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King.com CEO谈公司制胜策略及未来发展目标

发布时间:2012-07-24 17:19:03 Tags:,,

作者:Steve Peterson

King.com首席执行官 Riccardo Zacconi日前接受采访,谈论公司如何快速挤进Appdata榜单第二的位置,成为仅次于Zynga的Facebook社交游戏开发商。该公司热门作品《Bubble Witch Saga》目前是Facebook排名第5的游戏,整个King.com在Facebook有1100多万DAU;而Zynga的DAU约4800万,EA则是950万左右。

Riccardo Zacconi from viuz.com

Riccardo Zacconi from viuz.com

你们如何挤进Facebook游戏排行榜中第二的位置?

这涉及两方面。高品质内容需要耗费时间;你无法通过安排更多人员加速进程。其次是,这是个靠热门作品推动的行业。回到你的原始问题,我们2003年在互联网上创建公司,开发自己的游戏、原创作品,游戏主要基于社交形式。这是种休闲玩法,在此你可以在竞赛中同其他玩家进行角逐,我们会将你同3个陌生玩家进行配对。当我们去年4月第一次在Facebook上发行内容时,我们将King.com的一款热门作品投放于这一平台上,你可以在King.com以竞争或非竞争方式体验这款游戏。而在Facebook,你的竞争对象不是陌生人,是自己的好友,而且这里没有所谓的赢家和输家,但你会有所进展。你会在包含200个关卡的情境中体验相同游戏,你会从某个关卡晋级到下个关卡(游戏邦注:通过在各关卡中获得最低要求的分数)。

这款游戏释放出它的潜能,所以我们让数百万玩家同时体验游戏。首款作品是名为《Bubble Saga》的游戏。然后我们再次选取某款King.com热作,这一作品又再次获得成功,获得超过100万的玩家。从去年4月来,我们陆续从自己的160多款作品中选取了6款,其中有两款作品的规模超过《FarmVille》和《CityVille》,如今成为Facebook的10大热门作品之一。未来我们将从自己的项目中选取更多作品。回到我们的前提内容,为什么这耗费时间,我们的资源来自于自身庞大的原生作品集合,但同时我们通过每年在网络上发行18款新游戏进行创新,各作品都是基于为期3个月的快速开发周期。优秀作品堪称是“Saga的化身”。

所以你完全没有在自己的Facebook作品上进行冒险;你查观察什么具有可行性,然后将其投放至Facebook。

是的。通过每年发行如此多作品,我们得以进行创新,因为创新需要试验,试验也蕴藏着失败,但失败结果很快就会显现出来,代价也不高。当我们投入更多资源,创建更庞大的团队时,我们非常确定玩法是杰出的。我们充分证明,我们所采用的格式也具有可行性。我们将这些带有“Saga色彩”的游戏变成一个平台,在此我们能够取得进展,同好友共同体验。所有常见功能都是平台,而非游戏的组成要素。当我们发行新游戏时,只有1%的代码需要进行修改,以转化成常见功能。若你还记得,我们的竞争对手日前刚宣布,将斥资1000万美元,安排100名人员,投入2年多时间制作一款作品(游戏邦注:这是Mark Pincus所指的Zynga游戏项目《The Ville》),那么你就会明白创新包含很大风险。当你进行创新时,失败会导致大笔投资打水漂,因此这是个巨大损失。就我们而言,我们能够进行创新,因为当我们失败时,我们只损失3个月的工作投入,浪费3名人员。

你觉得你的新作品主要吸引既有玩家,还是新玩家?

我觉得这是两码件事。就行业来说,这是个更庞大的娱乐行业。娱乐的关键是什么?必须包含新鲜内容。若你总是制作相同系列,没过多久,玩家就产生厌倦情绪。所以你需要进行创新。用户是相同的用户,因为体验Ville游戏的用户主要是女性群体。《FarmVille》和《CityVille》60%以上的玩家都是女性。我们的游戏主要迎合这些群体,但同时会引入更多色彩,更多元化的玩法。这并非主要围绕资源管理,在此你需要等待,然后进行点击等。这在一定程度上带来更富挑战性的玩法。有益智游戏,有交换游戏,有麻将游戏,有更多题材的休闲游戏,这非常广泛。

你认为资源管理游戏不像街机游戏那般有趣?

