specification - 'Goats and Tigers'

Discussions are currently being held as to the feasibility of porting Goats and Tigers to the iPhone. It would be available as a downloadable application from the Apple Store. The actual concept depends on a few variables, notably if Dan can get an SDK kit to work with a Mac (we don't even know if he has one!) and some extensive rewriting of the game in all areas.

We have come to realise that, as a student project, the original version of the game served its purpose well. However, if we are to take on the fierce competition of mobile phone games, we need to acknowledge that the overall quality of these games is usually exceptionally high.

For this reason, we will need to go back to square one in terms of graphic design, programming, and music. Most mobile phone gamers these days, for instance, are accustomed to being able to stream their own music and playlists from an iPod or other portable device, so there needs to be a wider range of accessibility options available. The technical requirements of the iPhone will need to be taken into consideration as well, since the display size will be uniform and not necessarily the same as a PC version.

With the kit, Apple also reviews the game code to make sure that the fundamentals are in place, and even suggests modifications from its own programmers. This is excellent technical support for software that costs £60. Ben has been telling me about an iPhone application in which a guy has taken several photos of each tube stop in London where the trains stop, presumably so people know how far down the train they can go before the doors won't open. I wasn't aware that people would be so eager to waste their money on a seemingly limited-use application, but what do I know? Apparently this guy has made £10,000 already!

Clearly, there is still a lot of hard work ahead, but the potential rewards are vast. According to the Apple Store, each iPhone application costs 59p to download, and approximately 67% of the price is paid to the game creators. So, for sake of argument, each sold copy of the game makes the creators 40p. We would therefore need to sell 900 copies of the game to raise £360, which is the forecast outlay for this project. (£60 for the SDK kit, and £300 for a Mac Minibook)