Last Thursday (25th November) I was very kindly invited to talk at the videogame industry conference Develop in Liverpool. Chaired by Will Freeman of Develop and billed as ‘The Rise of the Micro Studio”, I answered questions alongside Robin Lacey of Beatnik Games and Deejay of Binary Tweed on what it takes to make a success of a small team. The talk was well attended, with Phillip Oliver of Blitz and Michael Rawlinson of the trade body UKIE (formerly ELSPA) being spotted in the audience.

From left: Will from Develop, me, Dejay from Binary Tweed and Robin from Beatnik Games

There was a great deal of discussion on how to set up and run a successful micro studio (we like the term ’boutique studio’), with particular focus on balancing own IP projects with ‘work for hire’ or ‘contract’ work. The panel’s opinions ranged from the guys at Beatnik Game who only do original PC or console games, to Binary Tweed’s Deejay who took on web design to fund his excellent Clover: A Curios Tale. Here at Mobile Pie we take a mixed approach, with both our own projects, such as Oh, My Word!, B-Boy Beats, bada pool and My Star, and mobile games and entertain work for our varied clients.

Will raised what this approach means to the creative freedom of boutiques like us. It’s a great question and lead me to think back on our approach, where we have actively sought partnerships and worked with clients. There’s a very real risk on easily becoming isolated on a project and building something only the development team, having been on the journey of the production, wants. Working in partnership with other parties helps to ensure our goals and vision looks right to external eyes, so has become something we actively encourage. In fact, getting and interpreting feedback during development cycles has been one of our keys to success and something which is of really important to young, small creative endeavors.

We also talked on why being small means being more efficient and flexible, why small often means better in terms of quality and if micros like us could become the stalwarts of the industry as the big studios hit rough times. It was a very enjoyable 45 minutes with some great questions, debate and polite disagreement and I think we could have all talked on for another 45 minutes (we ran over by about 5 anyway).

Thank you to all who attended, listened, asked questions and gave such kind words after the event. I hope you got out of it as much as I did!

Myself and Matt had a little day trip to the Innovation Centre in Bath on Thursday to attend another of the enjoyable OpenMic events. We found the previous event in Guildford to be interesting and useful so wanted to get in on the action again! Read on to hear our reflections on the many discussions… (yes, this includes iPad).

First up we listened to an entertaining talk from old-hand tech journalist Giles Turnbull, on the evolution of news reporting in the context of mobile and the generally slow response of news editors to embrace the technology. He seemed to think that the iPhone had finally clicked on the light bulb for the people of influence in news, just by looking and feeling so good! Maybe true, let’s hope the new generation of editors etc. are a bit quicker to adopt new technologies… (AR news anyone?)

Next up Richard Spence gave us a quick run down of mobile development away from the iPhone, which was a handy reminder that the other platforms have remained viable. He pointed out that the success of Apple’s App Store has improved the world’s understanding and general consciousness of mobile apps (beyond only iPhone users), making it more likely to get your Java or Symbian app actually noticed and installed by the public. As developers who haven’t forgotten the skills we cut our teeth with, we completely agree, and if you want your app reach a large audience then you have to face up to this fact! You’re never gonna hit everyone but you can have a jolly good go…

After that, Bruce Lawson from Opera gave us a run down on Opera Widgets. Now, Mobile Pie have had plenty of experience recently with widgets, having developed over 50 of them so far, but we are always on the look out for tips from the experts.

The final session before lunch was a panel discussion, in which experienced designers / developers gave their views on iPad, which were a little mixed (we’re still going to get one!). The inevitable question mark over multitasking was raised. Personally I feel that this will not be so much of a problem for a lot of the potential audience (i.e. non-geeks). As web browsing and web-based email will be two of the most common activities for them, a web browser will maybe be all they need 90% of the time. Also, if web apps are due to make their presence felt over native apps in the way the rumour-mongers would have you believe, then that supports the point even further. However, maybe the Safari multi-tabbing capabilities might have to be made a little quicker/accessible than the iPhone version.

After a great noodle-break at Hong Kong Bistro, the format changed to bar camps, the purpose of which is for delegates to discuss among themselves the burning issues of the day (surrounding mobile development!). The themes are suggested by the delegates themselves; here Matt and I split up to get the most knowledge into the Pie databank as possible.

I attended ‘How to make money from apps’ – which threatened to be a lot of disheartened developers sitting around complaining – but turned out to be an interesting discussion on different revenue models and schemes, i.e. free/premium/freemium/ad-funded. We also came up with an interesting idea of borrowing the concept of certified standards for application stores. For example, if your app doesn’t drain the battery in 10 minutes, or can be used offline, it would be nice to have certain industry wide stamps on your app to demonstrate this. This helps the professional developers who put time into the design and user experience of their products get some recognition above the rest of the rabble!

Matt however, hadn’t quite had his widget fill for the day yet, and took in Opera’s Patrick Lauke discussing HTML5, widgets and Opera’s latest browser. He seemed pretty impressed with some of the demonstrations – how graphics can be composited onto video directly in HTML 5 and the content of vector graphics can be dynamically changed with media queries. The best thing on show though, was the brilliant demo video of Bruce’s turkish dancing. To get a feel for HTML5 they have some cool articles on their Opera developers pages, especially their Introduction to video in HTML5.

A good day and we look forward to the next OpenMic!