Love or hate mobile gaming, if you look at the top charts in either Apple’s App Store or the Google Play store, you’ll spot one familiar name that’s been dominating the upper echelons almost since its launch. Crossy Road, Hipster Whale’s first – and free – title, puts an endless runner spin on classic Frogger-style gameplay, and it’s even more addictive than the short-lived Flappy Bird. We chatted with Matt Hall and Andy Sum, two members of the Australia-based three-man team about how they got started, what inspired them and what’s next for the team and game.
How did the Hipster Whale get started?
Matt Hall: Andy is based in Melbourne, but I'm not. We live around maybe two hours away from each other. I'm in the countryside, so I have kangaroos and sheep outside. Andy does not.
Andy Sum: Me and Matt did the whole development for the game without meeting up – we just did the whole thing online, and over Skype.
Where does the name come from?
Andy: Me and Matt met a bit over a year ago at GCAP [Game Connect: Asia Pacific, Australia's annual game development conference] conference in Melbourne, and we were sitting in this free to play talk at the back of the room, and we were doing these squiggles. I drew a whale, as they were talking about free-to-play and whales, and Matt sort of made it a hipster with a cup of coffee, a little hat and a goatee, and we had this hipster whale idea from way way back, and it was funny to us, so we'll go with that for a company name.
Matt: We tweeted about it at the time. It's a little tongue in cheek and a wink to the industry, with free-to-play and whale hunting. I'm in this middle point where I'm wanting to make a game that's a business, but for me, making video games is clearly a creative expression. So this hipster whale is this kind of mid point between two forms.
How long did it take to make Crossy Road?
Matt: We originally budgeted the game for about six weeks, but it was a bit smaller than it is now. When we got to that six week point, we went 'this is looking pretty good, I think we're going to double down', so we went 12 weeks.
That's essentially to submission day. We continued, and then had a bit of a break after that. Andy then did #7DFPS [Seven day first person shooter game jam] while I spent a week relaxing. We've been on Crossy Road ever since and it's well beyond the original 12 weeks, but it took those 12 to get to version one.
Did you ever think it was going to get big?
Matt: We thought it could. We tried to make the most popular game we could. Well, not the most popular game, but we just wanted it to be the sort of game you'd tell your friends about, as it's pretty crazy. We tried to make some talking point out of a lot of the characters. Andy did most of them solo, while I did most of the rubbish work, but it worked out fine. And then we also wanted to make a game that people would play for a long time. So, Flappy Bird and those sort of games, they're very throwaway experiences, you'll play for a bit with your friends, try and get the high score, and then you'll leave. Our whole animal collection element was born from that.
What inspired you to make the game – aside from Frogger, of course?
Matt: Flappy Bird was like, the key reference for us. That was such a huge event back in April, and obviously, the clones. The clones came in. What was more interesting though, was games that weren't clones. Games like dEXTRIS, which did really well. It had the same kind of high score chasing element, but it wasn't Flappy Bird at all, and it did well. That was when people really wanted to play high-score chasing games, and they were telling people about it, and there was this cool opportunity. So I had this mantra in my head for probably about six months. February was when I went really crazy, February and March. And then Flappy Bird left the store in April, and that's when the clones went crazy.
So yeah, it was about six months I had it in my head, and then one day in the shower: "Oh yeah, Flappy Bird plus Frogger! That's it! Andy, what do you think of this idea?". Andy already had a prototype of something similar going, so we were good to go – Hipster Whale was born.
The free-to-play model (watching optional ads to earn coins, which you can use to buy characters, or you can purchase them with real cash) you guys have used is a bit different to other games we've seen, did you have it in mind from the start?Matt: It wasn't really from day one. The game was going to be a lot simpler originally. We knew we wanted to make it free. We originally were looking at a publisher, but when we told them about the idea, they were like 'ehhh, it sounds okay.' So that kind of threw us a bit, but we decided to self-publish it. How were we going to monetise it though? Andy: We did it all in one session, had this big brainstorming session and came up with all these ideas. If you've played Disco Zoo, and seeing the ads work well in that – we actually spoke with the guys there, and it was something we were thinking about too. Matt: We knew video ads would work as long as people wanted to click them for some reason, so we had that nugget there. Andy: And I've been playing a lot of Dota 2, which has purchases in it, and they're only cosmetic, and don't affect the game at all. So we had this skin idea – different character ideas – that didn't change the game at all, so we had lots of different influences in it for this.
