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Tag Games 'fesses up: Five things we did wrong in 2010

Developer dishes the dirt

Tag Games 'fesses up: Five things we did wrong in 2010
Far from wishing to congratulate itself during a year when it has worked on huge franchises such as Doctor Who, launched a new app development wing and survived in its Dundee base when all around were struggling, Tag Games has instead turned tables and offered up its five biggest mistakes of the year.

(It will relate its five biggest successes in a future post.)

They might not all be entirely serious – one supposed misdemeanour being the inability to serve up a hit the size of Angry Birds – but they do help highlight an overall optimism and the key areas where the studio believes it can improve on its performance in 2011.

Learn as you go

"We have been self-publishing since the beginning of Tag and this has given us a great deal of insight and data on which to inform future decision," says co-founder Paul Farley in the blog entry.

"So many trends, technologies and platforms are converging it’s very exciting, but this can also lead to much confusion.

"Social, self-publishing, digital distribution and casual seem to be interchangeable terms but each should be clearly defined and assessed in their own right."

Stepping away from self-publishing to work on big thirdparty franchises is, in fact, one area where Farley believes Tag might have made a mistake in 2010.

"After fighting so hard for the right to self-publish and learning the hard way the pros and cons it seemed a little ungrateful to step back from the fray for a while."

Social savvy

It has, however, been a great educator, and overall, Farley suggests Tag might get a little more hands on in all areas of its business in 2011 – including cutting down on time spent sourcing investors, as well as the implementation of social elements in its titles.

"We knew that we would need internet technology skills and that social connected gaming was the future way back when we started Tag but it just became too easy to use Open Feint, Scoreloop and the other third party providers," he adds.

"Whilst this short term solution was great in that we could add social functionality to our games for free it meant that we ended up delaying the inevitable transition from a company that understands how to make single player/non-connected games to one that has the social graph running through everything it does."

The price is right

Farley also claims the studio learned a lot about app pricing in 2010. Having initially priced Astro Ranch at £2.99, Tag soon started selling the game without charge – the result of learning the hard way that "the arrogant 'console quality' ethos" doesn't work on the App Store.

However, the very act of doing so was, in Farley's words, a "customer service nightmare".

"I believe we now have the understanding and the confidence to use the free to play model on future releases," he adds.

"The learning on Astro Ranch was particularly hard, but it was incredibly useful."

[source: Tag Games]


With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font.