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  • Developing Pocket Tanks for the I-Phone…

    Posted on July 15th, 2009 IndieGamePod No comments

    Mike, from Blitwise Productions, talks about developing Pocket Tanks for the I-Phone…

    You can download the podcast here…
    http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/blitwise-production-podcast.mp3

    Or listen to it here…

    [wp_youtube]8nyb4JLQh4A[/wp_youtube]


    Interviewer: Welcome to the podcast show. How about you introduce yourself.

    Michael: Hi. My name is Michael Welch with Blitwise Productions. We write video games for the PC/Mac, and we’re just working on the iPhone now.

    Interviewer: What video games do you make for the PC and Mac?

    Michael: Well, let’s see. Blitwise has been in business for about eight years. We started out making PC games. There was Pocket Tanks, and then we made SuperDX-Ball and Neon Wars. Before that, we were working on things like DX-Ball back on Windows 95 and Scorched Tanks way back on the Amiga. So, I’ve been doing this for a long time.

    Interviewer: So, you decided to move to the iPhone recently. What inspired that?

    Michael: Well, actually, we started working on a 3D graphics back in December of 2007. I didn’t really know what I was going to do with it. I thought, maybe, I’d make like Hi Def games, something that… Traditionally, I did things in software rendering, but I wanted to do like 1920 x 1200, you know, really big stuff, and software just is no good for that. So, I was just kind of working on 2D with 3D hardware acceleration.

    But I went to a conference called The Casual Connect in Seattle, and it was there that I was introduced to the iPhone. At that point I guess I had been living in a vacuum or something, but it was just made clear that the iPhone was a pretty neat platform to program.

    Interviewer: And so, this was last June or July?

    Michael Yeah, yeah; back in July, actually.

    Interviewer: You heard about the iPhone platform, and around that time it seemed like it was a gold rush for indie game developers. The understanding was that indie game developers would have their chance for a few months, and then the “big boys” would come in. What were you thinking at that point? Were you saying that the opportunity was over, or…?

    Michael: Oh, well, no. As I was just learning about it, I thought it was a neat platform, but, you know, to be honest with you I’ve been doing this for awhile and trying to stay in business and stuff. You’ve kind of got to shake things up every now and then.

    Interviewer: Sure.

    Michael: It was just I saw an opportunity to, maybe; get some contract work so I wanted to prove what we could do. It wasn’t so much bringing my applications to the iPhone as it was just getting experience because it seemed like a great way to get people’s attention in terms of doing contract work, which isn’t what we normally do but you’ve got to go with the flow.

    Interviewer: And so, you make the decision then to make an iPhone game. What game were you thinking of putting on the iPhone?

    Michael: Oh, well, always we kind of lead with Pocket Tanks. That was the first game I released when I formed Blitwise. It’s just been a natural. It’s kind of funny. It’s obvious that we had to make Pocket Tanks, but truly throughout the years people always said, “Why don’t you make Pocket Tanks for the pocket PC, naturally? Why don’t you make Pocket Tanks for the Palm Point?” I mean, everybody wants Pocket Tanks in their pocket.

    I’m like, I don’t really want a program the pocket PC and I don’t want to program those. They didn’t seem to have what I was looking for, but when I saw the iPhone and I learned, OK this has got OpenGL in it and it compiles in C, it was just – I don’t know. It was almost like providence. This just was the one opportunity to make Pocket Tanks that fits in your pocket.

    Interviewer: When did you make the decision then to start on it now? Was that immediately after Casual Connect, or was it later on?

    Michael: It was actually kind of a funny story. I went there not knowing anything about the iPhone. I got my first look at an iPhone. Somebody showed me one and the game they had on. I was just taken back by it, so I thought, why don’t we see if we can get an iPhone? I was very naïve. I didn’t realize. Really, I had no clue.

    So, I went in to the AT&T store. I’m in Seattle. I’m not anywhere near home, and it was just crazy. I show up at the AT&T store. I walk through Seattle, and I’m like, “Can I get an iPhone?” And they’re like, “Well, yeah. Here, we’ll take your name and you can get one in 30 days”. I’m like, “Well, thanks, no” [laughs].

