As a followup to yesterday's inteview with ngmoco CEO Neil Young, this morning we spoke with Freeverse President Ian Lynch Smith to hear what the recent purchase of Freeverse by ngmoco means to them. The full audio is attached below, but here is a summary of the talk.

Originally founded in 1994, Freeverse's earliest titles were Mac shareware games. They later branched out in to games for Windows, XBOX Live Arcade, and most recently the iPhone. Freeverse's MotoChaser was one of the few 3D games that launched with the App Store. Also immediately available were Big Bang Sudoku and Jared. They then went on to release a catalog of great iPhone games, both developed in house and and by outside developers published by Freeverse.

Photo by Crain's New York Business

Since the surprise announcement yesterday of ngmoco's purchase of Freeverse, what we've all been wondering is what is going to change. Ngmoco has recently shifted gears to an entirely free to play business model, while Freeverse has been happily releasing massively successful 99¢ games like Skee-Ball and Flick Fishing while working on highly anticipated games such as Warpgate.

The short answer of what is going to change initially is almost nothing, with very little changing in the future aside from the shift in payment models. According to Ian Lynch Smith, they wouldn't have done the deal if it wasn't for the shared vision between both companies, as each of them focus on the iPhone and iPhone OS. This doesn't mean they're abandoning the Mac games, applications, and everything else they do either. Freeverse will remain its own company in Brooklyn, just as a wholly owned subsidiary of ngmoco.

In addition, Freeverse will continue to publish the works of other iPhone developers, with the same level of quality and care we've seen in the past. As Smith put it, "[Ngmoco] did not buy Freeverse to make radical changes. They bought us because of our success, and they bought us because of what we've been doing right."

From Freeverse's perspective, the main motivation behind agreeing to this deal is the immense potential for growth. Through the years they've done everything they could to reach a larger audience, originally starting with shareware, then making the jump to retail shelves, then bringing their games to both the PC and XBOX, and finally jumping on the iPhone.

In regards to ngmoco's recent push to "freemium" games, Smith said, "We wouldn't have done this if we didn't think there wasn't more growth and more possibilities to reach more people in the free to play model." He cites people (now teenagers) who have grown up playing high quality free flash games as well as the massive successes seen in Asian markets as proof that the free to play model works.

Ian seems open to all forms of free to play games currently, including a one-time purchase to unlock all the features and functionality of a game– Something often requested by forum members regarding ngmoco's TouchPets and Eliminate. Freeverse has no intention of "nickel and diming" gamers, and plans on just being smart about how these things are implemented.

While he was reluctant to comment on future game development, when asked if they were still going to provide substantial gameplay experiences for gamers to enjoy instead of Farmville-like games, Smith simply responded "Yes" and mentioned a "substantial game" being discussed behind the scenes.

Freeverse admits they have much to learn about the free to play world, but with the combined expertise of ngmoco, they hope to release compelling games that can be played at no cost to the player, while providing optional in-game purchases for players who spend hours a day playing. They're hoping this will result in games that see the same exponential growth that the iPhone in general has enjoyed, instead of the current linear growth patterns Freeverse sees now.

Prior to this recent acquisition by ngmoco, Freeverse has never had investors and has been profitable on their own for the last 15 years. According to Smith, the main motivation for agreeing to the purchase was to "swing for the fences" and feels we're at a major moment in time, an inflection point, where we're going to see an explosion of mobile gaming.

"At the end of the day, we are just trying to sell our games in a way that lets us grow and continue making more games," Smith explained.

We recommend listening to the entire interview yourself, which is included here.

Podcast music provided by Overclocked Remix.

Interview Audio: Subscribe in iTunes or Direct Download (M4A, 12.9MB)

Ngmoco's CEO Neil Young took some time to speak with TouchArcade about their just-announced acquisition of Freeverse. The response to the acquisition in our comments and forums has been very lively both about the overall move as well as the adoption of the freemium model.

In the interview, we addressed their choice of Freeverse as a target, as well as their move into freemium content. The full audio recording is included in our podcast format, while a summary is transcribed here.

Addressing why they choose Freeverse, Young was very complimentary about the company and described them as "wonderful people" who shared their vision and values while also having a pool of talented people and intellectual properties that complemented Ngmoco. Freeverse will remain functionally independent and retain the Freeverse brand. According to Young, to the outside world, things won't look very different initially.

