Olga Khomenko gave tips on monetization with HTML5 to a Casual Connect Europe audience. “There are like 7 billion mobile subscriptions around the world,” she said — and HTML5 is a major way to get your games onto mobile browsers. For more reasons to consider HTML5, see the video below.
When someone asks Olga Khomenko what she does for a living, her favorite answer is, “I play games.” She came to the games industry three years ago after spending four years in web project management, so the switch was a natural one.
Doing Whatever Is Necessary
Khomenko is a co-founder of PlayToMax, one of the leading companies in the HTML5 market. Her main specialization is project management, but, as she points out, when you start your own company you have to do many things outside your area of specialization. For her, these include sales, risk management and client services, as well as whatever else is necessary. She and a group of friends founded the company, where she initially filled the project management position. Gradually she has become part of the top management and co-owner of the company.
She draws the greatest inspiration for her work from the people she works with. In fact, she emphasizes that not only her company, but the entire industry “is filled with people who give me the constant realization that this is a dream job I have.”
Her biggest challenge in this dream job is limited free time, but she insists, “When you really enjoy your job, it is not that important; you are getting satisfaction from what you do.”
When she does have time away from work, her main hobby is music. She plays drums in a band, and is often involved with rehearsals, studio recordings and concerts. In fact, she says if she were not in the games industry, she’d be a professional jazz musician.
The Recipe for Success
Every day, when Khomenko comes to work, she feels intense pride in the team at PlayToMax, starting from the time when the company began with only five members, until now, when it has grown to 22 people. Their recipe for success is friendship and a sense of humor.
When adding to the team, she looks for someone with team spirit, a constant desire to improve, and that important sense of humor. The most difficult attribute to find is balance: balance between ideas and implementation, between money and quality, between time and opportunity. So it is essential to search for someone with that inner sense of balance so necessary to address every aspect of game production.
In the game creation process, constant testing is critical, according to Khomenko, particularly with the HTML5 technology they are using. She maintains, “You should test the idea first, then test the main functionality on every device and in every browser. Follow this with testing every level of the game, and then have a final test.” She considers this the most effective way of testing, since testing at the end of development makes the process of balancing and bug fixing much more difficult and time consuming.
Khomenko believes the most important trend in the games industry is the mobile web. With constant growth of mobile users and devices, the mobile web will overtake PC web this year, according to forecasts. As one of the pioneers in HTML5 gaming, PlayToMax will continue to press its advantage and proceed with developing high quality web-based games and providing services for them. “Our company has several great ideas to be implemented this year; you will soon hear more news from us on this subject,” she says.
Comments
