Company
One of the most welcomed surprises of last year was finding out that the very well received 8-bit styled App Store game, The Incident, was developed by Big Bucket Software, a game and app development company based in Perth.
The success story of The Incident was instrumental in persuading Matt Comi, the main developer behind Big Bucket Software, on finally making Big Bucket Software a full time venture in game and productivity app production. We contacted Matt to find out more about his company and The Incident...
TV Forecast
So just to start of with, can you tell us a bit about yourself? What's your professional background, and how long have you been programming?
Matt: Well, I'm based in Perth, I have a degree in Computer Science and I've been developing software for about 8 years. My first job out of University was in embedded C and C++ doing cool things like signal processing to track boats and submarines. My second job was in, would you believe, Windows and C#. That job involved real-time monitoring software for the mining and oil and gas industry. I bought my first Mac, (a 15" Powerbook) in 2005. My company, Big Bucket Software (http://bigbucketsoftware.com) had it's first formal release in 2007: the TV Forecast Dashboard Widget (http://bigbucketsoftware.com/tv). Since then I've made a variety of Dashboard widgets, iPhone web apps and native iPhone apps for myself and clients. All of this was done on weekends and after hours. Big Bucket became my full time gig after the release of The Incident in August of last year.What's the idea behind the name "Big Bucket Software"?
Matt: The name is meant to express the broad scope of my projects; I didn't want the name to pigeonhole me in anyway. When I first coined it in 2005 I didn't really know what I'd be working on. Games, apps, widgets, whatever.Before you developed The Incident, you made a physics puzzler called Pocketball. What did you learn from making that game?
Matt: Oh wow, a lot. Pocketball had some really dedicated fans and it received some glowing reviews. It also received some not so great reviews; for many people, it was a very hard game. So from a marketing perspective, I came to the conclusion that if many adults find your game difficult, then you're going to have trouble selling it. I like making (and playing) niche games, but I think Pocketball was too niche. A lot of The Incident's codebase started its life in Pocketball. Most of the graphics and sound framework comes from Pocketball as does the Objective-C wrapper around the Box2D ( http://www.box2d.org/ ) physics engine and my next game project will no doubt inherit code from The Incident. Pocketball, released 2009.Can you give us the basic premise of The Incident?
Matt: You first meet the hero of the game, Frank Solway as he heads out on his way to work one eerily quiet morning. He hails a taxi. Nothing. He looks up - a taxi is falling from the sky! The Incident is a game where you have to dodge and climb completely random things as they fall on top of you. A little like being trapped inside a game of Tetris. My original pitch ended there. During development, Neven Mrgan and I elaborated on the concept. We came up with the idea of levels, checkpoints, powerups and even an explanation for what the "Incident" was.For those who don't know the story, can you tell us how you teamed up with an artist in the States to work on The Incident?
Matt: The first official release from Big Bucket Software was the TV Forecast dashboard widget. (http://bigbucketsoftware.com/tv) That was back in 2007. I would watch my Google Analytics very closely then, visiting many of the referring sites. Neven Mrgan's blog was one of them. Neven had nice things to say about TV Forecast and so I thanked him in an email. A couple of months later, Neven released the world's first iPhone web app, OneTrip. (http://onetrip.org/) I got in touch again to pass on my congratulations. Soon after that, I started work on a iPhone web app version of TV Forecast. Since Australia didn't get the iPhone until 2008 (we never got the first gen!), Neven was kind enough to test it for me. From there, we worked together on contract jobs and became internet buddies. In December 2009 I asked him if he wanted to work on a game about stuff that falls from the sky. He was into it and that was that.Where did you get the inspiration for the game, and what sort of challenges (technical or otherwise) did you face when developing it?
Matt: The original idea was so simple, I can't really say it came from anywhere. I remember turning to a colleague at the office and asking what he thought of a game where you dodge and climb things that are falling from the sky. He thought it was cool. I imagined it would take 2 or 3 months and honestly, that probably would've been true if it weren't for all the details we packed into it. Ultimately, it took Neven and I about 9 months. We both had day jobs so, there's that. A major technical challenge I faced was to come up with a way to make it seem as though items were piling up forever when really, the first gen iPhone could barely manage to process a single screen of items. I came up with this idea of a "freezer" area. The freezer is a rectangular region that occupies an area just below the player. The freezer moves up and down with the player and camera. Once an item enters the freezer, it becomes static. A static object can float and doesn't respond to collisions. As the freezer moves upwards, it will eventually leave the static item behind. Once this occurs, the static item is deleted. These frozen items provide a solid base for the items that are falling from the sky. Also, during development, the iPad was announced. We knew we had to get in on that. To make that possible Neven had to widen the artwork to fit the new screen proportions and I had to figure out all of that "universal binary" stuff. The Incident, released August 2010."...the developers have made all the right decisions, and the result is a game you pick up quickly, but can't put back down." - EngadgetIn terms of gameplay, we had to deal with the issue of getting stuck under a pile. We went through quite a few iterations before ultimately settling on making Frank super strong and making an escape bubble. You "shake to escape" a little like the bubble in Mario Brothers Wii. The escape bubble required a lot of tweaking; first of all, we knew it should only be possible to activate it when trapped. But how do we prevent people from deliberately becoming trapped? For that, we thought to send up a curse balloon (an anti-power-up) simultaneous to the "shake to escape" indicator. This worked pretty well, but we found that people were playing chicken with the curse balloon. For this, we added a bubble recharge indicator. Sound and music is another challenge. I sourced many of the sound effects from sounddogs.com and produced the 8-bit effects using cfxr ( http://thirdcog.eu/apps/cfxr ). In May or thereabouts, Neven and I started discussing what to do about music. It all seemed too hard to me and so I said that I would be happy to release without music. Neven mentioned that there was "this guy" who might be available to do the soundtrack for us, but no promises. I eventually learnt that this guy was Cabel Sasser ( http://cabel.name ) of Panic fame ( http://panic.com ). As it turns out, Cabel is an extremely talented musician! His soundtrack really became the final piece of The Incident puzzle. I can't imagine The Incident without it.
