Melior Games

Please describe your company and your position there.

Owner of video game development company

For what projects/services did your company hire Melior Games, and what were your goals?

We were on a tight schedule and hired Melior Games to port one of our games for Xbox. By porting the game, we were hoping to release our game during the holiday season.

How did you select Melior Games and what were the deciding factors?

We searched online for video game porting companies and spoke to a few of them. Melior Games provided us with competitive rates and told us they would be able to complete the work in 2 months, which would have allowed us to release our game on time.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

During the initial meeting, we discussed what we were looking for and our timeframe. They told us that they had previous experience with Xbox and after looking at the source code of our game, told us they would be able to complete this work in time.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

A project manager was our main point of contact throughout the process. There was also one developer that worked behind the scenes.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Apart from the work taking twice as long, we was handed back something we could not use. The source code we was handed back was not finished, it did not meet our or the platform's requirements, and it did not run correctly. We had to scrap everything we had received from Melior Games. In the end, we decided to do the work ourselves.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

We had contact with the project manager over Slack but communication was slow, which we later found out was due to the work not being complete. At several times during the project, we did not communicate for 1-2 weeks and when we did, we were assured the project was still on track, which was not true.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We were not impressed with this company at all. They were late to start, they were late to finish, and they did not even complete the work. They lied to us during our initial meeting saying that they could handle the work, which they clearly could not. They did not even have access to the tools required to do the work.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

They could have let us know as early as possible that they could not do the work so that we could have found someone else, they could have completed the work or at least gave us something we could have used, and they should have refunded us our payment we made.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of a chess game company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Melior Games?

We needed a vendor to develop a game for us.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Using the Unity platform, Melior Games developed the first phase of a game that mirrors a variant of traditional chess. We’re currently running an invitation beta test with about 100–200 users.

What is the team composition?

I’m not completely sure because our project manager handled everything on their end. I think there was a frontend developer, a backend developer, and a UX/UI specialist.

How did you come to work with Melior Games?

A friend who’d worked with Melior Games in the past recommended their services. I reviewed the results of that collaboration, and I was impressed with the final product, so I chose to partner with their team.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent somewhere between $25,000–$30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from about March­–November 2018. They completed the game, and we’re now looking into ways to market it.

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

Overall, we’re pleased with the experience. They delivered high-quality graphics while demonstrating great project management skills. There’s a good balance between the cost of their services and the results they produce.

How did Melior Games perform from a project management standpoint?

I was pleased with their communication and work pace. The team met all of our deadlines, recording each step of their process and tracking their progress in Jira. They’re a team of proactive and responsive professionals, which helped them come up with multiple ways to solve any issues that arose.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They thought outside of the box. The Melior Games team put together a basic development roadmap and followed it, but they also offered alternative solutions as needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we’re perfectly satisfied with their services. Everyone on the team is friendly and easy to work with.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the creative director of a game development company. We target the social mobile game market, and have recently soft-launched two games developed in collaboration with Melior Games.

What challenge were you trying to address with Melior Games?

We were developing two iOS games for the social market on the platform. Our main challenge was working back-and-forth with our developers and publisher.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Melior Games assigned two developers for our work, one for each project, as well as a game design artist and a project manager. We used the Unity and Xcode.

How did you come to work with Melior Games?

I believe I posted on the Unity forums, and Melior Games replied to my post. We reviewed their portfolio and decided to move forward.

How much have you invested with Melior Games?

The cost of Melior Games’ work was around $25,000 for both projects.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Melior Games around five months ago. The project has been completed. We are going to be starting more projects with them very soon.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We are getting good response and retention rates. The games have been soft-launched, and, if they perform well, we will go ahead with a full-on hard-launch, and add more features.

How did Melior Games perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated via Skype, and found Melior Games to be very responsive. I never had an issue with anything.

What did you find most impressive about Melior Games?

The most impressive thing about Melior were their flexibility with budgets and how cost effective they were.

Are there any areas Melior Games could improve?

Being more flexible with iterations. If we get some feedback from publishers that our version is not very strong, we’d need to have a few more iterations. There’s usually one chance to get the artwork right.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO of Sunset Games, in charge of all operations related to mobile games.

What challenge were you trying to address with Melior Games?

We wanted to develop a game called Football Tycoon. We had a graphics team in Israel, but needed to find a firm which could develop the game itself. Programmers are very expensive locally.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Melior Games developed our game, based on our in-house graphics. We have used their team for other games, but Football Tycoon has been by far the largest.

Our only point of contact has been Melior Games’ project manager. We haven’t looked at how many people are assigned to the project, but we know that there is one main developer in charge of the work.

The workflow consists of us providing a game-design document with formulas and everything else in the game. We use informal language to describe the more difficult features. Melior Games will assign tickets to their programming team, and usually work fast in terms of development.

They also handle QA, but we have found problems with every release. The process is not smooth, but, considering Melior Games’ fast delivery, we find it acceptable.

How did you come to work with Melior Games?

I initially found them two or three years ago, when I was looking to develop another game. I made a Google search for mobile development firms in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, and Melior Games came up. I approached them and got a fair price quotation. I have also tried to use Melior Games for graphics, but they’re not as competitive in that area. For the difference, we’d rather work with graphic designers whom we can meet in person, in order to explain exactly what we want.

How much have you invested with Melior Games?

Football Tycoon had an initial cost of €8,000. Each subsequent version added another €1,500, coming to a total of €13,000 or €14,000. [$14,000 – $15,000]

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Melior Games a year and a half ago, and plan to use them for future projects. We have plans for many more updates to Football Tycoon, and have another partner in Israel for another game. Once they’ve finished their portion of the work, it will be given to Melior Games for completion.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The game has had 150,000 downloads on Google Play, and nearly 100,000 on iOS. It’s been quite successful. The game has a rating of between 3.9 and 4 on Google Play and the Apple Store.

There have been some complaints about crashes, slow performance or incompatibility with older Android versions, but these are minor issues. With each release, there will be some bugs, but, because Melior Games is very fast in terms of development, it’s acceptable to us.

The success of the game has to do with the design itself, but also with the quality of Melior Games’ work on our features. They implemented everything as we envisioned it in our specs.

How did Melior Games perform from a project management standpoint?

They are quite responsive. Melior Games’ team works within the GMT+4 time zone, while we are GMT+2, which means that we can speak to all of them starting at 11 o’clock in the morning. They work from Monday to Friday, while, in Israel, we work from Sunday to Thursday, but the team is responsive during their off days as well. We receive answers to any question we have within a couple of hours. During big releases, I will speak to our project manager for 10 hours on Skype, but there are also days in which Melior Games takes longer to answer our feedback. From a managerial point-of-view, it’s quite comfortable to work with Melior Games.

What did you find most impressive about Melior Games?

They’re simply a development firm which works well and is cost-effective, compared to Israel prices.

Are there any areas Melior Games could improve?

They chose Unity as a development language for our app, which is a text-based managerial game. There aren’t many animations in it, so Unity is overkill. This is the reason for the game being a bit heavy, at around 79MB. Melior Games should have used Objective-C for iOS, and another native language for Android. I think that, in terms of technical challenges, Melior Games could improve, and find more efficient solutions. They haven’t put enough effort in this, but they deliver fast solutions which ultimately work