Non-public API usage woes

First and foremost if you have come across my post you have my condolences.  Not because of landing here but more you must have gone through the frustrating exercise that I have lost 3 days of my life to.

Having deployed my latest version of 1800 to app store I couldn't understand why I was greeted with the email of:

Non-public API usage:

Apps are not permitted to access the UDID and must not use the uniqueIdentifier method of UIDevice. Please update your apps and servers to associate users with the Vendor or Advertising identifiers introduced in iOS 6.
If method names in your source code match the private Apple APIs listed above, altering your method names will help prevent this app from being flagged in future submissions. In addition, note that one or more of the above APIs may be located in a static library that was included with your app. If so, they must be removed.

If you think this message was sent in error and that you have only used Apple-published APIs in accordance with the guidelines, send the app's nine-digit Apple ID, along with detailed information about why you believe the above APIs were incorrectly flagged, to appreview@apple.com. For further information, visit the Technical Support Information page.

... and an invalid binary for my efforts.  This has all come about due to a new privacy policy instilled by Apple on the 1st May 2013 which prohibits the use of using the devices UDID for tracking or identification.  If you want to read a bit more about it check it out here.

I am going to write about my experiences but I will summarise so that you can go away and solve the problem now but come back to perhaps pick up a few tips.

Tip #1 and my solution - Update AdMob SDK

Just to be clear I am using Unity, Futile and Prime31 plugins.  At first I thought it was the Prime31 plugins as I am only using Unity and those. The problem was the Adwhirl plugin from Prime31 but more specifically the AdMobs SDK. All you have to do is download the latest SDK for here and then copy its contents to assets/editor/AdWhirlAdMob folder. All being way you can see your friend again of "Waiting for review".

While Prime31 don't use the UDID uniqueIdentifier I was ignorant to how the AdMobs SDK was updated and assumed when I updated the Prime31 Adwhirl plugin it updated the third party SDKs.  Not the case so you have been warned. I also had a red herring as Astavoid didn't have AdWhirl plugin in its project but somehow was in the editor folder which meant I had earlier eliminated this plugin as an issue as it wasn't (in theory) across both apps.

If you have got this far into the blog then perhaps the above hasn't worked.  If thats the case then all is not lost.  I've tried a few things to try and get the solution above so maybe be these will help.

Tip #2 - Find and replace uniqueIdentifier
From within XCode do Cmd-Shift-f and search for:

[[UIDevice currentDevice] uniqueIdentifier].

This should list out all instances of this method.  Instead using the above method use a hash of the mac address like:

+ (NSString *)GetUUID
{
  CFUUIDRef theUUID = CFUUIDCreate(NULL);
  CFStringRef string = CFUUIDCreateString(NULL, theUUID);
  CFRelease(theUUID);
  return [(NSString *)string autorelease];
}

or as alternative within code base use this method instead

 [UIDevice identifierForVendor] 

Tip #3 - Command Tools
Still getting rejected then the chances are one of your compiled libraries or frameworks has the little blighter in.  If so not a problem (well not yet anyway). I don't profess to be an expert in this area so apologies if factually incorrect and happy to be corrected for the greater good :)

Download XCode command tools.  Easier send than done you say.

Xcode includes a new "Downloads" preference pane to install optional components such as command line tools, and previous iOS Simulators. To open this pane click the "Xcode" button in the top left of the screen near the Apple logo, then click "Preferences", then click "Downloads".

Once downloaded open up a terminal window and navigate to where your xcode project is located. Then choose your framework files or libraries you want to check with the strings command of:

strings <your file>.a | grep uniqueIdentifier

This will then iterate through the files looking for the method you specified as the last parameter.  This will allow an investigation and the next area of investigation.

Hope this helps I certainly know information was scarce so if it just helps a couple of people then it will alleviate some pain that I had to go through :)

1800 out April 2013

Just a short note to say the game we have been working on in March is due for release to the App Store in April.

To get a preview of the game modes, levels and experience why not watch the short trailer below.

Also follow and support the forthcoming release on Toucharcade at http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=183923 and http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=183924

Indie Dev Insight: Whitaker Trebella

It was during 2012 that I first came to learn of Whitaker. Didn't know him from Adam and at this point hadn't released anything but everybody I was following was either talking about him or his unreleased game polymer. 

