Casual Connect 2013: Navigating Different Devices: How to Make Successful Cross-Platform Games

moderated by Neal Sinno, SVP of Casual & Mobile Games, Arkadium

·         Panelists include Mathieu Nouzareth (CEO and Co-founder, FreshPlanet Inc.), Carl Callewaert (Evangelist, Unity), Lisa Paulson (VP Business Development, A&E), and Rob Sandberg (Sr. Producer, Reliance Entertainment Digital)

·         A&E goes where the product makes sense, either on Facebook or mobile. All their games are outsourced and they have a lot of level content. A&E’s audience is mostly Midwesterners and Southerners who are less tech savvy than the coasters, so they do a lot of marketing pushes on Facebook and more mainstream platforms.

·         FreshPlanet used Adobe Air to launch SongPop on multiple platforms, which allowed them to reach critical mass easier.

·         Unity’s slogan is to make once and deploy anywhere. It’s good to hire game designers who have worked on different platforms.

·         Try to keep social and mobile the same game experience, and only change the UI. Different devices should deliver the same experience, like localization, but tune the messaging to the audience.

·         One problem nowadays is that games have to implement so many SDKs. SongPop has 15 SDKs, which are all constantly changing and updating. It’s frustrating when the game is nearing release and an SDK updates, requiring more work and increasing the filesizes.