街机游戏容易把握,你可以随时暂停体验,因为玩法通常耗费1-3分钟。如果你是位家庭主妇,正在准备午餐,或者你有小孩,你通常需要暂停游戏,无法继续体验下去。内容很容易掌握。就游戏耗时来说,这算是种快餐形式。但你也可以体验很长时间。第三点,品质非常重要,而且玩家能够轻松返回游戏。当你回到某资源管理游戏时,你的庄稼已经枯萎。在此,你会从你上次暂停的地方继续游戏。

Bubble Witch Saga 01 from gamesindustry.biz

Bubble Witch Saga 01 from gamesindustry.biz

移动平台是否是你们的下个目标?

移动平台是我们的下个重要战略目标,这主要因为我们从中看到巨大发展机会。谈到休闲游戏,若你联想到的是快餐式消费,那么移动平台就是理想选择。它适合任何屏幕尺寸,相比硬核游戏,它并不需要消耗众多数据,这也是移动平台的关键所在。我们还推崇差异化,我们期望的差异化方式是,呈现完全同步的游戏,这样我们就能够获得无缝隙体验。我们认为,玩家应着眼于游戏,当我们发行游戏时,我们希望游戏能够无处不在。若你是玩家,你会想要通过电脑进行游戏,但当转投iPad或iPhone设备时,能够从暂停的地方继续游戏。若我在电脑上购买能够推动玩法的道具,我会希望自己也能够在iPhone和平板电脑上利用它们。这就是我们所瞄准的目标。

你们的游戏是否都基于Flash格式?将其移植至移动平台是否会很复杂?

我们一直都是基于本土语言;在Facebook平台,我们基于Flash格式,在iPhone和iPad平台,我们基于本土语言,在Android平台亦是如此。我们其实还尝试了HTML5;《Pyramid Saga》就是基于HTML5,所以你可以通过你的浏览器体验游戏。我们发现,而且我们和谷歌进行密切合作,他们给出的建议是,当你基于移动设备开发内容时,本土语言是更优的选择。

据有些开发者表示,HTML5在移动平台的表现还不是那么突出;这是否是你们的感受?

其实还不错,但就渲染、新鲜色彩&图像和音效而言,我觉得本土语言依然更胜一筹,我们希望获得尽可能优质的体验。《Pyramid Saga》目前已具有可玩性,但原生体验要优质很多。

创造你所谈到的能够追踪移动和社交平台之间游戏数据的同步性是否会很困难?

的确非常麻烦。我们投入众多时间,我们在自己的平台中植入推广渠道,这意味着,我们发行的所有新作品都将立即植入所有功能及技术解决方案。所有游戏都附属于同个平台。你只需设置一次,下款作品就会立即获得完善,这包含速度和品质优势(游戏邦注:因为你无需重新制作代码),第三,也是最重要的一点是,知识管理。通常我们很难确保,你在此所学到的东西能够真正作为知识传递给下个团队,尤其是在我们的工作地点处于不同位置的情况下。就我们来说,知识管理根植于代码之中。

Bubble Witch Saga 02 from gamesindustry.biz

Bubble Witch Saga 02 from gamesindustry.biz

在多个国家处理货币和交易是否是个问题?

就我们来说,这简单许多。我们有针对各个国家的60种不同付费解决方案。例如,若你在德国没有LSV(这是个银行汇款服务),你就无法创收。在德国,用户鲜少持有信用卡;这同时也体现在意大利或西班牙。所以我们设计覆盖所有计费服务提供者的本土解决方案。Facebook非常简单;你整合Facebook,他们负责所有工作。苹果亦是如此;Android略有不同。

你对于Google Nexus 7之类低成本高性能平板电脑的问世是否满怀憧憬?

我异常激动。在我看来,最大变革其实在于平板电脑。我觉得,移动平台无疑是个庞大用户,但平板电脑依然处于初级阶段,值得一提的是,平板电脑的价格将逐步降低。它将带来新的用户群体,这些是能够在家上网的族群。我觉得家庭用户目前游离于未来行业发展局面之外。

你是否将连网电视看作是重要平台,就如智能电视或Ouya,或是其他将手机游戏带入电视机中的盒装设备?

