Just a quick post to say that we have updated the look and feel of the site today. It was done in part to make better use of the space as a lot of our text and box-outs were really big. We hope you like the new look.
If you look hard you might spot our new project too 😉
Seeing as we have just submitted Pop+ Solo to Nintendo for approval I wanted to write a short post highlighting what sorts of things happens when submitting a game for approval and why we do it. Please note we are covered by a Non-Disclosure agreement so we cannot be too specific. I hope you find this post interesting. (more…)
Kotaku today put up an interesting post regarding homosexuality in games. Seeing as I am a gay man and also part of the games industry I thought I should put up some of my thoughts in the comments section. My comment turned out to be quite long so I though I should also post it here for those who are interested.
The original Kotaku article is here. Read on for my thoughts on the subject.
Last week Damien McFerran (@DamienMcferran) of Pocketgamer.co.uk interviewed Nic. Below is a copy of that interview. You can also visit PocketGamer for the real deal (click here to do so).
“If you cast your minds back into the swirling mists of time you’ll recall that we spoke to Nnooo’s Nic Watt at the end of last year about the iPhone version of the bubble-based ‘puzzle shooter’ Pop.
We went on to grant the game the covetedPocket Gamer Silver Award when we reviewed it shortly afterwards, with our iPhone expert Tracy praising its “delicate balance between accessibility and sophistication.”
Watt has been far from idle over the intervening months and is putting the finishing touches to a DSiWare version of the game entitled Pop Plus, but he nevertheless found the time in his busy schedule to sit down and talk us through what we can expect from this new portable offering.”
This being my second post in as many days I wanted to up date you all with some cool new videos we have recently put up on YouTube. First up is a video of the new Adventure mode.
Adventure mode features 16 waves of progressively faster and smaller bubbles. Every 4th wave we have added a boss battle and during the waves we have added mines to detonate, jets to push the bubbles about and golden fish to pop for extra points!
Last week I was kindly invited, by my friend @scottrhodie, to speak at Optus’s iPhone 3GS launch event in Sydney (Optus being an Australian mobile phone provider). My topic was to talk about developing games for the iPhone which I used Pop to illustrate how we approached developing on the iPhone and how we made use of the iPhone’s unique features. You can see the presentation below in all its YouTube glory!
On Friday night I attended #SHTBOX (chuck that into twitter) which is basically a group of friends and Sydney-siders who go along to the Clock Bar on Crown St and chat about social media (blogging, tweeting etc). I was invited by a friend @scottrhodie who works in PR and is a bit of social media specialist. It was a great night and I got the opportunity to chat to some really nice and knowledgeable people. (more…)
It has been a while since we have updated the news pages so here is our second in one day!
Pop+ Solo is progressing very well and is getting very, very close to being ready to submit to Nintendo. This week we are finalising the last few parts (saving, badges unlocking) as well as squashing all the little bugs which creep into development.
We have also submitted 5 videos to Nintendo for inclusion on the Nintendo Channel which we hope to release on a weekly basis. We will release these on youtube at the same time (please note we are not 100% if Nintendo Europe will be adding the videos before or after release of Pop+ Solo, we will keep you appraised of the situation).
Finally we also updated the Pop+ Solo page today with some new information on badges and modes.
-Nic
Just a quick update to say that we have recently hired a new programmer and started, in earnest, our next project.
This new project is not a game and is our first entry into the application side of DSiWare. We think many DSi owners will enjoy what we are working on and more will be revealed soon.
In addition to this news we are also working on our next game which is currently in the design stage. We hope to have more to reveal about this later in the year…
Dear sir/madam,
I am writing to ask that you introduce a cheaper classification system for downloadable software in Australia. As a developer of downloadable games for Nintendo Wii (WiiWare) and Nintendo DSi (DSiWare) your current costs ($1150 or $2040 per rating) are very high in comparison with other regions across the world when compared on a population basis (your charges are viewable to the public and available here:
http://www.classification.gov.au/special.html?n=293&p=84).
As you can appreciate Australia is a much smaller market than Europe and America however your cost based on population is much much higher. This means that although we are an Australian based developer it is very hard to justify releasing our games in this country. By comparison USA (ESRB) and EU (PEGI) cost less with populations of 300 million and 400 million respectively (actual costs are not available to the public so have been removed). In this light Australia’s $1150 against a population of 21 million makes it 13 to 21 times more expensive on a per head of population basis while the $2040 charge is 26 to 42 times more expensive.
This means from a small developers perspective that the risk of return in Australia is approaching a prohibitively high amount. Big retail games which come on disc and cost $80 – $120 do not really suffer the same issues as they cost, on average, well over $1 million so an extra $1,000 or $2,000 is not as significant. Most WiiWare and DSiWare titles will cost about $100,000 or even less. As you can see the cost of getting a downloadable game rated in Australia adds at least 1-2% of the development cost to the game.
By having costs as you currently do you are restricting the market of great software to Australians in comparison to that which is already available in other territories. This as you can appreciate creates a barrier to free trade and reduces consumer choice. I would like to suggest that you consider introducing a cheaper classification process for cheaper/smaller downloadable games in the same way as the ESRB and PEGI have done. This will allow small developers to continue to create and sell their software to all the great Australian WiiWare and DSiWare fans.
Yours,
Nic Watt