Interview

RedLynx talks iPhone, N-Gage and cross-platform development

From Reset Generation to DrawRace

RedLynx talks iPhone, N-Gage and cross-platform development
Just two projects for Nokia have made RedLynx one of the most talked-about mobile games developers in the world.
Pathway To Glory and Reset Generation - one for the original N-Gage devices and one for the new N-Gage platform - won critical acclaim and awards a-plenty.

Now the company has made the jump to iPhone, with the recent release of top-down racer DrawRace, and before that Monster Trucks Nitro.

We caught up with CEO Tero Virtala to find out more about the company's plans.

How did the move to iPhone come about?

In good and bad, we've always had a very open mindset to creating new types of game concepts and games. In the early days of the company, that probably meant we didn't have clear focus, when every developer was supposed to choose and focus on specific game genre and platform.

Rather than thinking of an individual game genre and platform, we've always been simply aiming at coming up with game ideas and games that could bring something new for the gamers, and be really fun games to play.

That inability/resistance to lock ourselves into specific genres has also driven us early-on to multiplatform development. We have a lot of ideas, concepts, and protos - and new ones coming out all the time - which could have a lot of potential.

But in order to take those ideas into good games, the timing needs to be right, the idea has to have a great fit for the right platform, and there needs to be solid business opportunity.

As an indie developer used to having limited resources for self-publishing, taking many of the great ideas into reality wasn't such any easy case a few years ago.

The new online platforms with digital distribution are drastically changing all that, and opening a whole new venue also for us and our game ideas. iPhone is one of those most important new venues at the moment.

Where did DrawRace come from - what were the inspirations?

We had had many ideas on games that would utilise different types of drawing features for a long, long time. They seemed new ideas years ago, but there wasn't actually potential platforms for those ideas. The ideas were stored in our idea and concept collections, and there they rested.

As one source of inspiration (and as gamers, as one natural part of our lives) we play a lot of games. iPhone with its open publishing system, thousands of developers, huge amounts of innovative, cool ideas, game mechanics, etc - has been mind-blowing.

Then Flight Control came, and it brought back to our minds all those different types of "drawing-game-ideas" we had had. With all those ideas in mind, our creative director, Antti Ilvessuo, came up with a new type of racing game idea: You draw the driving path, and very importantly, the pace at which you draw affects the acceleration and speed of the car.

The driving path and speed combined into a few suitable driving terrains and obstacles, and good driving physics summed up into a driving model (speeding, braking, grip, skidding), seemed to make a concept that worked well.

We made a prototype on that in a day, and it was addictive already then. After that, the team was already busy developing DrawRace.

What are your thoughts on iPhone as a platform, and how it compares to N-Gage?

iPhone simply is a great platform. It's great to develop for, it's a good device for gamers, and it provides a lot of opportunities.

We see that very clearly, having made also "traditional" mobile games for years, with all the technology challenges, platform diversity, distribution channel problems... The original mindset was to compare iPhone to those mobile devices, and that difference was huge in many frontiers.

Quite soon the mindset started to change from "mobile device" to portable game platform. And even there the easiness and openness of the development and publishing opportunities are so flexible when compared for example to DS and PSP.

iPhone is a great example of the new online platforms that are changing the game of "game business". As one of our friends, a true game industry heavyweight and visionary, Terry Nagy, said: “iPhone is like a Christmas present that never gets old”.

When comparing to N-Gage, well the differences are big. Compared to any mobile platform, iPhone has been not been a step forward, but a giant leap to next dimension.

However, even though N-Gage didn't become a big phenomenon, there were really good games people there as well. You can see great things done also in N-Gage for the gamers that are still missing from iPhone, like the points-system and solid community which was built, and kept on building around the games.

What's your take on iPhone 3.0 - are there any features you're particularly keen to take advantage of?

The game always has to fit the platform, and its features. So we have naturally been investigating the new features. However, there are still so many potential new ideas unexploited that utilising all the new features is not our primary goal at the moment.

We'll keep on bringing new type of games that are great games to play, and if the new features fit the game they will be utilised. Then updates, which we are doing for the existing games, will very likely utilise some of the new features, when they make a good fit.

But I would not yet start saying which new features we will be utilising: a number of them are at the moment under planning, but the final features will be clear only when the new games are ready.

Part of the planning and design of the new type games at RedLynx happens on paper. Most of it is an iteration: design, development, testing, design, and the loop starts again. Especially when we aim at developing new types of ideas.

You only really see their potential and how fun they really are when you have the prototype in your hands and you can try it. Everything else is just a sophisticated guess, based on which we won't lock anything.

What is your overall strategy now: are you focusing on multiple platforms, and if so which ones?

We develop and publish great games that bring something new for the gamers. Platform-wise, we are a multi and cross-platform developer. So we aim at coming out with game concepts that have the possibility to either later expand into other platforms as well, or to extend into gaming entities in which the different platforms are closely interlinked.

We have developed and published games for web, PC, Mac, interactive TV, a wide range of mobile devices, N-Gage, iPhone, DS, PSP, and coming out with Xbox Live Arcade next.

And that same direction will hold also in the future - a primary focus naturally on those platforms that enable digital distribution and online elements on the games.

Genre-wise, we'll be making many type of games also in the future. This also creates long-term benefits. When we make different types of games for different platforms, and are quite systematic - not in the idea and concept creation, but in the development process and technology - everything develops all the time.

As our knowhow builds up and many things are being made, we only realise afterwards that they can be re-used in many ways.

Of course, while we aren't making huge three-year console-game projects, we also see these benefits quite clearly and sometimes fortunately, quite fast as well.

How about those N-Gage games, Pathway To Glory and Reset Generation. We're guessing they're not heading to iPhone...

You are right, they are games owned by Nokia, even though developed by us. But the truth is they are really great games, and we sure are proud of them. These games would have lot of opportunities in many platforms, but whether that could happen, that's unfortunately not in our hands.

But when you consider that sort of "big games" with really developed multiplayer features... For example Pathway to Glory: It was developed in 2004 for N-Gage. It's now 2009, and there is iPhone.

I don't think we have seen anything of thereally big and deep gaming experiences that iPhone can also provide for the gamers - in addition to all the stuff and great games already out there and about to come out.
Our thanks to Tero for his time.

Contributing Editor

Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)