“I decided to take the plunge and register the company and actually start working on my first iPhone game, which launched earlier this month…”

Interview by Mike Sullivan

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Mike:
Hey everyone, I’m Mike Sullivan. Thanks for joining me today at MO.com. With me today is Patrick Chukwura of Fine and Dandy Games. Patrick is a long time IOS developer, and he’s with us today to talk a little bit about their new release and about the company in general.

Thanks for joining us Patrick. Can you start out, tell us a little bit about your background?

Patrick:
Well, my background has always been very tech heavy. I’ve actually been in software development since I was actually in middle school. So, every little endeavor or small business that I’ve been involved with has involved some sort of programming by me, which kind of leads up to what I’m doing now, which is actually Fine and Dandy Games. It’s always been, I guess since I have started programming, my wish to develop games. Finally I decided to take the plunge even though it was a bit difficult, and that’s where I am now is developing games for the IOS platform and hopefully other platforms to come.

Mike:
Tell me more about Fine and Dandy Games and how that came about.

Patrick:
Well, it came about . . . actually, I should start back in 2008, when Apple actually finally allowed third party developers to develop on the iPhone. That’s how I got into mobile development. I actually started with BlackBerry and iPhone at the time, and I was developing pretty much just the normal apps out there. I finally decided I wanted to develop games and maybe this was the right time to do it as mobile games seem to be taking off, and pretty much everyone now has a smart phone.

I felt this was the good time to do it. So actually, in late 2010, I decided to take the plunge and register the company and actually start working on my first iPhone game, which launched earlier this month, in August. So I’ve been really excited about that.

Mike:
So you mentioned your most recent release, Goop. Tell me what lessons have you learned as an entrepreneur from the development and the release of that product?

Patrick:
What I’ve learned is marketing needs to start as early as possible. Basically with that, we tried to do it as early as we could, even before the application was available to consumers, which was probably a month in advance. However, we realized that even before that time, we could have still gathered and built up some more hype and popularity and following for that. I think one key thing I did learn was to get as much following and marketing for the actual product release so the launch can go a bit smoother than it would be if you wait until the last minute. That’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve learned doing this project.

Mike:
It seems like every company now has an app. Whether they should or not is probably debatable. But is it difficult to launch an app for a brand?

Patrick:
Yeah, it’s pretty difficult. Well, the easy part is coming up with the idea. A lot of times, especially for me, I’m a developer, so a lot of times I take it for granted that I can just develop something and put it in the App Store and hope that millions and millions of people download it and I become a rich guy.

But what I and many others have found out is that the App Store is just like releasing a product for any normal retail. You have to make sure the product is polished and finished. You have to know that enough people know about your product, that it gets in the right hands. So the same difficulties do exist on the mobile platform and developing for IOS that do in any other business.

So, it is difficult. But there are things that do make it a lot easier, such as the fact that once you develop the application, it’s just that one time. You don’t have to continuously create new product, which is helpful. But it does have its difficulties, especially now with over 300,000 plus applications available. It’s very, very competitive.

Mike:
You’ve obviously embraced the concepts of apps. What do you think the future looks like and the importance of apps to the small businesses?

Patrick:
I see basically the future of apps as important as or even more important than a company having a website. Just because with the mobile application with everybody, they’re having an IOS device or Android, even Windows Phone 7. The phone is pretty much right next to a potential customer at all times, as opposed to a website, they usually have to go find a computer and Internet access.

So being on a mobile device gives you a presence anywhere they are. You can take advantage of things like location based services to even give them a richer experience that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to receive on a traditional website. I think it plays a major role. It’s probably another asset that most small businesses should or need to be looking at incorporating in the future or even right now.

Mike:
So we talked about you released your first game. What’s in the works now for Fine and Dandy Games?

Patrick:
Actually, we’re still focused on the release of Goop. As we’ve found out, that marketing is continuous even after the launch. We’re also hopefully working and going to push out an iPad version of Goop in the near future as well. So right now, it’s available on iPhone and iPod Touch. I have a bunch of ideas for some future games that I want to look at and develop and hopefully, time permits, that I can start working on those and share them with the world as well. That’s pretty much what’s going on.

Mike:
I’m curious. What’s the difference between an iPhone app and an iPad app? I’ve seen some that seem to require two different downloads, and some that seem like the one app will do it for both.

Patrick:
Well, you can develop them as one specific file, I guess one specific application, or you can separate them. The main differences between the two are, of course, it’s just the resolution of the screens. So, pretty much 90% of the code stays the same. Typically, when it comes to a visually heavy application, like a video game, the graphics do to take up a lot of space on a device. So, splitting it up is one way where you can lower the size of the application so that downloading it over 3G, like most iPhone users would, wouldn’t be such a hard task. There’s actually a limit on 20 MB the file size can be to download it over 3G. So that’s one reason to split the two up, but other than that, they’re pretty similar.

Mike:
Patrick, thanks for joining us today.

Patrick:
Thank you.