Kabam‘s President of Studios and Live Service, Aaron Loeb, explored how the meaning of “good” games in the free-to-play industry has evolved over the years in his lecture at Casual Connect USA. He also spoke about how game makers make great games now. Using examples from Kabam’s hit game Marvel Contest of Champions, Aaron discussed how Kabam marries AAA game production with highly iterative data-driven designs when making great games with mass appeal for a global audience. To do this, Aaron says, “Your designers have had to learn business. Now your product managers have to learn design.”
What is the most exciting segment of mobile games? According to Aaron Loeb, it is, without question, AAA quality mobile free-to-play games. And he is in exactly the position, overseeing creative output in the studios in San Francisco and Vancouver, to participate in making this happen.
The Impact of Games Across Networks
Aaron has loved video games all his life. Because his father is a mathematician who loves computers, he has been involved with computers since before DOS. In fact, his first computer was a Kaypro 2. His brother was also very influential in his interest in computers by occasionally taking him to the CERL computer lab at the University of Illinois, where he found the world’s first networked games on the PLATO systems. More than thirty years ago he was fascinated with playing an MMO game called Avatar. He says, “The potential and excitement of video games across networks is something I’ve wanted to be involved in as long as I can remember.”
Gen Con was another important factor in his evolving attraction to the games industry. Each summer he would travel with friends to Wisconsin to participate in the conference where he became friends with many slightly older gamers, some of whom went on to run game companies. One of these was Doug Tabb, who became an editor at Mayfair Games and offered Aaron his first job writing for a role-playing game. This experience led to an editorial job reviewing videogames, which then led to his first position producing games.
Aaron reveals that his career path has led almost perfectly to his present work. When he started out working in paper and pencil PPG publishing, he worked on games such as Underground and The Whispering Vault, eventually developing d20 source material for 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons. In the earliest days of the commercial web, he worked on developing one of the first websites covering videogames, GamePen, which launched just after Happy Puppy and GameSpot. For ten years he was an independent developer and CEO at Planet Moon Studios where he worked on games in almost every genre and on nearly every available platform. He then moved to the free-to-play business of Electronic Arts where he first became deeply involved in mobile gaming as general manager of The Simpsons: Tapped Out.
When Everything is New
The most fun in video games, Aaron insists, comes when everything is new. He asserts, “Coming up with ideas and creating a new IP is when it feels like anything is possible. It’s terrifying but also wonderful.”
His favorite part of his job is working with the talented teams, a diverse collection of people with AAA console experience and people who have made massive free-to-play hits. The leaders of the teams include those who have worked on some of Aaron’s most preferred games, such as Dragon Age, Diablo, Halo, Call of Duty, The Sims and many others. As he maintains, “It’s a remarkable group of people.”
Aaron is also a professional playwright and is deeply passionate about both games and theater. As a child, making games was his dream, and he was obsessed with the idea after long sessions of D&D, as well as playing on the Atari 2600 and the early PC games. But as a teenager, he became more interested in theater so this is what he studied in college. Finally, in the 1990s, he decided to do both, and sometimes he can even connect the two.
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