Friday, September 23, 2011

6 different ways to land a job in the casual/social games industry


We can all see that the casual/social games industry is booming. Worldwide social gaming market revenues are expected to quintuple by 2015, reaching as much as $5 billion due mostly to advertising revenues and virtual goods sales, according to a new report from market research firm Parks Associates.

What does this mean? It means that this industry has jobs, lots of them. And because this industry is only a few years old, it’s not easy finding people who have tons of direct industry-related experience. And that means that young 20 some-things with a lot of passion for gaming can look for jobs in this industry, and actually be able to get them!

Based on my experience in this industry (I work as a games producer), there are 6 ways in which you can land a job in this industry.

1) GET ENTREPRENEURIAL 

Come up with an original game idea – There are tons of gaming companies right now that are more than happy to invest in your game idea if it has potential. You don’t even need to build the game first and then look for investors. Just come up with a good idea and start reaching out to game studios/publishers with a nice looking presentation or proof of concept. Companies like W3i technologies, Crowdstar, Nimbus Games etc have actually built out gaming funds for aspiring game creators.

I can quote the beginnings of my career itself as a good example. I come from an engineering/MBA background and have spent my whole career in healthcare and online video. As I was graduating last year, I tried really hard to get a break in the gaming industry. I must have applied in more than a 100 companies and spoken to more gaming professionals than the number of friends I have on Facebook.

Since nothing was working out and I was also about to complete my masters, I started working on an idea for a real-time trivia game. I built out a one page description of the game and reached out to various gaming professionals (God bless LinkedIN for this). I even travelled to some of the popular game conferences and randomly spoke to gaming professionals.

One of them turned out to be a games industry veteran who had worked for some of the biggest names in the industry. She introduced me to another gaming veteran who was known for investing in original ideas. This person liked my idea and offered me a job as well as the chance to help me build this game in his studio. Obviously, I had to take a huge paycut in my salary because I had no experience building/producing games. So I spent the next year of my life living just above the poverty level J

I built out these games for Facebook and mobile. Unfortunately they didn’t do too well and the games never really crossed more than a few thousand installs. But one of my personal goals was fulfilled. I now had some good experience in the industry and was a good candidate for any casual games company. That helped me land my current job as a games producer for Mindspark Interactive.

Even if you are not looking for an actual job but would like to work on a game idea that you feel has potential, then don’t hesitate to reach out to different companies. You can even reach out to me at aabidsiddique81@yahoo.com and I will be happy to introduce you to such companies.

2) GET TECHNICAL

If you are the kind who likes coding, then this is probably the easiest way to get in. Software engineers are generally among the highest paid professionals on average in this industry. Game publishers are always looking for professionals who understand iOS and Android platforms well and have the ability to handle Java, HTML 5, Flash and other Object oriented programming languages. Database administrators and graphic designers are a big draw in this field too.

Smaller companies/start-ups are generally not inclined towards hiring graphic designers, QA testers and audio producers full-time and tend to outsource this kind of work. A graphic designer can charge as low as $30 an hour upwards to a few hundred dollars per hour based on the level of work he/she can provide. I have worked with graphic artists and illustrators who charged as low as $35 an hour and they were equally good or sometimes even better than reputed professionals. Testing is a low paying field and most vendors charge around $10 an hour per tester for testing casual games both on browsers as well as mobile platforms. Audio producers normally charge about $25 for a 3-5 second jingle. But it’s quite easy to find much cheaper music compilations online. I have personally brought 5 second jingles for $3!

Most casual games don’t require a whole lot of audio so an Audio producer is probably better off in the console games industry where the music tends to be much more elaborate and long.

A fresh engineer right out of college can normally start off in this industry at around $55,000 and after around 2-3 years of experience can easily start earning in six figures.

3) GET ANALYTICAL 

This is a high paying field and people who have a statistics/mathematics background can do really well in the games industry. One of the biggest differences between console gaming and casual gaming is that console game developers only have to build the games and then hand it over to game retailers like Bestbuy or Gamestop who do all the analytics/marketing/distribution. But the casual games industry works differently. Casual game developers are not only responsible for developing the game but they also market the games themselves. Because of this, every single casual games studio tends to have a marketing and analytics team. 


A basic job description of an analytics dude is something like this:
a) Look and dress like a nerd (very important otherwise no one takes you seriously)
b) Design, develop and produce weekly user quantitative and qualitative trends.
c) Retrieve and analyze data from server logs, online experiments (A/B testing), instrumented products, etc.
d) Model user behavior based upon previous findings and the most relevant available data.
e) Advanced statistical training and thorough practical experience modeling behavior from data.
f) A working knowledge of SQL, SAS/SPSS or programming languages useful to data retrieval and analysis.

