{"id":1682,"date":"2013-08-05T12:49:46","date_gmt":"2013-08-05T19:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/?p=1682"},"modified":"2013-08-05T12:49:46","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T19:49:46","slug":"notes-from-casual-connect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/?p=1682","title":{"rendered":"Notes from Casual Connect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/?p=1618\">mentioned<\/a> that I was at <a href=\"http:\/\/usa.casualconnect.org\/index.html\">Casual Connect<\/a> last week. Unfortunately I didn&#8217;t get as much benefit out of it as I&#8217;d hoped. I attended lectures Tuesday, but with a locked jaw I really wasn&#8217;t feeling attending on Wednesday. I made an effort to get over to see one lecture in particular called &#8220;Forget the Fu*king Press&#8221; but was disappointed to find it cancelled.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nI had actually acquired my pass by volunteering at Casual Connect. I was supposed to help watch over the Indie Showcase, but knowing that conversation was only going to aggravate my locked jaw, I had my position switched so that I would be checking badges instead. Unfortunately, this still required enough talking that by mid day, my face felt exhausted and I knew I wasn&#8217;t going to be able to last the rest of the day. I&#8217;m embarrassed to say that I wasn&#8217;t able to stick it out but at the same time there wasn&#8217;t a single person that I stopped to check their badge that didn&#8217;t already have one squirreled away in a pocket or backpack. I suspect that my aid wasn&#8217;t <em>really<\/em> required.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, the lectures themselves were alright, but it&#8217;s hard to take much away from a conference directed at social\/casual games when that&#8217;s not really what you&#8217;re developing. The format of the presentations made it so that the content was somewhat limited as well. I guess the idea is, your gamers only want to play games for about 20 minutes at a time therefore the developers must only want to have information thrown at them for 20 minutes at a time. It&#8217;s tough to instill any meaningful insight in a 20 minute conversation where part of that time is devoted to introducing who you are.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Here are the different lectures I attended, and the notes that I took whilst there:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"#SelfPublish\">Self-Publish or Die<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#ThreeThings\">Three Things to Think About When Designing Free-To-Play Games<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#StartUp\">Start Up Survival Lessons for Indie Developers<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#Culture\">Building an Amazing Studio Culture &#8211; There is More to it than Just Free Lunches<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#Trends\">EMERGING TRENDS: Global &#8220;Micro-indie&#8221; Development<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#MindMyths\">The Five Mind-Myths of the Micro-Mobile Studio<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#Niche\">Designing for Mass Niche Audiences<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#SkillGaming\">The New Face of Skill Gaming<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#Consoles\">Releasing on Consoles: From Business to Coding<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#DesignVsMarketing\">Game Design Vs. Game Marketing: Battle Round<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a name=\"SelfPublish\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Self-Publish or Die:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>By Will Harbin, CEO of Kixeye<\/li>\n<li>Kixeye has grown from about 5 to 500 employees in 4 years<\/li>\n<li>Publishers are obsolete in the free-to-play model<\/li>\n<li>Free-to-Play really is the new model of business for games<\/li>\n<li>If you can make a game, \u00a0you can publish a game<\/li>\n<li>It doesn&#8217;t make sense to let people take a cut of your money for essentially no work<\/li>\n<li>Set up an ad account and buy ads<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t share your revenue or control<\/li>\n<li>Different sectors to be aware of on the business end of things: marketing, community, game analytics, user acquisition, support, and insight<\/li>\n<li>The key is to make sure that the long term value of a user is greater than the cost per install<\/li>\n<li>You want the cost per click to be low: ie. organic\/viral sharing of your game<\/li>\n<li>You want the cost per install to be low: ie. fantastic new user experience -&gt; Hook them quickly<\/li>\n<li>You want high retention with good metrics: ie. what did users experience before quitting?