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USA 2014 Video Coverage

Ian Vogel: Targeting Gamers in the Middle | Casual Connect Video

September 5, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

“We see this great opportunity between the smaller and the casual games that you see on mobile and the big Triple A budgets,” Ian Vogel told his audience during Casual Connect USA 2014. “There’s a huge market in the middle which I think is very exciting to me as a gamer and to me as a business person.”

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IanEdit — Ian Vogel, Studio Head, Amazon Game Studios

Ian Vogel has been creating games for the past sixteen years, including work on Age of Empires Online, Bioshock, System Shock 2, Swat 4, and Thief: The Dark Project. He has held key roles at Microsoft Game Studios, Irrational Games, Airtight Games, and Looking Glass Studios.

Learning the Ropes

Recently, he was promoted to Studio Head at Amazon Game Studios, where he leads first-party game development and is focused on giving players fun, innovative experiences. He insists that he could not be in this position if he had not started out as a designer, and he feels fortunate to have begun his career working with Doug Church, Tom Leonard, Ken Levine, Jon Chey, and the others at Looking Glass Studios and Irrational Games. He emphasizes, “Building a lot of games over time, killing some, and succeeding and failing along the way – It makes for some tough skin.” He sees this as good for consumers because developers focus less on how incredible, amazing, and infallible their idea is and instead learn to look at it through the consumers’ eyes. What are they going to feel? Where will they be confused? Where will they be frustrated? He insists, “You need some wins and losses to get good at that. I’m still learning!”

Vogel gains the most enjoyment in the games industry through seeing the impact his work has on people. He talks about an incident that occurred when he went to GameStop after Bioshock was released.

Ian_France — “It made my day, and is a great example of why I do what I do.”

“There were 3-5 enthusiasts talking about the game, and I asked them ‘What do you like and not like about the game?’ About 45 minutes later, they had told me everything they loved and hated about the game, and loudly and emphatically asserted ‘You must buy this game!’ Which I did. And I left the store never having told them I worked on Bioshock for two or three years; it was immensely gratifying to listen to them appreciate the craft of the game and talk of deep personal experiences in that world. I didn’t need to talk about myself, that day was about them. And it made my day, and is a great example of why I do what I do.”

He reveals that being promoted to Studio Head at Amazon Game Studios has been very gratifying and a challenge he is eager to take on. He has always had opinions on how to do things, and this position is his opportunity to put them into practice. “Amazon is full of intense, brilliant people so it will be a heck of a ride,” he says.

Competing For Time

The biggest challenge Vogel sees in the games industry today is the competition for people’s time. There are hundreds of great indie games, too many copycats, and expensive, but intriguing console titles, all clamoring for attention. It becomes harder and harder for a game to actually make money. He points to the many lay-offs in recent years, with very talented studios and people gone. He would love to see the industry solve the problem of discovery and get interesting games in front of the people who want them, at a regular, dependable pace. He notes, “The barriers to succeeding at either mobile or console get higher every year. We have to help games find their audience.”

NickCaveShow — “The barriers to succeeding at either mobile or console get higher every year. We have to help games find their audience.”

But Vogel sees a huge opportunity in the middle space, between casual/mobile games and AAA console titles. Indies are venturing into this space, but he believes there are markets we don’t know about that are looking for smaller, crafted games in that middle space. He emphasizes the need to understand this market and be ready with good titles when the opportunity arises.

Virtual Reality, Micro Consoles, and Hardware

For the future of the industry in the next few years, he is interested in the possibilities of VR, but needs more experience to understand the ups and downs of the tech.

For the future of the industry in the next few years, he is interested in the possibilities of VR, but needs more experience to understand the ups and downs of the tech. He also likes the trend to micro consoles; he thinks they are great products and looks forward to exciting possibilities as the hardware ramps up. He believes procedural games like No Man’s Sky and similar efforts will drive the potential for smaller teams to make bigger games. If that can be done at reasonable prices, the games industry will grow even more than it has in the past.

Vogel is an eclectic gamer, using every variety of device and game. He plays FTL and 10,000,000 on his iPad when he wants an engrossing but snackable experience. When he wants to sit down after dinner and play a game, he plays Badland or Double Dragon on his Fire TV. For a few hours of concentrated play, he uses his Xbox 360 to play NHL games, Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, or Demon Souls. But when he is looking for a total forfeiture of normal life and 13 hours of getting lost in a different world, he plays XCOM, Civilization, and (he hopes) upcoming space sims, like Star Citizen and Elite.

He believes exposure to different experiences, different art forms, and other cultures of the world would make everyone better creators, so travel is extremely important to him. Some of the interesting places he has visited are Istanbul, Romania, Paris, and Fiji. One of the art forms he immerses himself in is music. He plays and records music on bass and guitar. One of his bands, The Model Sons, was on the original Guitar Hero. He also sails, hikes, and takes improv comedy classes.

USA 2014 Video Coverage

Amy Dallas Leverages Her Determination & Experience | Casual Connect Video

September 1, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

At Casual Connect USA 2014, Amy Dallas, the co-founder of ClutchPlay, described her views of running an indie company during a panel. “When you’re starting a company with other people, you’re essentially getting into a ‘business marriage’ in that you’re legally bound to those people for as long as your company is around. So, you need to know that your co-founders share your goals and values and that you’ll stick by each other when times are tough,” she said. She was excited to announce the release of ClutchPlay’s second game, “Skullduggery!”, in Fall 2014 on both iOS and Android.

