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Questions about Gaming

By Bobby Voicu

techhub-developing-killer-games

Later today I will moderate a great gaming panel: Mihai Sfrijan, Head of Studio in Bucharest for King, George Lemnaru, founder of Green Horse Games and last, but not least, my co-founder at MavenHut, Cristi Badea.

The thing is, I need to prepare some questions for the 40 minutes of panel talk.

Some ideas are:
– how do you analyze metrics in your company
– what are the most important metrics that a game creator should follow initially
– how much should you force the monetization, where do you stop?
– how do you react to players revolt (it happens!)
– what are some numbers that define a good game
– what is the most important element in acquisition-retention-monetization process?
– some suggestions on acquisition, both free and paid?
– some suggestions on retention?
– suggestions on monetization?
– how expensive is to create a hit game?
– how big should the team be? is it possible to do it by yourself, with a small team? who should be in the team, what skills should be there no matter what?

OK, it should be enough for 40 minutes, but do you have some questions of your own? If so, the comments below are at your disposal :)

P.S.: if you want to come, the event is today, 6:30, at TechHub in Bucharest.

Work Hard, Play Hard, Get a Massage

By Bobby Voicu

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We work hard at MavenHut. We really do. The culture of the company is to work hard and have fun about it. Cristi is the one taking care of this when it comes to MavenHut (to be sure that everyone in the team understands what is expected of them) and you can feel it: people really try hard to do their part.

Still, we are also trying to relax from time to time and the team is actually happy to join in.

Several weeks ago, we had a lot of fun at karting (and I missed my first ever medal in internal competitions by 4 hundreds of a second!!!). In the photo below there’s a heated moment between me and Cristi on the race track:

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Then we went to see Jobs at a cinema VIP room. You can read more about the movie here. The certain thing is that I’ve never seen so many people not wanting to leave their chairs at the end of the movie and actually sitting in through the entire credits.

But these one-off events are nothing compared to the massage we receive at the office. Not all the time, of course, but we have someone coming constantly to give us 15 minutes massages. And it’s great, as you can see below, when I was almost falling asleep in the chair :D

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Finally, the XBox hooked to the video projector makes games like FIFA and Mortal Kombat a totally different experience.

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Work is good, you need perfection in everything you do and that’s not easy. But fun is also good. From time to time :))

So don’t forget about it. It makes work a lot easier and more productive.

Photos by Elvis, Cristi and me.

Bucharest Gaming Meetup at TechHub

By Bobby Voicu

techhub-developing-killer-games

If, by any chance, you are in Bucharest and you are interested in gaming or entrepreneurship, this is an interesting event to be at: TechHub Meetup: Developing Killer Games.

You can ask questions to and listen the experiences of:

– Mihai Sfrijan, Head of Studio at King. Mihai is a great guy, that we got to know better this year and is one of the great resources about gaming in the Romanian market, especially when you are talking about Facebook/mobile casual games (I mean, they develop Bubble Witch Saga in Romania and King is the studio behind the crazy successful Candy Crush Saga).

– George Lemnaru is, I think, a pioneer in the gaming entrepreneurship in Romania. He co-founded eRepublik and he is now starting another gaming company, Green Horse Games.

– Cristi Badea, my co-founder at MavenHut. He is the guy behind the mechanics of Solitaire Arena, the one that crunches numbers for breakfast in order to create the best games that we can create.

Of course, I will be there. I will be the host for this event, the one that will try to squeeze as much information as possible from the guests. I will appreciate any kind of questions you want to ask, so don’t be afraid to write them in the comments below.

If you can be in Bucharest, come to TechHub on Thursday at 6:30pm. You’re not gonna regret it.

Saturday Game: Jelly Splash on iOS

By Bobby Voicu

Jelly_Splash_for_iPhone_4__iPhone_4S__iPhone_5__iPod_touch__4th_generation___iPod_touch__5th_generation___iPad_2_Wi-Fi__iPad_2_Wi-Fi___3G__iPad__3rd_generation___iPad_Wi-Fi___4G__iPad__4th_generation___iPad_Wi-Fi___Cellular__4th_generation_We are always testing new games here, at MavenHut. On all devices, from anybody. Last week we’ve discovered Wooga’s Jelly Splash.

The game is a cross between Dots and Candy Crush Saga. It starts a little bit slow, but I got really into it after the first 7-8 levels. Now I am at level 50, to give you an idea :)

It’s a free game with inApp purchases. I managed to get to level 50 without spending any money (you start with some credits that can be used to unlock new areas, so don’t spend them in the first levels).

My advice: if you’re looking for a Candy Crush Saga like new game, try Jelly Splash. But don’t blame me for the lack of productivity :)

Jobs The Movie

By Bobby Voicu

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Yesterday MavenHut’s entire team went to the movies: Jobs. While the experience of a VIP cinema room just for ourselves made us feel a lot better, I have to say I really liked the movie. I was quite surprised, especially after reading all the bad reviews the movie got on IMDB and similar sites.

