Casual Connect 2013: Keeping Your Development Team Motivated to Run the Free-to-Play Marathon

by Guy Bendov, CEO, Sidekick Games

·         Think about development in two phases, pre-launch and post-launch. In other words, it’s assumptions and realities.

·         The unknowns of moving into the free-to-play space are scary. Not everyone can handle it.

·         Advice – lose ridigness, locate the nimble and detail-oriented, create a small team with external help, focus on the core features and postpone the others, the team needs to support quick iterations

·         Gratifying for the team – short bursts, playable deliverables, everyone should get exposures to the numbers

·         Explore but don’t lose the end goal. Write a game brief with the main features, and then explore the game with everyone involved.

·         A free-to-play game is like running an online shop. You need marketing, sales, and in-store updates with item management, promotions, pricing, and placement.

·         Communicate with players often and have the entire team communicate with them. Players are the guiding angels and the numbers they generate are key. Print out all the numbers and expose it to the team by pasting it near the team area.

·         Tips – allow the team to change game parameters online without pushing content updates, leave time for third party service integration, be quick to respond to failures, don’t lose yourself

·         Making a free-to-play game is like what Ray Bradbury said about love and business. “First you jump off the cliff and you build your wings on the way down.”

Casual Connect 2013: Building an Amazing Sutdio Culture: There is More to It Than Free Lunches

moderated by Chris Ye, founder, Uken Games

·         Summary: Co-locate the team for face-to-face communication and keep them motivated.

·         Note: I only caught the first half of this panel.

·         Panelists include Joshua Nilson (Co-founder, East Side Games), Tim Teh (Co-founder, Kano Apps), Emily Greer (Co-founder, Kongregate), and Sonia Ryan (Outreach, A Thinking Ape).

·         Culture outlasts every company and allows them to be innovative and creative.

·         East Side Games printed their three pillars and posted it on the walls near the entrance. Their pillars are “fiercely independent,” “community,” and “fail faster.”

·         A Thinking Ape is decentralized by product. They make their core hours 1pm – 4pm, and everything else is up to the team itself. The teams can choose to work from 1pm to 11pm if they choose to. They try to centralize the company through town hall meetings and “Ask a Founder” Fridays where anyone in the company can ask the founders silly questions.

·         General tips – stress communication between employees, put people in the office at the same time for that face-to-face communication, deencentivize people working at home, give employees rewards if they’ve been there x months, have annual all-company off-site meetings if your company has several offices.

·         There’s no silver bullet for company culture. Everybody will organically grow their culture in their own ways.

·         Hiring out of the player base will ensure very loyal and passionate employees.

Casual Connect 2013: Start-up Survival Lessons for Indie Developers

by Kenny Huang, CEO, BlueBat Games

·         Summary: Be able to take on any role, take on projects to bring in cash, and remain persistent.

·         Wear lots of hats. You have to be an engineer, designer, producer, and even the janitor.

·         The first three people to hire are the CEO, CTO, and UX (someone who does art, UI, and usability testing).

·         Pick your evil dictator at the start because dictatorship moves things a lot faster.

·         Need to hire slow and fire fast. It’s important to build a really good team at the start.

·         Need to bring in cash. If you’re really passionate about something and you’re not making money, then it’s a hobby, not a business.

o    Do work-for-hire and take some contracts.

o    Pitch and get fundraising, though this is a full-time job in itself. It’s especially tough in the games industry since it’s a hit-driven industry. Investors aren’t looking for a good project, they’re looking for a good company. You need to instill confidence in your investory, which may mean building out your portfolio beforehand.

o    Get government grants or tax credits. There are less strings attached.

o    Crowdfund using Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, but make sure it is project-based, not company-based.

·         Learn financial statements, at least at the surface level.

·         Don’t trust the statement: ”If you build it, they will come.” Almost in all cases, they will not come. You need to budget for post-launch and marketing.

·         Use lean methodology. Build a MVP (minimal viable product), launch fast, test it, and iterate on it.

·         Get lucky. When all else fails, listen to the wife and ask what she thinks (assuming she’s the casual audience).

·         Remain persistent. BlueBat Games had 94 rejections before finally getting VC backing.

·         Further reading – Get Lucky (Miller & Becker), Lean Analytics (Croll & Yoskovitz), Made to Stick (Heath & Heath), Financial Intelligence for Entrepeneurs (Berman, Knight, Case).