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Annual Review 2011 – Thanks for your support, guys!

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

Hello Fishlabs fans, the year 2011 is almost over and we’d like to thank our friends, community, business partners and media contacts for all the support you’ve given us in the past 12 months. The last year had been really successful for us and a lot of amazing things have happened here at the Fishlabs camp. All in all, we have released five new games (three own titles and two brand games) throughout the course of this year, won a couple of prestigious awards and ported our flagship title, the highly popular sci-fi shooter and trader Galaxy on Fire 2, to a whole variety of new platforms and systems.[full]

The year 2011 kicked off really nicely with our action-packed fun sports spectacle Snowboard Hero winning two IMGAwards in February and being officially released on the App Store in March. In April we then ported our popular sci-fi shooter Galaxy on Fire 2 to Android in an exclusive Xperia PLAY version and later on that month, the game’s first add-on Valkyrie saw the light of day as well. In June another Android version followed especially for Tegra 2 devices and in July we released the arcade hit Waterslide 2.

Snowboard Hero by Fishlabs

In August we moved to a beautiful new office building right in the heart of Hamburg city and in September we celebrated the very first release of a Fishlabs title on a non-mobile device, namely Galaxy on Fire 2 Full HD on the Mac—which is easily the best looking instalment within the Galaxy on Fire series so far.

Galaxy on Fire 2 Full HD by Fishlabs

In November we put out Sports Car Challenge, another successful ad-game for Volkswagen featuring highly detailed and beautifully rendered 3D models of the latest super sports cars from Audio, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche and Volkswagen! And in December we last but not least won the “Best Studio 2011” award at the renowned German Game Developer Awards.

All of this wouldn’t have been possible without your constant help and support and we’re eager to see what 2012 will have in store for Fishlabs. We’ve got a lot of plans and projects up our sleeves and will reveal the first spectacular news rather soon. Until then the whole Fishlabs team wishes all our friends, fans and partners a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you soon!

Sports Car Challenge by Fishlabs and Volkswagen (China)

Fishlabs Timeline 2011

02/2011:   Snowboard Hero wins two IMGAwards 2011
03/2011:   Release: Snowboard Hero
03/2011:   Galaxy on Fire 2 wins the “Best Mobile Game” award at the German Video Game Award 2011
04/2011:   Porting: Galaxy on Fire 2 for Android (Xperia PLAY)
04/2011:   Release: Galaxy on Fire 2 – Valkyrie (Add-On)
06/2011:   Release: GTI Edition 35
06/2011:   Porting: Galaxy on Fire 2 for Android (THD)
07/2011:   Release: Waterslide 2
08/2011:   Porting: Galaxy on Fire 2 Full HD for Mac
08/2011:   The Fishlabs team moves to its new headquarters
10/2011:   Porting: Galaxy on Fire 2 HD for iPhone 4S and iPad 2
11/2011:   Porting: Valkyrie for Android (Xperia PLAY)
12/2011:   Release: Sports Car Challenge
12/2011:   Fishlabs wins the “Best Studio” award at the German Game Developer Awards 2011

Tags:2011, 3D, Best Studio, Fishlabs, Games, German Game Developer Award, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Mobile
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Fishing for Talents! – Fishlabs at Making Games Talents 2011

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

On November 5th, 2011, the eighth installment of the German games industry’s leading recruiting event Making Games Talents took place at the University of Hamburg. It was the second time that the high-flying job fair organized by IDG Entertainment and supported by Gamecity: Hamburg took place in the beautiful city of Hamburg and the first time ever that Fishlabs Entertainment participated and presented itself to a total of 150 students, all of which are eager to pursue a career in the games industry after they’ve finished their studies. At Making Games Talents 2011, Fishlabs Entertainment was represented by our CEO Michael Schade, our PR and Marketing Manager Marc Morian, our Marketing Assistant Daniel Sadowski and our Game Monetization Trainee Hanno Trennt and we competed for the favour of the attendees with seven other high-profile representatives of the German video game industry[full], such as Bigpoint (Battlestar Galactica), InnoGames (Tribal Wars), Crytek (Crysis 2) or Spellbound (Gothic IV). The overall concept of Making Games Talents is quite a bit different from that of other job fairs because at these particular events it’s not the talents, who introduce themselves to potential employers, but rather is it the companies, who present themselves to the programming, game design and graphics prodigies of tomorrow.

Fishlabs Entertainment at Making Games Talents 2011

Across the day, Michael held several speeches and presentations, including a key note about Hamburg as Germany’s prior video gaming location as well as a brief introduction of Fishlabs Entertainment and a more in-depth presentation of our company and our most spectacular titles, such as the action-packed 3D outer space adventure Galaxy on Fire 2 Full HD or the stunningly beautiful premium racer Sports Car Challenge. Infront of an intrigued audience, Michael elaborated on the huge advantages and promising perspectives of the mobile market and explained how smartphones and tablets have already replaced consoles as the world’s most widespread gaming platforms and how Fishlabs has managed to establish itself as a key player in the industry by co-operating successfully with blue chip clients and carriers such as Apple, NOKIA, Sony Ericsson and Samsung on the one hand and by releasing high-quality premium games in state-of-the-art console quality on the other! The importance and potential of the mobile market can hardly be overestimated these days and yet this industry is still lightyears away from having reached its peak!