How did you promote and market The Incident, and were you expecting the sort of response that it received?
Matt: We first introduced The Incident to the world through a YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arjW9n6m7PQ) that we hosted on a teaser website (http://theincidentapp.com). If you look closely at that video you'll find that the UI doesn't match what you find in the game. We used Campaign Monitor to collect email addresses for a release day mail out and a dedicated Twitter account for a release day tweet. As for the response it got - Expecting is not the right word - hoping, certainly.The 8-bit art in The Incident seems to have worked greatly in it's favour since it gets a fair bit of mention in many reviews. What was behind the decision for choosing the 8-bit art style?
Matt: We both love pixel art! It was really just one of those decisions - I can't imagine The Incident any other way.Five days after the release of The Incident, you resigned from your then-current job to pursue software development full-time on your own. Was this decision long in the making, or was it spurred on by the feedback or success from The Incident?
Matt: The bosses knew that I had these side projects and that if one ever became successful, I'd be leaving to pursue it full time. I'm not sure any of us every considered that possibility very seriously though. The resignation was a fairly stressful moment. The sales were going remarkably well and my friends were encouraging me to take the plunge into full time indie dev. After day 1, there was a part of me that was ready to resign. I remember thinking, "maybe tomorrow's sales will be bad, I should wait one more day just in case." As it turns out, they were stronger. I remember my IM would regularly pop up at work: "have you quit yet?" By day 5, I had mustered up the courage to give in my notice. It didn't come at a very good time for the company (it never does) but my manager was totally understanding and supportive. The whole experience couldn't have been better, honestly.You've made several updates to the game since release (and it's also on the Mac App Store!). What have gamers been requesting and what have you been adding in those updates?
Matt: Most of our updates have be based on making the game experience more console-like. We went from the ability to use an iPad as a display with the iPhone as a controller to being able to connect the iPad to a TV. Neven has regularly been adding new items to the game and in 1.2 we even had a few guest artists add their own (http://dribbble.com/shots/66084-The-Incident-1-2-guest-items). We've also added a survival mode and Game Center integration.The Incident was "sweded" by some fans. What was your reaction to that video, and have you received any other interesting or amusing feedback from The Incident?
Matt: The sweding was incredible, I can't think of any feedback we've seen that compares to that level of awesome. But we always get a kick out of parents uploading videos of little kids playing it. I also love it when a fan notices one of the many subtle references to things we love that are scattered through the game.The Incident: Sweded from Greg Borenstein on Vimeo.
It's been seven or so months since you left your job to be an independent developer. Was it a challenge to adjust to working for yourself? What keeps you motivated and focused, day in, day out?
Matt: Having a work partner is great. Sure, we're not in the same office or even awake at the same hours but knowing that we're relying on each other to reach that next milestone keeps me motivated and focused. Other than that, the nature of App Store income is almost enough to keep me going. By that I mean, sales tend to spike and then plateau. To make Big Bucket viable in the long term, I need to keep those spikes coming. That means more releases and more updates.Big Bucket Software doesn't primarily work on games only. You've just starting working on TV Forecast. Can you describe to us what that app does?
Matt: This will actually be the latest incarnation of TV Forecast. TV Forecast is a different take on a TV guide. To put it succinctly: A TV guide is for knowing what you can watch right now. TV Forecast is for knowing when you can watch what you like to watch. Basically, you add your favorite TV shows to your "forecast" and they are displayed in chronological order. Of course, you can tap the show to learn more about the upcoming episode or about the show in general. The iPad version will add a calendar view and hopefully a few other cool things. I'm documenting the design work on my dribbble page for anyone who's interested in that sort of thing: ( http://dribbble.com/mattcomi )What are the main differences do you find between productivity apps and games, in regards to sales and feedback. Which do you find more challenging and more rewarding to develop?
Matt: Games are scarier. With something like TV Forecast, it is easy to see the "need" (a loose term) that it satisfies. A game can't be measured that way; fun is much harder to quantify. In general, games take longer to develop than apps and have greater associated risk.
TV Forecast