One hot topic amongst our readers is Ngmoco's recent move towards a freemium model — where games are free to download and revenue is generated through in-app purchases. The reason for this move was a combination of factors according to Young. Despite the running speculation, the move was not in response to the high piracy rates on the iPhone.

Instead, there were two main factors. First, they felt that there was a large pool of App Store customers who only participated in the free-download side of the store that were not being captured in the traditional model. Young cited download numbers 10-20x higher for the top free apps compared to the paid apps. And, second, in looking into the future of the App Store, they saw a general trend away from higher priced premium games, and towards these type of games that can be played over time.

Interestingly, Young admits that the first incarnations of their freemium models for Eliminate Pro and Touch Pets Dogs were somewhat "clumsy" and "1.0" versions of the model (and to be followed by 2.0, 3.0 etc…). Part of this is attributed to the fact that neither game was originally conceived to be freemium. Young said, however, they have continued to learn and made ongoing adjustments to the model for their upcoming games including God Finger and We Rule, and beyond.

Finally, Young confirms that Freeverse's existing games including the upcoming Warp Gate won't be affected by the acquisition, but that future games will be designed around the freemium model.

We recommend listening to the entire interview yourself, which is included here.

Podcast music provided by Overclocked Remix.

Interview Audio: Subscribe in iTunes or Direct Download (M4A, 14.7MB)

Venan Entertainment is the creator of the recently released Space Miner: Space Ore Bust, which we absolutely loved in our review. Space Miner is the first game from Venan, but we liked it so much that we decided to feature them in this week's developer profile.

Brandon Curiel, the CEO of Venan, was kind enough to agree to be interviewed by us, and I got the chance to find out a little bit more about him, his company, and his games.

Touch Arcade: Could you give us a brief history of the company? How did you start off?

Brandon Curiel: Venan started in the summer of 2002 in my spare bedroom. We had just left a dot com bust, and having worked in games prior to that, the five of us we decided we wanted to get back into that market. Our initial target was the Xbox, and we spent a year working on a game demo and shopping it around, but didn’t have much luck. So with our savings getting low, we decided to switch gears and aim for something more modest – mobile development. Our first game, Super Putt Classic, got sold into Sprint by Mforma (now Hands On Mobile) and from there they started offering us contracts to do new games. One game led to another, and to another, and eventually we built up our business being a third party mobile developer.

We got started on the iPhone pretty early with a contract from EA to bring Monopoly over, which we had done on mobile and the regular iPod. It was like a breath of fresh air after having to deal with the fragmented Java/Native landscape for so long. Since then we’ve done four iPhone games, three for EA and one for Sega, but Space Miner is the first one we’ve developed as an internal title. We’re hoping to be able to dedicate more resources to internal titles going forward.

The Venan Entertainment crew

Touch Arcade: What was the inspiration for Space Miner?

Brandon Curiel: Space Miner is an interesting story, because there was no direct inspiration for it. Initially we were just trying to prototype a control scheme. The idea was to use the accelerometer to determine the device orientation such that when the user turned the device, we’d take the world and pivot it around the player. Seeing some of the success smaller developers were having, we thought we’d knock out a quick game with this nifty control scheme idea, so we brainstormed for some ideas that might work. Eventually we settled on a classic asteroids style game.

Since we’re not talking about the game I just described, something obviously didn’t work. To be blunt, the whole idea was a colossal mess. I can say that, since it was my idea! There were so many problems, like not having anywhere to put a UI, getting tangled up in headphone cords, and the undeniable fact that flipping the device around like that was just not fun and liable to get it dropped. So, having developed an asteroids “engine”, we had to rethink what exactly we were going to do with it.

Having to start over again I think made us take a deeper look at the App Store to figure out what exactly was out there and where we could be different. What we found was that there were a lot of “snack” type games, but not a whole lot of the type of deeper games like those you’d find on the DS or a PSP. So, we decided to be different. Instead of going in the same direction as everyone else on the App Store, we decided to do back to our roots and just blow out the whole asteroids concept into something we’d want to play. And that meant narrative, RPG elements, and all the things that you see in Space Miner now.

Space Miner, the first game from Venan

Touch Arcade: What's a game that you'd love to make in the future?

