Interview with Brian Goble from HipSoft
How big is the HipSoft team? What are the roles of different development team members?
HipSoft is made up of three owners (Bryan Bouwman, Garrett Price and yours truly...Brian Goble). Bryan and I handle programming and business development tasks while Garrett takes care of all the art. Garrett and I also work-together on the major game design tasks.
How many projects do you usually have in development at once? How long is your average development cycle?
Our goal is to release 4 products a year and we develop the old fashioned way...one title at a time. Our dev cycles range from 6 weeks to 3 months and we've found that more time spent on a game doesn't always equate to a more success. So far, we've released 8 titles.
To date, which of those 8 titles has been the most successful?
Flip Words is now one of the most popular downloadable word games on the Internet and has been our most successful title. However, it's looking like Puzzle Express may equal or better its performance--only time will tell.
What is your design process like?
We usually discuss game ideas within easy reach of our trusty white board. We doodle and chat (and sometimes argue) until we all have a good picture of the idea in our heads. Then, we spend a day or two and make a playable prototype of the core concept to make sure the idea truly shows promise when translated to the computer. This process has worked out well for us since we don't waste time on concepts that sounded good during white-board discussions but fail to deliver in the digital prototype. If the core gameplay doesn't feel right, we'll try something else knowing that we haven't wasted much time at all.
There are online high score tables in all your games, and the ability to download new game content for Flip Words and Puzzle Express. Are those features heavily used?
Our online high scores have been very popular and have showed us that some of these players spend insane amounts of time playing our games. The scores that some of these people can get amaze us. We quickly realized that we needed a "Daily" high score table in addition to the "All-Time" table because it became almost impossible for the average player to get a score high enough to qualify for the All-Time table.
Our downloadable content system has also been heavily used since it can automatically download new game data every time the application runs. This has been a great way to provide on-going game content without having a huge download. In Flip Words, we even have a feature that allows players to submit new game phrases to our server for possible approval into the game. We typically get over 4000 phrase submissions daily (with the current record being just over 7000!)
What do you see as the target audience for HipSoft games? How do you make sure that you're developing a product that will appeal to that particular audience?
Our market is mature adults (with the majority being female) that are looking for fun-themed games that are easy to learn and play. Although the controls and core gameplay concepts need to be somewhat simple, this audience still wants a high-quality gaming experience just like everybody else (nobody likes bugs, sub-par graphics or annoying audio).
From emailing with customers, we've established a small group of "Elite Testers" that helps us with early prototypes so we can get feedback on new ideas and gameplay elements. This has proved incredibly valuable and our testers seem to really enjoy helping us by playing "sneak peaks" of early versions of our games. Direct communication with our customers has helped us improve almost every aspect of our business.
How do you imagine the audience changing in the future, if at all?
I see the audience itself expanding in size but also the age-range widening from both ends as both younger and older folks buy more of these types of games. We already know the older end is expanding...here's my favorite email from a happy Flip Words customer:
"Thank you very much. Not only are you very nice to do business with but you have one of the greatest games I have had the pleasure of playing. I am 90 years old and with Flip Word I don't dare to die."
Expansion into the younger side of the market may take more time, however.
What's your play testing and game-tuning process like? Do you wait for the end of a project, or test as features are implemented?
Our market is try-before-you-buy, which means that great marketing and promotion can get you a ton of downloads...but the game still needs to deliver fun and addictive gameplay to actually get the sale. Playtesting and tuning take place as soon as the core game mechanics are working.
We usually start with our wives (since they are part of our target audience) and then expand out to our Elite Tester group. Once we hit beta, we recruit some fresh players from our newsletter subscriber database to help with final testing and tuning.
Can you give us a specific example of how this tester feedback has influenced one of your games?
In Puzzle Express, we didn't display the minimum loading time in Express Mode in the beta version of the game. This made it very difficult to determine how much time you had left for completing the level under the time limit-but we were just used to it since we had played the game for so long. We get a good laugh out of this mistake (we jokingly refer to it as our "rookie move") but our testers noticed it immediately.
We've also made enhancements to the text in our help screens based on tester feedback. In fact, a few of our testers have actually re-written paragraphs of help text for us…they just love to contribute.
Is there anything you'd like to do in your games but can't, due to technological constraints? If so, how do you work around that limitation?
We've avoided using 3D hardware and the latest versions of DirectX mainly because our customers don't always have the newest hardware and software and many are not comfortable updating drivers when that becomes necessary. Our games need to run flawlessly from the first install or the user will just move on to another free game demo. Fortunately, there are still a lot of fun effects that can be made without relying on 3D hardware or DirectX 9 (or 8...or even 7). When we do add 3D, we'll probably use an internal software renderer rather than require 3D hardware in order to eliminate driver headaches that we don't want our customers to have to deal with.
What do you think are the unique challenges of developing in this field of casual, downloadable games? How do you imagine this market evolving over the next few years?
Truly understanding the customer has been our biggest challenge. When we first started, we made decisions based on who we thought the customer was and what we thought they wanted. After releasing a few games and getting both positive and negative feedback, we started to really learn what this audience is looking for in a casual downloadable game.
Everything we've experienced since we started HipSoft tells us that this market is growing rapidly and I think it's still in it's infancy. As the market grows, it will be harder to make a game that appeals to everyone so more specialization will probably occur. The highest standards in terms of quality and unique features will also remain key as the competition among available game choices continues to expand as well.
What business advice would you give to a developer who is just starting out in the downloadable game market?
If you're just starting out, I would recommend starting small with your first project. You'll encounter many hurdles you never thought of but you'll also learn much more than you anticipated. The learning process can be incredibly valuable-especially for your future (and bigger) projects. Also, keep in mind that developing a great game is just one small part of creating a successful business.
What were you doing before you began developing downloadable games?
Before starting HipSoft, all three of us helped start Monolith Productions back in 1994 to make games for the retail market. This was a great learning experience and Monolith is still going strong today. Prior to Monolith we all met at Edmark while developing children's educational software.
About Brian Goble
Brian Goble was already programming games for profit while earning a Bachelor's of Science degree in Computer Science at the University of Washington. After graduating in 1991, Brian worked as a senior software engineer at Edmark before co-founding Monolith Productions in 1994. In 2002, Brian co-founded HipSoft to develop casual games for the downloadable games market.
About HipSoft
HipSoft was founded in 2002 to create high quality games for the downloadable and casual gamer markets. Current titles include the popular word game
"Flip Words" as well as "Digby's Donuts" which was the winner of the RealOne Arcade Game Developer Showdown in 2003. The three founders of HipSoft (Bryan Bouwman, Brian Goble and Garrett Price) have over 30 years of combined experience in the entertainment software industry and have shipped dozens of retail products. Prior to starting HipSoft, the three founders helped start a traditional retail game development company back in 1994 that is still going strong today.
For more information about HipSoft, go to www.hipsoft.com.