During his session at Casual Connect USA, Hattara stated, “Replayability is an indicator of meaningful choice.”
Antti Hattara is Head of Studio at Wooga, where he works with Product Leads to develop free-to-play games from concept to live service. If he was not involved in the game industry, he imagines himself with a future in sports tracking. He intended to become a management consultant, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Work and Play
When Antti studied programming at university, his projects all ended up being games, including Java Applet Air Hockey, Asteroids for early Symbian, and 3D Tetris with open GL. He was made to work on games. He started working as a game engineer for Sumea Studio in Helsinki. The company was acquired by Digital Chocolate in 2004. He claims working there was “seven years of fun, with eight different titles, and eight different business cards.” Then he made the move to Berlin to work as Wooga’s Head of Studio. “Sticking with what you enjoy is an easy decision,” he says.
When Antti has time away from work, he enjoys swimming, cycling, and running long distances, as well as exploring the playgrounds of Berlin with his two sons, ages 2 months and 2 ½ years. It is no wonder he describes himself as energetic.
The Challenges of Changing
Antti tells us the greatest challenge in his career was changing from the paid mobile games model to free-to-play Facebook games. It requires more than just changing development. The process required that he establish the Product Manager role and then build the team. Once that was done, he needed to get the cooperation of free-to-play experts and traditional designers working in the Helsinki Studio.
During his session at Casual Connect USA, he goes over how you can evaluate prototypes to recognize which have hit potential.
The Future is Tablet
The biggest trend Antti sees coming in the next several years in the games industry is the tablet. His reasoning is that it reaches the mass market and can also serve the core gamer audience well. He believes, “Many game genres will be reinvented for the tablet, as bigger touch screens allow more advanced and intuitive ways to interact with games.” At Wooga, they are working hard to prototype revolutionary new ways to interact with games on the touch screen.
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