Enjoy!
Showing posts with label mobile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mobile. Show all posts
2019/02/05
2019/01/10
Happy New Year - here is whats up ...
2018 was a year full of travel. You will have access to most of my talks which were taped. I also published the ones online for download. So what's coming 2019?
I am busy with two large clients so I actually stopped taking new ones - but I do have partners I can recommend working for you. So don't worry.
I will also cut down my conference visits as I am starting my own mobile game project soon. Watch this space as soon as we can talk about it.
The next conference up is White Nights Berlin. I will talk about the "Lost Art of Immersion on Mobile". Something completely different but its a topic by heart.
The only other conference fixed so far is Devcom right before Gamescom. I do not know if I go to GiC or Digital Dragons in Poland yet - we will see. GDC USA isn't a place for me since years, although I have been on the first 10 since it started (yes, 1988 onwards) and triple-A and console aren't much for me these days although I am helping on a AAA f2p title at the moment. There is also the fact that the advisory board of GDC USA keeps ignoring my submissions, which is strange to experience when most other conferences fight about me but GDC isn't. Well, their loss.
So, if I visit other conferences which topic would you love to see? Let me know. I have covered so many that I might have lost track what you want to hear or learn about.
I am busy with two large clients so I actually stopped taking new ones - but I do have partners I can recommend working for you. So don't worry.
I will also cut down my conference visits as I am starting my own mobile game project soon. Watch this space as soon as we can talk about it.
The next conference up is White Nights Berlin. I will talk about the "Lost Art of Immersion on Mobile". Something completely different but its a topic by heart.
The only other conference fixed so far is Devcom right before Gamescom. I do not know if I go to GiC or Digital Dragons in Poland yet - we will see. GDC USA isn't a place for me since years, although I have been on the first 10 since it started (yes, 1988 onwards) and triple-A and console aren't much for me these days although I am helping on a AAA f2p title at the moment. There is also the fact that the advisory board of GDC USA keeps ignoring my submissions, which is strange to experience when most other conferences fight about me but GDC isn't. Well, their loss.
So, if I visit other conferences which topic would you love to see? Let me know. I have covered so many that I might have lost track what you want to hear or learn about.
2018/08/14
2018/05/27
2018/04/21
My next talks & conferences
April/May is crazy. Too many conferences - all inviting me for f2p talks. So here is my schedule for now:
Week April 23rd: Quo Vadis, a talk about "Meta Games" and moderating a fireside chat with Lord British. See https://qvconf.com/
Week May 8th: Oulu, Finnland, there is half a day a public workshop about the Crazy App Store and More, organized by Fingersoft.
Week May 21st: Digital Dragons, talking about Product Strategy and how it decides your chances of success. See http://digitaldragons.pl/
Week May 23rd, GDD Frankfurt, talking about raising ARPPU/Conversion, the complete version: https://www.germandevdays.com/
Week May 29th, Casual Connect London, again raising APPU/Conversion, see http://europe.casualconnect.org/
and finally Develop in Brighton, talking about Lootboxes: https://www.developconference.com/
Phew. A lot, and I guess the next will be Devcom/Gamescom, but my talk isn't confirmed yet.
Week April 23rd: Quo Vadis, a talk about "Meta Games" and moderating a fireside chat with Lord British. See https://qvconf.com/
Week May 8th: Oulu, Finnland, there is half a day a public workshop about the Crazy App Store and More, organized by Fingersoft.
Week May 21st: Digital Dragons, talking about Product Strategy and how it decides your chances of success. See http://digitaldragons.pl/
Week May 23rd, GDD Frankfurt, talking about raising ARPPU/Conversion, the complete version: https://www.germandevdays.com/
Week May 29th, Casual Connect London, again raising APPU/Conversion, see http://europe.casualconnect.org/
and finally Develop in Brighton, talking about Lootboxes: https://www.developconference.com/
Phew. A lot, and I guess the next will be Devcom/Gamescom, but my talk isn't confirmed yet.