    So, I did have a cell phone in my pocket and I just 411’d, where is the Apple store in Seattle? Thus ensued a huge – a cab ride out in the middle of nowhere. I’m supposed to be at the conference. I’m not supposed to be doing this, so I show up at the Apple Store and really I had no idea. There was a huge line, I mean, a huge line. I was just like – well and the cab guy was like, “Do you want me to wait?” And I’m like, “No, I think I’m just going to stand in this huge line because I don’t know what I’m doing. If there’s this much of a line there’s got to be iPhones, right?” Basically, I stood in that line for three hours.

    Interviewer: Wow.

    Michael: People were pulling up in limos, coming out saying, “Do they have this version?” No, people are driving away. It was very strange. I’m from upstate New York. I’m not used to how things are done in Seattle, but that was my experience. I actually was one of the last people in line to get an iPhone. From there I went back to the conference and said, “Well, I just managed to get an iPhone 3G and everyone went, “Oooh”. So, it opened a few doors.

    It was an interesting networking opportunity. From that point on I was like, I’m going to get a kit and I’m going to start programming on it because it seems like people are interested in talking about it, at the very least.

    Interviewer: You get a kit. What was the next step after that? And how easy or how hard was it to get a kit?

    Michael: Well, we ended up waiting four weeks. I signed right up the beginning of August, and it took about four weeks to get it. You know how it is? There’s always that: are we going to get the kit, or are we not? And there’s people that get rejected and people that don’t. I was fairly confident that, maybe, that somebody at Apple somewhere someone heard of Pocket Tanks, maybe. So, I wasn’t too sure. I was pretty much like everyone else. Are we going to get it or not? I don’t know but we got it and it was cool.

    Interviewer: So there is a chance then for indie developers to not get the kit? I thought it was just something one would sign up for.

    Michael: Well, back then there was a lot of uncertainty. At that point in time there was a whole lot of – who is getting it and who is not. There were some horror stories, so you just don’t know. You send in your application for the kit; you get nothing back. Well, at least, back then you did. I don’t know now, but you’d get nothing back. It’s just a lot of silence. You’re like, “Oh, I don’t know. Did they even get my email?”

    Interviewer: So, you get the kit. Are you thinking about pumping out a game, like in a week or two? What’s the next step after that?

    Michael: Oh, no. Basically, we had to take the 3D engine that I had been developing for the past six months, seven months and just get that working on OpenGL ES. So, we were kind of working on that while we were waiting for the kit, you know, working on the simulator and stuff. We were able to, at least, continue not knowing if this month’s worth of work or more was even going to pan out.

    Interviewer: While you were waiting for the kit, were you playing any other games on the iPhone?

    Michael: Not really. No, I was really kind of having a lot of fun just programming it.

    Interviewer: Once you got the kit, what did you start playing around with? Was there any facet of the API that you found intriguing or that you found interesting or different?

    Michael: Well, you have to understand with the Blitwise engine we actually have the ability to compile things in both Windows and Mac and Linux. So, the first order of business was getting the iPhone bridge. That was pretty interesting, but then what was cool was that there were things that the iPhone could do that other platforms couldn’t do. So, what I did was I started taking what the iPhone could do and bringing it back to Windows and Mac and Linux.

    So, for instance, we have an accelerometer simulation, so we had a lot of fun just – how do you visualize accelerometer with mouse input just if you’re going to write a game with the accelerometer. So, I wrote a quick game – and nothing’s released – but I made a little game called Retro Feed that was like this cool graphical thing that allows you to simulate the accelerometer. So, we had that all running on different platforms. The same thing with Multi Touch, so actually on the Windows or Mac side you plug in multiple mice, so that was kind of fun, too.

    Interviewer: Oh, wow. Were there any other design realizations or interesting insights that you got as you were playing around with the iPhone and developing for it since there are some different pieces of hardware than your standard Mac or PC?

    Michael: Well, Multi Touch is kind of interesting. It actually wasn’t terribly difficult to make the ‘pinch and pull’ zooming. It was just kind of fun. Of course, then, on the PC side you’ve got two mice and it’s a little more interesting to try to simulate the two mice with ‘pinch and pull’. At least, you can. You have to understand that I am really, really new to programming anything with 3D hardware, so for me it was really just an amazing eight months of development because I was just going from zero. And then I wrote this engine, but I had never actually written a game to use that kind of stuff.

    So, it was just… The touch interface, I had to learn how to take a mouse and just – I had no idea how to make a touch interface. I had no idea how to use textures to simulate software rendering. It was the most fun I’ve had in probably eight years. It was a lot of fun to program. Never mind, what the opportunities are in terms of the business side of it. It was just a lot of fun.