Our CEO Michael Schade introduces Fishlabs Entertainment to a total of 150 video game-loving students at Making Games Talents 2011

Due to its slick organization and brisk attendance, the event turned out to be a full-scale success for us, not only because the whole Fishlabs crew had a great time and lots of fun at Making Games Talents 2011, but also because the students present showed a lot of interest in our company and even picked Fishlabs Entertainment as the most sympathetic and well-liked developer of the day! That’s really amazing and we’d like to say a big “Thank You” to Heiko Klinge and the rest of the Making Games team as well as everybody who visited us at our booth and listened to our presentations. You guys totally made our day and we really hope this wasn’t the last time we took part in a Making Games Talents event!

To give all those who couldn’t be there a little impression of what Making Games Talents 2011 was like, check out the video above and let us know in the comments what you like best about our company and our games! For more information about Making Games Talents, check out their official website (http://www.makinggames.de/) and like them at Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/MakingGames).

Tags:Android, Browser, Console, Fishlabs Entertainment, Future, Galaxy on Fire, GOF2, Handheld, Industry, iOS, Mobile, Smartphones, Sports Car Challenge, Tablets, Trends, Video Games
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Galaxy on Fire 2 comes to iPhone, iPad and Nokia – Developer Diary Part 1

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

In recent months, the galactic rumour mill has been buzzing, and we have frequently been asked if and when we are going to bring out Galaxy on Fire™ 2 for the iPhone. First, the good news: yes, we are bringing out GoF2 on the iPhone and we have been working all out on it since October of last year. But we still need quite a while, because GoF2 is an unbelievable complex and extensive game – and our quality standards for what we want to offer you are, as ever, high. To make the wait a little more bearable and to give you an impression of just how all-encompassing the work is and which details we are polishing, we will begin describing all of this regularly in our developer diary, starting now. To take a more laid back approach to all of this, we will let those mainly responsible speak for themselves in interviews. [full]

Let’s get started with Hans-Christian Kühl, also known as HCK, the lead developer of Galaxy on Fire™:

Where did the original idea for the GoF [Galaxy on Fire] series come from?

I had the idea after we had finished some smaller games like Motoraver and Robot Alliance. I thought, ‘Let’s see what will work,’ and started to make a tech demo, that I then later expanded. After that, more people from Graphics and Design came on board pretty quickly, and the project was born.

Was it difficult to convince owners Christian Lohr and Michael Schade of the concept, or were they both excited from the beginning?

I think they thought it was a good idea from the start, especially because it was so open and free compared to projects like Motoraver or Cloud Commander, which were limited to single roads or a canyon. With GoF 1 we already had 500 different planets and 100 systems, which almost no one could have imagined for a mobile game back then.

…and thus taking a step away from linear level design toward a sandbox, an open world?

Yes, originally it was just 13 missions that had to be played through. Afterwards, the system opened, and you could fly everywhere – that was a major innovation at the time.

Playing GoF brings back memories of classic titles, especially Origin’s Wing Commander series and its sequel Privateer. Did titles like that influence the development of GoF?

„Privateer“ was kind of like „Wing Commander“ with added tradesystem and more freedom. „Freelancer“ was really the first game, that combined the best aspects of the previous titles – namely a good story, a huge universe with several factions, a tradesystem, individual ship-modification, ore-minig, generic missions and lots and lots to discover. Definitely an inspiration. An additional source of inspiration concerning the productions of various goods according to blueprints has been „Eve Online“.

What are you currently working on for GoF 2?

Currently, we are working on 3D models of ships, weapons, asteroids, as well as various hangar scenes and the bar where you get new missions. At the same time, Marc Nagel, our art director, is making 2D concepts for new ship models. Then I try to bring it all together. Next, Marc and others will help me with that and deal primarily with the shader, so that everything looks right. And, of course, we mustn’t forget the sound. We’re still looking at a lot of work.

What adjustments are necessary for porting GoF 2 to the coming C platforms?

The most conspicuous thing is the graphics. But for me as a programmer, the change from Java to C is the biggest step. Unfortunately, there’s no tool where you can push a button and everything is reformatted. Whole concepts need to be redesigned. And with a huge game like GoF 2, that already wasn’t easy with the Java version. The Java version of GoF 2 is based on a predecessor, Deep – an underwater game that was itself based on GoF 1. That means there were already two intermediate steps from development to improvement. Porting all of that to C was extremely difficult. Since we already had GoF 1 in C for the iPhone, I first had to consider whether I should take the GoF 1 version in C and turn that into GoF 2 or take the GoF 2 Java version and port that to C. I must have needed 2 weeks just for that decision. Ultimately, I decided to convert the Java project Projekt completely into C, and that was good. Of course, that is only the technical side of the programming. With the graphics, everything had to be adapted, there was no stone left unturned.

Will the work on GoF 2 make the work for upcoming projects easier?