Brandon Curiel: Dark Blossom. It’s a name that means nothing to anyone (it shouldn’t at least), but it’s a classic fantasy RPG we’ve had kicking in the background in one form or another for at least five years. Prior to Space Miner, we had been working on it as an original DS title, but gave up because the market there is very tough if you aren’t Nintendo. I’ve personally always wanted to make an epic fantasy RPG, so hopefully we’ll get the chance someday to port it over to the iPhone and try reviving it once more.

Also, Space Miner II. First since that will mean the first Space Miner was successful. But really we always have had a plan for a sequel and have tons of ideas we couldn’t get in the first one.

The Venan Entertainment offices

Touch Arcade: Who wrote the dialog for Space Miner? Can you tell me a little bit about the decision to make the game humorous in nature?

Brandon Curiel: The story was primarily a collaborative effort between me and Alex Kain, an associate designer here. I dealt more with the story elements and the arc, and Alex handled the actual writing (and re-writing) but we both did some of the other as well. We also brought in an extremely funny writer we worked with on Ninjatown, Robbie Telfer, to help “funny it up.”

As for humorous, well, I think that was a natural fit. Once we hit on the mining angle, it took all of 1.5 seconds for Uncle Jeb to be created in our minds, and that character is just funny out of the box. We wanted this to be fun, light, and accessible. We were just so sick and tired of all the dark, gritty stories you see in these games that have just been done to death. So the tone was very conscious, from the UI, to the plot, to the dialog, to even doing the space station as a bobbing 2D billboard.

Here's a gameplay trailer for Space Miner:

Touch Arcade: What's an interesting fact about your company?

Brandon Curiel: There’s an ongoing agreement with the employees that if we sell 100,000 units of Space Miner, I’ll get them a pinball machine. We have a long way to go though…

App Store Link: Space Miner: Space Ore Bust, $4.99

Donut Games is the developer/publisher of well over a dozen iPhone games including fan-favorites like Rat On A Scooter XL, Comet Racer, and Cows in Space. Officially titled "Swedish Game Development Group AB," Donut Games has all of their games available in flash form on their website, where they can be played for free. With a arcade-like menu and three-star rating system for the levels in all their games, Donut Games has earned a large fanbase by consistently providing simple, quick experiences that draw players in for more, usually with a focus on increasing high scores.

I got the chance to find out a little bit more about one of the important faces behind the company, Daniel Zandelin, one of the founders of Donut Games.

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Last month, we previewed an upcoming iPhone game from True Axis called Jet Car Stunts.

Jet Car Stunts was described as "a fun, over the top, 3D driving game, with massive jumps, mid-air hoops, floating platforms, spiral roadways, outlandish maneuvers and impossible environments." Controls are accelerometer based along with mid-air flight controls to nudge the angle of flight or adjust speed with air braking.

We loved the look of the game video, but had some questions about the game's playability from that video alone. We've since had a chance to interview Luke Ryan and Andy Coates of True Axis about their upcoming racer. They also provided this exclusive hands-on video showing their game and controls in action:

TouchArcade: We understand Jet Car Stunts is based on the True Axis Physics SDK. Can you give us a little bit of history on this game engine and the company?

Luke Ryan: The True Axis Physics SDK was a bit of an accidental development. It started back in 2002 as part of a game demo I was developing. The physics engines back then were not good enough, and I already had a few years experience involving lots of physics programming, so I made a much better one. I started getting a few requests to make it commercial. In-between doing contract work for mobile and handheld games, I did all the extra work necessary to commercialise it, which was the reason for the formation of the company, True Axis.

Since then, the physics engine scene has changed unrecognisably. I'd always kept in touch with the mobile gaming scene here in Melbourne and I started to fall back into that. I met my co-owner at True Axis, Andy Coates, while I was helping out at Firemint. In 2008, I decided to take True Axis into independent game development which has always been my dream.

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It didn't take us long to fall in love with Tiger Style's first game, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor [App Store]. It has a beautiful simplicity to it: you are a spider, and as a spider you spin webs and eat bugs. You can choose to explore the various rooms of Bryce Manor, or you can ignore your surroundings and just go on an insect feeding frenzy.

28 hand drawn levels paired with great music and a clever method of storytelling puts Spider pretty high on my list of personal favorites, and judging by the forum response, I'm not alone. If you haven't heard of the game yet, check out our review and watch this trailer that was recently put together by the developers:

After playing through Spider, we wanted to know more about the people behind it and what went into a game that is currently sitting at 146 5-star ratings on iTunes. We tracked down Randy Smith and David Kalina, the two people behind Tiger Style to ask them a few questions about their past, the development of Spider, and what's in store for the future.

