It’s a crucial question because Kickstarter campaigns usually involve backers pre-ordering the product, and while that’s perfectly easy on platforms like Steam or Android, it’s more complicated – but not impossible – on iOS. But still pretty straightforward.

Here’s how we did it:

1. We developed two near-identical apps – Zombies, Run! and ZR Advance. Zombies, Run! is a paid app at $7.99; ZR Advance is free.

2. Before launch, we emailed all of our backers a link that allowed them to set a password for their ‘ZombieLink’ account.

3. They downloaded ZR Advance, entered their email and password, and were authenticated by our ZombieLink server; this then unlocked the appropriate content in the app.

But the most important step was telling Apple what we were going to do before we did it. We were pretty confident this plan would work and didn’t break their rules, but there was no way we were going to rely on it without getting some confirmation. Luckily, they reached out to us first because they thought the game sounded cool, so we took that opportunity to explain our issue and proposed solution. They were very helpful and in fact offered some other potential solutions, along with the advice that the free ZR Advance app must have at least some content for curious downloaders (in our case, we made some of our Codex available, plus people could look at the base).

After our Kickstarter campaign finished there was still plenty of demand for Zombies, Run!, so we set up a where people could continue to pre-order the game. Apple were also fine with this although they made very clear that we should shut down the store once the game was on sale – which we were planning to do anyway.

Please do not take this post as any kind of official Apple policy. Even if this strategy was fine earlier this year, there is no telling whether it’ll still be fine next year. For what it’s worth, we feel that it works well and that it complements the App Store nicely. It’s not as if any of the most profitable game developers like Zynga or Rovio are about to crowdfund their next game, and even if they did, it would hardly be worth anyone’s time since their games are either free or 99 cents. Rather, crowdfunding – and this distribution method – is an ideal way to help higher-priced indie games like ours attract backers and become a reality, which is good news for developers, for gamers, and for Apple.

Q: What if people share their ZombieLink credentials?
A: We can tell. If they do, then we will send them a warning email.

Q: Can’t I just put the user/pass credentials in the app, so I don’t need to do any server stuff?
A: Sure, but see above.

Q: Who did you talk to at Apple?
A: We’re pretty sure they wouldn’t want us to say.

Q: How did you market your Kickstarter campaign?
A: Two tweets, one email, and one Google Plus post. Also, it’s a pretty cool idea that can be explained in under 140 characters.

Q: I thought that only famous game devs like Tim Schafer, or beloved IPs/genres can get funded?
A: Yeah, don’t listen to people who say that. The $73k we raised for Zombies, Run! certainly isn’t a million dollars but it’s definitely useful for a small dev like us, and more importantly, it’s excellent validation for the game concept.

Q: Wait, backers had to pay $10 on Kickstarter for the game, but you’re selling it for $7.99!? You monsters!
A: Kickstarter backers get every single paid add-on released during Season 1 for free. There will be at least three add-ons that will bring the price up well beyond $10. They’re getting an awesome deal.

If you’re a smart app developer who wants to make fun and important games that players love, get in touch.

Your responsibilities:

• Office upkeep and organisation
• Answering the phone
• Research and copywriting
• Game testing
• Assisting with audio production, live event organisation, and customer support

You need to be:

• A fast, accurate, grammatically correct and clear writer (if we find any spelling mistakes in your application – sorry!)
• Hard working, diligent, and organised
• Good at interacting with members of the public
• Familiar with Macs, Skype, Google Docs, and basic HTML
• Basic video editing experience is a plus
• Interested in games

Your application

Send a plain-text email to internapps (at) sixtostart.com with up to 300 words explaining why you would like to be an intern at Six to Start. We don’t require masses of experience, but anything you can show us that demonstrates your commitment and skill is good (e.g. a writing sample such as a game review).

Other requirements:

• In your email, use the subject “Summer 2012 intern”
• Attach a one-page CV as a PDF or as plain text (max 300 words) in your email
• Also, please include in your email’s subject line the name of our previous location-based storytelling project for smartphones

The internship will last from 2-3 months and pay London Living Wage. Interns will be expected to work 40 hours a week at our office by Clapham North.

We expect a high volume of applications, so if we do not reply to your email, unfortunately this means that you have not been accepted (it may have something to do with not paying attention to the requirements above). We cannot respond to enquiries regarding the status of your application.

The application deadline is 9am Thursday 17th May. Shortlisted applicants should expect to be emailed on or before Friday June 1st.

For newcomers: Zombies, Run! is a running game and audio adventure for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android (coming May/June) co-created by Six to Start and Naomi Alderman, in which you run in the real world while getting a story and zombie chases through your headphones.