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What is “Skullduggery!”

She describes the game this way: “”Skullduggery!” is an atmospheric, fling-based physics platformer, in which you’ll play a Semi-Organic Autonomous Skull, working as a collection agent for the INFERNAL Revenue Service. Your mission is to collect taxes from the ‘deadbeats’ of the afterlife. You do so by using the elasticity of your own brain to flick yourself around the fortresses of the netherworld’s worst tax dodgers as you repossess their underworldly belongings. You also get to do a lot of other cool stuff like slow time to avoid deadly obstacles, pull off crazy trick shots to collect riches, discover hidden caches, and slip past surly guards. We also have a multiplayer mode we’re calling ‘head to head’ which allows you to play against your friends to become the afterlife’s most successful agent. Oh, and you also get to fill out paperwork and reflect on the inherent emptiness of existence. And I ask you, who doesn’t want to do that?!”

“Skullduggery!” also features an endearingly grotesque art style created by Bill Mudron and inspired by the Max Fleischer animations of the 1930′s.

It was announced earlier that “Skullduggery!” will be featured in this year’s “PAX 10” Indie Games showcase at the PAX Prime event. “Being part of the PAX 10 is a tremendous honor,” says Dallas. “We could not be more honored that “Skullduggery!” was chosen.”

SkullduggeryLogoMaster copy — “Skullduggery!” features an endearingly grotesque art style created by Bill Mudron and inspired by the Max Fleischer animations of the 1930′s.

Determination & Experience

Dallas co-founded ClutchPlay in 2012 with Bernie Rissmiller, Jon Guest, and John C. Worsley. The studio they had worked for was downsized, so the four seized this opportunity to create their own studio. It wasn’t an optimal time to start a company with no promise of a salary for any of them. Dallas’s husband had also been laid off, Rissmiller and his wife had just had a baby, Guest had two children, and Worsley had upcoming major travel plans. They had no VC, angel investors, or funding of any kind. But they knew they had the right team, so they took a giant leap of faith to begin their company.

What they did have was determination, lots of experience, some savings, and an idea that became Little Chomp. Within their first year, they had developed a proprietary cross-platform game engine and had launched Little Chomp on both iOS and Android to great critical success. Little Chomp was selected as a featured game in the 2013 PAX East Indie Showcase. In their second year, they did a contract project for KIXEYE, Inc. which involved using their proprietary game engine to take KIXEYE’s Facebook game, Backyard Monsters, to mobile. Besides their consulting fees, KIXEYE licensed their engine source code, and the proceeds from that are funding the development of “Skullduggery!”.

StartupoRow_ClutchPlay5 — Within their first year, they had developed a proprietary cross-platform game engine and had launched Little Chomp on both iOS and Android to great critical success.

She says, “So far, it’s been the scariest, craziest, and most exhilarating time of my career, and I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. It’s true what they say. Feel the fear and do it anyway!”

Because ClutchPlay is a small, four-person studio, and Dallas is the only one who is not an engineer, she does almost everything else, and is, among other things, the producer, chief of ops, QA, and biz dev person. She has worked at a number of different game and tech companies and has been a producer most of her career, so that part of her work is second nature. But other things, such as marketing, have involved a giant learning curve. She claims, “If you aren’t at least a little freaked out at your work, then you probably aren’t pushing yourself hard enough or learning anything new.”

Another Discovery Challenge

Discovery is unarguably the mobile industry’s biggest challenge, especially for indies, according to Dallas, given the sheer volume of games flooding the market. It isn’t enough to make a great game, you also have to be great at marketing it. But that is difficult for indies who lack the resources to compete with products from larger producers with more experience and greater resources.

10580205_10152317417152099_5528871506159199524_n — Amy Dallas, Co-Founder, ClutchPlay

“As a developer,” she insists, “you have to do everything possible to keep your game visible”. At ClutchPlay, they do this by going to as many festivals and conferences as possible to meet press people, reps from different platforms and, of course, other developers. She is amazed at how willing the indie community is to help each other out. They also share their development process through blogging, forums like Touch Arcade, and weekly events such as Screenshot Saturday. This is a good way to whet people’s appetite for the release of the game.

Dallas believes the next few years will bring the release of more premium games, especially on iOS. She disagrees with those who believe free to play is the only way to go on mobile. Free to play titles do have the potential to bring in more revenue for a longer period of time, but they also costs more to produce, have on-going maintenance costs, and require huge user acquisition budgets.

Bigger Spend Equals Bigger Risk

The more money you spend developing a game, the more it must bring in. This pressure leads to taking fewer risks and going with a formula you know will succeed. The result is a lot of very similar freemium games, which is why Dallas believes premium is due for a renaissance. Some of the exciting titles out now, such as Badland, Duet, Monument Valley, FTL, are all premium games at a higher price point. She claims that these games are made by small, scrappy companies who can not only afford to take risks, they NEED to, and because risk is at the heart of innovation, we’re going to start to see a lot more really weird, cool, interesting games come out of the premium space. And so far, people are buying them.

Dallas says that the best thing about working in the games industry, by far, is the people. Game production can be brutal, grueling, and utterly exhausting. Sometimes, she feels blown to bits by it. But what gets her through is the people. Game teams will do whatever it takes to support each other and get the job done. There is a passion and camaraderie that she hasn’t found in other industries.

