I left three and a half years ago to come and do this - so I guess I was there for about six to seven years. This is my eleventh year professionally in games, even though I was making games prior to that. \n\nWe transitioned there with technology changing - we moved from web to mobile, and eventually digital console. The last things that I was doing there were Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, stuff like that which seemed to be the like new thing - the new emerging market. I had just launched a few games there. One of them was fairly successful, which I was then able to leverage to get funding to come and set up my own thing. \n\nWhen we'd set up this team to work on XBLA and PSN stuff using the connections that I'd built the landscape changed again - the iPad came out and mobile became so much larger. XBLA and PSN are all but ghost towns now. No one really makes games for those things unless there's a movie and you want to make the video game version. The landscape's changed a lot, so I guess that's the evolution - how I used one successful game to piggyback things on."\n\n[["How has Dawn Patrol evolved since then?"|Dawn Patrol is evolving!]]
"We thought it would help us drive downloads because everyone likes to try free things, but the conversion numbers weren't really what we were looking for. I think that, in hindsight, we should have just launched as a premium game and not let people try it. If they like this kind of thing then they'd just buy it because I think the strategy game players know that they want to pay for stuff, whereas the free to play, the larger market, will just try anything and stop playing in the first 90 seconds if they're not hooked. \n\nIt's tough trying to figure out the right monetization strategy, so we've changed it for the next set of games - they're basically free to play, and if you want more content you need to watch a video ad. That'll give you in-game currency that you can spend however you want. There's a more direct link to the player so they can go 'I don't have to buy anything, everything's here - I'll just watch this video and I get a bunch through that. It's what Crossy Roads made popular with their model - a rewards-based monetization strategy."
[[Nitropia|Nitropia]] took a lot of time to make and left people feeling burnt out. The team decided to try something new, and had an internal pitching session.\n\nEach member of the team has a different taste in games. Some are into super-hardcore games, others like casual, cutesy things. As a result of an internal pitching session, ideas were put forward and the entire team looked at ways in which they could be made to work - from monetization to theme and style. The ideas were evaluated, sorted and ranked, and the ones that bubbled up to the top were chosen.\n\nThey then split themselves up into smaller groups, each functioning as a unit. Three games with three different art styles - 3D, 2D and abstract - and three different gameplay mechanics.\n\n
Gautam Venkatesan, the studio's IT Manager and Producer shows me around the office. Posters line the walls, shelves are neatly stacked with dozens of games, and consoles patiently wait for lunch break to be played with.\n\nHe introduces me to the team. They are spread across the floor and are currently working on [[three games|Three little games]] simultaneously; it's been a few months since they wrapped up a long project called [[Nitropia|Nitropia]], and in order to keep up with the changing landscape of mobile games they've had to adapt, moving away from the larger, complicated games that they had worked on previously.\n\nAs we head upstairs, he gives me a bit of history. To Gautam, this is more than just an office - he grew up on the same street and spent a good portion of his childhood in this building.\n\nWe enter a what appears to be a rec room and [[sit down|My grandfather's house]] at the table.
“I think that's what all indies are trying to do - they're trying to find their people.”\n\nThe folks at Dawn Patrol Games had me over for an afternoon to talk about the challenges of being one of Sri Lanka's only game developers. Based in the country's capital Colombo, they have braved the choppy waters of the international mobile market for the last three and a half years. \n\n[[It all started with a lane...|It starts with a lane]]
"I'd leave mobile in a heartbeat if I could find another market that works. \n\nI think for us as creators we want to find users that like our stuff, whether that's on the PC or mobile - wherever it is. It's just that mobile is the market that we adopted when we started this journey - but that's it. \n\nWe build a lot of our stuff in Unity and Unity works on any platform. We're platform agnostic, it's just that the stuff we're doing right now works for mobile. But that's the dream for all indie game developers. They want to make content and they want to find a bunch of users that like their content and keep serving those users. If we had 100,000 fans that liked our games and would play our games I'd gladly just dedicate my time to pleasing those players and gradually adding more, as opposed to going for the millions of potential users on mobile where the users are spoilt for choice. \n\nUsually when you give a kid too much of what they want they turn into dicks. A lot of people I know have to deal with so much hatred from users for no apparent reason. These are creators - the stuff that they're making isn't for everyone, but hopefully someone will like it and I think that's what all indies are trying to do - they're trying to find their people. If we found our people, we'd be very happy to serve our people. We just haven't found them yet."\n\n[["Since you're on iOS you're out there in the global market. Do you have much of a market here in Sri Lanka though?"|So much for the home crowd]]\n\n
