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Point Perfect: a Casual Game for a Hardcore Gamer

November 12, 2014 — by Industry Contributions

As a developer, you want the world to think that you are a thriving company with half a dozen employees destined for greatness in the indie game scene. But Bobby Patteson, the owner and CEO of the Toronto-based company Highcastle Studios, decided to tell the truthful story of making a game that is not on Steam’s top 100 sellers list. Bobby is a former male fashion model, an inventor, an artist, a computer game developer, and in between all that, you can find him doing all the jobs that nobody else wants to do (for the minimum wage, he adds). Highcastle Studios is literally one guy making games with a little help from Jonathan, an intern from last summer, and music commissioned by Matthew Joseph Payne. Bobby defines his goal as “to make weird games that explore new ways to play and interact”. Point Perfect is his first experiment.

Test Your Skills While a Friend is in a Starcraft or LoL Match

The idea of Point Perfect comes out of my love for real-time strategy games and the eSports culture that surrounds it. I noticed that there can be a lot of downtime between games of Starcraft or League of Legends. I thought - wouldn’t it be great if there was a casual game to test your skills while waiting for your friend to get out of their 40-minutes game? And so the concept for Point Perfect was born: the casual game for the hardcore gamer.

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A casual game to test your skills while waiting for your friend to get out of their 40-minutes game

At the time, I had a passion for designing games, but absolutely no idea of how to program. So naturally I gravitated towards Gamemaker Studio to build my game. Because of the technical limitations of the engine, I decided to go for retro aesthetics. What is more, I always felt that Point Perfect should have been thought up sooner, and belonged in the 80’s with Tetris and Pong.

Making Fun of Losing the Game

There were many changes and updates of the game during its development. The original idea was to have the player only avoid obstacles with the mouse pointer. It dawned on me, however, that the game would be too similar to free titles that people could play online. There just wasn’t enough depth in mouse-avoidance alone. So I decided to allow the player to fight back by drawing boxes around enemies and blast them to bits with a laser from your mother-ship.

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The original idea to have the player only avoid obstacles with the mouse pointer was too similar to the free online games

This was the turning point and the most exciting part of doing the game’s design, but it also created some new issues and concerns. After initial playtests, it was evident that people were having extreme difficulty with the two competing tasks of both avoiding obstacles and aggressively selecting enemies to destroy. However, I also noticed that players were keen to figure it out, and there was a strong “just one more try” element to the game.

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Draw a box around an enemy and the mother-ship will shoot it

After a while, the player would adapt and be able to understand the gameplay, but the initial learning curve was very steep. That’s why I decided to add probably the most controversial element to the design: “making fun” of the player for losing! After all, the players who might get offended by this are not the people who would be playing my game in the first place. So the decision came to embrace the difficulty of Point Perfect and try to get the player to laugh about it.

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The difficulty of the game was used for an additional element of fun and amusement

Graphics Define Audience Range

I am very happy with my final product, but there are some things I may have done differently a second time around. The most notable is the importance of the game’s graphics to appeal to all audiences.

It’s very easy for a game to be discriminated because of the graphic design.

It’s very easy for a game to be discriminated because of the graphic design. There’s so much depth and content in Point Perfect, and it breaks my heart when I hear things like “is this a Flash game?” or “this should be free”. Believe it or not, it’s also very easy for the media to have the same opinion based on a first glance. The retro look fits my personal taste and vision for Point Perfect, and while there are many gamers who love it, there are also many demographics that I have found despise this art style, unfortunately. Maybe a better fusion of old and new would have made a difference in making my game more appealing to different audiences.

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The art style influences your audience and its range

Point Perfect was picked up by a publisher, Plug In Digital, and distributed over all the major online stores such as Desura, Humble Store, and Steam on July 17, 2014. It has quickly gained the reputation of one of the hardest PC games out there and has been somewhat of a cult hit with YouTube celebrities because of its unique design and crazy sense of humor.

Point Perfect is now available only for Windows PCs, and Bobby might make it MAC and Linux compatible in the future.

 

USA 2014Video Coverage

Teut Weidemann : “I Teut You So”| Casual Connect Video

August 14, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

While at Casual Connect USA 2014, Teut Weidemann analyzed the monetization of League of Legends. “Riot’s conversion rate is less than 5 percent,” he said. “That’s not good. If you’re looking to copy League of Legends‘ monetization, don’t. It won’t work for you.”

