A certain dinosaur movie launches next week, but if you have that dino itch to watch people run away or get eaten by Jurassic beasts, War Drum Studios has something for you, as it launches Ark: Survival Evolved on iOS and Android today.
The original Ark is from Studio Wildcard, but it turned to War Drum in part because of its past work helping studios with remasters such as Rockstar with Bully: Anniversary Edition and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and its own game, Auralux. The mobile version of Ark is free-to-play, and War Drum has a blog post breaking down how the monetization works.
Fortnite right now is the hottest thing in gaming, with Epic announcing its battle royale sensation surging to over 125 million downloads (even if it started as a survival game). But Wardrum CEO Thomas Williamson doesn’t see Fortnite as the competition — a stance that makes sense when you consider mobile gaming could go over $70 billion this year, according to market research firm Newzoo.
“We are not worried about competing with them. Ark is the most outstanding survival genre game on mobile, and Fortnite isn’t a survival game. So they don’t target the type of gamers we are focusing on,” he said. “Ark will definitely have competition from other games in terms of eyeballs. The mobile space moves at a terrific pace, and anyone’s attention on Ark can come at the cost of taking that attention from someone else.”
Ark: Survival Evolved is an online game about taking on a dinosaur-infested wilderness and scrapping together the resources you need to build a base and thrive (a survival game). It has more than 80 dinosaurs, and you can tame these beasts to serve you — even ride them.
You can also play with instead of against other players, either joining in tribes to share vital resources or taking on fellow survivors. Or you can play against the environment.
And the time, Williamson notes, is just a bonus, with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom opening next week.
“We wanted the game in players’ hands the moment we could do that for them. It is launching now because we feel it is ready to be played and for us to enjoy the mobile game with a global audience. If it was ready two months ago, we would have released it two months ago,” he said. “With Jurassic World [Fallen Kingdom] coming out, we fortunately will be able to capitalize on dinosaur related hype, but that didn’t play into the true high level discussions.”
Between this and Jurassic World: Evolution, it’s a good week to like dinosaurs in video games.