"I think the majority are from Sri Lanka - about 70%"\n\n[["How has it gotten out to them?|Fans into a fan base]]
"Yeah. It's really painful. Really, really painful. \n\nWe're trying to do things to stop it, but unless you move to the always-on model where you have to be connected to get content, or more restrictive DRM things that you can do, which users obviously hate… \n\nTo be honest with you, you can't do anything with piracy and you can't do anything about the state of the games that come out - free to play is popular because the onus is on the user - the user must vote with their dollar. If you don't want to pay for anything, what you're going to get is a bunch of free to play crap. Personally, I hate the free to play model. I think it waters down games and it's kind of soulless, but that's the way it is. And we can't move away from the model because no one is willing to pay for quality content. \n\nYou put something on mobile and the first thing you're going to get is a bunch of 14-year-old kids going 'This game sucks! You've gotta pay! One star.' And that drives down your rating, your game falls further and further down the charts, you've gotta do stupid things to boost it up… It all adds up. People don't realize, but it all adds up, and at the end of the day it's the user that suffers because the industry is becoming less and less risk-averse. You don't want to make indie darlings. Most of these indie guys that struggle and work ridiculous hours for their passion projects most of the time get burnt out. It's such a toxic user environment. \n\nPeople complain about spending a dollar on a game when it's someone's life's work. You play it every day but you don't want to give them one dollar. It's kind of ridiculous when you think about it."\n\n[["Given the success of indies on the PC and console, do you think you'd ever move away from mobile to try something else?"|In a heartbeat]]\n\n
Their most recent game, <a href="http://dawnpatrolgames.com/wp/?page_id=977" target="_blank">Nitropia</a> was a result of a phase during which they did a lot of client pitching. \n\nA big publisher wanted a strategy game that was to be a large IP. Dawn Patrol made a demo using their own material, and when the publisher passed on it they decided to turn it into their next project. It, along with its DLC took about twelve months of work and became a tower defense/real-time strategy mashup.\n\nNitropia is a premium game with freemium elements - it has a free trail, and after purchasing the game additional content can be unlocked with either a purchase or by using the in-game currency.\n\nYou can check out Nitropia on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nitropia-war-commanders/id900468974?mt=8" target="_blank">iOS</a> and <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bulkypix.nitropia&hl=en" target="_blank">Android</a>.\n
It's just the three of us - production takes place on the office's bustling ground floor; this is peaceful in contrast. \n\nA large television sits silently by one wall with comfortable seating scattered around facing it. The windows hold back the cool breeze that the air conditioning is silently pumping out as the scorching sun blazes down on the other side. A small balcony overlooks the little lane that they grew up together on. \n\nThe city and country around us have captivated me since I arrived a week earlier - hubs of development and tall, shiny buildings just a short drive away from untamed natural beauty. \n\n“Makin' mobile games in paradise!” Dawn Patrol's Twitter account declares. Sometimes paradise can be lonely, though.\n\n"So, Prithvi..."\n\n[["When did you decide to get into games?"|The beginning]]\n\n[["What's it been like developinging in Sri Lanka?"|Developing in Sri Lanka]]\n\n[["Looking at your most recent game, how did Nitropia's model of a free trial, premium purchase and in-game unlockables work for you?"|Nitropia - lessons learnt]]\n\n[["If you're still trying to find your feet, have you found some sort of sustainability?"|Searching for sustainability]]\n
“This was my grandfather's house.” Studio Head, Creative Director and founder, Prithvi Virasinghe tells me as he joins us. A touch of nostalgia creeps into his voice - “In fact, this used to be his room.” \n\nA moment of silence as we [[take it in.|The old sustains the new]]\n
"Well, when we did Nitropia we had our own analytics and our publisher had theirs. Our numbers were 10 times larger than the publisher's - so when they gave us our royalties we were like, 'But our numbers are larger, we should be getting a lot more!' and they were like 'No, we get our numbers from iTunes - this is the real number'.\n\nSo to answer your question, for every game that we sold, 10 copies were pirated.\n\n[["That's... Wow."|Downright depressing]]
"I guess when I first knew that I could get a job in games is when I decided... I started to get money for making games in 2005. That was after I came out of grad school."\n\n[["What did you study?"|Before Dawn Patrol]]\n