Teut Weidemann is the senior online supervisor at Blue Byte Ubisoft, ensuring games in development have good online game mechanics and monetization practices. While the complexity of online game mechanics is something many teams underestimate, ensuring success requires constant iteration of both the monetization and game mechanics systems. Weidemann is passionate about educating the industry about online games, their systems, how F2P works and what they need to make good online games.

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Teut Weidemann, Senior Online Supervisor, Blue Byte Ubisoft

Getting In

I was the least nerdy

Weidemann became involved in gaming while growing up on Airbase Ramstein in Germany. The officers club had all the arcade games from the US, something that was a rarity in Germany at the time, and he quickly became hooked on Defender, Lunar Lander, Space Invaders, and Battlezone.

It all began when “Our group of coders was bored and started programming our own games, selling them to small publishers for 2500 DM (DM 1.95583 = €1 when the Deutsche Mark was converted to Euro). As I was the least nerdy, I was the one who would talk to the publishers.” Weidemann’s interest in the games industry became a career by a stroke of good luck when a friend asked him to sell his game for 5000 DM and offered Weidemann 20 percent for his contribution to the graphic and level design. The publisher was so impressed, Weidemann fetched 25,000 DM and quickly began supplying the publisher with more games, one of which was a hit: Katakis on Amiga. This success enabled Weidemann to parley university and jump headfirst into the games industry.

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Katakis enabled Weidemann to parley university and jump headfirst into the games industry.

The Future is Online

Personally, I think Al Bots, QTEs, etc. are boring

Weidemann was drawn to online games because he loves interacting with other gamers. Ultima Online represented a turning point for Weidemann where the future of online was clear: Sooner or later, all games will go to online. Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, and Eve Online form the basis for all other online games. “Personally, I think Al Bots, QTEs, etc. are boring; humans write the most interesting stories. Everyone needs to play Eve Online to fully understand the potential of fully immersive online games.”

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Weidemann’s Eve Online Character. He is able to fly the largest ship in Eve.

The best part of making games is sharing the enjoyment with others, when someone he knows picks up one of his games, and likes it, he insists, “You can’t beat that!”

Mistakes are to be Cherished

The Ubisoft philosophy is that mistakes are opportunities we should share proudly and learn from. One mistake to proudly share is Weidemann insisting that a team do what he felt was right, rather than letting them learn from their own experiences. He admits he had a hard time and the situation made him angry, making him so unpleasant, there is a meme to this day uttered frequently in the Blue Byte office, “I Teut you so”. While the story will live on, Weidemann is a new man; after sharing his opinion, each team is free to follow their own path, analyzing how their decisions performed and the result afterward.

 

Asia 2014Video Coverage

Richard Song Recognizes Success | Casual Connect Video

June 9, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

“375 million of our monthly active users we are delivering to our app designers and game developers,” Richard Song said during Casual Connect Asia 2014. “Our partner developers made over 1 million US dollars last year.”

Richard Song, the head of APAC, platform partnerships, games, at Facebook, says, “We are the sum of our choices. Every experience we have had, good or bad, has led to us being where we are today.”

Richard Song
Richard Song, Head of APAC, Platform Partnerships, Games, Facebook

And today, Song is serving Facebook’s partners, helping them to establish, grow, and monetize their businesses using the Facebook platform. Prior to coming to Facebook, he worked in the games industry for 16 years as the managing director and vice-president at Perfect World Entertainment, vice-president of global publishing at Webzen HQ, managing director of Shanghai at NHN HQ, and vice-president and head of global business at Hanbitoft HQ. Then one day a recruiter recognized the value of his extensive experience, gave him a call, and enticed him to join Facebook.

Exceptional Teamwork

The most satisfying moment he recalls in his career came in 2005 when the team he led was recognized as the most valuable of the year. He asserts, “This achievement came as a result of exceptional teamwork by every member of my team.”

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Today, Song is serving Facebook’s partners, helping them to establish, grow, and monetize their businesses using the Facebook platform.

When Song is away from his work, he likes to spend time with his family, hiking, and gaming. He describes himself as an old-fashioned gamer whose preferred platform is PC. He likes to play the “oldies but goodies”, including League of Legends, Warcraft III and Team Fortress 2.