Should we follow the lead of almost every other successful game on the App Store and make it freemium or $0.99 – or… well, it didn’t seem like there was any alternative.

So, how did we end up pricing it at $7.99, a price that isn’t just more expensive than most games – it’s the most expensive game in the Top 200 paid apps, and for apps overall, it comes behind only Apple’s own $9.99 offerings such as Pages and Numbers.

In fact, it’s insanity. A lot of developers and investors we’ve spoken to after launch do a double-take when they hear that the game isn’t the standard $0.99 or $2.99 and they wonder how on Earth it’s possible that such an expensive game with zero brand name, zero marketing spend, and zero advertising spend could even hope to breach the top 200, let alone top 100 grossing, for any extended period of time.

Yet here we are – Zombies, Run! has been out for over a month, during which it held the #1 position in Top Grossing Health and Fitness apps for two weeks (it’s still at #3) and has been settling down comfortably into the Top 200 grossing apps, having been in the Top 100 for most of the time. We’re on track to sell 100,000 copies in the near future and, crucially, it’s had fantastic critical priase and user reviews, with great word-of-mouth.

So why can we charge so much?

1. We Deliver Value

Compared to a game, Zombies, Run! is expensive. Compared to a gym membership, or to any sporting or fitness good you could name, and you realise that $7.99 isn’t a lot – especially if it works and gets you running more than you were before.

Of course, this is because Zombies, Run! is not just a game, it’s also a health app, and we know that people will pay more for those as well – but even comparing against those, we’re still the most expensive. It helps that the game has as many missions as it does.

2. We’re Unique

Zombies, Run! isn’t just “it’s X but with Y” – there are literally no other running games or health apps out there that even attempt to tell a story (at least, not that we’ve heard of). This means that Zombies, Run! effectively has no competition whatsoever. It also seemed unlikely to us that brands like Nike would try and mimic the game, since they have a very different positioning.

However, we fully expect that to change in time, which is why we’re pushing out updates on an aggressive schedule, and why we focused so much effort and resources on Naomi’s story. It might be easy to copy the concept, but it’s not so easy to just whip up a good story.

3. Existing Fan Base

Zombies, Run! is brand new IP, but that doesn’t mean it came from nowhere. We funded the game via Kickstarter in September 2011, raising $73,000 from 3500 backers and becoming the most successful videogame on the site – until a certain Tim Schafer came along, that is…

That meant that when we launched in February, we already had tens of thousands of people eagerly anticipating the game and already knowing what it was, along with press coverage ready to go.

4. High Quality

We feel that Zombies, Run! is a high quality app – we used professional actors and spent the time to get it right. The story is as good as any you’ll find in videogame today.

But Still…

Despite all this, we were still thinking of a freemium or $3 or $4 price point. There was one major snag with this: we didn’t want to undercut our Kickstarter backers, the vast majority of whom pledged $10 in return for the game plus all Season 1 add-ons (which we stated would be $20+ of value). Pricing the core app at $3 would make that promise much harder to fulfil.

But let’s assume that we’re horrible people – what if we don’t care about our backers and we just want to maximise revenue? Well, Kickstarter and subsequent pre-orders had shown that there was massive demand for the game, with several thousand of people willing to buy our game for $10 or $12, sight unseen. They didn’t know Six to Start, didn’t know Naomi Alderman, they just thought the concept was cool and that we could execute it.

Under those circumstances, it would have been crazy to charge it at a low price.

I became more convinced of this over the winter, when I tried out the alpha builds. Even at such an early stage, I remember thinking that we’d made exactly the game I imagined it to be when we started, and I would not have any problem paying $7.99 for it.

Could we have made more if we charged less? Maybe – it’s impossible to know. But we’re happy with where we are at $7.99. It’s earned us enough money to continue releasing updates and new features for our very loyal fanbase, and we feel that upholding our promise to our Kickstarter backers was crucial. When we release other games in future, and if we ever run another Kickstarter campaign, we want people to know that we’ve got their backs. That’s not the mention the extra support costs that come with a bigger player base.

That’s Fine For You…

You could say that being able to charge $7.99 is a one-off, only applicable to health games*. But that’s not the case: there are other interesting health games out there. And there are other ‘must have’ games that have done very well at high price points – not just Infinity Blade or GTA III, but the likes of Swords and Sworcery and various good board-game ports.

No, the issue is that people think freemium or $1 is the only way for games to make money on the App Store. As a result, developers feel they must make a game that appeals to the lowest common demoninator – in other words, casual games. And clearly that works very well – Zombies, Run! is never going to make as much money as Cut the Rope or Tiny Wings. But we’re doing pretty well where we are without competing against ten thousand other developers who are also making casual games.

