“What’s very important before you start developing the game is at least assuming the family situation of the people,” said Paweł Weder to his audience at Casual Connect Asia 2014. “Think again about the women between 35-45: she will probably have children, and doesn’t have time, let’s say 1.5 hrs, to play the game.”
Paweł Weder is CPO of Ganymede, Poland’s leading developer of entertainment software, specializing in casual, social, and mobile games, and owner of the GameDesire.com platform. Weder began in the games industry with his own startup company, GameLab.EU. Later, this company merged into Ganymede, as his career evolved from being a producer, through game designer, product owner, and finally to his present position as CPO. He maintains that every product they release is like a child to him; he can’t possibly pick one over another. But he does admit, “Every time something works, it just makes me feel good!”
Weder describes himself as a happy person, spending his time seeking “awesome personal experiences.” And enjoying his motorcycle.
A Discriminating Gamer
He is a discriminating gamer with strong opinions about his likes and dislikes. He prefers playing on his Nintendo 3DS and loves Mario, Zelda, and, as he says, “Name it as you want, I love them all.” On the other hand, he had a PS4, but returned it. He insists, “There were no games that I liked.” He enjoys free-to-play games and has spent $99 in one game, but claims he is ashamed to say which one.
When Weder considers what will be most important to his company in the coming years, he emphasizes, “Retention, retention, retention! How do we keep our users?” At Casual Connect Asia, he discussed several examples of what Ganymede is doing to ensure players want to return again and again.
An issue he feels the games industry urgently needs to address is gameplay. He says, “I think that we lost the gameplay in the last few years. Monetization was much more important. Now we need to take a step back and make fun games again.”
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