Pet games

Two decades ago when he was a young teen, John Swiderski submitted a computer game he developed to a magazine. The form he needed to use asked the name of his company.

He looked at the pet hamster in a cage near his computer and decided, yeah, my company is Mean Hamster Software.

Swiderski, 33, still runs that same aptly named company, but it’s no longer a one-person operation. He’s grown the company to 12 workers, making Mean Hamster Software one of the area’s thriving software development firms.

His latest product, the casual game Pet Shop Hop, became one of the most popular downloads on several Web sites, including PlayFirst.com and Yahoo Games. It’s been downloaded more than 330,000 times. Close to 10,000 people have paid $20 to play the full version of the game, with PlayFirst sharing a portion of royalties with Mean Hamster.

PlayFirst, the San Francisco publisher of dozens of successful casual online games, asked Swiderski to produce a second game for them. The Mean Hamster team is expected to finish the next game within eight months.

Game development is what Swiderski likes doing. Four years ago he was working in a tiny corner office in Deer Park when he gathered the courage to visit the other big game developer in town, Cyan Worlds. He told them he could do something no one else had tried, converting the massive and multimedia-rich games of Myst and Riven into a handheld version for phones or personal assistants like the Palm.

When they were released in 2005, those efforts became best sellers. They also convinced Swiderski that he had a future in game development.

By 2006 the online game industry was no longer dominated by sprawling, loud, shoot-and-destroy adventures. Casual games – relatively simple games with a basic challenge that can be easily downloaded and played for a few minutes at a time – started taking hold.

One of the most successful casual games is Diner Dash, developed by an independent company and published by PlayFirst. In it a character named Flo has to serve diners at a restaurant, managing an ever-more demanding load of tasks and keeping disasters from happening.

Looking for his next project, Swiderski realized his next game revolved around animals. He and his wife, Pamela, manage a farm outside Deer Park with dozens of pets, from stray cats and dogs to horses and rabbits.

“We figured we knew pets and we cared for animals. What kind of business in a game would we have where you take care of animals?” Swiderski said. “The choice of a pet shop was obvious.”

Two years later, in March 2008, Pet Shop Hop debuted and quickly landed at the top of the Top 10 list at PlayFirst. In the game, a player manages a small pet shop, trying to accumulate sales, buying more animals, caring for them and making sure customers are happy.

Swiderski said he’s delighted by the success and hopes he can build on it. “I would really like to continue making good games and making Mean Hamster even more successful,” he said.

As Cyan and other area tech firms have learned, finding enough skilled game developers and graphic artists here is challenging. As a result, Swiderski has to rely on collaborating with artists and developers in Hungary, Seattle and San Francisco.

One former Cyan employee, Chris Brandkamp, says Swiderski deserves credit for making Mean Hamster a success. Brandkamp met Swiderski as Cyan signed the deal with Mean Hamster. Back then, Mean Hamster was just two employees and Swiderski, working long hours on that project.

“John has what it takes to succeed, in terms of artistic talent and programming skills,” Brandkamp said. “He knows how to get things done.”

When it comes to developing games, small is better, he added. “In the casual game industry, a company like his can make a game for a fraction of what it takes to make a much larger game” like Grand Theft Auto or any other of huge hard-core titles that grab attention in the media, Brandkamp said.

“He’s following a smart model, which is to keep costs down, turn out a good product and then make another product that continues with the same strong features that he had in the first one,” he said.

Swiderski’s own goal is modest. “I just want to be successful enough that I can retain control of a game that turns out to be a big seller. We haven’t reached that level yet, but we hope to.”