6 things you should keep in mind while making a mobile app.

Making a mobile app can be a fun experience for some, and a financially painful experience for others. It’s like the gold rush of the last century. Everyone wants to dig, very few strike gold, and almost all of them go broke. And yet, the mobile apps industry is expected to create more millionaires in the future than any other industry.

Most Indie developers who are just starting out on a great app idea don’t necessarily have a lot of funding. Hell, most of them are selling their own stuff to generate enough money. I got lucky with my first mobile game. I built it out around the time I was finishing up college and then managed to sell it to a bay-area studio. This helped me launch my career in the industry. I have produced about 3 mobile apps and some Facebook games till now and am now working as a games producer.

Anyways, based on my experience making my first app (with extremely limited funding), here are some things I feel a new mobile app developer should keep in mind when he/she decides to take the plunge.

1) Costs: It generally costs between $5,000 - $30,000 to build the first iteration of an app. If you are building a game, then the costs can start from as low as $10,000 and go into hundreds of thousands of dollars based on the type of a game you are building. Once the first version of the app has been built, you could work out a monthly app maintenance plan for as low as $500 in which your developer will do 1-2 updates a month and also manage the app on a daily basis for technical issues.

Some of the cheapest (yet good) app development companies that I have personally worked with are either from India, Latin America (Colombia, Argentina) or Russia/Ukraine.  Indian studios always come up with the cheapest quotes but they require a much higher amount of supervision and time-management. Russian companies are slightly more expensive but their work tends to be of a higher quality overall. And they are definitely better at time-management than their Indian counterparts. One of the biggest issues with Latin American companies tends to be the language barrier (unless they have a representative in the US).

The most expensive quotes I received were almost always from American/Canadian companies. The quotes were normally about 50% higher than the rest. But I have to admit that their work quality overall was generally much better than other countries.

One good way to offset your costs will be to offer some equity to your developer. I succeeded with that one (even though my developer got a majority stake). This may not always work but it’s worth a shot. This can help in getting the developer focused on the project too since he knows he has a stake in it now.

You could also save a ton of money if you decide the build the app yourself. There are a lot of software tools floating around that don’t require programming knowledge. But these can mostly be used for building more basic apps with limited functionality. As the complexity of your app goes up, at some time you will require the use of an expert.

2) Schedule: No matter how well you plan out a project schedule, it’s more than likely there will be some delays. A lot of times, the delays can happen because of the app store itself. Apple is notorious for rejecting apps for the smallest of reasons and then not providing clear cues on why it was rejected. My team would spend days just figuring out what went wrong. Even if it's approved, Apple can sometimes reject it after a few weeks or months if it finds something it doesn’t like (bad language, violent images etc). Other than that, programmers can get stuck with a bug which will completely throw them off track and take up a majority of their time.

One way to offset this is to make sure that developers are using pre-built code libraries to build all basic features of the app. It helps immensely because these libraries have a lot of online support, are bug free and most of them work well for any kind of an app. I have seen a few developers who try to write their own code for basic features and functions. Avoid this behavior.

If you know Agile project management, make sure you follow that. It's a good tool for assigning short sprints and building the app one small step at a time. The best tool I ever used to manage my projects was Jira. It’s a very effective tool and helps you manage multiple teams and assignments without any hassles. For online storage and sharing of files, nothing beats Dropbox.

3) Multiple Platforms: This is becoming somewhat of a norm now. A lot of developers are now building one piece of code that can automatically work on multiple platforms like iPhone, Android, Windows Phone etc. The way they do is by using industry leading app platforms like PhoneGap, Appcelerator or Xamarin (Mail me if you would like a technical comparison of the three). They are excellent platforms to build your apps on because you can easily port the app to almost every emerging platform out there with minimal investment in additional programming and time. And these platforms offer excellent support and one of the most comprehensive set of libraries for creating good, clean code.

