Karsten Wysk Interview

Dec 16 2011
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Karsten Wysk, CEO of Mobilebits, talks about developing 3D games for many platforms. Karsten shares observations about the various platforms as a developer who has been writing games for 15 years. He goes on to talk about Mobilebits’ open source game engine, Delta Engine, that enables .net developers to deploy to all the appStores from one code base.

Links referenced in the show:

The music in the show, Have Mercy — Big Walter Horton, was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley.

Transcription

  1. Karsten 00:00:22

    So my name is Karsten Wysk. I am the CEO and co-founder of MobileBits. And we are doing two things: doing a multi-platform technology called Delta Engine and we are doing games using this engine.

  2. Ryan 00:00:36

    This is really cool. So I guess, which came first? You were doing game development and you found a need and then you started building the platform or did you find yourself interested in building a platform first and then you made games as a proof of concept?

  3. Karsten 00:00:49

    Actually, the games were first. We have been developing games for almost 15 years now, starting very early when we were 16. So actually, my co-founders are all friends from school. And we have been doing PC games since then. And then a few years ago also switched over to console development. And then the iPhone came out and then we said, “Oh, let’s do iPhone games or games for mobile phones.” And then -- but we had challenges how to do it because we only knew how to develop games on a PC. And then we thought maybe it’s a good idea to do an engine which allows you to continue to create games on the PC but they will also run on iPhone, Android, or whatever will be out there. And then that’s why the Delta Engine was born.

  4. Ryan 00:01:40

    It’s interesting that you built Delta Engine on .NET. Well, I guess mostly just interesting because I feel like whenever I hear people talk about cross-platform solutions they’re talking about you would do things in HTML and then somehow do a wrapper or convert that. But actually going from .NET, I know there’s the Mono projects, but I just don’t feel like I hear about them as much.

  5. Karsten 00:02:06

    For us, there are two game development worlds. First, there’s the browser world (they use Flash or HTML5) and then there’s the native world. Normally, we develop games in C++ so you’re right. .NET or C# is not the normal or not what most people do. So why do we do .NET? Actually, we have been doing the first commercial C# game ever in 2004; it was called Arena Wars. And we also developed this with .NET just because our CTO is a big fan of .NET and he thinks that developing games with .NET is much more efficient and much faster than doing it with C++. So that’s our experience and some people think .NET is slow and you don’t get the good performance and stuff compared to C++, but that’s not our experience. It’s just not true. So all of our games we develop are very, very performant. Even running on low-hardware are very, very good. And you just save so much time with .NET because you don’t have to worry about memory leaks and other stuff so it’s much easier and much faster to do it. It’s just most people know C++ and that’s why they use it. It’s not because it’s faster or whatever. So why don’t we use HTML5 and other things? So Flash obviously doesn’t work on mobile devices or doesn’t work well and HTML5 is something, you know, I experience with hash of course a big future hash but only for certain types of games or apps.

  6. Ryan 00:03:44

    Yeah. It’s worth mentioning to people that despite the fact that you’re doing a lot of mobile games here, we’re not talking about casual games for all of these. I mean, these are some rich, 3D-experience games.

  7. Karsten 00:03:57

    Exactly. And so you can do something like Mafia Wars or something with HTML5 where you just have more or less a Website and you press a button to take them up or whatever and then you wait 30 seconds and then it’s done. So these type of games are perfect for HTML5, but if you have a game with 3D graphics or even a zoomable lens/zoomable map and something like that, it will be really, really hard to do it in HTML5 or not really possible. If you want to have a look at the current state of HTML5 games, just look at the Facebook games (HTML5 Facebook games) which were released (I don’t know) 2 months ago from Facebook with a big announcement that they now have HTML5 games. Also for mobile. And they’re just so -- they’re even much worse than Flash games. So it’s -- it works (HTML5 games) but they’re, like, ten years behind native development.

  8. RP: Right. The tools are still very primitive depending on what kind of problem you need to solve.

  9. Karsten 00:04:59

    Exactly. And so for the type of games we’re doing, HTML5 is not in competition. So we need to do native development and we just do .NET because that’s the best way to do it. We know that most people use C++, but actually people who can do C++, it’s very easy for them to also learn C# and everything so it’s not a big difference.