Ultimately, success at higher price points is about making a ‘must have’ game – not something that everyone must have, but some people. How do you start?
Do it with yourself – what game would you really like to play? And from there, get people to be brutally honest about your idea. Not just your friends, because most of the time they don’t want to hurt your feelings, but the public. Kickstarter works pretty well for this, because it allows you to gauge the level of demand very quickly.

It’s also useful to let your ideas stew, not just for days or weeks, but for months.

*(I have heard it said that we were successful because we featured zombies. A cursory examination of the App Store and Kickstarter would reveal exactly how wrong that is.)

Ending the Race to the Bottom

At $15 for a 2 hour experience, Journey for the PS3 seems like an astonishingly expensive game – one that exceeds the developer’s previous title, Flower, by 50%. But I am perfectly happy I paid $15 because it was such a fantastic experience – more memorable than any other game I’ve played in the last year.

Perhaps they could have made more money at another price point or with a slightly different game design, but I suspect they’re selling well as it is, plus they get the vital satisfaction that they have made something good that’s true to their vision.

No-one wants a future where games are only $1 or less. Not developers, not Apple – not even gamers, if they realised at what cost it came. We want to deliver unique, high quality, amazing experiences that are good value for money and that offer some kind of social benefit, however small. We hope that Zombies, Run! demonstrates to developers that there is another route to take than $0.99.

Get Zombies, Run! on the App Store for $7.99 – it’s worth it!

But where some might see the word ‘crisis’, we see the word ‘opportunity’ – a prime opportunity for some Friday afternoon fun:

“Hi guys – so I found a way to remove yourself from the mailing, it’s pretty simple:

Hope this helps!”

So what would you get on the phone number? Listen away:

Of course, the joke was on us, because BBC tech support had already shut down the reply-to-all function of that list in the mere 20 minutes it took to write, record, and set this up, so it didn’t get the widespread coverage we had hoped.

Well played, sirs! But next time, we will be there…

• Show us something you have made, ideally in iOS. It doesn’t need to be a game, it doesn’t need to have graphics, it doesn’t need to have zombies, it just needs to be interesting.
• You’re able to work from our office in South London at least 4 days a week.
• You’re flexible in your habits and what you’re willing to learn; we’re an indie developer and everyone’s job can be very fluid. If you aren’t comfortable with that, this is not the place for you. But if you like trying out new things and learning very quickly, it is.
• Being friendly and approachable!
• An interest in games and game design, and a tenacious approach to problem-solving.

Nice-to-haves include:

• 1+ year experience of iOS development
• Experience in a related field (e.g. any of: web development, UI/UX design, sound engineering, Android development, hardware hacking, etc.)

We are not looking for a writer at this point, nor people whose principal goal is to become a game designer.

Salary is competitive. Get in touch at hello@sixtostart.com with your CV attached and a link to something you have made. No CV and no link = not good.

No recruitment agencies.

We’ve written a lot about Zombies, Run! on our Kickstarter page and official website, so in this blog we want to talk about how this game became about and why we’re making it.

*We just made that term up.

The Dream: An original, self-funded game

When we founded Six to Start, we had a very simple plan: we’d make brilliant games for great clients and when we had enough profits saved, we’d make our own game. Either that, or we’d make our own game in our spare time. Easy!

Or maybe not. Believe it or not, it turns out that making brilliant games is really very difficult; if you’re spending all of your time trying to make We Tell Stories or Smokescreen – two highly original projects – as good as they can be, you don’t have that much time to do anything else. In 2008 there was the financial crash, which didn’t help our clients all that much; and during all of this time, we were trying to learn how to run a company.

We’ve had time for a few experiments, like Werewolf 359, an online framework for playing Werewolf, and Wanderlust, a location-based storytelling engine that integrated with Foursquare. Around this time, we’d also been developing an action game for the iPhone with time travel and ARG elements – unfortunately we let the scope grow too far and we didn’t have the skills to do everything we wanted to. A simple mistake, and one we were determined not to repeat with Wanderlust, which was made entirely in-house, and we tapped our writing buddies to craft stories for it. Despite being made in just a few weeks, it got a decent amount of attention and also boosted our confidence that we were going down the right path.

The Running Dead

I’m a keen runner. I didn’t always use to be one – I hated it at school – but over time I’ve really fallen for the sense of freedom and energy that you get from running, and of course, it’s got to be one of the cheapest ways of keeping fit. Being an early adopter, I’ve always had a close eye on running tech, buying two successive versions Garmin Forerunner GPS tracker and having three different running apps on my iPhone.

