King's business performance director on creativity, analytics, and Henry Ford

so my name is Emily the business performance director in the studio Barcelona and I almost basically together with the team of data scientists and business performance managers to make sure that our games always form to the best of their potential so we are looking at the numbers of horror games game plays the metrics that come out of it and and give the team's the information I'm going to talk to make the game better you know give a simple example if we find out that a certain level of the game that will number 38 a lot of people stop playing because it's too frustrating and that's the kind of information that we take out of the games feed it back to the game to you to say hey try to treat that level make it simple for people who passed because otherwise I'm gonna lose 20% of the players there which is and so we've been looking at but we've solitude and you know it was illustrate it looks really interesting so this course is sequel so

why I need a sequel to of which so why do see because we wanted to know it was a basically three reasons we wanted to make a lean forward and with the game so usually our games our services because they're they're casual social games they are not running out after after launch and then it's the content as it is for the rest of its lifetime actually we launched our games fairly fairly early on with the relatively small set of levels and then we keep on adding and improving over time so other words everyone now is almost three years old we'll have close to 600 levels basically I'm not even entirely sure but 500 600 levels area what park area if you want to step out of that frame that you put yourself for the game and you want to experiment with things that go really change the core game changing for example the size of the war no change in the way that the controls work or experimenting with different game modes

it's probably able to do that it's level 657 so that was one of the reasons the other reason is that we there we know from 10 years of experience with casual games that people love playing power shooters but actually nobody hasn't done any great of a shooter a pretty long time my question is I don't know I think those are there's often also fashions and trends so we see a lot of passionate and imagination or a lot of action in linkers sliders and click the type of games but nobody has to looking at that it's a sometimes I think it's also trying to throw away come and go people think that that was that's that's 2006 doesn't work anymore but I think if anything if you look at the the capital sector that for game mechanics many of them have been around for twenty thirty years here and the twist is how you make that into a new font game have new

elements to that both make it recognizable but also challenging in you for people to play something to discover a mattress it cannot just be published as in this place you don't know you know a twist in the formula and some of these universes existing for a long time and in the tool you mean earlier you kept mention creativity of King why is group like what is creativity some woman on the global stage what you want a keynote because it's the feature of everything that you do if you just start to to you know algorithmically iterate on what you have it's basically a formula to slow and gradual decay you never know what the next big thing is might be we have somebody here it might possibly have somebody just starting up in the garage next door you never know that but you need to you need to keep pushing you need to start coming up with new things and came for example we have game jams every year so the entire studios across King at the

same time across the year leave the office with all the equipment and we go outside of a different space and they work in very small teams to maximum three people and they have 24 hours to create you get up to you do whatever crazy the other hand and a half no there's no teachers no midnight process just go and make it it's also a lot of fun and it's we do that in a competition and are the best games out there we take our maternity games for our own web platform so then you make a slightly naughty but usually also very very small TV for people involved on war and on a very short time scale a few months we turn that into a game that we can launch on the web and from that we learned fairly quickly we launched more than 180 games like this over 10 years we learn very quickly what is what is it that sticks ideas I think is Steve Jobs that one seven years a dime a dozen that's

really the hard part is not coming up with ideas the hard part is finding out which of their 106 that you have on the table is the one that you should be doing the way we do it is we let the players decide they decide on our website by playing the games and playing some games Morton and others so they tell us this is something that I want and once we know that we have a full team available we start to developing that into the forty-first cyber type of game you're clearly very passionate about creativity and you know positive about King as company and there's a narrative that's being told in the press perhaps you can long sparkle gamers the king isn't a they certainly seem they King as not the company that's a space create their creativity and creative freedom I would I would suggest that some portion maybe even saw their viewers would suggest the Kings place where you

know certainly game archetypes are we made and then they've come successful and then came very strongly defendants those those games I will see you never feel like that is the narrative so how would you respond to some reasons Chris Clun I think it's there's there's several aspects to that the first part is that naturally speaking with you if you talk to a more classic more hardcore or in both respects or just in general the area of the place and Cavanagh games are not considered a very in opera innovative feel so it feels more like that's not you know there's no what's the new thing it was the pushing the boundary physics where's the this the new other controls with the new Google type of rendering or whatever kind of graphics so so they don't see that this of this a large chunk of innovation that is attached to technological innovation