  10. Ryan 00:05:21

    Cool. And so, let’s see; platforms that you’re currently supporting with this is you’ve got Windows, iPad, you know, IOS in general, Android, Windows Phone 7, and it looks like you’ve got what, Xbox 360. Even supporting Linux and some sort of Web support coming down the line. I mean, really, just everything. When you say you support every platform, this is pretty true.

  11. Karsten 00:05:48

    So the rule of thumb is wherever there’s Mono there will also be support with the Delta Engine. And since on all of these platforms there are some kind of Mono support, we can also use this to get the Delta Engine running on these platforms. And right now we are focusing on mobile platforms so it works great on IOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7. But the other (Xbox and Linux), they’re in a status where we probably have made some tests and so it will probably work, but we aren’t in a status that we can actually just press a button and then it’s on this platform. But this will require more work. But it will eventually also work on these platforms.

  12. Ryan 00:06:35

    That’s pretty cool. I mean, this is one of the more ambitious Mono projects that I’ve seen outside of, you know, like, MonoTouch or something like that. It seems like, for the most part, if I see things built on Mono they’re little WinForms apps, you know, that happen to be, you know, cross-platform. But actually, you know, rich 3D games; this is really impressive. It’s interesting to see how far that idea can go.

  13. Karsten 00:07:03

    And so it was a lot of work and still is. Actually, the Delta Engine is based on our Extreme Engine (the engine we used for our Arena Wars game in 2004). So it’s, like, really years and years of R&D in this engine. And so now we worked for about two years to get really on the Delta Engine, but again, like, four years before there was work on the Extreme Engine. And so there’s really a lot of work going into it and we’re still not done. So we want to come into a state where we can really just develop the game on a PC, press a button, and then you get an iPhone app out of it. Right now, it’s still a bit of work (manual work) required to get this done, but we are already down to (for some games we’re already down to) a few hours. And soon we’ll want to have this down even to just a click for certain types of games. But we’re getting there.

  14. Ryan 00:08:00

    Now this leads up to something very interesting because you say you sit down to a PC and you push a button and you kick out an iPhone app. For anyone who’s looked into making iPhone apps, that’s not how that works in general. So what makes your solution different?

  15. Karsten 00:08:17

    So the big difference to other platforms out there is that we have a really unique structure. Actually, the Delta Engine itself is a free, open-source engine for the PC. So you just go to DeltaEngine.net and download the engine for free and you can do whatever you want with it. So how does it then come to an iPhone or Android or whatever? To do this, you actually need our cloud services. So, for example, if you will use content on your game, you just drag it into the content manager, which is a tool we provide. This content manager automatically uploads it into the cloud and converts it in the cloud into the appropriate format you need for your target platforms. So, for example, for IOS you need PVR textures and these textures you just drag into the content manager and they’re automatically transformed into this format. You don’t have to care for it; you don’t have to know. That’s one of the big things for the Delta Engine. You don’t need to be a specialist for all these new platforms. Just stay a PC and Windows developer and we will try to take care of the rest. So just use our content manager and use our cloud services and then your game will work on Android, iPhone, and whatever. So that’s the target. As I said, we are not 100% there yet but that’s where we want to go through.

  16. Ryan 00:09:48

    That’s a pretty lofty goal. That’s an impressive, you know, challenge to attack. It seems like with other cross-platform building frameworks they’re having enough troubles with rather simple interfaces; trying to make them performant. And then to attack, you know, again. Like, this is, like, one of the most, you know, intense kinds of programming, right? Like, doing 3D gaming. Like, this is pretty impressive work.

  17. Karsten 00:10:18

    Yeah. So I can tell you a lot of things, but you have to check it out yourself. In a few weeks we’ll release our game; Soulcraft, it’s called. And it’s, like, our lighthouse project showing off the power of the Delta Engine. And it will come out on Android first, but later, in 2012 (early 2012), it will also come out on IOS and Windows Phone 7. And this will actually show that we don’t have performance issues with it. It’s actually very, very good-looking and very fluid also on mobile devices. And this was a lot of work to get it done, but it really works and we’re pretty proud of it that this looks so good on a mobile device.