2017/09/02
Coming soon ...
My next talk is in creation. I decided not to do any Dissection talks anymore due to many reasons but someone convinced me to do this one - simply as I spend a long time analyzing it (3 years in fact), the longest ever it took to finalize this talk. I will let you know when and where I will hold this talk.
2017/08/18
Honorary Consultation
Sometimes I stumble across a game I really like - from an Indie team. And I offer to help them for free. The only thing we do is a handshake deal if they get filthy rich by their game they thank me.
So recently two of them have been released and I would love you all to download and review it in the app store ok? Give them 5 stars, they are small teams and did wonderful on both projects:
Cat Quest (iOS, Android, Steam)
Look here: https://thegentlebros.com/catquest/
It's a great action RPG and in my opinion, fits mobile very well.
Hades Star
If you like space games, logistics and PvE this one is for you. A very good laid back game pacing on your habit, not the games.
So recently two of them have been released and I would love you all to download and review it in the app store ok? Give them 5 stars, they are small teams and did wonderful on both projects:
Cat Quest (iOS, Android, Steam)
Look here: https://thegentlebros.com/catquest/
It's a great action RPG and in my opinion, fits mobile very well.
Hades Star
Look here: http://www.hadesstar.com/
2017/06/19
Common Mistakes in f2p Design - video!
Here is the video of my Casual Connect talk from this February - Common Mistakes in f2p Design.
Enjoy. And if you like it please consider visiting any of the four Casual Connects happening each year all over the globe.
2017/03/31
Videos of my talks
Many developers watch my videos of my talks but are missing one or two here and there. So I created a playlist where I link most of them available - minus the ones on GDC Vault if they aren't public: Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVGQLTaJYT6MO7Z4hVHaUyAlyJyZNLG_P
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVGQLTaJYT6MO7Z4hVHaUyAlyJyZNLG_P
2016/12/28
What 2017 will bring to the game industry
2016 was harsh. Many studios closed. Some hit games didn't sell. But overall the industry grew as always. Superdata claims we nearly reached $100b in 2016.
Meanwhile China became the largest gaming market of the world thanks to mobile. Talking mobile: it is now the largest segment of our industry. As forecasted by so many.
From my experience and point of view 2017 will be a hard year. In fact it will be more difficult than this year. For various reasons.
First some AAA IP's won't sell as good as they were, as already shown in 2016. The primary reasons are that gamers spend more time in less games and the competition in terms of price. f2p taking over even more market share does further impact the $60 AAA game market.
And of course mobile. Mobile will continue to grow. We will see new games entering the top 10 which do more and more revenue each year. The PC won't suffer, the consoles neither, but their growth will slow down. Nothing major but it will have an impact on studios relying on the old publisher model - meaning more studios will cease to exist.
We also will see a more dramatic impact on the crowded market space. Too many titles, not enough time to play them all. Remember? We will spend more time in less games. So the only way combating this is to bind your fanbase to your game - this means you must update your game and service it beyond its lifecycle. Games as a service. Invented by MMO RPG's now a must have for all games.
Update: read this:
http://steamed.kotaku.com/none-of-2016s-most-played-steam-games-came-out-in-2016-1791048654
We will see an invasion of non gaming IP's to the mobile space as the desperate publishers try to fight high acquisition costs with using foreign IP's. This won't work for most of them as we have so often experienced in the past: the 80's, 90's, 2000's all had those waves and most publishers failed with them unless they can afford the mega IP's - which they can't. If they afford it they won't have enough money left for the game - meaning they ship shitty games on large IP's - failing. We have seen that as well in the past.
VR will continue to be a toy - not a market (yet). So investors will shy away, studios will close. VR will be in a crisis waiting to be revived.
The Switch will ship and sell ok. Nintendo's IPs will be strong, and depending on Nintendos policy to sign up other developers the console will not rival the PS4 or XBox, it will rival Nintendo's old 3DS system, cutting their own market share.
