Madfinger Games Spills the Beans on freemium for Shadowgun: Deadzone

For those who consider their mobile device as an extension of their console may be familiar with works by Madfinger Games. The Czech Republic based developers have released the artistic Samurai II: Vengeance and the graphic intensive Shadowgun.

With the release of Shadowgun: Leftover and the anticipated multiplayer add on to the original, Shadowgun: Deadzone, we got the chance to sit down with Tomas Slapota, Co-Founder of Madfinger Games. Below you’ll find the reason they followed the freemium business decision for Shadowgun: Deadzone , sequels, and more!

Madfinger Games is becoming a household name for triple A mobile games, yet not much is known about your company. Can you tell us a bit about Madfinger Games?

MADFINGER Games is the indie company, that is trying hard to shift the limits of quality graphics of mobile games to their very potential limitations. It has been established as the company made up of veteran AAA developers of console and PC games. They decided to draw on our experience in the development of games for mobile device. Currently MADFINGER Games consists of two teams working on multiple projects.

Most of our readers complain that iOS seems to receive preferential treatments, in form of first release or exclusive games. Shadowgun: Leftover was released on iOS first then followed by Android months later, what made you to decide to release Leftover first on iOS?

Working on iOS versions is easier thanks to the system's isolation and limited number of devices. Today's world of products with Android is very fragmented and optimization for as many devices take its time. However, we tried to develop exclusive gaming content for Android tablets and mobiles, which I mean is the special SHADOWGUN version for NVIDIA Tegra 3 devices.

Samurai II: Vengeance and Shadowgun gave us one of the best graphics for mobile devices. How were you able to accomplish such graphics on a number of devices?

There are graphic artists in our team who have a sense of distinctive stylization (became evident in SAMURAI) as well as experience in creating photo-realistic graphics for AAA titles, that they have utilized for development of SHADOWGUN. Of course, with any newly developed generation of devices the meaning of "possible“ in the field of graphics moves on.

Any news on the upcoming Shadowgun: Deadzone?

We are still working hard on it. The new version will be shown at MWC in Barcelona. I think, we are going to reveal new multiplayer maps and characters here.

On your twitter account, you’ve announced Shadowgun: Deadzone to be freemium which concerned a number of our readers. In what ways will you charge users to play the games?

It's our first feat in the field of freemium games. We consider very carefully gameplay setting and pricing of game content. The first IAP should be upgrades of weapons and characters.

What made you decide to go on for the free to play model?

As I said, it is the first time we applied freemium model in our game. With Deadzone we want to gain experience in how this type of games to develop . Among other things, it is currently very popular game model. Simultaneously we still hold the idea that SHADOWGUN:DEADZONE has to be built up and released as the free app.

We'd like to thank Madfinger Games for taking their time to sit down and answer our questions. As always, check back often for more info on their upcoming games!