This is an interview with Keith Pichelman of Concrete Software , a US based Java games developer who were established in 2003..
Hello Keith, stock question, can you tell us a little about your company, history, how many work for you etc?
Concrete Software has been established now for one year. Concrete Software builds innovative mobile software from games to personal productivity applications for mobile devices ranging from mobile phones to Palm handhelds. The company has quickly grown over the year, starting with its first big application - Driving Log. Driving Log won Nokia's Best Personal Productivity Application for 2003. To follow up to the success of that application, Concrete Software had an even bigger hit to follow with Aces Texas Hold'em. Concrete Software currently sells 7 software titles on over 100 devices all over the world. The company is 11 people strong and is located in Minneapolis, MN USA.
What is the future for mobile gaming. For example as handsets get more involved do you think that games like "Doom" will work on handheld devices?
There will always be the simple, fun games. Look at Bejeweled, a simple game that continues to sell well. People will always want the simple time fillers. Though the simple games will still evolve with much better graphics, while new-sophisticated games will become big. Even though new handsets will bring along great 3D games like Doom, phones will really excel where they have an advantage over unconnected devices in multiplayer games. Games where you can meet and play your friends or other people, trivia games where you can play against many people, and more.
Tell us about your ideal mobile phone game, what would it do and what functionality would it have? Go wild, you can limit it by your imagination
A multiplayer, 3D game, where you can play on a team of other mobile phone users.
Do you have any big games in the offing that you can tell us about without having to kill us?
Nope, can't let any of the new applications out of the hat! I can say we are reworking a lot of our older applications to use newer APIs (MIDP 2.0, BlackBerry API, etc).
When you develop a game, do you have difficulties with different handsets? How many do you test it on before release?
We have probably around 40-50 devices that we test on. We usually release our product after being compatible with about ¼ of them and release the other platforms after that. We really don't have many difficulties porting to different platforms since we have the process documented very well. We have a build process that makes moving to new platforms easy, while knowing what issues to look for on each platform.
If I wanted to make a phone game or get into the phone game business, where would you suggest I start?
It depends on what you are going to write it in, if you plan on writing a Java application start at Javasoft, www.javasoft.com, they have all the information you need to build a J2ME application.
I have a fascination with hidden features withing games, do you have any in your games. If so care to hint at a couple?
We've talked about it, but have not added any hidden features yet! Unless
someone here has and hasn't let me know!
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Thanks for answering our questions and telling us a little more about Concrete Software. If you would like to find out more about Concrete Software you can visit their website.