Consoles will drop in price for Christmas 2017 and for the first time go under $199 - embracing new markets. But those new customers won't buy $60+ software, they will buy already discounted or used software - as we have seen in the past when that happens. Still the market will grow and reach its peak - and drop after that staring 2018.
We will see a new creative push from the III side. What is III? Triple Indie, from pro's who left AAA companies and going independent we will see a wave of really good titles created for lower budgets and selling enough to keep those new studios alive.
This means we see a remix of studios. Old ones go, new ones come - and in large numbers. We need to learn all those new studio names otherwise we lose track - so many will be there. All over the world.
Meanwhile China became the largest gaming market of the world thanks to mobile. Talking mobile: it is now the largest segment of our industry. As forecasted by so many.
From my experience and point of view 2017 will be a hard year. In fact it will be more difficult than this year. For various reasons.
First some AAA IP's won't sell as good as they were, as already shown in 2016. The primary reasons are that gamers spend more time in less games and the competition in terms of price. f2p taking over even more market share does further impact the $60 AAA game market.
And of course mobile. Mobile will continue to grow. We will see new games entering the top 10 which do more and more revenue each year. The PC won't suffer, the consoles neither, but their growth will slow down. Nothing major but it will have an impact on studios relying on the old publisher model - meaning more studios will cease to exist.
We also will see a more dramatic impact on the crowded market space. Too many titles, not enough time to play them all. Remember? We will spend more time in less games. So the only way combating this is to bind your fanbase to your game - this means you must update your game and service it beyond its lifecycle. Games as a service. Invented by MMO RPG's now a must have for all games.
Update: read this:
http://steamed.kotaku.com/none-of-2016s-most-played-steam-games-came-out-in-2016-1791048654
We will see an invasion of non gaming IP's to the mobile space as the desperate publishers try to fight high acquisition costs with using foreign IP's. This won't work for most of them as we have so often experienced in the past: the 80's, 90's, 2000's all had those waves and most publishers failed with them unless they can afford the mega IP's - which they can't. If they afford it they won't have enough money left for the game - meaning they ship shitty games on large IP's - failing. We have seen that as well in the past.
VR will continue to be a toy - not a market (yet). So investors will shy away, studios will close. VR will be in a crisis waiting to be revived.
The Switch will ship and sell ok. Nintendo's IPs will be strong, and depending on Nintendos policy to sign up other developers the console will not rival the PS4 or XBox, it will rival Nintendo's old 3DS system, cutting their own market share.
Consoles will drop in price for Christmas 2017 and for the first time go under $199 - embracing new markets. But those new customers won't buy $60+ software, they will buy already discounted or used software - as we have seen in the past when that happens. Still the market will grow and reach its peak - and drop after that staring 2018.
We will see a new creative push from the III side. What is III? Triple Indie, from pro's who left AAA companies and going independent we will see a wave of really good titles created for lower budgets and selling enough to keep those new studios alive.
This means we see a remix of studios. Old ones go, new ones come - and in large numbers. We need to learn all those new studio names otherwise we lose track - so many will be there. All over the world.
2016/07/20
2016/07/17
WTF Niantic
So the servers of Pokemon Go are unstable.
The game crashes frequently.
The game loses it synch with the server often.
Bugs. Bugs.
Usually if companies release an online game and this happens they put a full stop on acquiring new users, even close down the registration and fix things first. As users are the most important thing you have. They are your customers.
Not so Niantic. Despite servers being overloaded they add country by country putting even more load on the servers - annoying most players.
I asked myself why. Niantic isn't stupid. So the only explanation I have is they want to increase the value of their company before users get bored with the game and numbers stabilize. To explain (easy model): a company's evaluation is usually based on yearly revenue times a multiplier, like 3. So if you do 100 million a year you are worth 300 million.
