Aussie game developers hit top of the app charts with Stickman BMX

70+ hour weeks. Working seven days a week. For up to a year. That's the kind of time you might need to think about putting in to scale the heights of the App Store, according to Traction Games' lead developer Ben Hazzard. And he would know. At time of writing, Traction's latest game, Stickman BMX, is sitting comfortably at #1 on the Australian iPhone App Store (in both paid and free categories), briskly ascending to the top spot after its release last week. (It's so far reached as high as #1/#3 in the US free/paid charts, and is also currently top-tenning in paid and/or free categories across UK, Germany, Canada, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Switzerland). We caught up with Ben to discuss the history of Traction Games, what it takes to make a successful app and the state of game development in the smartphone market today. Here's what he had to say.

Stickman BMX currently holds the top spot on the Australian charts but hasn't yet achieved the same level of success in the US App Store, so far peaking at #3. Are you pleased with how the game is being received at home and abroad?
We are very happy with the reception of the new game in the US. While being #1 in Australia is a proud goal for us, being #3 in the US is a far more lucrative achievement financially. It is also worth noting our "free" version of the game reached #1 in the US free charts and stayed there for five consecutive days.


How long has Traction Games been in existence?
I originally started Traction Games (TG) with a buddy from university as a partnership back in 2005. We were making J2ME games for old-school mobile phones back then. However, he ended up getting a job working with Sony PlayStation to work on the SingStar series (and had to sign over his share in the business).

Who's involved in Traction today?
At the current time, the main people involved are myself and a high school friend, Liam Stephens, who is based in LA. The rest of the staff comprises of a select group of contractors who we call upon for various skillsets when the need arises.

What are your respective backgrounds that led you to where you are now?
Well, as the programmer, my background is pretty much exactly that. I’ve been doing it since I was six years old, programming Apple and Commodore computers. Pretty much ever since I could write my first few lines of code I was writing games. After finishing a Computer Science degree I worked as a professional software developer for many years building business desktop applications, before moving onto mobile development full time. Liam was pursuing a life in film and editing. He was the guy at high school who was always working on film scripts, shooting videos, and could name just about every director (and every film they ever made). After he finished his Communications degree he headed to Hollywood and began working there in an L.A. studio, cutting feature films.


And how did this lead you guys to a career in app development?
At the time I was working as a contract programmer in Sydney and running Traction Games in my spare time when the Global Financial Crisis hit. My contract ended and they didn’t renew, and the market dried up seemingly overnight. Faced with the option of taking a lesser role or going back to full-time employment, I decided to give iPhone gaming a shot and purchased my first Mac computer to learn the language for iPhone development. A few months later Liam popped up out of the blue and asked if I was interested in making a surfing game for the iPhone. I was still learning the ways of the Mac dev world at that time and thought it would be a great challenge to sink our teeth into. The 3D iPhone surfing game Pro Surfing was the result.

How do you break up your roles?
I was kept busy with the programming duties on Pro Surfing. Liam pretty much took care of everything else like designing menu systems, gameplay and testing. He was the surfer in the team so he was integral in achieving a natural surfing experience. Traction Games had some money in the bank from earlier mobile game sales, and this was used to hire some contract 3D artists/animators to work on the surfer. All up it took six months to finish. While the app did okay in Australia, it struggled to make an impression in the US (where the majority of the app store revenue resides), so once again the reality of game developing as a full-time career was slipping away.
 
How long did you work on your first real hit, Stickman Skater?
Stickman Skater took about eight months to make in total. It was literally the last roll of the dice. Both Liam and I were avid skaters most of our lives, having produced local skateboarding videos and running skateboard-oriented web sites etc. After the relative failure of Pro Surfing, we spent a lot of time just studying the App Store. Probably a good two months of watching apps rise and fall, trying to estimate which ones would succeed and why. We noticed a lot of low-fi production games involving doodle drawings (etc.) were doing better than the console-style 3D games, and started throwing around the idea of a skateboard game with a casual play mechanic in a "sketch" environment. As soon as the name "Stick Skater" came up in conversation [later changed to Stickman Skater] we both knew straight away we wanted to make it. At the very least, even if no-one else wanted to play it, we would want to play it.


