Mike Bithell on strategies for indie success

so one thing um that I found uh is is finding specific opportunities is very important it's something that happened with Thomas Was Alone soled by mistake wasn't something we planned for but one thing uh again that you find in the conference circuit is that Trends are often discussed you know where's the money where are people hitting big what was the last game that came out and was very successful and how do we emulate that and follow that and the problem with that is that means we see these enormous population shifts following the success which is really bad business uh generally uh we see this a lot so examples that have come up at least in kind of the western conferences I've been out in the last year um game called Monument Valley did reasonably well in the paid space uh with a lot of marketing spend but it made it made very good money um and it's a great game as well um so suddenly paid was coming back in a big way um just because of that one game that kind of came up above the parit before that was free to play

before that it was be Angry Birds before that it was Facebook these Trends occur and we all talk about them at conferences but ultimately one or two people are very successful in that space and by the time you're hearing about it at a conference that's passed that that that money has been made or that that trend has been followed and the problem is everyone else in the conference is also listening to the people on stage talking about it and they're all rushing over there as well what we find if we actually look back at successes that have occurred especially in the Indie space space and I can only really speak for the Indie space we make much less money than the big guys but we're also you know one or two people teams or we're very small companies with very little overhead and very little marketing spend which means that we don't have to make as much money but what we find with the Indie space is if you look at the big Indie hits the big opportunities where individuals have made a lot of money or where small companies have made lots of money it's because they ignored all through stupidity were ignorant of where they should be um point in history where a

lot of Indies made a lot of money in PC was the exact point in time where all of the enormous games companies specifically decided to make console games so they all vacated the platform all that was left was a bunch of people who were making small quirky little games and they did very well out of it similarly um in the mobile space um for the last year everyone has been saying premium is the only way to go it's the only way we can make money and from talking to people in the last night sounds like that is the only way to make money in India currently uh but in Europe and America um there's a lot of us who've done very well Thomas Was Alone came out on mobile and did substantial business um I can't talk about the numbers cuz people would kill me I'm not going to but we did very well much better than I think people would assume we would do uh especially uh much much better than I thought I would do on a personal level it's comparable with with with how we've had success elsewhere which is great and we did that because we ignored

all the people who told us to put in our purchases in or or do advertising spend we charged $5 for the game on on on iPad or iPhone uh it's wobbled a bit since then we play with that number every now and again but we've had fun with it and it's it's done very well again by being ignorant arrogant and stupid let me click through the slides gone can I go back to my presentation please thank you very much so the next part of this is playing to our strength this is something that we've we've really done with volume so Thomas Was Alone came out did very well uh million copies sold um and we we've done we've done well from it and obviously that gave us a nice chest of money um which um instead of buying a sports car which did appeal um I decided to invest that back into the next game um and into subsequent games from there uh volume is the new game is I'm wearing the T-shirt um Brown

um we uh we we're learning trying to learn from every mistake we made on Thomas Was Alone and trying to build on what we've got and the way this I think appe would apply to people with their first games is really play to your strengths play to what you're really really good at and make that it's it's it's cool to stretch yourself and we should we should always find small areas of our work where we can kind of learn a new skill or develop our business but actually playing to what you already know you're good at and what you know your team is good at is a very successful way of doing things so Thomas Was Alone a lot of people in the audience won't know what the hell Thomas Was Alone was um it was a puzzle platform as I said story Le um but I can't do artwork at all and at that point I couldn't afford artists so the entire game is comprised of uh rectangles colored rectangles of different sizes uh that can jump different heights uh it looks ridiculous um uh but what we did was I'm a graphic designer so we made sure the col looked

nice and we made sure that the composition of the levels looked cool and the loading screen was classy and you know all these all these extren things I could do that weren't really about how good the game was but could up that and up that quality we also had access to a great composer so we made the music awesome volume is a similar thing volume is a much much higher budget game but it's a it's a stealth game you play as a thief a master Thief kind of sneaking around in these these kind of environments robbing from the rich a kind of Robin Hood game um futuristic but what we do is avoid things we're not good at so for example we have a lot of dialogue in the game uh we were kind of scratching our heads about lip syn and the risks of lip syn so we put a mask on the character masks really improve facial animation in video games um it's amazing the performance you can get out of an actor once you cover their face entirely um so we we find these opportunities we find these ways of kind of polishing our games but also kind of cutting back on what we do uh in order to make things um successful another thing uh which I was just

chatting with with Keith about is um is is the cloning issue um and and I do call it cloning it is cloning um when you take an idea that's successful and is is doing well in the marketplace and you directly kind of copy that game mechanic um often the art style as well and things like that um it's a it's a very moral gray area I don't think it's necessarily evil um but it's kind of dodgy um it's also not usually very profitable um it can work uh cloners who take games which are premium and they make the make a free version which maybe ad supported those can work very well um uh the the trick to avoiding that is to make games that are not easily clonable and the way to make games that are not easily clonable is to put something difficult to copy in there um in my games um I have kind of complex AI that I use um I have uh voice over music and artwork which you can't copy without you know copyright issues occurring um making games with very simple core mechanics uh really in this day and age means that if you're going to be

prepared for Success you kind of have to um bring out for free maybe add supported uh so no one can undercut you in the marketplace and that's something to avoid and I would also say um that a cloning game is not actually a way to get successful long term you're going to become known as the clone of the game you're essentially building someone else's brand you know if you if you make a knockoff uh Nike shirt which is almost like the Nike logo you'll make money short term because you'll sell that that t-shirt but you are still just making Nike more successful and popular and well known in the long run um so so I always kind of encourage people against that approach it can it can look very very attractive in the short term so what are we doing well we're trying to learn and and trying to push forward uh the business is a big gap in our in our our plan uh at the moment uh we have it it wobbles because we bring in people's contractors but there's about 10 15 of us um we don't have a business manager um we have no one in the office who as ever studied for an MBA or has any

knowledge really of companies so that's a problem we're solving uh by bringing in the right people to do that uh we're trying to kind of basically organize and structure our business in a much more intelligent way up till now it's been kind of a collegate atmosphere that we kind of make stuff and see if it works and hope it all works out in the end um so we're playing with that I've lost the slide there let me just there you go you put all the effort into the nice animating slides and you don't use them um we're also investing in the team uh we're trying to bring more of our freelances across to employees uh just kind of starting to build the structure in place to take the company forward um without kind of losing sight of how we got as successful as we have up to now which is keeping things very lean and very simple um so that's that's it really I just wanted to kind of power through a bunch of my thoughts and really open up to questions in the audience if anyone has any um if we've got time I don't know I think we've got time yeah so if you want to thr up your hands if you if you have a question I'll happily pontificate come on have we got any questions for Mike on how is that a

question the back on light anyone you've been oh I think we got is that a question in the back no no that's okay I can I can I can oh there's one there's one a sympathy question I was about go gentlem here with black black t-shirt it's not really a sympathy question U I really really like Thomas Was Alone Oh someone played it here actually have interest like did anyone in this room play this game I'm way more humble than I should be I should be a bit more AR I should have a bit more Swagger on stage thank you very much it's very kind of you to say that so I just wanted to know what were the difficulties in making it for both the uh PC and the mobile what difficulties do you face it was hard I mean bringing a game across is very difficult um uh I don't know actually how big PC gaming is in India um so I so I speak from a position of incredible ignorance about your country um but at least in in Europe there's a real stigma attached uh if you're a mobile game coming to PC because you're perceived as