    Interviewer: What challenges did you encounter as you were developing? You mentioned some of the stuff right now. Were there any other challenges?

    Michael: In terms of the development?

    Interviewer: Yeah or any surprises in terms of how easy or how hard it was to develop.

    Michael: Oh, well I think like everyone who ever tries to develop on the iPhone, getting the whole certificates thing right and getting all that ad hoc right. It’s kind of difficult because once you get the dev kit you still have to figure out how to do all the provisioning and the certificates, the code signing and X-code is a little quirky. X-code is very powerful, but it gives you a million choices, a million different ways to make it work or break. It’s just kind of like, wow, kind of mind boggling, all the protections they have in there, too; just to get the application to run on the hardware.

    Interviewer: Were there any specific forums that you went to to get help from other developers who were also developing for the iPhone? I know that documentation, at least, back then wasn’t that great, at least, online.

    Michael: Right. No, we basically had the engine up and running in a month, and we just did it ourselves. There was very, very little information on it.

    Interviewer: Once you got the engine up, what’s the next step? So, what leads to – because you just recently released an iPhone game. What was the next step of the development cycle to get to that release?

    Michael: Well, that was actually rewriting Pocket Tanks from the ground up.

    Interviewer: Wow.

    Michael: I mean, you have to understand. It took nine months to write the first Pocket Tanks and, of course, we’d been working on it for the past eight years but nine months to develop it. But, then it took us and I had a significant amount of help from Ben Miranda who I worked with, and it took eight months for me to figure out how to convert over to OpenGL. It was a big project. It was just wild. It’s a whole new game, so the weapons stuff – a lot of the code is the same, but emulating the software rendering we had to do some pretty strange things to make OpenGL look like a 2D program. It was pretty fun.

    Interviewer: What were some of the other design challenges you had when you were pretty much rewriting the game for the iPhone?

    Michael: There’s a lot of them, really. I think the most interesting one, though, is how do you simulate our weapon effects because if you look at Pocket Tanks everything is software rendered circles or software rendered lines and alpha lines. That stuff all just works naturally in 2D rendering, but in 3D, you know, like how do you scale the screen; how do you show these things when the screen is scaled way in or way out?

    And also, with Pocket Tanks it’s a static screen on the PC, but on the iPhone it actually scrolls around. People don’t necessarily like the scrolling, but some of them do. They think it’s more exciting that way, but we basically had to make some hard decisions. We experimented with rendering textured stuff in trying to be able to get all these weapon effects working at every resolution, but we had to make a hard decision.

    We basically had to say, “You can look at the play field at any scale level you want, but when it’s time to fire you’ve got to be at one-to-one”. That allowed us to use primitives to render all this stuff in Real Time, so we could match exactly how we programmed them in the config files for the PC version. We had a lot of strange little hacks we had to do.

    Interviewer: Did you ever consider using some of these other third party engines to develop games, specifically Unity or the Torque engine?

    Michael: I think those would only be good if you were starting from the ground up.

    Interviewer: OK.

    Michael: You see, we actually have our own engine and we’ve always written our own stuff. It would be a lot easier for us to just figure it out in a month than it would be to spend the money on Torque. I think Torque is pretty good, and I think Unity is pretty cool, too. I haven’t actually tried them, but from what I’ve read they sound like top notch products. But, you know, we’re just so close to having our own iPhone bridge, why don’t we go for it?

    Interviewer: How did you implement multi player?

    Michael: Actually, we have no network coding in it right now.

    Interviewer: OK.

    Michael: So, it’s just hot seat. It’s just pass the phone, and I think that works the same way as it does with Pocket Tanks. You can play anybody across the Internet, but if you can actually play with somebody next to you, somehow I think there’s a deeper connection. We do plan to add the multi player just like we did, kind of, with Pocket Tanks with network play.

    Interviewer: Have you researched how you would do that on the iPhone?

    Michael: I think it will be pretty simple. We haven’t actually written the network code for that. I assume that we will be able to work it out, but I don’t have any details on that right now.

    Interviewer: And so, once you finish you release the game. What are the steps or were there any challenges when you actually did release the game?

    Michael: Well, again, it’s kind of like the waiting game. You release the game, and in our case we decided to release both the free version and the ‘for sale’ version at the same time. It’s kind of funny. I was very careful, no neg screens on the free version. Apple is kind of specific in the things that you’re not supposed to do, like you’re not supposed to release the game that makes the player feel bad for having the free version.

