Welcome back to our Meet the Devs segment! In this piece we take a little time to get to know the people who really make Android what it is today and that is the app developers. In this week’s developer interview, we are talking to Erdin Kacan of MogaMecha.
Name: Erdwin Kacan
Developer Name: MogaMecha
Country: Turkey
Website: http://ift.tt/1tGm8NE
Google + Profile/Page: Erdwin Kacan’s Google+ page
How many people on your team? 5
Apps
Save the Comet
Tell us about your company
We are a very young company that was formed at Global Game Jam 2012. Our company consists of 5 people. We were bigger at one point, smaller at another but the core team was always there. Our team has people from different ethics and jobs.
Erdin Kacan being me, is the Game Designer and the Developer of the game. At the same time a SAP Business Intelligence consultant. Oz Tova Suman (We can not reveal his real name) is our Game Designer and Project manager. He also created our beautiful UI and 3d Models. Mert Kutukoglu and Onur Sipahioglu are our 2D artists. Both had spent tremendous amounts of time drawing sketches and icons. Onur Sipahi is a Caricaturist and Mert is Industrial Product Designer. Our last guy is Burak Baduroglu, who is our Audio Designer and at the same time a Musician that plays in bars and is a kindergarten owner. Strange mix for sure! :)
You can get a lot more detailed information on our team and company at :
Team : http://ift.tt/1v8kM2B
About : http://ift.tt/1scaokD
We have been working on our game Save The Comet for about 2 years. Since we are also working on secondary jobs to survive the development process was a lot slower than it is expected to be for a mobile game. But we have took our time to polish every little detail we could.
What level of experience do you have with coding and development?
I as Lead Developer and one of the Game Designers of MogaMecha and I have about 10 years of coding experience and 2 years of game development and design experience. Oz as Game Designer and Project Manager and also our 3D and UI Designer and he has about 8 years of Graphic Design and Animation experience. Our 2D Designer Mert has about the 8 years of 2D Design and Product Design experience. Onur has about a couple years of Digital Design and about 6-7 years of Traditional Drawing experience. Burak Baduroglu also has a several years of Audio experience and also experienced as a Musician.
All of ours Game Development experiences are between 1-2 years since we have formed the company pretty much together.
What level of experience do you have with design?
I have never worked as a professional designer. But as an amateur I have created a lot visuals, posters and so on. For my own projects. You can see some of them at http://ift.tt/1scangM. As a game Designer i have been working for 2 years.
What apps have you made?
We have just released our very first game as a team. it is called Save The Comet. Also i have created a freeware app in my free times called Final Countdown. You can find it here : http://ift.tt/1v8kMiX.
How do you monetize your apps?
Minor full screen advertisement and some unique offers to show video ads. For example we offer a video ad when player wants to buy something but missing a very small portion of in game currency for it. So s/he can watch a video and we make a instant discount for them.
Do you consider yourself successful?
As of current. I am not sure I should or could be called successful. But I believe in what I do, and i believe that if do put everything I’ve got in it. I can fill this as “Yes, I am quite confident that I am”. Until then, I am a humble indie game designer.
How difficult is it to make money as a developer?
With our current download numbers, it is pretty much impossible. But with our calculations, with 500k downloads and over it is quite possible.
What can Android do to improve?
Well first of all showing disk write permission as photo and media permission is a quite big problem. I think they should be separated. We do receive a lot of complaints because we have to ask for disk write permission for caching but it is showing as photo and media in the Google Play Store. People are not happy with sharing photos and media with a game, even though we don’t want their photos at all.
Why did you choose Android? Do you develop for other platforms? What are the differences between them?
Save The Comet is planned to be released at iOS and Windows Phone at a future date. We have chosen Android first because we are more close to the environment and we do not currently have an Apple device. We haven’t choose Windows Phone as our first platform for obvious reasons, not enough people. But we will definitely release on iOS and Windows Phone.
What are your thoughts on iOS and Windows 8
Well, just a random Google search would still suggest that iOS developers make a lot more money than Android, even though Android has a lot more users worldwide, so they must be doing something right over there. As for Windows, their still relatively new on the mobile OS market, but things are looking promising for them for the future.
What are your thoughts on iOS and Windows 8?
Well, I believe iOS is a strong platform and operating system as it is. But lack of customization and control over their products are making me stay away from them, mostly.
Windows 8. Hmm. I think it is the most innovative thing ever created by Microsoft. I believe it has a great potential and ease of use. But the biggest mistake was to hurrying up and trying merge 2 very independent platforms together in a hurry. I am quite happy with where Windows 8.1 currently going. Windows Phone 8. I haven’t such beautiful interface for a long time. But currently lack of features makes it a nice looking and not very usable platform. But as a developer Android iOS and Windows 8 are all equal importance of me.
What do you think of the Android design guidelines?
Well since we are a mobile game company, they are not very applicable to us. But I do like where android going with their design policies. 4.4 seems to be trying to get a simpler design which I support.
What are your favorite apps?
I do like a lot of them. I like gReader as my reader. Switching between OneNote and Evernote from time to time. Quick Office is quite nice. Trello andBitBeaker apps are a must for a developer think. I do frequently use Social apps and Dropbox too.
What has been your experience working with Google?
It was quite a smooth experience for me. We started using Developer Console from the beginning of our Beta, so we did not have any problem while launching our game. There were only 2 concerns from me about it. First of them was it was not possible to batch upload our Achievements. We had to create and translate them on Google Play one by one for each of the 7 languages we support. And secondly, the process of joining to a Beta test is very hard and complicated for most users.
Other than those everything was quite fine.
What does the future of development look like?
Well it is getting harder and harder to shine I believe. As I am following some researches, charts and so on, it is getting a lot more expensive to be seen and a lot harder to be found. I fear it is becoming more like you “have to” have a publisher to be seen as it has been in the PC game industry for a quite long time.
What tips do you have for aspiring developers?
1 – Marketing is more important than your game.
2 – You game is “VERY” important.
3 – Small graphical issues can piss users off.
4 – Make sure restarting the game takes a very small time.
5 – See number 1.
We want to thank MogaMecha for chatting with us in this week’s developer interviews! If you’re a developer and this looks like something you’d like to do, check out our Meet the Devs form! We look forward to hearing from you.
from Android Authority http://ift.tt/1ssnnzN
