RedLynx's Tero Virtala

Basically we were founded in 2000 and for years we mainly did sub-contracting work for hire for bigger publishers. At the same time we did a lot of prototyping of small games and throughout the years we have maybe made about 100 games. That has been very important for our current success. They are really small games and in a way we've been able to try to innovate new game ideas with these little games and polish them until they are really good. We did them for interactive TV, for mobile, for free web games. Back in those days part of the idea was that those games were also prototypes for potentially bigger games that we could pitch to publishers. Some of them were realised, but some of them, back in those days, we didn't think they would have been big enough to be retail games. But we created a lot of good game ideas and developed our skills.

Then it was about three years ago when digital distribution was starting to open completely new types of opportunities for high quality, but smaller to medium sized games. And we began to think now maybe we can self-finance, develop and publish our first game, which was Trials 2 for PC. It was very successful and it proved the potential in these markets. Then last year we had four games, two for iPhone. Draw Race was very successful in that immediately it sold over 100,000 copies, and then Monster Trucks Nitro, which to date has sold over 600,000 copies.

So now we have about 35 people split into five teams of different sizes. We have a really talented team, we have the knowledge base and we have the know how. The idea is that those teams try to come up with game ideas that are somehow different. We don't have to reinvent the whole wheel but they have to stand out, there has to be something different about them. Our biggest projects are about a year in development. This year we are coming out with eight games on different platforms – iPhone, online consoles, web, PC. There are a number of really good platforms and be they casual gamers or hardcore gamers, they are interested in good games, no matter what the platform.

The games industry is really interesting because it's changing rapidly but at the same time it's growing at a huge pace. Our approach is to focus on creating and developing really good games that always have something new and different and we'll try to reach a number of platforms. We're developing smaller and medium-sized games for digital distribution, and the prices can be set low but the games can still be high quality and deep enough. At the same time the world is changing so I think it would be risky for a small studio to develop a large game that requires three or four years time, because no one knows what the game world will look like.

In 2008 we had one of our own games. Last year we had four and this year we're going for eight games and the quality of the games will be good. We've learnt a lot during those years.

Maybe not double the output every year but I think there are new markets opening up. When you consider how big digital distribution is going to be, we have the multiplatform development skills, we understand the digital online distribution space. It's not just what games are good but what does the audience appreciate in terms of marketing and what do players appreciate after the game has been launched? There is a really high market space for quality smaller games that can expand to a number of platforms. There aren't too many smaller studios that are going after that and for the big studios it's still very new to them. So in the long term, yes, it's going to be a big market and there is going to be a number of players, but this is the time for new players to get a strong position in the market place, and we have the opportunity to be one of those.

That's been part of our philosophy for developing new game ideas. We know we have really god staff, but part of development is that the world is changing so fast and we try to make games that are deep for the gamers and appeal to a casual audience that isn't familiar with games. In that way we try to be humbled, because we don't know everything. So when we have a good game sometimes we prototype it internally and we don't release it, but we still have people from outside the company testing the game and giving us their feedback to see whether they think the core mechanics would make a good game. Sometimes we do it so we'll release a free version of a game to see how people pick it up and how much they play it. It's an important feedback loop. No one can understand all of a changing market like this.

They are but the world is changing so fast. There used to be this retail related business model and there was the free web-based business model and the MMO subscription business model. But now the online space, where you have a number of new game platforms that are connected and online, we need to do a lot of planning and analysis. There are many things that no one has tried yet and we don't know if they'll work or not but it needs to be tested. The torrent networks reach a lot of people and yes there is the possibility that they eat your sales, but on the other hand it wasn't the full game that we released. It didn't have all the multiplayer features and leaderboards, it didn't have all the tracks in the game. In a way it was like a demo or a paired down version of the game which people got a lot of value out of as a free game, an it might have ate some sales but on the other hand when our idea is to go step by step to new platforms maybe it expanded the fanbase of the game, and maybe that fanbase has picked up Trials HD as well.