He appreciates free-to-play for the opportunity it gives players to try a game before they commit to it, comparing it to test driving a car before you buy it.

Song does not yet own either Xbox One or PS4, although he expects to. He says he is waiting for Grand Theft Auto 5 for PS4.

Tailor-Made Success

As he considers what is coming in the games industry, he see a trend toward focused, tailor-made audiences, while standard service for everyone will diminish. He believes Video on Demand will continue to increase with YouTube and IPTV. Other trends he expects to gain strength include Mico SNS and wearable technology such as GoPro, SmartBand, and Google Glass.

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As he considers what is coming in the games industry, he see a trend toward focused, tailor-made audiences, while standard service for everyone will diminish.

At Casual Connect Asia, Song announced that Facebook will be working more closely with Southeast Asian-based developers and building up a new platform partnerships team for the Southeast Asia region.

 

Europe 2014Video Coverage

Mohamed Fadl: Focus on the Players | Casual Connect Video

February 25, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

Mohamed Fadl was one of the panelists during a panel about video, free-to-play games, and eSports at Casual Connect Europe. “The community itself drives us,” he says.

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Mohamed Fadl
Mohamed Fadl, eSports Director, Wargaming America and Europe

Mohamed Fadl is eSports Director of Wargaming America and Europe. Wargaming is an award-winning online game developer and publisher; one of the leaders in the free-to-play MMO market. Mohamed began his career with the company as Director of Community, leading a thirty-four member community team which supports seven languages. Before coming to Wargaming, he gained valuable knowledge managing virtual communities in other companies. That experience helps him on a daily basis in his present responsibilities, especially as it allowed him to meet core players.

It is All About the Players

Mohamed believes the biggest challenge facing the game industry today is losing focus on why we do what we do. He insists, “It’s about you and me, the players.” He believes the players invest the most important thing they have, their time, and they will never get back any of the time they invest. “So we should focus on the responsibility of making it a unique experience tailored to the players we want to reach, instead of trying to make games for everyone as long as the money is right.”

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“So we should focus on the responsibility of making it a unique experience tailored to the players we want to reach, instead of trying to make games for everyone as long as the money is right.”

He emphasizes that every decision should be made keeping in mind that the players give their time for the game, and that is something they can never get back. But he admits, “Listening to the community is not always useful; a very small percentage of the community is vocal about what they want.”

For Mohamed, the most enjoyable part of working in the game industry is meeting the hard-core players of the games you work on. And the proudest moment of his career came when he helped to donate one hundred thousand euros to Warchild with Wargaming.

Gaming and Exploring

Mohamed spends his free time exploring the north of Finland and traveling with his wife and child. Any other available time he spends gaming. He prefers to use a PC, and games he enjoys include World of Warcraft—multi-boxing (one of his favorite hobbies is multi-boxing), World of WarPlanes because he has loved to play flight simulators from childhood, and League of Legends, where he finds the social aspect of the game quite interesting. Mohamed owns an Xbox 360 and an Xbox One, but mostly because they have soft launched World of Tanks 360 Edition.

Europe 2014Video Coverage

Dmitri Williams: We’re Here to Help Everyone | Casual Connect Video

February 24, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

“Your big spenders are not necessarily the same thing as big influencers,” Dmitri Williams told his audience at Casual Connect Europe. “The baseline value we’re finding in gaming is that social value accounts for about 25 percent of activity, as in sessions and in dollars/euros spent.”

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Dmitri Williams
Dmitri Williams, CEO and Product Owner, Ninja Metrics

Dmitri Williams is CEO and Product Owner of Ninja Metrics, an analytics company he co-founded. As a former professor specializing in video games, he was in an excellent position to succeed with this new company, since he had already developed an understanding of player psychology, data, and the economics of the games industry. Williams asserts that the proudest moment of his career by far was getting this startup company funded, especially since it followed nine months of rejection!

Ninja Metrics differs from most analytics companies because its Katana Social Analytics Engine is able to measure the value of social contributions in games and apps, as well as provide developers with detailed projections for outcomes. It also offers tools to measure how effectively features facilitate engagement and social interaction.

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The Katana Analytics Engine, an ultra-scalable, cloud computing-based social analytics platform behind some the biggest games on the market.

