Watch Out For Cop-Man, Waka Waka?
The website of Brazilian/Norwegian mobile game developer Microways shows details on a number of amusingly 'familiar' games. Sure, there's 'Kingo Kongo', which may or may not remind you of a certain Nintendo classic, and cheekily and half-assedly flips the scenario, since "the purpose is to help Kingo save his family who has been imprisoned by an evil hunter."
But even better, there's Cop-Man, in which the 'nothing like Pac-Man' entity is helping 'move' some money, but "the ghosts of former security employees will do their best to make you into a happy little jailbird as soon as possible." Wow, so it's all about betrayal, death, and redemption? Take that, Indigo Prophecy. Oh, and Cop-Man 3D is also absolutely nothing like Pac-Mania, just to get things straight. Oddly, the games seem very professionally coded, even the ones 'borrowing' from Game & Watch, so it's a shame the gameplay couldn't be a little more... original? [Via normalroach.]
Comments
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
There is no such thing as reading about your own productions, and reading this post was surely intriguing. And, I can say I do agree with simonc, we could have made the gameplay more original.
Yes, we would love to make original games. (Which we are infact doing at this very moment). However, ask any EA board-of-directors member how to make money. They will all say a big loud "Make what people recognize, make what rattles their wallets"...
And clearly this is what we have done, these games were planned and made long time ago (2-3 years ago) due to a popular demand by the largest Mobile content aggregators in Scandinavia.
"If you make old-classic-lookalikes, we will guarantee you first class PR and high sales numbers"...
And they were right. Most of these games have been in the TOP 10 sales list in Scandinavia no less than 5-7 months each, which I'd say is pretty good for mobile games.
But simonc have a very good point, gameplay and originality needs to be adressed. We have been aware of that for a long time. Good graphics artists and good programmers alone are not enough, gameplay is its own area of work.
We released 15-20 different games in 2005, including those made for 3rd parties, and we have now decided to go more in-depth for our own titles, with more innovation and allover quality - including gameplay.
Anyway, thanks for this insightful and observant blog, and I hope you will continue to pay attention to our website. And, on request - I would be happy to provide you with inside information, alphas and pre-release final beta versions of our coming titles.
Keep up the good work!
Robert Restad
---
CEO, Microways Ltd.
Posted by: Robert Restad | January 6, 2006 8:46 AM
sdf
Posted by: waed | August 20, 2009 6:11 AM