Meet Creator of 'Hero On The Hudson' Game

So it took some digging, but if you can believe it, I tracked down the team who invented the free game "Hero on the Hudson" and it turns out the company is quite the prolific games developer. Not to mention how successful this particular title has become. You won't believe it.

The CEO is Andriy Sharanevych and his Orb Games Ltd. is headquartered in Kiev, Ukraine. He started the company back in 2006, with a team of games developers who sport a terrific pedigree. His engineers have worked on "Chasm the Rift," "Duke Nukem Endangered Species;" "Vivisector: Beast Inside;" "Moto GP 3: Ultimate Racing Technology;" "Chaos League;" "StarWars Galaxies;" and many others.


Your Chance to Be the Hero on the Hudson
On the company's website (www.orb-games.com), he says his mission is to "develop innovative games based upon our own concepts as well as upon other unique and interesting mass-market product lines in mind." The focus of the company today is on casual, downloadable, online, PC and home consoles, as well as handheld devices, and that the company is authorized to develop for Nintendo DS, Sony Playstation and Sony's PSP. (Sorry Microsoft Xbox fans.)

Here is my email interview with Andriy:

JG: When did you create "Hudson"?

Andriy Sheranevych: We’ve created this game about 10 days ago, only few days after Chesley Sullenberger safely landed the damaged plane in the Hudson River, saving all the passengers and the crew. Initially, the game was released at our portal TastyPlay.com and at Addicting Games, who also sponsored the game. From there it was taken to many, many other game portals, blogs, etc. and became popular.

JG: What gave you the idea to base a game around this incredible event?

AS: The event itself was absolutely shocking for the whole world...But shocking in a good way. We were watching a miracle - where each single component of circumstances matched another so well, and at the head of it a masterful performance of pilot Chesley Sullenberger. We just wanted people to understand and not to forget that this is not for granted, so we tried to make a game that would remind everyone about this miraculous event.

JG: What kind of technology did you use to create it? Was it easy?

AS: We used Flash to create this game. The biggest issue was the really tight development timeframe – only 2 days to make and release the game! We knew the game is going to be viral and we had to make very quickly, as it's all about the timing. So that was tricky. And I'm glad we’ve made it.

JG: What's been the feedback?

AS: Good question. There’s a lot of controversy in comments that we get. We realize that some people think it was heartless to create such a game. But our thought is different. I’d like to accent that with "Hero on the Hudson" we wanted to create a game that is very positive in its nature, that gives you hope. And in fact, we deliberately made it very simple to make a successful landing in the game, as this is the game about the miracle and not a tragedy. You can play a role of a pilot, who will save hundreds of lives behind him and bring joy, happiness and hope to millions of people.

JG: Any idea how many hits you've gotten? Seems like the game is getting a lot of attention here!

AS: We’ve got over 1.5 million gameplays during the first week and the game is still very hot. Today it’s on the news all over the place (people say they even saw it on TV), so I guess we’re going to see another boost of popularity.

JG: Any plans for a mobile version, maybe something for iPhone?

AS: Yeah, everyone is crazy about iPhone development these days. No comments.

Think of the game as almost a "loss-leader" for Orb. Tastyplay is a free website, advertising driven, and some of these games from Orb itself show just what this company can do, in a very short period of time. (Two days?!) And this one is getting them noticed in a big, BIG way.

So there you have it. Good ol' fashioned ingenuity, capitalizing on current events. Geez, sounds almost, well, American, doesn't it!
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