and that's not you never pretend to do that we never we never set so actually and we start this month games we do because it's not the type of games our players like to play then again there's a lot of innovation within the game's itself and if you take the classic example Kenny prospect somewhere I know that the founder of PopCap I think he posts at one point said that very nicely because it's often Civic yeah you know that's just bejeweled but he said it very nicely and I like it so there's not coming for me now that what what King is done with the game is much more than just doing a visual on it something that you worked on because if you look over there we have 600 levels which I had crafted and which have constantly varying mechanics in the game it's not one game mode that is repeated over and over again there's different elements in the way of innovation how do how all the power-ups work together in the game that make actually the heart and core of candy crush well you can

have different effects when you mix the candies is that is that the innovation like saying through the first 3d first-person sugar no we said this but it's still a very very important piece of innovation if you think about it I remember when when the iPhone launch have this discussion many times people are saying who were very anti Apple in this case I'm not comparing geologists I like this example where it matters day night but there's nothing you and the phone was there before touchscreens were though for I my phone as an ally browser and check my email there's absolutely nothing new about that the best truth but the sum of things is different than the whole is more than just the sum of the things so soon as either for cities their creativity in terms is that more creativity in terms of statistical analysis and player feedback that's one thing is that word were a lot

of the creativity it's not the creativity and the team's first off first and foremost the team server wants doing the games it's like if you take this example what I mentioned before which is part of my job and I like the games once they are life are being played by players that's something that's based on the game that they create there's nobody there's no you know executive decision I'm telling them how to do the game take the example but we start to know yes there is a friend given in the sense that after after being how to do the best we say we want to do we want to try this as a sequel and to a new published shooter I mean one compared to the okay we wanted we want to have people game they want to have more game modes but that's basically the kind of pitch that fits on one piece of paper and that's what the team tanks and the team points with it and the team creates the game and all the creativity that goes in there there's nobody telling them how what's the story behind it why should should we go the same which is should it be younger which is the next generation of

which is what should the colors what should the game want to be that you actually try and prototype and find out whether or not they're fun all this is coming from the team they are the owners of this and that's where I think more than anything is people consider kidnapped to be a great place to work I think be very much in my head toward the comment and join the teams because it's a creative challenge day in day out and so finance bows and to come a little bit close to you all position like directly and along with also second question if you know one of your one of moms you giving earlier was about forward and saying yeah you know if people if you notice it's what people want to tip like this first post and so I suppose when I sort of issues it and how do you how do

you as somebody who is you know animal is in how they gain performance how are you using that data and that information to be fought to say you know actually you don't want this thing even though you think you do you actually want this up how do you personally use that data to create to I should tell your audience or once essentially at the level of creation of the games we don't use this thing at all so the when it comes to creating in your game and having the energy of a new game no no they don't accept the data that you carry in your hair which is what you call experience will tell you whether or not that will be successful and we want to use that example also so they could make a tip again and decompose any question to all that statistical elements and I can roll the second game which for

all these ingredients will all have these features that drive this morality or this monetization and this kind of thing and mechanical thing that is there and what you end up is a game that most life is not gonna be fun no way it works is the envelope is only there to multiply something which is in the center and the heart and core is always the gameplay and it's always the game that's that comes of the same creation of the same creative process like like any other entertainment product that you have I would say one of the key advantages of King is that we do have an hour suppose our own platform so we have we are at liberty to create this super heart and core of the game the game idea it's very simplest and turn it into a simple fun game to play a tournament based gameplay and we put it in front of place and that's the player features in the tablet reviews if you to play that game ten times a day play ten times to Warren and the other day it's probably good indicate that

people like playing this game but then suppose they another takes hasn't gets it's just having this at our disposal deserves great weight advantage it helps us to to eliminate to reduce the risk a lot that we do not start about in a fully fleshed our game over much longer period of time when we when we start this process we already know the hardened corpus game some in the place with all still doesn't mean it's gonna be a bit we still make it work we still need to find out how to develop it and how to make it better and how to have a progression that keeps players entertained for two or three years or more so that's how a challenge