Backflip Studios is launching the free-to-play game DragonVale today, which represents the pioneering game studio’s latest efforts to raise the stakes in the iPhone game market. And the mobile game studio will use its casual titles to draw more users to this type of deeper mobile gaming experience.
We’ve monitored Backflip’s progress over the years, particularly since chief executive Julian Farrior has always been good about sharing helpful details about the state of the iPhone gaming business. This new title has a depth and higher quality of art that’s reminiscent of the work that went into early console games. Put that together with a huge fan base that Backflip already has with its casual games and you have good distribution model.
Backflip’s heavy investment in game development has yielded a string of hits and nearly 150 million game installations. Many of those are related to light and casual games like Paper Toss, NinJump, Shape Shift and Backflip Solitaire.
“We will continue to bring in and entertain our user base (3 million daily active users and 27 million monthly active users) with ultra casual fare, but more and more we are finding we have the ability to have them playing multiple games, many of which have higher yield,” Farrior said. “This is very important for us as a company.”
To succeed now, Farrior said, “It takes a combination of very good game design and even better distribution muscle. Distribution can be bought to some extent but you are in a much better position when starting with an active user base as large as ours.”