  18. RP: Well, you snuck me a sneak peak of a trailer and it does look pretty good. I’m pretty excited to play this game. I think this looks like a lot of fun.

  19. Karsten 00:11:10

    Thanks. Actually, NVIDIA has been using this game to show off their hardware. We were invited at the CES keynote from NVIDIA earlier this year and they showed off the Tegra 2 with this game and our engine and they also used this game again for Tegra 3. So we are proud that even big companies like NVIDIA show off their hardware with our engine and game.

  20. Ryan 00:11:38

    Hey, that’s a heck of a feather for your cap there. I mean, if NVIDIA’s using you to show off, you know, how great they can be, I mean, that’s an amazing testament to what you’re doing.

  21. Karsten 00:11:47

    Yeah. Thanks. We’re really happy with that as well. And especially because NVIDIA was then very nice. Really good support, giving us free hardware and stuff so that’s really good as well.

  22. RP: Very cool. Now you had mentioned that you’re going to go with Android first. And this is not an arbitrary decision for you. You have a really interesting reason why that is.

  23. Karsten 00:12:11

    So if you would only consider the market, you would probably just say, of course, IOS is at least currently still the most important platform so you’d go there first. But in our opinion, if you do a game today it’s probably going to be a free-to-play game and so you’re going to do lots of updates and you’re going to add lots of stuff later on down the road. And that’s why you need a platform which you can actually do these kind of maintenance updates very easily. And that’s why we go for Android first because, with this, we don’t have to wait for Apple to accept our updates and you can’t plan when they will be accepted. So you don’t know if it will be in two days or two weeks. And with Android you just upload it and one hour later or something even shorter, everybody in the world has your new version. So that’s really the main reason for us to go to Android first and use this as a lead platform and then only put the stable versions or the bigger changes to IOS and the other platforms.

  24. Ryan 00:13:18

    That’s really neat. Yeah, that’s a thing that I feel like I don’t hear people complain about as much as I would expect with IOS development. I mean, so it’s one thing for them to kind of monitor your content and kind of tell you what kinds of things you can and can’t do. And that’s acceptable, I think, for a lot of people in the same ways that, you know, like, getting some things on the Xbox. You know, you’ve got to have to have certain ratings, you know, getting into Live. But the idea that their workflow can actually stop you from, like, debugging your game? Like, that just seems crazy to me, right? Like, slowing down that iteration? Like, that seems like the thing I’m surprised people aren’t more up in arms about.

  25. Karsten 00:13:58

    I think it’s not only crazy, I think it’s getting more crazy down the road because you’ll have more and more games really working in this free-to-play model where you don’t have your game not only as a product which you just ship once and then you kind of forget about it, but you operate the game for half a year or even a few years and extend your brand and really offer it as a service and not only as a product. And this kind of workflow needs you to be able to really manage your customers or manage the experience of your customers because when there’s a bug in your app, which certainly will happen at some point, your customers will be angry at you and you can’t tell them, “Yeah, I uploaded the new version but Apple hasn’t approved it yet.” We tried but customers don’t accept that. It’s your game and they want you to be in control of it and so that’s why I think it’s not a good way to operate an app store in a free-to-play or in the service kind of approach to games and that’s why this particular advantage of Android will become more important over time.

  26. Ryan 00:15:10

    Yeah. I personally work with the Web, you know, more than doing, like, distributed apps and it just seems like the rule of thumb is you’ve got to release early and release often. And get it out there, you know, before it’s perfect because you may not know you’re going in the right direction. You know, it’s kind of -- it seems like it’s more just the way that the Web works. And it seems almost archaic to me to see, you know, native app development not working that way. So, I mean, this is really cool that you bring this point up and say, you know, “There’s a very good reason to shoot for Android first despite what, you know, people kind of accept to be true about the marketplaces and things like that. Just say, you know, technically, this is, you know, more friendly to developers.” Especially if you’re doing, like, a cross-platform play like you’re doing anyway.