10536363_10152317415877099_7751828300127124062_o — Amy Dallas sitting on the panel at Casual Connect USA 2014

More and more, she realizes she is a mobile gamer at heart. She doesn’t have time for epic console games or MMOs. But on mobile, she can play in short, concentrated burst, which fits her lifestyle much better. She has just finished Monument Valley and has recently been playing Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake, which has just been released by another Portland studio.

Dallas has discovered that when you are an indie working from home, the line between work and personal life becomes blurred. When not working or playing games, she gets as much exercise as possible “to keep from physically fusing to her office chair.” She also loves to cook, describing herself as a huge food nerd. She enjoys reading and is working on writing a novel.

USA 2014 Video Coverage

Nick Yonge - A Little Luck and Timing | Casual Connect Video

August 22, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

“As content creators, we shape our culture,” Nick Yonge declared in his session at Casual Connect USA 2014. “Whether it’s through flash games, mobile casual games, social games, or stand-alone titles, we make games that become a part of the zeitgeist of our industry. Even in little casual games, we can reinforce ideas for better or for worse, so it’s very important to be aware of what we’re doing.”

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Nick Yonge, Founder and Director, krangGAMES

An independent game designer and developer, Nick Yonge is the founder and director of krangGAMES, an independent game development company based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. He created the company in 2010, shortly after graduating from the Vancouver Film School. Yonge has developed a number of successful games, including i saw her standing there, Nyan Cat FLY!, and PRIOR. He is responsible for every aspect of making the games: code, design, project management, and whatever else is necessary.

Yonge claims he started krangGAMES for a simple reason: he was unemployed. He had no previous experience in developing games, but clearly, that has not prevented him from doing exactly what he has chosen.

Currently, Yonge is working on Emerald, a zero-gravity platformer set in a derelict spacecraft, funded via a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Luck and Networking

He emphasizes that the biggest challenge for independent companies is marketing and discoverability. Although many indies have quality content and ideas, often they simply don’t have the connections or personal skill to properly market their games.

He mitigates this challenge “with hilarious amounts of luck mixed with a dash of being in the right place at the right time.” Going to networking events, such as GDC and Vancouver’s Full Indie meetup, are opportunities he believes have helped him immensely, but he admits that a lot of his success was the result of chance encounters or random emails. He says, “It helps to be proactive, but it’s still a bit of a Wild West situation for indies.”

Nick Yonge 2 — “It helps to be proactive, but it’s still a bit of a Wild West situation for indies.”

The big opportunity in the games industry today, as he sees it, is the exploration of new input devices. “Things like the Oculus Rift, Leap Motion, Kinect, and other devices are letting developers try weird new things that haven’t really been possible before,” he believes, citing Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes as a good example.

A Shift For The Indies

The games marketplace for indies is starting to shift, in his opinion. The next few years will be increasingly chaotic as more developers make more games, and the marketplace attempts to accommodate that rise in content. But, he emphasizes, “No matter what trends come around, like the blast of F2P games that have come about recently, or the rise and fall of Facebook games a few years back, there will always be a place for high-quality premium content.”

“The most fun about working in the games industry”, he insists, “is seeing what the other indies are working on! Everybody’s making fantastically weird and unique stuff. It’s fun to know you are a part of that.”

“Everybody’s making fantastically weird and unique stuff. It’s fun to know you are a part of that.”

The most exciting moment of his career came with winning ArmorGames.com’s 2013 Puzzle Game of the Year award for making i saw her too, with lasers. He particularly enjoyed drinking rum and coke out of the silver chalice he won and reflecting that he had made the game because he was a month behind with his rent, so he revived an IP he was not really interested in reviving. He says, “Reality is weird that way.”

Yonge is an enthusiastic gamer himself; his favorite platform is his PC because it is so convenient and because of his “hilariously overstocked library of Steam games.” These days, he frequently plays Vlambeer’s Nuclear Throne, and claiming, “If you haven’t played it, you absolutely must!” When it comes to consoles, he owns plenty: SNES, N64, Xbox 360, PC and Mac. He also has a few handhelds, such as Nintendo DS, a smartphone and a tablet. And why does he have so many? “I own them because games are fun.”

When he is not gaming, you will find him playing the guitar, singing, and drinking craft beer.

USA 2014 Video Coverage

Steve Meretzky & His Homecoming In Games | Casual Connect Video

August 14, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

“Social casino is one of the most lucrative, if not the most lucrative, free-to-play genre today. As I pointed out, 30 out of the top 100 grossing games right now are social casino apps,” Steve Meretzky said during a session at Casual Connect USA 2014. “But, this doesn’t necessarily mean you should be rushing into social casino. That might have been the case a year or two ago, but now that market has become quite saturated and there are some very dominating players, players with very powerful relationships and pretty deep pockets.”

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Steve Meretzky, Vice President of Creative, GSN Games

Steve Meretzky is the vice president of creative at GSN Games, which is the mobile, social and online division of the Game Show Network. Within the social casino games division, GSN Games operates the Games by GSN Facebook app and GSN Casino, a top-ranked and top-grossing mobile app. Meretzky leads the game design team to create great gaming experiences for players. He joined GSN Games a year ago, and says it was something of a homecoming for him because he had worked at WorldWinner, now a division of GSN Games from 2000 to 2005. Already knowing some of the people at the gaming company was one of the motivators in his return.