There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that knowing your exact pace and distance is a fantastic way to make running better and more fun; it makes your progress – both in a run and as a runner – much more transparent. That’s why RunKeeper, Nike+, and Garmin Connect are so popular.

And over the years, there have been various ‘running games’ out there, including Seek and Spell, PacManhattan, Journey to the End of the Night, and the more sedate Pokewalker. These are all really interesting and I’ve played most of them, but most of them aren’t really about running at all. They often involve running, but more in the sense of running as a side-effect of the game mechanics rather than “I’m going to spend 30 minutes running 5km this evening”.

There are even other augmented reality running games out there where players avoid enemies or collect loot that has been superimposed on nearby roads and parks! But because they often require you to look at your phone’s screen to find the next waypoint or whatever, you can’t really do any extended running unless you want to get injured. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – not everyone wants to run – but it’s not ideal for regular joggers or runners, who prefer to stick to one or two or three familiar routes (which is antithetical to the discovery-centric nature of many location-based games).

On the flipside, sites like Fitocracy, Superproof, and Nike+ are attempting to add badges, levels, points, and collectibles to running. I am sure that some people like these things and find them motivating, but they all seem centred around the idea of competing, either with other people or with yourself. The truth is that for many recreational runners, running isn’t always about beating your personal best time or distance. Running is fun and tiring and exhilarating and painful and freeing; it generates numbers, but those numbers aren’t the reason we run.

So we wanted to make an iPhone game that was really about running (or jogging, if you like). Our first idea was based around actual geography and was more classically game-like, but it didn’t seem like it would have enough longevity and was a bit too geared towards hardcore runners, so we weren’t that satisfied. Then we talked to Naomi Alderman – who became our lead writer for this game – about it and we came up with the brilliant idea of setting the game in a post-apocalyptic world of zombies where running would be an essential and life-saving skill. It was also clear why you would run – to help gather vital supplies for your people. Naturally, there would be a story delivered straight to your ears, and much more behind it. Everything fit into place.

Making It

Even better, making Zombies, Run! was something we could do almost entirely in-house, and it would exercise all of the skills that we’d been honing for years – new forms of storytelling, great user experience, sound design, ARGs – they’re all essential for this game.

We did some proper feasibility testing to make sure we could actually make the game well and in a reasonable amount of time – creating an internal prototype, writing the script, recording the audio, adding SFX – and everything looked good, so we began creating the Kickstarter trailer. While Zombies, Run! isn’t as difficult to explain as other games we’ve made, it’s not quite like anything else that’s out there. Other than saying “It’s like Nike+ but with zombies” we felt a live-action trailer and interview would convey what the game was all about.

We’ve also had many long discussions about how we balance storytelling and play in the game; at one end, Zombies, Run! might just be a podcast – at the other, it’d be a highly complex system. We’re somewhere in the middle, and the same applies to the game mechanics: we made a deliberate decision not to have traditional points or XP or levels. We do have analogues to them, but they’re much more integrated into the fiction of the game. They are the people in your base you want to save. They are the things that will feed and clothe and protect them. They are the secrets, mysteries, and tales of the people and the barren environment that you run through.

In short, we are creating a world filled with stories and characters that make you want to run – a world where your ability and drive to run is a matter of life and death, not just for yourself but for the people around you. It’s not a crude and empty system of points and levels, it’s a game that is about what it means to be alive.

Support us – and help rebuild civilization!

If you like the sound of this and you want to support us – and get a discounted copy of the game plus some great swag – check us out on Kickstarter. This is a real labour of love for us, and we think it’ll be something very special.

It’s not as if The Code is the first TV show to innovate online; The Million Pound Drop, Misfits, Virtual Revolution, Push Nevada, and more have all done very cool things mixing the web and TV.

But what we’re doing is new in a few ways…

TV and online, side-by-side

Long before The Code was commissioned, the producers at the BBC were thinking about how to reach out and engage a broader audience in a deeper way. “Doesn’t everyone do this?” you might wonder.

The answer is: not really. In our experience, it usually boils down to, “Let’s do something on Twitter and Facebook.” If broadcasters are feeling particularly flush or reckless, you might even get a Flash game or a dedicated microsite that solicits audience photos and videos. But very little of this online activity ‘touches’ the TV show, mainly because TV workflows are completely different to online workflows – everything is produced in one go, scripts can change day-by-day, and the edit might see entire sections chopped out.

So it’s easy to understand why many TV producers are reluctant to delve deeply into any online integration when they themselves aren’t sure what will be in the show – you need a lot of trust and very good communication right from the start to make it work. To help establish this, Six to Start’s producer for The Code, Matt Wieteska, is embedded with the BBC production team for part of every week – and not just with our Julian Phillips (our exec producer there), Jo Witt, and (previously) Morwenna Gordon, but with the TV people as well.