So Niantic adds countries to raise revenue so their evaluation gets higher and higher. I think there is someone negotiating with them to buy - and they release country by country to put pressure on them to close as otherwise they get more expensive over time. Nintendo surely is interested. Now they can afford it too - easily.
The game crashes frequently.
The game loses it synch with the server often.
Bugs. Bugs.
Usually if companies release an online game and this happens they put a full stop on acquiring new users, even close down the registration and fix things first. As users are the most important thing you have. They are your customers.
Not so Niantic. Despite servers being overloaded they add country by country putting even more load on the servers - annoying most players.
I asked myself why. Niantic isn't stupid. So the only explanation I have is they want to increase the value of their company before users get bored with the game and numbers stabilize. To explain (easy model): a company's evaluation is usually based on yearly revenue times a multiplier, like 3. So if you do 100 million a year you are worth 300 million.
So Niantic adds countries to raise revenue so their evaluation gets higher and higher. I think there is someone negotiating with them to buy - and they release country by country to put pressure on them to close as otherwise they get more expensive over time. Nintendo surely is interested. Now they can afford it too - easily.
2016/07/14
So Pokemon Go happened
Now news about it here. I might get paid for this ;)
Really. What did you expect. They could have slapped Pokemon to an average game and would sell tons. So they slapped it on this one. AR isn't doing a lot for the game, they could have skipped this. Pokemon is the secret sauce to its success.
Want proof? Look in what shitty condition the app is. No onboarding, crashes, glitches, server overloads, disconnects. Nintendo never ever released a game in this bad shape ever. No game would have gotten away with this, but Pokemon overshadows it as it is the first time people can enjoy Pokemon outside the Nintendo Hardware space - on their mobile phone. This alone sells anything.
More news might come. We'll see.
Really. What did you expect. They could have slapped Pokemon to an average game and would sell tons. So they slapped it on this one. AR isn't doing a lot for the game, they could have skipped this. Pokemon is the secret sauce to its success.
Want proof? Look in what shitty condition the app is. No onboarding, crashes, glitches, server overloads, disconnects. Nintendo never ever released a game in this bad shape ever. No game would have gotten away with this, but Pokemon overshadows it as it is the first time people can enjoy Pokemon outside the Nintendo Hardware space - on their mobile phone. This alone sells anything.
More news might come. We'll see.
2016/07/03
The bane of IP's
I have worked on games with foreign IP's a lot. You know you develop a game with an IP which you license. The industry has done this since their beginning and in the long term those business ideas fail. And there are reasons for this - but somehow they tend to forget - and history repeats again.
Soe of you might remember the time when Ocean, Activision and the rest bid themselves to death for arcade machine licenses. Outrun, Defender, R-Type etc. None of these games are around anymore. In fact most of us remember the original arcade developer and not the licensee. Who remembers that Activision did R-Type? In fact I produced R-Type on C64 and Amiga for them, but this is another story.
So this happened in the last weeks:
http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/28/kabam-to-make-mobile-strategy-game-based-on-james-camerons-avatar/
http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/28/plarium-teams-with-skydance-to-create-terminator-genisys-mobile-game/
Again f2p publishers turn to IP's to make their games more successful. Here is the thing. f2p games are successful if they live long. Decades. Believe me, the good f2p games are still around. Maybe you can check out Tibia, a game 18 years old and still feeding a developer of 70 people.
The problem lies here: who knows if the IP you license is still sexy in 5 years? or 10? Exactly then your game might fail. Who knows if the IP owner screws up their IP in the long run like the TV series Heroes or any other similar fail?
And this leads to the question: which IP's are worth licensing anyway?
I always tell my clients that IP's are only valuable if they represent a universe, not just a single story or setting. Lord of the Rings. Star Wars. Those are universes. Worth taking.
This again leads to the business problem that publishers bid themselves to death for the valuable IP's. Do you remember EA paying $200 million for Harry Potter? Where is that now?
