Australian app success story Fruit Ninja celebrates fifth birthday

Halfbrick Studios CEO and local rich lister Shainiel Deo shares his secrets to creating a billion-download game.

Shainiel Deo.

Brisbane-based gaming powerhouse Halfbrick Studios is celebrating the fifth anniversary of its food-slashing app Fruit Ninja, which has passed over one billion downloads and is the second most-purchased iPhone app of all time.

CEO Shainiel Deo, who founded the company in 2001, told The Australian that the day he submitted Fruit Ninja to Apple five years ago he had no idea it would be such a hit.

“The other day we pulled up first version from app store and it’s amazing to see how much it’s evolved,” he said. “The key for us five years later has to keep updating the game, keeping content fresh, and most importantly listening to our audience.”

New features in today’s update include an anniversary tournament mode, six new mini games and a golden ember blade.

The highly-addictive fruit slashing game, which is available for free download, began life as a one dollar download but has moved to an advertising-supported ‘freemium’ model.

“We have had to grapple with changing business model over the last few years,” Mr Deo said. “People used to prefer paying a dollar but over last five years we’ve seen freemium model take over app stores, so we adjusted the game and added those components.

“Advertising for us has always been a thing, but we started with banner ads and then it moved to video ads. With this update we’ve added incentivised video ads [which reward users for watching advertising].”

His game development firm Halfbrick Studios now employs 100 people and produces a number of games including Jetpack Joyride, Hollywood Game Night and Radical Rappelling, all of which will be getting a Fruit Ninja bonus this month and will join in the anniversary celebrations.

Mr Deo said there’s no secret sauce for reaching a billion downloads on the app store but persistence definitely helps, along with doing the hard yards with regards to research.

“When we made Fruit Ninja all those years ago we looked closely at the games that were being successful,” he said. “One thing is looking at the market and studying what is successful, and really try to capture that but be fast about it,” Mr Deo said.

“The market’s changing so much all the time, once you release an app, you need to learn from what your users are doing from within the app and improve it incrementally.”

He warned that while an initial release might be a smash hit straight away, the developer needs to keep constantly improving it to make it sustainable.

“Not every game will be a hit but you will learn from every game you make,” he said.

And what about those users that downloaded Fruit Ninja five years ago — why should they re-download it today?

“If they haven’t played the game for a while there’s so much fresh content they haven’t experienced,” Mr Deo said. “The key thing is, every time you come back to the game, you’re hooked all over again. It’ll feel fresh and like a whole new game.”

Fruit Ninja’s 5th anniversary edition is available from the Apple App Store for iOS users.

Android users can download it from Google’s Play Store.