I am sure you can yourself see the benefits here (wider reach, less coding, bigger markets etc) so I will stay away from talking about it.

4) Graphics: One of the biggest drivers of traffic to your app will be the user experience and the graphics. This can literally make or break your app so spend a lot of your time perfecting this part. Draw up a ton of graphical wireframes and also research some of the top apps to see what they do right. In terms of graphic design, I can confidently say that the best graphic designers I have worked with are almost always from the US. Indian designers are generally the cheapest but they follow a very different coloring/design aesthetic that for some reason doesn’t seem to always gel well with American clients.

You can get a decent graphic/UI designer in the US for about $70 an hour and most of them can finish designing an app in about a week. You can easily find cheaper graphic designers too. I have worked with some who charged as less as $20 an hour. But the quality suffers drastically. There are a bunch of graphic design studios in the Vietnam/Philippines area who are actually pretty good and charge about $35 an hour.

5) Testing: You can save up on this part by testing the app yourself. Dedicate atleast 1 – 2 hours a day just going through your app to look for design/technical flaws. You can also use an online tool called Testflight which is pretty helpful.

If you feel the need to get it tested by a company, then get ready to shell out about $10 an hour for testing. There are a handful of American companies who will handle your app testing needs but they generally charge upwards of $20 an hour. Indian companies charge about $10 an hour.

An app generally requires about 3-5 full cycles of testing before you can safely say it’s ready to hit the app store. In case of my games, I would allocate 2 testers who would do a 1 day test drill on the app. That’s 2 testers x 8 work hours = 16 hours of testing in 1 day. This in my view is enough to do the first round. Once you get the results, give yourself some time to go through the whole bug list and prioritize each major bug. Once your programmers have cleared them out, it’s likely that new bugs are introduced while they are tweaking around the app (trust me, this ALWAYS happens). Keep running through this cycle till you are pretty confident that the app has no major bugs. Don’t worry about the minor bugs too much because they have this uncanny ability of showing up or sticking around no matter what you do to get rid of them (like a jealous ex-girlfriend).

One last suggestion would be to scour the internet for freelance testers (I know a bunch of them). These are high school/college kids who are surprisingly good at testing apps and are willing to work for pretty cheap.

6) Marketing, PR and Distribution: So now you have a working app. Congrats! Time to hit the app store (and hopefully not get rejected). A few things you can do to market your app effectively (and for cheap) are:

a) Get into social media marketing yourself (Google+, Facebook, Twitter feed, Blogger etc). This is by far the best way to market an app and its totally free.

b) Get into App distribution: Talk to companies like PlayPhone, W3i Technologies etc and partner up with them for distribution. You will probably lose some portion of your stake in the app (unless you have the money to pay them for distribution), but these platforms are great for distributing your app to a large demographic.

c)  Include in-app advertising - Implement popular ad-servers like Admob, iAD etc. These can serve up a decent revenue stream once your app hits a few thousand downloads.

d) Create a Youtube/Vimeo video that demo’s the app. DON’T LET THE DEMO GO BEYOND A MINUTE. People just won’t watch it after the first few seconds. In my opinion, the sweet spot is 30 seconds. This is an excellent marketing tool that lets users see the app first hand and understand how it works. You can keep it very simple by just focusing a camera on the app and navigating through it (while a voice in the background explains each screen). Get a female voice-over (it helps).

e) Start attending a LOT OF Meetup groups and talking to people about your product. You will find a bunch of product/technology meetup groups in and around the city. I have noticed that the best Meetup groups for mobile apps and games are generally in New York, Bay Area and Austin, Texas. This is a great place to showcase the app and get some much needed free media coverage.

f) Try to get your app featured in the app store. You can directly request Apple to feature your app and if they agree, this will literally double or triple your downloads while it’s in the featured list.

g) Reach out to app review sites and request them to review your app. Most of the smaller sites like PocketFullofApps, Inside Social Games or iOSappsgonefree are more responsive. All you need is one good review and then you will have boasting rights. But of course, reach out to a bunch of them (I can help out here).

