All Change

I think there's a big vacancy in the market for really compelling competitive and co-operative games. Games where enlisting your friends in play is an integral part of the game, and I don't think anybody has really done that well yet. It's an area that we want to focus on - obviously we haven't done it yet but it's on the road map. Ultimately, playing computer AI has its limitations, and playing with real people is inherently a lot more interesting.

Yeah, it feels like 20 or 30 percent of the effort is getting to launch and the real work comes post launch. As Nick likes to say, 'This is when the team grows up,' and we really have. We've gone from, during development, two or three week sprints, to pushing almost daily to add new features and tuning the game.

I think the team has placed a lot more value on understanding the data coming off of the users' performance, and making changes based on that data instead of just our hunches. A lot of arguments are usually concluded with, 'Let's test it.' It's sort of the great equalizer in arguments.

It really depends on how you use the data, or what you're trying to solve. We can use that endless stream of data to identify problems in the game, and find out where we're losing people. At that point we gather as much data around that as we can, and that's where it stops. That's where creative problem-solving and an experienced team comes in to come up with a creative solution. You don't use data as the solution; you use data to help identify the problem.

It's about understanding what the customers buy, how much they value it, and how much they're willing to pay for it. That's the big balance that you have to strike, and there's a lot to be done there. I think the average monetisation rate across the industry is something like 3 or 4 per cent, but we question why it's 3 per cent, y'know? Why isn't it 20 per cent?

Yeah, and I think there's a real lack of public data in the social space. AppData does a really good job of understanding reach, but that's basic, and unless you're a public company are have filed an S1 it's really hard to understand how people are monetizing, the ways that's happening, the average revenue produced per user. There's a lot of groping for, 'What numbers make sense? What's a reasonable expectation to have?' We're struggling with that probably like everyone else is.

But ultimately we lean on this whole value proposition: if you create a high quality game that's really fun to play, and that people want to play, these are the intrinsic motivations that will make those people want to return, for people to invite their friends, and for people to pay money. They value the experience.

Well, if we did agree with that we'd probably just close up shop right now, but I think he makes a fair point. The playing field has changed, and there are certainly advantages for established players with a large reach today. But it's still early days in the life of social games, and I think that what's more fundamental than Facebook as a gaming platform is free-to-play as a business model.

This is not just flash in the pan; y'know, the table has been set, and if you're not there yet you're not gonna get dinner. I think this is very early days, and there's still going to be a lot of innovation that drives the market... But it changes the way you make your games, so you can rely less on spammy viral tricks to grow audience and you come back on how to build a quality game that people are going to tell their friends about.

Yeah, and you talk to any marketer in the world and they'll tell you that positive word-of-mouth is the most powerful way to grow an audience.