AppTalk: Interview with Matthias Höchsmann - Developer of ZombieSmash - Plus Win One of Ten Copies
by Staff Writer
May 4, 2010
My brother and I have always been gamers, from a very early age. And I guess we never grew out of our childhood dreams to one day make games ourselves!
The iPhone leveled the playing field for game developers. It allowed small-time indie studios to compete – and beat! – the established publishers. We saw this happening in the early days of the App Store, and realized that it was our best chance to get into the business of making games.
Did you think Zombie Smash would receive such a good reception as it’s the #1 overall paid app, and most reviews loved it?
By the time we launched, we had invested so much energy refining and polishing ZombieSmash!, getting feedback from our awesome beta testers – we were pretty sure it would be critically well-received. And since we had a decent amount of buzz before we launched, we knew we stood a pretty good chance of getting commercial success as well.
But that’s not to say getting the #1 paid app position in countries around the world blew our minds! It certainly did.
We took a very measured approach with ZombieSmash! Many iPhone developers recommend against putting too much stock in one product, because the App Store market is so volatile and hard to predict. We chose instead to invest a lot of energy and resources into creating a great, extremely polished game that we knew would stand a good chance against established titles that have had months of updates and refinement.
What do you think of the App Store economy, especially while sitting as the number one game?
When we were sitting at number one, you could say I was pretty happy with it! Realistically, it’s an interesting market. It’s extremely competitive, and beyond a great game there are other factors that are critical for calculated success. This includes advertisement, a well thought out PR campaign, cross promotion, and other creative approaches.
Not only does this create user attention but it can also result in Apple’s attention. For us, this resulted in an iTunes banner, which was of course extremely helpful (and unexpected) but shows how much Apple pays attention to their development community.
And of course there’s a lot of price pressure, especially for companies that haven’t had a chance to establish themselves yet. But looking at the success enjoyed by sequels and new games from established developers and publishers – even at higher prices – I think it’s great overall. The App Store is still young, and I guarantee we’ll see a lot of changes in the near future.
ZombieSmash has already been updated twice, but do you have plans for more, and are there any specific details you can provide?
We will continue releasing free updates for the foreseeable future, and we plan on introducing in-app purchases with all-new campaigns, new zombies, weapons, and more soon. Details on that are just around the corner, so stay tuned!
Will ZombieSmash be coming to the iPad?
The iPad’s an interesting question – I’m not sure if the market is really there yet, in terms of install base. It’s quite likely ZombieSmash! will be making its way there at some point, but we want to bring the same level of polish and quality to any platform we launch a product on. And quality, I think, means taking great advantage of the improved screen real estate and other unique advantages of the iPad.
***To win one of ten promo codes for Zombie Smash simply leave a comment below or retweet this post. Winners will be chosen at the end of the day today 11:59 PM PST. US itunes only, must have a valid e-mail address and/or follow us on twitter to send you the code. Good Luck.
