Creating a Mobile Game: A Cautionary Tale
Amy C. Cosper leans forward in her chair, a mischievous smile creeping across her face. "Can we add more blood?" she asks, her eyes locked on the projector screen on the back wall of the makeshift conference room.
The screen frames an early prototype of Bosshole, a mobile game conceived by members of the Entrepreneur staff and built by software design startup Rage Digital. Bosshole--a corporate satire pitched somewhere between the movie Office Space and the classic Nintendo title Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, complete with cubicle zombies and other workplace horrors--is Cosper's baby: Entrepreneur's editor in chief formulated the concept, sold the idea to her boss, assembled the creative team and hired Rage to shepherd it to digital life. This powwow, taking place in Rage's Boulder, Colo., office on a near-perfect afternoon in August 2012, affords Cosper her first opportunity to view Bosshole up close. "Seeing the animation is the greatest thing ever," she swoons. "This is amazing. It's beyond all of my expectations."
Cosper conceived Bosshole to expand the Entrepreneur brand into a new digital media realm and to explore the inner workings of mobile application development, a booming business segment expected to generate worldwide revenue of $25 billion this year. The article you're reading was envisioned initially as a how-to for aspiring mobile software moguls, a step-by-step guide to designing, monetizing and marketing the next Angry Birds or Temple Run.
That was wishful thinking. In the months following that August confab, Bosshole grew far bigger and more complex than expected. Originally slated to go on sale at Apple's App Store in late 2012, the game instead suffered technical setbacks, blew past internal deadlines and did not go live until February of this year. Both overstuffed and underfed, tricked out with complex multiplayer interactions but coming up short on fundamental gameplay principles and mechanics, it remains a work in progress--down but nowhere near out.
Forget establishing a blueprint