This makes IP's very expensive in the long run and cuts into the development budget and ultimately into the quality. That was the reason why most IP based games simply sucked in the past. And will in the future. I say most, there are exceptions.
There are other problems too. The IP owners are very protective about their IP messing up your game - as they usually don't know how games work and their IP protection is more important to them than a good game, which they can't even quantify. This for example led to the strange fact that most racing games weren't allowed to damage the original cars of BMW, Mercedes etc.
And believe me, working with IP owners sucks energy out of the team and you, and the game ultimately, reducing your game to nothing.
So here oyu are sitting on a bad game with an IP you don't own after 5 years and wonder what to do.
Creating your own IP is 100x more valuable than buying someones IP. If you do you will never own your game. Never, wich contradicts everything you need to do to your game as a service. As you can't do whats good for your audience. Ultimately you will fail. Like so many others before.
Read the history of the game business. The 80's, 90's, 2000's. Every 10 years this happens. And fails.
p.s.: exceptions to the rule exist and you will notice that many use them as proof this works, however there are 10x more fails than successes with IP's. If you don't know how to work on IP's DONT DO IT.
Soe of you might remember the time when Ocean, Activision and the rest bid themselves to death for arcade machine licenses. Outrun, Defender, R-Type etc. None of these games are around anymore. In fact most of us remember the original arcade developer and not the licensee. Who remembers that Activision did R-Type? In fact I produced R-Type on C64 and Amiga for them, but this is another story.
So this happened in the last weeks:
http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/28/kabam-to-make-mobile-strategy-game-based-on-james-camerons-avatar/
http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/28/plarium-teams-with-skydance-to-create-terminator-genisys-mobile-game/
Again f2p publishers turn to IP's to make their games more successful. Here is the thing. f2p games are successful if they live long. Decades. Believe me, the good f2p games are still around. Maybe you can check out Tibia, a game 18 years old and still feeding a developer of 70 people.
The problem lies here: who knows if the IP you license is still sexy in 5 years? or 10? Exactly then your game might fail. Who knows if the IP owner screws up their IP in the long run like the TV series Heroes or any other similar fail?
And this leads to the question: which IP's are worth licensing anyway?
I always tell my clients that IP's are only valuable if they represent a universe, not just a single story or setting. Lord of the Rings. Star Wars. Those are universes. Worth taking.
This again leads to the business problem that publishers bid themselves to death for the valuable IP's. Do you remember EA paying $200 million for Harry Potter? Where is that now?
This makes IP's very expensive in the long run and cuts into the development budget and ultimately into the quality. That was the reason why most IP based games simply sucked in the past. And will in the future. I say most, there are exceptions.
There are other problems too. The IP owners are very protective about their IP messing up your game - as they usually don't know how games work and their IP protection is more important to them than a good game, which they can't even quantify. This for example led to the strange fact that most racing games weren't allowed to damage the original cars of BMW, Mercedes etc.
And believe me, working with IP owners sucks energy out of the team and you, and the game ultimately, reducing your game to nothing.
So here oyu are sitting on a bad game with an IP you don't own after 5 years and wonder what to do.
Creating your own IP is 100x more valuable than buying someones IP. If you do you will never own your game. Never, wich contradicts everything you need to do to your game as a service. As you can't do whats good for your audience. Ultimately you will fail. Like so many others before.
Read the history of the game business. The 80's, 90's, 2000's. Every 10 years this happens. And fails.
p.s.: exceptions to the rule exist and you will notice that many use them as proof this works, however there are 10x more fails than successes with IP's. If you don't know how to work on IP's DONT DO IT.
2016/06/23
Why do people play Game of War
If you haven't played Game of War you should. It represents a genre which kickstarted f2p in Europe. Among the originators was OGame, Tribal Wars, Travian, Ikariam, Grepolis and more. They all follow the same principles invented by a game called Planetarion - which failed to monetize as f2p wasn't invented back then.
