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Riptide Games acquired by Mercury Active, developer Brian Robbins leaves
We've posted a few times before about Brian Robbins' Riptide Games. In addition to being a vocal member of the dev community, Robbins has worked with his team to make popular apps like My Pet Zombie and the iLook series. Now, Riptide has announced that it's getting acquired by a company called Mercury Active, which is part of a company called Mercury Filmworks based up in Canada that works on major television and film properties. The acquisition will earn Mercury Riptide's entire library, and presumably the company will end up helping Mercury make and work on other interactive titles in the future. As for Robbins, he's sticking with the team short term, but he's announced that he'll be leaving the venture soon. There's no news on what he plans to do just yet, but he says he's still interested in mobile, and would like to work on the technology of mobile games, as well as doing various consulting and advising for other projects. Riptide is a solid mid-level company on the App Store, and it should give Mercury Active a nice foothold on the iOS platform. As for Robbins, we wish him the best, and we'll look forward to seeing where he's headed next.
360iDev: Riptide Games' App Store wins and losses
Because there are so many apps on the App Store, we often have a tendency to hear most about what are actual outliers on Apple's platform. It's very rare indeed, in fact, for the average developer to have either a giant hit or a giant loss, though obviously those games and apps tend to get the most press and become the most talked about. But for the majority of apps and developers on the store, those stories just aren't typical. Usually, the outcome of an app release is far less obvious: An app can do well at some things and not so well at others. Developer Brian Robbins of Riptide Games (who's done some speaking on the subject before) took to the stage at 360iDev this past week to do a run through his company's history, and go over what both worked and didn't about his company's many iPhone apps. He's had what we'd normally call both successes and failures on the App Store, but even Riptide's wins weren't perfect, and the biggest failures still let the company learn how to better do things in the future. In 2010, for example, Robbins said that he and his company came up with an idea they called "iLookGood," a mirror app that used the new iPhone's front-facing camera to actually work as a mirror. Despite its simplicity, that app did well and continues to grab downloads to this day, though it hasn't been updated in quite a while. But it wasn't all a success -- while the app did bring the company to spin off a popular version called iLookFunny, it also spawned a version called iArrPirate, which Robbins said was terribly unpopular. "Nobody likes pirates," he told the crowd of developers. "Don't do pirates." Robbins also said that he regretted that the iLook apps didn't have "a coherent strategy" -- they were just a silly idea that the company spun up into a brand. BopIt has been a relatively big success for Riptide -- Robbins had connections with the popular toy's makers, so when the time came to make an app for the brand in conjunction with EA, he jumped at the chance. And indeed, the BopIt games (which are now published by EA under Chillingo, but made by Riptide) have been one of Riptide's most steady brands, providing work for the company since the very beginning. But in making the first title, says Robbins, Riptide actually lost money on the property. He says he doesn't regret making the first BopIt game, as he gladly jumped at the chance to work with EA on a larger brand. But though the decision was a good one, it wasn't very profitable for Riptide. My Pet Zombie was Riptide's first really profitable title, and most App Store onlookers would probably call that one a hit (so much so that Riptide's next game, called My Pet Dragon, will use the same model). But Robbins says that My Pet Zombie had missteps as well -- it "didn't hit metrics," and he says the company could probably have followed up better on customer interest in the game. Ultimate Battle Zombies, a freemium game that Riptide released earlier this year, was the company's "biggest financial failure yet", according to Robbins. The original idea for the game was to team up with a major media network and make a game based on celebrity zombies, but at the last second, the idea was kiboshed by lawyers and their reservations, says Robbins. Riptide decided to publish the game itself, but "we shouldn't have finished it," he says. The game's goofy premise "missed its audience," according to Robbins, and the work that went into the title (which makes use of Game Center's asynchronous gameplay features) just wasn't worth it. But something good did some out of Ultimate Battle Zombies. Robbins and his team decided that instead of working remotely as usual, they would try to bring the team together and work in one place. After some research, they decided to meet up for two weeks in Florida, and at a cost of just around $12,000, were able to pull everyone down for about two weeks, having meetings by the pool and cooking all together as a group. Robbins admitted that a retreat like that probably wouldn't work for every company, and even Riptide only had everyone together for a period of about five days. But he says the experience was completely worth it for teambuilding, and any company with remote team members should consider an experience like that. In the end, said Robbins, developers need to be scrappy and work hard on whatever chances come to them. True hits and misses are actually rare on the App Store, despite how much we hear about them in the community every day. As Riptide's story shows, the majority of developers have to always deal with the good and the bad, and figure out how to best move forward when either happens.
Daily iPhone App: Ultimate Battle Zombies is a freemium zombie throwdown
I unfortunately made the mistake of overbooking myself for interviews last week at GDC, so I didn't get to see developer Brian Robbins' panel on how to put together money for making iPhone games. But I did get to meet up with him later in the week, and he showed me what's going on with his company's latest iPhone app, Ultimate Battle Zombies. Ultimate Battle Zombies is a freemium title that serves up multiplayer, turn-based fights with some really goofy zombie characters. You pick a character to get started, then you can enter that character into Game Center-enabled fights. Each round, you choose three attacks from a list of four (high, mid, low, and a special attack that varies per zombie), and three blocks. Depending on how your opponent chooses, you win the fight or don't. There is a little bit of skill to it. As you fight, you can hit your blocks and attacks at exactly the right time and get a nice bonus that helps you along. But at this point, the zombies are basically the same, and the look of the characters is mostly just cosmetic. That will change soon, however. During GDC, Robbins showed me the new belt system that has just arrived for the title. After this latest update, you can now complete objectives while fighting and earn various belts, which will add new stats and attributes to your characters. Character choice is still basically cosmetic, but belts will make each character just a little different, so you can have a little say in how it all works. In the future, Robbins says Ultimate Battle Zombies is getting a singleplayer mode for players who aren't willing to wait for multiplayer turns to come around. That should be out in about two weeks, and there are also new zombies coming: An old lady called Grandma Z, and a gorilla called Gorilla Juicehead. Ultimate Battle Zombies is a little chunk of free fun. It's not the most intricate game (the zombie attacks basically play out like a game of rock, paper, scissors and can sometimes be pretty unfair), but it's colorful and easy to play, and especially if you convince a few friends to jump in the zombie ring with you, it can scratch that freemium itch for a while. Ultimate Battle Zombies is available now.
