 A standout theme at the 2016 Samsung Developers Conference was the, how do we say, widening definition of mobile developer. So we took some time to learn about three very different projects from three very different individuals. First up is Flowrider. Yes, that Flowrider. Turns out he's working on a mobile game called Speed Gods! It's a racing game and it's all caps, all bold and all italicized. And if that's anything to go by, it might be as loud as it is fast. So I wanted to open with one that's really actually quite personal for me. So would you consider putting my car in your game? Let me see what kind of car this is. Okay, at least it has an engine. Oh man. How much you gonna pay? Oh, no, no, it's all custom, man. It's not cheap. Oh man. That's custom. Man, it looks like Pep the Bismol on wheels. All right, well, I guess that's my answer. So why don't we get down to the more serious stuff then? Can you walk me through the progression from musician and performer to game developer? I mean, this must be a passion project for you. Yeah, definitely. But it's very organic because my guy Chris at IM3 Gaming, you know, he's been trying to pitch ideas to me, you know, since the start of my career. But I had to do something that I felt would be, you know, would have that wow factor as well as my music. This game is, like I said, it's very organic to myself. We have some of the flyest cars in there, you know, with me having a guy who loves music, you know, we definitely have some of the hottest music and everything in there. So, I mean, that's where it all started from. I let the guys know and Chris, you know, he's a great friend of mine. So, you know, I've actually been on them out on, you know, the NASCAR track racing and things like that. So from the from I was particular about how fast the cars would move, how agile the cars were. I felt like, you know, being a guy putting out a game for the first time, it has to be perfect. So I definitely was on those guys, you know, every moment, you know, like this represents me. And I needed to be perfect for my fans. You decided on a mobile game. Why is that? Well, we all know that, you know, we live by our phones, you know, so I can't go nowhere without my S7. And at the same time, we're creating this game. I felt like, you know, it would be a plus if even if I wasn't a part of it, this game would be hot. So it had to be hot, you know, rather if I was a part of it or not. What makes Speed Gods different from other mobile racing games? There's hundreds of them. Well, Speed Gods is a triple take. You have some of the flyest cars. It's so surreal as well as you have myself. What's a game without Flowrider? But that's not to say that every musician's mobile app has to be tightly tied into his or her music career. And Tommy Thayer, you might know him from a little band called Kiss, is working on, of all things, a kids storytelling app called Ernest Hummingbird that's due out in August. Tell me, how do you bridge the gap between songwriting and performing and creating a children's storytelling application for phones? You know, it's tricky. No, it's actually pretty easy. Bridging that gap is actually a lot of fun and I really enjoy it because what I do usually in rock music, you know, it's very defined what we do. So when we have a children's storybook app like Ernest Hummingbird, I can be inspired by the imagery and the aesthetic of it. It's outside of the box, so to speak, from what I usually do. So I've really enjoyed doing this. It's been a lot of fun. The reason we went with doing a storybook app rather than a traditional maybe a television show to begin with or whatever it may be, is that with new technology, new media and all the exciting things that are happening, particularly here at this developers conference, that is the avenue that I'm interested in. And I think that because it's really what's happening, it's where the future is going, you know, with mobile apps and like I said, new media. This is the new form of distribution for music and storytelling and all the things that we're doing. So we're embracing that and, you know, that's the direction things are going for sure. Which leads us then to our last unusual developer. Youngling Youngjun Lee from Korea evolved from simple block based coding in App Inventor to Android Studio, where his plant watering reminder app for Android won him the Junior Software Cup and a chance to come and speak at the developer conference. He was obviously a little nervous, but he did an amazing job of walking us through the various features of the app, adding plants, setting up watering schedules, creating nicknames and even drawing little avatars for the plants and his shockingly deep thought process for all of the features and functionality. Honestly, I wasn't really expecting for a grand prize when I attended to the Cup, because the grand prize actually had only one prize within elementary, middle and high school. So I wasn't really expecting to get that prize. But being here and winning that prize, I really cherish this moment for a long time. The reason, the main reason I kind of gamified it was because I wanted the user to be encouraged. Watering plants isn't really an exciting thing. That's the same thing with the drawing feature. I just wanted to make the user feel encouraged and be intrigued to water those plants. Because I really like living things. My career to biologist hasn't really changed. But I think I can be kind of a biogrammer or something that can actually simulate or do some research on biologist by computer programming. And so my goal, dream, whatever I want to call it, is actually biologist and also a programmer. I actually really love your hand drawn paint inspired icon design. Do you do them all yourself? Yeah, I just wanted some emotional kind of little icons, because many people think that machine is really something that is cold and something that is really hard. But I think by that drawing, I really put some emotional contents in my app. So yeah, I think those drawings really represented me, some kind of goal that I wanted the user to feel. So I hope you guys enjoyed this little spotlight on unusual mobile development. Don't miss any of our Samsung Developers Conference 2016 content by checking out the playlist, wherever it is that playlists go. And don't miss any of our videos in general by making sure that you're subscribed to Linus Tech Tips.