Meretzky has worked in casual games for 15 years and in mobile and free-to-play games for approximately five years. He finds this experience totally relevant for the games, business model, and audience demographic he now focuses on with social casino games for GSN Games.

Quality and Innovation

The biggest challenge confronting the games industry today, according to Meretzky, is the sheer volume of content that has been created. There are now about 1.2 million apps in both the App Store and the Play Store. There are 54 million pages on Facebook. He says, “The amount of noise you have to break through in order to reach players is staggering.”

GSN Games responds by differentiating themselves through working to produce the highest quality and most innovative games in the social casino market. And because players are often drawn to familiar brands, GSN’s titles like Wheel of Fortune Slots or Deal or No Deal Slots immerse them in the sights and sounds of their favorite entertainment brands. Meretzky maintains these games provide unique and engaging experiences that delight players time and time again.

GSN Casino Deal or No Deal — Because players are often drawn to familiar brands, GSN’s titles like Deal or No Deal Slots immerse them in the sights and sounds of their favorite entertainment brands.

“Today,” he asserts, “we are on the cusp of many promising trends in gaming.” There is wearable tech, for example, Google Glass, and iWatch. There are potential ground-shifting changes, such as the legalization of real money gaming. The convergence of existing technologies, including multi-tablet gaming or tablet gaming meeting the TV in the living room, is arriving. And evolutions of existing technologies, such as voice recognition software, are reaching new tipping points. He says, “We are keeping tabs on the trends that are likely to produce opportunities for our specific businesses.”

Meretzky is so involved with his work that he considers free time a hypothetical concept. But if he had any, he says he would spend it reading, watching movies, and plotting world domination from his secret lair.

San Francisco Office 1 — GSN Games’ San Francisco Office. Meretzky is so involved with his work that he considers free time a hypothetical concept.

Murphy’s Law?

This desire for a secret lair may be behind what he claims is the proudest moment of his career. At a suite party at the Game Developers Conference, he managed to get folded up inside a Murphy bed. And close behind this event, in terms of career satisfaction, was working on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game with Douglas Adams.

He insists that the most fun part of working in the games industry is not working in the construction industry. His degree was in Construction Project Management, and he actually worked in that industry for a couple of years. He says, “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” but clearly, it was not quite the right fit for him.

When Meretzky is playing games for fun, he uses a tablet, specifically a Nexus 10. Usually, he plays tablet adaptations of his favorite board games, such as Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, Aquire, and Alhambra. He does own one console, an Xbox 360, for playing Rock Band.

USA 2014 Video Coverage

Barbara Chamberlin’s Insatiable Learning Quest | Casual Connect Video

August 7, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

Barbara Chamberlin shared her views on user testing during Casual Connect USA 2014. “The personal epiphany I had was not to resent user testing every time I had to do it, but to find a way to make it easy,” she said.

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Barbara Chamberlin is the director of the New Mexico State University Learning Games Lab. For almost 20 years, she has been developing games for learning. Because she has always hated user testing, she has focused her research on finding more efficient and enjoyable ways to get the kind of feedback from kids that will make learning games better.

Students work together in the Learning Games Lab. (photo by Darren Phillips) — Barbara Chamberlin and Michelle Garza work with some of the youth consultants who test products at the NMSU Learning Games Lab. (photo by Darren Phillips)

As a parent of two children, Chamberlin naturally spends considerable time involved with their activities, such as 4H meetings and swimming practice. She also downloads many children’s apps and finds it exciting to review, play, and discuss them with her children. She brings to her work the advantage of constantly being reminded of how children learn and how things that are mundane to adults are exciting new discoveries for kids.

Learning and Experience

Chamberlin describes herself as insatiable, constantly wanting to learn more, see more, and experience more. In her work, the results of her research immediately spark new questions. When a new construct is implemented, she enjoys thinking of other ways it could be used, and hearing about something new carries with it the desire to learn more.

As part of her work developing games, Chamberlin speaks regularly to different audiences about the uses of technology, and how to best integrate games and apps with learning.

The best part of working in this industry for Chamberlin is the opportunity to learn about a wide variety of different things. She sees her work as education rather than gaming; everything they create is based on research and has education or behavior change as the end goal. She insists that, although the concepts their games teach may sound boring, the content is vital to a student’s success, so it is equally necessary to do a good job helping kids learn it. “When you really understand how essential this is, it is exciting to realize how much potential you have as a designer,” she claims. “That’s the best part. We’re changing lives here, in small, incremental, but incredibly important ways.”

talking video closet — In the “Video Closet” at NMSU’s Learning Games Lab, youth consultants give feedback on games they’ve played… avoiding the ‘group think’ that often happens in focus groups, and giving kids more of a chance to reflect.

The Power Of Interactivity

When it comes to developing apps and games for kids, NMSU's Learning Games Lab believes in testing frequently: sometimes that is on the device, and sometimes it is giving input in more open-ended and creative ways. — When it comes to developing apps and games for kids, NMSU’s Learning Games Lab believes in testing frequently: sometimes that is on the device, and sometimes it is giving input in more open-ended and creative ways.

Twenty years ago, when she was creating interactive touch screen kiosks for public environment, she realized the power of interactivity for learning, and thought, “It should all be like this.” So she has spent her career at NMSU figuring out educational gaming and seeing it evolve and grow. Recently, she has seen an increase in great educational games and public acceptance of educational game play. She maintains, “Just as every game developer should be a game player, so should every learning games developer be a learning researcher. We can do so much more than make quiz games for learning; we can change behavior, alter mindsets, influence emotions and really empower inquiry. I’m excited to see the industry moving in those directions.”