Both Work and Play

Williams tells us he enjoys being around games, game makers, and players. And, as far as working in the industry goes, he feels, “If you enjoy what you are doing, it’s not work at all.”

When Williams is not “working”, he is playing video games, as well as reading, exercising, and watching the occasional TV show. For his gaming, he has always preferred to use PC, and these days, he can generally be found playing League of Legends, claiming, “The game play never gets old, and the variety is nearly infinite.”

He owns neither Xbox One nor PS4 because he finds the lack of backward compatibility annoying. Besides, although there have been some good launch titles, there has been nothing he felt was worth standing in line for several hours to buy. He says, “Not when I have a stack of still-to-plays gems like The Last of Us waiting for me.”

More Quality and Garbage

The Social Value through Katana
The Social Value through the Katana Social Analytics Engine

Williams feels the greatest challenge in the games industry is coming from the explosion of games and apps exerting downward pressure on AAA titles, a situation he finds painful to watch. However, this means there is more quality, as well as more garbage, available today. The situation is very similar to what occurred with TV, so, assuming it will follow a similar pattern, it will emerge into “a golden age of content,” he believes.

Although this challenge can be difficult for many in the games industry, for Ninja Metrics, it is actually an opportunity. As Williams points out, “There are so many developers out there, and we’re here to help everyone – whether that is a single developer working alone in a dorm or a massive company.”

Europe 2014Video Coverage

Dan Fiden: Going Truly Global | Casual Connect Video

February 21, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

At Casual Connect Europe, Fiden announced that FunPlus is growing rapidly and has positions open in their offices in San Francisco, Vancouver and Beijing.

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FUN+-02Dan Fiden, Chief Strategy Officer at FunPlus, believes the company will be most affected in the next few years by the growth toward being global. He points out that in the past, ‘global’ companies could only be considered ‘global’ if you exclude areas such as China. But as business models in the East and the West converge, both games and game developers/operators will become truly global. FunPlus intends to be one of the truly global companies, and it is well on the way, building global games and development teams. Fiden emphasizes, “Great teams build great games that work no matter where they are developed.”

The trend that he sees most impacting the game industry as a whole is the transition to free-to-play games. The west is still at the beginning of this transition, but game companies and developers are learning how to make games to accommodate this trend. The future of the industry will certainly be interesting with the innovation and new ideas that will result.

Feel Good Moments

Fiden met Andy Zhong, founder of FunPlus, as an investor with Signia Venture Partners. This was a company Fiden founded with Rick Thompson to fund early stage investment in free-to-play games. At that time, FunPlus had already achieved a high degree of success and profitability. Over the course of a year, as he got to know Zhong, Fiden watched it more than double its revenue and profit, while becoming a successful mobile business. When he was offered the opportunity to join the team and help the business grow, he was excited at the opportunity. He had worked with a Chinese game development team at Pogo’s Shanghai studio in the early 2000s; however, the Chinese game industry had changed considerably in ten years. He finds the team dynamics at FunPlus very exciting, and he feels great pride in seeing people he has hired at the start of their career go on to something interesting. Their goal is to become the first truly global game company, and Fiden believes they are well on the way to succeeding.

The FunPlus Team
The FunPlus Team

Fiden is also proud of the time he won money playing poker with David Perry. He admits, “Of course, he’s won more money from me, but it was a thrill to win money from the creator of Earthworm Jim.”

Time For Some Fun

In his free time, Fiden enjoys surfing and playing with his bulldogs, Merle and Tiny. He also enjoys playing video games across different platforms, but his favorite platform is his iPad Mini because it is a great size, and games look great on it. He enjoys longer sessions on it and is currently playing Republique. His smartphone works well for shorter session casual games such as Family Farm Seaside.

While playing casual games, Fiden usually limits his spending to $5, although he has spent $20 a few times on League of Legends. On the other hand, he has yet to spend anything on Candy Crush Saga.

Europe 2014Video Coverage

Scott Foe’s Evil Hilarity | Casual Connect Video

February 13, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

As Scott Foe reminds us, the Evil Game Design Challenge was the most watched session at Casual Connect USA. He hopes to top those numbers in Amsterdam, claiming, “With industry hitters like Ben Cousins, Teut Weidemann, and Laralyn McWilliams, we should be in for a hilariously evil time.”