显然我们处于游戏化之中,游戏无处不在。这就是为什么无缝隙体验如此重要。

即时共同体验是Zynga最近在其游戏作品中所呈现的。这是否也是你们的游戏所追求的目标,即时多人街机战斗?

在King.com,我们拥有真正多人模式的游戏作品,而在Facebook,我们正在进行尝试。我认为,关于电视游戏方面,你多半希望同置身相同房间的玩家共同体验内容。

Facebook平台已经达到稳定水平,用户数量在过去几个月里维持平平状态。这对你来说是否是个问题?

平台基本覆盖所有美国用户,其他国家依然有较大发展空间。我认为在美国,这更多变成伴随天气的周期循环;夏季会有更多玩家。在我们看来,这依然有较大发展空间。

你认为亚洲是否具有较大发展潜力?

我认为亚洲是地区扩展的天然场所。目前,我们主要着眼于欧洲、美国、北美和南美市场,但下个地域扩展目标是日本,此外,韩国也在考虑之中。就游戏题材而言,这些游戏类型非常适合他们。最具休闲性的游戏源自于70年代的日本。它们在功能手机中得到完善,但功能手机提供的内容无非就是纸牌收集游戏或虚拟角色游戏。如今,随着智能手机开始在日本普及化,我相信新题材的游戏作品也将越来越受欢迎。

你觉得你们在Facebook是否依然有较大发展空间?

不妨看看我们在King.com所采取的举措。在King.com,我们每月会引入新作品。玩家对于新作品满怀期待,会立即进行体验。优秀作品将留存下来,而较逊色的作品将淡出市场。而在Facebook,我们也会引入新内容。这对那些没有160款作品的公司来说是件难事。10款热门作品中,有7款是过去1年开发的。

你们的创收水平是否和Zynga相当,还是比他们更胜一筹?

出于竞争原因,我不方便就创收话题发表评论。我所能说的是,我们有3种创收模式。若将其比作金字塔,金字塔的底部就是我们的多数玩家,他们不愿意付费体验。我们通过广告进行创收。第二层就是想要继续体验游戏,不想要等待或邀请好友,或者是观看广告的玩家。这些玩家会购买生命值,购买虚拟道具和魔法,这些能够强化他们的玩法,例如准确魔法能够让你更好瞄准目标,预见魔法能够让你向上滚动屏幕。

金字塔顶部是重口味玩家,他们投入许多小时玩游戏,对于游戏非常精通。他们想要获得额外挑战,这些玩家随后受邀参加竞赛。在这三个模式中心,你接触到的是相同的游戏。结合这三种玩法能够让我们在收益上有所突破。我们2005年1月开始创收;我们的员工由在Facebook发行内容前的110人扩展至如今的240人。我们发展迅速;我们刚在巴塞罗纳、伦敦、布加勒斯特和波兰创建新的办公室,在瑞典成立第二个办公室,全部都着眼于内容开发。我们在旧金山创建了工作室。这带来丰厚收益。

听起来像是你们的限制因素主要在于,找到足够人员开发游戏。

是的,在社交平台推出更多游戏作品,这就是最大因素。这就是为什么我们收购了一家移动公司,这就是为什么我们在布加勒斯特开设办事处,这完全着眼于移动领域。这主要涉及人才。我们不收购IP;我们拥有众多IP,我们收购人才。这是我们在各个地方成立办事处的原因所在,因为斯德哥尔摩的人才都是高技术人才,但数量有限。这就是为什么我们在马尔摩成立第二个办事处,因为那里有两所一流的技术大学。我们在巴塞罗纳成立办事处主要是因为那里人才济济;我们不久前成立了这一工作室,目前共有成员18人。我们在布加勒斯特成立办事处是因为我们在此找到曾任职于EA移动部门的杰出人才。

这一平台解决方案让我们能够同全球工作室进行合作,确保相同质量水平。我们表示,这款曾发行于King.com的作品,这是款杰出作品,是款经过考验的作品;所以这是玩法,这是图像,请给这款游戏添加额外关卡。关于常见功能(游戏邦注:如从登陆到地图功能),请整合我们的平台。我们有标准化流程,在此我们有个支持他国团队的团队。

你们是否会继续在原有游戏中引入新关卡?