a silly frivolous game for people who don't really play games not real Gamers all this kind of rhetoric gets thr around it's nonsense cuz games are games are games um so what we did was we actually brought the game out on PC first got the reputation got a few Awards got kind of a bit of Buzz around the game and then we went to Mobile so I would always recommend that's part one is I'd always recommend doing it that way go from PC if you're planning to go crossplatform do PC and console first and then bring across to mobile simply because that's where you can build a reputation which cuz mobile both mobile players and also apple and the guys at Google love getting quote unquote real games and it's a horrible phrase across from the PC and console space because they know that there's a certain audience who have this very stupid view the mobile games aren't real games um so they like it that way that's part one part two is from a game design point of you it's incredibly challenging um especially with Thomas Was Alone Thomas wasone is a platformer so you've got movement controls and jump um it's ch so

challenging that I gave up on it um I I said in many interviews I'll never do a mobile version Platformers suck on mobile I don't want to do it I don't want to release the subpart version and I've got to give kudos to um to Bossa who did the port um Bosa Studios who we've got speaker from so who did a really great job of convincing me they basically uh sent me an email asking for the source code and said can we just make a version and if you don't like it we won't release it uh basically and they did a really good job of making a version that I was like yeah this works and then we worked together kind of polish that up and bring it out so it took someone completely separated from my company to actually have the the nerve to try it so fair play to them cool any more questions oh there is but keep it quick so don't T now had a chance before they were so impressed by that answer that they thought I've got to jump actually got so we do one more we just trying time we on some sort of schedule um so so I got a question like um so as when when we develop a game uh

you worry about um aspects of look it like um user interaction um the game play and the tuning how do you decide which is important or how do you say I mean you spend this much time on it or how do you get feedback I mean is there is there any um oh that's a big question I'm going to try and shorten it you're looking at me so nothing's most important that's there there's no answer to that question in that sense that the uh different games different things are more important so some games are all about the visuals some games are entirely about the mechanics and everywhere on that Spectrum it's really about the game you're making the other thing I would just Echo the point that was raised earlier about any opportunity you get to find out what the market thinks of the game and there's lots of opportunities mobile I'm actually jealous of mobile because of things that you have access to in terms of soft launches and um AB testing which we can do on PC but are slightly more frowned upon by the audience it's harder to make it work you guys have an amazing level of access to your audience and your community to find out whether your stuff is working spoilers it's not um ever um we so I Rely more on stuff

like doing uh I do a lot of QA processing but we also do a lot of play testing where I will literally go into a room with a bunch of players put games console controllers in their hands and just have them play the game and then me and the designers will kind of sit behind them with clipboards it's really old school that sounds so Antiquated now compared to the amazing tools you have available so please don't do what I do make use of all of the Fantastic metric stuff the only thing I'll say is metrics are not good design ERS what they're good at is telling you where your design isn't working the way you want it to so never be led by them but use that data to make your decisions better basically cool all right thank you very much Mike we get the Blinky selfie thank you I'll go here we go come you can clap you can clap just got um I'm not just doing this for my health you know so basically uh have we got the slide no yes no anyway twitch so we are we are we are twittering tweeting

no fair off we're tweeting to atpg PGC Bangalore um and not only uh are we doing that because it's nice and fun and social and you can tell people you're here but there is a competition so I think it's if you get the most tweets or the most retweets there's uh there's basically half an hour consultancy for free uh at the end of the day with uh Amazon and maybe something else up for grab so get on there take some pictures read share some comments tweet # PGC Bangalore there'll be a slide up in between the talks to remind you but that's what we're doing anyway onwards um so we're going to hop on Hop you see what I've done no fine okay uh on to another legendary mobile game now um again it was created by a small team so we Tri try to do that we' try to get developers together that haven't been massive companies that trying to inspire how you can start the small teams um so and but it's managed to reinvent itself and stay relevant so to tell talk a little B about Doodle Jump and what it's doing and the other stuff that that lias Sky doing please welcome to stage Le M Sky Arman

hmel he's also possibly the fittest man in the mobile games industry so if anybody this is the only I know swam during a conference like so thank you Chris can you hear me yes so um thank you very much for having me here I'd like to run you through uh our success of Doodle Jump and for those of you who don't know Doodle Jump you will know it by the end of uh my talk here um when I got the the topic I was a little bit confused because the anatomy of a casual sensation sounded a little bit like a I don't know a science report that I had to write so I went onto the dictionary and actually looked what is actually the anatomy and what is a casual and what is a sensation and this is what I came up with from dictionary.com and I was a little bit puzzled so um I did my own thing I didn't stick to this I just did my own thing and as a reminder this is our beautiful game Doodle Jump this is what it looks like it's an endless jumper and this is the main figure in it you can see him right

here as well um a little bit about the game it's digital snack it's addictive it's simple precise it has a till functionalities it's bite size it's not large you don't need to spend a lot of time on it you can play it anytime and anywhere and even if it's just for 30 seconds and at the beginning it's likely to be just 20 seconds or even less it gets you frustrated but you can also play it with friends you can you know share high scores and so forth so in numbers um that's what everybody likes to hear obviously we're in no means in the league of uh Angry Birds but um we're still number three alltime top paid app and mind you now people don't pay for apps anymore so keep that in mind um we have been in the top 40 um for five plus years um we have 100 of millions of downloads and updates so when we talk

hundreds of millions it's in the range of like 200 million installs um and we have in the area of up to 20 millions of monthly active users our strongest markets at the moment are the ones below us France Germany UK Russia and China I'd love to have India on the map here um you know that's why I'm here as well to kind of figure out what we can do here next slide so a little bit history we launched the game March 15 of 2009 so that was a little bit before Doodle Jump uh sorry before uh Angry Birds so sometimes we say Doodle Jump was The Angry Birds before Angry Birds was Angry Birds um on day one we had 21 downloads which doesn't sound to be surprising but you know it didn't discourage the team we kind of stuck to it and um you know did the ne necessary things to make it a

success um on Christmas day of 2009 we had 880,000 downloads on iOS what did that happen of course there was um very early that we had a compelling game it had an easy nice game and apple did some featuring obviously there wasn't the competition that there is now which helped a lot but uh very important milestone also was that in early 2010 we um launched again on Android and Java um that old uh snake kind of you know mindset that you had and how did we do that we uh licensed the IP out to to a partner that was the expert in that area which was uh real networks they had a development studio and they said hey you guys know iOS we know how you can tackle Android and Java interesting fact fact was that at that time I was with real networks so I

was on the other side of the of the side so bringing a game that's been successful on iOS all the sudden to a massive audience of those guys who were using other phones and Java phones was for us had a big impact because you know it wasn't only the rich kids fancy kids who had an iPhone who had access to the games there was also a broader audience that not yet had converted and obviously the early adopters of of Apple users were talking to their friends say I have this really great game and they were actually able to get it even on a Java phone so what's the anatomy and you know what did we need or what did we do to to to get there um it has been talked about updates updates updates um we referred to even in the beginning if you can do a we update that's fine just make sure it's a

