The Lab Rats’ journey to nearly completing an iOS shooter begins rather unconventionally — waiting tables in Italian restaurants. Lab Rats Studio founders Alan Rueda, Shadie El-Haddad, Rion Holland and Adrian Schmettau shared two things: a passion for video games and a burning desire to change their line of work.

However, they agreed waiting tables instilled willingness to work and motivation to pursue any opportunities related to their skills. They all possessed a talent for art and creating 3D worlds, so video games were a natural fit.

They became proactive, and the Triangle residents enrolled in the Wake Technical Community College Simulation and Game Development Program. There they created Lab Rats Studio; a name reflective of their work. Like a gym rat that spends hours perfecting their basketball game, the Lab Rats devote their time to perfecting their creative work.

With their work ethic they combined a knowledge of video games. The virtual worlds of Max Payne and Duke Nukem served as major influences on their work, particularly with M.U.S.E. They also saw opportunity with the rise of mobile gaming platforms and the lack of quality mobile shooters. Mobile technology for gaming only improving, they targeted that opportunity by creating console quality shooters for mobile.

With their vision in mind, they said the key was to find opportunities to make their plans real.

Enter us at Joystick Labs. After hearing a presentation at Wake Tech about the Joystick opportunity, they said it was like a light bulb going off for them. They entered an application based on their ideas for Lab Rats and M.U.S.E. Our founders were intrigued by their ideas and the chance to work with them, so they were chosen for the fall 2010 accelerator. They went through the program and decided to stay on at Joystick until their game’s completion.

But the Lab Rats aren’t entirely just about work. It’s known around the lab they enjoy a good prank here and there, and they are quite competitive. Fruit Ninja battles, among other popular games, are common amongst the Lab Rats.

Their road to Joystick wasn’t straightforward, but their growing team is about to become developers of a finished iOS title. They plan to continue working at the Labs up until the finishing M.U.S.E. and look forward to continuing their future work on mobile platforms.

Here are a few photos of the Lab Rats at Joystick and a promo for M.U.S.E. Keep an eye out for both in the near future!

Four of the studios we have funded – Gale Force Logic, Lab Rats Studios, Mighty Rabbit Studios (who organized the event) and wefiends - were among the 10 studios showing off their games to a crowd of 150.

Congrats to our teams – wefiends’ Sushi Boy Thunder took the top prize, Mighty Rabbits Cylinder finished second, and Lab Rats’ M.U.S.E. finished fourth.

The Escapist and WRAL TechWire both had great coverage – check out the articles.

Wefiends hoists the cup – photo by Greg Tito/The Escapist

Shaddie El-Haddad, co-founder of Lab Rats Studio plays M.U.S.E. – photo courtesy of Kevin Barrios

If you’re interested in learning more about Joystick Labs, have a look.

Ken Tucker built a career on helping companies such as Ubisoft and Red Storm work through the quality assurance stages. He recently visited Joystick Labs and educated our teams on how to handle quality assurance.

He provided a few takeaways for aspiring developers on how to handle bugs before they reach the QA stages.

1) No game is bug free.

It’s a lesson you’ll learn quickly, bugs are inevitable. However, worrying about every bug through development will only bog you down, making the process drag out. Be thorough in development, but there is an appropriate time to all issues.

2) Communication is key.

Great communication is usually always a good idea, but Tucker stressed that it’s essential here. You and your team need to be updated on any issues in the game. Keeping everyone in the loop and documenting errors goes a long way. Tucker suggested opening a shared document where everyone can catalog issues. Logging everything in your brain keeps others in the dark and likely ends up in you forgetting a bug Tucker warned.

3) Planning Goes a Long Way.

Before you begin development, plan with your team how you will address any bug. Form a categorizing method for issues where the errors are clearly defined and understood. Vague description of a bug won’t help your team much. Consider things such as what the problem is and how you encountered it. Clearly defining problems will make solving the issues during the QA stages much simpler. Tucker said the process requires diligence, but it will make your life easier and your final product more polished.

Overall, strong leadership and organization goes a long way in producing a professional grade, well-polished video game.

Any developers out there have any suggestion for tackling glitches and bugs? Your favorite process for QA?

More to come in the future, so stay tuned!