<\/li>\n<li>Mechanics must be supported by the art style.<\/li>\n<li>You must be different<\/li>\n<li>Be platform agnostic and be versatile<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a name=\"ThreeThings\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><strong>Three Things to Think About When Designing Free-to-Play Games<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>By Tim Letourneau, CCO of Zinga<\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s been a journey to free-to-play&#8230; markets evolve<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t be afraid of commercial art. The Sistine Chapel is commercial art. Sometimes you need to do what is required to earn money. Sometimes, that&#8217;s free-to-play.<\/li>\n<li>Do what will be satisfying -and- financially beneficial -&gt; but don&#8217;t be afraid to cater to your market<\/li>\n<li>Bejeweled and Candy Crush Saga are essentially the same game<\/li>\n<li>Free to play must,\u00a0<em>must<\/em> pull people in immediately\u00a0<em>and<\/em> keep them for the long term or else they will lose their audience.<\/li>\n<li>You need to engage, and supply the audience with new things to keep them around<\/li>\n<li>Lessons Learned:<\/li>\n<li>-The future comes\u00a0<em>fast<\/em><\/li>\n<li>-What is the experience you will deliver in the future?<\/li>\n<li>-Have a long term creative vision, otherwise you risk fragmenting your game as you race to create new content at any cost. You need Creative Pillars.<\/li>\n<li>Have a tight economy. People don&#8217;t want it to be too easy, or too complex.<\/li>\n<li>Make things social. Build a community, and make them want to share their community with others<\/li>\n<li>(I somehow either missed the &#8220;three things&#8221; to think about&#8230; or it just wasn&#8217;t really listed and became more of a &#8220;things&#8221; to think about.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a name=\"StartUp\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><strong>Start-up Survival Lessons for Indie Developers<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>By\u00a0Kenny Huang, CEO of BlueBat Games<\/li>\n<li>One of the most useful things you can get involved with as a new company is &#8220;start-up acceleration&#8221; programs.<\/li>\n<li>You&#8217;ll ideally want three people to take on specific roles. CEO (Chief Executive Officer), CTO (Chief Technology Officer), and UX (User Experience) which involves UI\/Art\/Usability\/Testing.<\/li>\n<li>Hire slow and fire fast.<\/li>\n<li>The slower you&#8217;re able to fire, the slower you should higher. You really need a team that works well with one another, and if it&#8217;s not working you really need to cut the umbilical cord as a bad team can really hamper your ability to get things done.<\/li>\n<li>You need to bring in cash:<\/li>\n<li>-Work for hire isn&#8217;t evil<\/li>\n<li>-Fundraising \/ Investors<\/li>\n<li>-Government Grants &amp; Tax Credits (ESPECIALLY IN CANADA)<\/li>\n<li>-Crowd Funding<\/li>\n<li>Learn to do financial statements.<\/li>\n<li>-this is particularly easy at first when you have no money flow, and will save you money if you can do it yourself<\/li>\n<li>The worst thing you can do is make something that you love, but isn&#8217;t attracting people. You\u00a0<em>need<\/em> to market your product. You\u00a0<em>need<\/em> people to be interested and invested in you.<\/li>\n<li>Learn methodology<\/li>\n<li>-Launch fast and iterate<\/li>\n<li>Luck is involved, but you can engineer your own luck. Don&#8217;t\u00a0<em>wait<\/em> for it.<\/li>\n<li>Some books to read:<\/li>\n<li>&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Get-Lucky-Serendipity-Business-ebook\/dp\/B007AKBIGI\">Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business \u00a0-&gt; Muller &amp; Becker<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lean-Analytics-OReilly-ebook\/dp\/B00AG66LTM\/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1375728676&amp;sr=1-1-spell&amp;keywords=Lean+Analytics+-%3E+Croll+%26+Poskovitz\">Lean Analytics -&gt; Croll &amp; Yoskovitz<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Financial-Intelligence-Revised-Edition-ebook\/dp\/B00AXS5EAK\/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1375728532&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=Financial+Intelligence+for+Entrepreneurs\">Financial