Apps are quickly becoming a huge staple of the gaming industry. With more and more apps breaking away from mobile devices and finding their way onto consoles, app developers have a lot of importance on the future of the gaming industry. Being intrigued by this, I decided to contact an app company for an interview to better understand how apps are made and how they will affect gaming in the future. I chose to get in touch with Metaversal Studios. Being a company that continuously creates popular, witty games for both iOS and Android, they seemed like a good choice. Matt Sughrue, VP of Product Development, was nice enough to give me his time to answer a few questions.
Geekscape: So, Matt, tell me about yourself.
Matt Sughrue: I started working in the game industry in 1992. Prior to that I worked in marketing and advertising in the computer business, but I’ve been a gamer since there were games to play and wanted very badly to make games. When I saw an ad in the Boston Globe for a game designer position at a small developer called Animation Magic, I went for it. I had zero qualifications other than good writing skills, boundless enthusiasm and rugged good looks. They hired me anyway, although it was as Marketing Director, not designer. I spent six months in that role before moving into design. Since we were so small (half a dozen developers in Boston), all of our roles overlapped and I was able to learn the ins and outs of game development by actually doing the work.
http://youtu.be/gcJPfb1GI3U
I loved being a designer and made a half dozen PC games, mostly for kids, during my first few years at the company. Animation Magic grew considerably during my time there, up to about a dozen people in Boston and 150 artists and animators at our studio in St. Petersburg, Russia. I had the opportunity to travel to Russia many times over the next 8 years and work with some extraordinarily talented people there.
As we grew, we had a need for someone to manage the client relationships and fill the producer role, so I shifted gears and became first a producer, then production director, then executive producer for the company. By the time we were purchased by Davidson & Associates (who had also purchased Sierra Online and Blizzard around the same time), our studio was developing multiple titles for multiple clients non-stop. It was kind of crazy, but I learned a lot about implementing best practices, juggling priorities and the importance of good planning.
After Animation Magic, I served as General Manager for Papyrus Design Group, the top PC racing simulation developer at the time, then went a social MMO startup that never got off the ground due to a lack of funding.
Over the next ten years I worked for developers and publishers running projects, teams and business units making games across just about every platform, from GBA to PS3.
I joined Metaversal Studios in 2010 as VP of Product Development, and have been here ever since.
Geekscape: Impressive! Could you tell me about Metaversal Studios?
Matt Sughrue: Metaversal started as a group of Northeastern University graduates making Flash games for fun and for web clients. When Apple launched the iPod and iPhone, Metaversal started making games for those devices. The founder of the company sold Metaversal to a New York-based game distributor called Alliance in 2009, and Alliance hired me in 2010 to run the studio. When I came on board I discovered a lot of raw talent and potential but no discipline or structure. There was no one who could tell the new owners of the company when a game would be done or how it would generate any revenues.
I applied the best practices I had learned over the years to the studio and the development team jumped on board without hesitation. They quickly understood the value of good design documentation, source control, bug ticketing, peer review and clearly defined milestones, and we had our first successful app (a novelty app called Shave Me) in April of that year. Shave Me went to the top of the charts and continues to stay strong 3 years later, with well over 8 million downloads and many, many updates and enhancements. We’ve developed many other games since then for both iOS and Android devices, and along with our parent company have recently become PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo developers and publishers.
http://youtu.be/kxvKeAQg0Zc
Geekscape: I downloaded Shave Me and it is honestly one of the most unique apps I’ve ever used. How did Metaversal come up with that idea?
Matt Sughrue: It was the winner in a “weirdest app idea” studio competition. Weird can work in the App Store!
Geekscape: I guess it can! So, what are you working on now?
Matt Sughrue: Can’t give you details on that since we haven’t announced it yet, but we’re building a new iOS and Android game, as well as working with other developers to publish their titles for iOS, PS4 and Xbox One.
Geekscape: I’ll keep a lookout for it! So how many people work at Metaversal and what are the different responsibilities that they have?
Matt Sughrue: We have seven people here in our Massachusetts office, and our parent company has offices in New York, Miami and San Francisco.
Here in our studio we have design, art, engineering, marketing and project management staff. We’re all gamers, and the chemistry between our devs is excellent. Most of the team are people whom I’ve worked with at other jobs in the past, so there is a level of trust and efficiency that lets us achieve a lot more than developers our size normally would be able to pull off.
Geekscape: Will any of your current apps be available on consoles?
Matt Sughrue: Probably nothing that’s already in the market, but we are looking at consoles for everything we do going forward.
Geekscape: So what goes into creating an app?
Matt Sughrue: App development is very different from making console games in that you have a very short dev cycle (1-4 months, depending on the game) and a very small team. We start with a group brainstorm session to get some potential ideas down on the board, then pare the list down by asking things like “Does this have staying power and can it be the start of a line of games?” “Can we bring this to other platforms easily?” “Does this take advantage of the development pipeline we’ve created, or do we need to change our process to make it?” “Can it be done in X months?” And on and on until the strongest idea remains. Everyone is thick-skinned here, which is good because we are also all extremely blunt with each other about the viability of a game concept.
http://youtu.be/Agt1cbPCa50
Geekscape: Finally- what platforms do you make apps for?
Matt Sughrue: We make games for iOS, Android, PC/Mac, and now PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo.
You can follow Metaversal Studios on twitter here! What’s your favourite Metaversal title? Sound out below!
http://youtu.be/GkkqUf7DgQ8