  27. Karsten 00:15:58

    Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know, but my feeling is that a lot of people don’t like how it’s done for Apple, but a lot of people also don’t want to speak out because they don’t want to have the problem of not being featured or something with Apple so they’re just not saying anything. So that’s I guess one of the reasons why you probably don’t hear complaints aloud on the Web about this (somewhere about this).

  28. Ryan 00:16:25

    Well, what I’ve heard from various IOS developers is that if you were to explain it to them, they would it’s far from ideal, but the checks keep getting cashed. So everyone just kind of agrees with it as long as the money keeps getting passed out, right?

  29. KW: Yeah. That’s true. As long as you make money, you’re happy. That’s probably true.

  30. RP: We don’t need to make this some sort of, you know, spiritual debate. Let’s just get paid.

  31. Karsten 00:16:54

    Yeah. So you have to give Apple credit for really making an amazing ecosystem which works economically for lots of developers. So that’s really a big achievement. But just -- it probably was a good way to do it to avoid having, I don’t know, fart apps all over the app store in the beginning and kind of have a bad experience for initial customers. But the market is changing and especially when it changed towards a more service kind of game, this workflow is probably no longer the best to do it. I think it’s not such a big problem for Apple to change it. If I were Apple I would do it like that; still have an initial check of your app, but then if you have, I don’t know, at a certain threshold you kind of get the rank of a trusted developer and then you can do updates without asking Apple. And only if they get complaints then they will just remove this trusted developer stage from you and then you’ll have to check everything again. But this would be much easier for developers and I guess they won’t have much problems. Because if I really want to trick something in my app, it’s so easy to do it even with current checks. So I can just do something like that he’s asking the server if he wants to activate some kind of strange feature in your app and Apple will never notice it. So if I want to trick Apple I can still do it, but I don’t because I want to continue to earn money. And so it’s kind of strange that they insist on checking everything I’m doing because they can’t really do it anyway.

  32. Ryan 00:18:35

    Yeah. It’s interesting because it does feel reminiscent of, like, you know, DRM arms races, right? Like, it does seem like at a certain point it feels like an old battle that I thought we all agreed that that’s not the right way to solve this problem anymore. You know what else I’d be remiss to not ask you about, because this is -- you’ve been doing this for you said 15 years, right? And you started off and you were doing PC game development and you did some console development and you were in the trenches. You can really compare, legitimately, trying to do console development versus now, you know, these platforms like IOS and Android. And what are your thoughts about it as, you know, as a veteran, to see this new marketplace come?

  33. Karsten 00:19:20

    I think it’s a big step ahead for smaller developers at first because you don’t have to ask for permission for some publishers or get a publisher to get the game out. You could just do it and if it’s good you may be very lucky and then you have a (like a) Angry Birds kind of success. Of course, you need to be very lucky that this happens. I guess, like, my personal guess is that if you take games like Tiny Wings or Angry Birds, which are really, really great, but there are probably 50 other games out there which are just as great but they didn’t have the luck of getting popular. So it’s not alone that you make great games; still you need to be lucky, whatever. But that’s how life is; no need to complain about it. But, in total, it’s a big step ahead that you can actually have the chance to be lucky and publish your game. And only if the clients or the gamers like it you will be successful, so that’s really great. So you get not 10% or 1% of the retail sales, but at least 17, which is great.

  34. Ryan 00:20:26

    Yeah. I think that’s something worth mentioning there. I think sometimes people don’t think about it and they say, “Wow, I’ve got to give up 30%. Like, right off the bat I’ve got to give up 30%,” but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to what you used to have to give up, right?

  35. Karsten 00:20:39

    Exactly. And so when we did our first games, of course we were, like - I think when I signed the first contract I was probably 18 or something like that. And of course I had no clue at all about how stuff works.

