Fireside Chat: Creating enticing sports games with short and fast play time

[Music] thank you very much so I'm Craig Chappell I'm a senior editor of Pocket Gamer got this kind of responsible for what you see on the silo though Ian's here he writes most of it a little bit but it's nothing about me so we've got John Middleton here from nifty games I have a bit of a bio here but you can correct me if anything is incorrect a games industry veteran of over 20 years John's held executive roles it is content so meet fire with game publishing at pulse entertainment game hardware Mad Catz you've been the CEO of

various companies and also have added them so booming game music massive in-game entertainment eight cylinders and now you've just set up nifty games with a focus on sports for mobile and digital platforms and you've raised three million dollars I believe yes three million sorry today that's seed round okay so I guess so the first question just so everyone understands a bit more about what you're doing so could you tell us kind of the reasons you form nifty and what what the company is up to sure thing so we started nifty a while back where we were looking at different I mean I guess primarily between myself and my partner Pete wanted who's back in California well honestly it's a bit trite but I think one of the major reasons we're very passionate sport fans Pete comes from a background where he was at ESPN way back in the day at a claim he made a worked

on NBA Jam and big her at baseball all-star baseball and I felt quarterback club I've worked over the years with a lot of different sports leagues and athletes on different projects within gaming and you know it's one of these things we've had this project in mind for quite a while and the opportunity kind of continued to be evident and so as as we rolled along we decided to go for it and you know we started raising early last year we closed our seed rounds in right about October and announced that November and now we're we're moving further into the business side of building up the company and the games as well as external relationships so you think your focus on sports why do you think there's such a big opportunity in sports now and are there specific areas within sports that are of the most

interest this is quite a broad area actually got them in my kid yeah you know it's it's interesting because you know sports sport games as a genre it's not really so much genres is almost a theme because it's it's sports and so basically looking at the success that's been around sports or lasts really 15 years has been mostly in high-end Sims with FIFA and Madden football as well as 2k basketball really on the console side very much driven by the big kind of traditional triple-a publishers more recently I think there's been efforts in mobile that have I'd say it shown some some real appeal to where there's mass market sports fans that are looking for content that that is a more relative to them on a day to day basis and it let's just lets them engage with their their

favorite sports on an ongoing basis and that's I think a really big thing and for us it's all about looking at ways to not just address you know gamers on on a user acquisition basis but also looking for fans people that already have a predisposition towards these sports and towards teams and leagues and players where they have you know higher proclivity towards engaging in the game and staying in the game you're talking a bit about licenses that do these kind of what we get about but these kind of games require those licenses if you're looking at it from a user acquisition perspective or is there a big audience just for these this games that is also untapped well I mean I don't think they require them I think that there's uh I mean even right here and you get obviously golf clashes done great on mobile played Amex got a great job of kind of bringing golf and

it's kind of that ease easy to play hard to master kind of gameplay frankly myself I've always loved new star soccer I'm a big fan of that one over the years that's my plane game so I've I think they've done a great job as well I think you don't necessarily need to have licenses involved or or even player licenses or any kind of affiliation but I can also say it is it certainly helps and you know from our standpoint we've got investment from a lot of different professional sports team owners particularly the US so you know it's interesting to see it's really where what's the easiest and best way to find communities where you can then go and expose them to your game and keep them entertained so you had quite a some big-name investors that are involved in sports I know there's some things you can talk about but so are these

companies so sports brands teams companies are they looking at mobile as an opportunity or increasingly so they've always been there or is now the time to involve them well I mean you know in this case I think we've now slaughtered so you know axiomatic is our lead investor you know axiomatic is is a group that is investing in gaming that you've probably a lot of people have maybe heard that invest in epically recently in the Niantic they announced last week but their background is really entertainment and then professional sports and in the u.s. they owned about in combination the the partners in axiomatic owned about about fifteen to eighteen different professional sports teams between the NFL NBA NHL and Major League Baseball we've also got Pegula sports entertainment which owns the Buffalo Bills in the NFL and then the Buffalo Sabres in the NHL involved as well