These positions could be contract programming or you could join their startup studio on a full-time basis.  They are looking for a self-directed, flexible developer who has no problem quickly picking up and running with new technologies and languages.

iPhone Programmer

Requirements:

• At least 2 years of mobile development experience
• Strong Objective-C Skills and strong knowledge of Cocoa Touch and the rest of iOS SDK.
• Extremely familiar with Xcode, Instruments, and Interface Builder
• Experience in developing mobile games (Android or iOS)
• Has shipped an app/game currently on the Android/iTunes Store (independently or as part of a team)

Pluses:

• Familiarity with cocos2d-iphone (big plus)
• Has created and/or contributed to iOS/game related open source projects
• Familiarity with OpenGL ES (especially on the 2D side) a plus but not required.

Backend Programmer

Requirements:

• At least 4 years of development experience
• Strong Javascript and/or Ruby skills and Rails/Node.js experience
• Has built game servers and clients (social games/apps a plus) and/or web app API’s.
• Strong knowledge of a wide range of web technologies (RESTful API’s, JSON, XML).
• Can configure, secure, and maintain a *nix based server and LAMP stack

Pluses:

• Familiar with MongoDB and/or other NoSQL DB’s.
• Familiar with Heroku, AWS, and cloud deployment/scaling.
• CLI/Bash Ninja (can automate repetitive tasks, generate metrics/reports)
• Has created and/or contributed to iOS/game related open source projects

Contact Nick Barrios – jobs@wefiends.com

Rule #1
Always have a build ready to demo.

Investors may drop by unannounced, so having a demo of your game at all times is a must. Your demo doesn’t have to be the full game, but have a polished build that captures the essence of your game. It gives them confidence their money is funding a product that will satisfy consumers. On the flip side, not having a polished build weaken confidence.

Rule #2
Have a short speech ready.

Tying back into a previous post, think about what you do best and what your work is about, and be ready to articulate that to investors. Keep it short and sweet, and allow them to focus on your demo. They may not know everything about you and your work, so a clear and succinct answer will give them that knowledge and in turn, confidence in you.

Rule #3
Recognize the Opportunity.

It can seem unimportant, but consider the opportunities that stem from meeting with investors. Besides funding opportunities, investors potentially offer networking opportunities. Impressing them with a polished build and professional demonstration could translate into them connecting you with others in the investing and gaming community, so take the opportunity seriously!

The above picture is Nick Barrios of wefiends showcasing his work to Joystick Labs investors, who walked away impressed by his demonstration.

Stay tuned for more Lessons in Game Development from Joystick Labs.

Flurry recently did a study on the composition of the “Top 100 Grossing Apps” in the App Store and found a significant increase in the number of freemium apps,  representing nearly 65% of the. A quick survey of the top 10 grossing apps in the iPhone App Store shows that five use the freemium model. What’s more, Flurry found that the average amount of money spent in free games with in-app purchases is an incredible $14 per transaction. That means that you can make 14x the amount of money through a freemium game rather than pricing it at the popular $0.99 price point. The analytics firm Distimo suggests that up to one-third of all revenue in the App Store is generated through in-app purchases and developers like BackFlip Studios (the ones behind Ninjump) reported nearly $500,000 a month from in-app purchases on free apps. In fact, a CTIA Wireless panel says that we should expect to see a shift to the freemium monetization model in the near future.

The freemium model also makes sense beyond simply the surprising monetary gains though. Users are more willing to try out a free app so you can develop an active userbase that can give valuable feedback for your game. In addition, whereas advertising for mobile games hasn’t been very successful, word-of-mouth marketing has proved to drive a significant number of installs and would work well with a free app. Finally, at the very least, ad-supported games can usually finance their development and new ad networks are cropping up to engage the user and drive more purchases. We will be doing another blog post in the near future about ad networks and we’ll keep you posted. That said, there are some caveats to the freemium model. For one, this incredible success hasn’t translated to the iPad App Store perhaps because iPad app users in general pay more for apps and are therefore more likely to buy paid apps versus free ones. In addition, this kind of success can only work if you’ve got a great app to begin with. Developers must be able to strike a balance between offering optional content for purchase and requiring it for basic aspects of the game. If users feel like they have to buy additional items just to play the game they will get frustrated and leave quickly. The best bet is to make an enjoyable game that can stand on its own and add additional purchasable features for enhanced playability.

Still, there’s a lot of potential in the freemium app market and it has proven to be very successful in the past few months for developers. It looks like this is the wave of the future for iOS app development so expect to see more freemium apps coming to an App Store near you.

