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Steve Meretzky Proclaims to GDC: “Nobody Knows Anything”

April 9, 2013 — by David Nixon

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News

Steve Meretzky Proclaims to GDC: “Nobody Knows Anything”

April 9, 2013 — by David Nixon

Steve Meretzky and Dave Rohrl at Casual Connect Seattle 2012

The combined industry knowledge residing in the heads of veterans like Steve Meretzky, Dave Rohrl, and Juan Gril is impressive, but at GDC’s Free-to-Play Summit, Steve put a big question mark over the value of it all with the repeated message: “Nobody knows anything!”




Meretzky used the quote from Screenwriter William Goldman’s book Adventures in the Screen Trade to summarize why conventional wisdom is frequently proven wrong, and conclusions derived from past experience are not necessarily predictive. He pointed towards industry pundits’ flip-flopping on the viability of Hidden Object Games (“HOG”s) in Free-to-Play as proof and asked the audience, “Were the experts right before they were wrong, or wrong before they were right?”

Criminal Case on Facebook is an example
Criminal Case on Facebook is an example of the viability of Hidden Object Games in Free-to-Play

Joined onstage by Dave Rohrl, his partner in crime for the popular and evergreen “Social Games Year in Review” presentation, Steve and Dave mixed up the program in a few other ways as well. Instead of focusing tightly on the Social Games market (e.g. - Facebook), which Dave compared to Donald Trump: “Older, established, and there’s definitely some money there, but every so often behaves…well…odd.”, the duo expanded their subject matter to include Free-to-Play game services generally, with a focus on Facebook, iOS, and Android. Further, explained Rohrl, “Like the Thompson Twins and the Ben Folds Five…our group now has THREE members.”  For the first time, the established duo invited another speaker to join the fun; Online game industry veteran Juan Gril, Founder & CEO of Joju Games.

Juan Gril
Juan Gril

Even fully warned that “nobody knows anything,” it’s hard to discount the trends and observations presented by three long-time game industry veterans, supported by hard data from the Casual Games Sector Reports on Social, Mobile, Fremium, and Casino games (presented by the Casual Games Association and Superdata).  Some key observations included the relatively low success rate for Free-to-Play “sequels” (Meretzky), the power of collection and crafting game mechanics contributing to the success of the online CCG (Gril), and an interesting analysis of the relative stagnation of the Facebook top developers list vs. the iOS and Android lists, with a warning to devs that the mobile game market is congealing, so it’s time to get in or out (Rohrl). Rohrl also pointed out that success in Free-to-Play is neither easy nor fast, and often is as much about perseverance as any other factor, citing multiple early failures by both King.com and Supercell before they finally achieved substantial success.

DOWNLOAD GDC PRESENTATION SLIDES







As always, Steve and Dave, and now Juan, presented a well-reasoned, well-supported, and insightful look into the evolution of Free-to-Play games in 2013.  Steve may believe that “Nobody Knows Anything”, but checking out their past “Year in Review” presentations from Casual Connect you’ll see that for guys who don’t know anything - they get it right more often than not.

Steve and Dave presented their 2012 Social Games Year in Review at Casual Connect Seattle 2012:




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David Nixon

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