The small, independant studio behind the popular PSN game Joe Danger has had quite the success story. Joe Danger was Hello Games’ first big selling title that managed to break even on day one and has been still “selling well” since. Without having to spend any extra money on advertising Sean Murray at Hello Games credits positive word of mouth for the sales of their stunt-racer. He also thanks Sony and Sony’s fanbase.
Murray: The thing that’s blown us away, and this sounds like a really cheesy thing to say, is how supportive the community has been. Everyone knows that Sony fanboys are the best fanboys. [laughs] They’re the most hardcore! They’ve been really supportive – they, hopefully, seem to associate Hello Games with a top title on PSN, and that’s a big thing for us, a huge deal.
With the trials and errors of Joe Danger behind them, the four man studio is looking to double in size with hopes of one day producing a disc based game in the future.
Murray: We’re desperately trying to find the right people, because I guess if you’re four people, you better make sure that whoever you hire you really get on with well. We’re found some really good people so far who are hopefully going to join us in the near future.
We’ve moved into a new office to accommodate that because where we were with another person oxygen would have been a problem. We’re kind of in the midst of that expansion, that doubling of the team to 8 people.
Hello Games is currently working on DLC for Joe Danger and they also have a new title in the works. Although Murray couldn’t comment on their next project he did have this to say:
Murray: I can say that we’ve learned a lot of lessons from Joe Danger, and that we know that whatever we do has to be different. It has to grab attention. We have to rely on that. We have to make sure whatever we do is good..
We need to grab people with that screenshot. That’s the thing with digital download, it has to be sold on people’s impression of it. They have to say ‘I want to play that’ and tell their friends about it.
Download Joe Danger for $15 on PSN.
