Gourami makes its mark in growing ‘apps’ market

A tiny software development company in Spokane Valley has been scratching its way into the crowded iPhone and iPod “apps” fray, with four games now, including a promotional game it developed for Liberty Lake-based Telect Inc., while it also builds a reputation for contract programming work.

The company, Gourami Group Inc., was launched in early 2009 by Gonzaga University graduate Erik Hutchinson and longtime programming partner Jason Lust and earlier this year it hired two additional employees, giving it four. It moved three months ago into space in the Vista Industrial Park, at 111 N. Vista, where it hopes to expand by two to three more employees by the end of the year.

Much of Gourami Group’s work amounts to contract programming, in which it takes on small software development projects for hire. But it also has created four games for mobile devices, all marketed through Apple Inc.’s App Store.

The most recent of those games is called Telecom Tycoon, which Gourami did under contract for Telect. Telecom Tycoon is intended to be a “fun way to promote” the telecommunications gear that Telect manufactures, says Hutchinson, Gourami’s president.

In the game, which iPhone and iPod users can download for free, users act like the heads of wireless telecommunications companies and try to build the right cell towers in the right locations to attract subscribers and get a return on their investment. The game includes cartoon depictions of real cities, including Spokane.

While playing the game, users see small boxes pop up to promote Telect products.

Hutchinson says Gourami won the project after Telect invited several local software developers to talk about Telect’s vision for the application, and it took Gourami about two months to create the game and get it approved for sale in the App Store. He declines to discuss the value of the contract with Telect but says its work with Telect will be ongoing. Gourami recently launched a version of the Telect game for the new iPad and is working on a version for Android-type phones. It might add more enhancements to the game later.

Hutchinson and Lust both have prior experience in developing video games. They met while working for an animation company in Seattle, and both also worked for a third-party game developer in California. Lust, the company’s director of design, says his specialty is in creating Flash animation. Hutchinson’s expertise is more in the C programming language and artificial intelligence, and he has worked for Next IT Corp. here, as well as for Neokinetics Corp. of Coeur d’Alene.

Gourami Group is named after the Asian family of fish species called gourami, known for their ability to breathe air through their mouths. “It’s kind of the fish out of water thing,” Hutchinson quips.

So far, the company has existed on a shoestring basis. Its quarters are modest. It buys office electronics mostly at surplus-equipment sales at Community Colleges of Spokane. Its marketing is done almost entirely by word of mouth, based on the reputations of Hutchinson and Lust.

“We get calls from people who say, ‘Hey, remember when you did that thing for us? Well, we have more work you might be interested in,’ ” Lust says.

The work Gourami does under contract is varied but has ranged from helping companies get their databases onto mobile devices to doing Flash animations for the Nickelodeon TV network’s website. It’s currently negotiating possible work with an online dating service, Hutchinson says.

He declines to disclose the company’s revenues but says its projects generally take two to three months to complete and it charges clients anywhere from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars for a project.

In addition to Hutchinson and Lust, Gourami employs a digital artist and a staffer who does a collection of tasks. It also contracts with someone who creates music for its games.

The company began creating games for iPhones and iPods late last winter, when contract work was slim.

“We had some slack time and we set out to develop some games, to do our own IP (intellectual property),” Hutchinson says. He says they chose that platform partly because “we’re essentially a Mac shop,” and because the barrier to entry in that market is small compared with doing games for vide game players made by such giants as Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

It costs about $100 for a development kit to make Apple mobile apps, and it doesn’t cost anything to get the app included in the App Store, as long as someone at Apple “sees value in your game,” Hutchinson says. Once a game is approved, Apple keeps one-third of the revenue from every sale, he says.

Gourami’s first game, iBrawl, was introduced in March. “It’s totally different,” says Hutchinson. Essentially, the players combat one another by shaking and twisting their iPhone or iPod violently. The game records the actions, and a remote server compares them with those of the user’s opponent to see who won the battle. Players can be challenged and notified of their outcome via e-mail or texting. The game sells for 99 cents.

The second game was launched in July 2009 and is more of a classic arcade game, called HungryGators, in which players try to keep visiting alligators happy and well fed. It also is priced at 99 cents.

The third game, Kachina, is a tactical tile game based on Hopi tribe traditions. It came out last August and sells for $2.99.

So far, sales have been relatively modest. Including the free Telecom Tycoon game, Gourami Games, the company’s games division, has had roughly 20,000 downloads through the App Store, Hutchinson says.

He says the approval process at Apple can take just a couple of weeks to navigate but also can be frustrating. “It’s a mystery process,” he says, adding that it depends on who at Apple is assigned to handle the approval.

Though the prices of such games are low, the object for some designers is to get their names out there and attract attention in the industry. In the case of the Telecom Tycoon, Telect is promoting the game on its own, which has helped. The promotional game attracted about 6,500 downloads in its first couple of weeks, Hutchinson says.

He says that game helped the company pull through a tough 2009, but 2010 is “starting out really good.” He says that if some programming contracts come through, Gourami should be able to expand its staff this year.

Hutchinson and Lust say they hope to see Gourami grow to perhaps 30 to 50 employees and to have multiple contracts at a time.

Although it’s willing to take on most any kind of programming with which it has expertise, Gourami likely will remain focused on applications and games for mobile computing, Hutchinson says.

“That’s our strong point.”