TouchArcade / Eli Hodapp: Can you tell us more about your backgrounds in video game development and how your development team was assembled?

Randy Smith: My first project in professional game development was as a designer on Thief: The Dark Project back in 1997.  This game was made at a legendary, now-defunct, design boutique called Looking Glass Studios, at which I was very lucky to kick off my career.  Since then, among other things, I have been the Project Director of Thief: Deadly Shadows, and a Creative Director at Electronic Arts Los Angeles working on a video game collaboration with Steven Spielberg.  I also have the good fortune to write a monthly column in the UK’s finest gaming magazine, Edge, and I am a frequent speaker at the Game Developer’s Conference, the Montreal International Game Summit, and similar conferences.

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On Monday TouchArcade.com interviewed id Software's John Carmack and Escalation Studio's Tom Mustaine about their new game Doom Resurrection [App Store] but we also delved into id's future plans for the iPhone, and they are many.

In fact, Carmack said that they were hoping to release a new id title to the iPhone every 2-3 months for the next year. These titles will include a mix of their classic PC games such as Doom and Quake as well as newer mobile games including Wolfenstein RPG.

The complete list of titles and add-ons mentioned in the interview are listed here:

• Doom Resurrection – Bluetooth Cooperative Multiplayer coming
• Wi-Fi Multiplayer is currently working in Doom Classic (not yet released)
• Doom Classic closing in on being ready for initial release
• Plans for 3.0 support in Doom Classic with Bluetooth Multiplayer and downloadable content including Doom 2, Ultimate Doom, Final Doom, Master Levels
• Considering competitive internet multiplayer in later update to Doom Classic
• Planning Quake, Quake 2 for the iPhone and maybe all the way up to Quake Arena
• Plans to do a Rage themed from-scratch iPhone title
• Wolfenstein RPG ready to go but being held by EA due to concern about confusion with Wolfenstein Classic
• Doom 2 RPG is in works for mobile and that will be ported to iPhone too
• Very early talks about a modernized Doom ("Doom++") release with new levels and story

We had a sneak peek at the cooperative multiplayer of Doom Resurrection at WWDC which allowed two Bluetooth connected players to play simultaneously — each player with their own reticule on the other's screen.

The currently unavailable Wolfenstein RPG title was accidentally released in Japan for a brief period of time, and one site was able to get video of it before it was pulled. Carmack hopes that the game will be released soon, but the decision seems to be with EA.

Overall, Carmack is very excited about the iPhone, and clearly it shows given id's aggressive plans to launch a massive number of titles over the next year for the platform. Carmack said that while they'd had fun with traditional mobile games, he's "had a lot more fun on the iPhone".

We've included the full transcript after the jump and is certainly worth a read if you have any interest in these upcoming games.

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Doom Resurrection was released today [App Store] and we had an opportunity to speak with id Software's John Carmack and Escalation Studios' Tom Mustaine about the brand new title today in a telephone interview. We have also had time to play through the final version of the game and will be posting our review momentarily.

Clearly, one of the most talked about aspect of the game is the control system that has been called an "on rails" experience. Carmack and Mustaine both object to that characterization, however, and feel that by removing the free-roam aspect, it becomes far more accessible and better experience overall.

One of the things I like to say is if you compare this to one of our traditional FPS games like Wolfenstein 3D Classic to a lesser extent and even more with Doom Classic… but those games can look really good when you've got somebody who knows what they're doing playing around with it, somebody who is comfortable with the controls. But, the first pick up response on it generally is not that great even from a FPS person because it's a control set people aren't familiar with.
….
And with Doom Resurrection because you do trade off some freedom, you don't have the ability to roam everywhere, but the game looks good all the time. …. And it does have that sort of skill based progression just like you would have with a traditional FPS game but it just has a generally more sort of positive feedback on there without the downside of making people feel like they have no idea what they're supposed to be doing.

The companies also spent a large amount of time experimenting with controls systems for the game, almost scrapping the game altogether about half way through. The original iteration of the game had a "tap to shoot" mechanic which was simply not-fun. It wasn't until they discovered the tilt to aim mechanic that they felt they had a compelling enough game. They are particularly proud of their implementation which has not been used in other iPhone games yet, and expect it will be imitated in the near future.