compelling update communicate with the players you need to know what do the players actually want and sometimes it's also been mentioned sometimes these guys want to take ownership in the game and they give you recommendations they say hey I'd like to have a zombie in there for example that's what we did we learn we you know we we listen to the audience and we took their recommendations and integrate them integrated them social networking um in terms of Facebook integration Twitter integration you want to you know you want to be active in those areas as much as possible um for us tweeting a high score and then challenging your friends was a great way to you uh to to access new users um we did have a lot a little bit of luck as well but we also got some promotion that also came because we had

such a large audience and not only on in the in the iOS territory so a little bit about updates um people love them you're you're in front of the in front of the uh consumer again when he sees the update you know on the little um app store they they just feel that they you know that the developer is also working on things it's not just a produced game stuck on the app store and then left there alone keeps the game alive um it gives you as a developer the flexibility because you can actually see what works or what doesn't work it's mentioned before that maybe you will take out something and people would really get upset about it you can take those things back in and you know it gives you the chance to uh communicate with players

um you have additional reach and communication because you have the description page where you can write things you can mention things that you've done um engage with message boards forums and blogs do as much Twitter Facebook communication as possible and also integrate I put three exclamation marks down here because that's something especially the um um integration ations with social networking and being on the Forefront of that that's been something that we have a little bit neglected in the recent um months or in the recent time and we realize now that something really hurting us not really hurting us but it it you know it helps to be in in that area the reach I talked about [Music] um we in 2010 it was you know the app was available the game was available on

Android brw Java and whatnot um we were a friendly phase to all everybody that wanted to talk to us we were generally open to to do business with anybody that wanted us so um we did we weren't in the we weren't being arrogant and saying look we have achieved so much now you need to pay us x amount to use our our um our IP we actually um I mean there there's a good example maybe we can show the video now man I was double team with no one to pass it to so I pull it up and hit the shot for the win and you didn't see it it's that data plane run always stressing about overages I get that but seriously he chose to download doooo jump instead of streaming my shot doooo jump man that's messed up switch to Sprint the only network with

truly unlimited data so a very nice example of you know a carrier talking to us we had carrier distribution wanted to see hey can we do something together and it wasn't that we said you know um you need to pay us a million bucks to be present in that in that advertising for us it was free advertising that didn't cost anything you guys maybe have heard what companies like supercells spent these days to run an advertising on TV for example Japan so whenever you get the chance to to to do something and as Peter was saying you know you need to kind of go with the flow and sometimes fall into things don't be opposed to it and be like oh this is my IP and it need to be like the Holy Grail um sometimes something fantastic will come out of something small like this couple more examples Battleship if you haven't watched that fantastic movie you will see an actor playing Doodle Jump in there we have some other um um Lady Gaga you know wearing a fantastic

uh um um vest there um there's other examples um Jimmy Fallon um in in in this TV show um where we just got free exposure by you know being friendly and open um where are we today um we are we have done a little bit of Licensing you can go to um Toys R Us and see some of our our our amazing toys that are available there obviously in no um scale like other of our bigger competitors are doing but keep in mind we're a small team uh there's around 15 people of us we don't need to well we need we don't need to make resilience to to cover overhead so rather do it right and do it small than uh big and and screw up we have some we have done some co-branding initiatives recently with DC so there's a a Crossover with DC Comics where you have Doodle Jump and and um

Batman for example in there um we got some very interesting learnings that yes this worked fantastic to the audience that are inclined to um to DC characters but our audience is just that much broader than just gearing towards uh the DC fans so we need to look at something that haters to to as much as or as big as audience as we have it which is quite challenging um interesting to us for example was also that the China is the is the in China is our top DC Market compared to any other European countries or other world countries um folk um our way forward I mean we have we have learned like our our friends and and and uh friendly competitors that it's very difficult to come out with a second third fourth fifth game that

has nothing to do with the original Ip so that's a big Challenge and what we want to do is we want to look at the Doodle Jump Brand Doodle Jump core product and see how can we continue to vitalize it how can we continue to keep it ACC we need to get back to be on the Forefront with social features we need to engage more as we have done recently with our with our fans and you know uh integ um other social features that we haven't done until now we need to get back to communicate with the audience much more as we have done recently and um we've also realized that while we have a quite large audience of players we can open this up and and uh help other players um in the market to have access to our crowd so publishing is obviously one initiative and we have two approaches there one is

you have a fantastic game already that um you want to uh get out into the into the world but you just don't have the access to the player so we can certainly talk to you and and look at um um ways to to bring it to the market or you already have it in the market and you're you're looking into other ways to monetize it so we have been in still quite successful to be in the premium business to sell through carriers uh where they charge four or5 per game and um you know you can make a pretty significant amount of revenues through those channels if you compare that for example to other distribution channels like Google play Amazon or whatever that's something we could be talking and uh yeah I think that's it for now thank you very much if you have any questions here so time for one maybe two questions

have we got questions up there there gentleman there uh my question is that you said that uh when you make one game and becomes a hit then making making a second game third game fourth game which has nothing to do with the first game you don't want people to say that it's like uh your previous game like that so how do you cope up with that how do you keep on innovating bring bring new ideas and new games well you know I'm not saying we don't we we're not we're not going to do it but um you know we need to be we can't just throw all our initiatives into a new game we need to be really really selective and we need to look at what's our core strength and what's our core product and from that evolve a new game so qu you know look at it in a way that Doodle Jump is an endless jumper game we won't be in the position to come up with a let's say um Angry Bird Style game or we don't want to you know we don't

want to do it because we just don't have the expertise so go as you you know slowly make your way and and find the right way it's it's challenging I think you guess you're saying because we've talking about there a couple things the brand thing is obviously very strong and sticking with one brand and growing that obviously you notice that a lot of successful people at come on stage have had branded t-shirts I don't know where that helps but there something to think about but the other thing as you say is it's sticking with a competency isn't it it's like rather than trying to be all to all people and I think even the big guys even like you know supercell may have of 20 projects being worked on at one time but they you know they're all relatively similar the ones that so I I don't think you know everyone's trying to do everything so I think it's a case of finding your your Niche I mean that's what's working for us because you know yes you can go and say all right now we've been successful now we have some serious cash in a bank now we can hire an amard of 100 people that's another way to look at it but it's just not the way we want to any more questions for for

