Nordic Game 2015 Diary: Day 2

hello again we are back here at the second day of the Nordic game 2015 conference after a couple of false starts for the camera we're ready to go and talk about our achievements Today George achievement one what have you done achievement one I managed to go and see some talks from some South Korean developers who came over to Sweden as part of what can only be described as an exchange trip for businesses so imagine that time when that French teenager came and stayed in your house when you were younger and it's roughly the same but with mobile gaming involved that sounds awesome it's not quite the same obviously fewer permission slips fewer permission slips and more talk about mobile game monetization and slightly less talk about whether the French eat waffles all the time but it was impressive it was really interesting but after that I'll end spent the rest of the day wandering the show floor I guess I have seen you swanning about at these conferences I'm never 100% sure exactly what you're doing well I I think the term swanning about is fantastic first um but what I'm generally doing is I'm walking around the floor trying to find

people who may come and speak at Future Pocket Gamer connects conferences so we've got a few coming up this year we've got one in San Francisco in July we've got one in Helsinki which is in September and then we've got one in London in the new year and what I'm looking for are some people who've got really fascinating interesting stories so come along to the show maybe talk about their experiences perhaps their experience of a different Market or working on a different game and use that as a way of helping increase everyone in the industry's knowledge about Mobile gaming as a whole nice well Lissa and I have been pratting about on camera yes we have it's actually been so much fun I've really enjoyed it it's been interesting yeah I suppose but we've actually been trying to do some quasi serious things we talked to the guys who made Subway Surfers who've got a brand new game coming out the announcement of which will have just gone live as you watched this it's called Blades of brim Blades of brim and it's another three-lane Auto Runner but they've put an RPG spin on it yeah which is which is an interesting you know I mean it's two very distinct genres one incredibly

saturated the other probably RPGs are equally I guess saturated and trying to J together like two saturated sponges and see what comes out they were speaking about it in very enthusiastic tones obviously and I'm I'm curious to see whether there is much life left in the three Lane Auto Runner thing they seem to have PT it up you can see the video on app spy so there is game footage of it and it's very good-looking subway surface is quite good looking but it is it is that thing again and we've asked this on the podcast before how much life is there in that match that match three that's the other genre no not that one the three Lane Auto Runner well I think people still enjoy these games and I know that maybe for people who are really dedicated mobile Gamers who are sort of super into their titles that yeah maybe we've all moved on from Temple Run but I know plenty of people who still play them and love the fact that these games they don't restrict you with timers they don't stop you from playing so if you're sitting on the bus you don't build a load of buildings and attack once and then have to sit there for 10 minutes while the next thing comes up you get to play them again um

but my concern about it is it's what you mentioned it's about this RPG plus this um you know the fre Lane Auto Runner genres they're both overly saturated and the people who like fre Lane Auto Runners are probably not necessarily the people who like RPGs as well and I'm wondering I'll be honest the ven diagram overlap is is not that big and I don't know if that overlap will be enough to make it a real financial success but it could be who knows then again I think of that is because a lot of people who play Auto Runners it's the ultimate casual game you often get people who aren't particularly Gamers RPGs is the land of people who have discovered gaming maybe this is the bridge between the two maybe this is the way that casual gamers can discover RPGs and kind of or just be introduced I mean obviously it's not a proper RP so what you're saying is they switch from the Casual Lane Runner Lane into the RPG Lane oh that was that was I'm not saying I'm not saying been a long conf is

it yeah not not fully not making a full kind of suddenly becoming World of Warcraft style kind of game but just you know RPGs are popular for a reason they there's there's that element of choice and customization which resonates well with everyone I'm sure that casual gamers could be if introduced to that in the right way Blades of brim could be an interesting way to do that yeah well while we've been doing our pratting about on camera we've been trying to get a flavor of the event like as a whole it's a Nordic event it's been taking place in the Nords as I Loosely call it how much of that Nordic flavor have you felt cuz some conferences you go to and you distinctly are aware that oh I'm in London or I'm in San Francisco or whatever here I'm I'm aware of it but it feels very International yeah definitely and a lot of the the games that we've seen and a lot of the talks we've seen have been on a very International kind of global level there's not been there was some there was the founding fathers talk yesterday where we had um the founders of massive entertainment and dice and some incredible we've seen roio running about there have been you seen the big Nordic gaming Giants but on the

whole the talk has been a very Global Focus there's been a lot of games that um haven't necessarily been celebrating the Nordic region because the Nordic region speaks for itself it doesn't need to beat its chest and say oh this is us um just point at Angry Birds exactly look oh look there's king that's what they do well you I mean sorry to cut off you you went to Bangalore didn't you and both of you did yeah right which I didn't go to how does it differ from something like this what are the major things you notice well one of the things is wherever you go in the world to a conference there's always going to be an element of Home Advantage but there's always going to be a certain number of people at that conference maybe sort of 70% upwards who are from the home territories in this case there were definitely a lot of people in attendance who are from the Nord but the culture around here is a really strong Sharing culture people share ideas I can remember talking to Finnish developers talking about the fact that they were sharing game secrets with their Arch rivals in coffee shops and in bars because that's part of the culture it's

