By Ray Paulick
So you’ve got an iPhone and you like to play horse racing games. Yeah, we’ve got an app for that.

That’s what McKay Smith, the former director of product development for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and Breeders’ Cup, told me recently when I asked what he was up to: development of iDerby, a horse racing game for Apple’s iPhone that is available on the popular iTunes retail platform. (Click here for a YouTube video showing how the game works.)

Smith focused on the booming video game industry for several years while Breeders’ Cup and NTRA were working together under the same roof in Lexington. There was a mobile game for the Blackberry smartphone, a horse racing console game developed in conjunction with Bethesda Software and a popular arcade game focusing on Breeders’ Cup produced by Ultracade. When the “divorce” of NTRA and Breeders’ Cup led to a downsizing of both organizations, he departed in 2006.

In the meantime, game applications for smartphones, in particular the 2007-launched iPhone, exploded in popularity. Smith was named vice president of marketing for Magmic Games in Canada but after two years there launched his own company, Bet Twice Consulting, where he could combine his two passions: video games and horse racing.

“Through those various efforts I had a lot of experience in understanding what people want and don’t want in video games,” Smith said. “I learned a lot at Magmic about iPhone apps and games for the BlackBerry, and decided I wanted to produce an iPhone application for horse racing. Looking at the marketplace I could see there was very little competition for horse racing games. If you go to iTunes (the online store where consumers can purchase digital music, video, books, games and other applications) you’ll find 15 or more games in other sports like baseball or basketball. In horse racing, there was only one game in the marketplace that would be considered a threat to any other game.”

That lack of competition encouraged Smith to underwrite the project. He recruited a programmer and designer and spent 14 months working on the project and learning more about the market. One thing he discovered is that gamers are more interested in a horse race than betting on a horse race. “They want to get in, navigate around the track, and have some fun,” he said. “When we approached this, the first thing we wanted to do was make the fun factor really high. The iPhone has a motion sensor allowing users to make their horses run inside or outside (by tilting their phones), and there’s a simple ‘whip’ or ‘hold’ button.

“The game right now is pretty simple. You create three horses in a stable, and there are three running style (front runner, stalker, closer). The game automatically breeds a horse for you; you simply pick your color. In career mode there are 30 ‘cup’ races that get more difficult as you progress. One horse is able to race 32 times. For a serious player the object is to try and complete 30 cup races in the allotted 32 starts.”
 
There are also multi-player games for up to 10 players, which Smith said is unusual for an iPhone app. “It’s a simple multi-player mode,” he said. “There are no stats or leader boards. In subsequent versions we’ll add more layers–leader boards, and competition.”
 
Smith said the current version of iDerby is “step one in what we hope will be a franchise. The programming and graphic design for something like this is extensive,” he said. “You can tell if you play the game or look at the video that it’s not something some guy in his basement cobbled together in a few weeks.”

Reaction has been positive, he said.

“I’ve already gotten a ton of email from players,” Smith said. “Some of them say, ‘Wow, this is good, but you should have ‘x, y and z.’ Core racing fans want everything, including betting simulation. But we are trying to cater to a broader market, to get people interested in horse racing. Step one is to make it fun, but we will be adding layers: mini games, little training scenarios, things to build up your horse, though I don’t think we are going to add betting.  We want to involve as many people as possible. A six-year-old girl doesn’t care about superfectas. Core horseplayers are too shortsighted to acknowledge that.”

iDerby can be found in either the casino or racing categories at iTunes for a cost of $0.99. (Click here to purchase iDerby for your iPhone or here for a free iDerby Lite version of the game that does not include career or multi-player modes.)

Ten free downloads are available to readers of the Paulick Report. If you are among the first to email McKay Smith at bettwice2@yahoo.com, you’ll receive a promotional code entitling you to a free download of the game.

Copyright © 2010, The Paulick Report

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Tags: Breeders' Cup, Good News Friday, iDerby, iPhone, iTunes, liberation farm, McKay Smith, National Thoroughbred Racing Association, NTRA, Ray Paulick

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