会的,例如在《Bubble Witch Saga》中,我们最初融入70个关卡,现在游戏有300多个关卡。

你提到说,你们设有针对熟练玩家的竞赛;是否有向这些玩家提供什么奖品,或者他们角逐的只是炫耀权利?

在Facebook,我们最近引入魔法竞赛,这一内容目前处在测试中。你同他人进行角逐,你获得的是能够在游戏中带给能量的魔法,例如让你更好瞄准目标的准确魔法。

你们向玩家呈现什么类型的广告?

视频广告;这些广告有相当高的eCPM,这是积极用户体验的一部分。当你结束自己的生命值时,你可以邀请好友,或是购买新的生命值,抑或是你可以选择观看视频广告。广告商会资助你的游戏玩法。我们和Nestle、T-Mobile等大公司合作。

你谈到引入众多游戏,它们是否都属于休闲街机游戏类型?

我们着眼于自己的用户群体,这主要是女性用户。我们瞄准休闲题材,因为我们觉得这类游戏有较大发展空间,因为这一题材能够通过任何设备进行体验。我们进行很多尝试,休闲题材包含众多不同类型,如益智游戏、文字游戏、隐藏物品游戏等。我们还尝试Saga之外的形式。若你没有持续进行尝试,那你就会停滞不前。回到蓝海策略,这似乎是大会的流行词汇,蓝海策略包含两个关键要素。首先是,你需要不同于他人;这是差异化。另一带来可持续竞争优势的元素是较低成本。若你存在成本优势,你存在差异性,那么就长远来看,这就是个可持续业务。

就如你提到的,若你们投下1000万美元的赌注,那你们将无法支撑众多项目。

没错。你多半不会这么做。这就是为什么采用这一策略的业内人士不会承担太多风险。

这似乎是游戏机业务遇到的困境;赌注规模持续提高,但销量并没有见涨。

是的。我觉得Facebook领域主要沿着这些路线迈进,我们正在瓦解这一行业。

据我了解,很多移动和社交领域的初创公司都着眼于图像元素,旨在确保他们的游戏呈现优美外观。就这所带来的额外资金和时间投入来看,这是否是明智之举?

我认为,作为初创公司,你需要承担风险,我觉得这是件好事。我觉得游戏就是一切,作为创业者,你其实是孤注一掷。我们非常鼓励这么做。但挑战之处在于,如何获得反复成功。很多公司凭借一款游戏而名声大噪,但随后则在后续作品中逐步走向没落。这是行业的一个挑战之处,这是个靠热门作品推动的行业,在此玩法是成功的关键。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

King.com Interview: CEO Riccardo Zacconi

By Steve Peterson

How the company has become the #2 Facebook games business in one year

Riccardo Zacconi, CEO of King.com, sat down with GamesIndustry International to discuss its rapid rise to second place on the Appdata rankings, behind Zynga. Its top game, Bubble Witch Saga, is currently the #5 game on Facebook, and overall King.com has over 11 million daily average users (DAU) on Facebook; for comparison, Zynga has about 48 million DAU and Electronic Arts has about 9.5 million DAU.

Q: How did you get to number two in the Facebook game rankings?

Riccardo Zacconi: Two things. Quality takes time; you can’t just speed up the process by putting more people at it. The second one is, it’s a hit-driven industry. Coming back to your original question, we started the company back in 2003 on the web, developing our own games, original titles, with a format which was a social format for the time. It was a casual play where you would compete against other players in tournaments, and we would match you with three people you didn’t know before. When we launched in April of last year for the first time on Facebook, we took one of the titles which was popular on King.com and we presented the same game, which you would play on King.com in a competitive way, in a non-competitive way. Instead of competing against a player you didn’t know, you would play with your friends, and you would not have a winner and a loser, but you would play progression. You would play the same game on a landscape with 200 levels, and you would progress from one level to the next, by achieving a minimum score at each level.