Yeah I do take some pride in that traditionally as like id invented the FPS genre on the other platforms, I think we will be a bit of a trailblazer in control methods etcetera on the iPhone as well. It's a platform that I care quite a bit about and we are making an effort across all the products to make sure that they do all come out well. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and I do expect this to be imitated.

In response to the question of App Store pricing, Carmack stressed that that was a very important part of the equation for the future of big-title games in the App Store. He believes that for the market to be able to sustain big AAA titles in the future, the App Store market is going to have to be able to support higher priced titles of at least $9.99.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

A full transcript of the interview is included after the jump. We have more information on Doom Classic, Wolfenstein RPG and id's future iPhone plans which we will report in a separate article.

App Store Link: Doom Resurrection, $9.99

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At WWDC we had the opportunity to sit down and speak with Owen Goss of Streaming Colour Studios. Owen is a 30 year old former console programmer who decided to take a chance at starting his own game company last year. Owen had previously worked at EA as an interface and gameplay programmer as well as Propoganda Games and was most recently involved in the development of the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean game for the Xbox and PS3.

iPhone gamers may know him from his color-matching game Dapple [$0.99], though he also gained some notoriety from a blog post he made back in March in which he detailed the (lack of) sales of his first iPhone title. The blog post received wide circulation after being posted to Slashdot.

After 6 months of development, his iPhone game had sold a disappointing 131 copies worldwide during the first 24 days on the market–very short of the numbers he would need to sustain a long term business. The reaction was massive and varied. Goss received both positive and strongly negative feedback about his results. He says, however, that his plan had always been to be open about his sales numbers good or bad. Back in 2008, when he decide to start his own gaming company, he did his research about the indie gaming scene and found a significant reporting bias. In that, success stories are much more likely to be told than the many failures.

Goss has reflected about the reasons for his lack of success in his blog, and also told us that he may have invested too much time into the 1.0 release. Coming from a console background, he had a strong desire for the 1.0 version to be feature complete and rock solid. He remains proud of the fact that he has not had a single crash report since the game's release. In today's iPhone market, however, such a thorough development cycle may not be realistic for small time developers. In the recent past, we've seen numerous examples of less ambitious 1.0 titles that have evolved over time after gaining some initial traction.

Goss isn't giving up, though. He remains optimistic about his future plans and is continuing to market and work on Dapple. His long term goal is to build his own brand around quality games and is working on additional titles. He's also helped organize AppTreasures.com, a cross promotional effort between multiple independent iPhone developers, to help boost sales of Dapple. Dapple has just seen a 1.2 version update that adds global high scores and a number of other user interface tweaks and fixes. Goss has even temporarily dropped the price of his game to $0.99 for the next week.

Owen Goss has been a regular in our forums with as OTrain13 and some early forum reactions to the game were posted in the original Dapple release thread from February. You can give the game a try yourself with the free Lite version.

App Store Link: Dapple, $0.99, Dapple Lite, Free

Digital Chocolate founder and CEO 'Trip' Hawkins recently appeared on CNBC in a CNBC Exclusive interview "Tech: It's All About Apps."

In the piece, Hawkins discusses the unique, social nature of mobile gaming today and echoes his earlier sentiments that the iPhone is a "breakthrough platform" that is leading the new wave of connected mobile devices that are being heavily embraced by today's "omni consumers," a new sort of user interested in interacting with digital media of many forms and on many different levels.

Hawkins expresses great satisfaction with the performance of his studio's games on the iPhone platform (four of the studio's games have hit #1 in the App Store) and calls Digital Chocolate "the #1 game company on the iPhone," based on 20 million downloads of their games, or 2% of all App Store downloads.

According to Hawkins, Sony and Nintendo should be very concerned by the iPhone's success and the degree to which today's omni consumers are embracing this new type of device.

They're using all kinds of platforms, many of them are brand new. And they've got a very different expectation [from gamers 10 years ago]. They're really looking more for social value than for escapism. They want to find new ways to check in and be in contact with people than just checking out and doing something by themselves.

Trip Hawkins left Apple in 1982 to form Electronic Arts. He was the man behind 3DO and formed mobile development studio Digital Chocolate in 2003.