The Monetization Challenge

The most serious challenge Chamberlin sees facing the games industry today is the monetization of casual games. While she realizes game development is a business, she also recognizes that we now know so much about human behavior that we can tweak every impulse and scientifically manipulate each person to spend, contribute, and buy. Unfortunately, it also makes the game less fun, and, she says, “It doesn’t do much for society either.” These games may distract the user and tickle the part of the brain that responds to incentives, but players’ lives are not made richer from the experience. She would much prefer to see people make money by crafting beautiful, engaging, and enriching experiences.

In Gate, learners free imprisoned shadows while building number groups, developing crucial skill for algebra. Chamberlin prefers to see people crafting beautiful, engaging, and enriching experiences such as this.

Chamberlin does not face the issue of monetization directly, since most of her work is grant-funded and does not have to show a profit, yet they — like many developers of educational games — are still looking for a viable model for disseminating, promoting and maintaining their apps, once developed.

In this competitive space, many educational developers still face the challenge of promoting and disseminating their games into classrooms and to learners. One of biggest questions in the educational gaming right now, according to Chamberlin, is the school-based dissemination of learning software. Everyone in the industry is trying to anticipate how teachers and parents find and buy apps, how schools decide what systems to use, and how children engage in the apps most specific to their needs. She says, “We are still trying to predict the best way to get effective learning tools the hands of the learner.”

USA 2014 Video Coverage

Cynthia Woll: Games Are Not One-Size-Fits-All | Casual Connect Video

August 5, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

Cynthia Woll discusses various designs of casino games during her session at Casual Connect USA 2014. “Engagement depends on creating a clear and reliable path to success,” she explained.

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Cynthia Woll is the director of game design at Playtika Santa Monica (formerly known as Buffalo Studios), where she manages a team of game designers and UI/UX designers.Their job is to come up with new features for Bingo Blitz, a game on Facebook and mobile, to keep the game fresh and fun. Their goal is to surprise and delight both existing players and new players.

B-I-N-G-O!

Woll loves Bingo, so she was excited to work for Playtika. She explains, “I see it as a very popular, familiar, and flexible mechanic – you can dress it up or dress it down and make it feel different, depending on the design.” In previous jobs, she actually used Bingo in brainstorming sessions, so she had already given the game a good deal of thought.

One of the things Woll especially enjoys about her work is the collection of smart, interesting, and creative people the industry attracts. She also likes the fact that every project she works on is so different that she is never bored. Each day brings a new set of problems to solve and new things to learn.

Cynthia Woll photo - at work at Buffalo Studios — Cynthia Woll, Director of Game Design, Playtika Santa Monica

An Eclectic Career

Woll has had a very eclectic career, going from educational games for kids, to mobile. One of her most difficult job (but also most rewarding) was at Mattel Media. She was executive producer there from 1996 to 2000; during that time, they pioneered a line of software products for girls. Before these games came out, it was generally assumed that girls didn’t like either computers or games. But that idea changed after they released Barbie Fashion Designer, followed by a product line that brought in more than $100 million in its first year. They made games girls actually wanted. She points out, “It became clear that ‘games’ was not a one-size-fit-all monolithic concept. Just about everyone likes to play games; it’s a question of listening to your audience.” Getting people to realize that software is cool for girls was something that made her feel extremely proud.

A Balancing Act

However, she has found throughout her career that all too often moments of pride have been immediately followed by moments of dismal failure. As she says, “It balances out, but it does make a person humble!”

Photo by Sasha Paleeva — Woll speaking at Casual Connect USA 2014

Woll views the games industry as multiple industries. The big publishers are trying to figure out free-to-play; the small publishers are trying to get market share; and everyone is working on acquisition, engagement, and monetization. But the biggest challenge for the industry as a whole is discoverability. “If players can’t find your games, they can’t play,” she emphasizes. At her company, they use cross-promotions to mitigate this situation, but recognize it isn’t a perfect solution; they are working on it.

Things are moving so rapidly in the games industry that Woll finds it difficult to think about trends even a year or two away. But mobile is transforming, with people expecting their devices to entertain them. So she is looking to the next generation of devices and imagining what they will do that is fun and inspiring. She asserts, “The best way to deal with new trends is speed – ideally, first to market with anything.”

Woll is an avid mobile gamer herself; these days she can usually be found playing on her iPhone. She admits to being obsessed with Hay Day, a farming/resource management game from Supercell. The social element is something she especially enjoys; her neighborhood, the Queen Beeeee, helps each other’s boats, and chat. It is a great quick breather from her day.

In her free time, Woll enjoys the great hiking areas in Los Angeles, from the Topanga Canyon to Pasadena and between. She loves classical music and dance; ballet was a passion from her younger years. So she enjoys watching the show So You Think You Can Dance, with its amazing dancers and choreography.

USA 2014 Video Coverage

Mitchell Berman is Targeting ‘Influencers’ | Casual Connect Video

July 24, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

“I’ve seen a lot of things; I’ve been through three sea changes in my business life,” says Mitchell Berman during a panel at Casual Connect USA. “It started with subscription paid TV, then went to video-on-demand and Over-The-Top services, and there’s another sea change sitting here in front of you.”