Intelligence, Revised Edition: A Manager&#8217;s Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean -&gt; Berman &amp; Knight &amp; Case<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Made-Stick-others-unstuck-ebook\/dp\/B0031RS2XG\/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1375728768&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=made+to+stick+heath\">Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck -&gt; Heath &amp; Heath<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a name=\"Culture\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><strong>Building an Amazing Studio Culture &#8211; There is More to it than Just Free Lunches<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Josh Nilson, Co-Founder of\u00a0East Side Games -&gt; Tim Teh, Co-Founder of Kano Apps -&gt; Emily Greer, Co-Founder of Kongregate -&gt; Sonia Ryan, People Culture and Outreach at A Thinking Ape<\/li>\n<li>Really this was a conversation between the different people on their views of why the culture at their company works.<\/li>\n<li>The take away is basically, this needs to be more than\u00a0<em>just<\/em> a place of business. Respect your employees, and do what you can to make sure they belong and mingle with one another.<\/li>\n<li>Have a creed\/belief and go with it<\/li>\n<li>Think of these people as extended family<\/li>\n<li>There is no silver bullet, you need your own culture<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t do everything through email. New people need to see that there is a culture \/ legacy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a name=\"Trends\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><strong>EMERGING TRENDS: Global &#8220;Micro-indie&#8221; Development<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>By\u00a0Steve Felter, CEO of Gamesalad<\/li>\n<li>Only 10% of indies will make enough money to be able to quit their day job<\/li>\n<li>It will take about 10+ games released before you&#8217;ll be profiting at over $15k per game<\/li>\n<li>Taken from Owen Goss&#8217;s 2011<a href=\"http:\/\/www.streamingcolour.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/28\/results-ios-game-revenue-survey\/\"> iOS revenue survey<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Takeaway from this is that persistence pays&#8230; but not much<\/li>\n<li>Indie Advantages include speed, agility, risk taking, and cost structure. If you\u00a0<em>aren&#8217;t<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>taking advantage of these&#8230; why are you indie?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a name=\"MindMyths\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><strong>The Five Mind-Myths of the Micro-Mobile Studio<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>By Charles Cox, Founder &amp; CEO of 4gency<\/li>\n<li>Users are not an acquisition strategy<\/li>\n<li>Going viral is not easy<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/4gency.com\/tag\/post-mortem\/\">4gency.com<\/a> has post mortems<\/li>\n<li>Game dev is difficult to get right. Making a game, and marketing it can be considered a $25,000 education&#8230; not necessarily a profitable one.<\/li>\n<li>Find your niche<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a name=\"Niche\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><strong>Designing for Mass Niche Audiences<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>By\u00a0David Kim, Co-Founder &amp; CEO of Animoca<\/li>\n<li>You need to be aware that you can design for demographics, geographics, and interest\/lifestyle<\/li>\n<li>If you design your game to be appreciated by 1% of Americans, 1% of Canadians, 1% of Japanese, 1% of Chinese etc etc it quickly adds up to be millions of people.<\/li>\n<li>Basically, you shouldn&#8217;t be afraid to target a niche and go for it. Things don&#8217;t have to, and probably shouldn&#8217;t appeal to\u00a0<em>everyone.<\/em>\u00a0But you need to tell your niche that your product exists.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a name=\"SkillGaming\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The New Face of Skill Gaming<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>By Wim Stocks, Virgin Gaming -&gt;\u00a0Mark Donovan, President of Xfire -&gt;\u00a0Andrew Paradise, CEO and Founder of Skillz -&gt;\u00a0Cooper Moo, VP of Business Development at GSN Digital<\/li>\n<li>This is all about competitive gaming, such as with games like Halo<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s about betting $ on matches<\/li>\n<li>You should be able to play competitive games online for prizes. This is the equivalent\u00a0of telling your buddy &#8220;I bet you $5 I can kick your ass in Halo&#8221;. This is unfortunately not legal everywhere.