Last week, we had the first part of the Dark Legends interview with Spacetime Studios CEO Gary Gattis. For the second part, he provided some additional statistics: since Dark Legends launched on April 11, there have been over a half million Dark Legends game accounts formed. The game has 80 percent male players between the ages of 18-34 years old, mostly from English-speaking parts of the world. The Legends games in general see more than 1.5 million play sessions per week.

Dark Legends is clearly off to a hot start, and this week we talk about what’s different compared to the other Legends titles and briefly on their upcoming fourth title.

How big was it to be able to launch on browsers and mobile devices at the same time and get that exclusive Google partnership for Android and Chrome?

It was huge for us. We had originally planned on going with a different partner, but we are close with Google. It fit with our unified platform since it allowed us to release it on Chrome. That also softened the blow for iOS players who weren’t able to play it on their iPhones.

Our aim is to be a unified platform for independent Mobile MMOs for people to play the same games around the world together. PC, Linux, mobile, Mac all at the same time; our vision is any platform at any time. When I’m at work, in my bed or in the bathroom it doesn’t change the game I’m playing with my friends. To my knowledge, there’s no other game that can be played like that. We’re also border agnostic as well. We get deep penetration in nations that don’t have much PC integration.

We’re played in every nation except North Korea and Cuba, but I think Kim Jong Un may play it. South Korea (we’re not localized there, we have plans to but haven’t) is about 50 percent of the U.S. as far as download and usage, and that is very high; it is actually about the penetration in the U.K.

I’ve noticed some of the biggest gameplay changes relate to social gaming elements like energy.

It’s more ambitious than our previous projects. We’re going to iterate with the gameplay. We have deep analytics and have been experimenting with energy and timers and have been very successful with it. They’ll be more integrated in the 3D space so more time sync mechanics will be coming

So we’ll be shipping [Arcane Legends] in three months or so and we’ve been working that for a while after getting Dark Legends out the door. Now all of our games have the same unified code base so things we’ve added, like achievements, we’ll roll back into other games.

We’re considering a Facebook client that would be fully unified with the rest of our stuff. There’s some concern with their level of control, however, and developers are moving from Facebook to mobile – it’s something we’re keeping an eye on.

It’s getting to be on Facebook that unless you’re one of the top companies spending hundreds of millions of dollars, you can’t make it worth it.

We’re starting to see that in mobile as well. The size of the App Stores and the number of apps makes it a challenge, and now Apple is taking out the unique device identifier, and I think they want to take away incentivized downloads. Their App Store is the pleasure and the bane of the industry.

It’s helpful then that you’ve already gotten yourself established.

I totally agree. And I think the fact that we were the first mobile MMO, and were an early mover in the space, now we’ve got that network of players because we were out in front. We have built in debuggers because we have 1.7 million play sessions per week.

Free-to-play is still difficult for some people to wrap their heads around as to how it can make money with 95 percent of people paying nothing at all. One of the best explanations I read was that the extra people help fill out the experience and being on multiplayer platforms enhances that.

Those people become the content and platform agnosticism is where its at. It’s not about where I’m playing but what I’m playing. That’s been a fundamental tenet. Meanwhile, the retail business is struggling to find its footing. We were suppose to see a new console three years ago but mobile and tablets took over now.

How are you looking to keep attention on your other titles?

We’ve just now put full-time teams on our live games. Pocket Legends and Star Legends suffered when we concentrated on Dark Legends, but now we have full-time live teams for them. Pocket Legends is larger than ever now. The average play session on Android is 12 hours a month and on iOS is about 15 hours a month. On our games, it’s about 25 hours a month. The hardcore players average 3 hours a day  – a significant portion of the day. Pocket Legends and Star Legends are doing very well; people cross-pollinated between the titles. People that discover one can move over to the other games. We’ve got people making more content and people want that content.

We are 42 and growing, approaching a corporate milestone of 50 people. We’re still all in one big room and we’re in the “partner pit” in the middle. I described the ownership of the studio as being four people. The ownership of the company is represented by the four disciplines of making games (programing, art, game design and producing) and we’re still knee deep in game development and we’re still hands-on with making games.  It’s a fun, interactive environment. It’s like a garage band that has grow into a 42 piece jazz fusion odyssey!

You’re currently CEO of the company, but could you ever see hiring someone to “be your boss” to continue on with development?

If someone came by tomorrow we’d hire them. We just love working together here and I want to preserve it.

Should we expect to see more different things in Arcane Legends?

Yep absolutely. It will be have 3D gameplay and things that people have never done before in mobile MMOs.

Gary, thanks.

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