One of the interesting and difficult choices we face in designing casual mobile games is whether to support offline play or to require an Internet connection. There are a lot of arguments for each approach, in terms of user experience, technical constraints, and many other considerations. With Lil’ Birds we struggled with this decision, even considering various hybrid approaches that would allow offline play for a time but require or strongly encourage periodic connected play. Supporting offline play has the advantage of keeping the game open to the widest possible audience, especially iPod touch users. And as a player it’s…Read more

The holidays are upon us and, before catching our breath for 2012, a quick look back at a big year for Villain… Above all, it has been a year of transition. The company joined the industry shift toward social, free-to-play games. Although it isn’t always easy to give away our hard work for free, we believe in this model and feel it plays to our strength of quality first. It puts our games in the hands of the widest possible audience and good things happen. In January, we opened the new office in North Carolina. Save for a mid-summer air…Read more

Thanks to the explosive growth of Zynga’s FarmVille and the entire free-to-play social game genre that followed, the “minimum viable product” (MVP) approach has been championed as the best thing since the Atari 2600. Free-to-play social games were a mysterious new genre that defied traditional beliefs in game design: There’s gold in them analytics! Major changes post-launch is a good thing! Mindless clicking behavior should be encouraged! Ship Early, Ship Often MVP, or the strategy of launching with the lightest feature set and/or depth as possible, came along for the ride. It wasn’t that Zynga made a pact with the…Read more

All of us here at Villain have joined the tech world in mourning the loss of Steve Jobs last month. His death was made even more poignant with the release of the official biography, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, revealing many new details of the man and his life. After devouring the book, we wanted to do something good that might appeal to Apple fans across the Web. The result is Steve’s Favorites, a mini-site roundup where you can buy any of his favorite songs, albums, and books. Each link is tied to a Villain iTunes affiliate account. All profits will…Read more

Villain is deep into development on Lil’ Birds, far and away our biggest venture into CasualLand to date. This is the first title since, well, ever, that I’ll not only be eager to share with Mom, but insist on her actually playing. But even though this isn’t a traditional “core” game, we aren’t abandoning big games nor turning down the quality dial. In fact, Lil’ Birds was something of a wake up call that we needed to invest in more rigorous testing practices. Better to come to that conclusion during development than at launch… And so, we’ve tapped a few…Read more

We aim high here at Villain, with some of the best industry pros lining our game credits. Our interns are similarly wicked awesome: They have been published authors, grad students, and teachers – even a PhD (shout out to Yue-Ling!). Our newest candidate is no exception, although his methods are a touch different: Meet Agork, our new Community Outreach…ah, coordinator. He’s been with us only a few short weeks, but our hearts are already warmed by his presence. Visitors may be startled by his muffled periodic wails, aggressive growls, and wracked sobs throughout the day. We call it passion. He’s…Read more