Community Spotlight: Plague Inc. by Ndemic Creations
We chat with Shacknews community member James Vaughan, head of Ndemic Creations and developer of the runaway indie iOS strategy hit, Plague Inc.
Will you be able to destroy the world?
-
Jeff Mattas posted a new article, Community Spotlight: Plague Inc. by Ndemic Creations.
We chat with Shacknews community member James Vaughan, head of Ndemic Creations and developer of the runaway indie iOS strategy hit, Plague Inc.-
-
-
-
-
Well retina for iPhone is already in there so I guess you are asking about Retina for iPad.
Will be updating a number of graphical assets in 1.3 (bubbles, airport icons etc) but I don't want to promise a 100% iPad retina experience from 1.3 as I'm having to balance a lot of competing priorities at the moment.
-
-
-
Heh, fine to ask although I can't give an exact answer as I haven't actually costed my time due to having a full time job at the same time.
Plague Inc. was very much in the hobby category and if I made my costs back , it would have been a plus. However, I can give you some general cryptic snippets which will be mildly interesting / sickening so only look if you want to...
I made back my costs within 1 day of release (costs = contractors, apple dev license etc)
Plague Inc. has been more profitable than my most optimistic business case
I left my full time job a few weeks ago in order to focus on this opportunity full time
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
My comment wasn't so much about the idea, because saying you can't iterate on any idea is pure nonsense. But there seems to be a prevailing factor popping up in modern society where new ideas aren't just iterative but very sourced.
He made a better game than the original and acknowledged where it came from, so props to him. But he also said this "Plague Inc. exploits a gap in the marketplace and offers radically different gameplay to other games out there. ... It was helped by being highly polished, easy to learn but hard to master and having an intriguing concept ('you have to kill everyone')."
So in that statement it sounds like he's taking credit for every iteration and polish in his game when he really had a tried and true template to work from.
So my annoyance isn't that he made a sweet game that I enjoy, or that he doesn't acknowledged the lineage of it, but he contradicts himself in the interview and isn't calling a spade and spade.
-
-
-
-
-