I hope this information helps. Please understand that these are all views based on my personal experience in the industry and they could differ widely from person to person. I am happy to hear any comment/criticism regarding this article.

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

6 reasons why you should also build an internet browser-based version of your mobile game.

The Apple App Store is arguably the greatest casual gaming platform on earth. It has opened up the kind of opportunities for indie game developers that are currently unmatched by any other platform. It offers a very consistent hardware and software experience that developers can optimize their games for, and gives an equal chance to every game to succeed (unlike Facebook). Google’s Android is also slowly becoming a powerhouse in mobile gaming. 

One thing I want to be clear about is that MOBILE IS THE FUTURE OF CASUAL GAMING. But there are still many advantages to building an internet browser based version of your game which I will discuss shortly.

All said and done, even a mobile app store cannot guarantee long term revenues and sustainability for a casual game. There are about a 100,000 games on iOS right now and only a few hundred are actually doing well enough to sustain its creators. Some of the most successful games are the free games like Temple Run, Heads up with Ronaldo, Angry Birds, Stupid Zombies etc. These games are hugely ad supported and let’s be honest here, when was the last time you tapped on an advertisement within a game? Less than 2% of users are likely to do that. There is a higher likelihood that you will click on an ad while on a computer than on a phone.

This is one of the reasons why a lot of companies are now evaluating ways to build browser-based versions of their games too, especially after the mobile version has been around for a while. For example, the makers of Angry Birds started off on mobile and after its huge success, decided to build out the browser version. It is now available in the Chrome app store. It’s a no-brainer that at some point, they will also build out a version that will run on gaming platforms like Yahoo Games, Mindjolt, Tagged, Gaming Wonderland etc.

So if you have built an iOS/Android game, here are 6 reasons why you should consider building a browser based version of it.

1) Distribution – A browser based version opens up a plethora of opportunities for distribution across multiple geographies and demographics. There are hundreds of gaming portals like Yahoo games, Mindjolt, Big Fish Games etc who will be happy to showcase your game on their platform. Or you can just work with one game distributor like Oberon Media who will automatically distribute your game to some of the top gaming portals in the world. Oberon has existing relationships with various gaming portals and offers an easy way to integrate your game across all of them. And each portal generally has atleast a few million unique users.

2) Monetization – A successful game on mobile can get you a lot of revenue, and I don’t believe a gaming portal can really match that. But who can say no to a nice side income! Gaming portals have their own ecosystems in place (Advertising, Payments, Support etc) and can provide a decent revenue stream for your game. I have known garage developers who have been making hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month for many years by just sitting at home!

Some portals will also be willing to pay you to put your games on their platform. Of course, this would depend on how successful your game has been elsewhere.

3) Demographic  - According to an Admob report, 94% of iPhone owners are over the age of 18 and an astounding 74% of them are over the age of 25.  On the other hand, the iPod Touch user base is nearly HALF (47%) composed of 13-17 year olds.  Only 31% of its users are over the age of 25.

What do you see missing here? What about kids below that 13-17 age group? Even though the main demographic for a gaming portal is middle-aged women with disposable incomes, a lot of younger kids play on these portals too. My 11 year old nephew recently got hold of an iPod Touch for himself but for the past few years, his favorite gaming destination was Yahoo Games. My 8 year old niece loves playing on the Big Fish games site and plays a lot of games that are made specifically for her. Every kid I know spends more time on these gaming portals than on an actual device. And parents prefer this too because it’s easier to supervise a kid’s playing habits on a computer than on an actual portable device. And more kids have access to a computer than to a portable device.

This is a win-win situation for your game because not only are you targeting an older demographic with the app store as well as the gaming portal but are also tapping into another, albeit smaller demographic through the portal.