That game unleashed its potential so we had many million players playing at the same time. The first game was a game called Bubble Saga. Then we took another game that was popular on King.com, and it again succeeded, having more than a million players playing the same game. We’ve launched since April of last year six titles from our portfolio of more than 160 games, and we have two titles which are larger than FarmVille, larger than CityVille, and are now among the top ten titles. We are about to launch more titles from our portfolio. Coming back to my premise, why it takes time, we are sourcing from this large portfolio of original titles we own, but at the same time we innovate by launching 18 new games every year on the web, in a rapid development cycle of basically three months for each game. The best titles are then qualified to be ‘Sagafied.’

Q: You’re not taking a chance, then, with your Facebook titles; you’re seeing what works and then taking it to Facebook.

Riccardo Zacconi: Yes. By launching so many titles per year we can innovate, because innovation requires experimentation, and experimentation also implies failure, but we fail fast and cheaply. When we invest considerably more resources with larger teams, we are pretty sure that the game play is good. We have proven the format in which we launch these games also works. We have made this ‘Sagafication’ of the games, where you have the progression and play with your friends, a platform. All the common features are part of the platform, not of the game. When we launch a new game, only 1 percent of the code needs to be changed for all the common features. If you think of our competitors, and just this morning it was announced that a game takes more than $10 million to develop with 100 people working for more than two years [Mark Pincus announced those numbers for Zynga's The Ville], it’s a big risk to innovate. Because when you innovate and you fail with so much investment, it’s a big loss. In our case, we can innovate because when we fail, we lose three months of work and three people.

Q: Do you think your new games attract largely your existing audience, or new players to your games?

Riccardo Zacconi: I think it’s two things. If you think of the industry, it’s the broader industry of entertainment. What is key in entertainment? It’s to have new things. If you propose always the same series, after a while people will actually be pretty tired of it. So you need to innovate. The audience is the same audience, because the audience who plays Ville games, the majority of the audience, is actually female. Sixty percent plus of the players of FarmVille and CityVille are actually female. Our games are appealing to this audience but are bringing in suddenly more color, more variety of gameplay. It’s not about resource management, where you have to wait and click, etc. It’s bringing in a more challenging gameplay in some ways. You have puzzle games, you have switcher games, you have mah jongg, you have more genres of casual games, which is very broad.

Q: Then you think resource management games are not as exciting as arcade games?

Riccardo Zacconi: An arcade game is easy to learn, and you can stop anytime because the gameplay takes between one to three minutes. If you’re a housewife or at home, and you’re preparing lunch, or you have a kid, you need to stop, you can’t just continue. It’s easy to learn, it’s a snackable format in terms of how long it takes you to play the game. You can however also play for a very long time. The third quality, which is very important, it’s easy to go back. When you go back on a resource management game, your crops have withered. Here, you continue from where you stopped last time.

Q: Is mobile the next step for your games?

Riccardo Zacconi: Mobile is the next big strategic area for us, principally because we see a huge opportunity there. With casual games, if you think of snackable consumption, mobile is the ideal platform. It adapts very well to any screen size, and it doesn’t require a lot of data consumption versus hardcore games, which I think is also key for mobile. We believe also in differentiation, and how we want to differentiate is to have fully synchronized game play, so that we have a truly seamless experience. We think that the player should focus on the game , and when we launch the game we want this game to be available everywhere. If you put the hat on of the player, he wants to be able to play on his computer, but when he goes on his iPad or iPhone he wants to be able to continue playing from where he stopped. If I buy some items which help me in the gameplay on my computer, I want to have them also on my iPhone and my tablet. That’s what we’re working on.

Q: Have your games been done in Flash? Will it be difficult to move them to a mobile platform?

Riccardo Zacconi: We always work in the native language; on Facebook we work in Flash, on iPhone and iPad we work in the native language, and Android the same thing. We actually did an experiment with HTML 5; Pyramid Saga is in HTML 5, so you can play it from your browser. What we found, and we worked very closely with Google, their recommendation was it’s actually better to native language when you develop for a mobile device.

Q: I’ve heard from developers that the performance of HTML 5 on mobile is not that good yet; is that your experience?

