1ft Startup

I wanted to preface this entry with where we left off last year: Hope is not lost for the weekend-warrior mobile game developer! Here are some upsides to try to make you feel better after losing all will to carry on in our last episode:

Mobile games are lo-fidelity. The point here is that it doesn’t take a multimillion-dollar studio to make a game that can compete on a level playing field with everyone else in mobile (yet!).

Distribution isn’t as hard as it looks. Installation is automatic for J2ME apps, so no need to hassle with installers, and there are plenty of sites dedicated to getting a very international distribution for your games. (What kind of volume this actually provides, well, I’m figuring that out now. More on it later)

These are still pretty early days in mobile. The small guys haven’t quite been pushed off the playing field. Most mobile game still really suck (even from the big shops), so if you can do something that’s not a painful, crashing eyesore, you’ve got a decent shot.

Mitosis Launched!

So, since the dawn of time (about 7-8 months ago), Theoretic Labs has been about consulting and helping our friends out with their startups. On the “side” however, we have been working on a LOT of other projects. A few of them will come to fruition in the next few weeks, a few more will come in the months following.

I’m really very excited to announce the first of these, which is a simple game called Mitosis. The basic premise of the game is actually hard to articulate concisely in text, but really easy once you play it for a few seconds. You play the colored cell on the bottom of the screen, and shoot down the incoming cells from the top. You can only destroy the ones that match your color, and if you shoot one that does not match, you’ll swap colors with that cell. Think Zoop (which apparently nobody remembers but me), but simplified angles of play and a little more disgusting.

Why Can’t Anyone Play Mobile Games Online?

I was surprised to find that nearly nobody has a “try this game online for free” type feature for their cell phone games. It seems that this is because it’s really hard to find a decent MIDP 2.0 emulator that runs as an applet in the browser. The closest the real world has got is a handful of commercial products, and a broken open-source one called ME4SE. Well, it turns out that ME4SE isn’t too hard to fix, so I did it for the release of this game. Try it here! I’ll find a way to reapply these fixes back to the OS community after I clean it up a bit.

As a total aside: I know that Java has really lost this web-application technology fight to Ajax and Flash by squandering their early lead with the most spectacular array of installation and execution bugs seen since, well, forever. But please, Java, don’t go away on the web, I need you for an emulator! You can still fix the mess you’ve made.

Mobile Distribution

Our first distribution partners are the low-hanging fruit for indies, Greystripe’s super-clever AdWrap service and ClickGamer, for the more traditional purchased format. We have some people working on our behalf to get our products under the noses of the carriers as well, so with any luck that will pan out in short-ish order.

It’s probably too early to comment on how it’s been working out with these partners so I’ll hold my tongue, but rest assured that will come soon!