<\/li>\n<li>This is about real $ gaming, not just credits for in-game purchases, however you should be aware that if there is any way to redeem in-game credits for real $ you <strong>are<\/strong> gambling with real $.<\/li>\n<li>Tournaments should be habitual<\/li>\n<li>Skill based games are looking to increase in China. China really loves that style of gaming versus America&#8217;s passion for slot machines<\/li>\n<li>expecting to increase to be a $671m industry by end of year (or greater pending laws that are being considered)<\/li>\n<li>E-Athletics is a thing, and gamers can now get the same visas as athletes<\/li>\n<li>Need the angry birds of skill based competitions to help explode the market<\/li>\n<li>Need to convince people that it isn&#8217;t gambling<\/li>\n<li>Fair Matches via ranking is necessary for -everyone- to ensure that n00bs don&#8217;t play against pros<\/li>\n<li>-If people lose a lot, they&#8217;ll stop playing<\/li>\n<li>Trying to create a pay-per-play scene basically, where people don&#8217;t withdraw money. This is what most online gambling sites have achieved<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a name=\"Consoles\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Releasing on Consoles: From Business to Coding<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>By Brian Provinciano, Founder of Vblank Entertainment<\/li>\n<li>Each SKU counts as a release. You&#8217;ll need separate contracts for Sony US\/EU\/Japan etc<\/li>\n<li>Retro City Rampage ended up with about $10 per unit after discounts<\/li>\n<li>170k Units sold in the first 9 months<\/li>\n<li>1 person<\/li>\n<li>$0 for marketing (ads) though did spend to attend conventions\/hand swag<\/li>\n<li>Comicon, E3, PAX -&gt; travel expenses\/swag. Didn&#8217;t pay for booths or ads<\/li>\n<li>Consoles are lower risk, and less discount driven.<\/li>\n<li>-He had more sales on steam, but more profit per unit from PSN<\/li>\n<li>-launch promotions have weight<\/li>\n<li>-there&#8217;s a more focused wudience<\/li>\n<li>-better store placement<\/li>\n<li>More to releasing than just development. Expect at least 1\/3rd of your time to be spent on non-dev tasks<\/li>\n<li>You&#8217;ll need to do task juggling<\/li>\n<li>You&#8217;ll need to get certified<\/li>\n<li>-This is extensive<\/li>\n<li>-Documentation required<\/li>\n<li>&#8211;Documents must be in the national languages wherever you release. Engligh, French, Spanish are the minimum for North America<\/li>\n<li>PEGI \/ \u00a0ESRB<\/li>\n<li>-costs add up<\/li>\n<li>Steam and Vita are the best goals to target for profit<\/li>\n<li>Brian has slides on <a href=\"http:\/\/retrocityrampage.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/xbox-self-publishing\/\">his website<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a name=\"DesignVsMarketing\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Game Design Vs. Game Marketing: Battle Round<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>By Eyal Rabinovich, VP Marketing at PlayScape -&gt; Tom Hess, Lead Product Manager at DeNA<\/li>\n<li>Essentially, marketing is a tool to serve the business<\/li>\n<li>-Marketing is just the message<\/li>\n<li>You need to communicate a message<\/li>\n<li>1% of games succeed&#8230; you need marketing to get discovered<\/li>\n<li>You need monetization to succeed<\/li>\n<li>You can&#8217;t market without a product, but your product won&#8217;t sell if you don&#8217;t market it<\/li>\n<li>Design &amp; Marketing are on pretty equal footing. You cannot rely on one to carry you.<\/li>\n<li>Referring to big spenders as &#8220;whales&#8221; dehumanizes people&#8230; you are addicting people&#8230; is free-to-play ethical?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I mentioned that I was at Casual Connect last week. Unfortunately I didn&#8217;t get as much benefit out of it as I&#8217;d hoped. I attended lectures Tuesday, but with a locked jaw I really wasn&#8217;t feeling attending on Wednesday. I made an effort to get over to see one lecture in particular called &#8220;Forget the Fu*king Press&#8221; but was disappointed to find it cancelled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-1682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1682"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1696,"href":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions\/1696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}