Reflexive Interview on Gamasutra

[Matthew]

Gamasutra is running an interview with Lars and Simon of Reflexive (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060516/carless_01.shtml). Topics include their company history, casual markets vs. the console markets, and a bit on their next title:


GS: Can you talk at all about the theme of your new in-development title, which may come out for Xbox 360?

LB: We can talk a little about it. The most significant thing that we can possibly say is that it's not actually a 360 title yet in the sense that Microsoft has not seen it, picked it up, or agreed to it. The next thing is…

SH: The game is very heavily based on a really cool physics system. There's a lot of interacting with the environment and things in a way that just – you'll really get to kind of feel what you're doing. It's hard to explain. I mean when I say “you'll feel it”, obviously I don't mean literally. It's like in Wik, when you're doing loops and things, when you're swinging around, you really get a feel for the weight of the character, how he's spinning around, your kinesthetic sense.

This kinesthetic feel is very important and we have a cool unique main character in the game as well.

Personally, I'm jazzed about them doing another physics-based game, although I'm willing to admit that I'm completely biased about the subject. An interesting read overall.

[Coyote]

I was just a little surprised to hear them talk about their games as being "casual games."

I never really thought of Ricochet as being a real "casual" game. Or Wik, really, for that matter. And I thought Reflexive was trying to dodge the "indie games are casual games" image...

[yanuart]

is it true that Wik cost $350.000 ?? wow ..

[Matthew]

is it true that Wik cost $350.000 ?? wow ..

Salary adds up. They've publicly stated the game's development as 9 team members over 9 months. For the sake of simplicity let's assume the team size was constant over the project. That's 6.75 man-years of effort.

$350k/6.75 = $50,000/yr per team member, roughly, without factoring in any kind of overhead for rent, power, computer, software, etc. It's hard to avoid costs like this for content-heavy games. You can either cut back on salary or cut back on development times. Of course, if you cut back on salary you're going to end up with less experienced talent which inevitably adds to development time.

(I have no idea what their actual cost breakdown was, by the way. I pulled the 9 people/9 months figure from their Gamasutra postmortem (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050214/hallam_02.shtml).)

[yanuart]

350K is a huge money for a small time indie like me. To make it up I have to sell at least 17.000 copies and even way more when it comes to dealing with portals and other distribution channel.
Most of us don't even sell 1K copies...

[Skinflint]

Yep, it actually cost $350k for the development of Wik for the PC...and that was just for the PC. The XBOX 360 version was extra, and that took many months to develop. In addition, we were one of the first devs using the new technology, which delayed us in some ways and increased our costs. It was fun though...

To further bump up the costs, we also pay more than what Matthew was surmising. We try to attract and keep industry veteran programmers, artists and designers and pay competitive (or better) salaries for the gaming space in general. All but one of the people on our dev teams have worked on big budget, triple AAA titles in the retail space and we need to pay them to keep them.

As to Coyote's point, I agree that Wik is not casual. Ricochet, thank goodness, was a crossover title in that many people from every side of the gaming fence gave it a try. Ricochet doesn't have the typical feel of a casual game, but it definitely appealed to a bunch of people that play casual games.

As far as our identity goes, I think that one thing stands out above all, and that's that we make the games that we want to make. If someone wants to categorize some as indie, great. If someone wants to categorize others as casual, that's great too. We follow our passions, regardless of where the game could be categorized. Obviously, we try and see what the market for it could be, but Wik obviously broke that mold too. Wik was a risky move in many ways...

[yanuart]

well.. more power to you guys. It's amazing that you guys manage to stay in the business with that expenses. Hopefull someday I'll be able to do what you're doing now :)

[James C. Smith]

It helps when there are lots and lots of grandmother playing Ricochet.:-)

The visual look of Ricochet may not fit most definition of "casual games", but the people playing it sure fit the casual games stereotype. Ricochet, Big Kahuna, and Mosaic are very successful in the ‘casual games’ markets and about half the players are female. Wik and Reflexive’s new console titles in development are less aligned with the traditional definition of casual games.

[VladR]

James: Who had the original idea for Wik and who had the final say in starting the actual production ? Because, on the paper, it must have been obviously a very high risk.

[berserker]

Vlad, you should read their Wik postmortem on Gamasutra. It has lot of interesting information and answers all of your questions in detail.

[Escapee]

I can basically go for semi-retirement with 350 K USD .. :)

[berserker]

I can basically go for semi-retirement with 350 K USD .. :)

What? No big house in French Riviera? No yacht? Even no personal Maybach?
Come on! You must be kiddin' :D

[Escapee]

Ah no I dont need personal Maybach or big house in french riveira, living frugally is a virtue to me , I feel content as long as i have a house and a car that can move.

" You are wealthy when u know you have enough "
Tao te ching - Lao tzu

When i have 350 K USD ( 1.26 million in ringgit ), i know i have enough...:D

[yanuart]

I was wondering, how did Reflexive do its marketing bits to get that audience in the early days.

It seems for me it's so hard to get quality visitors to my site, I get thousands of visits but mostly from international visitors and only 20% of them from US yet 90% of my paying customers are US based.

The only thing I haven't done is doing online advertising which is something I'm still not convinced yet.
Hmm.. maybe my game sucks .. hehe

[DFG]

It seems for me it's so hard to get quality visitors to my site, I get thousands of visits but mostly from international visitors and only 20% of them from US yet 90% of my paying customers are US based.

That is fairly typical as far as the paying percentage goes.

Have you tried approaching sites that are motorcycle related? You could give them a free copy of the game in exchange for a brief review and a link to your site. Small, personal sites would probably be the most interested.

