Ian Atkinson moderated a panel on the challenges of mobile publishing at Casual Connect USA 2014. ” I think it is a super exciting time for mobile games,” he said. “Typically, games lead the innovation in markets.”
Ian Atkinson is vice president of product management at Sleepy Giant. He oversees the product management for Sleepy Giant’s fofofum backend game technology and services and sits between sales, marketing, development, and accounts to make sure they are aligned and executing on all fronts. He originally partnered with Sleepy Giant while he was at THQ to help with online games, and he has been working with the company ever since, first as a customer, then a consultant, and now as an employee. Atkinson’s background prior to gaming was in management consulting and investment banking. Since then, he has primarily been focused on F2P games, helping developers improve game operations with advanced analytics and product management.
Investing and Developing
Ian got the bug for technology and entertainment when he helped raise $150 million in capital to fund the first meaningful digital product push into theaters, enabling downloadable virtual prints of films via satellite. This allowed theaters to bring customized content to their screens. Later, after working with F2P gaming companies in China, he joined THQ to help drive their F2P online games and launched Dragonica and Company of Heroes Online, the company’s first foray into that business model.
Earlier this year, Sleepy Giant announced the formation of fofofum, an internal operating group that offers a complete backend game technology and services solution, featuring a game management system powered by a rules engine that drives real-time automation. A successful beta test with select partners has been completed, and the game ops engine is now available to game developers and publishers worldwide. fofofum’s technology and custom development expertise will be on display in Midnight Star, Industrial Toy’s mobile first person shooter, and in upcoming game releases from partners, including Tilting Point and Robot Entertainment.
Cross-platform Evolution
Cross-platform gaming and the evolution of F2P are the big trends Atkinson sees affecting the games industry in the next few years. All the platforms now have the power to drive a more meaningful experience, whether that is unique to each platform or mirrored on each platform. Sleepy Giant’s technology is very focused on being platform agnostic, so their customers can have a single end-to-end tool to manage their games. Atkinson emphasizes, “This is essential because F2P requires a high number of users, which may change over the next few years, but for now having access to a large pool of users means being on all platforms.”
“F2P is a numbers game, which given low paying player conversion rates, requires developers to drive more players through their funnel, while simultaneously fighting low switching costs for players (i.e. free). This dynamic keeps upward pressure on acquisition costs, leaving developers scrambling to to figure out how to keep monetization at the same pace.” Ian dislikes F2P because he feels that it has introduced the complex player funnel (mentioned before) and a business model that is proving difficult to sustain. Now developers must not only focus on game development (which isn’t easy), but also build a whole new and different set of skill in guerrilla marketing, merchandising, business intelligence, and merchandising. That’s not bad in the long run, but until now, the games industry hasn’t had to think or execute in those manners, so it’s more challenging.
Gaming at Home
When Atkinson is gaming, his favorite platform is still console, which goes back to his early days of playing on Atari, Colecovision, Nintendo NES, and Sega Genesis. He owns an Xbox 360 and is currently evaluating Xbox One and PS4 for his next purchase. Since the Xbox One is not backwards compatible, he feels opting for a new platform may make sense. His unofficial poll from GDC and E3 has the PS4 looking like the leader.
However, in spite of his preference for console play, most of the time, he is playing on mobile devices or PC/Mac these days because of the convenience. He is currently playing Hearthstone and finds having strategy notes along with the game is extremely helpful.
When not working, Atkinson spends a lot of his time with his two children, aged six and eight. They enjoy riding bikes, going to the beach, and playing sports. He also enjoys mountain biking and surfing.
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