I couldn't quite work out why somebody who seemed a relative unknown like myself was getting so much attention.  This was four fold: 

1. Some notoriety in the industry for doing the music for games such as  Super Stickman Golf
2. An excellent marketing strategy - see more later on this
3. A great app in polymer
4. A thoroughly nice chap

Since then we have exchanged quite a few tweets not least because he was an early adopter of Futile and would very kindly be my sounding board.  If you haven't already follow Whitaker on Twitter not least for his obsession in changing his avatar every week :).

What proceeds is probably one of the most insightful blogs for newbie indie gamers and is the very reason I started my project and indeed this blog to share and have other people share such knowledge. Enjoy!

What got you into writing games?

A couple years ago, I was just starting to get into the world of doing music for games. While I loved it, the more I did it, the more I had the urge to make a game of my own. Unfortunately though, I had absolutely 0% programming experience. I hadn't programmed a day in my life. So I had a lot to learn. More here: http://www.polymerapp.com/ 

What's good and bad about what you do?

 I do music for games and I also create my own games. In some ways this is awesome. Whenever I hit a creative wall with one thing, I can switch over to the other. This gives me a way to sort of leapfrog over each other, always progressing in a different way. At the same time, this can be troublesome. If I'm in the middle of a successful programming run while making my game, I tend to have a very hard time stopping and focusing on music for awhile. The same thing happens in reverse when I'm really into a song I'm composing.

What would you do differently now given what you know from projects completed and experience from the gaming and app market?

It's hard to say what I would do differently in regards to Polymer. I seriously did the best I could with the knowledge I had. Of course, looking back at my code horrifies me now. But at the time, I just did what I could to finish it. I'm trying to be more organized this time around with my new game, but who knows what will happen as it progresses. The one main thing I would have done differently with Polymer was to take out the IAP's that popped up, allowing you to skip the "grinding." This pissed some people off, and I think it's one of the reasons that it wasn't quite as respected in the indie community as it could have been. I'm not against IAP's in any way, but I think the way I implemented them in regards to gameplay could have been handled better (I'm not referring to the purely cosmetic IAP's though). 

What tools do you use.  By this I mean software development kits/engines (Cocos2d, Corona, Unity3D etc), audio packages, art packages.

• For Polymer: Cocos2d
• For my next game: Unity and Futile
• For audio/music: Logic Pro
• For art: Photoshop

What made you choose these tools over others?

Cocos2d: it seemed like the best option at the time. It was iOS-specific (which was my only target for Polymer). And there were a TON of resources out there. Pretty much any problem I had could be solved by a Google search. Very helpful for a beginning programmer (well, for any programmer for that matter).

Unity and Futile: I really wish I could have made Polymer multi-platform. It's the biggest thing I'm looking forward to with my next game. I'm shooting for PC/Mac/iOS/Android. I feel that I missed out on a big chunk of market because of only focusing on iOS (even though it was the right choice at the time for my skill level). Also, Futile is very similar to Cocos2d in execution so it comes naturally. Finally, I may eventually want to get into 3d games, so making the Unity transition now is a good first step. 

Given you experiences in music what advice could you give to tone deaf indies who want to take a stab at their own music?

I wrote two blog posts about this.

Part I: http://www.whitakerblackall.com/blog/music-theory-for-beginners/

Part II: http://www.whitakerblackall.com/blog/music-theory-for-beginners-ii/

Music theory is super-complicated. Because it seems like second nature to me now, it's easy to forget how difficult it can be to explain. The biggest thing I can recommend for beginners is to *get feedback.* This is true for any new or amateur skill. Getting feedback from pros/teachers is by far the best way to improve your sound and continue on your way to more professional-sounding music.

 

What marketing tactics do you employ?  Forums, twitter, paid PR etc

I wrote a blog post about this too:

Promoting your game through Twitter: http://www.whitakerblackall.com/blog/a-guide-to-using-twitter-to-promote-your-game/

I think Twitter was probably the most important thing in all this. I've been building my follower count for years now, trying to make a good reputation in the indie gamedev community. It's really important to talk to other industry professionals, be willing to offer and receive help, and to be patient. As for other PR things, my wife Dana helped me a ton because she's a PR professional. One of the most important things with PR is to have a "story." My story for Polymer was that it was my first game, and I was branching out from doing music. I think this is what helped some people latch onto it, and also be inspired by it (I got a LOT of comments saying it inspired people to finally try to make their own game.) I posted my story (http://www.polymerapp.com/my_story) on Reddit, and it got a lot of attention. I also wrote a press release (with a TON of help from my wife) and reached out to a lot of targeted press contacts who I thought may be interested.