    And there’s all these horror stories about what gets rejected and what doesn’t. Even just as I had released it to the Apps Store, there were these stories coming out about Pocket God had just released a game or that game was released and it had been accepted for the past number of times. And they released one and it got rejected for no reason. There was a reason but Apple decided just to…

    So, you never really know what you are in for. My biggest fear was we released two games, Pocket Tanks and Pocket Tanks Deluxe. Are they going to keep one and reject the other? Just silly stuff like that because they were saying – it could be somebody was cranky that day and just one of them gets through. It was kind of funny because Pocket Tanks Deluxe got through and then nothing. We didn’t hear about Pocket Tanks until the next day, and it was like: oh, man. And we had even submitted the free version first. Why did the deluxe go through first? I don’t know.

    Interviewer: How long did it take to get approved? Are there stories about it taking six weeks or three months or…?

    Michael: Well, at that period in time I had heard two weeks.

    Interviewer: OK.

    Michael: Two weeks, from other friends who had released games. Ours actually came through in eight days. So, I wasn’t ready. I thought I’d have another whole week to get ready to start calling people and talking about previews, but you know what – it’s kind of funny. It’s kind of exciting because all of a sudden you’re waiting for approval, waiting for approval. It’s this little yellow light on your application.

    All of a sudden, bam, green, ready for sale and it’s like: oh, what do I do? Well, I could either prepare for the next few days, or I could release it and see what happens. So, we released it and I should have waited, but it was fun. You just can’t resist. I’m approved. What do you do?

    Interviewer: When did you exactly – what month did you release it?

    Michael: That was April 14th that it was finally ready for sale and released.

    Interviewer: You talked about the marketing and previews and stuff. How did you go about marketing this game, and what are you doing right now to stand out amongst now all the other games that are coming out on the iPhone?

    Michael: Well, you know, I kind of do what I always do which is I release the game first, and then I just kind of hope. In truth, the first thing I did is I sent a few reviews to some of the bigger sites, like Touch Arcade and Finger Gaming and some other places. I just sent them a few promo codes, and you go, “Hi, I’m Mike and I’ve been writing games for a while. This is a pretty cool program”. So, I sent them out personalized to those two sites and just waited to see what happens. That’s about all I did.

    But I learned over the next week and a half, two weeks that it’s really hard to get noticed, even with something like Pocket Tanks which – I don’t know – I think people know about it. I’ve had a hard time getting reviews, and I still am. So, if anyone out there wants to review it, just let me know. Ultimately, it’s pretty hard to get noticed. I’m surprised.

    Interviewer: What other steps or ideas are you going to implement to get noticed and to get more exposure? So, for example, some iPhone apps, they have a lot of YouTube videos. I’m not sure if that’s something you guys have looked into.

    Michael: Actually, that seems to be a mandatory thing if you want to get noticed, though it hasn’t really helped me to get any reviews. I think that it would be silly to not release a game play video. Either get a camcorder and record that, or get fancy with something like Fraps or whatever they have on the Mac and record from the simulator. But, it’s absolutely imperative that you come out with a game play video. I wasn’t ready for that, so if you look at my game play video you’ll see – well, that’s about the best I could do with a six-year-old camcorder.

    We’re going to actually make some better videos, and we’re going to keep sending them out and see if we can get a few people to, at least, post Pocket Tanks.

    Interviewer: Are you going to have any kind of community components so, for example, games like Field Runners which is also another iPhone game? They have a community site. They might have leader boards and stuff like that. Is that something you are looking into for your game?

    Michael: Bringing in the community thing, I’m not exactly sure. I would say at this point we’ll probably just figure out ways to do Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when OS 3.0 comes out. Beyond that, I don’t know if we are going to have any online high score. It would be really, really nice to get the online multi player, but you’ve got to take it one step at a time. We’d like to, at least, get some kind of multi player in there, probably in the room sort of a thing or within a certain distance and go from there.

    Interviewer: Yeah. What’s the next step then for the game and for iPhone development for you guys in general?

    Michael: Well, it’s kind of funny. We were working on Pocket Tanks, and one of the big things with Pocket Tanks is expansion packs.

    Interiewer: Oh, yeah.

    Michael: You get 30 weapons in the PC version and 60 in the deluxe version, and the payoff for getting deluxe is you can use expansion packs. So, we’ve always had a free expansion pack and a ‘for sale’ expansion pack.

