Flutter: Butterfly Sanctuary was the first game developed by Runaway Play, a division of NHNZ based in Dunedin, and when it was first released on Facebook three years ago it attracted more than one million players.
It had since been redeveloped and was released for iPhone and iPad in February this year. Now more than 30,000 people play the game on their devices every day, and that number was expected increase to 100,000 by August.
Runaway Play director Tim Nixon (now 30) said its popularity was already paying off.
''In four months [Flutter] had made five times more revenue than the Facebook game had made in one year''.
Flutter was free to play and download but about 1% of players chose to pay to speed up their experience of the game. This was the only source of income, but with so many people playing the game, it was enough for it to be profitable, he said.
''Because the game is free to download, we can spread out to a really wide user base ... so the 1% that do pay end up generating enough revenue for us that we can have a profitable business and continue to work on it,'' he said.
The market for Flutter was also just about to get a huge boost as it was to be released on Android devices in August. This meant the number of daily players could triple to 100,000, he said.
Flutter has achieved international success thanks to a partnership between Runaway Play and the Tokyo-owned, San Francisco-based company, DeNA.
The partnership, which began in November last year, allowed Runaway to develop the game from Dunedin while having a foothold in the competitive international market, as DeNA took care of the international marketing and distribution of the game.
''We spend a lot of time in the States ... being in the market is really important. You can do it remotely, but those are the outliers,'' Mr Nixon said.
He spent about three months a year overseas for a strong relationship with the industry, but was happy in Dunedin.
''I'm still in Dunedin now because the city has continued to present interesting opportunities, most recently the opportunity to work with NHNZ. It is hard to be so far away from the market, but there are definitely advantages to living in a quiet little city with low overheads,'' he said.
In such a rapidly evolving industry, the future of gaming was not entirely clear, but Mr Nixon was confident Runaway would feature firmly in it: ''Right now we make games inspired by nature for mobile ... that's something we can build on 5, 20, 30 years in the future.
''Natural History has been around for 30 years. Runaway should be around for 30 years. We want to build an enduring brand, team and philosophy,'' Mr Nixon said.
- George Driver
