Interview with Fishlabs, developers of Galaxy on Fire

Kai Hitzer, Marketing Director at Deep Silver FISHLABS, spoke about the features of hardcore games on the mobile market.

There is an opinion that science fiction games are not very suitable for the mobile games market, which is still more focused on a mass audience. But Fishlabs has gained fame by making games in this genre. What do you think about this?

Science fiction may not be as popular among gamers as fantasy, for example, but that doesn't mean that space games don't have their own huge audience on different platforms. For example, the first two parts of Galaxy on Fire received more than 15 million downloads on iOS and Android alone, and our mobile MMO strategy Galaxy on Fire — Alliances is now played by hundreds of thousands of players around the world.

In general, if we talk about why we decided to make the setting of our game outer space, then everything is simple: those who made the first Galaxy on Fire were big fans of the sci-fi genre and really wanted to make a mobile game based on such classic PC games as Elite, Wing Commander, Freelancer and X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter.

However, there was another reason. When we started working on the Java version of Galaxy on Fire 3D, mobile devices were many times weaker than current smartphones and tablets. In conditions of very limited resources, setting in outer space provides a major advantage: you do not need to create a rich game world and complex locations. What is a galaxy? It is, in fact, a boundless space in which planets, asteroids, stations and ships move. Unlike, for example, a jungle or a desert, a not very powerful processor is enough to create such a setting.

Give some advice to developers who are going to make a hardcore game for mobile platforms.

Despite the fact that casual games have enjoyed incredible success on mobile platforms, midcore and hardcore projects have also become popular recently. And as technology develops, they get better.

If you are going to make a hardcore mobile game, first of all, do not underestimate the amount of work that will have to be done. Every detail must be carefully polished: graphics, sound, gameplay, technical side, and in general all aspects of the user's interaction with the product.Right now, developing a hardcore game for mobile platforms will take almost as much time, effort, resources and a team member as developing a similar game for PC or consoles.

What is the specifics of interacting with gamers who play hardcore games on smartphones and tablets?

The main feature of hardcore gamers is that they are much more passionate about games than casual players. They pay close attention to every detail, organize themselves on forums and in chat rooms (for example, on LINE), write articles, regularly contact developers and absorb all the news about their favorite games. If you have launched a hardcore game, then to communicate with fans you will need an experienced community management team that will answer all the questions of the players and constantly communicate openly with them.

Now Fishlabs is also porting old games to mobile platforms. Why are you doing this?

After we joined Deep Silver Holding in early 2014, we began to engage in all their activities in the mobile sector. Deep Silver, Europe's largest game publisher, has a strong portfolio of top IP's popular all over the world, and none of these games have been released on smartphones or tablets yet.

In the future, we plan not only to make completely new games, but also to perform publishing functions for existing Deep Silver products, which, albeit belatedly, will appear in the App Store and Google Play. Such games include, for example, the adventure game Secret Files Tunguska, the iOS version of which will be released soon. She was very successful on PC, and now she will get a second life on mobile devices. The graphics and gameplay of this game are great for touchscreens, so we are sure that the additional porting efforts made by the original developer of the game company  Animation Arts, they will pay for themselves.

What to expect from Fishlabs in 2014?

We have quite ambitious plans for 2014. Together with the rest, we will move to a new large office in the center of Hamburg, increase our team to 90-100 people and announce completely new projects that will combine the existing Fishlabs and Deep Silver titles. A lot has happened in the last couple of months, and very soon we will be able to enjoy the first fruits of these changes. Unfortunately, I can't reveal the details at this stage, so be prepared for surprises!