Arman no okay all right fair enough we got to do obligatory selfie so look at this you can give me a round of applause while doing this CU I like I like applause and a picture of myself it's very good so don't don't forget uh hash PGC uh PGC Bangalore um and as I say we have got a prize I shall announce more about that again in a second but just to crack on um we now have one of the most well arguably probably not arguably at all one of the most creative game developers work in the industry today um they've managed to make surgery not only fun uh but also spectacular successful um and they're currently trying to repeat the the uh the trick by bringing toast to life so there go figure so to tell us all about the unique approach please welcome Bost Studios Marina melow to the stage a slow walk a bit sorry no problem go for it I have the same problem right so let me put this down

here hi everyone I'm Marina Melo I'm the commercial director over at Boston studios in London um I actually started out my career as a Management Consultant no booze and over the years I've worked no over the years I've worked in a number of different uh media organizations the last of which was shine um big Global TV production group responsible for Master Chef and Biggest Loser if you're familiar with those here um and with that have become really interested really fascinated actually with the creative process and how different organizations go about enabling creativity and creating the right conditions for that to thrive um and um that's what I'm here to tell you about today and that's not to say that boss's approach is the only one and the right one but it's it's our approach and it's worked for us um so first of first of first and foremost I'll show you a little bit about Bosa for those of you who don't know us this is what our last year looked like and I'm really happy I want to thank the organizers for putting

me just before lunch cuz I'm going to show you some footage of surgeon um simulator which is probably not the most suitable after you've just had a meal um right this is the right button [Music]

[Music] right I'll start with a couple more things you probably should know about Bosa we're still a fairly young independent Studio we've been around for about 5 years where we've released over which uh the course of which we've released five games and published two one of which was like B's amazing Thomas Was Alone 300 rupees well spent if you haven't uh if you haven't played it yet um and um the most famous of which is Surgeon Simulator um a very very difficult um Darkly comedic Clum simulator um although financially we've grown year on year uh we've very purposefully maintained our head count at about 30 people um we find that that's what works best

um in terms of enabling this approach we have to to generating new ideas um and a bit of a brag we've been privileged to have been recognized every year since launch for our creative achievements um by the baas which is a very prestigious UK award voted by a peerce and finally a unnown to me when I joined BOS have quite a unique approach to coming up with new ideas the bulk of our pipeline um of new projects comes from these internal monthly game jams that we run and I had the pleasure of experiencing my first one within weeks of arriving so the session kicked off with a brainstorm where everyone in the studio comes together to bounce ideas around everyone from marketing to finance to the coders to the artists and there's very few rules in terms of how the next 48 hours play out um the big one is you must work with someone else you must find someone else to develop any any idea you of want to develop with you and you must present it back to the entire team at the end of

the 48 Hours what struck me um was really how involved everyone around the studio was everyone participates in these and not just in the in the area where they're most competent at but you're sort of encouraged if anything to try things outside your comfort zone to you know if fewer a coder to maybe try try a little bit of Art and so in this particular one the them was Clum simulation we had um our digital marketing assistant and Resident YouTuber Oliver doing the art for one of the games we had our QA Matt doing leading on the design for another so 48 hours later we got to see the results of our labor and I am bread emerged so on paper Ascension piece of bread rolling around may not seem like the strongest of ideas however um it really came to life when we were all together sort of watching this this bread flop around and it's urge to get toasted it was all very

exciting and we knew we had something so what do we achieve um with these game jams firstly it puts our ideas to the test very very quickly and putting something on screen it makes it very easy for us to ask the really tough question of do I want would I want to play this um secondly promotes a mindset of creativity and experimentation within the studio multiple studies show you know creativity something requires a great deal of discipline and practice it doesn't just happen contrary to popular belief so we make sure that no matter how busy we are every month uh you know we put the projects down and we take 48 hours to exercise if you will this creativity and thirdly it's a really useful tool for learning um whilst we may not have the appetite to commit to say a project in a newer um more emerging platform like wearables um this gives us the opportunity to do so and to learn about you know the Dynamics of the platform how that impacts design etc etc um allowing us to kind of keep our

thinking fresh um and so if if you um I don't know if any of you are following the Apple watch launch but one of the last game jams we did was around wearables and we developed a game there that's actually going to be launched alongside the watch on the 24th it's a notification based spy Adventure it's very very cool um so we find that regularly refreshing these game Jam the game Jam format has also worked really well for us we've had um some that have been longer we had some that have been shorter we've had some that have had looser themes um we've had somewhere we separated the idea session from the actual development phase so as to let our ideas mature that's to say I don't think there's I wouldn't dare say that there's one right format to do it um the key thing for us is the regularity um I want to show you this video was pulled together by ashens a very famous UK YouTuber he was the theme of the last game Jam

people have often said to me you should make an ashen game and then they always say exactly the same thing you could have a game where you and Chef exellence run around and shoot things it would have retropixel graphics and the silver scale and the god monster of Indian Flats could be bosses and my answer is always the same there are an awful lot of games like that already and I don't really think that the world needs another one and so it was a quiet time for ashens related video games but then I spoke to Bossa Studios they are famous for Surgeon Simulator and IR am breed games which are both original and funny and they're not just funny because they've got jokes in them the humor is integral to the experience so by using a combination of Sound business planning and mind altering drugs hidden in pastries I got Bossa to agree to a 48h hour ashens game Jam [Music]

the idea was simple they would split into teams and spend 48 of their precious hours working on Games inspired by my videos by which I mean not necessarily full of references but something with an ashen feel to it and of course a sense of humor so we had a big meeting to nail down ideas and then the 48 Hours began and this happened [Music] [Music] [Music] this week I shall be going through each of the game prototypes one a day and providing a let's play style commentary along with a quick chat with one of the people behind the game but here's the best bit you can actually download the prototypes from boss's site and play along at home so you can see just the breadth I guess of of ideas that came out of just

that game Jam I I think that that that music does really help sell it though you know they're far less realized than than they seem um so contrary to popular belief the game jams aren't always popular with the teams you know they do bring a huge amount of pressure in terms of coming up with new ideas and in maintaining the momentum for the current projects we have um but the team ultimately understands that this brings a huge amount of value to to to Boston and to so this this particularly important that it gives us the ability to very quickly halt projects that we don't believe 100% in and um transition to new ones almost instantly um so the game jams are where it all starts they result in a wealth of ideas some good some less good and it's the question is how do we make it work as a business for Bosa how do we manage the risk that comes with taking on risk your projects because we have a taste for the slightly unusual um more experimental Fair we need to be really ruthless with our ideas um I boss

the critical feedback is encouraged at any point but that's only really possible with the right culture and the right people in place and it's not a topic that I think you can cover in a short session it's something probably merits its own uh its own discussion but um if I were to say um if I were to summarize our approach to it it's that we look Beyond um just people's technical skill skills when we're hiring look for people who are really P we very passionate who've got very strong ideas and who are able to articulate those to challenge the status quo um operationally we support that culture and that um and those people um with a bit of process a bit of the more boring stuff so we've introduced we found that introducing a monthly green light for each one of our projects to be really effective and forcing us to ask some difficult questions um in those green lights we review the projects as a whole we review budgets we review the project plans we review the creative Direction

and we'll review the commercial potential of each idea and that probably sounds really familiar to most of you um what's different is that we empower the teams to take their own conclusions from that analysis so um only recently one of the teams actually pushed for us putting a Hal to the project they were working on um and that's only that's possible because we have those game jum ideas in the back burner so they they know that a great idea is just around the corner and they aren't afraid to question the projects that we have in development so I've told you about how we come up with ideas by the gra jams and how we ensure that we're working the right ones via our people culture and um operationally supported by the um by the green lights but there's one more element that's really core to our um development approach and probably the one we're best known for um we found tremendous value in involving the community in our development process um and in really listening to them there are biggest Advocates our most passionate supporters and a huge source