  36. RP: In general, right?

  37. Karsten 00:20:54

    Yeah. So I think we worked with a German publisher. And I think our deal was from a 30 Mark (it was the German Mark at the time so I don’t know) -- 15 euro. We didn’t even go up to one Mark. So we didn’t even get 50 cents per sale or something like that. So which is, of course, not even 10% of the sales price. And, of course then, it’s much better to have something like 70% and you actually can see what’s going on and you have more transparency. So that’s really a big step ahead. But still, for indies it’s great. But we at least try to become more professional and try to have games with bigger budgets. And then I also see the point of having a structure like Xbox Live Arcade, for example, where you’re just more certain that your investment will pay off. And this is somehow required for bigger budget titles because you just can’t invest a few hundred thousand euro in the title and then do not know if you will be featured by Apple. So what I would like to have is to have some kind of premium store for all platforms or for both Android, Windows Phone 7, and IOS where you do have the chance to submit your game very, very early before development begins or in a kind of prototype stage, then they agree to have this in this premium shop, and then you can actually invest the money of making a great game out of it. Otherwise it’s just not feasible to spend so much money. I think this will be a huge step forward to get more console-quality gaming also on mobile devices.

  38. Ryan 00:22:47

    Yeah. That’s an interesting thing that you bring up because I think a lot of times you get into this debate between sort of I’ll just call it, you know, the Android way and the IOS way, right? Like, do you want it to be open or do you want it to be well-manicured? And that’s kind of a false argument because it can be both, right? It can more easily be better-manicured on Android in the current state of things because there’s no reason that this kind of, you know, free marketplace can’t somehow be curated, but yeah, I mean, ultimately, this is a very young industry and to say that either of the camps is correct this early would be naive.

  39. Karsten 00:23:29

    Yeah. So I just think since on Android it is possible to have different app stores and they will not only be the Android market but, like, every OEM and every carrier will probably integrate its own app store version, I guess there will emerge some kind of premium app store anyway.

  40. RP: Seems logical.

  41. Karsten 00:23:53

    Yeah. So Apple will also wake up and say, “probably, not only having this featured app is probably something which is not enough so we want to have, like, a premium partnership program for certain developers.” And so this will -- it always ends up the same that it gets more professional and you have certain, like, ABC customers and ABC developers or whatever. So I guess it’s just a natural thing; how to do it. But I would never like to miss this really open Android way to do things that everybody can just do things and just publish it. Otherwise we won’t have games like Minecraft or whatever.

  42. RP: Right. That’s a good example.

  43. Karsten 00:24:32

    But nobody would ever think this would work. And you need this creativity and office-open world. And if a game works in this, like, with low budget means, you can always make it again with big budget if it’s worth it. But having this open source funnel at the beginning; I don’t want to miss it anymore.

  44. Ryan 00:24:56

    Yeah. You know, it seems the openness of a platform is even more important to games now now that you mention that. Because if you think about a lot of the successful games that you’ve ever played, like, if you were trying to explain that to someone (like the elevator pitch), some of them just sound almost ridiculous. But, you know, you sit down and you just have to play it and then that’s where the magic happens, right? When it’s more the feel of it than the think of it, right? That’s the Kubrick quote.

  45. Karsten 00:25:21

    Yeah. So my personal favorite for this is really Tiny Wings. I love this game. Actually, it was made I think from one German in Kiel, which is a small city nearby here. He’s a student and he made it, like, all on his own and one year later he got featured by the Apple keynote. So that’s really, really amazing. But nobody would, like, if you pitched Tiny Wings; you have a bird who cannot fly and you have to press a button to have some kind of physical inputs going on. It’s just -- okay, that’s going to be very, very boring very soon. But if you play it it’s, like, very addictive.

  46. Ryan 00:26:00

    Yeah. That’s a great example. And also you bring up, you know, such a nice thing to tease up; especially in an industry that’s so hits-based. And then one year later he had an overnight success.

  47. Karsten 00:26:13

    Yeah. So I think it’s good that, in general, the markets have become more long-tailed, if you wanted to use that kind of words. But you still need an area where you can assure that you have a bit -- you can sell the short-tail. Because otherwise you won’t have big investments in games if you can’t reduce your risk a bit for these type of games.