As my tuk-tuk pulls away, I look around at what appears to be a peaceful residential street. It's a bright, sunny day in Colombo, and I'll be flying out tomrrow. What a great vaca...\n\nA door opens behind me and a man steps out into the sunlight, momentarily blinded.\n\n"Hello?" I venture. [["Gautam?"|Gautam]]
"I went to school originally for finance - I used to work in banking. From there I transitioned into marketing and then advertising, digital media, and in 2003 I went back to school and I studied new media - interactive games, human-computer interaction, that kind of stuff. That was in 2003, around when the birth of web 2.0 kind of was. Picking up more ubiquitous computing and interactivity now in sort of a bigger light. Technology made some significant jumps. While studying there I focused on game design as one of my concentrations. \n\nWhen I graduated I got a job at MTV Networks. At that stage online gaming was becoming a big thing and I was tasked with creating a games program for Comedy Central and Spike TV, which is one of their divisions. We were part of a large team so I did Comedy Central and Spike TV - I was the producer - another one of the producers did MTV, another did VH1 - all within the family. I guess that was the start of my games career."\n\n[["What was MTV like, and how did you move to starting Dawn Patrol?"|Dawn Patrol is born]]
"iOS, Android and Amazon - so we're on the Kindle. I think we'd go Windows as well - Steam - it's just a matter of getting one game type that's popular and taking it to the platforms that make sense. \n\nThe only monetization that makes sense right now is iOS because that's the place where people actually spend money. Even though Android has a user base that's much larger, your monetization is higher on iOS. There's a lot of piracy on Android."\n\n[["How has piracy hit you guys?"|There be pirates in these waters]]
"There are a couple of other software companies and web companies that also make games but I don't think there are others that have invested on this scale to just make games - and that too their own games. There may be be some hobbyist, one, two-man shows - there are other people around but if there are they're very small and we don't know each other.\n\nThere's no industry in Sri Lanka, so it's not like you can come here and be like 'I want to hire a game developer and a game artist'. We had to do a lot of training, getting people to understand pipelines since it's very different from traditional software development. \n\nI think most people struggle with the iterative process of games. They're like, 'Why do you have to do it again?' 'Why do you want it five pixels higer?' or 'What's the big deal with the motion trail?', but it's about feedback - it's about feeling. Software development is about results - you say 'It should do this!' and it does that. That switch took a long time. I thought we'd spend the first year doing that, but it's actually taken us about three years just trying to figure it out, and we're still trying to figure it out."\n\n[["What about hobbyist development and game jams?"|We'd like some company]]
An Afternoon With Dawn Patrol
No. Nobody pays for anything here. Everything is pirated. \n\n[["In terms of finding 'your people', do you think that even with all the piracy of your games you still have a lot of fans here?"|Fans to customers]]
"There are some at the university level and we've been trying to work with universities - we've got really good Computer Science programs and we try to talk to schools. Some of our guys are lecturing in schools - it's just that we don't have enough time.\n\nThe problem we have is that we have no one to invite, so we have to spend time to nurture people - get the hobbyists and students together - and that's a big ask on our time as a studio. We'd really like some company."\n\n[["It sounds lonely."|It is]]
"No, we're not self-sustaining yet. We're still in the red. We feel like we're on the verge of turning the corner and we'll see what happens with the next three games - those are really make-it-or-break-it games for us. If we can't break through with them then we'll have to try other options - but I think our struggle is 90% of everyone else's struggles. Most people have trouble trying to monetize, and to be fair, a lot of the big, successful studios were early adopters. It's hard finding a model for success - you can't just follow a set of steps. \n\nUntil you find your niche, build your audience and start to serve them. It's hard to get a foothold even though there are billions of dollars being earned and spent.\n\nWe hit the trade show circuit. We travel a lot. It's very draining having to travel, especially since we're here in Sri Lanka. There's an emerging market in Southeast Asia which is cool - Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Phillipines - hopefully those wil glet more popular and we can start serving those regions.\nWe feel like we've learnt enough lessons now to figure out what we can do best. \n\nI think that, for games, you have to launch about 10 games and hope that one of them hits. We're about to launch our 5th, 6th and 7th games, so hopefully it's one of those three and not 8, 9, 10."\n
"That's downright depressing."\n\n[["That's painful, I imagine?"|Finding our people]]