of inspiration so we've been we've been experience we've been experimenting more recently and actually involving them earlier on in the process so with surgeon um it happened quite late on it was it was somewhat of an afterthought so we put the game out there and a huge part of its success was due to the 2.5 million user generated videos that our fans created um we then realized that we were in you know in huge debt we had a huge debt to them and we wanted to reward them with something so we started watching these videos and looking for the weirdest most unusual things we could find in them we then reintroduced some of those as a sort of thank you to our to our fans into the game in the form of achievements we also when we released alien autopsy which was um an additional level where you operate on an alien as expected um we named some of the aliens organs after some of our most

famous fans the puds ball after PewDiePie and the Rob balas after robas um with ir am bread we went a step further we released a trailer for the game after the game Jam so purely based on the content we had on the game Jam so it's to test the waters we had over 1 million views in under a week so we knew we had something we then came out in Early Access which is perfect for this sort of development sort of collaborative development approach and we made sure we fed the audience with constant updates and and we proactively sought out feedback from them and the so we put out a lot of Dev Diaries and we also created this what we call the bread Diaries um on our YouTube channel which is a sort of magazine style Vlog hosted by two of our more fun uh team members and they approved really popular um and we've gone yet another

step further with worlds of drift our latest project with little more than an idea to show we opened up development and asked our asked our community for feedback which is quite frankly terrifying um luckily U we've received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback for it even on YouTube Believe It or Not um and I'll show you I'll show you the video we put out um announcing the game that's world the [Music] drift hi hello we wanted to talk to you about something we have been working on for a couple of months now uh it's not IR am bread that's the iron bread team working hard on the bugs and the new content that we have to push out in the next months they have the word code out for them for quite some time yet uh it's something else entirely that the bossa Labs team has been working on call it worlds of drift worlds of drift is a game that we have been experimenting a lot with because it

does some things that other games have never done before and we have been working with our partners at impr probable who have been helping us make it [Music] possible very mind this all very early stage everything is very rough around the edges the art is all placeholder right but we are still excited to show you a little bit of what we have been working on so take a look [Music] [Applause] [Music] so this is where we come in we are very

eager to hear what you think about our ideas feedback for the game and your ideas as well honestly we want to know if you think that it's worth for us to continue working on this game or not and to do that all you have to do is to head over to this website and let us know and that's all from us and our that's Enrique our gamer and Chief and he really means that when he says let us know if we should be working on this we really do listen and that's it from us thank you for listening cool so have we got any questions oh we have yeah Co where's where's our man with the mic I asking to here's our lovely lady with the mic here's lovely Sally man the hand next to you I couldn't see the hand so good hi uh I'm sorry for so many questions in every uh lecture we're getting but uh I'm saying I am read it very well in Early Access but I want to ask what is too early for Early Access in terms of games production cycle um well I think you

need to have something that kind of demonstrates the direction in which you're going I don't you know I'd say have you know one coherent level that people can play through and kind of understand the direction you're going in um but I don't I don't think there's any harm in releasing things before they're sort of fully polished you know they before they look amazing provided you sort of very upfront uh with your audience say this is where we're at okay fair enough question there thank you uh hi Marina so I saw like you emphasize a lot on game jams so I wanted to know this happened after Surgeon Simulator and uh as a company how were did you have to convince it to other people or how did you go about introducing the game Jam culture in the company um well actually the game jams had been there for a very long time they proed surgeon um it was something it was

just always part of the the company DNA really it was very early on Mike's probably better place than uh I am to talk about this yeah but it took a long time I think that that's to say it's not something that happens overnight that's a really important Point not something that happens overnight right you really need to get into that mindset you need to get people used to it you need to have the right you know bring the right people on board before they begin to be productive we really experimented with loads of different formats um before we hit on something you know different format for the jams okay good question any more questions out there time for one more I think n oh there's one at the back right at the back there go for it uh um ma'am my question is actually uh what a beginner developer should do to commercialize the game that uh developer get uh some of the software developer animators video game developer they

develops their game but they actually don't get the platform they are won't get much more options to commercialize their game to U that's what's about the what are the options what the options you've made a game what you're saying and what what options for commercializing you're talking about mobile game or PC game or anything particular ma'am my question is actually what a beginner should do to commercialize the game okay um in what sense in then in regards to platforms sort of the strategy with which we roll out on platforms for it may for mobile games desktop whatever it may be we tend to We tend to release on PC first we tend to find that PC is a much better platform for building a brand um again it's been covered before um it it is just it's an easier place to build an audience with which you can then launch on mobile and make a case for visibility um from Apple

which is invaluable um we do look at all platforms so we we do believe that um there are different audiences that you can reach by rolling out different platforms it does require quite a bit of work as the game obviously aort isn't just about sort of copying making exactly the same just for another platform why you need to really think about what works and what doesn't work there's a huge amount of redesign involved but we do believe believe that in rolling out to multiple platforms we get more value from our ideas so that's in the pipeline for IR bread obviously cool all right thank you very much so let's do all brly selfie which I'm sure you're looking forward to I know it's been the highlight of the day for you this you've got to you've got to put it really high up otherwise sorry I'm going to look make me look huge is everybody enjoying this cuz I am go thank you very much thank you so um to conclude this the first half for lunch we have a of of games journalist and media so can I invite them to the stage there's Keith

coming up the rest of them are outside they're a bit shy don't Shout with them come on wa where's our journalist come on guys why outside there's a tracks going oning they're hell hell how you doing I'm good set yourselves down have we got any more for any more or is this what we have we have okay right fantastic um be gentle with them as I always say about games CH that's a bit like spiders they're more afraid of you of them so to go easy on them um so okay so we're going to um we've got a pretty impressive panel actually I must admit even if I even though I'm quite quite cheeky with it most of the time um so we've got guys uping a lot of different kind of media here um let myself in a second um in fact I'm going do that to start with I'm just going to

let you introduce yourself see which publication you're from and just say something about the focus what it is you're looking for not in detail but just you know what sort of stuff you cover okay are you starting with me because you're looking directly at me I'm looking directly at you that's that's a key indic okay yeah thank you okay yeah um my name is uh Keith Stewart I'm the video games editor of the Guardian uh so pretty much any uh video game coverage that you see either on the Guardians website which is I think the third or fourth biggest media Source in the world I'm not sure one of those two daily mail's at the top for some reason that I will never understand um and um we're one of the first newspapers stroke uh media uh conglomerates uh to take a video game seriously as a culture uh so that's the kind of angle that I always take with video games um so it's always really interesting to come to a place like this where there's lot to talk about monetization and things like that and how do we make money and not so much talk about the culture of video games which is where I'm interested in and where I think a lots of the interesting stories are in game development so so yes there we go Pete hello uh my name is

