“Back when we were in the console days, it was ship your game. maybe it was successful, maybe it wasn’t. But you didn’t necessarily know how players were engaging deeply with your gameplay,” Allison Bilas explained during her session at Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014. “Now with mobile, of course there’s this influx of data; it is a fire hose of data coming at you and allowing your to optimize your game. So it is an exciting time for using data, I think. It’s still surprisingly underused however.
“If you want to acquire users, there’s a lot of people you can talk to,” Tomislav Mihajlović says while on a panel at Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014. “Just talk to some people and try to find something that will work best for you.”
Sharon Magen provided his view on mobile advertising during his session at Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014. He says, “With mobile devices, advertising is getting more personal.”
When talking about ways to improve the discovery of mobile games at Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014, Rakesh Raju says to “Be in the sweetspot of quality engagement, scalability, and reach.”
“Success is 50 percent development, 50 percent distribution,” said Michaël Peiffert in his session at Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014. “Start working on how to market your game the same way you cared about crafting it.”
Chen Levanon, CEO of ClicksMob Inc., spoke about the advantages and misconceptions of affiliate networks, the markets they serve, maximizing user acquisition, and the value of data-driven decisions with Clark Buckner from TechnologyAdvice (they provide coverage content about innovative training games, customer loyalty programs, strategic employee engagement software and much more).
Maciej Mróz shared the experience his team had with growth within the company in his session at Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014. “So when you grow, things start to break down,” he says. “Obviously it’s not something that happens overnight, but it does, and it’s because you have a successful product, and the product grows in complexity.”
Vladimir Gersl discussed the transition from working in a big company to turning indie during his session at Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014. “Use AAA games rigid processes for vision, budget & planning,” he explained. “But as indie, stay flexible and iterate a lot to find the perfect process that will suit you.”
“Churn prediction works for casual games, or at least for engaged segments within your player base,” Julian Runge explained during his session at Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014.
“Increasing fun through data is an exhilaratingly cool task and something that nobody relates to data. But the games industry makes it possible!” says Julian Runge, who leads Wooga’s analytics team.
In 2012, Julian began working for Wooga as an analyst on Monster World, Wooga’s largest simulation game on Facebook at the time. His background in statistics and economic thinking, as well as the experience he received through internships and starting a small company while still at school, have been enormously helpful in his work. Now he is responsible for advanced analytics across games and for marketing. He also coordinates the work of a team of four analysts “to set the right impulses and derive impact from data on design and bottom-line.”
Julian began working for Wooga as an analyst on Monster World, Wooga’s largest simulation game on Facebook at the time.
Passion Produces Results
Julian’s inspiration for joining the games industry was, quite simply, his passion for gaming. On a day-to-day basis, his greatest motivation is the opportunity to work with equally passionate people and assist them in developing outstanding products. He had no desire to work for a company that did not have its own creative process. And, he maintains, “What is more creative and fun than game development?”
Along with passion, he is tremendously energized by working with data and generating insight and impact from them. Even in his free time, Julian enjoys playing with data. But in contrast to the intellectual and virtual aspects of his work life, one of his favorite free-time activities is using his hands to build things.
Julian Runge, Senior Analyst, Wooga
It’s Unpredictable
In the future of the games industry, Julian sees predictive analytics becoming increasingly important, with huge implications for gameplay and marketing. He believes customized user experience will be the key success factor for gameplay. Customizing the gameplay will require adequately targeted offers, adaptive gameplay, and strategic cross-linking to other games.
Although he is personally excited about analytics and the potentially huge impact of big data on the games industry, he emphasizes that introspective game design is the key factor in success, saying, “Analytics matter, but mainly after great game design has happened.”
Julian emphasizes that introspective game design is the key factor in success.
What he finds most appealing about the industry: its inherent unpredictability. So the future can be expected to bring surprises, possibly in game mechanics and the use of new devices. But he would love to see more augmented reality, like, for example, Google’s Ingress. He also believes there is potential in using digital technology to advance direct interaction with the physical environment for gaming.
