The Maltese gaming company VRTron recently released its very first video game called ‘Languinis’, and has quickly become the number one word game in over 100 countries including the USA, Germany and the UK, its creator said.
“Languinis is a casual game aimed at people who enjoy playing Candycrush or bejewelled. It’s a Match 3 game with a twist, blended with a word game. Think of a mixture between Candycrush and Scrabble,” VRTron CEO Ingo Mesche explains.
Mr Mesche was born in Germany and moved to Malta many years ago. He has been developing games for the past 25 years. “Most of my ideas came to me from everyday situations. I was playing with my son and had found a name for every letter in the alphabet. This is how the characters of ‘Languinis’ came about. I wanted to create a word game which he could also play. My wife was playing mainly Match 3 games at the time so that’s basically how the idea was born, by combining these two worlds.”
The game has had very positive reviews across the board Mr Mesche said. “I am very pleased with the cross-generational appeal, as parents are playing the game with their children.” It also acts as an educational tool, helping children learn to spell.
‘Languinis’ involves uncovering match tiles which reveal letters and form words to meet the level objectives, using power-ups to help along the way. “There are 75 levels split across 15 lavishly hand-drawn islands, and more to come with content updates.”
Nowadays, multiplayer gaming is an important component to help promote the social activity of gamers. Currently, Languinis allows several people to play on a single device; however “a multiplayer mode is currently in the making.”
He was unable to give too much detail on this aspect as it has not yet been announced. He said that people would be able to play with Facebook friends or any random Facebook player.
The game has been translated into six languages and is available as a mobile application and can also be played on Facebook, he explained.
“There’s a quite a funny story here. We had to update the game as players were having issues finding the option to switch the language to English. Through an update, The British flag, Spanish flag and flags of the other languages would appear in the start-up screen. Then American users created uproar, asking why we had removed English from the game. They hadn’t recognised the British flag. We then changed the graphics for the flag, and it is now a half British /half USA flag”.
So do players have to pay to play Languinis? The answer is no. “Languinis is a free-to-play game, meaning that anyone can download the game without paying a cent. There are however, optional payable downloads that would help players advance at a quicker pace.”
Casual mobile games are normally intended for women aged between 30 and 60, yet Languinis is slightly different due to its educational appeal.
So how does a game developer make money from free games?
“Making money from such a game is not easy, and having a large number of downloads is very important. Roughly two per cent of those who download Languinis are willing to pay for the optional downloads. We believe that by the end of the year we will make a profit.” Currently, the game has around 700,000 downloads on IOS and Android.
Asked about the profitability of the mobile phone gaming industry, he spoke of video-game giant Konami. Konami is traditionally a console developer, but recently began creating games for the mobile genre. “Blockbuster games like Metal Gear Solid are now less important than their mobile games section, as it is a huge in this market. It’s harder and more expensive to develop for the niche console market. Don’t get me wrong, the budget required to create a good mobile game is rising, and quite an investment is required to be up to standard,” Mr Mesche said.
The man behind the game
VRTron was set up in summer of 2014 and currently has eight employees… 10 with freelancers.
Although VRTron was established last summer, Mr Mesche has worked on a large number of games, with one of his more famous ones called ‘Moorhuhn’ created in 1998. Moorhuhn had over 80 million downloads at a time when mobile phones were not very advanced. “The success of this game could be compared to that of Angry Birds today. It was an advertising game made for Johnny Walker Scotch Whiskey, and in fact was one of the first advertising games in the world. Through the ad-game, it wanted to strike at its competitor the Famous Grouse, another whiskey producer. The game was created as a promotion for the whiskey company, and people were able to play the game in clubs and pubs through promoters. Two years later, the game became a craze in Germany, where newspapers wrote about it and singers sung about it. ‘Moohuhn’ is the most successful game ever in Germany.”
So how do ad-games work?
An ad-game promotes a product seamlessly in a game. As an example, he said he made a game for Coca-Cola where you had to open bottles that promote all their different brands.
In financial terms, ad-games work differently to normal games he explained. “You got paid for the development and that’s it. Today things have started to change as there are royalties involved that allows developers to earn through sales.”
Mr Mesche explains that there is no specific price tag or budget for making an ad-game, as essentially it’s the content or genre of the game that dictates the price. “On average however, a casual game costs around $100k to make. We are seeing more and more such games with a budget of over a million dollars however.
Mr Mesche has made games for the Swiss government and UNICEF. One particular game he made was called ‘Catch the sperm’, and was aimed at raising awareness on sexually transmitted diseases. “It was a very successful campaign that began in Switzerland and was sold by the government to several other European governments and institutions.”
In the game, players control a condom gun, and shoot condoms over sperm and STDs as they fly towards the user.
One of his first games called ‘Space Max’ was created in 1991, developed in conjunction with NASA. “It was a space station simulation where the player had to manage a Space Station. We had a consultant from NASA who gave us information etc.”
Competition in the mobile games market is very tough. “The tools to make games are becoming easier to use and the quality of these games is constantly on the rise. Obviously, gaming companies can see the demand for such games and more and more people are entering the field. This results in more companies developing games and the market is now quite cluttered. Languinis is our first mobile game and we all hope it will succeed. Development of the game took the whole team more than a year, so these games do cost money to make.”
Concept design of a game in the making.
Future projects
The VRTron team will be working on Languinis 2 in the future, as well as on a few other projects. “We are working on a jump and run game, a strategy game and a shoot-’em-up. The shoot-’em-up is sci-fi oriented, where players control a space ship flying over planets with random terrain. It will be played from a first-person view. The strategy game is a board game that involves mathematics.
As for the future of the company, the CEO explains that once a company develops a successful game, the company can grow, and this is his dream following the recent release of Languinis. “We will soon enlarge the team to help continue servicing the game while expanding our work on other games. My dream is to have an art studio, a sound studio, a programming department and so on.”
The video game industry in Malta is still in its infancy, Mr Mesche says. “I was one of the first software developers in Malta and now more and more companies have started or moved here.”
Malta lacks creative training for artists and designers specifically for the video games industry, Mr Mesche says, highlighting the need for more training in this field. “I have found a great artist in Malta and we were really lucky.”
“I think there are some very talented people here who are willing to learn and train. In some cases it’s not something you can teach, you must be artistic to begin with”.
At present, VRTron is looking for two programmers and a level designer. In the case of the level designer, he must have experience in Match 3 games and show an interest in word games.
Mr Mesche runs another company called AV Technologies, which handles research and development.
The company is working on a rather interesting project, hologram development. Mr Mesche thrives on creativity, and has come up with quite a few interesting ideas. “I had come up with the idea for a volumetric display and received an EU grant in order to develop the concept. It’s a complete volumetric display, where if you look at it from any side the image appears in 3D. You can really walk around it and see the 3D image from all angles without any special aid or glasses.”
The project, although a prototype has been built, is still in the early stages and work is ongoing. “I am currently in talks with quite a large company who would like to take it to the next step”
Languinis can be found on www.languinisgame.com