I had the pleasure of attending Part 1 of the Fruit Ninja Developer Workshop on 14 September, held in Sauce Bar at the Esplanade.
The men of the hour who had just flown in from Brisbane – Richard McKinny (Chief Technical Officer) and Phil Larsen (Chief Marketing Officer) of Halfbrick – said a quick hello after opening the event, allowing the many participants to mingle over drinks and finger food catered for the game development enthusiasts.
One such attendee was Joshua Cheong, 21, a current Information Systems major from the pioneer batch of the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).
Currently developing a game called Slash The Snowflake in Objective C, he decided to sign up for the workshop given the similarities it shared with Fruit Ninja.
Mingling with other developers, he also said, was a good opportunity for sharing and exchanging unique ideas.
Another enthusiastic participant was Jeff Lim, a Senior Lead Engineer in his 30s at Lucasfilm Singapore.
It was hard to find local developers, he said, explaining that he had come to get to know more of such like-minded programmers on the ground.
Jeff mentioned that the gold-rush era of Zygna and their particular breed of social games was over, and the gaming community was trending towards developing individual titles on a much larger scale.
Given the fact that “consumers are becoming more discerning and picky with how they spend their time”, even current development of casual games has taken this mindset shift into account with the inclusion of sleek graphics and clever mechanics despite a simpler premise. Something most developers at the event seemed to agree on was using iOS as a sort of “testing ground” for an app before releasing it on other platforms.
Whether this trend continues, however, remains to be seen.
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