Reality Gaming Group
How long have you been a developer?
I have only been working in the games industry for the past two years – having joined the Reality Clash project in 2017. At that time, the team was doing an ICO (initial coin offering) to raise funding to make an innovative augmented reality mobile game and an accompanying digital asset trading platform. I had prior experience working with cryptocurrency communities and had a massive love for all things gaming-related, and so I jumped at the chance to work on the project. As we are a small company, I’ve had the opportunity to work in many aspects of the business. My official role as Community Manager has extended to allow me to get involved in game development and more.
How many years has your team been developing games?
The team has been involved in the games industry for a very long time. One of our co-founders: Tony Pearce, has been working in the games industry for over 25 years and was around at the birth of mobile texting games as well as working on one of the first ten PlayStation 1 games to be released. Our game dev team is NearLight, https://nearlight.co.uk, who has been involved in numerous projects in the past, including VR shoot-em-up: Shooty Fruity.
Who, or what, inspired you to become a games developer?
My love of gaming has meant I’ve always wanted to work in the industry but thought I didn’t have the opportunity because I didn’t study any relevant technical degrees. I was fortunate to be recommended to the role at Reality Clash, and that’s where the gaming career has begun. It has been fantastic so far.
What was the inspiration for your team’s name?
Reality Gaming Group – we wanted to find a name that carried with it the primary genre of our augmented reality games – which is the mixing of real and virtual realities. Reality Gaming Group was therefore born from this.
Describe a usual day in the life of an Indie development team.
We do our best to keep to a schedule and with a team spread across multiple areas of the world, and it’s necessary to have regular meetings over skype and keep contact via email. We will tend to discuss and assign tasks at the start of a week and then try to get through these before the coming week. With so much to do and so few to do it, we try to use task management systems as effectively as possible. It can be hectic, but we get the work done.
Can you describe the process/timeline of developing a game?
Research – before I joined the team, the founders had done a lot of research into the market and gauged whether the game was fit to develop. The original idea for our first game came from our CEO, Morten Rongaard, over 4 years ago, but it was not until Pokemon Go was released in 2016 that the founders believed Reality Clash would be technically possible and marketable.
Funding process – you have to fund your game. We did this via an ICO. Backers supported the development of the game and trading platform in return for RCC (reality clash coins) which could be used on the trading platform to get limited edition, tradable weapons – which are tokenised as digital assets on the Ethereum Blockchain.
Hiring a team – you need the staff. We worked alongside NearLight who is our development team based in Brighton, UK.
Building the game – explains itself, we spent a long time reworking the game and even submitting test versions to see if the game would be accepted on mobile platforms.
Beta/testing – after testing the game in-house, we opened up a beta to get community feedback on the dev builds. This helped us improve the user experience and test servers.
Going live + Marketing – we are now at this stage with Reality Clash, our first mobile game. We are currently live in several regions including Russia, Denmark, Spain and Italy with more regions coming in the next few months. We will be launching in the UK in April while the USA will get access in the Summer. We have begun to prepare marketing campaigns and talk to influencers to get our app seen in the great wide world of games.
Next? – We are continuing to develop and improve the game throughout 2019 and beyond. There are a lot of features that we couldn’t include in our first release of the game, but we’re looking forward to bringing these out to our community in the coming months.
How do you juggle all of the aspects of games development?
As long as you keep things on track towards a collective objective – even with multiple teams, you can get the results you need. As previously mentioned, we use task assignment systems and regular calls to ensure that we are meeting our deadlines and moving forward.
What is your ambition as an Indie developer?
To build a game that is innovative and offers something new to gamers. Reality Clash pushes the boundaries of augmented reality, and this is something that I hope all gamers will appreciate. The style of gameplay is refreshing, and it takes mobile FPS gaming to a whole new level.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to get into the games industry?
It takes a lot of talent to make games, and the market is ever-expanding. If you are passionate, then there is likely a role out there for you. If you don’t try and get involved, then you won’t be involved.
Where do you see gaming heading in the next decade?
We have already seen the massive rise of Esports over the past few years, and I think that will continue to grow and become more entertaining for players and their audience. Mobile Esports will garner more interest as the tech develops further and mobile devices can provide more immersive gaming experiences for everyone.
I want to say a massive thank you to Jake Scott, Community Manager for an upcoming AR mobile game called Reality Clash, for giving his valuable time to take part in the Indie Corner Spotlight interview series. If you would like your team to be featured, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Avenger Bird
