Will Luton, Creative Producer at Mobile Pie
B-Boy Beats is being published by TAG Games, how did that partnership come about?
The plan was to do the game quickly and self publish, but two things started happening: Firstly we started hearing more and more about people not being able get noticed on the App Store and how important marketing had become and that was driven home when we launched the first Oh, My Word!. By the time we'd got the second out we had better understanding, although were still making mistakes - we launched at full price on Black Friday and didn't sort our advertising out early enough leading to poor traction on the App Store charts. Also we'd didn't really have the contacts and experience with the press. So, we knew it was becoming a really tough market and probably wanted help to make a big splash.
Secondly came the issue of music licensing. Most indie games don't have licensed music in, even from unknown artists, and there's a reason for that - it's a legal and logistical nightmare. A few years ago I'd gotten in to a sub-genre of hip hop called Nerdcore, which is weird as I'm really an indie rock fan and had no interest in hip hop, and really, really loved it, especially the music of MC Frontalot. So, once this game came along I knew I wanted this geeky awkward-white-boy rap in it - I contacted a few people and made some enquires and it just seemed too large to handle, so we decided we had to get someone else on board.
We took the prototype to a lot of publishers and had a mix of reactions - it was an early version and was far from refined and so I think a lot of people had problems seeing passed the initial lumps and bumps in the gameplay. Also, I think a lot of publishers in the iPhone space don't have experience of music licensing, so they were sort of scared by the amount of music we needed. We wanted someone who was totally behind the project, not someone who was going to simply stick their name on it, dump it on the App Store and take their cut.
As we were still in talks with some people Tag Games announced they would be publishing third-party titles, so I gave them a call and spoke with Paul Farley the MD. He seemed pretty interested so we got a build over to him to play - he loved it and totally understood what the game was about. Plus, they'd had experience of music licensing with Car Jack Streets, so we cut loose the other people we were talking to and within a week were thrashing out a contract with Tag Games and were to become their first third-party published developer.
It's been really good working with them - they've helped shape the game. It's great working in a two man team, as has been the case for most of the development cycle for BB, but it does leave you in a little bit of critical vacuum, so having Paul, who worked on the design of the original GTA, and his team, who are also vastly experienced, has been brilliant in making the game even more fun and funky. Plus, they got some really amazing tracks - in fact so many tracks that not all of them made it in to the game. Not only did they get music from MC Frontalot, but they also got the man himself in the game! He's one of the later characters you battle against in the game.
So, for those of us not clued up on the world of break-dancing, explain to us what the Freeze and Caterpillar moves look like.
A freeze is a break dance move where you go in to a position, normally on your hands with your feet in the air, and balance there for a few beats before going in to your next move. The caterpillar is an absolutely classic move which I'm sure you've seen a drunk uncle do at a wedding disco to show he's "still got it"! The person drops forward and their body arches backwards and they land and sort of flip backwards, in a motion like a caterpillar crawls. Both of those moves you can recreate with your hands in the game with little chance of a broken neck and a blooded nose.
Ever tried break dancing yourself?
I was in a break dancing and graffiti crew way back when I was in school. It got disbanded after some people got arrested for spray painting a bomb (an arrangement of letters or a character) in an underpass - mums got involved, wrists were slapped and there were some apologies and tears before bed time. I was one of the best breakers in the crew, but was still totally crap - we were all terrible and used to go to a break dancing class. It wasn't at all cool - we were these geeky little kids who should have been spending more time studying for our Maths GCSEs rather than trying to spin about on our heads on some lino.
But we were in the Bristol graffiti scene at the same time as Banksy broke here and it's what got me interested in art and sent me down the path which led me in to the games industry and to ultimately making this game.
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1 comment
Online Meds / 5th Jun 2010
Pretty insightful post. Never thought that it was this simple after all. I had spent a good deal of my time looking for someone to explain this subject clearly and you’re the only one that ever did that. Kudos to you! Keep it up