 

What effect do you think free to play has had upon your game design?

Not a lot. I've considered doing F2P, but I don't know if I want to go down that route, especially at this point. F2P is just not part of my brand. I want to make standalone games that you buy once and play. Having said this, I get very annoyed when people associate F2P with being "evil." It's a business decision that works well for many people. It's just not one I want to take at the moment.

 

What resources do you swear by for learning new techniques, getting more from the packages you mentioned above, news etc.  e.g Books (specific titles would be appreciated), forums / websites, social media

• Reddit's gamedev community: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev
• 3d games math (currently in the middle of reading this): http://www.amazon.com/Math-Primer-Graphics-Game-Development/dp/1568817231
• The Nature of Code (also in the middle of reading this and it's been EXTREMELY helpful): http://natureofcode.com/book
• Twitter (obviously)

There has been a lot in the press recently that app development is going through a gold rush and that the bubble will burst soon.  Do you see it like this?

I don't think the bubble will burst necessarily. But I do think we're entering into a totally different era of app development. It's way harder now to develop a super popular hit because of how inundated the market is. It's getting harder and harder for indies to compete with the big studios, at least when it comes to polish. It's incredibly important, more than ever, to polish your game as much as humanly possible. Make the best possible game you can. I've heard this said before, and I'll paraphrase: for each game, you have one chance. If your game's not 100% ready, don't launch. Making a good game is the most important thing, before anything else. The F2P revolution is also taking over so it will be interesting to see where that leads. 

Do you think app games will eventually kill off Triple A titles as we know them?

 Well, that's a tricky question. I think we may be leading towards a universal solution. I think eventually one app/game will run on all devices and there won't be many console-dependent things anymore. So I don't think apps will "kill" AAA titles, but I think gaming as a whole is going through a major transition. 

What does 2013 have in store for Whitaker?

 I'm currently working on a new game. It's taken me WAY too long to figure out what to do. I've prototyped a ton of things and thrown out a lot of crappy ideas. But I think I've finally settled on something that's gonna be pretty awesome. I've also been working on a lot of music, including the soundtracks for the upcoming Danger Boat, Super Stickman Golf 2, and Nimble Quest. 

Any additional advice you would give for up and coming indie developers?

Make the best game you possibly can. That should be your first goal. Get as many industry pros to look at it as possible. Get BRUTAL feedback. Network at local industry events. Do not settle for less than perfect (well, as perfect as your skills can get you). Use Twitter (correctly!!!). Don't launch until your game is absolutely 100% ready. Be insanely nitpicky about every tiny seemingly unimportant detail. Every single pixel matters. POLISH POLISH POLISH. If you do all these things, marketing your game will be much easier.

Go download Polymer immediately available for both iPhone and iPad!

Indie Dev Insight: Streaming Colour

When I first got interested in writing games abut 18 months a go my first choice for inspiration was to hit Twitter. Like the internet if you don't really know what you are looking for the choices, options and information overload is overwhelming.

Soon though you get drawn to those who repeatedly have something useful to say on regular occasions and have an affinity to on your development.  Owen Goss is one of those who I started following in the early days.  I don't recall why specifically but I think it was the fact that a number of people I was following were all following him.


Owen formed Streaming Colour  in 2008 for the purposes of creating fun, non-violent, and creative video games. Prior to founding Streaming Colour, Owen worked in the console games industry for 5 years at such companies as Electronic Arts Canada and Propaganda Games, developing for platforms like the PSP, Xbox 360 and PS3. In 2008 Owen decided to head out on his own and form his own company with the goal of making the kinds of games that he enjoys playing the most.

Most recently he launched the perplexing yet highly addictive game Finger Tied for iPad. Recently he took some time out to share his thoughts on a few of my questions.


What got you into writing games?

I've been programming since my early teens, but I grew up in an artistic household. I really wanted a career that would allow me to combine my love of art with my love of programming. Game development provides daily challenges at the intersection of art and technology. I love it.

More specifically, at university I got a degree in computer science and then got a job building enterprise Flash websites after graduation. A couple of years working there gave me the experience to get a job as a lead programmer at EA in 2004 building game UIs in Flash. I worked on console games for 4.5 years as a lead UI programmer and senior gameplay programmer. I left the console industry in 2008 and I've been doing the indie thing ever since.

