Bobblebrook, a relative newcomer to the Vienna, Austria games development scene, has launched as of May 1st! Consisting of childhood friends Philipp Seifried and Markus Mundjar, Bobblebrook aims to release new and innovate Flash games every four to six weeks, focusing on unusual ideas and concepts. So far, they have three games launched, “A Good Hunch”, featuring two time-traveling goats in a platform environment, “Twizzle”, a puzzler based on pushing a sphere through various circular orbigs and “Drifts”, a re-imagining of a previous game released several years ago by the duo.

Read the full press release after the jump or Go play at Bobblebrook

Vienna-based start-up launches free online games service for non-core gamers.

VIENNA, AUSTRIA – May 1st, 2008
Right on time for your morning coffee, Austrian start-up bobblebrook have launched their online-game website bobblebrook.com.
bobblebrook.com features small browser-based games (so-called “Flash games”), ideally suited for a short break at the office or a quick distraction while your lasagna is baking.

“Casual gaming has become a huge trend in recent years”, says Markus Mundjar, one of the Viennese company’s two founders, “In the 1990s, gaming had a very well defined audience primarily consisting of technology enthusiasts. Now, with a computer in every home and ubiquitous broadband access, the target group has widened considerably!”
His co-founder Philipp Seifried adds: “A lot of the kids who grew up playing video games in the 80s and 90s now have jobs and families. They still like to play games, but they can’t afford to sit down for three hours and learn the interface of the next great strategy game.”

This is where casual games come in – games that are easy to pick up and that can be played for 15 minutes at a time.
Casual gaming has become a large market. The Casual Games Association has estimated a total volume of 1.5 billion USD spread over 150 million gamers for 2008*, a substantial percentage of which are women over thirty. Indeed, some outlets report that as much as 75 percent of their audience are female**.
“The barriers of entry into the market are still very low.”, says Philipp Seifried, “While a mainstream title can run in the tens of millions of Dollars, casual games can be produced with budgets that are two or three orders of magnitude smaller.”

In fact, the start-up aims to release a new Flash game every four to six weeks. “We plan to have ten titles online within the first year.”, says Markus Mundjar, “The quick release cycles are a great motivation for us. We can try out a lot of unusual ideas and concepts within projects that are so short they are essentially free of risk.”
“We spend a lot of time working on the emotional aspects of our games,” says Philipp Seifried, “but the actual execution can be very quick. We both have an educational background in media-design, and we handle every step of the production ourselves, from concept to programming, all the way to graphics and music. Essentially, we have a huge playground here, where we get to try out different aesthetics and sharpen our skills.” “And we get to entertain people”, adds Markus Mundjar, “and give them a great way to spend their time, all for free!”

This approach of experimenting with concepts and producing highly polished small games is visible in the diversity of the three launch titles: “A Good Hunch” is a platform game featuring two time-travelling goats, “Twizzle” an innovative puzzle game based on pushing a sphere through different circular orbits; “drifts” is a reworked version of an action game released two years ago, which, placed on a single site with no other related content, gathered over half a million pageviews within the first year.

bobblebrook estimates that their Flash games will be able to finance themselves within the first year, using a strategy that combines banner-advertising on bobblebrook.com and a range of services provided to other businesses. “We have worked in advertising and have good relationships with local design agencies. All our Flash games can be licensed and co-branded to add value to advertisement campaigns.”, says Markus Mundjar.
In addition to growing its portfolio of free online games, the company also has a commercial downloadable title in production. Pre-production on a second offline title has begun as well. “Our long term strategy is based both on free browser-based games and commercial offline games.”, notes Philipp Seifried, “The offline titles take a lot longer to produce, so our Flash games have the additional benefit that they allow us to see which ideas work great and which not so well.”
“Flash games are also really good at attracting visitors”, adds Markus Mundjar, “When you’re developing a commercial title, it never hurts to have an audience that already knows what standards of quality to expect from your games!”