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USA 2014Video Coverage

Casey Pelkey: Bringing His Experience to Tetris Online | Casual Connect Video

August 8, 2014 — by Catherine Quinton

“Remain true to your original game design,” Casey Pelkey advised his audience during Casual Connect USA 2014. “The thing that makes your game great for your fans is the thing you have to exploit the most and the farther you stray from them, the less likely that your fans will enjoy them.”

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Casey Pelkey, vice president of marketing at Tetris Online, is closely watching the microconsole movement. He began evaluating the opportunity when OUYA received overwhelming support for their Kickstarter campaign. Then, when Amazon launched Fire TV in April, the company became an active supporter with a single player Tetris game. They quickly followed that with Tetris Battle: Fusion, a multi-player follow-up to their Facebook game, Tetris Battle. Although Pelkey recognizes that the market is still very small, with plenty of room for improvement, he thinks it is only a matter of time before these affordable devices become clear alternatives for playing games. His excitement about the future of microconsoles has grown with Google’s recent announcement to roll out Android TV, as well as the rumors surrounding Apples next update to Apple TV.

The Tetris Battle: Fusion game on Amazon Fire TV is a follow-up to Tetris Online’s smash hit game on Facebook, Tetris Battle.
The Tetris Battle: Fusion game on Amazon Fire TV is a follow-up to Tetris Online’s smash hit game on Facebook, Tetris Battle.

The two games Tetris Online has launched on Amazon TV will allow them to better understand how players will respond to playing on these types of devices. But he admits, “Games are unfortunately a secondary focus for many larger manufacturers, so we’re also trying to work closely with each of them to help improve the overall experience.”

Generating Revenue Through Partnerships

As vice president of marketing, Pelkey’s primary responsibility is to give their products the best chance of success by generating and executing marketing plans. He is also responsible for generating revenue outside of game sales and in-game purchases, including both advertising and partnerships. When not focused on revenue generation, he handles public relations and business development issues.

Working With Icons

When he was offered an executive role at Tetris Online, it was difficult to leave Nintendo after many successful years, but the timing was right for his family, and being based in Honolulu was certainly an added enticement. But the biggest reason he made the decision to accept the position was the opportunity to work with several industry icons he deeply admires, including Minoru Arakwa, Henk Rogers, and Alexey Pajitnov.

CaseyPelkey
Casey Pelkey, Vice President of Marketing, Tetris Online

The launching of Wii brought Pelkey the time in his career that he remembers with the greatest pride. During his time at Nintendo, he assisted with many product launches, but none were as challenging as the launch of Wii. There was a lot of skepticism in the market prior to showing it at E3. Although E3 is not always the best indicator of how a product will perform, it is a relief to get a strong reaction from the media and retailers who are attending. But two days before E3, Pelkey had an emergency appendectomy and his doctor advised him not to attend. He relates, “Fat chance! The next day I jumped on a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles to attend the show. Fortunately, the stitches held and I got to see the reactions of the attendees first hand. It was great to see and the rest is history!”

In the games industry today, he has noticed a trend that isn’t getting the attention it should. That is the rapid and blatant copying of games. Although this has always been an issue to some extent, he feels what happened with Flappy Bird and Threes illustrates how quickly many small developers can jump on and idea of someone else and profit from it. He says, “I think we’re just scratching the surface of this issue, so it will be interesting to see what happens over the next few years.”

For his personal gaming, Pelkey prefers using consoles, but because of its convenience and accessibility, he actually uses his smartphone most of the time. When he is not playing EA’s Tetris Blitz, it is Threes by Sirvo or Trials Frontier by Ubisoft. He usually prefers puzzle games because they work well with the touch interface, but Trials Frontier has been keeping him entertained for the past few weeks.

The Tetris game on Amazon Fire TV offers endless fun and is easily controlled using the Amazon TV Remote.
The Tetris game on Amazon Fire TV offers endless fun and is easily controlled using the Amazon TV Remote.

Although he usually limits his F2P purchases to less than five dollars, he did once spend $40 on Zynga’s Empires and Allies on Facebook. His motive was purely competitive, since many of his industry friends and co-workers were playing it. Originally, he refused to support Zynga’s mastery of the in-game up-sell, but in a moment of weakness, he succumbed.

The latest consoles are available at the office for employees to enjoy, so he hasn’t purchased any of them. But he owned almost every previous console and handheld gaming device in existence. He still keeps some of them in storage, planning to share them with his children.

When not working or gaming, Pelkey enjoys spending time with his family, usually on the beach or soccer field. And the rest of the time you will find him on the golf course.

 

ContributionsDevelopmentOnline

Mobile Games Cannot Stay Away from TV for Long — Here’s Why

February 7, 2014 — by Mariia Lototska

JohnGargiulo
John Gargiulo, SVP, Business Development + Marketing, BlueStacks

This article was written by John Gargiulo, SVP, Business Development + Marketing at BlueStacks.

When I was a kid, the most famous video games in the world were Super Mario Brothers, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, and Legend of Zelda. Today, they are Angry Birds, Candy Crush, and Subway Surfers. These are the games that 10 year-olds today will remember nostalgically when they are 34. The major distinction between these groups of games, of course, is that the former were all played on TVs, while the latter are, for the most part, played on screens no more than 4.5 inches big. There are several reasons why this line in the sand will be washed away over the next two years.