How was it for you guys when the game took off?
Insane. That's about the only word to describe it. It started in Australia where we watched it climb up the "sports games" charts. Every day we’d be having victory celebrations via SMS for reaching a new milestone that Pro Surfing hadn't made it to. Every milestone we treated like the last, expecting it to fall the next day and trying to make the most of the moment. But it didn’t fall. It kept climbing and climbing in Australia until we were the #1 skate game on the Aussie App Store. Soon after that we popped up in the USA sports charts. And the whole process repeated itself. Then it was the top 100 games, the top 100 apps, then top 50 apps, top 10 apps. At this stage we were beside ourselves. Reviews were positive and the game just kept climbing. Eventually it reached the #2 spot in the USA (it had already reached #1 in various other countries around the world). We were getting approached by the media, being praised on US radio stations etc. Unfortunately for us, at the time, Angry Birds had recently established itself as the killer app on iPhone and had set up a stronghold at #1. We were never able to knock it off its perch at the top and had to settle for second place. Around the same time we released a Lite version of our game that reached #1 in the free apps charts, so I guess that was a nice consolation prize.

Are Lite versions essential to getting paid versions noticed?
They can be reasonably effective for certain types of games but by no means are they essential. The gains can vary but the key benefits for us lie in providing a free alternative to those who may not be able to afford to buy games. The word of mouth from these players in the community is a positive marketing tool.

Whats the story behind the name changes you had to implement, like changing the name from Stick Skater to Stickman Skater?
We were issued with a cease and desist by a company in the UK who claimed to have the rights to the word ‘Stick’ in the context of computer games. We had a very strong position and our lawyers found many examples of prior art using ‘Stick’ before their trademark was issued. Unfortunately, Apple’s policy is to remove the app in dispute until the matter is settled in court regardless of the evidence. That court case could have gone for over 12 months, and we figured it was best to rename the game to keep people playing it than to fight it out in court.  In the end the name change made no difference to sales, and we have heard many people say they even prefer Stickman.

There's a "goldrush" notion today that app devs can make it rich with a killer game: is this true in your experience, or do you need to continually funnel resources back into the team to keep things going?
It is definitely possible. Andreas Illinger is a great example. That single-man studio released a killer game (Tiny Wings) that managed to beat Angry Birds. The game is very simple but groundbreaking in terms of its gameplay and sensory appeal. Of course, for every success story there are thousands of disgruntled developers with tales of woe. I refuse to believe that it is "luck" that causes an app to succeed. The fact that a game will blow up in every country around the globe simultaneously in independent app stores says to me that there are measurable factors for a successful game. The number one pitfall that we fell into with Pro Surfing, as do many others, is that they write games for themselves and not for the casual gaming audience. My favourite saying is: “Would your mother play this game?” If the answer is no, then it will probably not succeed. Long gone are the days of male gamers sitting in dark rooms playing Duke Nukem 3D on their PC computers with souped-up video cards. Gaming has come to the masses and they have short attention spans, short play times, and ages range from one to 101, both male and female.

Is there a rivalry with Rovio over Angry Birds keeping you from the #1 spot?
I doubt Rovio would even know we exist. They would be too busy counting their millions after having made the biggest-selling computer game in history to care about a little Stickman on a skateboard nipping at their heels. However, of course, we are secretly plotting their demise...


How long have you been working on your new game, the sequel Stickman BMX?
10 long hard months, 6-7 days a week, 10+ hours a day.

What can players expect from the new game?
Its really a second-generation version of the Stickman Skater engine. There are more things to interact with, curved terrain, bigger jumps, moving obstacles, an entirely new physics engine, new locations and, of course, our Stickman is now riding a BMX bike. I think the presentation aspects of the game have gone up significantly and this time around we released an animated cartoon to coincide with the launch.