Yup, as painful as this may sound, the salaries are pretty sweet. So if you got Math in you, then this is the job for you. You can start off at around $80,000 and hit six figures faster than any other profession in this industry.

4) GET SELLING 

Casual games are all about how they are marketed to the right audience. Most casual games are played by an older audience. The core demographic tends to be women in their mid 30’s with a decent amount of disposable income.

A marketing person needs to have an in depth understanding of the core audience of a casual game and know what channels to use to market these games to them. For example, you can’t market a casual game on the Sony Playstation Network just because it’s a network of gamers. These gamer dudes don’t really give a damn about casual games and would just give it a pass. For that matter, marketing a casual game on Facebook or Google+ with a special emphasis on targeting women will probably be more helpful.

A marketing person is expected to have a good understanding of SEO/SEM principles and also understand marketing on different platforms like Facebook, Google+, iPhones etc. Some PR experience is a huge plus. There are tons of books out there that can help you understand casual games marketing (reach out to me for suggestions).

One more thing that a lot of game publishers like Hi5 and IWON look for are people with good relationship management skills. Hi5 works with a bunch of game studios to release their games on the Hi5 gaming portal. And marketing guys are generally expected to handle these relationships too.

Marketing folks can really not expect high salaries to begin with. I know marketing people who have to make-do with about $45,000 to begin with. But again, once you get some good experience, the sky is the limit.

5) GET PROCEDURAL 

If you have project management experience, then there are a good number of positions available for game producers/project managers. Producers basically manage the development and operations of games. They manage teams, schedule project timelines, handle vendors and sometimes even do a little bit of the technical work too like graphic design, QA etc. It’s a fun job as long as you like the games that you are producing! Project managers and producers are really like twin siblings. A producer just tends to be the more technical and geeky sibling.

In the same mould are product managers. Product Managers and Producers tend to have a lot of overlapping responsibilities too. They both work on introducing new feature sets to a game and implementing them. A product manager will have the added responsibility of some P&L work and will handle a lot of the user acquisition efforts too.

You don’t really need a Project management certification (even though it helps in getting a job) but having some experience with tools like Photoshop, Basecamp, Fiddler and also agile development tools like Jira is a huge plus. If you have actual coding experience, then you are much better off being a producer than a product manager.

Producers play a vital role in a company and a lot of jobs can literally depend on the producers ability to execute a game project. A producers’ salary starts off at around $60,000 and the rise to a six-figure salary is somewhat slower than the other professions. You will have to show atleast 4-6 years experience in order to get that magical $100K + salary. Product managers are slightly better off and can expect a decent salary after about 3 years of experience.

6) GET TESTING

The grander name for this is Quality Assurance. These are generally low paying and somewhat clerical jobs and most companies outsource testing to vendors outside the US. But every company tends to have atleast a few testing positions. College students generally take up these jobs because it helps them get their foot into the industry and then work their way up.

If you are really keen on entering this industry, then you could consider testing jobs too. It’s all about entering the industry and then you can work your way around. The one good thing is that you will get to play a lot of games (every child’s dream)!

One last suggestion is to just play the damn games! I can’t stress this enough. The more you play casual games, the more you will get better at understanding how these games are built and what really makes them click. Remember, you are playing these games not only to have fun, but also to understand how they work. Take some time to study the graphics, the user interface, the game play, the audio, the game stability etc and start logging all this information in a word document. Once you have played about 5 games and completed this exercise for each game, you will personally notice minor differences that make some of these games really stand out.  

It always helps to know people in the gaming industry too. If you are really that passionate about this industry, feel free to reach out to me at aabidsiddique81@yahoo.com.  I got into this industry the hard way, and if someone wants to go the same route, I will be happy to assist.

You can also follow me on Twitter @aabidsiddique for updates on this industry.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

9 reasons why casual games will always do better than hardcore games on mobile devices.

Every industry goes through the initial growth phase where products that started off as being more simplistic in nature get increasingly sophisticated and complex. This has been the natural progression of almost every industry and that’s how the casual games industry is widely expected to grow.

The general thinking is that popular casual games like Angry Birds (Rovio), Dolphin Play (W3i) and Stupid Zombies (Game Resort) which are easier to play and less complex in nature will sooner or later be replaced by much more graphically and technically powerful versions of themselves. And this is because super-popular hardcore games like the Call of Duty series, FIFA, Gran Turismo are all entering the mobile space in a big way. Of course, these games are backed by huge investments, excellent graphics and gameplay, humongous marketing budgets and gameplay times that take weeks/months to complete. Our poor ol’casual games are no match for them.

