Infinite Arms is trying to bridge the worlds of toys, gaming, and television.
Infinite Arms is a free-to-play mobile game being developed by newly formed Jumo, Inc. Jumo brings together names from both the toy and gaming worlds: Keiichi Yano (Elite Beat Agents, Lips), Chris Esaki (Kill Switch, Mass Effect, and Gears of War), Akio Fujii (Bandai Namco, DeNA), Yasuo Takahama (Transformers, Tamagotchi), and Tom Abernathy (League of Legends, The Division).
Shying away from the $4 billion toys-to-life market that includes properties like Activision’s Skylanders, Disney’s Disney Infinity, and Nintendo’s amiibo, Jumo is calling Infinite Arms a “games-to-life” product. Infinite Arms is also aiming for a much older audience.
“We tried to make really awesome, kick-ass action figures and characters that appeal to us, and that were cool to us,” Chris Esaki, Chief Creative Officer of Jumo, said. “And that’s kind of where we ended up.”
Esaki also mentioned how the free-to-play mobile market has become a red ocean with only two real business models — ads or in-app purchases — and that it tended to limit the types of games that developers could make. Instead, Jumo is trying to replace in-app purchases with toys.
The toys themselves went through many revisions as Jumo tried to figure out exactly who the audience for the game was. They had initially aimed for the younger toys-to-life market, but decided that that market was already crowded, and that those games weren’t products they would personally want to play.
Jumo aged up the character designs and the game and did a lot of user research with 15-17 guys, an age-group that would shrug at the idea of still playing with toys. While most toys-to-life products don’t offer much in terms of play outside the video game, Jumo wanted to make sure to have toys that could be played with in both spaces, and thinks that Infinite Arms’s figures will appeal to an older audience, even if they don’t consider themselves as “toy” players still, or playing with toys is something that many of them may have stopped doing years ago.
“The reaction was like ‘Oh yeah, I don’t play with toys, but I would play with these all day,'” Esaki said. “And it’s just because it doesn’t look like a toy anymore…it just speaks to a more older sensibility.”
Add the figure and the toy together, and Esaki thinks that combined, Infinite Arms has a better connection to how that age demographic thinks about entertainment and characters.
Infinite Arms is also bringing in influence from outside the toy and gaming worlds, specifically J.J. Abrams’ work — in terms of mysteries inside mysteries inside enigmas — and Esaki is thinking of Infinite Arms as following in the footsteps of television.
“We’re structuring the game as our take on the new Saturday morning cartoon,” Esaki said.
Infinite Arms is set in the year 2050, where globalization had led to the rise of Power Houses that now wage war and settle business via Metamods (the robot toys), piloted by humans. The reasons for how and why humanity got that way will be uncovered over the course of the game’s bi-weekly episodes.
“Once again, it’s these roots in our upbringing of Saturday morning cartoons and toys that go along with them,” Esaki said. “We’re just bringing that to the modern era with a free play mobile game and toys that go along with that.”
Infinite Arms supports up to six players in real time, and has a full campaign mode, multiplayer area modes, and squad-based missions. It runs on Unreal Engine 4, and the plan is for bi-weekly episodes, as well as seasonal content as well.
“It’s more like Destiny on mobile,” Esaki said. “It feels like a shooter RPG with awesome robot things.”
Esaki mentioned another MMO, World of Warcraft, as an influence. There’s also all the trappings players would expect from an MMO in Infinite Arms: bosses, loot, leveling up, progression trees, and down-the-line the team is looking at including raid bosses and co-op, as well.
“It is the antithesis of what most people think of a mobile game,” Esaki said. “It’s a very significant product. We have tons of people on this thing. There’s so much content.”
The Infinite Arms toys themselves are more akin to action figures, at least compared to the more figurine-like toys-to-life products currently available. So far Jumo has shown off two: a four-legged Metamod named Ixion that has a unicorn/centaur vibe going on, and a very spiky red Metamod named Skorpos, complete with a triple-gun scorpion tail.
The figures feature over 20 points of articulation, and can be customized with up to four different attachable weapons. They connect to mobile devices directly over Bluetooth — no base or other accessory is required — have built-in speakers, and are also painted with a premium metallic paint finish.
“We really wanted to move toys-to-life forward, and also be able to play with toys,” Esaki said. “Being able to physically play with toys [is something we’re] really, really trying to deliver on.”
Esaki felt it Jumo was going to make an impact in the market, they had to make sure that the products could be played with in both the digital and physical realms. Unlike other toys-to-life products, Jumo didn’t want to make figurines that you could only place in settings, or use to more pieces on a game board.
Instead, Jumo focused on the idea of action figures. Infinite Arms figures are fully poseable and customizable, allowing for play outside of the game, and have weapons that can be swapped out on the actual toys, with the app matching the changes in-game automatically.
Further ways the toys work in conjunction with the Infinite Arms game include them being always on and talking to your mobile device. They’ll light up when they get Push notifications or alerts and during play, data such as a player’s health state will be sent to the toy, which results in a “extended sound and light show.”
“We’re trying to really elegantly hand off the experience between the two different devices,” Esaki said. “It’s not really this experience where you’re playing with both of them at the same time…we really want players to be focused on one or the other at any given time.”
The team is also taking a unique approach to the physical release of the toys, with new toys going on sale every two weeks. That’s quite a quick turnaround in terms of producing and manufacturing physical products.
“We’ve really gotten that process down to something that’s super, super fast, in comparison to pretty much everything else that’s produced out there,” Esaki said.
Jumo has created a patented system called Fast Toys, which has optimized everything from the software development process, to the manufacturing, distribution, and fulfillment of toys, and has spent two years figuring how to speed up the entire process.
“This could change how toys are created and distributed,” Esaki said. “If this really, really takes off, it’ll have significant impact and influence…I think, for how toys are produced for the rest of time.”
Pricing for the toys hasn’t yet been announced, but pre-orders will be up on Amazon in the near future. The team is also looking into retail distribution, but the focus will be on online sales.
But even though the focus is on bringing the toy and gaming worlds together, players won’t need to purchase toys to experience Infinite Arms.
“It’s a free-to-play game,” Esaki said. “So you can actually download and play the app without any toys. You can play the whole game without ever buying a toy. That’s intentional.”
But purchasing toys doesn’t automatically mean that a player will have a leg up on everybody else, either. There’s two versions of each weapon — the “software” in-app version and the hardware toy-based weapons — and each will have its own advantages or disadvantages depending on the situation.
“We’re trying to make a system, as best as possible, where to be competitive and to enjoy the game you don’t have to spend any money on toys…but we imagine that the ultra, ultra competitive guys are going to go for the best stuff and have the things that give them the most options for any type of scenario,” Esaki said.
The toy versions of the weapons will be better: they’ll have higher weapon level caps and different progression tress, but the toys still may not always be the best weapon of choice depending on the situation. There will still be reasons to use both the in-app, and paid for, weapons.
“We don’t want this to feel like a pay-to-win game,” Esaki said. “It’s just pay to enjoy the toys.”
For the initial launch this summer, Jumo is looking at releasing three to four characters, and is still working on the final numbers of weapons to be released in the first week. At least three weapons will be released every two weeks, with three to four game seasons taking place in a year, and new characters and toys to go along with those, as well.
But, at the end of the day, it all comes back to the game part of the games-to-life category Jumo is hoping to break into.
“The game is what grounds everything,” Esaki said. “It’s the core of the entertainment product. It’s the Saturday morning cartoon. It’s the thing that draws people to play.”
