Rik Haandrikman spoke about multiplayer functions in games during Casual Connect USA 2014. “Chat is really important, so we try not to touch it, ever,” he explained. “When you break the flow of the chat, people are more likely to leave. You want to keep them engaged with each other more than the game.”
In a way, Rik Haandrikman had been preparing his whole life for his job at GamePoint.
His life as a game developer began on his uncle’s Commodore 64 back in the 1980s playing games such as Boulder Dash. Eventually, he got his own Commodore and started coding his own games for family and friends. “I can still hear the sound the game tapes made as I copied them using a double-cassette deck stereo,” he says.
His reasons for enjoying games differ depending on the game. There are those that are a form of escapism, others that are a way for him to challenge himself, and some that are a way to socialize and share experiences with people.
Haandrikman spent close to a decade jumping majors after finishing high school - studying a range of subjects from marketing, psychology, and programming to Asian languages, cultural sciences, and trade management. While he wasn’t planning on going into the gaming industry at the time, he says that his schooling gave him a broad base of knowledge for pretty much every aspect of the gaming business. “(It) seems like I’d been unwittingly preparing myself for a fruitful career in the games industry,” he says. “Who knew?”
After tiring of working in the European club scene as a party promoter and organizer, he stumbled on to a position in community management at GamePoint. He says he was familiar with the company’s games because his mom had been playing them for years, and it seemed like it would be a fun place to work. “Turns out I wasn’t wrong, as I’ve been here for over half a decade now,” he says.
Lessons in the Data
As director of business development at GamePoint, Haandrikman’s day-to-day work tends to be split between data analytics, user acquisition, and a grab-bag of miscellaneous projects - new games, new platform features, and anything else GamePoint related. Haandrikman likes to be involved with projects all over the company since growth is his job objective and it’s a company-wide undertaking.
There are also important lessons to be gleaned from data analysis, and some of these lessons have helped steer the growth strategies GamePoint undertakes. One of the most important takeaways Haandrikman discovered was that there is no single solution to issues such as retention or monetization. “We have a platform of interconnected games, so for a very long time we’ve held the belief that all those games should have similar features, similar layouts, and even similar business models,” Haandrikman notes. “It took us over a decade to take a hard, long look at the data and admit that how we monetize our social casino games doesn’t work for most other game types. We’re changing some things quite drastically on that front as we speak.”
Another lesson learned through data analysis is how to better retain players in their games. There was a long-held belief that more complexity in games created the “ridiculously high customer lifetimes” the company sees in the average GamePoint game. And while it’s true that veteran gamers do enjoy endlessly tweaking options to create a game custom-tailored to them, the data showed that the complexity and overload of options turned new users off from the game. “We’re only now tailoring the first-time user experience to better fit what that type of user needs and layering on complexity as they progress.”
GamePoint and Gaming
The lessons learned from data have helped GamePoint stay creative and innovate as they get closer to achieving their long-term goal: to be the number-one multiplayer social game developer in the world. “There should be no question as to where you go when you want to enjoy a quick multiplayer social game with friends or strangers,” Haandrikman says. “We’re not there yet, but we will be.”
He notes that innovation and creativity both rely on inspiration and that, even though gaming companies may find themselves a little too inspired by each other at times, the industry still hasn’t scratched the surface of what games can and will be. For instance, while he acknowledges that imagining what GamePoint could do with new platforms like Oculus might not make a lot of business sense for the foreseeable future, it makes for a great exercise in creative thinking - which can lead to new and usable ideas.
He also believes there is a place in the gaming industry for all games and ideas, though the majority of games will obviously be tailored toward the masses in an effort to make money. “This means that the major publishers probably won’t be interested in your game about the experiences of a snowflake as it melts on the hood of a car that just crashed into a tree, killing a family of four,” he says. “That shouldn’t stop you from making it though. There’s room for big money and hobbyists alike in this industry.”
Maturing Innovations
Haandrikman sees many innovations in the gaming industry beginning to mature. Digital distribution is becoming mainstream with products like the iOS App Store, Steam, Google Play, Xbox Live, and PlayStation Network. He also wonders if platforms themselves won’t eventually get wrapped up into the digital world sooner or later. He points to OnLive as an idea that may have been before its time, but the type of service that might gain traction in today’s market. “I admit that, in true hardcore gaming fashion, I scoffed at the likes of OnLive when they first came out … (but) Facebook would have a field day if they could use an OnLive type service to run hardcore games from their web canvas or mobile apps. Imagine the size of that for a distribution channel.”
Haandrikman also expects to see a lot more casual/social/mobile game developers working with messaging apps. But he is personally most excited for 5G. “I know I should probably (be excited for) VR, Oculus, holograms or whatever, but right now the masses are (and will be) on mobile,” he says. “The faster and cheaper mobile internet gets, the better the mobile gaming experience will be. Who knows? Crazy fast mobile internet might even make browser-based HTML5 gaming on mobile viable.”
Over the Horizon
As for things on the horizon for GamePoint and Haandrikman himself, they are currently looking at pushing GamePoint Bingo into the 50 highest-grossing games worldwide. More importantly, though, they just launched GamePoint Poker during Casual Connect USA 2014. “We’ve worked long and hard on making a poker game that’s also uniquely GamePoint and I think we succeeded,” he says. “Seeing GamePoint Poker join GamePoint Bingo as one of the best monetizing games worldwide would be a nice close to an awesome year.”
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