What's good and bad about what you do?

The good: doing a job that I love; being my own boss; creating something out of nothing; getting to make whatever I want; and being part of an amazing indie community.

The bad: slogging through the parts of making games that are both really hard and aren't fun; dealing with self-doubt when you're working on something by yourself over long periods of time; and dealing with all the parts of running a business that isn't making games.

How many people are involved in writing games at Streaming Colour.  What roles do they take on?

Streaming Colour is just me. On most of my games I've been responsible for: game design, programming, art, sound design, project management, PR, marketing, accounting, and anything else that comes up. Though for some games I've hired an artist and/or sound designer. The one thing I always have someone else do is the music. However, I'm currently collaborating on a game with Matt Rix, creator of Trainyard, and this collaborative process is proving to be a lot of fun.

What would you do differently now given what you know from projects completed and experience from the gaming and app market?

With every project you try to learn from your mistakes. One of the biggest challenges in the app market is that it's constantly changing. But in general: try to keep the games small and stay agile. Look for the fun quickly and build on that. Worry less about more features, but instead concentrate on nailing the core of the game. Get feedback from people who can be honest with you earlier than you think you should. Don't build your own engine/tools when an existing engine/tool will do the job.

What tools do you use.  By this I mean software development kits/engines (Cocos2d, Corona, Unity3D etc), audio packages, art packages.

I've used a lot of different tools and engines since I started 4.5 years ago. I'll try to list the ones I've used more than a few times.

Engines:

• custom OpenGL-based engine
• cocos2d
• cocos2d-x
• Unity + Futile

Tools:

• Xcode
• MonoDevelop
• Photoshop
• Inkscape
• TexturePacker
• Audacity
• Garage Band
• Blender
• Git
• A notebook and pen
• twitter

(I only part kid about adding twitter to my list of tools. The community I've met through twitter has been invaluable over the past 4.5 years.)

What made you choose these tools over others?

Mostly familiarity and efficiency of use, but also price. I try to choose the tool that is going to allow me to complete the job as efficiently as possible. Sometimes this means paying for software, but sometimes, you get lucky and the best tool is also cheap/free.

What marketing tactics do you employ?  Forums, twitter, paid PR etc

I've had little success with running my own forums, as its hard to keep spam out. I've never paid for PR, but many swear by good PR firms.

Build relationships with your fans and players. Engage with your players where the players hang out (e.g. TouchArcade forums, etc). Keep making games and finding ways to let your fans know about it. More Games pages, twitter Facebook, mailing lists, websites. Build relationships with the press so they know who you are and what your games are. Go to conferences and meet people face to face. If you have a big enough game and timeline, show at PAX and other gaming events.

Marketing is just as hard as making your game. You need to be thinking about it and acting on it all throughout the process of making your game. If you're done your game and are just starting to thinking about marketing, you waited too long. All that said, this is an area where I've made a lot of mistakes and I'm still learning a lot about how to successfully market my games.

What effect do you think free to play has had upon your game design?

Honestly, I'm not sure yet, but it's something I've been thinking about more and more.

What resources do you swear by for learning new techniques, getting more from the packages you mentioned above, news etc.  e.g Books (specific titles would be appreciated), forums / websites, social media

Many of the tools I use, I learned at jobs before going indie. For things I'm learning for the first time, I like books for some things (e.g. learning a new programming language, math, physics theory), but for others I like forums, online tutorials, and digital documentation (e.g. I've been learning to model in Blender almost exclusively by watching youtube videos and reading their online docs). Having a circle of friends who are smarter than you is also a great way to learn.

There has been a lot in the press recently that app development is going through a gold rush and that the bubble will burst soon.  Do you see it like this?

The app market feels a lot to me like the .com boom felt in the late 90's. It felt at the time like you could do no wrong. All you had to do was create a website and get rich. People seem to have the same feeling about apps: I just need to make an app and I'll get rich. Those of us who have been making apps for a few years know that this isn't the case. Yes, some people are making a lot of money, but most of us, by working hard, are slowly finding a way to eek out a living. My hope is that we'll see more people approaching app/games development as a sustainable way of making a living. Not shooting for instant riches, but trying to build a catalogue of quality apps/games that garner attention and earns their developers a living.

Do you think app games will eventually kill off AAA titles as we know them?

