Iterating Fun - Simon Newstead

It’s not often you get to hear from a game designer whose work spans multiple genres, from blockbuster social games like Farmville while at through to girl games hits like My Horse for the iPad and many more.

Raymond Holmes of gave a talk at the Innovation Lab last night on the different games he has designed and what he learned from them:

1/ Minimum viable product can be very “minimum” if you’re early

Farmville was pulled together in an incredibly short amount of time and with a very small team.  It went to show that a MVP can be very “minimum” and still succeed, particularly in the era of freemium and games as a service with fast iteration post launch.  He cautioned that it only works if the market is new, but given all the rapid evolution in gaming platforms these days there are likely to be plenty of situations where that remains the case - there are plenty of new markets that don’t even exist yet in gaming.

2/ Learn to think from a user point of view

One of his early gigs was helping design Barbie Team Gymnastics.  The game did well and taught him “the important ability to design from a player point of view”.  It was a game that clearly he wouldn’t enjoy playing himself, but he learned a lot about the actual players who enjoy that type of game and how they play and interact.  That resonated with my own personal experience in designing .

3/ Leverage what you learned from the past

At Barbie Team Gymnastics, he learned a lot about gymnastics - animation, theory etc.  And later when he was on the team creating Aeon Flux, it was decided the lead protagonist would be much more acrobatic, and his past experience led perfectly to the new game.  His lesson?  Leverage what you have learned and have an open mind to new topics - they could be useful in the future too.

4/ Monetization has to be appropriate to the audience

It was interesting hearing about his experience with My Horse - on one hand an extremely popular game with over 10 million downloads for iPad but relatively speaking, low monetization. Why?  Because a lot of the level grind mechanics in the game didn’t match the audience - young girls and boys. They simply didn’t “get it”. In hindsight, his opinion was that it could have been better to have designed more of a pet simulator/dress up style of experience to match those who love the game.  That said, it’s hard to argue with the success of a product that has driven that much traffic and surely a good amount of revenue.

5/ And finally… every game needs a WOW moment

Raymond made the observation that the moment players fell in love with My Horse was when they first saw the horse in the field, animating and interacting with the player - truly a wow moment that emotionally hooked them (we see that when players first see their stylist interact to their touch).  He recommends all games try to establish a WOW moment early on in the experience to get them engaged.

All up, some excellent tips from a very experienced and creative talent.  

Any feedback?  

This is a repost of an article I wrote recently for Amazon’s app developer blog last week.  The original is available

Guest author Simon Newstead, CEO of Frenzoo, discusses designing games for monetization. In it he uses examples from Frenzoo’s Style Me Girl, the first 3D fashion game on mobile. Simon can be reached at .

A Numbers Game

Our debut game Style Me Girl gained impressive downloads in its first two weeks, reaching the #1 position in the Amazon game charts. Whilst the downloads and rankings were nice, what made us really happy was the monetization, with Kindle Fire performing particularly well.

Mechanics

To look at what drives monetization it’s always helpful to look at the core game mechanics:

In our case with Style Me Girl, the primary is a fashion puzzle mechanic where the player must dress a series of models for different Photoshoots, each with a unique fashion genre. The game uses a proprietary judging algorithm to determine scores, taking into account the items used, the fashion genre as well as the attractiveness of the photo taken. Passing the level unlocks the next level (model and fashion genre), progressing the story. Story evolves with new levels added dynamically from the cloud each week.

The secondary is a casual “catch the falling item” mini-game called Style Catch. Style Catch escalates in difficulty and provides and increasing payout of coins, used for shopping. 

A freemium game, Style Me Girl has a hard currency Cash (purchased via IAP) and soft currency Coins, earned in Photoshoots and Style Catch.