Of course, there’s always some benefit. For GoF 2, for example, we are currently working a lot with geometry and texture shaders under OpenGL ES 2.0, which we will certainly be able to reuse in future projects. Other components of the game, such as the depiction of space with nebulas and the simultaneous depiction of a large number of objects, will also be able to be reused. But naturally, we will get the greatest added value if we develop a sequel to the current title or integrate add-ons like in-app purchases, that unlock new levels or equipment.

The GoF 2 port also resulted in a conversion from integer to float. Why? What are the advantages?

All newer end devices use a floating-point processor. Floating point operations [mathematical calculations using floating point numbers] are carried out in the hardware. For older Java devices, we realised projects using integers, because that ran faster and those devices did not have their own floating-point processor in the hardware. That brings some simplifications into the game: for example, we no longer have to calculate everything large and recalculate it small again later in order to realise small numbers in this way. Actually, we can now compress the whole game much smaller, so that the units of length are smaller. Previously, a ship had to be 1000 length units in size so that it could move smoothly. Now, a ship can theoretically consist of just one unit. Visually, the changes in the game will be apparent in that things no longer shake during camera rotation and navigation.

Does being able to use float also reduce the programming effort?

Not for GoF 2, of course, because this is primarily a port. In this case, the conversion is rather complex. But for future productions, it will be good that we can rely on floating-point.

What else has been especially difficult to implement so far?

Memory management in Java and C is completely different. Unforeseeable problems could crop up any time. You could play the game for two hours and suddenly it crashes, and at first you don’t know why – it is probably because someone at some point didn’t release something somewhere, where everything occurs automatically in Java. In addition, we now have a lot more textures and of course everyone wants everything to look great. But we ‘only’ have 10 – 20 MB of texture memory available. In comparison, with Java we had to get by with 512-byte texture. Everybody in the team said, ‘Oh, everything will fit in, we have to make use of this somehow!’ Now, they all come and say, ‘Everything should look really good now, and we still need five 1024-byte textures…!’ In the end, we have to sit there and make sure we don’t pack too much content into the game.

To be continued…

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Tags:free, Galaxy on Fire, Games, gof, iPad, iPhone, java, Mobile, nokia, online, scifi, Space
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FISHLABS joins Casual Connect with three topics around iPhone Games

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Casual Connect in Hamburg, from 10. – 12. February 2010 right at the front-door of FISHLABS

We are very pleased to attend Casual Connect with three topics on the second day. Casual Games Association Events are the premiere events for the casual games industry with over 3,500 professionals attending Casual Connect Events each year. Casual Connect Europe brings together the most talented and knowledgeable experts in the casual gaming field to further the casual games industry with the best of networking and learning.

This year FISHLABS is among the front runners: With 10 iPhone Games and more than 21 Millionen downloads we are now ranked as one of the top players worldwide.[full]

At Casual Connect we are attending three panels:

What’s the Smart Choice in Smartphones?

Attendees:
Alex BUBB, Senior Partner Manager, Media and Games Nokia
Joe NEALE, Head of End User Programs Symbian Foundation
Michael SCHADE, CEO FishLabs
Moderator:
Chris JAMES, Founder Pocket Gamer

Smartphones are the new black in the mobile content world, but who are the main players and which of the many new platforms and accompanying app stores should you be supporting? Our expert panel of platform representatives and publishers offer an invaluable guide from Android to Windows Mobile.

Case Study: Ad-Funded Games

Speaker: Michael SCHADE, CEO FishLabs

Smartphones are on their way to become the most engaging media in everyone’s life. Millions of downloads with hundred thousands of hours game time make ad games on smartphones like iPhone, Android and other new mobile platforms the Trojan horse for brands to cut through the daily media noise. Learn from best practices with Volkswagen and Barclaycard how to engage with consumers on a global level in a long-lasting and lean-forward experience.

Business Models & Pricing – Making Money on the App Store

Attendees:
Nicholas LOVELL, Director GAMESbrief
Michael SCHADE CEO, FishLabs
Christopher KASSULKE, CEO HandyGames GmbH
Moderator:
Tim HARRISON Founder The Mobile Consultancy

The iPhone has well and truly shaken up mobile games pricing, enabling a wide variety of new business models. This session examines these models and key pricing trends from the initial rush to the bottom to the emerging premium bracket along with micro-payments, lite and free versions, subscriptions and asks the simple question…which models are making money?

Of course there will be enough time for chats and discussions after and in between the panels and we look forward to many inspiring conversations.

Tags:Android, app, Barclaycard, download, Fishlabs, free, gamer, gamers, Games, iPhone, Mobile, nokia, store, Symbian
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Sony Ericsson strikes back: Satio and Xperia X10 got even more steam for games than iPhone 3GS

Friday, November 27th, 2009

Sony Ericsson has been known for its outstanding 3D gaming performance on Java phones for years now. It all started back in 2004, when Sony Ericsson introduced the first mass market Java phone that could render decent 3D graphics on a 176×220 pixels screen. We had been early on and released our first 3D games Motoraver, featuring 3D driving physics in a fairly large sandbox-style city at night, and Robot Alliance, a proper first person shooter in full 3-D (!) with smoothly animated 3D characters, all within 350KB of data.[full]

Continuously, Sony Ericsson improved their hardware and, even more important, the Java Virtual Machine it was running. The crown of 3D enabled java phones still belongs to the K800i, the game experience felt close to the Playstation 1, even if it was not as fast and on a smaller screen. And Fishlabs has to give Kudos to Sony Ericsson. Without this great performance we could never have created mobile games of such high quality like Blades & Magic, Rally Master Pro, Snowboard Hero and Galaxy on Fire 2.

