Miniclip's Rob Small

We can very clearly track through all of the analytics that we have to see the games that are most successful on our site. And although initially we may give those games away for free, we believe that there's an appetite for users to play those games on other platforms.

We have a very successful franchise we've developed called Monster Truck Nitro, which was originally something we came up with as a fun and action packed flash game. But over time we've built an iPhone game that's been hugely successful and was used by Apple in the global TV commercial for the 3GS. We're just about to relaunch that. We also created a PC download version of that game that people can buy which has a much richer experience in it. So we're creating this franchise concept where we will test the concept with the audience and if we get the sort of interest and involvement from them we can grow it into this cross platform franchise.

That's really what we're looking to do and it means we can capitalise on those games that have a very big audience and build them into something much bigger.

It's something we were very keen to ensure, even way back we knew that if we were going to attract high calibre advertisers - the Sonys and Disneys and Time Warners - we would need to ensure that we maintained a high quality bar and didn't try the get-rich-quick approach that some of the flash game sites do - creating things that are topical, then are somewhat unsavoury in their content.

We also didn't want to compromise on security and safety of the users - so we do have pretty stringent things in place to ensure that it is a safe place and high quality place for users to spend time. And something we're looking to get into even more is the learning and educational stuff. We see that parents not only see Miniclip as a fun place to spend their leisure time as a reward for doing homework and so on, but also it could be a learning experience for them and there's an opportunity there for us to capitalise on some of the successes we've seen on things like the Nintendo DS - building a casual experience that teaches kids valuable things like how to spell and how to type and maths and geography skills in a site that they really enjoy visiting.

Yes, we've built a set of different tools so that the developer network - which is about 300 individuals and companies that work for us developing content - are able to use those different APIs and different assets that we create within their games.

So each game, although it may not be an exact look and feel copy of a previous game, it has that Miniclip feel about it, it has our logo and same high scores component, the same awards. We wanted to create that continuity of quality across the titles. We want people to look at a game and say, "yes, that's a Miniclip game".

We wanted to build up a brand name that people would trust and know it was a place they could get a high quality experience.

There are two ways you can go about it - you can let the audience rank what is going to be popular, and certainly in Facebook that happens. Or you can take a more editorial approach. And while we consult with our audience - a lot of them are testing our games in beta - we reserve that editorial control. The reason being that if you rely entirely on what the audience likes then you end up with most of the content on the site staying the same, which is why Mafia Wars is still the number one game, along with Zynga Poker, and those games are very difficult for anyone to ever topple because they've got such a head start and such a large audience behind them.

I think it's natural on a site that is social or community-based that the audience makes that decision. But I do think that, for us, with the understanding we have of our audience, that we're able to make those selections and set a kind of filter in place to make sure the stuff they're seeing is good enough quality.

You look at YouTube and you see this ridiculous amount of content they've got available on there, but it's very difficult for people to find the good stuff, it's so vast. And there is a limited amount of shelf space on their homepage for them to be able to display the stuff that's popular. You have more shelf space online, but I think the audience likes to have some sort of suggestion at least given to them of what they might enjoy, and that's something we tried to do.

I think users are pretty savvy but I think that what goes around comes around and that if you want to create a business that's going to be around for a long time and be successful then you need to think about how you're going to connect with your audience and spamming them is not something we'd contemplate doing. It's something that would tend to lean towards a very intensive period of success perhaps but that might end up with some fairly serious issues.

You look at the problems [Zynga] have had around their offer-based business model which have been fairly unsavoury. Certainly companies that are well-known for using rather underhand techniques for acquiring users, using mechanisms like that is a way to make, clearly, some pretty large amounts of money over a short period of time. But I wonder if they're going to be around in five years time and continue to be as successful.

I think there's this move to online play. I play as many console games as the next man, and if you come to the Miniclip offices you'll see we've got a whole array of different consoles here that we use for 'research'.

It's a lot of fun and I enjoy the whole online experience now, with games like Call of Duty the longevity of the gameplay you get playing online against other users in a million times what a single player game could ever offer you. And that's why a lot of the games we're developing now are free flash multiplayer games, because we know as well as they do that by having a different human opponent every time you play it's going to give you a different experience.

Our games are playable in the browser on the Wii. We have a site that runs on iPhone and, as I say, the Google Nexus. Both of those have had a few hundred thousand views, which on something like the Nexus, which is a new phone, makes us think there is this demand for people to move towards accessing this content online.

That's not going to happen on the iPhone because the success of the App Store means that it's a bit of a walled garden. The convenience of having a payment method already set up and being able to do very low cost transactions is a fantastic business model. It's something we really want to be a part of, but I still think that there's an appetite for users to access the content online - there's just more flexibility in that experience I think than being forced to go and buy a title and have that typical CD or cartridge or whatever it is that you need to carry around.

Yeah, I think so. I see them as two totally separate business models and I don't see that there's any kind of crossover. You have to look at the fact that Zynga has the same investors as Facebook and they're kind of the same company therefore. I believe it would be very difficult for someone to topple them from the success that they've already had.

Underneath them, there's always a changing mix of who's popular month on month, that's something we see, so I think it's going to be very difficult for people to maintain the successes that they've had.

It's also very expensive and time-consuming to build a lot of these very successful social games. And although some of the numbers people throw out seem fairly low, I think in reality the continued development that needs to go on to ensure the audience continues to play is significantly more than perhaps they might let on.