[Skinflint]

In the early days, it wasn't nearly as competitive as it was now. There wasn't nearly as many games out there for the "casual" games space, so they were more of a rarity. We did pay for a few things, but none that I can remember working. At one point, we were working with Clear Channel, and even had radio commercials up in the Southern California area...but they kinda sucked.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. In the early days, I was the Jack-Of-All-Trades here at the company, so I contacted every casual games reviewer known to man, and a few known to monkeys, to get the word out. I begged, cajoled and even promised to eat bugs if I could get a review. We were working in the first floor of my townhouse (the CEO and I were room mates) and we were willing to take chances. For the most part, I got reviews by everyone I contacted, even if it was just as much out of pity as much as interest in the game. :) I still remember reviewers saying "Oh, that's too bad" when I would tell them we were a start-up game company, like I had told them my dog had died. I don't know how much the press helped out, but I sure felt good about getting the reviews nonetheless.

Simply having our name on Swarm and then the immensely popular Ricochet series (branded as Rebound at Real) also brought in a bunch of people to our site. We then had a built-in fan base for our next project, Ricochet Lost Worlds.

Then, and here's a secret that's not-so-secret but exploited by almost nobody, with Ricochet Lost Worlds we had downloadable levels that players could get from the net for free. Traffic went up. Sales went up. (Big Kahuna Reef level downloads did the same thing when we launched that.)

Then, when we really went after the Arcade in earnest (putting a bunch of other games on our site to give people a reason to keep coming back) traffic exploded. I think a good trick now for most sites would be to stack their site with tons of other games that they like or are similar to their own games. <Insert Shameless Plug Here> You could sign up as a Reflexive Affiliate, pick out the 20-30 games (from our almost 500 to choose from) that you think your customers would like and put those up. That way, they might be incentivized to come back to your site when they are looking for a shooter/rpg/whatever game type you like </Insert Shameless Plug Here>

Point being, having lots of reasons to come back to your site rocks.

It's been a slow process over many years to get to where we are now, but it is interesting to look back on.

...and I agree with the previous post. Contacting niche sites that can directly relate to your game is a great way to go.

[Escapee]

I was wondering, how did Reflexive do its marketing bits to get that audience in the early days.

It seems for me it's so hard to get quality visitors to my site, I get thousands of visits but mostly from international visitors and only 20% of them from US yet 90% of my paying customers are US based.

The only thing I haven't done is doing online advertising which is something I'm still not convinced yet.
Hmm.. maybe my game sucks .. hehe

I'm on your opposite , 80% of FunPCGames (http://www.funpcgame.com) unique visitor comes from US of A. I believe USA remains the most important market for casual games for many years to come ( maybe forever).

Have u tried google adwords ?

[Davaris]

It seems for me it's so hard to get quality visitors to my site, I get thousands of visits but mostly from international visitors and only 20% of them from US yet 90% of my paying customers are US based.


Yeah thats really wierd. I've found the same thing with my game. Why is it that people from the USA buy online and almost no one from other countries do? There's plenty of cashed up people in Europe and the UK, but they don't buy online.

[yanuart]

even so, I do have 2 customers from Russia, 1 from Japan, 1 Israel and 1 India. I never thought that ppl from those countries willing and able to buy a 19.95$ shareware game. Which makes me think that 19.95 is actually a o-kay :D

[Davaris]

Israel and Japan are pretty well cashed up. The Russians are probably publishing your game by now. :) As for the guy from India, you'll probably get a charge back real soon. ;)

I'm sure I'm going to get into trouble for this. Oh well... :)

[berserker]

I have lots of customers from Japan and would have even more I was able to accept local payments through their banks. Anyone knows of some kind of Japanese reseller that could do that?

[VladR]

There's plenty of cashed up people in Europe and the UK, but they don't buy online.You know, when EU put into practice the law that puts a VAT as an additional amount to pay, it has made the online games just too expensive. For me, it broke the barrier that I`m not willing to cross.
2 years ago I was buying about 2 games per 3 months. Now (or about 1 year ago), I stopped, because with the additional VAT, the game costs almost as much a new AAA releases, and that`s a different beast, isn`t it ? Even if I don`t have the amount of time that AAA games need, I simply chose not to play than to pay ridiculous amount for a usually very short game.

For the same amount of money that a typical online game costs ($20), I can get 3 PC budget games (be it RTS,Rally,RPG,FPS) from last year that shall definitely provide me with more gameplay for my money (although there`s no way I could actually finish them, there`s no time for this, but the received value for money is unbeatable here).

Add to that, that USD currency has ~20% higher value compared to our poor Slovakian currency (than 2 yrs ago), and the online games became ~50% more expensive than they were 2 yrs ago - all at the same time costing just $19.95...

Also, if you take into account the inflation during last 3 yrs, if you`re an US citizen, $20 must seem less and less with each passing year. For you, it`s always $20, but for an European, it could be well over $30, depending on current exchange rate and a local VAT.

I used to decide with my wife which online game to buy for our kids for their birthdays/namedays/XMas. Now that we`ve switched to PC budget, there`s no going back for them. They simply wouldn`t want playing them again, they`re just too simple compared to AAA games (mostly RTS/RPG).

I believe, the same happenned to many other people in othe countries of EU.

[Escapee]

19.95 x 3.6 = 72 ringgit .. that 's equivalent to about 18 plates of chicken rice ( compared to maybe about 4 plates of chicken fried rice in USA ).. So if u receive any sales from Malaysia or from any southeast asia nations . he/she must be filthy rich with money no place to spend .

My paypal is filled with some money earned from placing private ads.The problem is I can neither withdraw the money to my local bank nor draw a check from Paypal ( service not avalaible ) , so i might be considering using my paypal cash to buy my FIRST EVER CASUAL GAME as some of the games really make me feeling impulsive to click the purchase button .. .. ..
:)