No. I think there will always be room for the Big video games; the blockbuster, mega-budget games. But I think they will be less dominant. People are gaming more and more on the go. Once everyone considers themselves someone who plays games, I think Big games will just become another market in the larger games market.

What does 2013 have in store for Streaming Colour?

Right now I'm working on a new game with Matt Rix (the details are still secret at this point). After that, even more games!

Any additional advice you would give for up and coming indie developers?

Making a living making games is not easy. It will be hard. Sometimes you will hate the game you're making. Sometimes you will want to quit. But, if you really love making games, you will find a way to keep going. I believe the key to long-term success is persistence. Those who eventually find success are the ones who kept going; who kept learning from their mistakes; who kept improving. Sometimes this will mean taking on contract gigs or getting a job to pay your bills. But if you love it enough, you will keep at it.

Download Finger Tied for iPad   If you don't know Finger Tied is a multi-touch puzzle game, only for the iPad. In each Finger Tied puzzle, fill in a shape by moving up to four fingers around on your iPad at the same time. But be careful, lift a finger, or go out of bounds, and it's game over. Finger Tied will test your mental, as well as your finger abilities!

Content Scaling: The magic size

When I was writing games in Corona SDK / Lua I was helped no end by this incredibly helpful article on content scaling.  This worked on the premise of ratios to deal with the different aspect ratios. This is related to my previous post in regarding the iOS screen resolutions.

Without a doubt this concept works and really does for the fragmented screen resolutions of android.  This principle also worked fine for iOS until the iPhone 5 came along.  This got me thinking about this concept not least because I wanted to do as little work as possible when it came to creating background images etc.

If you read the article in Corona they suggest that applying an image of 380 x 570 on a 320 x 480 resolutions provides the appropriate bleed around the safe zone of the screen resolution.  However, this doesn't work when applying to the newer versions of iOS not least the iPhone 5.

So I did a little playing and a minor adjustment and came up with the magic size that seems to work for all and that magic size is ...385 x 570.

Not that different in size you say but look at how this works for the iOS resolutions with simple multiplications.

• 320  x 480    use  385 x 570
• 640  x 960    use  770 x 1140
• 640  x 1136  use  770 x 1140
• 768  x 1024  use  770 x 1140
• 1536 x 2046 use  1540 x 2280

This then works to an exact ratio of 1x, 2x and 4x with only 3 different backgrounds needed.

The principle there is that by declaring a screen size is a “safe zone” — any content outside this area of the background image might be cropped, either on both sides or at the top and bottom, depending on the target screen’s aspect ratio.  So when planning your image you may applying additional grass, trees, stars etc. to make up the area which isn't a playing area for that aspect ratio but will take up screen real estate.

This principal works as of February 2013 and will hopefully be updated when Apple bring out a further X amount of screen resolutions to contend with.

iOS Resolutions - a handy guide

While working on my most recent game I wanted to try and target iOS devices.  I constantly found myself trying to work out the screen resolutions as well as how a background image would differ between the sizes.

What I came up with is the attached positional guide with screens horizontally and vertically aligned so that you see the various challenges ahead in terms of planning your imagery.

I hope it helps.  Its certainly stopped me having to visit half of the internet.

Just click on the image to show at full size.


Check out my related post on content scaling and the magic size for planning your images.

Indie Dev Insight: Imangi Studios

If you haven't heard of Temple Run series then you must have been living under a rock for the last couple of years. Temple Run 2 has broken records for being the fastest game to 50 million downloads and there are certainly no signs of this slowing.

Despite this phenomenal success, Keith Shepherd, one half of Imangi Studios, remains one of the nicest, helpful and down to earth people you should every meet. In my journey to date he has been kind enough to share emails and tweets with advice and continues that support with some invaluable learnings as to how Imangi and the Temple Run series has become such an unstoppable juggernaut.

What got you into writing games?
I got interested in making games as a kid. Mostly because I was playing a lot of video games and I wanted to know how they worked so I could make my own. That led me down the path of learning how to program. I tinkered with it a bit when I was a kid but never really knew enough to make games. It wasn't really until high school when I took my first programming class in Pascal that I really started to learn enough to make games. I tinkered on and off with making games all the way through college, but never really ever finished of released anything. When I graduated from college with a computer science degree I wanted to get into the games industry, but it was the height of the dot com boom and I ended up getting a job with an e-commerce startup instead. It wasn't until Natalia and I founded Imangi that I was able to get back to my childhood dreams of writing games and actually publish my first game.