First, there is a perfect storm of technology that has hit just this past year that will serve as a huge enabler. We have reached a point where the pixel density on a smartphone is actually higher than on a 60-inch TV. This has never happened before. This means that games built for mobile phones look fantastic on TVs. With the right code in place to trick portrait apps into displaying in landscape (where possible), almost any mobile game looks like it was graphically designed to be played on the big screen. Android has also taken off both in numbers and in the imagination of the Amazons and Xiaomis of the world to fork it and march forward. For the first time, we are seeing extremely low-cost Android devices like Raspberry Pi and GameStick emerge. The hardware these are built on is getting commoditized very quickly. It is getting easier to bring Android to bigger screens beyond mobile.

Perfect Storm
A perfect storm of technology has hit just this past year that will serve as a huge enabler.

Second is the promotion this past year by Amazon, Apple, and (more quietly) by Google of a controller standard for apps. By putting this forward, developers have been encouraged to keep physical controller schematics in mind when designing their games. I have spoken with several developers large and small who have been doing this for some time already. By the time a real vehicle for controller-based mobile-on-TV distribution becomes available, developers will be ready.

Third is the pure demand for this gaming content that has gone from zero to the moon in just five years. The people who are obsessed with Candy Crush Saga or Deer Hunter 2014 want this IP however they can get it. Why not on their flatscreen TV? So what’s holding things back? Why hasn’t this happened already?

Gamers
The pure demand for this gaming content that has gone from zero to the moon in just five years.

One thing that’s important to remember is how fast all of this has been happening. The iPad only came out in 2010. The AppStore was born not long before that. Growth and innovation in the content and technologies making up the mobile gaming space has been epic (though some argue the content side is slowing down). It is only now that all the players have caught their breath and, concurrent with the technical perfect storm mentioned above, begun realizing they can work together to massively expand the screens on which we play “mobile-first” games.

There is also the matter of the Microconsoles, an apt term coined by Friend of the Casual Connect Community Tadhg Kelly. The introduction of Ouya, GamePop (full disclosure: our company BlueStacks has launched this one), Gamestick, and others represents the opening act of a larger show that will play out larger and larger over the coming years. While I won’t pretend to predict the winner of this race – and there very well might be more than one, it seems apparent that this is a category that is coming. In five years, that fact that mobile-first IP is on our TVs will seem as obvious a development as in-app purchases were a few years back (they were not).

In conclusion, there are a myriad of reasons why the white-hot content developers are building for mobile will be headed to your TV soon. How it gets there, who brings it, and the timing are anyone’s guess. However it happens, like the rapid development of the smartphone gaming ecosystem itself, it will certainly be fun to watch.

John will be at Casual Connect Europe next week discussing user acquisition secrets with people from some of the most popular games on iOS and Google Play. Find out more on the conference website.

Video Coverage

Tadhg Kelly: The AAA Trap | Casual Connect Video

September 5, 2013 — by Catherine Quinton

At Casual Connect in San Francisco, Tadhg Kelly spoke to the emerging trends of “Microconsoles” like Ouya, Bluestacks and Gamestick. His talk, Welcome to the Microconsole Generation, touched on the potential broad reach and appeal of microconsole and how it is different from the AAA Console market of the past. “You see the same adoption pattern for games as seen in music and books,” Kelly believes, “this is not the Xbox audience.”

For the next year, the biggest impact on the game industry will be made by microconsoles. There’s no escaping how much that story has resurfaced this year.

Jawboning about Jawfish

Tadhg Kelly
Tadhg Kelly

Tadhg Kelly is the Creative Director of Jawfish Games, a company focusing making on real-time multiplayer games a reality in mobile and tablet. As Creative Director, Tadhg is head of design and product strategy, as well as filling various related roles. His career has always involved game design in some form, so the position with Jawfish Games is the ideal situation for him. Participating in creating the next big move ahead for games is an exciting opportunity for him.

Writer and Entrepreneur

In his time away from work, Tadhg enjoys reading and exploring his new city of Seattle, as well as experimenting with cooking paleo food. He prefers listening to electronic music, especially ambient or super heavy bass, for the interlocking patterns this music creates. His most time consuming non-work interest is writing the game design blog What Games Are. He has also written the book What Games Are and writes for other publications, including TechCruch, Edge and Gamasutra. Among the notable articles that Tadhg has written is “The Four Lenses of Game Making”.

Smarter Devices and More Players

The most important trends Tadhg sees emerging in the game industry today are the rise of multiplayer gaming on smart devices and what he calls “the rising storm of microconsoles.” Jawfish is entirely focused on figuring out multiplayer gaming, with an outstanding team that has already developed the necessary architecture. Although the company is not presently working on microconsoles, Tadhg is “something of an evangelist on the subject and keen to see how we might work with them.” He believes that for the next year, the biggest impact on the game industry will be made by consoles. He maintains, “There’s no escaping how much that story has resurfaced this year.”

Jawfish
Jawfish is entirely focused on figuring out multiplayer gaming, with an outstanding team that has already developed the necessary architecture.

Springing the Trap

Tadhg believes the biggest challenge he has faced in his career was changing his mindset to get out of what he considers “the AAA trap.” He had spent an especially difficult year working on failed projects when someone close to him died suddenly, and he confronted the realization of how short life is. He decided he had to make a change. This painful experience taught him how important it is to set your own course.

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