively multiplayer online games, though, first with Pocket Legends, then with Star Legends, and now the company is planning a vampire-themed take on the forumla with Dark Legends. Spacetime has seen some serious growth, and I'd guess it's far from over. We'll be talking to the company at next month's GDC conference, so stay tuned for more from them then. Show full PR text Spacetime's Legends Mobile MMO Franchise Surpasses 100 Million Play Sessions AUSTIN, Texas – Feb. 9, 2012 – Spacetime Studios' mobile MMOs Pocket Legends and Star Legends: The Blackstar Chronicles have been played more than 100 million times. Spacetime players spend about twice the number of hours playing Legends titles than the average gamer spends across all mobile games each month. Users with iPhones play games for 14.7 hours per month while Android users play around 9.3 hours per month according to Nielsen research. The average Spacetime player spends 25.2 hours per month playing Legends titles alone. Since the inception of Spacetime Studios, the primary focus has been to bring the immersive MMO experience traditionally found on the PC to the mobile world in meaningful, bite-sized play sessions. "MMO games by their nature are more engaging and involved than most genres, but making that work in the mobile world is very delicate balancing act," said Cinco Barnes, Chief Vision Officer and co-founder, Spacetime Studios. "With each launch of a Legends title we make it our mission to innovate and it has become the largest, most successful mobile MMO franchise in the world." Spacetime Studios has continually expanded the Legends franchise since the advent of Pocket Legends and its rich fantasy world in 2010. The second title and sci-fi adventure, Star Legends: The Blackstar Chronicles was made commercially available in 2011. The third entry in the franchise, vampire-themed Dark Legends, will be released in the first quarter of 2012.
Pocket Legends offers paid content for free
Pocket Legends, I maintain, is one of iOS' best technical achievements. It's a full-featured MMO, in the style of the legendary World of Warcraft, and it's available to play for free on Apple's App Store. It's huge among a certain audience (and, in fact, I've been told that audience is even bigger on the Android side of things), but I'm surprised that even more players haven't tried this game out to see what Spacetime Studios is working on. Maybe this will help, though: to celebrate the game's one-year anniversary, Spacetime is opening up many of its normally premium content areas to all players for free. In a goofy video they made, developer Cinco Barnes says that all of the game's major premium areas will be open and playable to everyone until May 4. If you haven't taken a look at this app yet, now's a great time to do so. Pocket Legends is free in a universal version, and it's definitely worth checking out.
Profit shocker! Android brings home more bacon than iOS for Pocket Legends developer
Back in 2009, we wrote a story on crack mobile developer Larva Labs lamenting its inability to make a living off top-rated games in the Android Market. Well, to put it lightly, it ain't 2009 anymore: the Android ecosystem has expanded exponentially in every conceivable direction, the Market has taken on tens of thousands of additional apps, and -- according to one research firm, anyway -- Android has now overtaken BlackBerry to become the most prolific smartphone platform in the US. To that end, Spacetime Studios -- the company behind mobile MMORPG Pocket Legends, which brings in revenue through in-app purchases -- was shocked to discover that it's making some 30 to 50 percent more from its Android users than its iOS ones. Furthermore, they're spending more time playing and downloading the app with far greater frequency, which might be a testament to the fact that really great apps still stand out in the Market better than they do in the more mature (and more populated) App Store. The in-app purchase disparity is a little more difficult to explain, though -- especially since iOS has a slick, integrated purchase mechanism that Google won't be rolling out in Android for a little while yet. At any rate, the online mobile economy -- regardless of platform -- clearly still has some growing, maturing, and stabilizing to do. [Thanks, Michael]
GDC 2011: Spacetime Studios returns to Blackstar
I last spoke with Spacetime Studios' CEO Gary Gattis last year at GDC Online in Austin, and when I saw him then, he told me his company was commissioned to create a PC MMO for NCsoft called Blackstar. Spacetime spent months and months of work on the project before it was abruptly canceled, leaving the company in the lurch and requiring it to make cutbacks until it got to work on what was supposed to be a much smaller project. That project eventually became Pocket Legends, an MMO that's now thriving on the iOS App Store. The game has seen over 3 million downloads across both the Apple and Android platforms (somewhat surprisingly, the game is more popular on Android, where Gattis says he's seen "more numbers and more money" coming in), and is an unqualified success. It's so successful, in fact, that when Spacetime thought about what to do for its second game, Gattis and company decided to go back to their origins and recreate Blackstar on the mobile platform.
Best App Ever winners announced, Angry Birds wins big
148Apps' own Jeff Scott just handed me an actual piece of paper here in the Macworld press room, and on it there are all of the Best App Ever winners listed. You can read the full list online in PDF form, but we'll spoil a few of them for you. Best App Ever for 2010? None other than a little app you may have heard of called Angry Birds. Sure, it's not a choice too far off the reservation, but you have to admit that in terms of exposure and playtime, there was no real equal. Chillingo and Clickgamer also walked away with the most wins -- Angry Birds showed up on the list seven times in its various forms, and Cut the Rope also nabbed an award for Best Puzzle Game. Flipboard is the most award-winning non-game app of the bunch, picking up three awards, including Most Innovative App and Best Visual Design on the iPad. And Spacetime Studios' Pocket Legends, a full-featured iOS MMO that has received relatively little press so far, picked up three wins as well. There are lots and lots and lots of excellent apps in the various awards and their runner-ups and honorable mentions -- it's been a terrific year for the App Store, and in its third year running, the Best App Ever awards are a great indicator of what's popular and well-made out there.
GDC Online 2010: Spacetime Studios and the making of Pocket Legends
Pocket Legends has been out on the App Store for quite a while now, but if you (like me) haven't seen it in a while, you might want to check it out again. Spacetime Studios has been steadily updating the game, and the title they showed off at GDC Online 2010 this week was pretty impressive -- an instanced MMO, running in full 3D with three character classes, dungeons and loot, and almost all of the other trappings you'd expect from the genre. This week, I got to sit in on both Cinco Barnes' panel about the studio and its up-and-down background. I also chatted with the company's CEO, Gary Gattis, both about Spacetime's history and what it's done with Pocket Legends so far, and what's in store for the growing title.
Pocket Legends updated to Pocket Legends: Adventures, a full MMO on iOS
I tried Pocket Legends for the iPhone a while back, and found it to be pretty interesting. It's a full 3D MMO inside the iPhone, where you create a character, equip it with weapons, and then jump in with a few other people to hack, slash, and cast your way through a dungeon. It could use a little polish (the particular dungeon I played wasn't exactly tuned for my difficulty level, and the people I played with weren't exactly forgiving), but if you're looking for this kind of cartoony MMO gameplay, Pocket Legends actually delivers quite well. And since it's completely free, there's not a huge investment barrier anyway. And the game just recently got a big update, adding in an actual explorable world, a bunch of new quests and items to play with, and some optimization to the game engine that makes it a little more forgiving on older devices (but the game looks pretty good, given what it is, on the iPhone 4 already). It's available on the App Store for free right now for both iPhone and iPad -- what Spacetime Studios has done in implementing a full PC-style MMO on Apple's handheld device is impressive, and the new update makes it even moreso. If you've never given Pocket Legends a look, but can appreciate a solid MMO, definitely check it out.
