This is an interview with Jacob Hawley of TKO Software, a company who were founded by "veterens" of the gaming industy and develop games for a range of devices..
Thanks for taking the time to talk with us Jacob. Can you tell us a bit about TKO software? What is the company background?
TKO Software was founded by myself and Mike Songy in 2002. Mike and I have a long history of working together and both of us have been actively involved in the games industry over the years. It was inevitable that one day would set up our own studio. TKO started out in the basement of my Santa Cruz home with $22,000 in working capital. Less than two years later we have 150 people working across four studios in Santa Cruz, Austin, Dallas and Dublin, Ireland.
Mike and I believed three things:
From the outset we wanted TKO to stand out. For any developer its important to hire good talent and we've been fortunate in our ability to attract veterans from every field which is why companies such as Electronic Arts had confidence in our ability to deliver on franchises such as Medal of Honor at such an early stage in our history.
But we also wanted to be around for the long term and that's not easy in such a fiercely competitive industry. We looked at the mistakes other small, more creatively-led developers made in starting out and focused on ensuring we built our organisation on tried and tested management processes.
We also want to be seen over time as an innovator which is why we have invested heavily in emerging games markets such as wireless and handheld gaming, as well as taking the decision to develop our own underlying gaming technologies and IP from scratch.
Can you talk us through the typical stages involved in producing a mobile phone game?
The stages involved in developing a wireless game don't necessarily differ that much from those associated with PC and console development, but the work is compressed into a much shorter cycle - typically 3 months. Branded wireless titles are still outselling non-branded content by a significant margin so our ability to identify and secure licenses for marketable properties is very important.
One of the biggest challenges in developing games for wireless platforms is appreciating the techniques essential for writing compelling games on low memory embedded systems. This has implications for every stage of the development cycle from the reuse of early design art to the number of objects used in an engineers J2ME code.
Of course, another issue that's unique to wireless gaming development is the number of ports our development team has to make of each title to deliver it to each carrier's portfolio of handsets. With games as small as 64K targeting such low memory phones you can often be looking at a significant rewrite to achieve a quality port. With as many as 50 different phones to target in Europe alone, you're looking at a significant piece of work.
What do you see as the biggest turning point in recent mobile phone history
For wireless gaming the arrival of colour screens has been a big market driver. As screen resolution improves, system memory increases and embedded processors get faster, the opportunities for enhancing the gaming experience and growing the market rise significantly. Handset manufactures recognise wireless gaming as a significant market and the form factor of many new handsets are being adapted for easier game play. Network operators have also made a significant step forward in attracting wireless gamers through the availability of new content services.
Do you design games for a particular handset or are things fairly compatible?
Whether we develop in Brew or J2ME depends on where we see the market for the game. We will typically develop for a mass market handset that has the capability to handle quality games such as a Nokia series 40 or 60. The work required to port the game to other devices depends on the device. Some devices will need little work whereas others require significant work. This is because of many issues such as variations in device memory and screen size. Our priority is to create good game experiences, the technical challenges we face for each game arise from our ambition to constantly improve the user experience.
Do you get together with other developer companies, is the industry close in its ties?
Yes, the industry is small and at an early stage in its growth and development and so we are close to many other developers and partners in this space. There's a great spirit of co-opetition as we all share a common desire to see the market succeed.
If you were to build your dream mobile phone game what would it do?
It would be an extension of a PC or console game and it would allow me to invite anyone else, anywhere to join and play with me, or against me, from any device.
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Thanks for answering our questions and telling us a little more about TKO Software. If you would like to find out more about TKO Software you can visit their website.