H5 games (HTML5) as we fondly call them has steadily grown on us ever since 2016 where we began to building byte sized games for the Jio Phone (feature phone). That platform meant that we had to reimagine and go old school as we were too used to building games in more modern tool sets like Unity or Unreal where we could splurge even for Mobile standards.
Carrom Play was one of those casual silent hits for us especially on the MX Player platform and ever since the recent pandemic we wanted to scale the game and make it feature rich. Its a game where we have been relentlessly working on adding continuous updates. The idea was to keep the game super light which meant we built it from the ground up as a HTML5 game and not look at the typical Unity engine that most other studios would pick.
We always wanted to build a multiplayer shooter. The moment any studio thinks of a shooter, only fancy modern shooter pop into mind, we are so influenced by shooters like Counter Strike, Call of Duty, Battle Field, Team Fortress 2, Overwatch to name a few. With the mobile landscape its always a challenge to build such degrees of games especially for smaller studios like us. The idea of building a top down shooter has always lingered in our minds
Well, like many other companies and studios in India and worldwide, we too had transitioned to a complete remote working setup and have been managing to build a lot more cooler games during the lock-down period. While most of us at the studio aren't a big fan of the work from home format, the challenging times meant we had to cope up and adapt and we are after all good at that. The biggest challenge with this format is coordination and correspondence. What would typically be a few minutes of conversation in person could end up taking multiple hours to make sure the message is sent across.
In recent times, we are growing more confident about HTML5 games (nick named H5 games), a medium that has been growing despite the popularity of large games. The issue with large games is , well, they are super large and that can be a huge factor with users who just want to have some fun time for a few mins. Instant games are a great fit here as they can provide that snackable (not really a word) experience. We have been designing several concepts around H5 games part of our IP strategy.
Quite often when we deal with potential business proposals to build games or license our IP, we hear the statement “You guys are expensive”, “The cost is too high”, “It doesn’t fit into our budget”. We cant really complain there since as a customer they have the right to determine what they should or can pay. The idea behind this post is to throw some light on some of the misinterpretation or difference in understanding with the costs of building games.