What did you guys do differently this time around with Stickman BMX?
I think the main difference this time around will prove to be the inclusion of in-app purchases. We have a brand new race mode you can buy for 99c which has 30 all-new levels, and you need to beat a computer opponent to the finish and move onto the next level. We also allow the players to purchase a skateboard for 99c if they would prefer to play the game using that instead of the BMX bike. A lot has changed on the App Store landscape in the last 12 months, as anyone can see; the majority of the top grossing apps are making their money from in-app purchases as opposed to up-front purchase models. Even Angry Birds has started to head down this road with their ‘Mighty Eagle’ in-app purchase. I see this as the future of mobile gaming. People can get an app with minimal outlay/risk and pay for features based on their interest in the game. This should hopefully remove the market for the dodgy con apps that make a quick buck with cool names and icons but mediocre content.


What have you learned about how to be successful in the app industry?
The number one lesson would be "know your audience". Just because you love playing real-time strategy or first-person shooter games doesn’t mean the rest of the world will share that opinion. The App Store can be brutal if you cannot receive exposure in the main charts. What would you prefer, to have kudos on a hardcore gamers forum and be selling 10 copies a day or to have kudos on the world stage and quit your day job? I respect both choices, but for me it was a no brainer, as I was really bored with my day job.

What would you say to people considering getting into app development?
You would be amazed at how many people approach us with "I have this idea for an app." Some of them get really excited and even make us sign NDAs before sharing their golden idea just in case we run off and use it. More often than not there is an app in the store doing the same thing cheaper and better. So my number one suggestion would be to research the App Store. Study it long and hard. There is room for clone apps but history states they will not do well unless you do them exceptionally better. The other thing I like to say to people is, before you even tell me your idea, answer this question: if I took a random selection of, say, 200 people from the community -- let's call it the "App Jury" -- how many of those people from all walks of life would want to use your app? That percentage is a good indicator of how successful it will be.

In addition to iOS, are you considering other platforms like Android, WP7 or BlackBerry?
Android is on the radar. We get many requests from Android users asking when we will port Stickman Skater across. Unfortunately the Android platform is plagued with the same problems of the archaic J2ME mobiles I worked on before. Far too many devices with different hardware/screen sizes/abilities/operating systems etc. I just have to take one look at my drawer filled with 150+ different mobile phones and chargers from the ‘old days’ to remind myself of the pain device fragmentation can cause the developer. These are problems that iOS has all but solved by Apple having such tight control over the hardware. Having said that, we will likely release Android versions soon enough. WP7 we are watching closely, but no immediate plans to release on that platform just yet.

Android's growth in the past year in particular has been huge. How does this change things for you guys?
It is huge, but it's a different market entirely. Android users are a lot less prepared to pay for an application. The fact Angry Birds felt inclined to release on Android for free with ads instead of charging for apps is the ultimate example of the differences between the two markets. The most crippling factor for Android is the fact they do not regulate the hardware. Any old company can bring out a tablet PC with the power and memory of a 10-year-old computer, sell it at K-Mart for $100 and call it an "Android" device. Yes, it has the little green alien on the sticker, but it would struggle to even run Snake, let alone a game like Infinity Blade for iPhone, running on the Unreal engine. All you can do as a developer is target the more popular devices that have decent hardware and hope those with the incompetent Android devices don’t complain too loudly when they discover your game is running at three frames per second and the controls don’t work.

One last question: why are there so many "stick" games in the App Store and mobile gaming generally?
I think players feel safe with Stickmen. That was our core reason for going with Stick rather than some sponsored game with real skaters (eg. like Tony Hawk tie-ins etc.). I think we stand apart from the usual "line drawing on a piece of paper background" games though because we put a full game's production worth of effort into the Stickman theme. The animated cinematic movie we released for Stickman BMX is a good example of that. We really wanted to show that our reasons for going with Stickman was not just to cut production costs. Even if you have no interest in our games, we suggest you check out our little cartoon.