2011-01-13

cubeia

From Idea To Success

I have a great idea for a game!

This has been the starting point for many meetings, someone has a refreshingly new idea for a game (social or money-based) and wants to offer it to the world. More often than not the idea is interesting and full of potential, but of course, between the idea and the smashing Zynga-esque success there is some uncharted territory.

Dragons

And beware: Because here be dragons!

So how can you ensure, or at least maximize your chances of success? Let’s measure success in terms of Return On Investment (ROI), this gives that not only is the end result significant – but also your investment into the product. And it makes sense; if you spend €1000 to net €10 000 you would probably consider that a success, but if you spend €100 000 to net €120 000 you would probably don’t quantify that as a smashing success even thought the end net result is twice the size of the first case.

In order to maximize your return on investment you must not only maximize your net result but also minimize your spendings.

Minimizing your expenses is also important since you probably have finite time to get profitable to some extent. I will refer to the time you have until all your funds are exhausted and you will have to shut down the project as your runway. Much like an airplane has a finite runway before it is destined to either take off into the air or crash into the ground that is closing, so will you and thus I think it is an apt allthough a bit dramatic metaphor (I like the dramatic side though).

One of the most expensive things you can do is to build a product that no one wants to use. You can spend almost infinite amounts of money on a game, but if no one wants to play your game then you will never be profitable. Just ask Realtime Worlds; they spent five years and about $100M developing APB only to shut down everything 3 months after launch, the end of their runway.

So now the question has become – How can I make sure that people want to play my game? And that my friend is a very good question, and in my opinion the most important question you can ask yourself. Sure, you can spend time tweaking business models in excel, plan for social and viral effects, model in-game party hats and think about how to decorate your underground lair once you have taken over the world, but the truth is – if people do not want to play your game everything else will fall. If people on the other hand *want* to play your game then I am sure you can find a business model to make it generate revenue.

How to know if people will play my game

That’s easy – let people try out your game and see what they say. No, really. That is exactly what you should do.

Fredrik’s 7 Steps For Player Validation:
  1. Develop a minimal version of the game
  2. Implement an easy feedback mechanism for the players
  3. Make it available publically
  4. Drive traffic through all means available (Google, Facebook, friends etc)
  5. Read feedback, measure churn, talk to players – keep collecting player experiences.
  6. Pivot until a good model is found or shut down

The goal here is not to gather a massive player base or generate revenue. In fact, there is no revenue being generated at this stage. If you are building a real-money game then do this with play money only. The goal here is to try and find out if the game is fun! You don’t need many players to find that out. Getting your first user feedback will help you pivoting your product in order to maximize ROI and make good use of your runway.

Here is an example from my own life. Many years ago I developed a ‘Play Counter-Strike for Money’ solution with some friends (kids, don’t do this – everyone and his dog have tried and no-one ever succeeds for lots of reasons) and before spending true money by making it large scale we opted to make a small test case scenario. We invited a clan to play over the weekend where we would give each player a certain amount of money to play with. Whatever money they had in their accounts at the end of the weekend they would receive in cash (given that you played a minimum amount of course). This test was a true eye-opener, people did not find the addition of money fun at all. We plotted graphs and tailed logs of what happened, talked to players and came to the conclusion that this will not work. People do not want this. And so far we have been right.

What’s so hard about this?

This seems fairly straight forward – validate your idea before taking the cost for scaling up development and marketing. But still it is so hard. Why is that?

I believe that one reason is cognitive dissonance, cognitive dissonance is when your mind has two conflicting ideas at the same time (“it will be fun” vs “maybe it will not be fun”). Your mind will fight hard against this and try to come up with a solution where one idea rules supreme over the other one. Effectively pushing it out of context by changing your beliefs or interpretation of the world around you. This is one of the reasons why making real life tests is so important, you cannot trust your own instinct all the time.

A second reason is an underlying fear for failing that all of us share. It is easier to decide to polish the product further rather then throw it out there and get the raw and naked truth from actual users. What if they say they don’t like it? What do we do then? This is not something we do conciously, but yes we all do it to some extent. Postponing the judgement day. (Do note that failing is not the same as being a failure 😉 )

With most projects in this category it is like they say about business plans – No business plan survives first contact with customers. In a very similar way your prioritization will most likely change drastically once you start to get some users.
If you adopt a release-early, release-often (RERO) strategy you will most likely increase your odds to find a product that is successful significantly.

Implementation

This sections talks about how to practically implement a new game (will assume multiplayer) using a cost-effective, RERO strategy. I will be referring to Cubeia technology, mostly because I have intimate knowledge about it but also because I think they provide a really good base for this type of projects. Feel free to apply this to any other technology.

Technology Stack:

Game Server: Cubeia Firebase
Back Office: Cubeia Network
Client Technology: Flex / Adobe AIR (Flash)
Hosting: Amazon EC2

Cubeia Firebase is free to use without AGPL restrictions up to 100 concurrent users. You will most likely not reach this limit within the validation and pivot phase. Cubeia Network is available freely in its AGPL license (since they are stand alone services other code is unaffected by this). Cubeia Network also includes Facebook integration out of the box.

I have chosen Flex / Adobe AIR for client technology mostly because you can get an ok looking client out the door pretty fast. Flex if you want to have it available online, AIR if you want a downloadable desktop client. Our most extensive API is also for Flex clients. Of course, if your idea is an IPhone game then your choices here are pretty limited.

Amazon EC2 was chosen because of the speed to set it up. We have created an image with Firebase + Network + MySQL installed and integrated (will be made public soon), which makes you able to have a complete network up and running within the hour. Amazon’s prices are elastic depending on the usage but it should not be expensive during the initial startup. Note that you cannot run any real money games on Amazon EC2 or you will be violating their EULA.

Cost for the above: Apart from Amazon – €0.

Your investments will now consist of development of the initial game version which depends of course entirely on your game so you will have make you own estimates here. But the good news is that your runway will be used almost exclusively to build and design your product.

Common Reactions and Questions

If I release my game before it is completely polished then other can copy it!

Yes they can. But what is the higher risk and cost associated to it; that you spend a lot of time and money to build a game that no one wants to play or that some other company picks up your game idea and develops a more polished game that is more fun to play and release it before you. The argument to keep things hidden is often moot, chances are that there are already other people out there working on a similar idea.

What about the liquidity Catch 22? If I dont have players no players will join?

This is always a pickle. Most likely you will have to eat your own dog food and try to be available online to offer players someone to play with/against. Prop-players (paying students etc. to be online) is also a way if you have the money but not the time. Another way is to make events, e.g. have a session on saturday at 17:00 where the best player gets a price etc. Like I stated before, you probably don’t need a whole lot of players to be able to get valuable feedback.

What if people don’t like the game?!?
Why don’t they like it? Is it possible to remedy or pivot the model to make it more interesting? If so then try that, if not then maybe try another game – you already have the infrastructure up and running!

What if people like the game?

Great! Start to scale up with features, hosting, integration etc. The world is now your oyster.

Closing Comments

The Release Early, Release Often strategy is often overlooked in the online gaming/gambling world. This may be due to the complex nature of the products but I am convinced that this strategy can be applied successfully also in this industry. If you have any questions or are interested in finding our more about lean gaming networks or Cubeia Technology then feel free to contact me as per below.

Now go out there and make the next big hit game!

Fredrik Johansson is a founder and CEO of Cubeia Ltd.

You can contact him at: fredrik.johansson(at)cubeia.com