so I think they're not necessarily looking at ways that for them it's about how do they engage their communities sort of engage their fan bases it's all about engagement it's all about found a fan reward fan satisfaction I think they look at the fact that the you know it's team owners on an individual basis not on a league basis I think the the league's have always been thrilled with the idea of you have these big partnerships with big publishers but there's there's a kind of a you know opening below that that is a big opportunity for a smaller company to come in and look for different ways to basically exercise that opportunity to continue to address those fans are you saying that the they're susceptible to developers project them about potential partnerships do you think yeah no I think they are I mean you know it's funny cuz axiomatic primarily set of frames eSports you know they own they own team liquid likewise with March

Capital is another one of our investors uh Gregory Milken who's who's there is actually our board member from March is a big investor in the Immortals there's there's a big crossover going on right now between eSports and traditional sport they all they understand the business of what eSports could be but they have a high interest in what gaming and and traditional sports where they meet in the middle but not necessarily with the idea that it has to cross over to eSports or anything like that so it's really about kind of building a pool of content where they can best bring the most value outside of money and you know obviously they have a lot of that too which helps so we saw some of their about other games so you got FIFA you Madden's which it was a huge and on mobile as well now so what kind of how are you getting in what kind of games are you looking at you're looking at kind of short and fast sessions so are you looking at - I'd driven more more I

ap I mean from our standpoint you know we're not anti advertising in any way but I think probably more in the vein of the way traditional sport treats advertising more sponsorships or affiliation deals rather than no ongoing no in-game advertising that's why we're looking at but yeah the games we're going we're looking to produce her definitely the biggest thing is competition you know so head-to-head synchronized short session you know you're talking kind of in the 3 to 5 minutes you know easy to play hard to master style of gaming and obviously for us it's a mobile-first approach and that's really driven by going after the the kind of the largest market addressable market we can find but we're also looking at console and PC

as as following would you be looking at things like cross-platform come out as connect work with what you're planning to do even with 3 to 5 minute sessions sure yeah I mean I think cross-platform I mean has been proven out this for sure this year has been the year where cross platforms come together I think as as we move forward across platform plays I won't call it a prerequisite but I think it's something that's here to stay and definitely is a smart way to go with your games if you can whether they're it doesn't matter if they're three minutes or three hour gameplay sessions I think the more you can evolve players on whatever you know whether they're on mobile or console or PC or whatever other future gadget or gizmo that comes out that's a game capable it only makes sense to me that if you can allow everybody to play each other when and where they are but you definitely advise people then to when they're making a mobile game even with those who to

definitely do that if it works them because obviously people user acquisition is quite an expensive figure as well so then to think about how you going to market it something on PC yeah I mean I think you got a everybody's got to take their own path when I marketing side of it's a different story of anything I think just from a pure gamer gameplay you know what's best for the audience I'm a full endorser of cross-platform gameplay but I think when it comes to user acquisition marketing development costs I think that's a case-by-case basis I was thinking still with the consolidation of just the mobile games industry show me what's working about those big games sometimes maybe a brands not even enough you still need to have backing or millions of dollars for sure yeah I know I think the more creative you can get with your whatever type of user acquisition you're after I mean I think branding certainly can help it hasn't necessarily proven to be you know

a silver bullet necessarily in all cases you know what I favor is more probably geared towards a heavy focus more of a laser focus on certain segments of gamers certainly you know rather than going after it kind of a shotgun approach where where you're trying to kind of just smash it out to all gamers and all types I mean it's one of the big reasons why he you know from a lock-and-key standpoint one of the you know the thing that we love about sports is we can we can we know the type of people were looking to engage we know the type of gamers were trying to find and generally you know they're watching sports they're going to support events they're playing sports and they're engaging with sports you know in a gaming form as well um one thing that I I personally enjoy most about certain sports is the tactical depth around so