    The free one is kind of a ‘thank you’ to all the folks that invested in Pocket Tanks for all these years, and I just love releasing the free packs and people love them, too. And people still want them, which is interesting, but I’m happy. You know, it’s a good thing. They still want them after all these years. It’s been eight years, anyways.

    So, expansion packs are just very, very important. When you are looking through documentation, there is no way to do downloadable content, at least, when we were in the middle of developing it, but a month before we released, all of a sudden there’s this news about 3.0. Expansion packs, you’re kidding me. So, absolutely, we’re going to be right there. Just as soon as humanly possible we’re going to have an update to Pocket Tanks Deluxe. People are going to be able to download free packs and ‘for sale’ packs. That’s just the most exciting thing, really. It’s phenomenal. Downloadable content is huge for us. That’s number one and then after that we’re dying to take a look at the Bluetooth because we do have the ability to do the network play. That’s pretty exciting, too.

    Interviewer: Are you going to focus then on Pocket Tanks, or are you thinking about other games, too, or other applications?

    Michael: For the iPhone, I think we’ve got our hands full with Pocket Tanks, to be honest with you. It seems like that’s doing OK. It’s kind of interesting for a game that didn’t really get very many reviews yet. That’s what we’ve been doing, and that’s what we are going to continue to do. There’s just a demand for Pocket Tanks stuff and as much as I’d like to work on some other things, that’s what we will be doing.

    I have dreams of doing lots of different stuff. I want to work on Scorched Tanks. People have been asking for that since 1995. When I stopped making it, when will there be a new Scorched Tanks based on the Amiga version? That was actually the impetus for this whole engine effort, so it’s kind of funny. It’s like with every project. You start something like: I’m going to make a new DX-Ball.

    Interviewer: Sure.

    Michael: I’m going to make DX-Ball with, say, network play. That project becomes too big so what happens, I split the network play off and put it into Pocket Tanks and then I split the graphic part off and make Super DX-Ball. It’s kind of the same thing. I start an engine. I’m going to make a super high definition, wide screen version of Scorched Tanks with lots of players, lots of network play, a team player, just go crazy on that.

    Well, then the opportunity comes along to convert that over to porting Pocket Tanks to the iPhone. Obviously, we’re going to charge ahead with our PC development, but the opportunity was just there. It was just amazing that we had the opportunity to do what we did in that timing.

    Interviewer: Are there any other platforms you guys are going to develop for? What’s next in store for your studio?

    Michael: Well, there’s been a lot of requests for Pocket Tanks in the Blackberry.

    Interviewer: Oh, wow.

    Michael: But, I don’t foresee writing a Java version of Pocket Tanks. I don’t know. I can tell you what I want to do, though. Have you ever heard of the Pandora hand held?

    Interviewer: No, I haven’t.

    Michael: OK. Basically, it’s this little indie hardware effort. It’s neat because it’s got OpenGL ES and it’s about the size of a Nintendo DS. You open it up and it’s got a keyboard inside of there and dual analog sticks and it takes SD memory. It’s just really hacker cool, but I would like to port Pocket Tanks to that because it has a touch screen, too, and a keyboard and all sorts of gaming stuff. So, it’s kind of an unofficial, sort of hobby effort in that regard, but I would love to support that platform. Then, I guess we’ll see what other hand helds come out that have C compilers.

    Interviewer: Are you going to also focus on Flash or some of these other web platforms, too?

    Michael: You know, I kind of would. I have a number of books here sitting on my shelf wanting me to read them on Action Script 3, and I’ve done some research on it, too. I kind of would like to get into Flash. I think Action Script 3 is pretty neat.

    Interviewer: Would that impact, though, on how you would promote your games if you did use Flash as compared to the downloadable model?

    Michael: Well, I’ve heard that you can really use the Flash version, too. I get the word out on your downloadable stuff, but it’s not something that I’ve personally done so I don’t really know how that… Obviously, the Flash version would promote the other versions of the game, but I do like to keep the code base all one, if humanly possible. It should be interesting to see how you would tie everything together and have it just be like just one glorious code base for everything.

    Interviewer: Going back to iPhone games, if there a community that you hang around to talk to other iPhone game developers, or is it still pretty fragmented in terms of places you can go to find like minded people?

