allansimonsen

Hi, Poorgamedev; I'm Allan Simonsen, Chris' co-founder. Just rolled out of bed (it started 7am here, and 6am in Japan where Chris is based :)), and came over to check out the AMA.

So Mobile marketing, and more hardcore games like Super Awesome Quest specifically. There's right now two primary paths; CPI and organic.

CPI (Cost Per Install) basically boils down to pay multiple middlemen to go spam ads in Facebook and as in-game advertisement; as long as your Cost Per Install is less than your Life Time Value (LTV, the total amount of cash you expect to extract from an average user), you'll make money. You'll end up giving most of that to a bunch of middlemen, but in theory it's an engine you can put money in on one end, and get more money out on the other.

I don't personally believe in CPI based installs; you end up having to tune to game exceedingly aggressively towards maximizing LTV, which makes it a worse game in the long run. To me, games like Heartstone, Fallout Shelter and Crossy Road are more interesting; 'light touch' free to play games where the game is entirely playable without spending a dime, and where if you DO spend anything it's to do something fun (get valuable new stuff, get a cool new feature), not to avoid something bad (having your crops destroyed, having to sit and wait for 30 minutes for a timer to count down). Light touch games don't work with CPI, so you end up trying for Organic distribution (which Chris covered earlier). That means talking to websites, talking on forums, talking to the AppStores, talking to youtubers/twitch streamers/vloggers

For SEA specifically, one thing we're doing that's quite unique is supporting local languages. It's coming out (soon; GMC submitted to Apple last week for worldwide launch) in Thai, Vietnamese, Bahasa Melayu, Bahasa Indonesia, Simplified Chinese and Taglish (the creole of English, Tagalog and other Filipino languages that people actually tend to use, translated by the Filipino lead designer, Jay). I think that's really cool, personally; we'll see if the world agrees :)

Allan

Also, launching during E3 was... not optimal :) Journalists have other things to worry about round about then.

It can also sometimes be difficult to separate work/life; your computer is your workplace (and often your entertainment machine), your den is your office, and a lot of the people you hang out with online and play games with are your colleagues.

A lot of us like working with a laptop, so we can take it out to a coffee shop, sit down and work there while watching life go by while working.

The trick is always order the non-vegetarian Hindu religious meal. A good curry's hard to spoil. It does make the poor air stewardesses look at me a bit strangely, though.

One of our oldest staff has been begging us to make a Hentai game for nearly 10 years now. He's happily married, but I guess he still remembers his roots. At the moment we've sadly got no plans for Renai or Hentai games. Though it would have been a kick-ass segue from HOPA games, and we had the tools/pipeline to revolutionize the genre :)