kind of academic you don't just keep your ideas away you go and share them with other people so the Nords in that sense they're really open that's the reason why I think we get this friendly International fi and I think Bangalore I mean that was definitely a friendly conference as well don't get me wrong but because it was one of the first major conferences in India it was a lot more about getting the feel of a particular country a particular territory that has been I think we would probably agree after attending unfairly uncovered yeah it's been overlooked a little bit yeah that's it and well the thing with India as a region is that it's it's very difficult to get people who are up in Mumbai to come down to Bangalore and vice versa in all the different cities there's um a lot of developers that we were talking to were saying that there is no chatting between there's no kind of dispersion of ideas throughout India because the developers just don't meet there is no opportunities there's no events the transport networks are quite difficult um M insul little development houses exactly and it's kind of like bees and pollination it's quite hard to get

different ideas all around the countes that that was what was really exciting about Pocket Gamer um connect Bangalore and so the conversations were very different to the conversations we're hearing here the conversations there were about Talent acquisition how to build great teams um the you know just designing itself really interesting stuff related to India's infrastructure in terms of monetization how they solve the free-to-play problem people mobile payments things like that whereas here that's all already established Nordic Nordic the Nordic region is one of the forerunners of kind of the the mobile gaming world and it just need to have those conversations so it's it's the next step it's you know where are we going to take this now well me and George are going to be off in a bit this is our last day here you're staying on I am and you're doing an actual talk tomorrow aren't you yes yeah yeah am what are you going to be teaching the lovely people I'm going to be teaching the lovely people how to get journalists to cover your game without resorting to Desperate Measures like Hit Men threatening kidnapping families that kind of thing okay that's helpful that's that's good yeah we we don't recommend

you please don't ever do that um but yeah I mean the idea is we we get a lot of pictures as journalists as you guys know I mean the the average there was a there was a survey done um and on average I think it's 50 pictures a day for each journalist which adds up to 13,000 a year so that's an awful lot and that's a lot of noise for developers to shout through and try and see how they can get their game covered in the media whether it's a review just a news piece a handson a video um so I'm going to be going through exactly the ways that you can do that um whether you need to hire a PR agency or do it yourself um how to exactly write a pitch and and some of the more unusual stuff like creating a video a Gameplay trailer just the stuff like including assets all these things that people often fall down on and that's the reason they don't get covered gameplay videoos more and more important now with everyone going to YouTube you know increasingly so but they've been asking me the same kind of questions the developers I've been speaking to and like not to spoil your talk but the quick the quick bits of advice that we

would always give if you are a developer wanting to get attention it's like one email very short introduction about what the game is all about embed pictures into the body of the email so we open up and we immediately see what your game looks like underneath that a video we can click it and immediately see it playing underneath that if you've got it a code whether it's a test flight build or access to the game in soft launch or something like that where we can actually sit down and play if we've got that small amount of information your chances of being actually featured on something or of us being able to go oh that look interesting increased dramatically cuz when you get 50 100 however many emails a day you just can't sit and read them all in full and people send us entire documents and then FTP links to gigabyte files like we can't I'm not downloading that it's not going to happen so make it easy on yourself keep it nice and short and sweet and the other thing is to think about some smart and innovative ways of maybe reaching out to new audiences so I I saw a developer today I'm afraid I've completely forgotten the name of the game but I will attempt to remember it soon yes I know I'm so sorry everyone but what was really interesting is that

when you were playing the game you could use a keyboard shortcut to basically put up the details of the game name and the company name in the bottom right corner so if you think about twitch streamers and you think about people working with YouTube videos watermarking content is a real pain in the backside for a lot of people and so what they've done is basically created this option for people who are playing the game and streaming it and who want to be attributing it properly just to basically go I think it's control L and there you go pops up and that means that that can help them really tap into that YouTub Twitch streaming audience because it just saves a little bit of time and it's it's a really small but smart idea and if you can think up a few little things like that then you never know you might just get that little bit of an edge well if you are interested in what the conference has felt like you can check out yesterday's diary if you haven't already seen it there are also several videos up in Pocket Gamer biz's YouTube channel and a couple on app spite as well if you're a little more gamer focused George we're going to scram yeah lissia best of luck for tomorrow so lonely don't fall on your face and die I'll try I am wearing heels so suddenly actually literally good advice that is

good advice fair enough and thank you for watching up until now we'll see you next time see you next time