Interview with Noam Abta (Nitako)

Noam Abta and Yuval Markovich, Nitako's co-founders

I recently had the privilege of e-mail chatting to Noam Abta, co-founder of Nitako games. Nitako is the creator of several iTunes App Store hits; one of which we have already reviewed.

Noam was kind enough to give us an insight into Nitako, their games and even some advice.

Graham Peter: Tell us a little bit about yourself and why you got into game development?

Noam Abta: I was an animation film maker before doing the shift to game development. Prior to Nitako me and my Partner Yuval Markovich were the founding team behind Aniboom.com which is today the biggest online animation portal. In Aniboom most of our work had to do with creating specifications for the web design and creating online interactive animation creation tools and not on producing actual animation content. Gradually we found out that we love creating interactive content better than linear narrative film content.

Graham Peter: How did Nitako come about and what is it’s goal? Was it a sort of, “Let’s start a development company, oh, and I’ll have a large chips with that,” or more along the lines of, “Let’s start a development company, but instead of chips I’ll have the salmon.”

Noam Abta: Haha, well after 2 years in Aniboom, learning that we love to create stuff other than just animation, we decided that we want to start our own thing and the natural choice for us was to become a game development studio. The Apple App Store just started and it seemed like a perfect way to get to an audience without having a need for a publisher or a big marketing budget so we chose to start there. Our first game Rasta Monkey was pretty successful and got to the #9 top paid game on the US app store and ever since then we continued making our own games which a whole lot of fun. As to the Chips vs Salmon question, yes we want to make money out of our games but our main goal here is to create a sustainable business that would enable us to devote all our time to it and create independent quality games that we love.

Graham Peter: What is your thought process behind each title? Each one has a distinct flavor and gameplay mechanic behind it.

Noam Abta: We try to experiment with something new every time we develop a new title. Rasta Monkey was an experiment with trying to create a character that moves differently and started as a toy on which we layered the platformer game mechanics. Eco punk was about trying to create a new way to interact with the touchscreen controls, so we invented the control mechanics and later on thought what kind of game can fit this kind of controls. Save Toshi was all about trying to innovate within the popular physics puzzle genre and we did it by adding a 3rd dimension to generic puzzle solving. So we don’t really have a repeatable process – we just come up with an idea for an experiment and then try to feel the soul of the game, develop it and iterate until some magic happens and it’s finally a complete game:)

Graham Peter: In an industry where the norm is big action titles, car games or multiplayer, how and why did you decided on these titles?

Noam Abta: It’s true for Big Consoles, but on mobile there is still much room for innovation and freshness. Titles like Cut The Rope are a good example of the fact that you can create a new experience and still succeed. We try to create stuff that appeals to us, hoping that if we love it more people will.

Graham Peter: Something silly: What food would you be and why?

Noam Abta: I would definitely be a Pizza. They say you are what you eat, so I guess considering the amount of pizza’s Ive eaten my entire life my body is at least 60% pizza (the rest is water I guess).

Graham Peter: Apple released the App Store with OS X 10.6.6, which has been a
huge hit. Is there any chance we’ll see a Nitako title on there as
well?

Noam Abta: Yes and in fact it will be very very soon! We also plan to release a few Android versions of our games as well. We are a small team so it takes time to do it all when you also strive to devote a good deal of your time to new content and not just to porting old stuff, but it’s definitely on our timeline.

Graham Peter: Can you give us a hint at any future titles?

Noam Abta: Yes, we are now working on a series of small & fast 2d games. The first of them will be a pattern matching puzzle with a very unique game mechanic and hopefully it will be out within no more than a month. We also plan to update Save Toshi with some exciting & fresh new content.

Graham Peter: Is there any advice you can give to aspiring game developers out
there?

Noam Abta: My most banal answer would be – create a really great game! but how do you do it? I must say it’s pretty amazing what you can do when you take the data you get from players and use it to create a better experience for them. That is the best advice I can give for any game developer out there – really listen to your players and iterate all the time. You can start by beta testing the game before it’s released with as many people as possible. But even after you launch, the app-store is a place where the development of your game can continue pretty much forever and users are eager to communicate, so use that to your advantage. It is crucial to constantly update and fix problems if you want to keep the product alive since it will convince people to keep the game on their device and talk about it with their friends. It makes a lot of sense to continue doing so if the game is also slowly gaining popularity.

And there you have it. I’d like to thank Noam for taking time out of his busy schedule. We’re all looking forward to the new projects and updates!

We will be reviewing more of Nitako’s titles in the coming weeks.

Nitako’s games on the iTunes App Store:

• Save Toshi DX
• Rasta Monkey
• Eco Punk