Peter Willington I'm from appspy I'm the editor there uh we are the video arm of Pocket Gamer uh so we have an incredibly popular YouTube channel we're the largest uh channel for mobile uh content on Twitch we do a podcast all that good stuff we work with Pocket Gamer to provide video content and lots of editorial and good fun stuff like that we do a lot of community outreach and uh have a lot of friends on the internet you like video things we like video okay fair enough Danny you got two mics you can split between yourself uh hi I'm Danny Russell uh I'm a staff writer for Pocket Gamer but I'm also the community manager for all the steel media sites so that's uh Pocket Gamer 148 apps apps byy uh Etc so uh if you want to get your indie game pushed it's probably good to get in touch send us a few codes yeah last but absolutely by no means least our good friend Eli uh my name is Eli hoep I'm editor-in chief of Touch Arcade uh we are primarily iPhone based but kind of dabble on Android stuff too uh

have huge forums and kind of specialize in long form editorial stuff uh that no one else is really doing anymore um so that's yeah cool all right so let's let's give a question um I want to ask a very direct question so how how many games a day are you guys being sent to to look at and then second part of that and how many games a day can you realistically cover maybe you should start that in I'll start this in I like I like you I like I like looking at you key I'm just looking you that's a different thing going on here bit some kind of erotic um for us like I I can't even really estimate how many games were sent a day anymore I mean as the app store has grown um and as Google Play has grown um it's just gotten to a point where I couldn't even really estimate anymore um but I mean we try to split up the cool stuff with as many writers as we can so is it like hundreds tens I would say hundreds maybe a lot yeah but I mean and you know we can only play a small percentage of that realistically so uh the initial filter is just what

looks cool and what doesn't I guess is what goes through okay what you think Danny I I'd say about 40 a day yeah to be honest but uh that's not including like like the same game multiple times so we'll often get uh sent the like the exact same email to three different email addresses uh because steel media you know has this kind of yeah so many different sites yeah I degree it's in how many are we get covering uh on a daily basis um across all of the still media portfolio I'd say dozens um uh yeah I would say that that that's probably it but obviously that is spread out amongst all the three three of the major brands okay and Keith you in the same situation uh I I guess I'm I'm slightly different because I'm kind of slightly removed from the daytoday uh news feed that I guess these people the these gentlemen deal with uh so I mean I do get maybe sort of 50 to 100 uh press releases a day from from game developers

and games Publishers uh of which only a very small fraction I can never respond to uh because I'm not really dealing with I don't we don't really do sort of daily video game news on the guardian in that way we're much more interested in the kind of higher level uh look at where games are going and some of the themes and the trends in game design so yeah it's very hard for us so we probably cover I don't know about four or five games a week uh I guess but within that we may do a feature on a certain type of game and we'll have lots of games mentioned in there so um follow on that cuz Eli kind of touched on his his initial answer how do you how do you decide what to to to pick out what to cover from that you've got 100 press releases I know you're not just mobile you've got all formats think what is it is it something that tickles in the press release is it that you've got a particular angle you're thinking of yourself that you want to do what what factors kind of affect your decision to fix them um yeah I mean that's that's a good question uh there are there are lots of uh factors that I look at um I think sending a really dry press release uh to someone telling you that they you have a game coming out and these are the

things it's going to run on and this is the genre that's a really bad idea I think um I I think you know what you have to do is separate uh video games uh as a business from video games as a culture I'm not I'm not really kind of interested uh in receiving press releases that look like they may have come from some sort of corporation uh uh you know in San Francisco or something uh I look for like personal emails if someone has sent me an email to say I am a small development Studio you won't you might not have heard of but we've done these sorts of things before here is a little kind of wacky experimental game we've played here are some screenshots here's a video we made for YouTube um please just have a look if it's friendly personal if it's got my name at the top of it that's super important not because I'm a massive egotist which I am incidentally um but also um because uh it's it shows that you've put personal effort into that email you've targeted who you want to speak to and it shows you have a little kind of knowledge about what you're doing and and about

the media so I kind of look for a personal touch and and I look for everything to be made really easy for me uh uh not because I'm lazy although I am uh but but um because I'm super I'm I'm really busy and I'm in undated with these sorts of things uh so you to make it easy like uh have screenshots have video make it look as if there's a culture already around your game I think so let's pick up on that I what one of the things I want to kind of do today which I think to provide some real value to the guys out there is to build a little bit of a process for how how people should should approach so Keith mentioned a couple of things there so looking it from a perspective of you've got a game developers made a game at what point and you can share this you can jump in what point should they be coming to you guys as journalists what point do you want to speak or as early as the game is at in some way representative of what it is that's what it is that you're making so we often get emails weeks after a game is out saying I've had a game out for 2 weeks 3 weeks it's doing this this and this and it's like well it's old news cuz it's already been covered by elsewhere it's literally

old news yeah and so it I would say as soon as you're ready to show it as soon as you're ready to have people look at it and criticize it and praise it and all that sort of stuff that's the sort of period of time that I would want to see that and is there is there it's not a typical like time before launch and it's not like 3 months before launch I think because mobile turns around so quickly um I would say that if you're looking for a review maybe a week beforehand would be perfect for us and it means that our reviews editor Harry Slater isn't goes doesn't go mad on a Thursday that's that would be really useful it m on Fridays mostly Fridays yeah uh so you know uh that that would be good but if you want previews if you want if you want the press cycle before all of that and the press cycle is really important you know the revie reviews are great but everything before that's really important as well then I would say a month two months yeah what do you think from your perspective I'm not skipping you something D but you're obviously in a similar Med no I mean I would I would totally agree with everything that Peter said um especially in regards to getting

word out as early as you can because um in doing that you're inadvertently building a community to people that are interested about your game like even if you're not necessarily even involving the press as much as you're just you know targeting Twitter and you know doing your own twitch streams and forums and things like that which those are the people are going to tell their friends and that is going to really be what interests like me personally because I know that hey if I write about this game people are going to be interested and people are going to share the story and that's how our business works I guess yeah we we want we want eyeballs as well so so early on early as possible you come out with some information and what what should that be like keep touched on it is it is it just a couple of screens is it is it going to be video now what what what what do we want ideally in a in a first stuff it's easier like you're developers you're know writers so you describing your game is really what we should be doing like so screenshots video you know if you've got a trailer on YouTube amazing because it means that we can just spend 30 seconds looking at it and going oh right that's what this kind of game is cuz we can tell you know

you might say it's a an incredible character-based running game on blah blah blah blah blah but we can just go oh it's Temple Run you know that sort of I'd say we we probably don't really want to know your life story either we we want to see a screenshot of the game as soon as possible we want to just see what it's about I I would say we don't want your whole life story as in like 90 chapters but I think I I would say personally I want to know something about the development Studio like the amount of times I've received press releases that are very formal and haven't been that interesting but somehow I've managed to talk to the developer and then you then they say sort of after sort of three three months of knowing about them they'll say something like oh you know you know in-house architect who you know who designed this Art Gallery in Paris just did this and you go whoa back up tell me more about this guy or we'll say someone will eventually tell me that you know a video game has been inspired by I don't know you know parental neglect or something that happened to them as a child you know that's FAS to me that's a story you know it's never just about the game as far as I'm concerned I want to

