INTERVIEW: Strawdog Studios

We caught up with business development director Dan Marchant to discuss creative freedom, iPhone, digital distribution, piracy and more…

CG.biz: You’ve spoken before about the desire to be making ‘fresh’ games. Have new content channels such as Xbox Live and iTunes made this easier now than it used to be?

DM: Digital distribution is certainly allowing developers greater creative freedom. Many more developers are able to self-publish (so their concepts don't have to pass a publisher submission process which favours rehashed ideas). Also, when publishers are involved, they are now more willing to take creative risks (due to the lower budgets and zero stock risk).

Perhaps it might seem easy on the outside with the proliferation of distribution channels and opportunities but the fundamentals remain the same, namely that the game has to be bankable and have a place in the market. You also have to overcome the business challenge of where the money comes from to develop the game.

CG.biz: We tend to regard Xbox Live, PSN and WiiWare as one mass digital console publishing platform, but are there any key differences between the services that can lead to a preference for releasing on one as opposed to another?

Strawdog Studios are platform agnostic as a developer. There are technical and business differences between all the digital platforms but I don't think any of them are extreme enough to make any platform a real stand out favourite. Wiiware and iPhone are both very open platforms, which is great, but as a result they suffer with a lot of poor quality shovelware.

XBLA and PSN are more restrictive which may seem bad but on the plus side some of the trash gets filtered out, which is better for the gamers and the developers.

CG.biz: Apple’s App Store has been dubbed the saviour of indie development. Is that realistic?

It is certainly easier to develop and self-publish for than some other digital platforms but from a business point of view that freedom generates a whole new set of problems such as getting your game noticed in a crowded market. Consequently developers need to embrace new skills such as marketing and PR if it's going to develop into a sustainable/predicable business model.

We have all read the stories of the guys who made hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single month but those people can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

There are over 25,000 apps available and most of those have struggled to make a few thousand dollars, let alone hundreds of thousands. Greater freedom means more competition and the openness of the platform means that many of the developers are hobbyists releasing free or very very cheap games. There have been several apps in the top 10 that make you scratch your head and wonder how and why they got there. It's becoming clear that price as well as polish are key ingredients to success.

CG.biz: In your view, how big a problem is piracy for iPhone games publishing?

Is piracy rampant? Yes. Is it a problem? Only to a limited degree. We don't view every pirate copy of a game as a lost sale. If people can't find a pirate copy of a particular game then a few may buy it but most will just download something else instead. These people want stuff for free and don't care that someone worked to make it. We're interested in getting our games out to as many people as possible and if some punters who download a pirate version of our game like it, and evangelise to others, that can't be a totally bad thing.

CG.biz: Have you had a chance to look at Google Android platform yet? If so, what do you think?

We've had a look at Android and are interested in getting our products onto the platform. Our iPhone game Turbo Duck will make it's way onto other smart-phones in the future but we haven't started that process yet as we are focusing on Space Ark for XBLA.

CG.biz: Is boxed triple-A console development still as appealing to devs as it once was?

I am sure the idea of developing a triple-A game is appealing to many developers but I am not sure the business model is particularly appealing any more. The size of budgets needed mean that the publisher will expect to own your game (and possibly a chunk of your studio too) and the deals are skewed in favour of the publisher so they pocket the lions share of the profits. I am sure that there will continue to be studios who want to work on those projects but there are also a growing number who want the creative and business freedom that smaller self-published digital titles bring.

CG.biz: Do you think you’ll ever develop another product for boxed release?

Actually we have just finished a Wii version of Geon which will be sold boxed at retail. Going forward there are several publishers that Strawdog Studios want to work with (on publisher owned IP) and some of that may well be boxed. We also want to develop our own games and license the boxed versions of those to interested publishers.

CG.biz: Tell me about Space Ark – what’s the most exciting part of the project for you guys?

A really interesting aspect of the project is having the opportunity to design a focused product that explores different game mechanics. The game takes some inspiration from Arkanoid/Breakout and the challenge for us was to create a product that evolves the concept without breaking it. These small digital games put a real demand on the development team to create concentrated game play which can be replayed and layered without becoming repetitive.

It's also great working within a small team environment where everyone has real input, you can see individual team members taking real ownership of the game and pride in what they create.

CG.biz: Why have you gone for Xbox Live with Space Ark? And will more platforms follow?

It is primarily a timing and relationship issue. Xbox Live Arcade was the first digital distribution platform we worked on back in 2007, when we developed Geon. During that project we built a great relationship with Microsoft and it was actually back then that the Space Ark concept was first generated. We hadn't finished our first PSN title yet so Microsoft was the logical choice to pitch the game too. They were very supportive and gave us concept approval to publish the game on the Xbox Live Arcade at which point all we needed was the finance to develop the game.

Raising investment is a project in itself and, although we started before we submitted the concept to Microsoft, it took over a year to finally get all the funding in place so that we could start the development.