Mitchell Berman, CEO and Chief Investment Officer, Zen Digital Fund, and Managing Partner, Zen Media Entertainment Group, Inc.

Mitchell Berman is the CEO and chief investment officer of Zen Digital Fund and a managing partner of Zen Media Entertainment Group, Inc. ZMEG focuses on identifying, mentoring, and funding new and innovative digital companies in entertainment, mobile games, mobile commerce, and social communication. Berman uses his 30 years of experience in the media industry and his global business network to mentor new businesses in Southern California; his purpose is to help them secure market distribution, build the audience for their products and services, and drive revenue.

An Inspirational Awakening

Berman feels that ZMEG has brought him a personal and inspirational awakening. He was recruited by the partners in 2013 to lead the company’s digital investment strategies. He had been in a two-year period of rebuilding his life after suffering the loss of his wife to cancer. He says, “ZMEG coaxed me back to business life and has given me a daily platform from which to share my three decades of business/startup and life experience, with exciting and dynamic new digital endeavors in my hometown of Los Angeles.”

MLS_9264_2c — A combination of many experiences, both good and bad, has led Berman to this point in time.

A combination of many experiences, both good and bad, has led Berman to this point in time. He played a role in the launch of six radically different and innovative entertainment and technology-based businesses and startups, both in the US and internationally. These experiences gave him the foundation that now allows him to help entrepreneurs in Southern California realize their dreams. Giving back to others through mentoring these passionate and innovative entrepreneurs brings him satisfaction in his work today.

The Influencer Economy

Berman believes the power of the influencer economy is a critical emerging trend that will impact the work he does. In particular, as MCN influencers affect P2P marketing decisions and game downloads, while driving discoverability, on-going video engagement will be recognized as the new way to launch products in-market with greater economic efficiencies. ZMEG plans to respond by incorporating targeted global MCN influencers into innovative P2P marketing initiatives for the launch of new mobile products and services in the US and abroad.

The Discoverability Challenge

MLS_8206 — “‘Building value with influence’ is going to be the new trend producing the biggest impact in the games industry.”

His particular focus is on mobile games, so he emphasizes, “Targeted MCN influencers incorporated into the deployment of mobile games, utilizing authentic-based messages, will dramatically increase the marketing efficiencies and discoverability of new mobile gaming products. ‘Building value with influence’ is going to be the new trend producing the biggest impact in the games industry.”

For his personal gaming, Berman’s platform of choice is “anything mobile.” Currently, he is playing Zombie Killer Squad because it has incorporated several influencers as characters in the game; it also is one of his personal investments.

As his children were growing up, he found it interesting to see how their gaming habits and choice of consoles developed. They graduated from Nintendo Gameboy to a Nintendo console for Mario Bros, then to Sony Playstation for NBA and Madden NFL, and finally to Xbox to watch Hulu and Netflix. But with his sons no longer living at home, the consoles are gone as well.

When Berman is finished work, he enjoys returning home to walk along the beach. His free time activities include attending UCLA football, Dodgers baseball, and Lakers basketball games with his sons and watching TURN, The Vikings, and House of Cards with his girlfriend.

Business Contributions Indie Online

HTML5 as Another Avenue for Indies

June 27, 2014 — by Industry Contributions

Rob Grossberg, Co-Founder and CEO of TreSensa, Inc, is no stranger to HTML5 games. Tresensa has many HTML5 games in their own portfolio. He shares his thoughts about how HTML5 could help indie developers.

The sad truth within the Apple App Store and Google Play is that it is no longer enough to build an awesome game. There are thousands of absolutely awesome games in the app stores today that nobody is playing. The app store dead pool is alive and kicking with quality content in search of an audience. Discovery in the app stores is so tough these days that the only viable way to get someone to play your game is to pay one of the many mobile marketing services to drive installs of your game. As a result, a prerequisite for app store success today is a massive marketing budget to buy users (the current cost is in the $3 to $5 per install range), drive your game into the charts, and then pray it sticks. A large marketing budget is not even a remote possibility for the vast majority of game studios looking to become the next Supercell or Rovio. The app store economy is broken and it is the indie studios that are getting squeezed out.

So what’s the secret sauce? HTML5.

It is no coincidence that as it has gotten tougher and tougher to succeed within the ecosystems of the app stores, companies (including mine!) would jump into the fray to bring game studios alternative means to reach people with gaming content on their mobile devices. So what’s the secret sauce? HTML5. Yes, that is the same HTML5 that took a beating a few years back, but has not gone away.

Over the past year, demand for HTML5 games, particularly HTML5 games that are mobile web optimized, has been rising. Online game portals such as Games.com, Yepi.com, Spil Games and Gamehouse.com have all shifted their focus to HTML5 and are actively seeking quality content for their sites and their millions of monthly users. The online Flash game ecosystem has woken up to the fact that mobile now needs to be core to their business, and the technology most portals are adopting to make the shift is HTML5.

In addition, many game stores like the Firefox Marketplace, Tizen, the Amazon Appstore and the Windows Phone Store are hungry for HTML5 games and often look to showcase and feature indie games. These stores may seem very small compared to Apple’s app store and Google Play, but good games can really stand out as “big fish” in these smaller ponds. Also, more and more media properties are starting to include HTML5 game content within their various mobile offerings. These are companies like Disney, Warner Bros., WWE, and HBO, that are already attracting large audiences on mobile and want to start supplying their users with the most engaging form of mobile content (games!) without pushing their users into the arms of Apple or Google. They are turning to HTML5 to do this.

