Diceroll Studios was born in December 2015, founded by 5 students with barely any experience in game development. We met in May while on internship at the Game Innovation Program (previously known as GAMBIT), and we created re:color as a financial literacy game for OCBC. After the internship ended, we were persuaded to continue building the game, and the rest, as they say, was history.
Southeast Asia (SEA) is a quickly growing region where many publishers and game companies are growing and expanding their publishing efforts. With so many available, this creates strong competition for game developers in licensing or finding a publishing partner in SEA. In a session during Casual Connect Asia, Robin Ng, Director of International Business and Strategic Development for ASiasoft, addressed the many factors publishers look at in a game which makes them ideal for publishing in SEA. Robin also explained what kind of games that are appealing in the SEA region. Robin explained, “Licensing of a game is more like a marriage between two parties so it is not a customer and client relationship. It is more like a marriage relationship.” For publishers, they have to be choosey and careful. Learn more about how they choose.
Chin Hooi Yen, who has been named a leading lawyer in the Asia Pacific Legal 500 and several other publications, is the founder of the Singapore law firm Polaris Law Corporation. Hooi Yen is passionate about working with investors and startups, guiding them through the unfamiliar legal and commercial challenges.
Hooi Yen’s session at Casual Connect Asia offered help in understanding the alien legal territory that startups face, including the legal nature of preference shares, the common terms used in relation to preference shares, as well as their impact on a funding round. Investors will commonly ask for preference share rights. “The rights of the shares are determined and always in control by the company. Be careful and read properly!”, stated Hooi Yen. To arm yourself with more of the knowledge you need to negotiate this area, be sure to watch the full video of this session.
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To read more about Chin Hooi Yen see this exclusive article and lecture from Casual Connect Asia 2015.
“A big question is how to be successful in this moving world.” Join Olivier de Rotalier at Casual Connect Asia as he shares why creating strong IPs is the best way to thrive in the long-term and Ubisoft’s unique approach to innovation.
The Gentlebros is a 3-people team based in Singapore. It was founded by Desmond Wong, Leon Ho and Nursyazana. Part gentlemen, part bros, the goal of the company is to constantly make unique games that stand out from the crowd. They share the story of Slashy Hero, a game about a great evil that has stolen all the sweets for Halloween. At Casual Connect the Slashy Hero game has won the Best Game Design and Best Mobile Game awards.
What is the next opportunity to target on the mobile platform? Atsuo Nakayama, General Manager for Namco Studios, Singapore, estimates that it will be mobile game ads and VR. Looking back at the broad history of tech hype, Atsuo gave exciting insights into the future. Atsuo explained, “Developers want to make something exciting. However, because of the implementation of the in-app purchase sometimes it deteriorates the gaming experience itself. One of the options is the video ad.” In-app advertising needs to be used carefully. To learn more of Atsuo’s insights, tune in below.
At the Casual Connect Asia conference, four game developers and educators were a part of a panel called But You Try and Tell the Young People Today That… and They Won’t Believe Ya. The panelists reminisced about what works, and what doesn’t from a decade of teaching students the Art and Science of Game Development. In speaking of his students at Digipen, Joe McGinn admits that he is “a little jealous of them. I wish there had been a program like this when I went to computer science I was learning how to program myself in my spare time on my Commodor 64 at home. When I became a game designer, I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what I was doing.” The students have a great opportunity to really get immersed in the industry and learn.
Ori Takemura explored what makes a game meaningful to humans during his Casual Connect Asia 2015 presentation. “The whole industry has been a little bit in a vaccuum,” he says. For Ori’s breakdown of the problem, see the video below.
Loud Panda Games is a year-old mobile games studio from the Philippines. Critter Camp is their first game, which is currently in soft launch on iOS, and the company’s Product Manager Jon Roque shares the story.
Jeremy Goh, co-founder of IMBA Interactive, explained how better audio can lead to better casual games in his recent Casual Connect Asia speech. To find out more about delivering the audio quality audiences increasingly expect, watch the video below.