  48. RP: Well, there needs to be a place for both, right, because they both serve different needs. So soon you’re going to launch Soulcraft; you said before Christmas, right?

  49. KW: Yeah. The open beta will start before Christmas. Exactly. Go to SoulcraftGame.com to -- but not now because we haven’t launched the Website yet.

  50. RP: Well, hang on. Don’t tell them that now because it might be there by the time we get this thing posted.

  51. KW: Okay. So go to SoulcraftGame.com and download the game.

  52. Ryan 00:27:09

    Yeah. It looks like a lot of fun. Hey, you know, let’s just tease up one more thing. Because you talk about free-to-play and this isn’t just a proof of concept. This is a serious endeavor that you’re going into. So how do you make money off of it if people don’t have to pay?

  53. Karsten 00:27:23

    It’s actually the pretty typical way to do free-to-play games. So you play as an angel, demon, or human and you try to save the world or win the world I should rather say. And of course you have certain equipment if you play as an angel, for example. And if you want to have a better sword or better equipment or better armor or better spells you can just play a lot and earn a lot of in-game currency, which is souls in our case and then buy this stuff and get this stuff from the shop. But if you maybe don’t want to play so long or want to progress quicker or if you want a certain type of item, you can also just use gold which is the real currency which you buy with real money. And then, of course, you can just have more fun if you spend money. So that’s the idea. You can buy everything for free, you can get everything for free if you just play long enough and are good enough, but if you want to speed up things and just want to have a bit more fun, you just spend a euro or a dollar or whatever you want and then you can get more out of the game more quickly.

  54. Ryan 00:28:35

    Very cool. And, you know, you’re entrenched in this so you say this is pretty typical but, you know, for developers who may or may not pay that much attention to the gaming world, that might be, you know, pretty clever to them; the idea that it’s different than freemium as we know it with other products, right? Like, the idea that, basically, what you’re paying is for your own impatience, which I think is really interesting; especially in games.

  55. Karsten 00:28:58

    Yeah, yeah. That’s one of the big things which you can try to monetize on the impatience (of the guys) of the players. However, I get there’s still a big difference if you have something like Farmville or something. You are also sometimes paying -- I think very funny that it actually works. Some of the things in Farmville is that you have an assistant actually playing the game for you, which is kind of ridiculous that you’re paying money that you don’t have to play the game. So actually doing harvesting crops or something, which is, like, the core thing which you do in Farmville. And if you don’t want to do it, you can pay somebody to do it for you. Which is, yeah, it would be the same as if you play, I don’t know, Quake and then you pay somebody playing the level for you so you can only watch or just tell your friends that you achieved the level. Which I think is really funny, but people do it. I don’t know why but they still do it.

  56. Ryan 00:29:56

    There is some crazy psychological mojo happening there with Farmville and a couple of games like that because, yeah, it is super-hard to explain why they are so huge and they are super-huge. But yeah, if you tried to explain it to anyone they’d just look at you like you’re crazy. Like why would anyone do that? And honestly I can’t tell you. All I know is that they do. And oftentimes the parts that it sounds like you like the least are actually what make them work, right? Like teasing people out, making them wait, things like that; that seems to part of the addictive nature. It’s crazy.

  57. Karsten 00:30:30

    I think it’s probably also think of the target group. So Farmville type of games are played by women (I don’t know); 30-year old women who are raising the children at home. And who understands women? So maybe that’s one of the reasons. I don’t know.

  58. Ryan 00:30:47

    And do you know what else is interesting about that is also, like, not what people say is a typical game demographic. So you couldn’t have targeted that group because it wouldn’t have made sense. But they found a market and it’s counterintuitive and it kind of goes back to what you were saying: it’s really important to go out there and explore and just play with things and maybe they work.

  59. KW: Exactly. Yeah.

  60. RP: Awesome. Well, Karsten, thank you very much. I’ve enjoyed talking to you.

  61. KW: Yeah. Thanks a lot. Thank for having me and have a great holiday.

  62. RP: Thank you.