From music to photos to games

In 2005 3D gaming was hyped very much but could not break through as the carriers always forced developers to support the lowest common denominator and the majority of handsets could only render 2D graphics. Sony Ericsson did right in focusing on music instead and introducing the Walkman brand to mobile with great success. A year later Sony Ericsson repeated the success story labeling their photo feature phones with the popular brand Cybershot. With all those millions of Walkman and Cybershot phones sold, sharing a consistent Java platform and decent 3D rendering capabilities, Sony Ericsson’s strength in mobile gaming started as the best kept secret of the industry and led into ruling the mobile gaming business: in 2007, Sony Ericsson was the fourth largest manufacturer of mobile phones worldwide, seven out of ten games downloads were happening on Sony Ericsson phones in Europe and emerging markets like Latin America and South East Asia. Until today, Sony Ericsson has released over 50 models supporting proper 3D rendering and has an installed user base of approx. 200 million devices (Fishlabs’ estimate). Not a bad thing for developers like us, focused on 3D mobile games, if only the ecosystem was right.

iPhone – the mobile games game changer

Nothing is constant but change. It was not Nokia, with its great ambitions in mobile gaming, finally introducing N-Gage as a service, or Vodafone with more than 300 (?) million subscribers who literally changed the mobile gaming business over night. New kid on the mobile block Apple swiped away all competitors with a mobile phone featuring a game experience beyond Nintendo DS and close to Sony PSP. With the latest installment of iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 3rd generation featuring OpenGL ES 2.0 even beyond PSP. In combination with the App Store integrated in iTunes, a fair business case for developers (70/30 revenue share) and a low entry barrier (get started for less than $299 with an iPod touch and the iPhone SDK) for everyone mobile game developers were flocking to this new exciting platform.

Satio – ramping up for the fastest mobile gaming device?

It took Sony Ericsson a while to find an answer to the unexpected competitor coming from the computer area backed by a loyal customer base addicted to superior user experience – which is exactly why Apple is so stunningly successful with the iPhone. Although, feature phones based on Java had been a great success for Sony Ericsson and were the preferred mobile phone for gaming by tens of millions users, the future in mobile gaming lies in smartphones. However, any half-hearted attempt to stand up against the leader of smartphones will fail. But Sony Ericsson has sent a decent device stuffed with the latest hardware to the race. The Satio features the same 3D-Chip PowerVR SGX as the iPhone 3GS running Symbian on an even more powerful CPU ARM11 clocked at 600MHz. Furthermore, it comes with plenty of memory and with a bigger display than the iPhone featuring 640 x 360 pixels resolution.

Lots of horsepower – what is it good for?

It is one thing to stuff a lot of nice hardware into a mobile phone. It is another story to make all this power available to the developer. Sony Ericsson did an amazing job here. We have ported Rally Master Pro from iPhone to Symbian featuring almost the same functionality on Satio (only automatic acceleration when using touch controls due to single touch on Satio and no multiple simultaneous sounds due to lack of layered sound capabilities). Although the resolution of the Satio display is quite higher compared to the iPhone we experience a stable frame rate of 30 frames per second on both devices running identical game code and graphical assets. Thanks to the better screen resolution of Satio, it is stunning how much more details can be rendered in the scene (the original iPhone textures were designed with some head room for larger screens).

Xperia X10: Mobile games on the big screen

Today a prototype of the latest Sony Ericsson smartphone has arrived at our studio: A shiny Xperia X10 and we have to convey it looks stunning, indeed. It is still a very early proto but navigation on the capacitive touch screen feels great and fluid and the whole menu is much more inviting and intuitive to play around with than it used to be with previous smartphones from Sweden. As the X10 is an Android based phone it will take a while until we have our first game running on it. But one thing is for sure: The big screen is a great, great plus. You can see our website in full 800 pixels width and everything is crystal clear. Even the small fonts can be read with ease. Equipped with a whopping 1 GHz Snapdragon Chip supporting OpenGL ES 2.0 it promises high-end smartphone gaming on the big screen.