Matt: We really wanted to retain the purity of the game. Say if we took Crossy Road tomorrow and put in that 'save me' mechanic, so when you get to the end of the game and you're dead, and you can spend some currency to continue, we'd probably make twice as much money – but we'd only have about half the people playing.
Andy: We'd definitely lose most of our players. That's the fun bit. You can tell how good someone is at the game by hearing their high score.
Matt: We really wanted to make sure it was a pure experience. And that it was the most— the number one goal was retention. Having people play and not wanting to leave for any reason. So we took the bare minimum approach with monetisation and advertising.
Popular internet meme Doge is also in the game, what made you guys pop him in?
Matt: That was the cornerstone character for me. That was the character upon all the other characters were built. That came from me. Once you put doge in the game, how would people feel about the game? So we just did it and it was hilarious. We just couldn't stop laughing. We've never seen a game do this before. And from there, we really started to push the characters – and now it's the least ridiculous one. Unihorse was also there, but Doge really set the bar. It's more silly than a unicorn pooping rainbows.
You guys have launched the game on Amazon’s App Store for the Fire TV, does playing with a controller help?
Matt: Yeah, the controller doesn't lend itself as well as you'd think – we spent a lot of time on those swipe controls. You can do a lot of movement, quickly. And not that we hobbled the controls, but if someone was playing with the controller, we didn't want to give them a massive advantage – it's much like playing with the touchscreen. The next update [now live] will support MFI iPhone controllers. Our publisher Yodo1 will be adding that update to Google Play soon.
The game lets you record yourself playing too, and upload to a video sharing service - where’d that idea come from?
Matt: Pretty much from all the Let's Play and YouTube videos that are taking the internet by storm. Everyplay [the video service Crossy Road uses] doesn't quite link up with YouTube as well as we'd hope, but we've got over 250,000 players using it. The community is using it to chase high scores, and there are some mind-blowing videos on there. We saw one where a player got a score of 963 – it was like watching a Jedi. He didn't have his reaction face on unfortunately. YouTube is such a huge influential force right now. I watch stuff on there. I think it's a really cool movement. It's a great way to check out new games and stuff.
We also talked to a few YouTubers too, such as iDubbbz and PrescriptionPixel, and of course, we put in Pewdiepie's dog as a nod to that phenomenon. He actually picked up the game and played it on one of his videos which was cool.
So what's next for you guys?
Matt: We made Crossy Road to kind of buy ourselves creative freedom. I'm not someone who wants to build a big scalable mobile business, and if I was, I'd be making Clash of Clans clones. People say that's a safe bet, while Crossy Road is an outlier, never to be repeated. But I'm someone who'd have been more than happy with 1/10th, or even 1/20th of the success that Crossy Road has seen. It's exceeded our expectations massively. I'm a very eclectic game designer; I've done some hidden object games, I've done a 7DFPS shooter, a weird arty puzzle reflexy type game. I really love playing RPGs, like Terraria, Binding of Isaac – now I have that freedom, I'm really looking forward to what's next.
Andy: I've got some cool projects on the horizon; we've both got books and books of ideas, and now we've got some money, it seems we can do a lot of those things in the future.
Matt: I think a lot of people will laugh at us for what we're going to make next. I'm sure a lot of the free to play people will wonder why on earth we're doing what we're doing – basically commercial suicide. We do it for the love. Crossy Road, I really, really loved making. It was a huge experiment, a huge risk, which is why we made it in as little time as possible, so when it failed – which we assumed it was going to – we weren't going to cry ourselves to sleep.
What’s up next for Crossy Road – Will you keep adding to the game?
Matt: Yeah, we just submitted the Aussie characters [Australian animals, of course]. We're going to try and do 15 characters a month, and that's for as long as we can keep up and people keep playing.
Which of you is better at the game? What’s your highest score?
Matt: Andy's way better than me.
Andy: I'm not sure... I think it's around 500.
Matt: Andy's joined the 500 club, and I have not. Mine's just 360. Some people have a thousand. It's ridiculous. Still, even if you have a score of 100, you might still think that's awesome and brag about it to your friends and that's cool. It's great people enjoy the game no matter what score they're getting. I've made popular games before, but nothing quite like this.
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