Finally, it really helps that not only is Marcus du Sautoy well-versed with the web and Twitter, a designer of maths games, but he’s also a big fan of treasure hunts. What more could you want for a project like this?

The right kind of games

Our four Flash games strike the right balance between fun and educational – which is to say, first they are really fun, and second they are educational. Let’s face it – it doesn’t matter how educational a game is unless people want to play it, so that’s what we focused on. Some of the games are much more on the fun side, but one, about mosaics and symmetry, is just about perfect in how the gameplay is inherently educational. I should also thank the super-smart guys at Devilish Games for their work here!

It helps that we’ve focused on just four games. It might sound like a lot, but we were thinking of doing even more during the design phases. However, in our experience in other games like Smokescreen, the vast majority of traffic flows to only a few missions or minigames – and that you can normally identify what those might be in advance. We took a long, hard look at our game designs and picked the four best. But even then, I’m pretty sure I know which of those four will be most popular…

Not a Pyramid

Seen this before? It’s our old friend, the ‘inverted pyramid’ model of engagement for ARGs and transmedia! But I don’t like it so much. It feels like a post-facto justification of why only a few people get really engaged in most projects by suggesting that what you’re making is just way too awesome/hard for the public, who’ll have to make do with lightweight stuff (yes, like Flash games).

The fact is, most people are smarter and more engaged than you might think. Masquerade – an incredibly challenging treasure hunt book – sold millions not just because it had a pretty cover and pictures (although that helped). It was because it had a beautifully-judged difficulty curve and contained all sorts of tricks and ways to draw even the most novice or hesitant reader in. Also, it was just a book – everything you needed was contained in it, rather than scattered across multiple places.

We’ve tried to do the same with The Code. Without giving anything anyway, while there are plenty of clues and ways in to the treasure hunt on TV and online, we are going to make it very easy for people to understand what they need to do, even if the puzzles within that are more challenging. That’s something we’re sticking to throughout the design.

To repeat: It’s really easy to play The Code. Most people should get most of the way through it. But even when it gets really difficult, you’ll still think you could solve it…

Exuberant!

We (Six to Start and the BBC) realised we had an opportunity to do something really wonderful with The Code. We could get thousands of people to think about maths in a new, exuberant way, and not just by creating a treasure hunt, but through everything in that treasure hunt: from the design of the treasure, to the clues in the show, to the ‘ultimate challenge’.

I think everyone will be really delighted by some of things we’re doing. You’ll find out some of them very soon, and others won’t be revealed until everything is over. I hope you’ll join us when The Code airs!

You can listen to (or download) the podcast from the site, and it’s certainly a useful window into how the BBC is approaching the area these days.

But of course, it’s not really the tech that’s important, it’s the experience, so do check out the games and read our brief case study.

(One of our favourite games was Line of Best Fit, a single-player word-tile game that you should check out – let us know what you think and we might do something with it!)

The session itself wasn’t recorded, but I’ve done a screencast of the talk which you can watch below:

As an ‘Intermediate’ level talk, it assumes that you’ve played or read about ARGs before, although you may not have made one. On the whole it was received very well, with lots of great questions about the role of marketing ARGs, smartphones, RPGs, and LARPs in future developments; I also got to see some sneak peeks of upcoming ‘mobile ARGs’ by indie teams, which were extremely exciting.

If you don’t have the time to watch the talk, here’s a summary:

Like every other new product, experience, or technology, ARGs are following the hype curve. The technology trigger came in 2001, with cheap broadband allowing a critical mass of players to easily communicate and collaborate online. Excitement peaked around 2005 with games like I Love Bees and Perplex City, both commanding budgets of six to seven figures. Since then, we’ve been on a precipitous descent since we haven’t attracted the millions of players (and dollars) we expected.

Why the disappointment? In short, it was difficult to scale up player numbers without losing the ‘magic’ personal interaction and multiplatform nature of ARGs; we got hung up over the ‘This is Not a Game’ (TINAG) mantra; and the friction of moving between different platforms was too high for casual players (no matter how cool it is to go to live events or get post in the mail).

The answer is to reduce friction, by means of converged devices like smartphones, and single sign-on mechanisms like Facebook; to get rid of TINAG and just make the games more transparent to consumers; and to steal/borrow ideas from other game genres on how to make games accessible and sticky without creating impossible amounts of content.

I feel like we’re definitely turning a corner in the ARG/transmedia space this year; I’m very enthusiastic about what’s coming up!