In early July this year, Brisbane game developers, Halfbrick Studios, reached the one million sale mark of their very popular fruit slicing game , Fruit Ninja, for the iPhone/iPod touch, after having only been available for 74 days on the Apple Appstore. They've followed it up recently with the anticipated version for the iPad, and it too has been receiving some tremendous success in the Appstore charts.
And while it has been an exciting time for Halfbrick, tsumea thought it would be a great time to grab Halfbrick CEO, Shaniel Deo, from his the extremely busy schedule for a chat about Halfbrick's latest and greatest milestone..
Congratulations on hitting the 1 million sale mark for Fruit Ninja on the iPhone! Did Halfbrick Studios do anything special to celebrate this incredible milestone?
(Shaniel Deo) We did a number of things to celebrate Fruit Ninja hitting the 1 million sales milestone. We had the obligatory drinks at Halfbrick on a Friday. We usually have drinks on a Friday but this one was a bit bigger than usually. We also had a lovely cake made by a Fruit Ninja team members wife.
My initial thoughts about Fruit Ninja was - why did it take Halfbrick so long to venture out on to the iPod Touch/iPhone platform? You guys seem such a perfect fit for it!
(Shaniel D.) It's always difficult to find the time to work on your own titles when you are doing work for hire projects for publishers. We've built up a knack for creating fun, simple games based on addictive gameplay mechanics over the years. We just need to make the sacrifice to devoted some of our capacity towards internal development.
The GFC was also a blessing in this respect as it forced us to put some of our free resources (due to cancelled projects) to good use. Even so, it has been a slow transition for Halfbrick towards creating original IP. It started with our Xbox LIVE Indie Games then our PlayStation Minis and finally Fruit Ninja for the iPhone. We've learnt a lot of lessons along the way on how to develop games for various digital markets as well as how to market and sell them successfully.
Was Fruit Ninja a product from the "Halfbrick Fridays" initiative? Are there any more games in the pipe coming out from that?
(Shaniel D.) Fruit Ninja was a product of the "Halfbrick Fridays" initiative. "Halfbrick Fridays" are a way for our staff to flex their creative muscles and develop the games that they want to make. Usually, teams are given the freedom to create whatever they like.
However during the Fruit Ninja round of "Halfbrick Fridays" I stipulated that the teams had to create a one screen game suitable for the iPhone market. We continue to regularly hold "Halfbrick Fridays" and there are a number of great games coming out of the initiative that are in various stages of development.
What were the expectations for Fruit Ninja when it was released by Halfbrick?
(Shaniel D.) We had reasonably high expectations for Fruit Ninja. The game was great fun to play and appealed to a broad audience. We had 3 year olds through to 85 year olds playing and loving the game so we knew that as long as we could get the word out, we had a good chance of being successful.
However, success on the App Store always seems like a roll of the dice so we did everything that we could to make sure that people knew about the game. We had a great viral video as well as plenty of press reviews on launch. This all helped to boost Fruit Ninja to the top of the Australian charts and get featured by Apple in other countries. The rest is history.
Has the success of Fruit Ninja changed in any way the focus of the studio? Is the PSP mini, Xbox Live Arcade etc still an important platform for Halfbrick?
(Shaniel D.) The success of Fruit Ninja has certainly provided us with an insight into how powerful the App Store can be for generating revenue. We're still developing games for a number of platforms including XBLA (Raskulls will be coming out this year), PSN and PlayStation minis but we also have more games in development for the iPhone. The iPhone has become a lead platform for us in many ways. We'll use the iPhone market to test out ideas and establish brands before taking them to other platforms in the future.
How do you account for the success of Fruit Ninja? Was it word of mouth, clever marketing, social media promotion etc that made all the difference?
(Shaniel D.) Fruit Ninja's success is due to a combination of all of the above factors. The one point that is missing is that Fruit Ninja is a great game! However, a great game alone is not enough to ensure App Store success. You really need to incorporate all of the social hooks as well as clever marketing to ensure that people hear about the game and want to buy it.
Other developers have remarked on the difficulty of transitioning from work-for-hire / contract development to self publishing DLC games that sell for much less ($1 in a lot of cases). How much of a challenge would it be for a small independent games studio like Halfbrick to depend soley on self publishing yet?
(Shaniel D.) Halfbrick currently employs around 40 staff which we built up organically over the years through work for hire projects. It certainly would be difficult to transition from work for hire to self publishing in one move. I think developers need to plan ahead to make the transition over a number of years and release a number of games around their work for hire commitments. Halfbrick started to make the transition over 2 years ago and it has taken us until now to have the breathing room to focus on self publishing exclusively if we choose to.
Ideally you want to build up an ongoing revenue stream from a number of solid titles. If you have hit on your hands then that can accelerate the process and give you more options sooner. I also think the problem of transitioning to self publishing is slightly easier if your company is smaller as you need to earn less to sustain the company. However you also have less resources to dedicate to internal development so that may balance things out in the end. It all depends on how committed your team is to making that transition.
What would you say were the biggest lessons you've learnt from self publishing on the Appstore?
(Shaniel D.) Marketing plays a huge role for independent developers on the App Store. So does having a relationship with Apple. These are two areas where I believe established publishers can make a difference for independent developers. Lastly you need to make a game that appeals to a broad audience. The audience for the iPhone is so much more diverse than what traditional developers are accustomed to dealing with on consoles.
In my opinion the iPhone audience is primarily a casual audience so your games need to appeal to those kinds of people. There are still a lot of hardcore gamers with iPhones and you can make a successful "gamers" game but just don't expect it to stick around at the top of the charts for a long time.
Plagiarism is something you're currently dealing with at the moment. Do you feel there is any recourse or action you can do to deal with it?
(Shaniel D.) Thankfully games that are innovative or the first of their kind on the App Store tend to hold off the challenge from the inevitable clones. I know that developers have complained to Apple in the past and have managed to get certain games pulled from the App Store but unless you can prove that a game has infringed on your copyright it's probably best to let it go. It certainly is a gray area.