Riccardo Zacconi: It’s actually OK, but in terms of rendering, the crisp colors and graphics, and the sound, I think it’s still better with native, and we want to have the best possible experience. Pyramid Saga is playable today, but the experience in native is going to be much better.

Q: Is it going to be difficult to have that synchronicity you talked about, where you’ll track game data between mobile and social platforms?

Riccardo Zacconi: It is. We’ve worked a long time on it, and we have integrated distribution on our platform, which means that every new game that we launch will have all the features and all the technical solution available immediately. All the games are attached to the same platform. You do the work once, and well, and any improvement is available immediately to the next game, which has the advantage of speed, quality – because you don’t need to redo the code – and thirdly and most importantly, knowledge management. Often it’s difficult to make sure that what you learn here is actually transferred as knowledge to the next team, especially when we work across several locations. In our case, knowledge management is embedded in the code.

Q: Is dealing with currencies and transactions in multiple countries an issue?

Riccardo Zacconi: In our case, it’s much easier. We are coming from the street, I like to say, because on the web it was pretty much the street. Very competitive, and we had more than 60 different payment solutions adapted to every country. For example, if you didn’t have LSV in Germany, which is basically a bank transfer, you would not monetize. Very few people have a credit card in Germany; the same thing also applies in Italy or Spain. So we had local solutions covering all the different billing providers. Facebook is very easy; you integrate with Facebook and they do all the work. Apple, the same; Android, slightly different.

Q: Are you excited by the advent of lower-cost, powerful tablets like Google’s Nexus 7?

Riccardo Zacconi: I am super excited. For me the biggest revolution is actually tablets. I think mobile is a huge audience of course, but I think tablets are still at the beginning, especially with the price points of tablets going down. It will open up a new audience, which is anyone who actually plays or surfs from home. I think the home user is far away from having seen what is going to happen.

Q: Do you see connected TVs as an important platform, like smart TVs or Ouya or other boxes that bring mobile games to TV sets?

Riccardo Zacconi: Absolutely, we’re in the middle of gamification, games are everywhere. That’s why a seamless experience is so important.

Q: Playing together in real-time is something that Zynga showed with some of its games recently. Is that something you see for your games, real-time multiplayer arcade action?

Riccardo Zacconi: On King.com, we have games which are real mutliplayer, and on Facebook we are experimenting with it. I think when you are talking about TV play, you’d want to play with someone who is in the same room.

Q: The Facebook platform has plateaued, with user numbers essentially flat for the last few months. Is that a problem for you?

Riccardo Zacconi: You have basically everyone in the US, in other countries I think there is a lot of growth. In the U.S. I think it’s becoming more cyclical together with the weather; more players in the summer season. For us there’s still plenty of growth.

Q: Do you see a lot of potential in Asia?

Riccardo Zacconi: I think Asia is a natural place for regional extension. At this moment in time we are focused on Europe, the US, North America and South America, but next on the geographic expansion is Japan, and we’re also looking at Korea. If you think of the game genres these games are perfectly suited for them. Most casual games have their origin in the ’70′s in Japan. They were advanced in feature phones, but feature phones didn’t allow you to play much more than the card collection games or avatar games. Now with smartphones really taking off in Japan, I believe we will see new genres being popular there.

Q: Do you think you still have a lot of growth potential on Facebook?

Riccardo Zacconi: You see what we do on King.com. On King.com every month we introduce a new game. Players are waiting for this new game, and they are trying it immediately. Good games stay up, less good games, they vanish. On Facebook we are bringing in something new. It’s tougher for other companies which don’t have a back catalog of 160 games. Seven of the top ten games have been developed in the last 12 months.

Q: Are you seeing monetization rates similar to Zynga, or better than theirs?

Riccardo Zacconi: I cannot comment on the monetization for competitive reasons. What I can say is that we have three models of monetization. If you think of a pyramid, the base of the pyramid is most of our players, who are not willing to pay for play. We monetize those through advertising. The second layer are players who want to continue playing without waiting or without having to invite their friends or without having to watch an ad. Those players actually buy lives, they buy virtual items, charms, which enable them to enhance their game play, like the charm of precision which allows you to aim, or the charm of foresight, which allows you to scroll the screen upwards.

