“‘Rule-breaking is creative,’ Alistair Aitcheson says in his presentation to the audience at GameHorizon. ‘Laughter trumps fairness,'” Cara Ellison reports for The Guardian. “It’s this theory of schadenfreude he has come to the conference to discuss: how pitting us against each other can strengthen friendships, and bring players of games closer.”
“Aitcheson is a one-man indie studio, a first class mathematics graduate who has spent the past three years running his business as an entirely one-man enterprise,” Ellison reports. “Mainly focusing on iOS games, he launched Greedy Bankers [US$2.99] onto the App Store in February 2011. The game gets you to group gems into squares and rectangles to maximise your use of space and revenue. You tap them to cash them in. It’s a simple, fun idea that sold well.”
Ellison reports, “But talking at GameHorizon in Newcastle last week, Aitcheson explained that when he added multiplayer mode to the iPad exclusive version – and encouraged players to cheat and steal from each other – he started to see the potential of the iPad as a social linchpin… Aitcheson decided to take this idea further on the iPad. Slamjet Stadium [US$2.99] is a shared screen multiplayer game with a futuristic deathball theme. It received a gold award from Pocket Gamer and was “new and noteworthy” on the Apple store in 61 countries. Another simple idea: grab a character with your finger, launch it to hit the ball into the opposing team’s goal.”
Read more in the full article here.
Every so often some developer “re-discovers” good old multi-player
Nice. Not really into social gaming, but it’s still cool that Apple is doing this.
That is a nice way of making money. iOS really is the system of Choise.