Mobile gaming is expected to be a $37 billion industry by the end of this year, growing to $52.5 billion by 2019--by then accounting for 45% of total worldwide gaming revenue. Gunslinger Studios, a new Chicago gaming studio launched by veteran video game developer Tim Harris, wants to put its own spin on mobile gaming with multi-player battle games you play one minute at a time, with only your thumb.
The idea is to make more sophisticated, competitive mobile games that people can play quickly while on the go. The company's first product, Exiles of Embermark, is a mobile combat game that will be available in the summer of 2017. By using a vertical format, rather than horizontal, players can navigate the game with one hand.
"All of us that are making games have designed for landscape mode, designing games for computer screens and television screens," Harris said. "But if you’re on the L, you can’t use two hands ... 90 percent of the time you're pulling out your phone, it's 60 seconds or less."
In recent years there's been a debate among online video publishers about vertical versus horizontal videos, and whether to make content that fits a computer screen versus a smart phone. Many YouTube creators and other digital video makers have despised vertical videos, as they look awkward when viewed on desktop. But as Snapchat, Vine and other social video startups have shown, people watch a ton of vertical video on their phones. And if you aren't maximizing your videos for mobile, you're being left behind.
Similar conversations are happening in the mobile gaming space, where "serious" video game creators have made content to fit the landscape modes of TV and computer desktops, while eschewing vertical gaming popularized by Candy Crush and other puzzle-based games. Clash Royale, released earlier this year, was among the early entrants in the mobile multi-player gaming space that utilized vertical content. It quickly became the top grossing iOS game in the US.
Exiles will follow the Clash Royale's vertical video model, but with even shorter gameplay (Clash Royale's games take 3 to 4 minutes). Harris, who started his video game development career in Chicago and left for Pasadena, CA in 2011 to found mobile gaming shop Industrial Toys, is now back in Chicago with Gunslinger. He said Gunslinger, which currently has a team of eight, expects to roll out several games after the launch of Exiles.
"(Exiles) is really the prototype," he said. "The back end, the actual piece of technology we’re building, doesn't care what the front end is. It's built to support any number of multi-player games."
Harris said the next game out of Gunslinger could be a boxing or basketball game, and he hopes to eventually have a library of Gunslinger-created games.
To fuel its growth, Gunslinger recently raised $1.4 million in funding from investors including Chicago Ventures, Third Wave Digital and gaming industry angels Gregory Milken and Rob Goldberg. The company plans to make money in two ways: in-game purchases that allow players to buy gear for their characters like swords and shields, as well as events. Harris said Gunslinger plans to bring the live gaming excitement of e-sports to mobile gaming, and host 64-team bracket tournaments.
One benefit of Gunslinger's format is its tournaments could begin and end in as little as 15 minutes as each match takes only 60 seconds.
Harris added that he's excited to be back in Chicago and to rejoin the city's strong, yet underrated gaming community--after all Chicago's Midway Games created popular titles like Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam, and Chicago-based Phosphor Games Studio has created one of the most popular VR games today, The Brookhaven Experiment.
"Chicago actually has a quite a robust gaming community. It just doesn't get a whole lot of credit for it."
Images via Gunslinger
