iPhone/Web 2.0

Today I have with me John Ray from Metatools with his game which is sweeping the iPhone: Metasquares. For those of you not familiar with the game, here is part of the official description:

Take turns placing pieces on the board while trying to get all 4 corners of a square. Squares can be formed at any angle and are worth more points the bigger they are. beat the computer by scoring 150 points first and having at least a 15 point margin of victory.

In the App Store in Germany, his app only has 5 star ratings. I’d have to agree with them that it’s a great game as I listed it on my own Favorite games for iPhone! I first remember playing it in 1997 on AOL. What I find so interesting about it is that it’s a board game that would be very difficult to play without a computer calculating the score.

Where did you get the inspiration for Metasquares?

I wish I could take credit for the concept. In fact, the game is the brainchild of puzzle master Scott Kim of Heaven and Earth fame. You are quite correct though in that computers make the game possible. However, there has never been a one player version before so we had to create the computer AI from scratch. We also created an AI test application that allowed us to simulate hundreds of thousands of games to balance each levels AI against the next.

On what platforms has your game run and what audience has it received?

We originally launched back in 1996 on AOL and were seeing hundreds of thousands of games being played per month. The game proved popular beyond our projections.

Why did you leave AOL?

Shortly after we launched the game, AOL switched from a per hour charge in which we shared revenue to an all you can eat plan. Since users no longer had to pay to play, we couldn’t keep the game going. Keep in mind that in its initial incarnation, MetaSquares was a multiplayer application that allowed users to play against each other and chat on the AOL service.

Why did you decide to port your game to the iPhone?

As soon as we heard about the open nature of iPhone development, we began porting for the device. In fact, we initially launched an iPhone web app that did quite a bit of traffic since it is on the Apple site. [Editor's note: this is a great way to try out the game to see if it would be worth buying.] The web app was a sort of a proof of concept in that it allowed us to see how good the game would play and how well it would be received.

What were your biggest difficulties reprogramming the game and getting it into the App Store?

I’d say the biggest issue we faced with the programming was getting used to the iPhone and its tools and then being able to tailor them to our needs. At MetaTools we place a very high emphasis on visual quality and we wanted to make sure the game looked its best. The iPhone turned out to be a wonderful device from that perspective. In terms of getting into the App store, it was actually quite straightforward once Apple set all of our permissions correctly on the development portal.

One thing I would like to see is multiplayer games, at the very least to be able to play someone next to me. What are your plans for multiplayer games?

Glad you asked. Actually our 1.0.1 version which we should be submitting soon will feature a “hot potato” two player mode where two players can play against each other on the same device. That version should also include German, French, Spanish and Japanese language versions as well. We are also hard at work on building true multiplayer functionality that will allow players to play against each other over the internet using their Wi-Fi connections.

Are you planning to make other apps for the iPhone?

Indeed. We’re already looking at a couple other titles, probably in the same board/puzzle category. We are even looking into branching out into other categories of products as well such as utilities and productivity applications.

Thank you for your time and I wish you the greatest success on your projects!

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