The Bloodirony Founders Story

As stated in our Bloodirony 101 we are three people from Vienna, Austria with a clear-cut mission: We need to save mobile gaming – the indie way. To start things up we had to decide on a name. So everyone came up with a couple of ideas. The clear winner was Bloodirony. How, why and what? We will let you know later. Promise! Basically, it just felt right. And let's be honest it sounds and looks awesome. So, why not?

We have clear goals. very early player involvement and quick results are the things that we want to make our vision work. We invest passion, time, and money to accomplish our mission and reach our goals. And it is about about fun, agile fun. Creating games should be fun, fun for the player and fun for the creator. We go mulitplatform, because it is fun.

Recently, my 5 year old son told me he wants to create a game when he grows up. "Cool," I said and asked him if it would be a video game, tabletop game or something like that. "No," he said, "it won't be a video game, it will be a game for the iPad."

Mobile games are not the sort of video games we grew up with and learned to love. They certainly are no console games either, because 99% of the time the reason to buy a console is to play games (except if you fell for the trap Sony set with the PS2 and PS3 that were supposed to be DVD/BlueRay Players and gaming consoles at the same time). You hardly ever buy a smart phone or tablet just out of the urge to play games. However, we think mobile devices have everything in place to become a platform that can become the next big thing in the evolution of digital games. The only thing missing is someone to create and actually build them without being afraid to try something new and different and not follow everything that kind of works and just copy it.

THE VISION

We want to create games for touch devices that feel like real video games but are native to mobile.

That means overcoming the challenges of touch controls aka controlling a game with a sausage, breaking out of porting handheld game concepts to phones with d-pad controls, and taking the chance to step away from having IPs that sell anyway and to just add sequels. WE WANT TO CREATE SOMETHING GENUINE AND NEW THAT WORKS AND IS FUN.

And yes, this is challenging, definitely not easy, and unlikely to pull off. But hey, it is about fun! And it is a chance. We take it. Everything else is herealready: the devices, the software-tools, the fail and success stories, and most importantly, our ambition to do it.

Let's look at the time frame: We started in January 2015 and the first game must be released by July 1 at the latest. So our time frame is only 6 months. You can see it as an expansive game jam: 3 people creating a game to fulfill our vision in 6 months. We are confident that we will reach our goal. Follow us on twitter, subscribe to our blog to get weekly updates, and gain (free) early access by subscribing to our newsletter. The first playable release of our first game will come in mid February. 

Shooting Stars

If you want to become the indie game studio that saves mobile gaming, you need to start somewhere, and we start with our first title: Shooting Stars. We will keep our development and design decisions open, and we will keep you up to date about them. You can follow the development on our Twitter Channel. This is the place where you can be a part of it and tell us what you think after you played an (really) early beta, and you will have the chance to get great in-game items exclusive to early beta testers. Be a part of it. Follow us and subscribe to the newsletter. We want you to be on board as early as possible. The first Version (0.1, named Mitch) will be available mid February. The 1.0 Version (named C.J.) will be out on July 1, at the latest. More on the roadmap in another blogpost.

Read the Shooting Star page. Sign up to the Newsletter and gain access to the early beta. Follow us on twitter and facebook so you can keep updated on how we save mobile gaming. We will have a blog post at least once a week and give juicy, funny insights that are worth reading. All in excellent Austrish (no, not the giant bird from Africa but the perfect blend of Austrian German and English), because that's where we are from. 

The Bloodirony Games 101

In order to make to make the start of Bloodirony Games as smooth and clear as possible we gathered up the most frequent questions and compiled a little FAQ/Bloodirony 101.

What is Bloodirony Games

We are a small Vienna based game studio fully dedicated to creating mobile indie games. Our heart beats for music, food, mobile technology and most importantly for unicorns. The ultimate goal of our mission to eradicate boredom is nothing less than to save mobile gaming. To find more about us visit our About Page.

Who we are

We are three guys from Vienna, Austria following our big bad bearded boss Michael into the darkest depths of gaming.

