Bringing back to life game series that have been appreciated but slightly forgotten is what the Kalypso Media company does as a publisher. They’ve previously worked with Tropico, and recently teamed up with the Hungary-based Kite Games to create Sudden Strike 4, the newest installment in the fan favorite World War II real-time strategy series. Here Christian Schlütter, the game’s producer, sheds some light on the what it’s like to honor an established brand while making an initially 2D game in 3D, and going to the console platform.
“Naturally, we are aiming to revive the series with Sudden Strike 4, but it is a full-fledged and completely new entry in the series – not a remake”, Christian explains. “We are looking to Sudden Strike 1 and 2 for inspiration, and will be evolving the gameplay from that core experience.”
Five games from Philippines and twelve games from Malaysia were invited to the international Indie Prize showcase during Casual Connect Asia 2017 in Singapore.
Game Title:The Letter Developer: Yangyang Mobile Platform: Desktop Win, Desktop Mac Website: http://www.yangyangmobile.com/ Country: Philippines
The Letter is a non-chronological, horror visual novel game with seven playable characters. It also features full English voice acting, several branching paths with more than 10 endings, highly animated character sprites and backgrounds, and quick-time events.
“It was a lonely night, I was playing EVE online scanning some anomalies, and then suddenly received a message from a friend of mine, Kostyantin Dvornik - he asked if I had any ideas for games. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how it all began”, says BSK Games‘ Andrii Goncharuk as he shares the story of Anoxemia.
In recent years DFC Intelligence has focused on segmenting the diverse base of game consumer types. The most important trend that is emerging in the game market is the growth of consumers that play on multiple platforms. For example, almost all console players also play on PC to some extent. Increasingly both console and PC gamers are playing on mobile devices.
“We are moving into a period of increased consolidation right now in the gaming industry,” Shawn Bonham said at Casual Connect Asia 2014. “As we move into this phase, it’s really important to identify the key components of the business back to scale. Just like that perfect black jacket or black dress that you can wear clubbing or you can wear to a wedding, figure out what your core components of your tech stack are, what the core components of your business are, and then you can really scale them as you build out your business across multiple dev teams, or as you work as a single developer with multiple publishers.”
Shawn Bonham is the senior managing director, APAC at Upsight, a company that delivers actionable analytics and marketing to mobile games. Upsight resulted from the merger of Kontagent and PlayHaven last December and has now launched its freemium platform. They offer unlimited access to core acquisition, engagement, and revenue metrics, as well as tools for performing in-app marketing and targeted push-notification. They will also offer multiple upgrade paths to allow developers to choose the right features and capacity at the right time. The merger makes it possible for them to offer value through a mobile’s tech-stack, as all of the components for deep analytics, in-game marketing, and push are connected together in a unified system.
Bonham also announces that Upsight continues to improve its product localization and have added Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Korean tool tips to its dashboard; more localized documentation will be coming soon.
At Upsight, Bonham manages operations and strategy for APAC and consults with mobile companies throughout the region on best practices in actionable data analytics. Previously, he held management positions at Havok and NVIDIA, working with publishers and developers to identify the business case for new technologies and to realize tangible ROI from their implementation. At Havok, he started the APAC team and helped to expand the adoption reusable console middleware in Japan in the PS2 era. At NVIDIA, he worked on many partnerships with mobile developers to create mid-core mobile games that reach the core gamer audience.
Upsight provides analytics and marketing for many companies
Energized By Innovation
Most of his career has been in the APAC region, including China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Southeast Asia; he is always energized by the speed of innovation and business in this area. He says, “It’s not about figuring out the right answer tomorrow, it’s about figuring it out today!” He emphasizes that each country is vastly different in language, business culture, business models, and game preferences. It is valuable to understand each in order to find the best business fit for various technologies and to consult with partners as they expand to the West and to other APAC regions.
Middleware Explosion
Bonham has seen mobile games become increasingly complex in their mechanics and budgets for development; operations have expanded accordingly. There has also been an explosion of middleware in the mobile space in the last few years to meet the needs of publishers and developers. As a result, developers must implement a vast array of SDKs and, on the operations side, view information on multiple independent dashboards to manage and optimize an F2P game’s performance. In response to these trends, he expects both developers and publishers will consolidate to mitigate development risk. And he expects to see consolidation in the middleware space to leverage multiple technologies through a single SKD. He believes platform will be a major theme in the next few years.
