Talk have the pleasure of speaking Mark from Sparkling Society. They are the developers of the highly successful game City Island and City Island: Airport. Make sure to check out our reviews of the games.
Q. Tell us a little about your company
A. Sparkling Society develops games with the ambition to engage players into fans, i.e. “members of the sparkling society”. With a strong and rapidly growing community of tens of thousands Facebook followers and email newsletter members, we are chasing our ambition. Based in The Netherlands, the games are developed together with developers and designers from all over the world to bring the best experience in many different languages.
Our first game City Island, has been played by over 3 million players this year. At the beginning of May, we have released our new game City Island: Airport which we like even more and expect to even outperform City Island. This year, we expect to release a sequel of City Island and perhaps one or two brand new games as well. We have great ideas for new games and beautiful designs, and we are working real hard to have them released as soon as we can!
Q. Why did you make City Island?
A. Ever since we started playing Sim City approximately 15 years ago, we were loving the concept of city building games. When we noticed there was no similar and fun game to our liking in the Google Play store, we decided to develop one ourselves. That is were the passion meets the business!
Q. What future updates do you have planned?
A. Currently we don’t have social integration in our games. What would be more fun when you have created a beautiful island, as to share it with your friends. Or when you face certain challenges in your game, wouldn’t it be great if your friends could help you. Those kind of social things we will be adding in the upcoming months. Furthermore, our designers are constantly working on new designs, new levels, a larger map with perhaps multiple islands and more. We will bring the Sparkling Society all ideas and features at the maximum pace that we can achieve.
Q. Any plans to port the games to iOS?
A. Yes. However, since we are a small team, we will not develop it ourselves. We are looking for partners to help bring our games to iOS as soon as possible.
Q. What you do you think of the freemium model for apps?
A. It is a great model. We think it is a win-win for our society. People don’t need to pay any money to enjoy our games. It is absolutely possible to reach the final level without ever paying a cent. We even provide free weekly giftcodes to get free gold on our Facebook page for City Island or diamonds on our Facebook page for City Island: Airport. Luckily, there are enough players that support us by purchasing gold and diamonds in the games for us to make a living out of it. Therefore we are able to keep the new games and updates coming. So, a win-win situation for all of us!
Q. As an app developer, what is the hardest part in making a game?
A. Since we are a small developer, it is difficult to test the games on all major devices. Furthermore, there are not only hundreds of android devices available, but there are many android versions as well. Due to the many combinations, it is impossible to develop games that work smoothly on all devices and android versions.
Q. Where do you see mobile gaming going in the next few years?
A. We expect the mobile gaming to be growing a this pace for a certain number of years. We expect the freemium business model find its way to console games as well and we expect the two worlds to come together in a few years, i.e. playing android games on your television and playing console games on your mobiles. Lots of fun for developers like us to jump into the possibilities!
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Larry: Thanks again Mark for taking some time to speak with us. Looking forward to see what Sparkling Society has for us in the future.
