Kelly Richard Fennig shared advice on dealing with non-gamers at Casual Connect USA 2014. “Gamers are willing to suffer,” he said. “But non-gamers are more easily frustrated, and if they are frustrated, they are taken out of the experience.”
Kelly Richard Fennig, producer, designer, and founding member of Ton Up Interactive, is a man with many interests and skills. When not involved in the games industry, he is a professional actor, a professional scuba diving instructor, and he teaches a traditional Kung Fu fighting style called Hung Gar.
Inspired by the Early Games
Fennig’s interest in the games industry stemmed from his fascination with the early Sierra-Online adventure games. That interest led him to study engineering, specifically so he could make games, but along the way he lost sight of that goal and turned to practical engineering. He got into the games industry after the Dot-com implosion of 2003. He stayed with the industry for a while, then left, and then returned again because he loves problem-solving.
He finds the fun of working in the games industry definitely comes from the people he works with. He enjoys being surrounded by many talented, creative individuals. But if he were to leave the industry, he has several options. Most likely, he would choose professional acting, return to engineering, or become an architect.
Building Garage Games
In his work, Fennig is the one who keeps everyone and everything focused, brings sanity to a project, and, when necessary, rolls up his sleeves to help. His latest project was Circa 1948 with the National Film Board of Canada to bring gaming conventions into their interactive art. Now he is working with friends to build some garage games they want to partner with a publisher. His extensive background in designing hardware, software, and firmware in various engineering companies, as well as being an actor, musician, and educator, allows him to communicate, understand, and bridge the gap between the technical, artistic, and design people on his teams.
When Fennig considers those times in his career that brought him satisfaction, he remembers Max’s Pirate Planet at Slant Six Games with pride. This was the first game he drove as the product owner, and it reviewed incredibly well with their target market. The small team took the game from concept to a very well-polished completion in only sixteen weeks. He says, “We were passionate about the game; it allowed people on the team to utilize skills they already had but never before in their careers had the opportunity to use.”
The game Fennig is enjoying at the moment is Assassin’s Creed IV. He is a big fan of the series because it is partly exploration and partly fighting, and he claims, “The pirate ship battles are addictingly fun.” He prefers playing on PC because he believes it is the most versatile and powerful.
He sees advantages and disadvantages to both iOS and Android. As a user, he prefers iOS devices, but as a developer, he likes Android. iOS devices are a closed and strictly controlled system, making prototyping more difficult than necessary. But that closed system, with reliance on the App Store, makes it easier to monetize on an iOS device. He emphatically states, “There are too many free-downloaders and not enough people willing to reward the developer by paying for their experience.”
Fennig believes this may be the last generation of consoles. He expects the games industry to go in two directions: the cloud and the tablet. Traditional AAA games will use the power of the cloud, and a small IO box will connect the display and controllers and do finishing touch rendering. Games won’t be purchases, but will be subscribed to or rented from service providers. He sees the smartphone and tablet as a huge market, saying, “If Candy Crush proved anything, it is that nearly any cell phone owner can be a potential gamer and customer, so the focus should be less on the hardcore gamer and more on the general public. Ironically, it is the general public who are more willing to pay for free-to-play services than the hardcore gamers.”
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