not just the quick pace spies when there's a lot more for going into it so it could be like one-off pieces of skill or like if you watch snooker when they're just trying to hear the thought process so how important is it to get that tactical depth even in a game that you're trying to get short and simple well I think you know for us it's important to capture the kind of the flavor of the sport I mean Dougie Brice I totally understood me you know I watched the NFL playoffs last night till about 6:00 in the morning so that was definitely a longer sit-down session but I think for us it's more about gamers ability to access the sport so I think from a tactical standpoint you want to be able to capture the essence of it but you don't necessarily need to capture it from a simulation standpoint that make sense how important

is social to this Sean Rogers you see you're talking about real-time play as well so adding in social mechanics is that something you need I mean there's some very good single player games like Miniclip did football strike sure which is fantastic it's good when you bought cold cash job people really get a social element so how important is it I think it's really important I think the more you can build in you know if it's a clan system kind of thing we think of it as you know more leagues and teams and you know well obviously bring our own thumb attic sport view to it but I think the more you can interconnect the people that you're playing with in an ongoing basis the better off you are and you know that's true about pretty much all games and sports games in particular I think there's always been an affinity towards that kind of a community aspect of it I do you want to call it that I mean players like to be on teams teams like to be in leagues leagues like to

win so you're talking a bit about clans there and being a sports game at least from a UK football perspective I can say that people are very passionate it's horrible word use of these days but a very passionate about the teams they support but then it can be very toxic to other fans put that in the game space that can lead to all manner of of issues so do you think are there best practices and ways to integrate those social elements I think there is I mean when you're talking about you know fandom from the sense of oh you're you know if you're a man City fan or a man you fan you know and the two shall not cross kind of thing you know my fans have it all so yeah but I think when it comes to gaming it's more about how do we kind of involve all fans of football and they're the same style of game where you know it

might not be in a situation in our games we're actually even facing off and that's in that sense it may be more of an eclectic mix where you know a more similar to fantasy sports not that we're really engaging in the fantasy sports style statistically driven types of games but we do like the nature of the way people engage with sports through fantasy and know that they don't have the it does alleviate that you know you know a specific territoriality when it comes to a team by team affinity you know and that we actually view that as a strength you've got a real real world connection where you know in other games and other types of games whether it's you know just general RPGs or RTS or MOBAs or whatever you know what games that are you know dragons and dwarfs and goblins and you know it's great and I've I've I've been a gamer since I was a kid and I love every type of game that's out

there but I think with sport games you've got a relationship with the real world and that's a huge advantage so we can go out and we can work with with different communities that are either working with with the sports as they go on in a professional sports or or even amateur sports you know where we can actually bring that what happens on the field on the pitch you know in the ring into the game itself what do you think that you so with the games that you're gonna make the live events gonna be important as well you're gonna have to bring it into the real world in terms of well here's a big that's like the super balls happen is you gotta do a special Super Bowl game Patriots are go Boston guessing so yeah yeah that's real world events I think are again you get back to something that bucks the trend

of mobile gaming do it in a way where you know you look at things like whether it's WrestleMania or the Super Bowl or the Masters for golf or the British Open you know frankly or the world's World Series of baseball there's there's a huge amount of attention even on an event by event basis you've got you know games going all week in and out where you've got tens of thousands of very focused very attentive you know I'll come you know in fans people that we can go and engage in the games I was just about to say does anyone in the audience want to ask a question questions any boy any questions back there my PR guy in the back see that's PR we just we just got back from practicing lighting man

lose you for the last three days last question do you have any more tips for dealing with sports brands and companies tips yeah you know I think if it's from a development standpoint for publishers if it's from a developer standpoint I think proving out your concept and getting content on screen that speaks to the you know what they're offering is it's important just like any ideally with any other IP owner you know to generalize it but I think sports groups in general are they're a bit tough for the reach but they're also a bit more open when you get there kind of thing so I wouldn't back down from it I think it's an interesting group of people to speak with that they like gaming they like the idea of getting into younger younger demographics a lot of these traditional sports that have been around for decades and not centuries

have problems keeping the younger generation involved and that's an ongoing fight for them they're always looking to kind of plant the seeds of future fans so it's a win okay thank you very much really shave it thank you very much thanks for coming everyone [Music]