What's good and bad about what you do?
I love making games. It's such a creative field and is a combination of so many things I love, art, programming, music, sound, game design, storytelling, etc. I truly feel lucky to be able to make games for a living. I guess the only bad thing about what I do is that sometimes it's hard to just sit back and enjoy playing games sometimes because you end up picking them apart to try and analyze what is working and what isn't.

How many people are involved in writing games at Imangi Studios. What roles do they take on? How has this changed with the success of TR?
Well it started out as just Natalia and I. The first person we started working with was an artist, because Natalia and I can't draw at all! Kiril, Natalia, and I made the original Temple Run in about 5 months. Natalia and I did the programming and sound fx, Kiril did the art, and Natalia composed the music. Support became a big challenge for us with the success of Temple Run, we started getting hundreds and sometimes thousands of emails a day. We've always liked being a small company, but that was the first indication that we might need to start working with some additional people. So we ended up getting my brother to help out with support and social media. From there we've still stayed relatively small and really instead of hiring a staff we've mostly leveraged outside contractors and made strategic partnerships where necessary. Temple Run 2 was made by a core team of 5 people, so we're still very small to this day.

What would you do differently now given what you know from projects completed and experience from the gaming and app market?
I think the biggest lesson we've learned over the years is to focus on projects with a reasonable scope for our small team. Whenever we've tried to make level based games with a lot of unique content we've always failed. I think that's mostly just because it's really hard to create a huge volume of content with a small team. So we've found most of our success with quick pick up and play games based on "arcade" style gameplay.

What tools do you use. By this I mean software development kits/engines (Cocos2d, Corona, Unity3D etc), audio packages, art packages.
We've used lots of tools over the years. The original Temple Run was made in our own in house 3d engine that we build over the years. Temple Run 2 was built fully in Unity3d.

What made you choose these tools over others?
The main reason we went with Unity3D is because it supports 3D graphics and because it's cross platform.

What marketing tactics do you employ? Forums, twitter, paid PR etc
There is no silver bullet. We've tried everything we can thing of over the years. We used to take more of a grassroots guerrilla marketing approach by posting in all the forums etc. These days we work with a PR firm to help us.

What effect do you think free to play has had upon your game design? Little know that TR was a paid game to start with so did you purposely create IAP when you decided to go free?
I don't think we let the business model define our game design. We always approach the game design first and then after we have something fun we try to figure out the best business model that fits. Even though Temple Run launched as a paid game, we already had all of the upgrades and in game coin currency and the ability to buy more coins with IAP. So it was already a natural fit for freemium. The only thing we changed when going from paid to free was the price.

What resources do you swear by for learning new techniques, getting more from the packages you mentioned above, news etc. e.g Books (specific titles would be appreciated), forums / websites, social media
I mostly learn by tinkering around with things and maybe following a tutorial here and there. Twitter has also been incredibly valuable for me as an indie game developer. There are so many other indie devs on twitter that you can interact with an ask questions. I've gotten so much great advice and learned so much from others that way.

There has been a lot in the press recently that app development is going through a gold rush and that the bubble will burst soon. Do you see it like this? You guys more than most seem to be bucking the trend :)
People have been saying the App Store is a gold rush ever since it opened. I try not to look at it that way, because I think people are being more successful every year and the scale of success just keeps going up too. It's still a tough market though, but I don't think that's really changed. When the App Store first opened there were only 500 apps, and it was still fiercely competitive and hard to make it. Now there are hundreds of thousands of apps and it definitely feels like the market it much more crowded, but in reality there are so many more people with mobile devices now so the market has also grown much larger. The reality is that video games are very much a hit driven market, so it's brutally tough to make it.

Do you think app games will eventually kill off AAA titles as we know them?
I hope not! I love big epic games with tons of content, and I think there are other people that do too. What I think has happened though is that mobile gaming has opened up games to a whole new segment of the market. There are tons of people that never really considered themselves gamers now playing a ton of mobile games. That's great for the industry and I think that there is room for both.

What does 2013 have in store for Imangi Studios?
Well, we have a lot more in store for Temple Run, that's for sure! I'd also like to work on some new games at some point, but right our focus is on Temple Run.

Any additional advice you would give for up and coming indie developers?
Start small, take on projects you know you can complete in a reasonable amount of time, get lots of feedback from others, and make the games you want to play, not the games you think others will want to play.

Download Temple Run 2 for iOS and Android.