“Nowadays, most developers, when you develop a game, there’s no reason to just make yourself or your games only available on a particular platform,” Tiam Yang said at Casual Connect Asia 2014. “Most people will be targeting cross-platform.”
Tiam Yang, co-founder and CTO of Tyler Projects, enjoys spending his time reading, jogging, and, of course, gaming. He most enjoys MOBA style games such as League of Legends because they allow everyone in the office to play as a team. They are also convenient with each game session short and separate from other sessions. But he doesn’t own consoles such as Xbox One or PS4, claiming that today, there are already more than enough games on desktop and mobile.
At Tyler Projects, Yang manages the day-to-day operations and helps with technical challenges in the company. He started with Tyler Projects immediately after graduation, and he says, “Most of our experience came the hard way and on the job.”
Success Within New Platforms
The popularity of their first Facebook game was a revelation, showing them that venturing into new platforms can pay off in a big way. Now they are constantly exploring new platforms, believing they offer outstanding opportunities, but they have discovered this is not an easy task. Building for a new platform requires a considerable investment of work and not every platform will succeed.
Distribution and marketing are increasingly difficult problems, according to Yang. The number of new devices and the number of platforms games are now played on means it is no longer wise to rely on just a few of them. He emphasizes the need to get into a new platform early, having seen the benefits with the inbuilt viral features when they launched that first Facebook game. They discovered there is less competition on a new platform and less marketing investment needed to attract attention to the game.
Free-to-Play Advantage
Yang sees a considerable advantage with the free-to-play model because it allows users to try out the game before investing in it. But he emphasizes, “There will always be good and bad examples in free-to-play. The most common and easiest way of monetization in free-to-play is simply Pay-to-Win. These games give free-to-play a bad name.”
For the next three to five years, Yang believes mobile will continue to lead the games industry. He sees this helping to spur the growth of certain smaller trends, including the growth of wearable tech games, and lifestyle- related games, such as sports.
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