    Michael: In truth, no, we’ve pretty much been doing this all on our own. If you get stumped with OpenGL ES or something like that, you just kind of do a few quick searches. You know, we help each other out on this. I have someone who helps me here, so we keep it going that way. I have my friends that I talk to but no, not really an iPhone development community that we’re hanging out with.

    Interviewer: If an indie developer wants to get into the iPhone development, what suggestions or top three things would you recommend or wish you had known when you first started it?

    Michael: Well, I think the first thing you should do is immediately sign up for the dev kit because you are going to be waiting awhile to get it. The second thing is, obviously, the example code that comes with the iPhone development is pretty good, so that should be all that you need to get into it in that regard. I don’t know. You’ve just got to go for it. If you can do OpenGL stuff, then you’re going to be very, very happy with the iPhone. It’s got a lot of power. I was very, very pleasantly surprised how powerful it was. You won’t have to limit yourself too much.

    Interviewer: Yet, do you think the platform is going to replace Nintendo DS or some of these other platforms like Sony PSP?

    Michael: Oh, absolutely not. No, I am a huge DS fan but now the PSP, I don’t know. I have one. I don’t really play it too much. I’m just a crazy Nintendo DS person, and I like to buy the games and stay on top of it. I know, part of it will say it’s research for all this touch based stuff I’m doing with the iPhone, but the DS and the iPhone are just totally different things.

    You’re going to get lots of different kinds of games, lots of exciting stuff on the DS, and the iPhone is a different experience completely. I think they can co-exist together happily. I think the DS is probably going to continue to be the gaming console platform of choice for a long time, but the iPhone is just opening doors. People have always said the iPhone is going to kill the DS, and the DS will never lose, things like that. They are different people.

    I would say Sony is probably in trouble because if I had to pick between the iPhone and the PSP, I’m a developer for the iPhone anyways, but I’d pick the iPhone because you’ve got the same resolution. And you’ve got visually what seems like the same amount of power, and it’s appealing to an older demographic that has an iTunes account and money to spend. The older teen and people my age, 20, 30, definitely the iPhone is the better choice just because – who has time to sit down and play a huge console experience. I don’t really. I can just whip out the iPhone and play something really quick. That works better for me.

    Interviewer: What are your favorite iPhone games, aside from your own?

    Michael: Let’s see. I’m going to look at my iPhone. What have I got installed here? I rather like… Oh, that’s a tough one. I like Rolando. I think that’s pretty darn good. I think that Book Worm – I’m kind of a [?] anyway. I love Book Worm. I bought it for every single PDA that I’ve ever owned. I had a pocket PC. I’ve had those, but I buy other people’s games for them.

    Interviewer: And now that you’re doing iPhone development, are you going to attend any iPhone conferences?

    Michael: Jelly Car is amazing; Jelly Car, the 3D graphics. I always wanted to get it working on the Xbox, but I couldn’t seem to get the community stuff installed correctly. But, it came right up and it worked. My kids love it. That was just a very pleasant surprise.

    Interviewer: Are your kids playing a lot on the iPhone, or do they prefer their own platforms?

    Michael: Well, my kids are big into the DS because I have a lot of games anyways. It makes it easy for them, but they are always wanting to borrow the iPhone – always, always borrowing the iPhone. They love it, any age. My son is 5 and my daughter is 10. It’s great for them if they can just pry it out of my hands.

    Interviewer: Since you are doing iPhone development, are there going to be any conferences that you’re attending for iPhone development?

    Michael: Not specifically no, but again, I’m looking forward to going to The Casual Connect in Seattle in July.

    Interviewer: Do you have any last words then for indie game developers who are starting their studio or running their own studio in terms of suggestions for platforms or ways to shake things up?

    Michael: Well, I think the perfect way to look at the iPhone for an indie game developer is if you’ve already got 2D games or 3D games that can be easily ported, you know, release them for free on the iPhone. They are going to be the best advertisements you could possibly release for your games. It seems to me I’ve talked to other people, and it just seems like even if you release it for free on the iPhone, it’s going to all kick back to the PC version so just get some mind share. Absolutely just dig in and make an iPhone version and just get the mind share.

    There’s always the temptation to release a ‘for sale’ version only, but don’t do that. Release the free version and then release the ‘for sale’ version but always think that that mind share is going to come back to what you’re doing on the PC and it will.

    Interviewer: Great. We’re talking with Mike from Blitwise Productions. Thanks again for your time.

    Michael: Thank you.

    Interviewer: Great. Take care. Bye.

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