5 Tips for Monetization

1. Incorporate a storyline

No matter the game type, if your game has levels, story serves up more motivation for players to progress through them. Players are emotional beings, and we are all compelled to be drawn into a good story. In our case, the game could have functioned just fine without a story line. However we saw from player feedback a deep engagement with the protagonist and goals in the story arcs. Given how little engineering resource is often needed on story, the ROI to include it is usually pretty compelling.

2. Replayability and collectibles

One thing that drives many paying users of Style Me Girl is successfully completing all levels with perfect 3 star results. Why? Of course completionism plays a part but the main one is being able to win rare “signature edition” items. These cannot be bought in the shop and a sign of success is sporting an outfit featuring 1 or more signature editions. It’s always good to make room for replayability and collectibles can play well in that.
 
3. Energy and speed up

It’s a cliche but it’s true - impatient players are paying players. Energy regeneration through paid items is a proven way to open up the purse strings. We saw that in Style Me Girl and cash purchase, even though Style Catch itself is just a game to let you earn the soft currency. Strange but it works.

4. Aesthetics and functionality

Whilst studies show that pure aesthetic items don’t monetize as well as time saving and functional virtual goods, if you can combine them together that can work extra well. In our case the cash items bought in the shop are attractive fashions, which lets users both look good and play good. Combinations are always good. Think the success of Toms, based on looking good and feeling good about it. Or owning the latest Macbook Air, a style statement as well as solid productivity tool.

5. A/B testing

Like eating enough fiber, it may not be a glamorous part of game design but it certainly is necessary to get the most out of your game. We implement A/B testing in the major parts related to the in-game economy - coins earning rate, starting currency values, purchase conversion rate etc. We don’t go to the point of A/B testing individual item prices yet though, but that’s the direction. Running tests has helped us increase monetization while not affecting retention (not always the case), and it’s something we’re going to dive into even further.

Conclusion

These tips are certainly not rocket science and not the first time they have been used in games.That said, keeping these fundamentals in mind when designing your next game ensures you’re getting biggest bang for your development buck. And that makes everyone happy.

Ah controversy :)

It stirs up emotions when it’s on a topic near the heart - like our debut game, lovingly crafted over several months.

Amid the positive articles on our Style Me Girl launch from ,  and others, one popped up by  from a very different angle:

Jim’s view as I read it was that a fashion RPG designed for girls and women playing as a stylist was patronizing.  His final paragraph:

Rejoice, GURL GAMARZ, no longer will you have to play Calling Duty or Grand Auto Grab with those smelly boys. Now there is a game that you little ladies can play while you’re shopping for shoes and thinking about kissing the high school leader of the footbasket team. Aren’t you lucky?

Well before responding, to be clear I have a lot of respect for Jim and his work.  He’s among the best in the business and it’s refreshing to see someone call it as they see it. Not to mention it’s way more fun to read, which is why I count myself as one of many Destructoid fans.  

That said I have to respectfully disagree and respond:

• The piece mentions that we’re described as the “first mobile RPG exclusively for women.” Rather, what we did say was that it was the first 3D fashion RPG game, because we feel our 3D technology is quite unique, and that it was among the relatively few RPG games for women.  And yes, there are boys and guys who play as well which is just fine by us.

• We feel female gamers should be able to enjoy different types of games including ones made specifically for them.  Our new designer Moona loves World of Warcraft as well as girl games like Fashion Story. Jasmine, our marketing manager plays Crime City and D3 as well as Top Girl.  Shouldn’t there be Vogues and Cosmos to complement GQs and Newsweeks? Imho, the more choice the better.  Hence Me Girl.

• Finally playing a game where you are an aspiring stylist, shopping and doing photo shoots is to us, a positive thing.  Fashion is fun and creative!  Games are fun and creative!  Both have no age limits. Why not bring the two together?

And whilst there was plenty of debate in the comments, it’s good to see others in the Destructoid community who feel the same way:

Anyway long live freedom of opinion and choice. Now it’s back to work :)

During a whirlwind trip to Hong Kong, I was asked to talk on raising a seed round, something we recently .

