Interview with Jacob Honore

By Tommy Rousse

I sat down and spoke with Jacob Honore, CEO of indie game development company Zaxis Games, about launching Harry the Fairy for iOS with mobile publisher Chillingo. 

Zaxis Games is a team of four based in Copenhagen working on its first major title; Chillingo is a juggernaut of casual gaming, counting massive hits like Angry Birds as part of their stable. 

To bring the two together, Honore flew out to Chillingo’s U.S. offices and called every day until he was able to land a face-to-face meeting with an executive. The exec liked what he saw, and the fruit of that meeting is Harry the Fairy, released March 15^th to Apple’s App store.

Honore explained some of the advantages of working with Chillingo: by uploading all of their massive hits to the same account, they’ve built up a brand and a network capable of distributing and promoting a game worldwide. But getting that kind of help comes with a cost: after Apple and Chillingo take their cut, only 35% of the revenue from each game sold goes back to Zaxis. Here’s what Honore had to say about why it’s worth it:

“It’s a question of volume actually. Since we don’t have a billion dollars in the bank, we have to focus on the economical side.  We have to make this amount of money, and if it’s a small percentage of a large cake or it’s a hundred percent of a small cake, I couldn’t care less.  Also with Harry, it’s one of our first real titles; we wanted not only to have good revenue or income but to have our name out, especially in the American market.”

I asked Honore about how the label “indie” fit with working with one of the biggest players in mobile gaming. While the hardcore indie studios emphasize their self-sufficiency and uniqueness, Zaxis is targeted at a different crowd. Honore said:

“I don’t think the users reflect on those kind of things. The usual casual gamer, I don’t think they give a f— who owns it.”