“If you want to get fans and create fans from your players, its about treating them like a fan,” Morgan Hall summarized during a panel she moderated at Casual Connect USA 2014. “It is about being accountable to these people.”
Morgan Hall, co-founder and creative director at Vancouver-based mobile app studio, Hidden Door Interactive, has been involved with games since she was first introduced to them at the age of five on her father’s work computer running DOS. She believes this experience has shaped her social life, her hobbies, and her career.
While at university, she had an internship with Electronic Arts, and has been in the industry ever since. She considers herself fortunate, saying, “I am encouraged by the way it allows me to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities as well as remain in a constant state of learning. My favorite part of the industry is that it is never boring!”
Paying It Forward
Hall feels the greatest satisfaction in her work when she is able to pay it forward to others in the games industry. Her opportunity came when, on behalf of her company, she sponsored a women-in-games event in Vancouver.
With her partners, Hall founded Hidden Door Interactive to make their game, Happy Flock!. In the process, they discovered how well they worked together, and since they have enough ideas to last for a lifetime, they are on to their next project.
Hall is also a producer/designer at East Side Games, a mobile games studio in Vancouver. Prior to that, most of her experience had been with console games, starting with the internship at Electronic Arts. From these experiences, she has learned what it means to be a professional game developer and the amount of hard but rewarding work it takes to create ‘fun’.
For her own gaming, Hall is currently playing Tiny Town, saying she loves the art style and is intrigued by its design. Her first choice of platform is divided between her iPad and her 3DS. Besides these, she also owns Xbox 360, a Steam Box, and a PS3, and she plans to purchase a PS4 soon.
She appreciates both Android and iOS, enjoying the power of holding the internet in your hand that both offer. But for her work, she finds that iOS has the right combination for her team’s skill set, size, and budget. She stresses, “We’ve had nothing but good experiences developing for Apple’s platform.”
And when she is not spending her free time gaming, she loves skiing and snowboarding in the winter, and fishing and hiking in the summer.
A Fuzzy Future Ahead
When Hall considers the future of the games industry, she points out that it is particularly hard to predict. Today looks completely different from only two years ago. But she expects the current mobile-first trend will continue getting stronger, pointing out, “You can’t be successful without a first-class experience on a device you hold in your hand.” She also believes VR could be big if the technology improves, explaining that a device more like Google Glass than a fighter pilot’s helmet will be needed before VR can succeed.
She emphasizes that whether or not her predictions are correct, there is an important lesson in making them. “Thinking about the future teaches me to be nimble. We have to see the trends forming and respond to them, even if this means drastically changing plans. We’re in an industry where taking risks is a necessity.”
At Casual Connect USA, Hall announced the worldwide release of her game Happy Flock! It is an adventure and animal-collection game for all ages, available on iPhone and iPad. The game came about through a lot of hard work and long hours by the team at Hidden Door Interactive.
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