Company Spotlight #1: Codeglue

September 1st, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Interviews | 1 Comment »

Welcome to our first company spotlight. We will try to highlight an innovative mobile games developer every month. This month we kicked off with Codeglue. Codeglue is a company based in Holland and has a focus on developing games for publishers like iFone (Glu). We spoke to their CEO Peter de Jong.

[Arjan] When and why did Codeglue start with mobile game development?

[Peter] Codeglue started developing mobile games in 2002. In that
year we ported the award winning game Toki Toki from another Dutch
company, called Two Tribes, to mobile phones. The game used Mophun instead of J2ME and was probably one of the first color mobile games.

[Arjan] What does Codeglue do to stand out from other developers?

[Peter] Nowadays Codeglue creates and develops connected mobile
games that empower mobile communities. In most of our games you will
find community building elements like highscores, customizable user
profiles, ghost racing and chats.

[Arjan] Can your players communicate across games to trigger
sales of other titles from you, or are users bound to people that play
the same game?

[Peter] Unfortunately, this kind of functionality is not supported
by the different multiplayer middleware providers that Codeglue works
with.
It would be a good idea though to stimulate cross-selling.

[Arjan] Your game GoWaku
has been nominated for the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Innovation Award
2006. Can you tell us why you think this game is the one that should
win?

[Peter] The award ceremony was June 20 and unfortunately we didn’t
win this award. But I think it is a good thing for the Dutch (mobile)
gaming industry that a game such as GoWaku got nominated for such an
innovation award.

[Arjan] The industry faces a lot of problems in regards to
reaching their consumer base. Codeglue is not really involved with
marketing games to consumers, but does Codeglue have a vision how to
activate non-downloading consumers?

[Peter] There is a big challenge in activating the non-downloading
consumers which is about 95% of the total consumers base. First thing
is, how do we get the consumer to browse on their mobile phone? At this
moment consumers largely browse the operator decks when they just
purchased a new mobile phone and they hardly return because of poor
user experience. So I think here is a great opportunity for large media
companies that already know how to reach the consumer. A second
challenge is how do we improve user experience? I think mobile
community portals will play a big role here. We work with most of the
leading multiplayer middleware providers who are setting up these kind
of portals. Codeglue supplies them with original game content.

[Arjan] Codeglue is pretty busy with J2ME and BREW development. How does Codeglue look at technologies like Flash Lite?

[Peter] At this moment Codeglue is doing some experiments with Flash
Lite and we really think it looks promising! It will definitely solve
some of the fragmentation issues that the industry is facing these days.
The only drawback at the moment is the amount of phones which has e.g.
Flash
Lite 2.0 pre-installed (Although this is rapidly changing). But we’ll
definitely keep tracking the developments of this technology.

[Arjan] You have developed ten games till date. Which one is your favorite and why?

[Peter] My favorite game would be So Square.
This game is still in development. It has all the features of a game
that can create a community. It’s multiplayer, it has customizable
characters, it uses user generated content and it has a chat function.
We expect this game to do extremely well.

[Arjan] What kind of user generated content would the game incorporate?

[Peter] Players of this game can create their own levels for this game.
Codeglue will supply gamers with a free level editor for this game.

[Arjan] We gave you enough time to promote yourself. Now we’d
like to ask you which game of any other developer you like most and why
you like it?

[Peter] I like the one-thumb games from OrangePixel a lot. They have developed quite a few new innovative game concepts, e.g. Toddlers. Other games I like are the Playman series from Mr. Goodliving. These games offer nice gameplay with stunning graphics.

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