Mobile Game Engines:
Interviews with Mobile Game Developers

Peek behind the curtain on the making of 38 different mobile games using off-the-shelf game engines

Mobile Game Engines: Interviews with Mobile Game Developers

“It's really very well done and interesting to read -- for me as an Engine developer ... because it contains a lot of information about why developers choose one engine over the another”

        -- Daniel Sperl, Developer of Sparrow Framework

“I think the interview questions are very well thought out. It's a nice mix of technical and non-technical/business questions.”

        -- Mario Zechner , Developer of libGDX

“the questions about selling results and strategies are a good read for game developers but, as [an] engine dev, the questions about the reasons of choice of an engine are pure gold for improving and getting inspiration”

        -- Kesiev Norimaki , Developer of Akihabara

“Questions are selected appropriately ... I personally liked the organization of the book”

        -- Görkem Cetin , Gideros Mobile

Book Blurb

“This book contains a total of 38 must-read interviews on the making of mobile games using 15 modern game engines.

In this book you'll hear how hired guns and indie game developers alike build games and get them to market using off-the-shelf mobile game engines. There is no abstracting or watering down of their experiences. You will read about what they did, in their own words.

The interviews were designed to collect wisdom from game developers around the problems of choosing and working with off-the-shelf mobile game engines, and you will agree that this objective was far exceeded. You will get a snapshot into the thoughts and processes from a diverse and successful collection of mobile game developers from around the world.

You will feel recharged and will be reinvigorated in your own game development efforts. The sage advice in these interviews will be useful in navigating, selecting and working with the tidal wave of promising mobile game engines available. Reading these interviews will help you find and best use the perfect engine for your mobile game and get it into the hands of an audience that loves it just as much as you.”


Features and Benefits

Features interviews with 38 game developers
  • benefit from unique advice from real developers that can only be found in this book
  • benefit from fresh perspectives of first-time developers and the experience of battle hardened developers alike
  • benefit from insights across a large and diverse set of games, one of which may be closely related to your game
  • benefit from the experiences of developers living and breathing mobile game development and those who are doing it on the side
Features advice from developers in their own words
  • benefit from the experience of proven developers that have actually got over the line as opposed to just talking about it
  • benefit from drawing your own interpretations and conclusions
  • benefit from fulfilling your curiosity about how mobile game developers think about their craft
  • benefit from being entertained by the personalities behind the games
Features guides working with off-the-shelf game engines
  • benefit from specific tips and tricks save time working with game engines
  • benefit from the outcomes to the time consuming questions and hard learned lessons faced when working with mobile game engines
  • benefit from a shorter time to take your game to market
Features interviewees from 19 countries
  • benefit from a truly international perspective on mobile game development
  • benefit from advice that is relevant to both developers in the US and those that are not
 Features 15 modern mobile game engines
  • benefit from advice that is actionable now with today’s devices and game engines
  • benefit from insights across the three big platforms of our time: iOS, Android and HTML5
  • benefit from insights into the popular and established big name game engines as well as some up-and-coming lesser known engines
Features full screenshots of mobile games (paperback)
  • benefit from getting a glimpse at what is possible with each game engine
  • benefit from getting a peek at what each developer was able to create
Features must have attributes of a mobile game engine
  • benefit from knowing what successful developers think is essential in a game engine, and what is not
Features a digital e-book download
  • benefit from having and reading the book within seconds
  • benefit from being able to read the book on your e-reader, smart phone, tablet or PC
  • benefit from the lower price that an e-book allows
Features an author who is a developer with a PhD
  • benefit from a carefully prepared and high quality final product
  • benefit from well designed technical and process-oriented interview questions


Buy the Paperback
$17.50 USD
Buy the eBook
$2.99 USD


Game Engines

Covers 15 modern mobile game engines for iOS (iPhone and iPad), Android, and HTML5:

  • Cocos2d for iPhone
  • ShiVa 3D
  • e3roid
  • Marmalade SDK
  • libGDX
  • Akihabara
  • UDK
  • Unity 3D
  • Cocos2dX
  • Sparrow Framework
  • Gideros Mobile
  • DragonFireSDK
  • ImpactJS
  • iTorque 2D
  • AndEngine


Interviewees

Features interviews with 38 mobile game developers from 19 different countries:

  • Abhinav Gupta
  • Ahsan Shafiq Chaudhry
  • Alex Mitin
  • Anders Lundberg
  • Andre Schnabel
  • Andy Hawkins
  • Benjamin Lee
  • Bernhard Wagesreiter
  • Chad Doriguzzi
  • Charles Dunn
  • Chris Robinson
  • CJ Hanson
  • Conor O'Kane
  • Daniel Vilchez Carpio
  • Fabrizio Terranova
  • Flavius Ivasca
  • Henry Hauser
  • James Borden
  • Joe Paiva Espindola
  • Jose Miguel Gomez Gonzalez
  • Justin Stahlman
  • Kenta Iwasaki
  • Lenn Lee Dolling
  • Luiz Felipe Beneton
  • Marcio Andrey Oliveira
  • Mat Hopwood
  • Mike Lentini
  • Milan Mancel
  • Paolo Manna
  • Petras Zdanavicius
  • Scott Wilson Billing
  • Sean Steel
  • Sergio Viudes Carbonell
  • Thomas Nind
  • Tomasz Kucza
  • Valerio Mandarino
  • Vitaliy Kolesnikov
  • Willian Molinari


Sample Questions

Sample questions asked of mobile game developers in the book:

  • About Your Game:
    • What is its price?
    • How many downloads?
    • How much revenue?
  • What features were on your list of requirements when selecting a game engine?
  • What is the one thing that developers using this game engine have to know?
  • With a released game, in hindsight, what process do you recommend for choosing a mobile game engine?
  • What is one question you would put to the developer of the game engine you used?


Technical Details
  • Title: Mobile Game Engines: Interviews with Mobile Game Developers
  • Author: Jason Brownlee
  • Date: July 2012
  • Pages: 318 (paperback)
  • Words: 64,710 (approximate)
  • Formats: Paperback, Kindle, iTunes, PDF, etc.


About the Author

Jason Brownlee Jason Brownlee studied Applied Science at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia, going on to complete a Masters in Information Technology focusing on Niching Genetic Algorithms, and a PhD in the field of Artificial Immune Systems. Jason has worked for a number of years as a Consultant and Software Engineer for a range of Corporate and Government organizations. He has written about Artificial Intelligence algorithms which you can learn more about at CleverAlgorithms.com

In 2009 Jason started his first iPhone game project and before he could start he decided he had to choose an off-the-shelf game engine. This turned into a research project and he was required to manually gather the information from across the web. Not only did this take days - days he would much rather have been working on his game idea, but the results were limited. He created a list of candidate game engines, but had no idea which engine was good and which framework he should stay away from.

Later, born of the frustration from his first and failed mobile game project, Jason built a website to address this problem both for himself and for any other developer that just wants to get on with developing their game. The site is MobileGameEngines.com

Jason is always trying to think of new ideas to solve this problem better. If you have any ideas or just want to chat about mobile game engines, reach out to Jason via jasonb@MobileGameEngines.com



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