Player Message: Pocket Edition
Hi everyone, with Pocket Edition coming to iOS, I wanted to chat through our plans for it and how it will (hopefully positively) impact VR and the broader Walkabout community.
For context, Pocket Edition is the mobile version of Walkabout Mini Golf that will launch on iOS devices on October 10th. While it’s a great experience in its own right and will provide the full mini golf experience without a headset, we think the most interesting aspect is that it features full crossplay between VR and mobile. Not everyone has access to VR, or might not have enough devices for everyone who wants to play. Pocket Edition is our solution to making it easier to share the experience and stay connected with people that you care about.
You’ll see the avatars and shots of someone on Pocket Edition just as if they were in VR, and vice versa. Pocket Edition also uses a unique “look around” mechanic where you physically move your device, like looking through a window into the virtual world. You can even putt by swinging your mobile device just like you would swing your club in VR, or use Touch-to-Putt mode for a more traditional feel that still lets you look around. It’s a novel approach that matches the VR experience surprisingly well.
On the business side, we’re taking a very unusual route with Pocket Edition… Most people are familiar with the typical mobile paradigm of free to play, where you try to bring in as many players on mobile and then try to upsell them with micro transactions or ads. We’re going the opposite route: a premium game that follows the same pattern as VR, offering genuine value for players and supporting the ongoing development of Walkabout. The prices will be lower than VR: $4.99 for the base game and $1.99 for DLC courses, but otherwise, they will match the exact same process as VR.
We might dial in those prices over time, but this parity is very important, because we don’t want to fundamentally change how things work. We feel that we’ve found a great formula that allows us to do what we like to do, and keeps you all happy with a steady stream of high-quality, reasonably-priced new content. Keeping the business model the same means there’s no competition between platforms for development resources. A new course that comes out on more platforms, only means that we can continue to make more, better courses for longer.
We don’t need Pocket Edition to become a top mobile game in order for it to be a success. Chasing the general mobile audience too aggressively could easily ruin a great thing. Instead, we’re hoping that a good majority of you try out Pocket Edition and use that as a companion to the VR game… maybe you’re traveling and want to join a weekly game with friends, but don’t want to pack your headset. Or your household only has one headset but the whole family wants to play together. To me, the most compelling use case is for showing off VR to friends: you can let them try your headset while joining them on a phone. Whatever you use it for, we see Pocket Edition as a great introduction or companion… something that will support and grow alongside the existing experience, without shifting our focus away from VR.
There are several smaller details that we’ve implemented to help ensure that Pocket Edition is a positive addition for everyone:
Guest Pass will function the same way as it currently does. It won’t matter if someone is on Mobile, or VR, if one person owns a course, it’ll open up guest pass for the whole room.
Quick Match will not be available on Pocket Edition. It just doesn’t seem like a good idea for a number of reasons. Additionally, I can confirm that we’re working on some upgrades around quick match and matchmaking in general. We’re still ways out on that, so stay tuned.
Private Games will work the same as VR. Just enter a room code to meet up! We will likely add a VR-only option for room creation, but we don’t want to fragment the player base or add complications until we see how this all works in the real world.
Voice Chat - it may seem obvious that talking to other players is a big part of Walkabout, but it’s extremely unusual in mobile games. It’s also another reason for releasing it as a paid game. While we want everyone to experience Walkabout, there’s a significant server cost for voice support.
One last note is that the next new course or two might not be released immediately on iOS. While we’re treating it as “just another platform” it does require some specific production considerations that will take a little bit of time to catch up to our regular release cadence, and we don’t want to slow down course releases in the meantime. We’re also considering Android as another platform many people have requested.
I’m sure that more details and questions will pop up as we launch, and we’re going to be listening extra closely to what works or doesn’t. But the big call to action is that we hope you’ll check it out and share it with friends. Even though we’ve grown, we’re still an entirely player-funded, self-publishing, independent studio and prefer to focus on improving the game rather than buying ads, so we’re relying mostly on word of mouth and people showing it to others. If Pocket Edition is a success, it will only increase our ability to add features and content that many of you have been asking for.
Thanks for reading and happy putting!
Lucas