Unknown — More and more media properties are starting to include HTML5 game content within their various mobile offerings.

A real benefit to these new areas for game distribution is that they are all based on a revenue share model, and thus do not require upfront marketing dollars to get your game in front of millions of consumers. In terms of monetization, the freemium model is the model of choice with advertising and in-game purchases driving revenue. And because the costs to produce and distribute these games is much lower than native games, studios have more leeway to extend creativity within the games themselves, as opposed to constantly pushing users to purchase points in order to attempt to recoup large upfront development and marketing costs.

Because the costs to produce and distribute these games is much lower than native games, studios have more leeway to extend creativity within the games themselves.

Has there been a hit HTML5 game that has crushed it and turned its developer into a mega-millionaire? No. Are opportunities emerging for indies to make several thousand dollars per game per month with quality HTML5 games? Yes.

So indie developers are left with this – forge ahead with a native game, try your best to navigate the challenges within the app stores, and hope you are the next big thing, or pioneer emerging areas for mobile games by adopting HTML5 and hope you can be an early player in the next big thing for mobile games.

Development Exclusive Interviews Game Development Indie Online

Matthew Hall: The Challenges and Rewards of Working as an Independent Game Developer

May 7, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

Matthew Hall, Founder and Developer, Klicktock

Matthew Hall, Founder and Developer of KlickTock, describes his career as the childhood hobby that never went away. He decided on his career direction at a very early age. He was five years old when he watched a news piece on Atari with some footage of the factory floor. He turned to his parents and said, “When I grow up, I want to be an electronic engineer.”

By eight years old, he was making his own games. Recently, he took out a 30-year-old cassette of these games and was impressed to discover that almost all of them were complete. “These days,” he admits, “I have a lot more half-finished games lying around.” Hall began working as a professional game developer in 2001 and now he can’t imagine doing anything else.

A Hard Choice

Starting out as an independent developer is not an easy choice to make. When Hall decided to start KlickTock, he tells us, “My wife and child moved back to the family farm while I toiled away there on the original Little Things. When the original launch of that title didn’t go as well as I had hoped, it was a pretty dark time.” The problem was not that he had made a bad game, it was that he had made it for the wrong audience. When it was eventually released on tablet, it was very successful. Fortunately, he was able to move on quickly and found a niche for his unconventional products on the App Store.

Video games have always been a source of inspiration for Hall. Zelda: Link’s Awakening was the first Nintendo game he purchased. “I was completely captivated,” he says. Luxor by Mumbo Jumbo inspired him to leave his day job and start KlickTock. Recently, he has been playing Forget-Me-Not by Brandon Williamson and Nuclear Throne by Vlambeer. He claims, “They are the two most inspirational games I’ve played and remind me just how much I have to learn about writing games.”

As an independent developer, Hall especially values being in charge of his own destiny. He believes the best thing about his work is never having to convince anyone that his idea is a great one. But the most difficult thing is convincing himself of its value. He has discovered, “Without perspective that you can rely on, the only way to properly judge your own game is to take a few months off, come back later, and play it again. This obviously makes development quite slow!”

matthew-hall-klicktock-star — As an independent developer, Hall especially values being in charge of his own destiny.

A Change in Indie Development

Hall points out that independent developers have been around since the birth of computers, but recently game development has changed in ways that benefit them. Unity and UDK have given independent developers the opportunity to compete with the big studios. Previously, they had to write their own 3D engine to release a 3D game. Now, any major problems can be quickly solved with a search, especially with Unity, since it has such a large development community.

The rise of portals such as Steam and the App store has also benefited independent developers, allowing them to make money, sometimes in significant amounts, from their hobby. Unusual games that were once played only by hobbyists can now find an audience.

Getting Noticed

age-of-solitaire-volcano-cats — Hall has been working on Age of Solitaire, and expects to release it soon.

The biggest challenge developers are facing, both in the indie space and in the mobile space, according to Hall, is getting noticed. Building a great product doesn’t guarantee success. He states, “For the indies, a cult of personality has emerged. Not only does your game have to be remarkable, but your personality also is a factor.”

In the mobile space, he has seen that the issues of a crowded marketplace have existed since the early days of the App Store. He emphasizes, “It’s important not only to build an amazing product, you also have to be ready to pick yourself up and try again if things don’t go well the first time. Building a profile as a reliable and interesting developer takes time.”

He gives this advice to independents starting out: “Build titles! Take a small idea, prototype it to prove it’s worthy of completion, then complete it.” He has noticed that developers are often overly invested in their ideas; playing them can shatter preconceptions of the game in a good way.

Preparing for the Future

Hall sees huge changes coming to the electronic entertainment industry with the advent of virtual reality via Oculus Rift. The original Oculus Rift dev kit has a profound effect on anyone who has tried it. Hall believes, “With the new technology, new genres and new opportunities will emerge. I’m very excited about making VR games, even if it isn’t the wisest business move at the moment.”

Deck War Cards — Hall is currently in “development hell” working on Deck War

And the future of KlickTock should be just as exciting. Hall has a wall covered in game ideas ranging from the esoteric to potential top grossing titles. For several months, he has been working on a new title called Age of Solitare, which he expects to release very soon. He also tells us he is currently in ‘development hell’ working on a collectable card game called Deck War and hopes to release it later this year.