Gaming Convenience
When Julian is gaming, he prefers the convenience of mobile and considers Android as the platform of the future, especially when he factors in the Asia market. And he plays everywhere. One of the more unusual places was a speedboat in Thailand. He was trying out a Wooga release candidate on his waterproof Xperia Z1, but unfortunately, he relates, “The processor got so hot you could have fried an egg on it.”
Game testing at Wooga
He concentrates on playing one or two games, usually an arcade game and another engaging game, and he plays them very intensely. Until recently, he had been focusing on Clash of Clans, but he has now deleted that app. Upgrading in the game had become ridiculously expensive, as he was to the point where it took six million elixir for level six archers and dragons. Currently, he is intensely playing a new, unreleased game from Wooga, claiming “It’s gonna be big!” At Casual Connect Eastern Europe, Julian advised everyone to “Watch for Wooga’s 2015 launches!” as well as the job opportunity of quantitative analyst for his team.
Uroš Banješević, together with his co-founder Nenad Tomić, shared the story of their company Mad Head Games during Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014. “What we were looking for was a one-night stand with the girl called game development, and we ended up married to her”, he says.
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Uroš Banješević is the co-founder and CCO (Chief Creative Officer) of Mad Head Games. Together with friends Nenad Tomić and Aleksa Todorovic, he founded this company in 2011, and now proudly claims, “We are currently the leading HOPA developer in the world.”
Uroš Banješević is the co-founder and CCO of Mad Head Games.
By the time they founded Mad Head Games, Banješević had worked with his co-founders for six years in a journey that brought them many experiences, a great history together, and a store of knowledge. With these assets, they knew they could create beautiful games. At the beginning, he was officially the art director, but as the company has grown, his position has become more difficult to define; basically whenever someone needs help, he is there to assist. He is someone who is an endless source of energy, always looking for a new adventure and new ways of doing things.
Their optimism has definitely been born out, with Mad Head Games named as the Best Casual Developer of 2013. And when their publisher Big Fish Games revealed its list of the greatest games of all time, six of the top seven were from Banješević and his team.
The Value of F2P
Banješević is a strong proponent of the F2P model for designing and distributing games, and notes as well the importance of the platform spotlight moving from PC and consoles to handheld devices. This is the route Mad Head Games is determined to follow, moving from developing primarily for PC and consoles to mobile, and from premium games to the F2P business model. He believes F2P offers the best rewards, and that Mad Head Games is more than equal to the challenges of being the best in that arena.
F2P and mobile are the trends making the biggest impact on the games industry today, according to Banješević. But he emphasizes, “F2P is not just about the business model, it is about the entire design of the game.” Since Mad Head Games considers game design their strongest proficiency, they believe they will be able to raise the bar and create completely new experiences.
“F2P is not just about the business model, it is about the entire design of the game.”
A second trend Banješević finds exciting is virtual reality, with ground-breaking technologies like Oculus Rift, although he suspects it may not be widely accepted. Even so, he admits, “The first time I put Oculus on my eyes, I was blown away. It was a completely new experience.”
All Work, All Play
Banješević’s passion for playing and creating games encompasses both his work and his free time. As a game developer, he finds his life complex and extremely busy, so his iPhone is now his preferred platform due to these advantages: it is always accessible, the play sessions are short, and the games are pure fun. Previously, the games he enjoyed were AAA titles on PC, but the time commitment these require is no longer feasible.
He has enjoyed many mobile games, but currently the game that keeps him returning to his phone is Clash of Clans. And it is certainly the one that has enticed him to spend the most money.
Banješević has many hobbies that are not directly related to game development, although he believes these all contribute to making him a better developer. His unique assortment of activities includes playing basketball, playing guitar, writing and singing, as well as studying ethnology.
Minibang is the game he feels will create an entirely new world and redefine the genre of Point’n’Click adventures.
At Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014, he announced Mad Head Games latest creation, Minibang. This is the game he feels will create an entirely new world and redefine the genre of Point’n’Click adventures.
