Leonard Frankel, Head of Business Development at Plarium, describes himself as a “solver.” When speaking at Casual Connect USA in July, he said, “When done right, the business development department can be the most efficient engine of growth for the company. You get to generate a lot of traction and be very influential. It can be very satisfying.”
Extending Success
Plarium works to sustain focus on their operations, self-improving along the way. An example of the company’s dedication to focus is Stormfall, the third game in the strategy series that brought the developer into the limelight.
The success of Stormfall was a pleasant surprise, Leonard explained, “With the optimized engine and a perfectly timed theme, the studio proved that significant potential can still be fulfilled.” Plarium’s upcoming unannounced title integrates all they have learned, as well as implementing lessons from mobile.
Artificial Intelligence?
Before coming to Plarium, Leonard was building an artificial intelligence system for online real-money poker games. After two years and a substantial budget, he realized it was time to end the work. “I learned a lot from the experience and now know that when you do all you can to succeed, it is okay if you don’t,” he said. “It is part of your path.”
Finding a Place at Plarium
When he came to Plarium, it took some trial and error to find the right path where he could contribute most significantly. This included mergers and acquisitions, collaborations, finding service providers and industry intelligence. “Your work is not measurable in ROI in the beginning, and I had to learn, together with the entire system around me, what our needs are and how we should grow,” he said “It feels very good to know you are on that path eventually.”
After Leonard closed down the previous operation, he brought up a partnership that was supposed to create social games off the AI poker engine. To do this, he had to research the economy of games on Facebook and create a full business plan. This experience was very useful in his work at Plarium, which he joined not long after they launched Total Domination on Facebook. He continues to have insights as a result of having managed a company of 22 people and is able to see the greater scale of things in Plarium’s organization.
The Vanishing PC
Leonard believes the next challenge for the game industry will materialize when people will stop buying personal computers in a couple of years. He says, “You will come to work, place your cell phone on your desk, and it will attach itself to your screen and keyboard to become your work computer. In a short time, there will no longer be social, web, and mobile, only variant uses of mobile software. This means we will have to serve games that work on your mobile device, regardless of what it is plugged in to.” Plarium sees mobile as one of the biggest opportunity for growth, making significant efforts to create the perfect experience on the platform. Leonard claims, “As I know us, once we get it right, we will spread quickly.”
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