know about something about what's happened behind it so yeah we don't want your whole life story but I think if there is something interesting about your development Studio or something interesting about why you made this particular game and if it's personal and human then you know every single news story that I write has a personal human element in it I'm not going to write this this game has 50 levels in it and three guns I'm just not interested also make sure you're contacting the right person ideally you shouldn't just send to I mean we get uh sent pictures to like our promo codes email address rather than news or the actual reviews editor it should be sent to the right person we have contact how you find the right person you just go you just search you just search for like Pocket Gamer about us or contact us and it will be the first thing that comes up top tip every single website that does editorial hasn't about us page because we are all complete egoists which will probably have a picture of lazy lazy um it'll have a name on it or a picture or both you know Twitter handles email addresses and all that sort of stuff ignore the Twitter handle bit you don't need to get

in touch with the sphere that but you can find our name you can find out what our position is and our email address every single editorial site of that you that's worth contacting has it so look for it and you for somethingone specific yeah so spam not spamming every potential address there so something personal something short uh additionally I would um like what I always tell people to do is like make sure you're reading the site so you're submitting stuff to and Target your stuff towards um the person that you see covering games that are similar to yours cuz like for instance if you've got a hardcore RPG um you know like look for the guy that's always reviewing the hardcore RPG games cuz that's the dude that's going to be like oh cool this is something I want this is something I'm interested in as opposed to like someone that's always writing about word games or something like that they're just going to shrug it off and you know so you got to really Target your stuff yeah as good as you can there's a bit of work there before you bit of targeting FR of who you're talking to Short History it's relevant short about the game and screens and video we can that's that's the tool kit to go with that's that's good and in

terms of so you sent it through I'm a developer I've sent it through I've done exactly what you just asked me I found out he I've sent it through I've heard nothing back what's my action then what do I do wait seven days okay uh and uh seven minutes did you say uh so maybe seven days a bit long but like wait four or five days and if you haven't heard anything you haven't seen any and double check the website that you've sent to before you follow up on on actually it's like why haven't you covered our game and then if you find out that actually it's already on app spy that's an immediate delete we have we have check game yeah uh so uh but yeah follow up within four or five days or something like that and just say you know I I didn't hear anything back is it something that you're interested in and then if we you know don't respond or and like that then we're you know potentially saying politely no it's not not something we're interested in so two like one followup if you can hear nothing and after that I would say like one followup if you've already had a conversation with the person before then just wanted to um like for example I've met a whole bunch of people today already and if they send me an email and

then don't hear from me and then send me another email say oh U you know just to just to jog your memory as to who I am we met in the corridor and I M stick you for Mike bthl you know that's that's which happened earlier by the way uh and uh yeah and uh basically you know and then I'll go ah yes and then you know we can follow up that conversation because it's more personal you know it's it's more about um it's got mood lighting now um that's good uh your head's really big on the St well it's big as it is um but yeah like uh the personal element you know as Keith was talking about like if we're already if we've already made that connection then we're already talking we're already uh you know pierced with one another okay and there's no response after a couple of mailes you seen them just curse at your computer screen no I just I'm just I appreciate this is the experience of people that you know that we we it's not because we're not interested or our teams are interested it's just as you said we've highlighted at the start the volumes so that's the first challenge to get past I'll I'll also add that if you're pitching a review you should just send a code if you've got a code or an APK file if

you're if it's an Android game um and you can get the addresses of the journalists off our website to go and knock on the door personally is that right okay so one question other question I ask is um so I'm not trying to I'm not trying to Veil this in any way I'm asking it straightly really in terms of kind of PR agencies there's obviously a lot of PR agencies out there for the games industry generally and for mobile some specialist ones you know it's hiring a PR agency is that something that that helps get attention from you guys is it does it help that you know it comes from or does it not make any difference um actually hinder I don't know um I think it I think it depends very much on the pr agency I think um like there are PR agencies that I that I really trust and when they send me a game they know that it's a game that I'm going to be interested in like personally and and as an organization uh so I so I they're not wasting my time um I I I don't want to be blitzed by a PR agency I I don't know I think one of the reasons it sometimes seems like a good

idea is because if you've got very very small team then you may not have someone who's particularly press facing on that team uh and especially you know if you're if you're based in a a you know in an emerging uh mobile development uh Community like India then you might not have that access to the larger Global uh media networks that that perhaps some developers in uh the UK or us may have where there's very regular opportunities to talk to the Press directly in person so I you know I I wouldn't say don't use a PR agency but I would say be very careful about using them be very careful be wary about their promises and what they promise you in terms of their reach and who they can get covering your games uh get someone that you may have you that that you may have seen a developer or a publisher that you respect has may be used so so be careful and understand how they um how they work because you know blitzing the whole of the press with one Anonymous uh press release and then aggressively following up on it is absolutely no way to make yourself friends in this industry so I have one

more question I'll go back question so the question is we guys are you know based in UK us obviously the majority of our leadership is likely to be us UK and and maybe you know Canada austral whatever and probably most games we review are probably from those regions what what what is our attitude or you know is it more difficult for for games coming from India or China or southeast Asia to get get get covered or any specific tips or issues to to beware because these guys I'm assuming there's a relativ large Indian developers here throw there um I I'd say if English isn't your strong suit then focus on Clarity uh because sometimes I've received uh press releases that make very little sense I think that that is one thing definitely with I mean I don't think it's as much India from a chinae situation is definitely when when a press release comes in and it's the first lines entirely misspelled it obviously it's one of those things that ticks it towards the kind of delete buttons yeah um one of the things I've noticed

regularly from uh Indian Indie developers and uh even large companies from the region is that um you guys tend to focus on talking to Consumer press almost like you talk to business press so I've had emails that that have started with um you know uh our out is really great and I'm like I don't care you know like like from a consumer point of view I really don't care because because my readers don't care so you know if if you're if you're starting with all these statistics about how popular you are and you know uh but in very fine detail then that's not really something we're interested in if you're sort of saying we've already got 30 million players awesome like cool so I already know it's popular but going into far too much detail on that side of things it I don't know it's just a waste of space and you could say you know it's a really fun action arcade game that's that's more useful if you want industry press coverage we we have lovely Alysia here judge who's from pg. Biz so if if you're looking for more industry trade

stuff about your company Point her out George there you go there's there's a list at the front so she's probably she this she's on the B2B side but yeah as as as Pete said there's a big differential between consumer press and B2B press I've got load more questions but I think it's sensible to kind of open it out um so do we have you've got like journalists here trapped in the wild this is an opportunity to to pin them down or ask difficult questions turn the Ta on them um give them a 6 out of 10 or something would you like to is any questions for for for for our guys here come on so last one before Lun you got a question they scared upsetting you can see this there's one on the back there's one over here as well okay uh okay my name is adya and uh we did probably most of the things that you said right now and we also put it up on the forums and we got like a lot of good responses there as well but we were still not able to get a reply from you guys so I'm just wondering what went wrong in we did we don't even have an English problem nor do did we put a YouTube trailer but we still didn't

manage to get a response so I'm wondering is it a a case of oversight or if the game didn't appeal to you guys how long ago was it um around 3 weeks of like a month back and and some of the guys on this I the only thing name any of them it's fine you can no I didn't send it to anyone personally but I send it to like maybe that's a problem yeah yeah but but when you go on no no it's not it's not it's not you caught the bit about massive egotists at the start no no but I did I did add a little bit of personal element and I tried to go on every site and it was written uh in some sites you know we want a Dropbox link so I tried to make it as personal as I could yeah but so you you included images and videos yeah I also added I added the link to the trailer and I also sent screenshots okay and uh uh didn't start with a whole bunch of numbers yeah so initially I didn't get a response so I put it up on forums and then I resign another mail so here's a really really hard question this is this is the thing we're all sort of dancing around is your game any good uh I would like to believe

