Game Producer for Divine Robot, Jaana Nykanen explains how to make a successful mobile game and raise twins simultaneously. Jaana’s main advice: “Do what you love and love what you do.” Jaana guided the audience at Casual Connect Europe through the journey from being a child with a love of computers and games to being a mother and a game producer who now is making games for children. “Don’t worry, you will fuck up,” and that’s okay.
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Divine Robot CEO Jaana Nykanen didn’t especially plan a career in game development, but it definitely comes with unique rewards. Though producing quality apps for children is serious work, Jaana finds sharing the finished product with people around the world very satisfying. “One of the greatest things about working in the game industry is to see and hear about people who love to play the games that we have created,” Jaana says.
Early Hits
In 2009, Jaana helped start Divine Robot, a developer with a mission to produce iPhone games. The company has never really sought external funding, but they raised enough through contract work to develop their first game, Blobster. Published by Chillingo in 2011, the game hit the Top 3 in the App Store shortly after release and scored positive reviews.
Jaana was very proud of Blobster’s success: “It took long and hard work!” Jaana says. “But obviously working with a well-known publisher helped a great deal. Also seeing my daughters voluntarily choosing to play our game among all the games they have on their iPads makes me a proud mum and game producer.”
Games for Families, by Families
Simultaneously parenting twins and leading a company leads to unique challenges (as Jaana detailed during a recent lecture at Casual Connect Europe), but it also gives Jaana extra audience insight and instant feedback. “My own kids help us a lot already at the design stage,” Jaana says. “They play around with our cutout characters and objects, and we learn from them what they appreciate and how they like to play. When the games are ready to test we learn from them if the interface works, and they find bugs for us.”
The testing doesn’t stop there, of course. Jaana credits intuitive touchscreen devices with bringing games and other developmental experiences to younger and younger children, but believes it’s still very important to refine game interfaces so interaction is as natural as possible. In pursuit of that end, Divine Robot takes beta versions of their games to local preschools to test with small groups of kids.
“We make sure that the interface works the way that the children expect it to work, not necessarily the way we expect it to work,” Jaana says. “In many cases we allow for several options, such as both clicking or dragging an object.”
That flexibility is important when developing for kids. Divine Robot makes games for kids from 3-6 years old, but even within that defined audience there are wide differences in the way players approach apps. Not to mention that gamers well outside the target audience want to enjoy the experience, as well. “Once we actually had a granddad writing to us, asking about the controls of our game, as he wasn’t able to play it,” Jaana says. “So maybe we need to start to do testing with grandparents as well.”
Kids Learn from Games
Jaana doesn’t draw a distinction between fun and education in kids games. If the game isn’t fun, kids will stop playing and then they won’t learn anything from it. Rather, Divine Robot’s games are built around exploration and experimentation. They avoid narrow definitions of success, and “right answers” aren’t needed to progress in the game. It doesn’t help when kids are punished for playing around — “Kids love to be able to play some pranks in the game without it affecting the gameplay negatively,” Jaana says.
That’s not to say that Divine Robot itself doesn’t take a serious approach to incorporating educational opportunities. During the design stages, Jaana says, the company collaborates with a pedagogical developer from Lund University to help ensure the game’s features will benefit young gamers. They also try to make the topics in their games as springboards for discussion with parents and other educators. “For instance, [while learning] the cycle of life on a farm, the child will be able to play around with different vehicles on the farm, taking care of animals and produce, but the game will still be open-ended,” Jaana says.
Jaana expects the demand for kids games to continue to grow as parents upgrade devices and leave their old tablets to their kids. That increase in kids’ access to intuitive gaming devices plus a proliferation of kids gaming tech like connected toys will likely mean opportunity for Divine Robot to keep working on projects for children.
Leading the Team
As for the developers behind those experiences for kids, Jaana seeks to foster a culture of flexibility, letting team members plan their own hours as long as they deliver on their responsibilities. “I don’t think that anyone likes to feel as though they are just small cogs in a big wheel,” Jaana says. The company recently started working out of its own office, but some developers still prefer to work from home. There’s one mandatory meeting per week, but aside from that, they give devs the freedom and responsibility to look after themselves.
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