Gameloft has been at the forefront of this and is working hard on ‘copying’ every popular hardcore game on the planet for mobile devices. It has games that are basically clones of Call of Duty, FIFA, Need for Speed and other high profile games and I have to admit, Gameloft makes some pretty darn good mobile versions of these games.

But there are also companies like W3i who have placed their bets on casual games and have had huge success in this space. W3i has been profitable for many years now and its game studio has developed a solid business model around funding and developing promising casual games.

In my opinion, the most popular games on mobile devices will always be the less complex, more traditional type of casual games. Here are 9 reasons why:

1)      Demographic: The main demographic that plays games on mobile devices is skewed towards older women and teenage girls. Compare this to the hardcore gamer demographic which trends towards males between the ages of 11 to 35. So at this point, it still makes sense to cater to the female demographic which is a 100% inclined towards casual games.

2)      Barriers to entry: You don’t need a large budget to build a casual game. There are thousands of best-selling games that were built by garage developers. W3i has actually built a games fund worth millions of dollars and they have successfully invested in many top selling games like Daybreak heroes, My Pet Zombie and Dolphin play. So finding an investor for a casual game idea is much easier than for a hardcore game idea.

3)      Higher focus/interaction: Hardcore games demand a much higher level of focus and interaction. It usually takes a dedicated effort to complete such games and the duration of game play can be anywhere between an hour to a few hours each day.   Mobile games, on the other hand don’t take more than a few minutes to complete a level. It’s this instant gratification that makes many mobile games a big success.

4)      Pricing models: Hardcore games are exorbitantly expensive to build and market. The development costs often runs into tens of millions of dollars and there is just no way the creators can recoup their costs by selling such games for the same price as simple casual games or by simply relying on in-game advertising/in-app purchases. A good game DVD generally costs about $50 - $60 and almost all casual games are priced at 99 cents. And I doubt anyone will want to pay more than $10-$20 for the mobile version of a hardcore game. And it would be a tiny demographic.

5)      Hardware specs: Smartphones come in a variety of different hardware specs and hardcore games can never be optimized to work perfectly on every device. Compare this to casual games that can run on 99% of smartphones without any performance issues.

6)      Network infrastructure: Most hardcore games take up a lot of hard drive space on a smartphone. It’s widely expected that such games will eventually run from the cloud. This would mean huge investments in content delivery networks (CDN’s) and general network infrastructure. Especially for MMO games.

A full fledged casual game can easily reside on a smartphone and can use the available 3G/4G network to operate very efficiently. It just does not require that level of investment in infrastructure/resources. And all multiplayer capabilities can be handled using third party servers like Amazon’s cloud service. At this point, there are no reliable mobile cloud computing platforms that can provide such an infrastructure for hardcore games.

7)      Creativity: Hardcore games have reached saturation in terms of the types of games being built. Almost every game you come across is either a racing game, a first person shooter, or a sports game. Every once in a while, a game like Portal comes across and changes the landscape a little bit. But other than that, the industry has already reached maturity.

Casual games, for that matter, are a whole different beast. There are millions of games right now that are actually based on very innovative ideas. I mean, there are games based on popping pimples that have become bestsellers! This industry is abundant with ideas that the hardcore games industry just cannot keep up with. Because of this, the casual games industry will continue to thrive as long as people have ideas.

I don’t even need to say this, but do you think you can build a hardcore game like Call of Duty or Unreal Tournament in your garage?

8)      Screen size: Come on, let’s be honest here, how much fun is it to play a game like Need For Speed on a smartphone? The gameplay really sucks. I still haven’t come across a decent racing or shooter game that actually is fun to play on a smartphone. One of the biggest reasons is the screen size itself.  Hardcore games are built to a cinematic quality and are best enjoyed on a big screen. Casual games are perfectly suited for the smaller screen because of the simplicity of gameplay and quick load times.

9)      Controllers: This can be a real pain in the behind for gamers when they play hardcore games on mobile devices. Most hardcore games require the use of a controller and mobile devices predominantly rely on the touch screen to simulate a controller. A touchscreen Is no match for an actual controller so games have to be reconfigured to work with touchscreens. These buttons take up unnecessary space on the screen and detract from the actual experience itself. And moving the device from side to side to simulate car directions is ANNOYING!

In the end, I really don’t see how casual games will ever fade away. Mobile games are really about instant gratification, smaller levels, quick load times and easier playability. Hardcore games are just not built like that.