Austin game developers finds success with iPhone apps

Austin game developer Brian Greenstone has been riding a wave of sudden celebrity.

In the past few months, Greenstone has been interviewed by CNN, The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine's online edition. It's all thanks to several Mac computer games he developed years ago that he tweaked in the spring so they could be played on the iPhone. He also developed two other games for Apple Inc.'s multiuse phone.
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Only five months after uploading the games on to Apple's App Store, sales of his games have reached $4 million, of which Greenstone gets 70 percent through his company Pangea Software. Some Pangea titles include "Enigmo," "Antimatter," "Bugdom 2," "Nanosaur 2" and "Billy Frontier."

"In my 26 years in the game business, I've never seen anything like this before," Greenstone said.

One of his other games, "Cro-Mag Rally," described as a "caveman racing game," became the most popular game on iTunes and was featured in a national commercial for the phone.

Greenstone has become a role model for programmers hoping to get rich quickly by making games for the iPhone. Apple has surpassed its goal of selling 10 million units in 2008.

"It's a gold rush," Greenstone said. "They discovered gold in the hills, and everybody's running out there."

Some Pangea games sell for as little as $1.99 on iTunes, and others sell for $7.99.

But price has become an issue for other developers. Initially, many games were sold for $9.99, allowing even developers whose games weren't blockbuster hits to make money. But the prices have dropped in recent weeks and now linger around $1, making it more difficult for small startup developers to turn a profit.

"It's a big issue right now," said Francine Walker, the head of Austin-based Survivor Soft, which develops games for the iPhone and Google's Android operating system, which is used in the T-Mobile G1 phone.

Because Walker develops her games from scratch, not converting existing games as Greenstone has done, her costs are higher.

"It is extremely hard because if you really develop it from zero, then you have the cost," she said, estimating that it can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000 to develop an iPhone game.

But Greenstone said that any application that makes it to the App Store's Top 50 list is making a lot of money.

There are more than 10,000 applications available for purchase on the iPhone, many of which are games. Apple, in contrast to other game platforms, doesn't have stringent requirements for developers.

Apple's approach means amateur and experienced game developers have been creating applications for the iPhone, ranging from simple puzzle games to applications that can track an airline flight or the weather.

In Austin, many small game companies have started focusing on developing games for the iPhone. Texas employs more than 3,000 people in the game industry, according to Game Developer Research, and there are about 70 game companies in the Austin area.

But the eagerness to cash in on the popularity of the iPhone comes with mixed success.

Glenda Adams, a director of development at Austin-based Aspyr Media, in October created "Lemonade Stand" for the iPhone, which mimics a popular Apple II game from the late 1970s.

The premise is simple: Players own a lemonade stand and try to sell as many drinks as possible, considering such variables as price and weather conditions.

It took Adams a month to make the game, working on nights and weekends through her one-woman operation, Maverick Software.

"It was very much a nostalgic game," Adams said. "It's very simple with basic graphics."

After putting it on the App Store at the end of October, Adams promptly sold 30,000 copies of the game for 99 cents each.

"It surprised me," Adams said. "I had three or four games before that, arcade games and simple things, and they would go out and might sell a few hundred thousand copies."

But she says "Lemonade Stand" is a one-hit wonder, not a new career.

"It's a nice hobby," Adams said.

Developers say the idea that someone can spend a weekend working on a game and then make millions is no longer true.

Although Apple opened its App Store in July, it's quickly been inundated with new applications.

"The market is just in fluctuation and undefined and saturated," said John Talley, president of game development firm Mock Science. "The bar is low for developers, so anybody can get in."

The quality of the games suffers as a result, and it becomes difficult to grab the attention of iPhone users.

"Marketing becomes hugely important because you've got to somehow get the word out," Talley said.

Walker is working on an application that would track hurricanes based on predictable math models, and she said she hopes to have it ready in time for next year's season.

"It's better to create a smaller app that you can put into the market and people can enjoy," Walker said, contrasting it with the work she had done previously for game publishers developing big-budget, complex games.

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BY Lilly Rockwell, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF - lrockwell@statesman.com; 445-3819
Source：statesman.com