After falling in love with multi-player pictionary game, What the Doodle!?, I decided to try and get an interview with it’s developer for This Android Life.  The game’s dreator, Che Jami, very kindly took time out from improving WTD!? to answer some of my questions.  Here is the interview in full-

I’m 23 and graduated about a year ago from Imperial College London with a Masters in Artificial Intelligence. I’ve done the odd web application here and there with a primary focus on Java. Before working on ‘WTD!?’ I had no experience working with embedded systems and virtually no experience with online multiplayer games. I am also unemployed and just playing around with ideas while I don’t have too many responsibilities.

I have always had an interest in real-time online multiplayer games. With recent developments in touch screen smart phones I spotted a niche in the market. ‘WTD!?’ started off as a proof of concept yet provided such exciting results that I soon turned it into a full fledged game. And yes, before anyone asks, I do love to play Pictionary

It took me about 6 months to produce the beta version of ‘WTD!?’. I had to learn pretty much everything from scratch, self-educating myself with tutorials, blogs, and reverse engineering existing demo code. The pressure really hit when ADC2 was announced mid-way my development, that’s when the sleepless caffeine infused nights began. Due to time constraints, the system wasn’t fully tested so a lot of it seemed theoretical until I released it to the market in early September. Now I know that everything pretty much works the way it should do which is a big relief.

After graduation, one of my friends was going to work for Google, he told me about Android and about how it was going to be the next big thing. So out of curiosity I started looking into it and fiddling around. Obviously one thing lead to another and here I am with ‘WTD!?’.

I think there is a lot of potential with Android. There is an enormous amount of hidden functionality that can only be uncovered through analysing the technical documentation or if you’re lucky, the odd forum post here and there. I think that most of the flaws that Android has are only skin deep.

For now, I’m concentrating solely on Android. The application is currently tailored towards it with the use of Android specific widgets and optimisations. You can even put the game on hold, return to the home screen (using the Home button), quickly read an sms (or whatever you want to do) and return to the game through a notification in your status bar, all in the spirit of the multi-tasking Android. I also got quite excited when I got my sliding chat bar working! Overall, I do not feel restricted by Android, but rather, enabled by it.

Definitely! I’m currently working on a Friends List that should be out next weekend. It’ll allow players to add each other as friends, private message each other, and see which friends are online or offline. I hope to add many new modes in the near future, such as a team mode with split screen and also new modes with an additional gameplay element called ‘deceiving’ – I won’t explain what that is now as I want to leave it as a surprise for the players. I also wish to polish up the existing freestyle mode, where people can collaboratively doodle and save their artwork. Different statistics and an achievements system are also on the list. I am continuously taking feedback from the community and incorporating different feature requests when and where appropriate. You can e-mail me at che.android@gmail.com and I’ll be posting updates on my twitter page http://twitter.com/cdroid.

After ADC2, I’ll be releasing a lite and paid version of ‘WTD!?’. The lite version will be locked to early game play modes such as easy mode. The paid, unrestricted version, will initially cost one pound as I want to allow my beta players to get in cheaply. Any future prices will depend on market weather at that time.

I’m currently using an HTC Magic. I would like to get my hands on the Android-based Archos 5 – imagine playing on ‘WTD!?’ on a 5″ screen! The Droid phone also looks interesting, but that’s still a bit of mystery.

I’ll be continuing to update ‘WTD!?’ until I’m satisfied with it, which may take a while considering the number of extensions I already have in mind for it. However I eventually want to move onto some more action-packed online real-time multiplayer games!

For new developers I suggest the following steps:

• Read up the tutorials and finish the the different exercises that are set up on the android developer website.
• Get a rough idea of what sort of applications you want to build then dismantle the appropriate API demo.
• Join an android developer community such as the android developer groups or anddev.com and try to absorb as much as possible.
• Treat articles and forum posts by Mark Murphy from androidguys.com as gold – he must have a big head.
• For optimisations, view the featured videos on the android developer website, especially the Google I/O ones although they are slowly getting outdated with each new version of Android.

And once you’re set:

• Scout the market. Find out what’s missing and what people are looking for.
• We don’t need more cloners.
• We don’t need more tech demos.
• Android needs more polished, functional and exciting applications. Once you release your application, market feedback will help guide you in the right direction.
• Act fast, the market is growing everyday and that idea you just thought of is probably being thought of by someone else right now (if not a team of super-armed coders).

I’m currently ranked 7th globally with 6305 points. Please don’t judge me, I might play a bit too much, but there’s something really addictive about the game when combined with a comfy bed!

I’d like to thank Che again for indulging my questions.  If you haven’t already tried What the Doodle!?, I heartily recommend giving it a go.