4) Porting to future platforms like Kiosks, Televisions – Companies like Samsung and Sony are now building out their own app stores for their television products. The Samsung TV App store is actually doing well and you will notice a lot of casual games. Even coin operated game kiosks are embracing some of the popular iOS games like Fruit Ninja.

Games on these platforms work more like a browser. The screen is much larger and you are using actual controllers. By having a browser version, you are actually well prepared to port your game to these platforms in the future with minimal effort.

5) Better technical support and feedback – Gaming portals have their own dedicated technical teams and are happy to provide you with all the support you need to publish your game. They provide excellent production and analytics support and most of them are prompt with their payments. This can be a huge help in improving your game based on feedback that you receive not only from the game portal but also from the players.

The Apple app store is different that way. You get absolutely zero feedback from Apple. They only make sure your game adheres to their terms and conditions and then go ahead and approve it. Every time my game was rejected from the app store, their reasons for doing so were sometimes so obscure that it would take my team a few days just to figure out what was actually wrong. Gaming portals are definitely more hands-down that way.

6) Localization support – It always helps to have some local language support for your game. China is a huge market and having a Chinese language version will take your game a long way. The same way, Latin America and the Middle-East are big on casual gaming too. And they prefer local language versions over any other language. India is a little different that way because most of the gaming demographic understands atleast basic English reading and writing.

Anyways, gaming portals are way better at providing localization support and targeted advertising than mobile app stores. A lot of gaming portals will even help you in building out local versions and assist you in specifically targeting a particular geography.

That’s all for now. It doesn’t cost a whole lot of money to customize your game for a portal. The main reason being most portal games are also run within a window which is slightly larger than a phone screen. And a lot of them work with HTML5 games too so you don’t have to build a flash equivalent.The main investment will be in optimizing graphics which is generally not too high.

I hope this information helps. Again, my blogs are based on my own research and experience so I welcome constructive (or destructive) feedback! I would love to hear your thoughts or hear other advantages (or disadvantages) that you see in such an initiative.

Finally, If you decide to build a browser based game and need help in distribution, feel free to reach out to me at aabid.s@live.com and I will be happy to assist.

Thanks. You can follow me on Twitter @aabidsiddique to stay updated on my blogs and the gaming industry.

5 hassle-free ways to reward/pay an online customer without asking for too much personal information.

Most smaller gaming companies today struggle with this one. How do you pay or reward an online player without having to deal with too many legal and transactional hurdles? Especially when the payments are really small (micropayments), like a dollar or worth around a dollar. Indie game developers often like to offer tiny cash incentives to their players but opt out of it because of all the associated legal hassles.

Some of the major issues companies face are:

1) Asking for personal information - A lot of companies need a customer’s address and other contact info to mail a reward or transfer any money to their account. This almost always is a deal killer because most customers are wary of sharing any such information.

2) Game studios themselves can find it a little embarrassing to transfer such small amounts to a user. One alternative is to offer virtual gifts (coins, game points, virtual toys etc) but let’s be honest here, not everyone likes these things. Anything that has actual cash value is always preferred more. 

3) Sweepstakes: A lot of times, people who win online sweepstakes don’t even bother claiming their prizes if the prize is actual money. Because the company offering the prize money needs all kinds of personal information from the user. And because of this, a lot of users don’t even bother claiming them.

      My team built out a trivia game a while ago that would give out a $100 each day to a player who finished all 10 questions correctly and then entered his/her name into a daily sweepstake. Surprisingly, most of the winners didn’t even bother claiming their prizes inspite of repeated emails to them informing of their win! After some research we found out that no one was interested in filling up the claim form because it asked for too much personal information. But because of legal reasons, that was the only way we could actually pay a user.

At that point, I decided to do some research and find out different ways that we could pay a user without ever needing their personal information. The one thing I realized was that it was pretty hard legally to pay small cash prizes ($1 or more) to a user. The only alternatives were products that had ‘real cash value’. Not virtual toys and stuff, but paid services that we could offer as a reward. Here was the list I came up with. The only thing you will ever need to distribute these prizes is an email address. 