The top of the pyramid are the heavy players, who play many hours and are really good at the game. They want an additional challenge, and those players are invited then to play in competitive tournaments. At the center of all these three models you have the same game. The combination of those three game plays allows us to grow in a very profitable way. We’ve been profitable since January of 2005; we wnet from 110 employees before we launched on Facebook to 240, I believe. We are growing very fast; we just opened up new offices in Barcelona, in London, in Bucharest, in Poland, a second office in Sweden, all focused on development. We opened an office here in San Francisco. It’s very profitable.

Q: It sounds like your limiting factor is finding enough people to create the games.

Riccardo Zacconi: Yes, and launching more games on social, that is actually the biggest factor. That is why we bought a company for mobile, that’s why we opened up an office in Bucharest, that’s entirely focused on mobile. It’s all about talent. We’re not acquiring IP; we have plenty of IP, we’re acquiring talent. That’s the reason we opened up offices in several locations, because the talent pool in Stockholm is a fantastically skilled talent pool, but it’s a small talent pool. That’s why we opened up a second office in Malmo, because there are two technical universities there that are very good. We opened up an office in Barcelona, for the pure reason that there is a fantastic talent pool there; we opened up the office last week, we now have 18 people there. We opened up an office in Bucharest because we found fantastic people who before were working at EA in mobile.

The platform approach allows us to work with offices around the world and assure the same level of quality. We say this game has launched on King.com, is a good game, is a proven game; so here is the gameplay, here is the artwork, please develop additional levels of this game. Regarding the common features, like from the login to the map, please integrate with our platform. We have a standardized process where we have a team which is supporting the teams in other countries.

Q: Do you continue to introduce new levels to your old games?

Riccardo Zacconi: Yes, for instance with Bubble Witch Saga we started with 70 levels and we have now more than 300 levels.

Q: You mentioned you have competitions for top players; are there prizes for those players, or is it just bragging rights that they are competing for?

Riccardo Zacconi: On Facebook, we introduced recently and we are testing competitions for charms. You compete against others and what you win is a charm that gives you powers in the game, like the charm of precision that lets you aim better.

Q: What kind of advertising do you show to the players?

Riccardo Zacconi: Video ads; they have a very high eCPM, and it’s part of a positive user experience. When you finish your lives, you can either invite your friends, or buy new lives, or you can watch a video ad. The advertiser is actually sponsoring your gameplay. We’re working with Nestle, and T-Mobile – big companies.

Q: You talk about introducing a lot of games, but are they all within the casual arcade game genre?

Riccardo Zacconi: We are very focused on our audience, which is a female audience. We are focused on casual games, because we feel these games have a long way to go, because it’s a format which can be played across any device. We experiment a lot, but casual has a lot of different categories like puzzle games, word games, hidden object games, and so on. We are also experimenting with formats outside of the Saga format. If you don’t keep experimenting you are dead. Coming back to the blue ocean strategy, which seems to be a favorite buzzword here at the conference, there are two key components of a blue ocean strategy. The first one is you have to be different from others; it’s differentiation. The second component for a sustainable competitive advantage is low cost. If you have a cost advantage and you are differentiated long term you have a sustainable business.

Q: As you said, if you’re placing $10 million bets you can’t afford to place too many of those.

Riccardo Zacconi: Exactly. And you will not. That’s why if you look in industry those who have this strategy are not taking many risks.

Q: That seems to have been part of the difficulties with the console business; the size of the bets kept increasing, but the sales didn’t keep up.

Riccardo Zacconi: Yes. I think that the industry on Facebook has been very much moving along those lines, and we are disrupting this industry.

Q: Many of the startups I’ve talked to in mobile and social are focusing a lot on the graphics, making sure their games are exceptionally good looking. Do you think this is wise, given the added costs and time?

Riccardo Zacconi: I think as a startup you have to take risks, and I think it’s good. I think the game is everything, and as an entrepreneur you often have all eggs in one basket. I would definitely encourage it. The challenge, however, is to have repeated successes. Many companies, which are very successful with one game, and then fade in launching the next game. That has been one of the difficult things in this industry which is a hit-driven industry where the gameplay is most important in succeeding.(Source:gamesindustry


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