Tags:Android, app, Apple, download, Fishlabs, Games, iPhone, iPod, java, Mobile, nokia, racing, rally, Shooter, store, Symbian, touch
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The Best Mobile Game of 2008 coming this autumn for iPhone and iPod touch

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Rally Master Pro, Best Mobile Game of 2008, coming to iPhone and iPod touch Certainly, some of you have wondered whether we will only be making ad games for the iPhone, since we haven’t announced anything new about our own iPhone games in a long time. The fact is that the development of ad games for the iPhone and iPod is currently a very lucrative business for us. But the best thing about that is that we can use it to finance the costly production of our own iPhone games. That means the better the ad games we develop do, the more we can invest in our own games. So you win either way. Free adv games for quick casual game fun and our top titles that get as much as possible out of the iPhone and offer hours of excitement.[full]

The Best Mobile Game of 2008 soon for the iPhone and iPod touch

Rally Master Pro™ has really cleaned up in the last year. All of the games magazines gave our rally simulation top marks, and Pocket Gamer even rewarded our hard work with a Platinum Award. That makes Rally Master Pro™ the only racing game to date to receive the best possible evaluation from Pocket Gamer. According to the Pocket Gamer Analysis, which summarises the most important mobile gaming magazines, Rally Master Pro™ is even the Best Mobile Game of 2008. No question, of course we had to bring Rally Master Pro™ to the iPhone. Starting in the autumn, every iPhone and iPod touch owner will be able to put the pedal to the metal and test their rally skills in sun, rain, and snow on 27 varied and detailed extreme courses.

Revved up rally graphics for the iPhone

Naturally, we have revised all of the 3D models and textures. The number of polygons has increased four-fold, and while the Java version of Rally Master Pro™ has to make do with five 256×256-pixel textures, which still is a huge amount for a Java game though, we have given the iPhone version 18 textures with 512×512 pixels and seven with 1024×1024 pixels – way more than we used in any other of our iPhone games before. Rally Master Pro™ comes to the iPhone with tracks of corresponding wealth of detail and variation.

The particle simulation has also been heavily tuned up. Depending on the track surface and weather, a variety of dust, spray, and even dirt particles will be generated for each individual tire. The various kinds of particles act quite differently. On dry, dusty tracks the car leaves a massive cloud of dust while racing through a forest on a rainy day you can literrally see the mud flying. To a certain level, we did that in the Java version too, but thanks to the computing power of the iPhone the particle simulation is way more advanced, here.

Dynamic lighting depending on weather and environment

The dynamic lighting for the rally cars in Rally Master Pro™ is completely new. Thanks to the high-powered 3D chips (OpenGL graphics acceleration) in the iPhone, we can light the vehicle in a variety of ways, depending on the weather: with lots of light and shadows when it’s sunny, diffuse when the sky is overcast, and correspondingly dim in rain and storm. But the environment also affects the lighting of the vehicle. Drive under bridges or through the shady area under trees and the car will be appropriately darkened. It isn’t necessarily an effect that you notice during the race too much, but it nevertheless provides a realistic game experience, and you can enjoy it all at leisure in the replay.

All screenshots have been taken from the Beta version and we are still working heavily on many things. However, to give you a first impression on how Rally Master Pro looks like on iPhone these should do.

To be continued…

Tags:award, free, Games, iPhone, iPod, java, Mobile, racing, rally, touch
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Dare hires Fishlabs to develop Barclaycard iphone game

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Off the back of the iconic Barclaycard ‘waterslide’ ad, Dare has developed an iphone game concept which will be available for free download from the apps store as of mid-July. In keeping with the TV execution, the game allows the user to ride a series of waterslides through urban environments and Dare has hired Fishlabs as mobile technical developers to help bring the concept to life. [full]

Tags:app, Barclaycard, Dare, download, Fishlabs, free, Games, iPhone, Mobile, store
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3D Multi-Player Mobile Gaming – when will it hit a cellphone near you?

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

3D Mobile Gaming Ahead Of Its Time

We are a true pioneer in 3D multiplayer mobile gaming and have been working on games like V-Rally 3D – featuring online ghost racing and first person shooter Robot Alliance in a massively multiplayer online gameplay (MMOG) experience – all the way back in 2005. Of course, we had to face extreme technical hurdles back then and the functionality was quite limited. Also, the number of handsets that these games worked on was very small. Actually, only three devices from Sony Ericsson (F/K500i, K700i, S700i) could handle reasonable 3D graphics at that time. However, in order to exchange the game data online we had to stop the rendering every time we wanted to connect to the mobile network. Gameplay-wise it was far from what core gamers desired but it was revolutionary at the time.[full]

No Business Without The Operator

Over the years, mobile phones became much faster. With 3D enabled mobile phones from Sony Ericsson and Nokia dominating the game downloads in 2007, theoretically, we could have addressed a potential user base of some 100 million mobile gamers with basic multiplayer online features. However, even with a reasonable user base installed, we still had the issue to implement new business models like subscriptions or micro-transactions with in-game billing dealing with 160 carriers worldwide. A task that was impossible, especially since most operators had outsourced their gaming business to aggregators who had no interest to go beyond simple pay per download models. But even if those business models had been in place the lack of flat rate data plans would have left any game utilizing connectivity floating dead in the river before it had a chance to start.

The iPhone – The Game Changer

Nobody had it seen coming. While the mobile gaming industry complained about fragmentation, operators taking too big a cut , crappy WAP portals and a value chain that hardly delivered any great value to the consumer, the iPhone came simply out of the blue. With computing power somewhere between Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, an even larger display, innovative touch and tilt controls and, even more important for connected gaming, no extra costs for connectivity, Apple took the lead in mobile gaming contributing 10% of the whole mobile gaming revenue with a handset market share of only 1.2%. Apple was clever enough to force operators to sell the iPhone with all-you-can-eat data plans to drive content downloads, with only one goal in mind, to sell more devices.