The Team:

We look for great founders. You need an entrepreneurial spirit and passion for your game  and the commitment that creating a new game studio requires.  The team needs to possess most of the capabilities required to deliver the game you propose, and if you are missing anything, a path for finding them.   For example, we can provide a lot of business advice, but we don’t have artists or programmers on staff.  Of course, you can contract art and programming, and in some cases that is the most efficient implementation path. But if you don’t have the expertise to manage those resources, that is one more challnenge you will need to overcome.  We are interested in building not just a single game but building a game studio that will be successful long term.

The bottom line – the more complete team you bring, the more interesting your application will be to Joystick Labs.

The Game:

We don’t limit applications to a specific genre or platform, but we have some strong preferences and the more your idea aligns with those preferences, the better your chances.  Our thinking has changed since our first session and over time will likely change some more, but for current applications we look at these questions:

Can you (and we) make money with this game?

Today’s market is shifting rapidly – 40% of iPhone games are now free to download.  How will your game make money – license fees, in-app purchases, advertising, something else?  Will Joystick’s share of the royalty and equity stake reflect the risk of our investment of money, time, and resources?

How big is the audience for your title?

If you (and we) are going to make money, there has to be a market for your game.  A game that appeals to a broad audience has a better chance of success than a game that might only appeal to, say, Leelanau County euchre players.  But if there is a smaller market with a passionate audience and no game for their interest, that might outweigh a game targeted at a broad audience.

How hard will it be to finish the game?

Our funding and the work we do with you over the three months you are at Joystick Labs must do one of three things: 1) get you finished, 2) get you close enough to done that you have the resources to finish within another couple months, or 3) finish a prototype and business plan that will enable you to get funded to finish.

The last thing we want is to fund a bunch of half-finished games.  So we have a bias towards smaller, simpler projects because funding for bigger games is very challenging today.

What platform?

So far we have funded five mobile titles and one social title, and the latter title has evolved into mobile as well.  Mobile fits with the criteria outlined above – a large audience and relatively quick to develop. And we do not today have console devkits at our disposal, so that rules those titles out.

What genre?

Other than the factors above, we don’t have a genre requirement, though we do have a preference towards mobile, casual, and social games.   MMOs are big and expensive and we would be very unlikely to select one.  3D games take more resources than 2D games, so there is some bias against them.

We look more for clever and innovative ideas no matter what the genre.  Games that take advantage of the mobile platform – augmented reality, the accelerometer, location, or that make good use of the UI would be interesting.

Down the hall from Joystick Labs is Adzerk, a company that specializes in ad serving technology, and CEO James Avery helped educate Joystick teams on the business of in-game advertising.

After listening to his presentation, there are a few takeaways for independent developers to consider.

First of all, your download should be free if your ads interrupt gameplay in any way. People pay for games with the expectation of ads not interrupting their game experience. Charging people for a game download and interrupting them with ads will turn people away.

Avery also made it clear in-game advertising is not as simple as slapping banner ads in your game. While you could certainly go that route, click rates on banner ads are minuscule, and the money you receive per click is even more depressing. Unless you’re Angry Birds, don’t expect to make huge sums of money on banner ads.

Instead, Avery suggested thinking creatively about advertising. An independent developer may not have the initial clout to pitch to advertisers, but be mindful of opportunities. Targeted ads that are relevant to your player demographics provide the best return for advertisers, so know your audience.

Avery said advertisers today look for engagement, ads and messages that invite consumers to be involved with the brand. Games that can deliver engagement become the most lucrative opportunities.

Gamers can be engaged through product placement, ads featured during gameplay and more, so be innovative. Advertising can be done in a subtle and effective manner. Selling out and making your game about collecting Coca-Cola tokens (although that could be a potentially lucrative option) isn’t necessary, but think about how your game could engage consumers.

A few examples come to mind. In Contract Killer, a free download, ads are currency and watching ads equals more contracts and weapons. After Angry Bird’s enormous success, their new title Angry Birds Rio based themselves on the 20th Century Fox movie Rio.

The above photo is from Joystick team wefiends’ title Sushi Boy Thunder, which uses the ad network Kiip to place ads within the game. Kiip is a unique network that ties gamer achievements with advertisements, which works perfectly for its arcade style gameplay.

What are your thoughts on in-game ads? Totally against them, or are they appropriate if done right? What are the best and worst examples of games using advertisements?

Come back for more development insights at Joystick Labs!