"Hmm... I think in Sri Lanka there are a lot of people who are fans of us. They're like 'Oh, Dawn Patrol! Game studio, cool! Awesome' 'First studio that's spending their own money trying to make this happen.' \n\nI'm not sure how many of them have actually made the jump from 'I'm a fan of them' to 'I'm going to support them to keep them around'. I think a lot of people are fans - our Facebook page has 27,000 fans. Trying to get them to do anything is like… three people. So… It's easy to be a fan but it's hard to be a user. \n\nYou're asking them for 200-300 rupees [$1-2] - a sandwich. You go outside and you spend that on lunch. You'll go outside and spend easily 2-3 times that on beer and junk food and cigarettes and not think twice about it. I think a lot of people don't realize that they should support indies. If you really like their stuff then support them buy buying their stuff because they really need that. I don't think people have made that connection - maybe because they haven't had a close connection - they're playing all these games but have no connection to the developer. Half the time they don't even know who the developer. They might go 'Oh, it's an EA game.' Yeah, but which studio? Who are the people who made the game? Did you know that the people who made this game that you love no longer have a job?\n\nPeople don't go beyond their immediate pleasure and go 'I love this! Who did this? What else have they done? Oh, what are they doing now?' - at least, that's the minority."\n\n[["Out of your 27,000 fans on Facebook, how many do you think are from Sri Lanka?"|70%]]\n
"We started targeting downloading console, and mobile stuff had just started to go big - around that time the first Infinity Blade had come out, Doodle Jump was the biggest thing ever, Angry Birds was just coming out - that was the start of these multi-million download and dollar mobile franchises. That was the time when people started jumping into the pool wholesale.\n\nWe'd started off with console with mind and had set up a pipeline in Unreal so that you could port to console pretty easily, but in the middle of that first year of development we switched gears from console to mobile because that seemed like a bigger opportunity. Obviously we had to switch pipelines as well, which was a pain in the ass - Unreal at that time wasn't built for mobile. It was heavy and bulky, and there were a lot of things that you didn't want it to do for mobile, even though it was great for console. \n\nSo we had to keep shifting gears - we're still shifting gears constantly because mobile keeps evolving all the time; monetization is the big thing over the last year and a half. Free to play has become so dominant. Now free to play is almost old hat - everyone hates it. They're looking at new things - 'What's the new form of monetization?' \n\nSo it's hard to really rest our hat on anything and say 'this is what we do' - but we're definitely mobile. We're trying to keep up with what's going on and constantly evolving our games. It becomes easier when you have a game published. You have a hit and then say, 'Okay, we made this, let's continue to make that', but until you have that sort of success where you can spend all your time just making something better and thinking 'okay, this model works', you're constantly having to evolve and iterate on gameplay."\n\n[["Which of the mobile platforms do you serve?"|The only place that makes sense]]
Gautam, who also handles the majority of the company's social media explains:\n\n"We're active on social media and forums. The challenge is to convert people who are fans, even if they comment and like your posts, to people who will download your games. It's hard to gauge who a fan really is and to turn fans into a fan base. People have short memories - you might be cool today, but tomorrow people look for the next big thing. \n\nBuilding a fan base, finding your fans, building that game that gets you to where you want to be - there's no blueprint for how to do it. We've had to learn over three years from the things we've done wrong and things we've done right. It's fine if you make a million dollars, but realistically, it's great if you can even keep going till you can make your next game. It's all about survival when you're an indie. And there are so many indies out there trying to make it."\n\nPrithvi adds on:\n\n"Any developer can look at a game, break it down into its systems and say 'okay, we're going to make this game just like that other game' but only 10-20% is actually building the game. 80-90% is the polish that's the secret sauce that differentiates one developer from another. How does it make you feel when you hit that button? How squishy was that thing? What was that sound like? What was that background sound that you didn't even know was playing when you were doing this thing that you thought was awesome? Those things don't happen by accident. Someone's thought about that for hours and days and iterated and iterated and iterated and probably driven their engineers nuts having to have done the same thing a hundred times. That's what makes the difference - the team that obsesses. It's not just making a game; it's crafting a game."\n
Mithun Balraj
"It is. \n\nGame development is a team effort. Indies have to stand together. We just don't have anyone to stand with.\n\nI think it's important to reach out reginonally. There's a lot of stuff in SEA, and I'm happy that a lot of stuff's happening in this region."