Generating Critical Mass

With the Apple App Store, made for developers to come up with innovative ideas, users have the power because content is ranked by users and the content created by third party developers not gaming managers. This new store reaches a target group of more than 40 million wealthy early adopters who all use more or less the same device and with a direct business relationship, Apple started a new era in mobile gaming. They knew, only in an ecosystem where taking the extra risk is rewarded and a fair chunk of the revenue is given to the developer, could innovation and quality succeed. Following Apple’s tremendous success, other handset manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and lately LG have introduced or announced app stores. Finally, operators started realizing their approach of selling content is outdated and under the umbrella of JIL (Joint Innovation Labs) app stores will finally come from the operators. So the app stores are coming. Some still have teething problems but competition will force every stakeholder to get their homework done. Finally the number of handset users addressable for high-end mobile gaming is gaining critical mass.

In-App Billing – Monetizing Multiplayer Gaming

Now, with a market big enough for 3D multiplayer mobile games, it is again Apple who introduces the last missing part to even justify costly developments of MMOGs on mobile phones: subscriptions and in-game transactions. With the latest firmware 3.0 for iPhone and iPod touch developers can monetize their applications beyond the pay per download model by selling subscriptions or micro-transactions for in-game items. This may be less important for games with simple multiplayer functionality – like turn based tournaments or asynchronous ghost racing as the multiplayer mode is not a necessity for the game – but a good way for games to diversify from its competitors and does not need to be monetized beyond a single payment per download.

However, in MMOGs a constant and expensive hosting service is needed to run the persistent game world and players of MMOGs expect constant content updates or they lose interest and flock to other MMOGs with a better offering. All this has to be monetized over the lifetime of the MMOG. Subscriptions are a proven model to do this for premium titles whilst casual MMOGs seem to be more successful with a business model gathering a vast number of players to play for free and monetize through in-game items.

LTE – Get Up To Speed

So Apple has successfully set up an ecosystem with about 40 million high-end connected devices and a strong shopping system that enables MMOGs on mobile devices today. However, these MMOGs won’t be truly “mobile” because only the Wi-Fi connection of the iPhone provides enough bandwidth to deal with dozens of players in a 3D scene simultaneously. It is LTE networks that is needed to bring MMOGs on mobile phones so users can be play their games literally anytime and anywhere. Also, with LTE as a new service operators have the chance to introduce subscriptions (only Verizon does already) and micro-transaction billing methods to make sure that developers/publishers will take the risk in massive development and the constant operating service of MMOGs. It is in the operator’s very own interest to do that as MMOGs will heavily drive the usage of data and content services and, if the content offering is compelling enough, keep the churn rate low. It might take a while to reach critical mass on LTE for core or even casual gamers on mobile devices to play against one other but it is inevitably MMOGs on mobile phones with ubiquity and constant connectivity that will reach an addressable market of more than 4 billion users.

(Originally posted on ng Connet Program Blog)

Tags:3D, app, Apple, Games, iPhone, LTE, massively, Mobile, multiplayer, online, store
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Apple WWDC 09 – One year later. Light-years ahead, indeed!

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

Well, we haven’t been at any WWDC before so we can’t really make a comparison, no doubt, Apple is way ahead of its competitors and the show was also much more than we expected. But first things first. Still quite jet-lagged I missed to take a picture of Marc, our CTO, queuing up for the keynote. I can’t think of any developer congress where people literally wait in line for hours to get in. Now I know why they call it a Blockbuster, Moscone West had a nice queue of greedy developers to conquer a seat in one of the front rows in the riesig Ball Room, easily seating 5,000 people.

Inside, the atmosphere was like being at a rock concert. The crowd was critically anticipating the show to begin. The stage was indeed huge and massive speakers and colorful spotlights hung down from the ceiling and a big luminous Apple logo was glowing in the back. Looks like Apple wanted to blow us away. Phil Schiller, SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing, entered the stage and kicked-off with facts about this year’s conference: 5,200 developers from 54 countries around the world, “this is the best level of anticipation and excitement for our developers conference yet”, he said enthusiastically.[full]

In the next 15 minutes Phil announced the new line-up of MacBook Pro, all with better CPUs (up to 3GHz), more memory (up to 8 Gig) , better graphics and new battery (good for 1,000 recharges and lasting up to 7hrs). All models are even cheaper than their forerunners and are available today – great stuff – Followed by impressing stats about the Mac OS installed user base: In the past two years the number of OS X users has tripled to 75m today (well, mainly because of the 40 million iPhone and iPod touch users but still impressive).

What’s better than a Leopard?

Next topic was Mac OS in detail. Bertrand Serlet, Head of OS, took over and showed some interesting facts and figures about the improvements of Snow Leopard (90% of what was in Leopard has been refined in Snow Leopard) not without some sharp comments about Vista and its disadvantages. Most interesting: Snow Leopard runs up to 45% faster, it shares up 85% functionality with iPhone OS and it weights about 6GB less, through file system compression.

