Emdigo are a mobile developer with a strong history, a powerful content platform and access to popular brands such as LEGO, Marvel and the NFL. However, rather than develop mobile games, they've currently chosen to concentrate on interactive 3D wallpapers. Games On Deck talks to president Steve Gleitsmann about that decision and where next for Emdigo.
Games On Deck: Tell us about Emdigo.
Steve Gleitsmann: Emdigo is approximately 3 years old and our founding team members all worked together at Intrinsic Graphics, the creator of the Alchemy middleware platform for console video games. We realized that the efficient production of any type of advanced content for the upcoming mobile phone generation with dedicated graphics processors would be an enormous challenge without the right technology in place. We initially focused on the creation of 3D graphics based user interfaces, working with industry heavyweights such as ATI (now part of AMD) and Sony Computer Entertainment. After working for some time with our partners in Japan, we realized that there already appeared to be a tremendous amount of interest in 3D based downloadable content, even though the mobile handset hardware did not seem to have the necessary capabilities. That realization made us get out of the interface business and into advanced downloadable content, using our experience with 3D graphics as a differentiator.
GOD: Tell us about Emdigo's content platform.
SG: One of the key lessons we have learned in our previous business is that the creation of advanced, media rich content on a large scale mandates advanced content production methods. The creation of a console game is no longer just about the engine, it is all about the integration of that engine with higher level content acquisition and transformation tools. Today, most major game productions in the console space are built around complete "production pipelines" that provide the necessary infrastructure for a streamlined content creation process. This may sound like overkill for today's mobile applications, but if you look at the complexity of the upcoming phone generation, you will realize that PlayStation-type content on a phone is not that far away. When we started Emdigo, we knew that content on mobile phones will eventually reach a level of complexity similar to that on game consoles, and we have seen a lot of game console people fail because they did not realize this in time. To some degree, our platform is the equivalent to Henry Ford's assembly line. Our content platform standardizes both content and its creation processes to make sure it runs on all of our supported phones while being completely reusable even on phones that don't even exist today.
NFL Team Tailgate
We create all our content assets with the usual tools: Maya, Photoshop, Cameras, audio mixer etc. These assets are then submitted into our asset management system strictly based on "emdigo playbook" standards. Our content designers can select and combine any of these assets from within our browser-based assembly tools into content product packages (such as a new NFL player animation for NFL Team Tailgate or an editorial for Style Kick). Once the product packages are approved for release, they are moved to our staging portal where they are automatically reformatted for all of our supported handsets. There is no individual porting necessary. Once the individual, handset specific packages are generated, they are submitted to our live-portal which communicates with the handset clients that consumers install on their phones.
GOD: How does this work in conjunction with your 3D engine?
SG: Our 3D engine is just a small part of our handset client software. Our handset client supports multiple media types - including 3D - but most importantly, it provides the handset specific framework for managing downloaded content assets, all our application logic, and eventually for content playback. Once the handset client is installed on your phone, it starts communicating with our content servers that provide content updates and track user preferences.
