NaturalMotion's Reil on iPhone success: 99c, sub-10MB, plus a great game

One of the surprise successes of the App Store during autumn 2009 has been NaturalMotion's American football game Backbreaker Football.

Inspired by a mini-game in the company's forthcoming console download game of the same title, it caught the imagination of the iPhone audience, partly thanks to its 99c price, as well as the quality of the animation and graphics, and its release at the start of the NFL season.

With its first update submitted, we caught up with CEO Torsten Reil to find out how the company, together with development partner Ideaworks3D, had dealt with its debut iPhone release, as well as what might be coming in future.

Torstein Reil: We were hoping it would sell solidly, but we definitely didn't expect it to go #1 in so many territories. Apple ended up featuring the game early on, which helped a lot. But it was also nice to see the great user reviews, which led to positive word of mouth.

Do you wish you'd charged more for it now??

No, I think 99c/59p was the right price. Our main aim was to maximise revenue, irrespective of general expectations on price point for a higher-budget game. I read several reviews saying they felt they had robbed us by only paying 99c, so everyone won: people felt they got a steal, and NaturalMotion made a profitable first iPhone game.

It's also important to realise that the iPhone and iPod touch are not typical gaming platforms. The audience tends to be much more casual than the PSP or DS and they often don't see themselves as gamers at all. In order to tap that mass market, you have got to think differently about price (and gameplay for that matter). Equally, the demographic is developing fast, so what was right a couple of months ago may be inappropriate in a few weeks.

The update address two major requests from users: 1) more waves and 2) a higher level of difficulty.

The original game shipped with 50 waves, and the update adds a new Challenge 6 with 10 waves. And I think these are our best waves yet - we've learnt a lot from watching people play the game.

The second feature, higher difficulty, is actually even more involved: we've added a Pro and Hardcore mode on top of the original difficulty level (now called Rookie). Under the hood, we didn't just make the artificial intelligence harder - we added new ways for defensive players to approach and tackle. Pro mode feels really good now - and Hardcore mode is mental.

For what it's worth, we also made the original's first two Challenges deliberately easy, after repeated focus group testing showed that typical iPhone/iPod touch users found the game too difficult early on.

Finally, we added a new Backbreaker Helmet (above the previous Gold level) and made some tweaks to the user interface. All-in-all, people should easily get as much additional play time out of this update as the original - probably more!

Yes, we've been surprised that sales have stabilised at such a solid level after the initial rush. We mainly put this down to word of mouth, together with the low price point and sub-10MB file size: if you buy the game, you're likely to show it off to your mates, who in turn can easily buy it (as it's cheap and downloadable via 3G). We're hoping, of course, that the update will provide a further boost.

We think we can apply the concept to many other genres, including several types of sport. Our main criteria are: can we visually differentiate the game both in terms of animation and rendering quality? Can we keep the gameplay simple yet addictive? Does it address a large potential market?

So we have a whole range of game ideas for Backbreaker on the iPhone, several of which we recently discussed with our development partner Ideaworks3D.

Ideaworks3D did a great job keeping the original game sub-10MB and it looks like they'll be able to do the same with the update, despite the additional content.

We haven't yet added specific support for the 3GS, partly because we wanted to show off what even the 3G is capable off, but this may come in the future.

We're watching the reaction to in-app purchases carefully. There's obviously a fine line between monetising and alienating your users - and that line is different for the iPhone than it is for, say, Facebook games.

Once we feel we understand this sufficiently reliably, we're likely to add optional micro transactions, but for now we're sticking with a one-off purchase + free updates.

You can get your hand on the updated Backbreaker Football, priced 99c, €0.79 or 59p via this App Store Link.