Safari 4 and Quicktime X reloaded

Along with Snow Leopard, Safari and Quicktime also get an update. Safari 4 now shipping for both Mac and Windows PCs impressed with great performance. According to Acid 3 test it scores 100/100 (benchmark executing HTML web pages) and outperforms Google Chrome and Firefox by far. Craig Federighi, VP of Mac OS engineering, had great pleasure to demo the speed of Safari opening the heavy NYT home page showing huge adverts for Microsoft’s new Bing search engine splashed all over it.

Quicktime got an overhaul of its user interface. Actually, there is hardly any user interface left. When you playback and the mouse is outside of the Quicktime window no status bar or controls are shown. Reduced to the max. Also, it works with any web server now. Bottom line: you can easily upload your video to YouTube. What’s really nice: Trimming options are included seamlessly and Quicktime renders your clips almost instantly for optimized output on HDTV, Apple TV, YouTube and other formats.

Now comes some heavy developer stuff

64bit, Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL. You probably won’t need it for daily stuff if you are not a hardcore user but worth taking a look at it: With 64bit Mac OS applications are no longer limited to address only 4 Gig of RAM and of course a speed boost of software written in 64bit can be expected (Photoshop users happy now?). Next was multi-core. To benefit from the multi-cores in modern CPUs (we don’t see higher CPU operation speed but more and more cores to increase performance) software has to be organized in threads. Grand Central Dispatch is a new technology in Snow Leopard with built-in support for multi-core, which organises threads. Surprisingly, even Apple Mail benefits quite heavily from that as it uses a lot of threads. Finally, OpenCL, an open standard c-based language to utilize the computing power of modern graphic cards, gives developers up to 1 Teraflop (a trillion operations per second) at hands. Whatever you might want to do with that amount of horsepower underneath the hood if you are not a scientist.

Making New Friends

Personally, the last new feature of Snow Leopard made me think there is no excuse anymore to not have a MacBook Pro: Integration of Microsoft Exchange. So the MacBook Pro can now connect to our company email backend server without hassle, it looks better, it’s faster, it lasts longer, has a better integration with iPhone (tethering e.g.), I don’t need to worry about viruses and after turning it on I don’t have get me a coffee before I can start to work. Eh, hang on, that wasn’t all bad.

iPhone gets the rest of the show

Alright, most of the news was interesting but not why WE were attending in the first place. SVP of iPhone software, Scott Forstall, took the stage and we (iPhone developers) were listening much more closely now. “It has been an incredible year for the iPhone. It was less than a year ago that we launched 2.0 and with it the SDK,” he said. “The response has been staggering – developers have downloaded the free SDK more than a million times. There are now more than 50,000 apps on the App Store.” [applause] “Now we’ve been working really hard to grow the user base for your apps […] We have already sold more than 40m iPhones + iPod Touches […]That’s a lot of devices. And of course passed a billion downloads.”

iPhone Firmware 3.0 Highlights

Well, MMS support is surely not a highlight for Europeans as other handset manufacturers have been supporting this for quite some time now but in the US it seems to be a big thing though. You could argue the same about cut & paste but the way Apple implemented it is again way beyond the way their competitors did. Parental control, tethering (use your iPhone as a modem) and dynamic language switching is all nice to have but nothing that made me got too excited. The feature that finds my iPhone based on GPS or mobile network cell (useful when your iPhone is lost in a building) and alerts, even if silenced, did. Even better, “Remote Wipe” deletes all data (contacts, emails, photos etc.) on the device. Anyone who ever lost a phone knows what I am talking about.

Next is peer-to-peer Bluetooth connectivity: “great for games, will automatically find the other player over wireless or Bluetooth, no carrier needed.” Well, that’s cool but Sony Ericsson had that in place, when was that again? Ah, 2006. But no complains, they integrated the API quite nicely so there is not much to do for the developer to set up a match.
Connecting to 3rd party hardware, like the diabetes monitor demoed, might be also useful for an external game controller for all those PSP lovers still holding up all the buttons it offers. Well, buttons are out, touch and tilt is in! Get it, folks!
Embedding Google maps into applications is for sure great for some utilities but I have never been a fan of location based games and such. Neither do I believe in digital books. Hence, Scroll Motion passed without any reaction on me. Last one I remember was the integration of TomTom navigation on the iPhone. Since most new cars come with a satnav system anyway I don’t know if that’s going to be a burner. However, I only I’ve only been riding 20+ year old cars for quite a while so you got me.

No new iPhone or what?

More apps using iPhone 3.0 firmware were shown but all very niche like tuning amplifiers for electric guitars or monitoring and displaying data for physical experiments. 135min had passed and we listened patiently to all the hot and the luke-warm stuff, too. But hey, what about why we came here? Phil Schiller comes back on stage: “To call the iPhone 3G a hit would be the understatement of the year. The iPhone has changed how people think about their phones – it wasn’t too long ago that people were frustrated with these… what I’ll call crappy devices.” And he doesn’t stop bashing the competitors: 2/3 of all mobile browsing (most be US) is done on an iPhone or iPod touch. Schiller compares the iPhone App Store’s 50,000 apps to Google Android’s 4,900, Nokia’s 1,088, RIM’s 1,030, Palm’s 18 – big ouch!

iPhone 3GS – The S stands for speed!

