Over the past few years, PDAMill has become one of the prominent developers of Pocket PC games. Starting with freeware titles such as Peter's GameBox, founder Peter Balogh built up a small following. In 2002, the company released Snails, which has been a blockbuster title for the Pocket PC and still one of the most popular games to date. Unlike most previous games and even many of the games that tried to duplicate it, Snails brought a level of game play, graphics, audio, and overall fun that, along with Rocket Elite, proved the Pocket PC was a worthwhile gaming platform.
Encouraged by the success of Snails, the company has continued to release a steady stream of high quality titles, including their own collections of simpler games such as Solitaire, Mahjongg, and Tetris. Some of their more ambitious titles include the RPG Arvale, the futuristic racer Flux Challenge, and the space shooter Anthelion, each bringing a level of quality rarely seen on the platform.
I recently had a chance to talk with founder Peter Balogh about how his company his company started, how he's managed to release several quality titles, and how PDAMill has managed to flourish in a very unfavorable market.
Peter Balogh, founder of PDAMill.
AG: How did PDAmill come about, and what got you interested in developing games for the Pocket PC?
PB: About five years ago, at the height of the IT boom, I was an IT consultant-well paid, well respected, and full of ideas. I was always fascinated by gadgets, especially Windows CE Handheld and Palm-sized PCs. As soon as the Pocket PC was launched, I had to get one. Of course I started developing for it the day I got it and started making my first PDA games. In 2001 I released Peter's GameBox and Peter's Casino as freeware and they became immensely popular. I enjoyed all the positive feedback and made lots of friends online. Then, in 2002, with a small team from around the world, we released Snails, our first commercial title. It became an instant success and built us some fame quickly. It's still one of the best selling games for PDAs, which I find very peculiar. Then in 2003 I finally assembled a team of four dedicated guys and officially formed PDAmill, Ltd. The team quickly expanded to the current 12 full-time employees and a product range of over 25 different products on 5 different platforms.
AG: When did you decide to go multiplatform?
PB: I ported Snails to Microsoft Smartphone and Symbian in 2003, and then we ported our technology and games to Palm OS in 2004. If you're starting from Pocket PCs, going multiplatform is a huge pain in the neck. Your code is all clean and nice, you work using the best (and free!) embedded development tool on the market, and you have a good emulator and on-device debugging. You really have everything a developer could ask for. Then as you start learning Symbian and Palm OS, you quickly realize that "porting" means more like a complete rewrite, and it takes a lot longer than you would have guessed.
Snails is one of the many excellent games available from PDAMill.
AG: In the mobile scene and especially the Pocket PC development community, a lot of companies (Ionside, Hexacto, Monkeystone, etc.) have developed successful products and then fallen by the wayside. Do you have any insights into this trend?
PB: I think the explanation is simple enough. A few years ago everybody expected PDA sales to skyrocket. After seeing cell phones and DVD players and so many things go from rare to household items, people expected PDAs to do the same. Most PDA game developers started making PDA games with huge investments from venture capital or private investors. When they realized that the PDA market's never going to boom, they've quickly fled the market-or went bankrupt.
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