Since I've already mentioned Michael let's start with him: 
Michael Hartinger aka. asebist was a senior developer and SCRUM Master at a huge Austrian financial institute doing super secret stuff he's not allowed to talk about. If he does... you know the drill. He is mostly taking care of the Bloodirony business, gamedesign and all project management related stuff. He is a proud father of two wonderful boys. A perfect homemaker and most probably the biggest Blizzard, Nintendo and Vlambeer fan alive.

Alexander Haider aka. haidelbert is our master chief developer. He was working with Michael at the same financial institute. As far as I can imagine he was working on the same secret stuff as Michael did. But at this point I'm too afraid to ask. Nevertheless Alex is a problem solver. Whatever needs to be done will be done in a timely manner, no matter how complex the problem is. Whenever Alex is not at the office he might enjoy a concert or can be found absorbed in tactical multiplayer shooters like the Battlefield franchises that he deeply loves. 

Stefan Malzner aka. adlk (even though my Twitter handle might says something different) I'm a graphic designer and frontend developer hybrid and I take care of the overall look & feel of our games. As I am a startup founder myself, I'm not afraid to try new things and to improvise to reach my goals. I'm a hobby chef and huge burger lover always looking for new burger joints or better recipes be able to prepare the holy grail of burgers sometime in the near future. Oh, and I consider myself a Dota 2 noob. 

Over the course of next few weeks we will update you with more introductory details about us and shock you with the occasional dirty detail on the world or Bloodirony Games. 

Why are we doing this

The better questions is: Why aren't you?

We are creating games because we simply love to. Ever since we were young, we spent endless hours in front of our gaming devices and completely lost track of time. How often have you dreamt of creating your own game? Thanks to the never ending technological progress being made, it has never been easier to develop your own games – especially for individuals or small teams with a limited budget. At this point I think it's appropriate to say thanks to ecosystems like the App Stores and technologies like Unity. 

In times nearly everyone owns a smartphone we're able to play thousands of different games by just downloading them to our device. It has never been easier to share content and to compete with friends. It doesn't matter wether we are on our daily commute to work or bored to death in the waiting room at the doctor's office, we can play the games we like without any limitations – most of those games are even free (-ish).

But here's the main issue:
We are totally aware that free2play games make a lot of sense from a business point of view and we don't have any problem with free2play games in general. Especially in mobile gaming, however, the latest trend is to spend huge amounts of money on so-called "monetization managers" who optimize the shit out of a game to increase revenue by completely ignoring the needs and wants of the gamers. It's about getting someone hooked on a game and to nickel and dime this person who probably hasn't even developed a real understanding for the concept of money yet and doesn't understands what's really happening behind all of that. In the end, it's much more about making shareholders instead of gamers happy.

So why are we doing this?
We believe that (mobile-) games are ment to be fun and are ment to make people happy, no matter if it's a premium or free2play title. No one should be forced to buy InApp upgrades just to be able to finish the game or being able to compete with their friends. We want to create exactly those kinds of games we want to play ourselves. 

From a much more personal point of view, I can assure you that every time I've bought something like in-game currency to speed things up, the progress I've made wasn't satisfying anymore and I almost immediately lost interest.

You are talking about saving mobile gaming. Are you diluted?

Even though Austria has a broadly established drinking culture, right now we're completely sober. And we are totally aware of how bold or arrogant this may sound. Well, seems about time to clear up some things. 

Could someone please save mobile gaming already? Kids are growing up being used to this, and they're doing it intentionally.

— Markus Persson (@notch) April 26, 2014

Last spring, one of our idols, Markus 'Notch' Persson, posted the following tweet: 

"Could someone please save mobile gaming already? Kids are growing up being used to this, and they're doing it intentionally."

Michael was so inspired by this tweet and at the same time so frustrated with the free2play development that he wasn't able to wait any longer to fulfill his lifelong dream of creating video games.

Here is how I imagine things happened on April 26:

Notch: Can someone please save mobile gaming already?
Michael: Sure dude, challenge accepted!

We are completely aware of the fact that we won't save mobile gaming alone. But together with our friends from indie studios around the world and the awesome indie community, we know that we can do it one step at a time.

Do you really have a direct line to the Rainbow Unicorn? is there something you can tell us?

Erm... the only thing we can tell you right now is that there is no need to grab your tin foil hat.