so because I've got I've got a lot of responses from okay from the forums I'm I'm not then that then that may then that may be a simple case of your information slipping through our fingers um and definitely follow up with us like find my name on the or talk to me later and we haveu for tomorrow and sometimes sometime well yeah sometimes you know genuinely and this kind of raises two points genuinely like information will slip through our fingers at times like we just won't hear about something and then Apple will feature it and we'll go what's this game and then we find out and it's and it's brilliant and uh it's very rare that that happens but it can happen the other big the other big part about all of this that we're sort of not talking about but I'll do it cuz I'll be the bad guy is that sometimes games are bad and we don't want to cover the bad games like and I know that's really harsh and it's not at all the situation with all of the games that we that we that we don't cover it's just that it also has to be a thing of you know you've got to really uh you've got to really take a hard look at your game and say you know if I'm not getting coverage

why is that and you can even ask us you know did you actually like just like a a one sentence response and we'll go yay or noay or or whatever it is yeah I mean and I would also say that it's not just bad games it's also um games that are very in very familiar genres like if I if someone sends me um a press release about a great game they've made called Furious birds or you know or sweee Crush Saga um it be an amazing game but I'm never ever going to cover it uh it's just there's just no news in there for me at all so sometimes that's it as well you know if it's a match three Puzzler I just my heart kind of just drops um I know and I know that there are Innovations to be made in that space and if there are then you've got to shout about exactly how you've innovated on it but um just going back to that question about um you know one one of the things that um an Indian developer will have an advantage in some ways to the Press is that lots of us don't know about uh the culture of development uh in this area and we're and like every journalist wants to be the person who's discovered

something first that's that's really important like massively important part of our job um like I often show off about the fact that I was one of the first people that saw Mike Biel's game uh Thomas Was Alone I saw it very very early because uh you know I think I saw it at game City kind of a small blocks at that point that early wasn't it it wasn't even that it was just mik on it standing on a screen saying I've got this idea um but yes everyone wants to discover something so we have you know the amazing potential of you know you're in a position where you can say to a developer uh you know I'm from the emerging Indian uh de development community and just hearing some of the stats around um like 750 million mobile phone owners in this in this in this uh area it's just staggering to me um and I I'm I'm thirsty for more knowledge about the development Community here so I would always say to developers put yourself forward as an expert make yourself available when you see a Twitter conversation and saying oh I don't know anything about Indian games development between journalists you can you can put yourself in there and say I am a developer in India this is these

are the things that happen in development these are the things you need to know make yourself available as a contact I think that's massively important because we all not only do we need new ideas but we also need lots of contacts that we can rely on and if you can make yourself one of those contacts then I I think that's really valuable on that note actually just a quick side plug we we do a thing on a PG Biz um called the the mavens groups and we're looking to sort of grow out it's like basically experts in certain areas of the industry ask questions every week we very short plug this but we're looking to expand out into different Regional groups at the moment so we are actively looking for people who want to put them themselves forward to talk on behalf of the Indian games industry so if you'd be interested in being one of those people which is a great way to raise your brand obviously uh come to me and drop me a business card and grab me at some point and we'll get back to you when this madness has died down but anyway so one more question we have over here this chat without a mic he's quite loud sorry for example you said you know he send you a game and you said I don't care about it because my users don't care so

for example we as of now you are representative of a lot of users who read yourself with that as a representative can you from West show us a mirror in the sense of whatever content that Indian developers are making what do you think about it because there's a huge cultural shock and I a lot of people B Be come from cricket Bollywood and all so what is really which when you talked about ini culture mhm so show some just tell us what is some of the stuff you have received actually from indan developers what do you think about so you want just tell you what you think of Indian games we've seen so far yeah yeah um go on then you're you're in Bangalore you're not out of here for 24 hours be as direct as you like actually he's been looking at games all day so it's a good question man thank you for your question uh so okay right um there's an absolutely fantastic game in the development section that you should all go and play and uh it is called uh uh it's a game called speed rush and it's from uh gam andx and uh it is just

a full-on racing game so the first thing I would say is that I think that game tastes game culture taste is quite Global uh like some genres just do well everywhere U so they're making like this really awesome uh uh game called speed rush really really awesome uh then there is uh uh Babaji from uh wijit games right and like this is a game that is uh I I understand B you means like healer or something like that in Indian culture is that right or um and uh it's hope not an insult hope sorry if I have you know I probably you tripped all over it and it's a it's like a it's like a passive schmap so it's like a Japanese shoot up like a cave shooter or something like that but it's got a really fantastic um uh Indian flavor aesthetic to it so visually it looks completely different and that that's really eye-catching and I think that I think that when you talk about you know what is your gaming culture I think that games are kind of universal there are some things like I think you guys like sports games a little bit more in the same way that the Russians like tank games a little bit

more and the Japanese like RPGs a little bit more it's you know it's true I mean Eastern Europe and Russia like they like those games you know um you know China likes uh card based card Batts and stuff um so there are slight variations but games generally are quite um uh quite Universal but I I think like visually like call upon your heritage like actually be proud of like this amazing visual history that you guys have like we like we came into the airport and saw these you know amazing religious figures and stuff like that and you know your culture like just enshrouded in it and it's just it's amazing and and and I feel like tapping into that and tapping into that part of that culture that that you have is is really more a visual side and but but you got to think about yeah Global you've got to think about as you say tastes are Global games are success terms of genres I think like match three like racing games tank games you know like all of these all of these different J I don't think that there is there is too much variation I think you guys like the same sort of stuff that we all like okay we we winding up so before we

go for lunch before we wind up and before we say thanks even I've got a couple of quick things I've got to say because as soon as I say wind up you'll go um so we're we stop for lunch in a second we'll be kicking off the sessions again uh about sort of 10 2 in here we'll be having the CH and monetize section so talking about um monetization and user acquisition and in the lit three and four rooms will be the making India track so be talking about the current India successes and and and some of the big guys talking about what's going on there um we also got the big Indie pitch which is the kind of middle part of is is kicking off from about 2:00 but that's really for those pitches the final that will be in here about uh 530 I think or something like that um the other thing other two things is you've got in your badges this thing here if you can see it I don't know screen it's a basically a Little People's Choice little badge award thing uh in the developer area uh you can go

around see some games and stick this next to the game you think that's most impressive most interesting Pete's listed some cool ones already um and the people that have the most at the end of uh today will have some sort of award so you'll be helping them out um help out your mates whatever that's fine um and last but not least PGC Bangalore do uh definitely use the hashtag do tweet there is a prize um Amit of reliance will remind me what it is but it is basically there is I know there some consultancy from Amazon and there some other bits and pieces so do do keep tweeting and I think that is pretty much it uh and then we can go go for lunch which is served downstairs outside in the Expo area downside and so go through the X area and lunch is served outside fantastic and then yeah we're kicking off again sort of about 2 10 plus 2 later on so big round of applause before we go for these gentlemen