What have top earners of mobile apps done to be at the top? What have they done differently? Peter Heinrich explains many situations, but one situation he told the audience at Casual Connect Asia 2014 is “Top earners are not selling more purchases, but they are selling higher ticker items.”
Peter Heinrich is a developer evangelist for Amazon.com, focused on games and game services. He started creating games while still in grade school, starting with Splat Man, a kind of anti-Lunar Landing. The goal was to crash as hard as possible and create the goriest impact. His first job in the games industry was the result of a lot of Amiga hacking; he even contributed to a book on the subject.
He asserts, “I love game development because the industry is always changing. There’s always something new to learn. If not for games, I would probably still be trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.” He claims the best thing about game development is the variety of problems you encounter. Game programmers work on AI, audio, compression, encryption, UI, physics, kinematics, video, animation, 3D, streaming, networking, gameplay, etc., so there is always something interesting to do.
Taking The Plunge
Co-founding two game studios was an incredibly rewarding, even surreal experience. But, Heinrich admits, “It was strange to look around and realize there were other people whose livelihood depended on me, people I didn’t even know a few months or weeks ago. Striking out on our own seemed like the next logical step at the time; my co-founders and I were ready to see what we could accomplish on our own.”
At Amazon.com, he spends his time helping developers do what they love. He has developed games himself, and tried to sell them, so he understands the joy and frustration of being creative on a schedule, especially when technology is involved. He emphasizes, “I really enjoy getting my hands dirty and love to dive into the code to answer programming questions.”
Second Screen Rewards
Heinrich is excited to see second screen experiences starting to emerge in the industry. He says, “I love the idea of heterogeneous access to a shared game experience, and the second screen games I have seen show how cool it can be.” He mentions Sev Zero for Amazon Fire TV as a great example, connecting seamlessly with a companion tablet app, Sev Zero: Air Support.
He also sees augmented reality leading to revolutionary changes in game design, display hardware, and controllers. Microelectromechanical systems like accelerometers have already shown incredible impact. Augmented reality game play will become even more immersive as deeper integration with a player’s physical environment improves.
Currently, Heinrich is playing the game a friend recommended, Mines of Mars. He says the game play is serene and it has great music. Although he still enjoys FPS on console, these days he is usually playing on mobile, Kindle Fire, or Android. He states, “I like Android for the supreme simplicity of development, regardless of language, tools or platform, but I also like the fit-and-finish of iOS, although I prefer Straight C over Objective-C.”
He tells us he also reads a lot, across all genres, and enjoys hardware hacking and building strange machines.
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