“The iPhone 3G has been great, so that’s why I’m excited to tell you about an entirely new version – the iPhone 3GS.” I guess no one expected the suffix 3GS. “The S stands for speed – because it’s the fastest, most powerful iPhone we’ve ever made.” Apparently, about three times faster on average, depending on benchmark. Launching messaging is 2.1x faster, loading apps (SimCity) is 2.4x faster, loading the New York Times homepage 2.9x faster. Good to hear that Apple also improved the battery life, how much this really adds when playing games needs to be seen.

With the integrated compass and the 3 megapixel camera, also taking VGA videos at 30 fps, it looks like they have some more new cool tech features implemented but for us as 3D game developers this is less relevant. So, the big news about the iPhone 3GS for us at Fishlabs was the new graphics chip, faster CPU and more memory. Especially the new PowerVR SGX GPU by imagination supporting OpenGL ES 2.0 drew our attention. The only thing as a developer that concerns us is that the iPhone 3GS will drive fragmentation. Well, we will see how that goes in the near future.

Tags:3gs, app, Apple, download, Fishlabs, Games, iPhone, Mobile
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The iPhone – Made for Games Like Galaxy on Fire™ – Part 1

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Tremendous computing power, a huge display, rich sound, and analogue controls via touch or motion sensor. The iPhone was just made for out space shooter game Galaxy on Fire™. For some weeks, our mega-hit is rocking on the iPhone and iPod touch. We have completely reworked all of the graphics, elaborately recomposed the soundtrack, added new sound effects, and developed a new survival mode and analogue controls, for a real outer space feel. But one thing at a time.[full]

Pure outer space eye candy on the iPhone

Right from the start-up sequence, Galaxy on Fire™ for the iPhone has a new look. The FISHLABS logo shimmers in the interlaced monitor design and all of the menus are correspondingly designed. An homage to the early 90s, when many of us spent hours playing Wing Commander and Elite. The first 3D scenes run in the background, more reminiscent of the PC games of the late 90s than a mobile game. Gigantic spaceships glide slowly past the camera, while small fighters fly patrol in front of a huge planet. All of this is accompanied by the familiar Galaxy on Fire™ main theme, but in a rich orchestral sound – I feel like I’m sitting in the cinema.

When is the film finally going to start?

I already have the main menu behind me. I chose the story mode. Of course, I remember the intro well, on the Sony Ericsson K700 at the time. It was impressive, because it was fully animated in 3D, rich in detail, fluid, and with an astonishing visual range. Impressive for a platform where only 2D games had run before. The new intro on the iPhone will knock you out of your socks. A twinkling background of stars shimmers, lone asteroids spin slowly by. The first semi-transparent text box is displayed, while the camera pans gently to one side and a splendid nebula enters the picture. In the middle is a planet, illuminated by a gleaming sun. Subtle lens flares play in the virtual optics. I select continue and the camera pans to a high-resolution, bright orange planet, with a space station in orbit rotating around its own axis in 3D. Eden Prime, AD 3587. It begins. Finally.

Arrival on the iPhone – I mean Eden Prime

Majestically, the SS Ulysses approaches and flies past the camera close enough to touch. The numerous details on the hull of the Terran battle cruiser are clear. On the stern, the gigantic ion drives pulse in bright cyan. Has my jaw dropped? Christine bids me welcome. Sweet. She doesn’t know that we met three years ago. No matter. I don’t let on and follow her to the hangar.

My first mission in outer space on the iPhone

It is roomy here. At the end of the camera pan through the spacious hangar, I spot a small something hovering above the floor. Hmm, it looks as though my first spaceship is still little more that a tin can with rocket engines. Whatever, I listen patiently to Christine’s instructions, and then my first test flight.

Wow! What a frame rate! Small particle fly towards me, my Icarus, with its glowing drives, stands out fantastically from the glittering backdrop of stars. The head up display provides all functions at a glance and, thanks to the huge screen, covers very little of the scene. While Christine explains the basic operation of the controls and the HUD to me, I look for the fire button. The bottom right looks good. PHEEEEW, PHEEW and the first twin laser shots fly toward the horizon in a glowing green. Wicked sound. Again. PHEEEEW, PHEEW. That was definitely missing in the Java version.

In the meantime, Christine approaches the first waypoint. Her ship is far in the distance, recognizable only as a yellow tail and the green marking in the HUD . She is probably wondering where I am. What was that she said about the controls? Ah, the analogue stick in the lower left. This is supposed to work? I’m surprised, the controls are very good. Amazingly smooth, the 3D scene flows past me and I fly in every direction until I start to get dizzy.

Now I really have to hurry to the first waypoint. On a normal mobile phone, the booster would be the ‘3’, but that doesn’t exist on the iPhone. Hmm, maybe the double arrow next to the analogue stick? WOOOOOHOOOOO! Boring tin can? With a noise like a turbine, the Icarus takes off like a bat and my head rocks back slightly, as if I could actually feel the acceleration. Conditioned like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I hope no one is watching me play.

To be continued…

Tags:Fishlabs, Galaxy on Fire, Games, iPhone, java, Mobile
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