He claims, “The merger of Kontagent and PlayHaven is a great example of the consolidation trend. We’ve been able to really empower developer while simultaneously making their lives easier by putting the tools for deep analytics, in-app marketing, and push together in a single, unified dashboard and SDK.
The Upsight Team
Wearable Technology
He also believes wearables will be an interesting disruption over the next few years, saying, “I look forward to seeing how game mechanics and business models will be tweaked for these new technologies. All of this is going to require a great deal of trial and error, for which concrete metrics and solid use of analytics to gauge progress will be key.”
When not involved with work, Bonham enjoys playing tennis and basketball with friends and working out, especially Olympic-style weightlifting. He appreciates the terrific live music and DJ scene in Tokyo, so he goes to shows whenever he has time. And he is a big gamer, making an effort to try out all the major releases on PC, console, and mobile.
Bonham used to be a huge console gamer and a fan of Japanese RPGs and action games. But these days, he rarely has time to finish epic games, so he now turns toward short-burst competitive PC and mobile titles, such as Clash of Clans, Hearthstone, DATA and many others. And, as a fan of American football, he occasionally plays the Madden series on consoles.
F2P Challenges
He sees F2P as a two-edged sword depending on the interaction between in-app purchases and game mechanics. A play-to-win mechanic can cause large problems in multiplayer games and in the single player genres. If a player feels manipulated into purchasing an item or power-up just to finish a level in a reasonable time or to collect an achievement, then it will leave a bad impression and negatively affect retention.
Here is an example of how SEGA used Upsight
However, if the micro-transaction can be successfully decoupled from in-game success, then F2P makes it economically feasible for a developer to focus on perfecting game balance and adding iterative improvements and content to a title while maintaining an F2P revenue stream, without worrying about adding potentially unnecessary mechanics and features to justify another full-priced premium package purchase to the consumer. Bonham believes the key to succeeding with F2P is making users feel they don’t need an in-app purchase, but just really want it.
As a longtime console gamer, Bonham owns both PS4 and Xbox One. He plays more on the PS4 because he prefers the clean interface and finds Playstation Plus a fantastic value. He is curious to see how this generation of consoles will evolve. He believes we are beginning to see hybrid games combining some free-to-play business models and game mechanics inside traditional packaged console games, and is excited to see how this will develop.
The next big trend coming to the games industry will be widespread cross-platform gaming experiences, according to Braden Moulton. Although everyone is talking about this, currently there are very few examples of it in the market. 5th Planet Games is incorporating cross-platform gaming into the present and future plans for their games. They recently released a cross-platform mobile version of Legacy of a Thousand Suns, and the reception from existing and new players has been overwhelmingly positive.
Braden Moulton, President and COO, 5th Planet Games
Braden Moulton, President and COO of 5th Planet Games, sees a wide variety of challenges facing the games industry. As both a game creator and consumer, Moulton believes the most glaring of these is innovation. At 5th Planet Games, they work to meet this challenge by rapidly prototyping multiple games. They have a company full of gamers who then scrutinize and improve on the prototypes; everyone in the company plays a part in innovation.
Skills to Succeed
Moulton manages the wide variety of dynamic elements that make up the day-to-day business of 5th Planet Games. His previous experience is in consulting, tech, and project management—all skills he finds advantageous to succeed. He also finds the ability to control chaos absolutely essential. Fortunately, parenthood has helped with this specialized skill!
He feels that the most fun in the games industry comes from working with people who share the same experiences, passion, and creativity. “I can’t wait to get to work each day!” Moulton said. His greatest satisfaction comes from the overall success of 5th Planet Games because it is the sum of everyone’s efforts. “Playing an instrumental part in that is very special,” he said.
A cross-platform mobile version of Legacy of a Thousand Suns is now available, and has received a positive reception
Time Away From Work
In Moulton’s free time, he is an avid online and board gamer. He grew up with PC and still prefers it. He claims the best RPGs and MMOs are found there and says he is currently losing frequently on Magic Online. He owns an Xbox One, but tells us he hasn’t played more than a couple of hours on it, insisting that both Xbox One and PS4 severely need must-have games such as Halo or Destiny.
When he is not gaming, he spends as much time as possible with his family and coaches youth sports. He also admitted, “I invest way too much of myself into the NFL season.”
Game Title: The Letter
