It's been developing mobile games for almost a decade, but making its first freemium game - the Capcom-published Lil' Pirates - has completed changed the direction of Canadian studio IUGO.
Entitled 'How IUGO rose above the noise and became a successful indie studio' at the GDC Smartphone Summit, director of business development, Sarah Thomson spoke about how the company's philosophy has remained the same, while its direction has changed.
Switch the switch
With a mission statement, 'Delivering our passion through premium mobile experiences via proprietary tech', IUGO made its reputation as a work-for-hire house with the likes of EA Mobile and THQ Wireless.
However, prior to the Apple App Store being announced, it decided to switch from this Java/Symbian and Brew work to smartphones.
"That was a hard decision, especially for the first 6-8 months. Even though there was money to be made in the space, we shifted from feature phone game development to smartphones," Thomson said.
"You have to expect that the direction of your company will change over the years."
Buried treasure
But with 15 self published smartphone games, and over five million downloads on iOS, another change happened in 2010, as IUGO decided to switch to making freemium games, with its Lil' Pirates release, which was developed in a concentrated period of four months.
IUGO choose to publish the game with Capcom; balancing the loss of control of the IP with the marketing budget Capcom could employ to launch the game in terms of cross promotion and buying installs.
"Lil' Pirates has completely changed the dynamic of the company," Thomson said.
"We believe a huge tsunami of social games is about to be released and we've been able to beat that rush."
Indeed, it will be focusing on freemium games for 2011 with its next social game - to be self-published - announced as Sunshine Cruise Lines, a cruise line management game.
News
Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
Related Articles
News
Mar 8th, 2011
Wealth of apps on iOS is killing developers says Digital Chocolate's Trip Hawkins
News
Mar 6th, 2011
GDC 2011: High value IAP in freemium iOS games is driving substantial App Store refunds
Top Stories
Feature
May 17th, 2024
New release roundup: The best new mobile games from a battle royale to a console classic remake
Feature
May 16th, 2024
Behind the scenes: How adding sandwich offers to an idle merge game boosted three metrics at once
Events
Valencia Indie Summit 2024 | Europe | May 16th |
Digital Dragons | Europe | May 19th |
GamesBeat Summit 2024 | North America | May 20th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Nordic Game Spring 2024 | Nordic | May 21st |
Impact 2024 - Indie Games | May 23rd | |
MomoCon 2024 | North America | May 24th |
Morocco Gaming Expo | Africa | May 24th |
Popular Stories
Feature
May 14th, 2024
53 top mobile games in soft launch: Squad Busters, Battle Guys: Royale, Plants vs. Zombies 3, LEGO Hill Climb Adventures, and more
Feature
May 13th, 2024
Hot Five: Dubai's new Gaming Visa, April's mobile game charts, and Xbox studio closures
News
May 10th, 2024