1) Redbox DVD rentals. These DVD’s rent for $1 a day and it’s very easy to give these out as prizes. As you may know, Redbox gives out free rental codes on a regular basis which can be redeemed for a one night DVD rental. A studio could buy these codes in bulk and offer them as prizes. They also have this for the Blockbuster Kiosks.

2) iPhone, iPad and Android paid apps, songs and other media – Most apps sell for 99 cents as you already know, so a studio could offer a bunch of paid apps as payment. The way this can be done is by using the “Gift an App” feature found in the iTunes application.

3) Longer game playtime (Gaikai, Big Fish, Tagged etc) – Big Fish games offers their games in a way that the first 30 minutes of gameplay is free. A studio could offer the players’ longer playtimes (60 minutes of free playtime) as prizes. In a similar vein, Gaikai, Gamestreamer and Onlive offer cloud streaming of hardcore console games. Studios could offer digital copies of these games/demos as a reward.

4) Groupon/Living Social deals – These can be offered if the prizes are of a higher value. Groupon allows a person to gift a Groupon deal to someone else.

5) Subscriptions – A lot of publishing companies offer newspaper/magazine/game subscriptions. These can be gifted to a player too. I was supposed to implement this in one of my games and it actually works well.

I am gonna keep this list open for now. I am sure there are many other ways to reward a user and it would be great to hear from the readers on suitable alternatives.

You can follow me on Twitter @aabidsiddique or mail me at aabidsiddique81@yahoo.com. 

A unique and more cost-effective way to make a social game viral.

In my earlier articles, I have noted how Facebook is become a very expensive and unstable platform for advertising social games. A lot of Indie game developers opted out of Facebook because it was just too expensive to market a game on the social network and the returns did not justify the investment.

There are many reasons here. Facebook lacks an app store like Apple’s popular platform and because of this, it’s hard to gain visibility on Facebook. And Facebook has become notorious for changing its policies as well as its designs to better satisfy its users and not the developers. And of course, everyone has heard of the special favors it grants companies like Zynga.

Anyways, my article here is more about a different method of making your game viral on Facebook. I am not here to criticize Facebook (which I do regularly).

Here is an abstract of this idea. Instead of paying Facebook or other ad companies to advertise your game (Facebook Ads, Interstitial ads etc), What if you PAID THE PLAYER directly to advertise your game?

I know a lot of companies would think, “Well, there are legal limitations here, paying a customer in cash or rewards is hard because we will have to ask for their personal information to make the payment, and a lot of customers are wary of sharing any of their info”.

First of all, let me explain how this concept works, and then I can also show very simple and non-intrusive ways to reward a customer. 

1) Each player is assigned a unique referral ID when he logs into the game for the first time. (Like how Amazon does it).

2) Every time a player shares the game URL (with the embedded referral ID), he gets rewarded with a few points whenever one of his friends clicks on that link and installs the game.

3) Once a player has received enough points, he can then redeem them for real-world rewards.

In a real-world scenario, you could equate 50 installs to $1. So once about 50 of a players friends have clicked on the shared game URL (with the embedded referral ID) and installed the game, this player would be eligible for a reward worth about a dollar. (I will talk about types of rewards later)

Of course, this is very similar to the Frequent Flyer rewards program. Let’s just call it the Frequent gamer rewards program. But look at the advantages here.

With this method, you don’t have to spend money on advertising on Facebook. Generally CPC rates on Facebook are very high and you need to spend atleast a few hundred dollars a day on marketing your game. A lot of Indie developers spend about a $100 a day on Facebook CPC ads.

A $100 a day spending on Facebook can fetch you a few hundred installs at the maximum. But with this new method, you will be spending a $100 for almost 5000 installs!

      

      This also encourages players to recommend games more often. And people are always more comfortable playing games that are recommended by their own friends.