*Groan worthy event title, I know :)

During it I mentioned prepping likely investor questions.  Here is my list of 100 in no particular order:

1. Who else has committed?
2. How much is the customer acquisition cost?
3. What is the LTV and LT?
4. How does this change with volume?
5. When would you get to market saturation?
6. How much runway do you have?
7. What about you makes you suited to start this company?
8. Who is your target user?
9. How did you customers find you?
10. What is your go to market strategy?
11. Have you tested your go to market strategy?
12. What do you want out of your startup?
13. What is the return multiple you expect for investment?
14. What are the possible exits for your startup and when?
15. Have you invested personally in the company?
16. If so, how much?
17. What is your runway?
18. What is your burn rate?
19. What is your cash flow situation?
20. What is the team now?
21. What will be the use of proceeds?
22. Why are you raising the money you are?
23. Why are you planning to spend like that?
24. What’s the cap table now?
25. What’s the cap table post close?
26. What’s your ownership percentage?
27. What’s the valuation, pre and post?
28. How much have they committed?
29. How are the unit economics?
30. What is unique about your team?
31. What are the team backgrounds?
32. What is unique about your technology?
33. Can you describe your technology in more basis?
34. Who are your closest competitors?
35. How are you different from them?
36. What is the competitive barrier?
37. Are you competing on price, product, UX  etc etc?
38. Has this business model been proven elsewhere?
39. What is your target market?
40. What is your addressable market?
41. What is your branding strategy?
42. Will you partner up with other companies?
43. Why are you based in USA / Hong Kong?
44. What is your expansion plan beyond…?
45. What platforms are critical to your success and why?
46. How have you constructed your business projections?
47. When is expected breakeven timeframe?
48. If you had half/double/triple the funds how would that change your plan?
49. Why are you using a convertible note / equity vehicle?
50. How do you justify the valuation / cap?
51. What are the comparables for your valuation?
52. What are the comparables for exit?
53. What is the projected revenue and profit over the next 3 years
54. Do you have any debts or liabilities
55. Do you have any licensing requirements?
56. What is the IP ownership and exclusivity on your technology usage?
57. Are your original seed investors following on?
58. How will you get to 100k / 1M / 1M customers?
59. What is the conversion rate to register/download?
60. What is the conversion rate to pay?
61. What is the ARPPU first day, week, month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year
62. What is the retention rate first day etc
63. What has been the user feedback so far?
64. Can I talk to some users?
65. Would you consider a tranche investment?
66. What type of investor are you looking for?
67. Will you increase the round size?
68. When are you closing the round?
69. Do you have a prototype of the next project?
70. What’s to stop Tencent/Zynga/Google etc entering the market?
71. How far will this round last you?
72. When will you start to raise the next round?
73. Who are you going to raise the next round with?
74. How do you monetize?
75. Are there any other alternative monetization techniques?
76. What are your biggest challenges at the moment?
77. What are the terms of the deal?
78. What is the downside protection of the deal?
79. What is the upside opportunity for the deal in the next round?
80. What is there is an acquisition before the end of the next round?
81. How much have employees got in your company and on what terms?
82. Why are you personally the right CEO for the company?
83. What are the unknowns in your business model?
84. What is your directly addressable market?
85. What is the likely revenue share/terms of go to market partnerships?
86. Do you have experience growing businesses?
87. Can I invest later on?
88. When do you need the funds by?
89. What will the board and management structure look like post closing?
90. What is your China entry strategy?
91. Is your localization strategy?
92. What is the company structure?
93. Who has authority/veto for this funding round?
94. What is your co-founder’s share situation?
95. Can I get access to your metrics dashboard?
96. Who are your existing investors?
97. What is your ideal investor?
98. How much do you want me to invest?
99. Do you have any contractual commitments we should know about?
100. What is the minimum/maximum investment block?

*I was the vast majority of these at one point or another during the round…

Full slides:

Any feedback?  Email