Madhawk Games

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of business development at Lipsynch VR.  

What challenge were you trying to address with Madhawk Games?

VR was relatively new, and I dabbled in creating apps to build and sell in various VR stores. Neeraj (Founder, Madhawk Games) worked on two projects with me.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first project was just helping a friend of mine create a mockup demo of a VR e-commerce environment. You could go inside a virtual room and interact with 3D versions of the products. Neeraj delivered on time, so I kept working with him.

He worked directly as my contractor for the second project, which was an Oculus VR project to help people learn Mandarin. We originally worked in Gear VR, but due to platform limitations I should have foreseen, we switched to Oculus. Since it’s a language based on characters, people can go into beautiful VR environments and practice drawing the characters on scrolls to develop muscle memory. When they draw a character successfully, an image of what the character represents will pop up, along with the phonetic pronunciation of the character.

While I’ve put the project on the back burner (through no fault of Neeraj’s), my long-term ambition was to turn it into a Dance Dance Revolution type game where users draw the characters to a certain beat. Due to market conditions, I’ve moved on, but the engineering Neeraj did on the Oculus frontend was impressive.

What is the team composition?

I just worked with Neeraj.  

How much have you invested with them?

I spent $4,000–$5,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from December 2017 until January 2018.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Neeraj built the whole thing. All the functionality and backend was him, as well as the frontend to a degree since he implemented the artwork. We wouldn’t have a product if not for him. He was consistently on time and budget. There were no issues once we switched to Oculus Rift.

How did Madhawk Games perform from a project management standpoint?

We worked almost entirely over Slack, with some email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I can only judge on the quality of his VR program and nothing else, but he’s good as others in the space for a fraction of the price. He’s clearly very ambitious and passionate in space as well. He shares material on LinkedIn and Facebook about industry news and has made a few mobile games on his own that have been succeeding. I would hire him again for sure. He’s responsive, reliable, honest, and trustworthy.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Other than communicating a little more clearly, I don’t have any improvements for him. Sometimes I just have to ask him to clarify what he’s trying to say.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

This is the same advice I’d give to anyone working with any developer: come with a clear understanding of what you want, whether in the form of mockups or Unity visuals. The more specific the instructions the easier everything will be.