In what I hope will the first of a series of interviews with game developers, I’ve sent a few questions to Magnus Alm, CEO of Muskedunder Interactive and good friend of mine. Muskedunder is a rapidly expanding Swedish development studio of advergames, but you may be more familiar with their indie game Ninja Loves Pirate which has won the Four Elements contest on Gamedev.net. Last week they announced their acquisition of Free Lunch Design, giving Muskedunder a good library of browser-based casual games.
Most of the games Muskedunder has worked on can be played in a browser. What do you think is the future of browser-based games? What will they be like 5 years from now?
I think the future of a major part of ALL games is browser based actually. The trend is that they’ll be free to play, very social centric and loaded with ways for the users to generate their own content, such as levels, replays and movieclips/machinima etc. In five year I think we will start to see really good looking 3D-games in the browser, the things worked on by Garage Game’s InstantAction.com looks very promising, and that is being released this year!
How much freedom do you have when making advertisement games? Do the advertisers know what they want precisely or are you free to create what you want, as long it fits their brand?
It depends. After working some time with many advertisement agencies, they’ve started to bring us in at an earlier stage of the campaign planning. I think it is a matter of trust. New clients still tend to want to decide a lot about the game first and then hire us to make it good for them, rather than asking us to make a good game for them in the first place.
What’s the biggest challenge when working on advertisement games and how do you handle it?
I would say that the biggest challenge is often time. Or rather the lack of it. The development time frame is often narrow and therefore we need to work with our own framework of reusable code and a very strict development structure. Therefore our most important resource is our organization.
A lot of people ask me questions about what to do with game ideas they have. Since you’ve had success as an indie developer, do you have any advice about what it takes to succeed as an indie? What would you recommend to a team just starting?
Make sure to finish what you start. It may be only a demo, but make sure it is something you can show off. There are a lot of wanna be developers with unfinished stuff in their drawer, the ones who actually see that their projects go all the way, even if they aren’t financed, will be the developers of tomorrow. I would choose “productive and reliable” over “talented and enthusiastic” any day when hiring new staff. You don’t need to be best when your getting started, you need to get the job done.
A lot of PC games in Asia are based on subscriptions or micro-payments. Do you think this model has a future in the west? What are your thoughts on this business model?
I’m 100% sure it will come strong in our markets, and sooner than many people think. Even the CEO of EA recently admitted that anyone thinking that they can keep charging $60 for a game will find themselves overrun by the massive free-to-play wave that’s coming. The wind of change is blowing, and for good and bad, the future of games can be summarized with one word: Free. The ones who can monetize on that opportunity will be the winners of that era.
Thanks a lot Magnus!