Ok, now to the tough part. How do you reward your players? For many companies, this can be a legal nightmare. Most rewards have to be mailed to a users address. But in this method, we can completely focus on giving players ‘digital’ rewards. For example:

1) Redbox/Blockbuster DVD kiosk rentals. These DVD’s rent for $1 a day and it’s very easy to give these out as prizes. As you may know, Redbox gives out free rental codes on a regular basis which can be redeemed for a one night DVD rental. A studio could buy these codes in bulk and offer them as prizes.  All a studio has to do is email this code to the reward recipient. No need for any home address, phone number etc.

2) iPhone, iPad and Android paid apps, music and games – Most of these apps sell for 99 cents. And iTunes allows a user to ‘gift’ an app to someone else through the iTunes application. So a company could ‘Gift’ a paid app to a recipient.

3) Game coins – Companies could partner with gaming portals like Hi5 or iWON and offer game coins as prizes. These are easy to gift too.

4) Longer game playtime – A lot of gaming portals like Big Fish Games, Wild Tangent or Gaikai offer playable demos of their games. These games can be played for about 30 minutes before the user has to buy the game. Studios could tie up with such companies and offer longer play times (let’s say 60 minutes) of these demos as rewards.

This is just an abstract and I am happy to share more info about this. As usual, feel free to discuss and point out potential flaws in this method. And I wouldn’t be surprised if such a system has already been tried before.

Thanks, you can follow me @aabidsiddique on Twitter to stay updated about my blogs. Or you can also mail me at aabidsiddique81@yahoo.com if you have any other questions.

Virality, Monetization or User Retention. Which one of these matters the most in a social game?

I personally feel that virality is the most important aspect. Here are some reasons why:

User Retention: The core social game demographic consists of middle-aged women with high disposable incomes. Unlike hard-core gamers, social gamers tend to have a much shorter attention span. They play purely for fun with not a whole lot of competitive spirit (unlike hard-core gamers). Because of this, social gamers can easily gravitate towards other popular social games once they have played a particular game for a long enough time. So long-term user retention is almost always the hardest metric when it comes to driving the success of a social game. Think about it yourself, when was the last time you came across a person who had been playing the same social game for more than a few months? For that matter, hard-core gamers are known to stay true to a game franchise (Call of Duty, FIFA, Halo) for years at a time.

Monetization: This same social gamer demographic tends to be quite careful about its spending habits too. No matter how addictive a game, most social gamers try their best to keep actual spending to a preset limit every month. Again this is because of the demographic itself which is older than the average gamer and is more mature about its spending habits. It’s also because actual spending on social games is often considered wasteful expenditure by the general population. So it can sometimes become a taboo topic. Ask any of your friends how much they spend on social games and you will never get the right answer! This is different from hard-core gamers who are willing to spend a fortune on gaming equipment and accessories and make no bones about it.  

Virality: Coming back to my original point, the best way to drive the success of a game is by focusing hard on virality. That helps in keeping a safety cushion of new users and also helps in offsetting existing users who may or may not end up being a long-term customer. Every game will have its loyal fan base and they will generate a constant revenue stream. But often, that’s not enough to sustain a game. Because of this, generating new users is what every publisher should constantly focus on. And each new user brings with him/her a fresh perspective as well as a new revenue opportunity.

I personally believe that Facebook is one of the most expensive and unstable platforms for virality. The company constantly changes its rules to satisfy its users and not the publishers. So most of its policy changes are almost always detrimental to a games’ viral development. It’s not a level-playing field too. Everyone knows that Facebook has shown favoritism towards some developers and left out the rest. That’s one of the reasons why there is a strong need for innovation when it comes to making a game viral on Facebook.

(These views are solely that of the author and are open to random dismantling and violent criticism)

Follow me @aabidsiddique or check out my site at www.aabid.me

Have comments or questions? You can also mail me at aabidsiddique81@yahoo.com

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.

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.