Hall will be sharing tips to getting featured on the App Store at Casual Connect Asia 2014! Read more about his session on the conference website.

Contributions Development Game Development Indie Online Postmortem

Glint Vs. The App Store : Getting Your Game Out There

April 24, 2014 — by Mariia Lototska

After spending seven years at Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic, Ensomniac Studios‘ Ryan Martin decided it was time to create something on his own, something he wanted to create. He tells us the tale of creating Glint, detailing the design, development and marketing of his first attempt at self-publishing a free-to-play mobile game.

After working at Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic for so long, I found myself craving more control over what I was making. I decided it was time to set out and start my own studio where I could develop mobile content. Being a developer and designer, the current mobile landscape is an appealing canvas for content distribution. After eight months of part-time design and development, I launched my first game, Glint.

Step Aside, Quest

Glint was not actually my first mobile game, but it’s the first game I’ve published. Prior to 2013, I honestly didn’t play games on my phone. I didn’t understand the point - screens were small and processors were limited. The quality of games I saw was poor; most of them were 2D with cheap-looking graphics and generally uninteresting to me. At some point, I started noticing that it seemed like everyone was playing Temple Run. I decided to see what all the fuss was about and I downloaded it. It was free, after all.

I remember one night sitting on my couch at home, obsessed with this game. I made my first ever in-app-purchase and, for the first time, understood how it was possible to make money with games. It got me thinking about how easy a game like Temple Run is and how I could use my existing skill-set to create something similar - as an experiment. So Quest was born, as was my passion for mobile game development.

Working at an industry-leading visual effects house like ILM forces you to push the limits of what you and your tools are capable of. I took this to heart when developing Quest - I wanted it to be beautiful and cinematic. I developed a pipeline and processing technique to pre-render and bake all of my graphics to keep the quality up and the mobile processing power down. I almost finished the game.

“Your First Game Will Fail”

As I came closer to finishing Quest, I started doing a lot of research about best practices for launching mobile games. What I learned was disheartening: my game would fail. Apparently, it’s pretty difficult to successfully launch a mobile game these days. With thousands of new titles hitting the App Store daily, the new kid on the block has almost no chance at success. So I decided to start working on another idea I had - a simpler gameplay mechanic that I perceived would be less time-intensive to make than a visually detailed game like Quest.

Glint was the game that would consume my post-Quest game development time. Initially, my goal was not to create the game that exists today, but instead, rapidly create a simple version to test the waters of the App Store. Of course, I should have known that my obsessive nature wouldn’t allow me to release a game that I didn’t feel was polished. So, Glint became my new Quest.

Protoyping — Glint was the game that would consume my post-Quest game development time.

A Great First Playtest

In the early days of development, I had people test the game mechanics frequently. It’s an exciting feeling watching someone play your game and become addicted to something that is so rough it’s barely playable. I installed a version of an early prototype on my roommate’s girlfriend’s iPhone since she really enjoyed the gameplay. A few weeks later, my roommate said “all she does now is play Glint, and when I try to talk to her while she’s playing, she clearly isn’t listening to anything I say.” That was an amazing compliment.

I continued to iterate on the gameplay and design for months. Each level in Glint is created based on a set of parameters and colors. I knew that I wanted to create a level editor that would allow me to quickly build and tweak each level. Something I picked up at ILM was the incredible advantage that quick iterative changes introduces. Building tools to support that concept assisted me, as a solo developer, in creating many aspects of the process. Still, though, it was important to build out each level and understand how the game felt.

Drunk Coding

If you’re reading this and you’ve been in a situation like me, you know that game development can be maddening. Many nights, I would drink while coding, trying to hit that elusive Balmer Peak. As I would test the game, I took frequent notes of things to tweak. One night, in particular, I was slightly intoxicated and super thrilled with one particular level, as recorded in my notes.

Drunk Notes — I had a lot of fun on Level 22

Market Early and Often

Once I had a game that I was proud of, I started doing tons of research on how to market games on a… zero dollar budget. It turns out this isn’t a super easy thing to do. I came across Indie Game Girl (Emmy Jonassen), who had done a really inspiring talk at Konsoll titled How to Successfully Market Your Indie Game on a $0 Budget. This fundamentally changed the way I thought about marketing.

I immediately switched gears from developer into marketer, something I knew nothing about. I started putting a lot of effort into creating “irresistible marketing material”, which is something that Emmy and other marketing professionals speak about often.

I put together an elaborate press kit containing lots of content about the game.

I began reaching out to the press and asking, begging, if they would preview Glint and write about it. My initial efforts paid off with AppAdvice requesting to cover the launch exclusively. They published a great write-up two days before the launch and published a phenomenal review of the game on launch day.

After the release, the game was covered by PocketGamer, TouchArcade & Apple’N’Apps - which was amazing. I decided to launch the game right before GDC so that we could promote it at the week-long conference. One of the nice things about getting press coverage is that you can use quotes to create better marketing materials.

In the End

Glint launched on March 6th and is available on both iTunes and Google Play. In the first month of sales, Glint racked up about 10,000 downloads. Not nearly enough to hit critical mass, but a much better “first launch” than I expected. I hope that other developers and designers understand the importance of both marketing and polished design in an ever-more-crowded App Store.

Ryan would love to hear your thoughts and connect with you. You can shoot him an e-mail at ryan@ensomniac.com or connect with him on Facebook.