And believe me every single game I mentioned is better than Game of War. So why do people play it and why is it so successful?
Game of War violates pretty much any f2p fair play rules. When you log back in after some days absence you have to close sales pop ups like crazy. Generally this game tries to sell you something at every corner of the UI. And it gets on your nerves, it disturbs game play. It is bad.
But it makes tons of money.
Why? Several reasons.
It was a first mover. Game of War was one of the first games of that successful genre being on mobile in a pretty solid quality.
It is a whale hunting game. The conversion of the game is bad but the ones who pay do so in exorbitant value. From stats I know it is by far the game with the highest average spending per paying user (ARPPU). Note: the value shown in the link is average YEARLY spending. Note 2: Some games excluded like Puzzle & Dragons which features a higher but only in Japan. Lets stick to world wide.
It is attractive to new gamers who don't know better. Yes. This. This is the prime reason. You should know that most gamers on mobile are new to games. This is a fact. So when they play Gamer of War they simply do not know the better ones. The the competition is either copying the bad style of Age of War or isn't known to them due to less marketing spend.
And the operator of Game of War knows this and puts their marketing where the new gamers are: on TV. TV ads attract a lot of users who aren't experience much in games. And when they are attracted ti strategy games they might try Game of War. The bad things of the game like the push to sales and pop ups are just something they think is normal. They accept this. Experienced gamers wouldn't. But those are the minority compared to the vast size of the mobile market.
There you have it. Game of War is successful as most of their players are new to games but fascinated by this successful genre. Competition is fierce. There are literally hundreds of these games in the App stores. And many of them are better. Some company make their living out of them like Kabam or Plarium.
The sad side story? German f2p publishers established f2p in Europe with this genre pre 2010 but lost the lead 60% market share (!) as they were too slow to move to mobile. Very sad.
And believe me every single game I mentioned is better than Game of War. So why do people play it and why is it so successful?
Game of War violates pretty much any f2p fair play rules. When you log back in after some days absence you have to close sales pop ups like crazy. Generally this game tries to sell you something at every corner of the UI. And it gets on your nerves, it disturbs game play. It is bad.
But it makes tons of money.
Why? Several reasons.
It was a first mover. Game of War was one of the first games of that successful genre being on mobile in a pretty solid quality.
It is a whale hunting game. The conversion of the game is bad but the ones who pay do so in exorbitant value. From stats I know it is by far the game with the highest average spending per paying user (ARPPU). Note: the value shown in the link is average YEARLY spending. Note 2: Some games excluded like Puzzle & Dragons which features a higher but only in Japan. Lets stick to world wide.
It is attractive to new gamers who don't know better. Yes. This. This is the prime reason. You should know that most gamers on mobile are new to games. This is a fact. So when they play Gamer of War they simply do not know the better ones. The the competition is either copying the bad style of Age of War or isn't known to them due to less marketing spend.
And the operator of Game of War knows this and puts their marketing where the new gamers are: on TV. TV ads attract a lot of users who aren't experience much in games. And when they are attracted ti strategy games they might try Game of War. The bad things of the game like the push to sales and pop ups are just something they think is normal. They accept this. Experienced gamers wouldn't. But those are the minority compared to the vast size of the mobile market.
There you have it. Game of War is successful as most of their players are new to games but fascinated by this successful genre. Competition is fierce. There are literally hundreds of these games in the App stores. And many of them are better. Some company make their living out of them like Kabam or Plarium.
The sad side story? German f2p publishers established f2p in Europe with this genre pre 2010 but lost the lead 60% market share (!) as they were too slow to move to mobile. Very sad.
2016/06/10
I am wondering .. a f2p Masterclass a good idea?
I play with this idea since some time and wonder how large the interest would be. Assume I do a 2 (or 3?) day Masterclass in f2p design covering all topics from monetization, system design, KPI optimization, Event design etc.
