Wow. Hard to believe it’s October, already!

Well. Maybe not that hard. We have been flying over here at Finger Food for the past few weeks, finalizing all of the projects from the summer. And, a busy summer it was.

We just released our second project, Yoga Teacher, but let’s rewind to the one before that, which snuck it’s way onto the App Store in September:

Axe: The Beautiful Game

Axe: The Beautiful Game was a little ditty we put together for a very cool promotion being done by Axe and GMR Marketing for the 2010 World Cup .

The game is a “spot the differences” picture search featuring charming soccer fans from around the world and is available on iTunes right now for free!

Yoga Teacher

Next up, comes Yoga Teacher – an App we build for Isabel Rumilla of Abundant Creature Inc. Her vision – to create an extremely high-quality interactive educational experience for all Yoga Students.

To realize this goal, Finger Food tapped our roots in 3D game development and set forth to build something truly unique. As the vision condensed, a full 3D environment, and dynamically posable “student” emerged. From there, we applied our game design sensibilities and together with Abundant Creature, we drove forward to create what we feel is the most unique and compelling Yoga App on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Next Up: ????

Well. We can’t say just yet – however, two more should be headed to submission this week, followed by some crazy partnerships we’ve struck up for the next round of products which will be shipping between now and Christmas ‘09.

Stay tuned…… we won’t be strangers!

Sometimes, there are just too many coincidences in life. In the past few days, I have had a triumvirate of convergence on a few big ideas. One, in particular, is particularly salient for iPhone developers, and our clients, so I thought I’d take a couple minutes to write it down!

It’s time to think small!

What does this mean? Let me explain:

• It’s 2009, and we are in the middle of a major recession.
• People are motivated to get the best bang for their buck – be it developing an idea, or purchasing a product, it’s about value and efficiency!
• The large scale, monolithic solutions of the past have proven to be not nearly as efficient as we thought they were – inability to manage the complexity and timeline of these efforts results in failure, overrun, and expense more often than not!
• Not every idea is the “best idea” ever, but sometimes you have to try it to find out. Going big may not be the best idea until you receive some validation!

Most iPhone developers are probably ringing the bell already saying, “Dude. You’re preaching to the choir”. But, you know what? There are actually as many iPhone developers falling into the trap as anyone else. Maybe the traps are a little smaller, but there have been some really uncomfortable threads lately on TouchArcade and the blog-o-sphere that lead me to think that we might not have this thing dialed in yet.

What really breaks my heart is seeing stories of 6 months of life energy plus $50K+ invested in games that never really took off. There’s nothing funny about people putting their absolute best effort forward and seeing the results come up short.

I’m certainly not saying that I have the answers, but I think we need to be realistic about sales potential and getting our messages out there in the simplest, smallest packages possible to let the Digital Democracy vote on them. If people vote, “Yes, give me more.” then that’s great. If they vote, “Not interested.” then it’s time for the next idea.

How do we do this? Some ideas:

• Reusable components and technologies: Don’t write your own engine. Use something like Cocos2D for 2D Apps, Unity or Oolong for 3D, and don’t shy away from UIKit and Quartz2D! You can actually do a lot of simple games just using the built in technologies. For other Apps, there are a ton of great utilities and libraries out there for managing Internet connections, HTTP, compression, etc.
• Bite sized chunks: A lesson we learned in handheld console development was the importance of people’s usage patterns. People consume handheld content differently than other platforms. Think of 5 minute experiences and how to maximize your content for reuse and consumability. Longer play patterns should be supported by multiple iterations through levels, but there is rarely justification for epic content in mobile apps.
• Micro transactions: Release of OS3.0 finally opens the door for in-App commerce. Although the benefits of this have been discussed in detail all over the Web, it cannot be overlooked how critically this changes the model. Release of the initial content is really the new “preview” of the App, and the goal should be to keep your users coming back for more and new experiences over the lifetime of the App.
• Realism: There are some great stories about guys buying Lambo’s off their fart App, but the reality is that the market is settling down. If you can’t make your game App for less than 1/2 of your realistic potential revenue from sales, then think twice. If you still think the experiment is worthwhile, go in with open eyes and do your best!

There is still a vast frontier out there for iPhone Apps – the trick is to keep yourself in business until the 200 millionth iPhone is sold, and then we can all revisit the strategy yet again!