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Scott Foe

Scott Foe is one of the few people in the games industry who admits to having any free time. He co-founded Big Head Mode with Tipatat Chennavasin and Richard Au and became its Chief Creative Officer. Recently, they sold the studio to PlayFirst, leaving him with ample time to play golf and watch Twitch.tv. When not fully immersed in these activities, he enjoys watching basketball and shooting hoops, making use of his amazing 2 ½-inch vertical.

A Pack-a-Day Habit

Foe became a part of the games industry directly out of college when Sega recruited him to be a part of the team that created and launched Sega DreamCast. He has remained in the industry simply because he feels he is making a positive contribution. He says, “Bringing joy to people is a big part of my drive,” so if he were not involved with games, he would choose to be a part of the entertainment industry in some other way.

Called "The most important simulation of human drama ever made" by Giant Bomb), "Douche Defender" was Scott's project while executive producer
Called “The most important simulation of human drama ever made” by Giant Bomb, “Douche Defender” was Scott’s project while Chief Creative Officer

As for the games he personally enjoys, Foe admits, “I do suffer from a pack-a-day League of Legends habit, and Chantix can’t even put a dent in that.” However, he claims to have no particular platform preference. And, although he has nothing against Android, he feels, “iOS can’t be topped for unflappable joy of user experience.”

Laughing at the Future

Foe is someone who is constantly looking forward, claiming that his proudest moment always comes from whatever game he is working on next. But he doesn’t envision any particular trend as the next important phenomenon in the industry, saying, “Anyone who tells you they can see the future should see you laughing at them ten seconds later.” Wearables are what he sees others in his area emphasizing for the future, but he has not yet felt inspired to do anything with wearable computing. But he admits, “Who knows what tomorrow will bring?”

 

Video Coverage

Mike Lu: Adapt or Fail | Casual Connect Video

August 14, 2013 — by Catherine Quinton

At Casual Connect USA in San Francisco, Mike Lu spoke on the importance of community in today’s ongoing, service-based game experiences. He cites Riot Games‘ incredible community engagement in League of Legends as a clear example of how community contributes to success. Lu observed, “The most recent League of Legends championship had more views than the World Series!”

Mike Lu
Mike Lu

Games as Social Drivers

Mike Lu is VP of Product at GREE International, a company that believes “When you can play what you want, when and where you want, it’s even easier to discover new games, face off against friends, and compete for the top spot on leaderboards.” He states that he has been very data driven throughout his career; a quality which he finds invaluable in his current role where data is key and keeps him aligned with his goals.

Mike’s passion for gaming extends far beyond his work life. He enjoys playing games across all systems; whatever free time he has he puts back into what he loves most. He is presently playing The Last of Us, Kingdom Rush, League of Legends, SC2 and Candy Crush.

Data to Understand Changing Consumers

The biggest challenge in the games industry right now is adapting to change, according to Mike. He believes, “The industry must rise to this challenge by continuing to do what it does best; make great games, but to do that, they must grow and evolve with the players and the hardware.”

Data + Design = Win

Mike has a formula for meeting the challenge of evolving while continuing to create the best games. “Data + Design = Win.” He emphasizes the importance of using the best analytical data we can collect and bringing it together with great design ideas to deliver new experiences to users. In addition to normal metrics like ARPDAU/Retention, Mike looks deeper into player behavior, and constantly reads player forums for feedback on the game.

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The best moments in Mike’s career come when he meets users and finding out they love playing one of the company’s games.

The best moments in Mike’s career come when he meets users and finding out they love playing one of the company’s games. He says, “I think as mobile developers, we don’t have the same input from our players as other markets do, so this type of feedback gives me a tremendous sense of joy and accomplishment.”

Saying ‘No!’ is Hard

Possibly the most difficult aspect of his work is saying “no” to ideas. With a lot of people playing games, many have great ideas about what they think would make the games better. Often, there is very little data to prove that one idea is better than another; he must simply rely on his best judgement. It will be essential to turn some ideas down. But Mike insists, “My objective as a game maker will always be to produce games that everyone will enjoy.”

Mike claims that the mobile market is still in its early stages. As more developers come to this market, they will raise the bar of quality, so he expects AAA quality production will soon become a key aspect of mobile games.

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