Of course the content would differ from the workshop you can find on youtube. That one was rather basic, this one is a designers in depth thing.
Would that be something you would be interested in? I would book a conference room in a Hotel you can stay and negotiate special deals. The evenings would be spend to mingle and talk about our favorite topics. Timeframe would be sometime mid/end of July. Or maybe the weekend before Gamescom?
The goal of the workshop would be to give you the weapons to properly design f2p games or optimize yours.
If you are interested shoot me an email and how many people would like to attend and what special interests you would have regarding topics and way how the master class would work.
Contact: teut986@gmail.com
Of course the content would differ from the workshop you can find on youtube. That one was rather basic, this one is a designers in depth thing.
Would that be something you would be interested in? I would book a conference room in a Hotel you can stay and negotiate special deals. The evenings would be spend to mingle and talk about our favorite topics. Timeframe would be sometime mid/end of July. Or maybe the weekend before Gamescom?
The goal of the workshop would be to give you the weapons to properly design f2p games or optimize yours.
If you are interested shoot me an email and how many people would like to attend and what special interests you would have regarding topics and way how the master class would work.
Contact: teut986@gmail.com
2016/05/29
The Damned App Store (Update)
Both of my versions (Amsterdam and Asia) of my talk for Casual Connect are online:
Asia / Singapore:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4gpHtYxf0I&feature=youtu.be
Europe / Amsterdam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jU4sRmqNrI&feature=youtu.be
The video of the panel is also online now about Asian vs. Westenr mechanics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-pnSvEFztg&feature=youtu.be
Enjoy!
Asia / Singapore:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4gpHtYxf0I&feature=youtu.be
Europe / Amsterdam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jU4sRmqNrI&feature=youtu.be
The video of the panel is also online now about Asian vs. Westenr mechanics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-pnSvEFztg&feature=youtu.be
Enjoy!
2016/04/12
Mobile Game Development vs. AAA
So many developers think Mobile development is so easy. Reason being that many games are smallish casual games. But here is the thing:
Nah. Let a friend explain it much better, thank you Seppo for this summary on Facebook:
Seppo Helava
Nah. Let a friend explain it much better, thank you Seppo for this summary on Facebook:
Seppo Helava
Dear fellow game devs, those of you who work on console/AAA games: You may think mobile is trivial compared to what you're doing. And in some ways you're right.In some ways you're very, very wrong.
It's a different set of problems. But to do a mobile game-as-a-service, at scale, keeping them successful for multiple years, is *significantly* more complex than most linear console games.
Graphically probably a lot less intense in most cases (though not all).
Logically probably a little bit simpler as well, depending on the game (*in general*, there are significant exceptions).
Design-wise? Same or harder, because of the need to design in growth, evolution of the mechanics over significant time periods, and factor in most of the business/monetization in fairly direct ways.
Management/production-wise? *Significantly* harder. Rallying a bunch of people to a ship date is intense, and extremely difficult - to the point where basically no one in AAA gets it even marginally correct. But shipping new content on a weekly basis, ensuring 99.99% uptime, balancing stuff to not break the game overall even after years of updates? You're taking on the risk of shipping live content every week. The difficulty of that vs. shipping once at the end isn't comparable. It's a totally different problem but it's just as hard *or harder*.
So, I'm not saying Mobile >> console/AAA. But I'm saying that if you don't appreciate the complexity and difficulty of shipping a game that's successful and lasts multiple years, that's because you're not aware of what goes into it. Dismiss it at your peril. This is a skillset you will almost certainly have to learn in the next decade, and if you think it's easy, you'll be dead.
2016/03/02
Casual Connect Amsterdam
So my talk at Casual Connect Amsterdam was a success. The room was packed, all seats taken and many people stood on the sides. Many ask for my slides or the video but I have to admit the video / slides will be delayed until after Casual Connect Asia where I will repeat a slightly longer edit of the same topic. Please be patient!
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