Interviews

Jon Hare on why iPhone, Android and bada are an inspiring opportunity for original games

Tower Studios launches new era with Vivid's Shoot To Kill

Jon Hare on why iPhone, Android and bada are an inspiring opportunity for original games
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| Tower Studios news

Beloved of UK gamers of a certain age thanks to his games such as Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder, Jon Hare is one of the few name 1990-era developers still successfully operating in the industry.

He's worked as a consultant, as well as taking roles with Codemasters and Jagex, and now he's focusing on his Tower Studios outfit.

We caught up to find out why this is the right time for a new smartphone and online publisher.

Pocket Gamer: Why have you decided to evolve Tower Studios into an online publisher?

Jon Hare: I've been looking at becoming involved in online games publishing for the last 18 months. I've done a lot of consulting for larger online games in the past two years and also spent a while as head of publishing at Jagex.

There are several major reasons for evolving Tower into a publisher.

As a designer I can get my own original games released exactly as I like, without having to deal with the politics of the usual developer publisher relationship. I haven't been able to do this since 1998 and have begun to miss it.

As I get older I intend to move into a position where I can mentor young, talented companies and help them to grow their businesses and make better games without all the politics and bullshit usually attached. I've met a number of excellent up and coming development companies in the past year or so.

It has been nearly 20 years since there was such a great opportunity to make and grow your own game IP without risking too much money. Now is the time... you just have to be good at making original games.

How will the publishing side work?

The main advantages are the ability to establish the IP of the games we're publishing into the market, and pick and choose which formats we self publish and which we license out to publishing partners.

We learned from the Sensible Software days that it's best not to over extend which platforms you take on yourself. It's best to leave that to someone else and focus on generating more and more IP. That's where the money lies. We've also taken advice from other companies already in this market and will be working closely with the San Francisco-based marketing agency IDE which is very experienced.

Very few companies have claimed the online space as the place to go for quality games, game upon game, and I believe that we can do this at Tower. I can assure you I won't be letting anything substandard slip through the radar.

How would you describe Tower Studios games?

We are working on a variety of games on a number of online platforms. Some of the games are my own designs, some are classic games licenses and some are original games from thirdparty developers that we have worked on together to raise the quality bar.

It is important that all games are tailored specifically to optimise the benefits of their target format(s). This particularly relates to control systems, display restrictions, monetisation limitations, download size and, for multiplayer, speed of connectivity.

All of our games will allow for intense competition between friends via Facebook, Twitter and achievement systems etc. We also in discussion with Apple in regard to offering full support of all Game Center features

We will self publish on iPhone, iPad, Samsung bada, Android and browser. The next step is to find the best publishing partner for the console online networks such as PlayStation Network.

Following this we will be looking towards the bigger console formats and PC, should anyone be interested. If you make good games and market them well on your target formats about 1 in 3 should be a hit so I am not anticipating a problem.

Why are these mobile platforms so significant?

To me, all of these platforms are much the same as all others. They offer new opportunities now, but they will almost definitely lose their shine within the next three years or so.

What is particularly inspiring about these machines however is the free publishing model, with relatively little politics and a generous cut for the publisher/developer. Besides the PC and all of its technical downfalls, the last time we had so much freedom to bring to market original games was in 1994, towards the tail end of the Amiga/ST era.

How's the search going for thirdparty development partners?

We already have a number of license deals in place and have just released our first game Shoot To Kill.

Shoot To Kill is a game from Vivid Games. It has been 18 months in development and we have been working together since the end of last year to polish it up ready for release. Vivid is one of our key development partners, both in terms of the games we are producing and in the infrastructure we are putting behind the company.

We offer a pretty straightforward deal to developers who believe in themselves and want to work with us, based on a straight 50/50 split of our net revenues. I learned a lot about this model from my time working with Renegade when we made Sensible Soccer and hope to be able to replicate it successfully with Tower

Do you have any plans to run cross-platform games across the various smartphones?

We have a very ambitious plan to link all of our games on all platforms by a system called Me-Stars, which also features realistic 3D faces of each user in all games. However Me-Stars is at least six months away and the development of its next phase is dependent upon investment, sales revenues, or any other form of loose change amounting to £500,000 or so.

In the meantime our games will be linked via achievements and multiplayer modes in the normal way. Some of these will be cross platform and some (most) will not.

Thanks to Jon for his time.

Shoot To Kill is out now for iPhone [App Store link].

You can find out more about Tower Studios via its website.

Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.