Pokemon 'Pokemon'-like 'MinoMonsters' heading to iPhones

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'Pokemon'-like 'MinoMonsters' heading to iPhones
Casey Newton, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, November 10, 2011

More... One day when he was 15, Josh Buckley emerged from the bedroom where he spent most of his time programming to share some news with his parents.

Buckley, who was still in high school outside of London, had just sold a website that he had created the year before - for six figures.

"I heard them downstairs talking all night," said Buckley, now 19. "They were shocked. I just went to bed."

Buckley had created Menewsha, a community where users create whimsical avatars and interact online, mostly for fun. But he was about to take on a much more serious challenge: an effort to disrupt the enormous global Pokemon franchise, which has generated an estimated $24 billion in sales without yet arriving on smart phones.

Buckley's idea was to create a "Pokemon"-like game, called "MinoMonsters," that would bring the experience of collecting, trading and battling monsters to the iPhone and iPod Touch. In January, he became the youngest person ever accepted to the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator in Mountain View - where founder Paul Graham called him "the Harry Potter of startups."

Major funding
Now, investors are validating Buckley's concept. Today the company was set to announce $1 million in funding from some of the most prominent investors in Silicon Valley, including Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel and Yuri Milner. MinoMonsters Inc. now has 11 employees, six of whom work in a colorful office in San Francisco's Mint Plaza, and its first game will launch in Apple's app store Dec. 6.

Nintendo, which owns the Pokemon brand, has resisted bringing its titles to mobile devices like smart phones for fear that doing so would undercut sales of its own mobile devices and games, which it sells at a premium. Games for Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating system typically are free or cost only a dollar or two, whereas games for Nintendo's handheld 3DS device cost $40.

But the tide has shifted in favor of developers for iOS and Android. This year, for the first time, game sales for those platforms will exceed sales for Nintendo and Sony's handheld game devices, according to the market research firm Flurry. The market share owned by iOS and Android games has tripled to nearly 60 percent in just two years.

"All my friends - everyone - was addicted to 'Pokemon' in my generation," Buckley said. "Nintendo has just let that brand go stale, and I don't think it can make a comeback anymore. It's stagnated."

Some industry observers say a "Pokemon" competitor could succeed on iOS.

"With just how popular the iOS platform is, and how people are playing games right now, it seems like the perfect opportunity," said John Davison, vice president of programming for video game news site Game-Spot. "It seems like it would have been the perfect opportunity for Nintendo, but they've been quite emphatic about their whole attitude."

Still, competition for gamers' dollars is fierce - particularly on iOS, where it can be difficult to become a breakout hit unless an app grabs a place on the store's list of top downloads and stays there.

"I think it would be pretty hard for someone to go up against such a hugely established franchise like Pokemon," said Anita Frazier, analyst with NPD Group, in an e-mail.

"It's hard for new (intellectual property) to break through even on platforms where there are far fewer competitive titles."

MinoMonsters plans a large marketing effort behind the game, which it will price at 99 cents. And an early version of the game built for Facebook gained 100,000 users in a short time, which is a start.

Few engineers
TJ Murphy, the company's 25-year-old president, calls MinoMonsters "the antithesis of Silicon Valley startups." Where many new companies are led by engineers, MinoMonsters has just three - the remaining eight employees are artists and designers. And more than half of the company's employees are women.

"We've got a broader view of the market," said Murphy, who previously co-founded social gaming startup SGN and later worked at Zynga. "We'll be able to break out of the Silicon Valley hype machine and hit people who live in states other than California."

Despite his youth, Buckley said there is nothing he'd rather be doing than being CEO of his company. Recently he returned to his parents' home while sorting out the visa issues that plague many foreign startup founders, and he did not enjoy the vacation.

"It was the most boring time ever," he said. "I was itching to get back here and create. The pace of life here is just like a fast-forward button on everything. It's such an adrenaline rush."

E-mail Casey Newton at [email protected].

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/10/BUIA1LS8A8.DTL

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/10/BUIA1LS8A8.DTL&type=printable


What is your opinion?
 
Looks pretty "meh" to me, the monsters don't have the charm of Pokémon. It's a wonder though that there have been so few "clones" of Pokémon (Dragon Quest Monsters, Spectorobes, CrystalMonsters, Telefang, ...). They are just pretty loosely inspired by Pokémon. If I was capable to do one, I would totally do a rip-off with a better story. Commercially. I would seriously "rip" it "off" (the raising and battle system) not even trying to hide what I was inspired by.
 
I think that even though this may be popular, correction, VERY popular, nothing will ever succeed the way pokemon did. Even if people like the idea of it being on their phones, pokemon is just too well-developed and well-made to be surpassed by a spin off of it.
 
The monsters aren't really appealing, no. While I'm generally supportive of young people breaking out of the system and being successful at business, I can't really see this actually taking on Pokémon.

However, maybe it'll open up Nintendo's eyes a bit to what exactly is going on in the world of phone gaming and might lean them towards doing more on that front.
 
This game looks like Neopets.

...Nuff said.

In depth:

Looks like Neopets and the battle system reminds me of Adventure Quest/Dragon Fable/Etc

Also, the HP bar makes no sense. The bar is the widest at the point where you have no HP left. Bad, bad, bad.

The names are extremely unoriginal and lame. Firecat and Rocko? Seriously?
 
Honestly, I don't see this taking off... It may find its own little nitch by being available for the iPhone, but that's probably going to be as far as it goes. Nintendo has kept Pokemon alive this long because it's taken the extra effort to establish a full-blown franchise encompassing from games, trading cards, anime/movies, and so on.
 
It'll be just like Google+. People are gonna hype it up to oblivion and it's gonna suck when it officially gets released.
Only difference between this and Google+ is that people aren't liking this in the first place.
 
Those who think the Pokemon we all know and love is stale clearly can't see past one Pokemon design they hate into the depth beyond. We've been trolled by a Conkelldurr, donked by a Donphan, and lit up by a Salamence, and we hate it. Then we turn over the coin. We're the ones trolling with the Conkelldurr, donking with the Donphan, and lighting the opposition up with Salamence, and we love every minute of it; that's the Pokemon we know and love.

A rip off carbon copy with Angry Birds graphics (and comparable depth) has none of that. People will buy it, but anybody with a little gray cell knows that Pokemon absolutely CURBSTOMPS this into its pink chocolate milk soaked pillowcase.

And besides, a Pokemon "inspired" (read: super copy) game already exists on iOS (I laughed so hard when I saw this):

[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VONSgUAH6KA[/video]

Need I say more. A Pokemon clone is nothing new, this one just has funding from some 70 year old investors who just learned what an internet was.
 
After seeing the video posted by Mizublue, this game is horrible. The graphics remind me of my old Commodore 64.
 
omahanime said:
After seeing the video posted by Mizublue, this game is horrible. The graphics remind me of my old Commodore 64.
Click to expand...

No, the video he posted wasn't for this. It was for another app.

Anyway, depending on how much it costs, I might get it. And provided it isn't like the video Mizu posted. I'd love to have some Pokemon stuff on my iPod.
 
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