Ashton Kutcher, which I actually like, especially because of his business acumen, creates a believable Jobs, down to his behavior patterns, his walking and, especially, his eyes. Really, when the images of both Kutcher and Jobs appear at the end of the movie, look at their eyes.

Anyway, the movie is a series of short moments that take you from the launch of the company to the launch of the iPod, without respecting the timeline. At times it feels like a series of sketches, but, if you already know the timeline, the movie is quite enjoyable. And the acting, I have to say, is good. Including (or especially) Josh Gad as Wozniak.

Yes, the movie has some off beat moments, but I enjoyed it nevertheless.

My advice: if you have the time, go see it, regardless of the bad reviews. I think you will really enjoy it. Especially if you read Isaacson’ biography on Jobs or Adam Lashinsky’s Inside Apple (which I actually think is the better read).

Finally, an interesting thing, the official site for the site is a collaborative effort on tumblr.

Startups Don’t Work with Other Startups

By Bobby Voicu

startups-dont-work-other-startups

Two days ago I’ve read something that sounded really familiar: startups don’t work with other startups. I am sorry, I can’t find the article right know, but this is something I’ve been thinking in the last 18 months, since we started MavenHut. Maybe a little more nuanced: early startups don’t work with early startups.

One of the most difficult things to do when in a startup is to convince your potential partners to work with you: startups, by their nature, are a fiddly beast. Most of them don’t survive the first several month, let alone the first year, so everybody starts with the assumption that a startup will not deliver.

To makes matters worse, a startup has even less incentive to work with another one. And the reasoning is simple: the startup you build is already on the edge of survival (as any startup is). You don’t really want to base your own existence on somebody else’s capacity of making it to the shore. And startups make mistakes, and first versions of the products are rarely the ones the customer needs. And I have limited resources (money and work hours), I don’t want to lose anything because of your testing/mistakes. I lose enough on mine.

Yes, working with a startup may be cheaper, even free. But I would rather pay more for something or make it without the specific thing that startup offers, than to base my livelihood on somebody else’s promises.

I am keeping in touch with startups we talk to for partnerships, though. We can still help each other and thrive together, but working together? Later down the road, once we’ve both crossed 2 years of building the same product. By that time you should already have a version stable enough for us to use.

Does this make life more difficult for startup founders? Hell, yes! But it’s the way it is.

P.S.: actually, I remembered that when we started, Cristi, my co-founder, kept saying: “While I am a startup, I am not going to be the first customer of another startup. Too much uncertainty involved.”

Photo from Shutterstock

Know Your Numbers

By Bobby Voicu

Know Your NumbersAsk a startup founder about the revenue for the month. Or the number of users his/her business has. Or the amount of servers and the load on them on an average day. The answer should be immediate (there can be some hesitation, but only to take into account or not today’s numbers). Obviously, ask each founder the questions specific for him: I would hate to be asked about the servers, instead of Elvis. Obviously, I now a general number, and I know how much we spend on it, but that’s it. My job is not to know how many they are, but how they impact the cash flow.

Surprisingly, though, I have met so many startup founders, especially in early stages, that don’t have a clue about their numbers. And I have no idea how that happens. How can you think about your business every minute of every day and not know those numbers?

When I ask about this, they say there are so many numbers, how can they remember all of those? And I give them the example of Cristi, the other co-founder at MavenHut, who follows several hundred indicators permanently and he probably knows by heart about 50 of them (the most important ones). Or it takes him 2 minutes at the most to give details on the others (after looking through Excels and stats). It may sound huge, but gaming is a metrics driven business and that is his job. If he doesn’t know those, he can’t do what he’s supposed to do: create great games that are played by lots of users.

You may say that you don’t have the time to look at the numbers, because you are busy building a business. How do you know how to build it, what it needs, if you are not looking at the numbers?? It’s mind blowing for me how many times I hear this, though.

And, as a side information, every investor I’ve met asked me about numbers. User numbers, growth, revenues, if any, estimates, industry numbers. You NEED to know numbers!

Photo from ShutterStock

Saturday Game: iPad and Football Equals SCORE!

By Bobby Voicu

scoreAbout 6 months ago I’ve discovered Score! (I think Cristi, my co-founder at MavenHut, told me about it). It’s a game for both iPhone and iPad, but I only played it on the iPad.

Score! is a kind of Pocket Planes for football. Basically, you take goals scored in the last 30 years or so and try to recreate them on the iPad screen. Based on the level (Amateur, Professional), you set up directions, shot power and let the game unwind and gain stars and points based on accuracy.

Initially it felt like a stupid game, I must admit, but with every goal I would go forward I would get more and more into it. So much, actually, that I wanted to buy a goal package (you have some initial ones, and some additional that keep updating, with goals from World Cups, Premiership and similar).

The thing is I haven’t deleted from my iPad it since I downloaded the game the first time, though I do not play it that often. And, thinking of it, I really, really enjoy it, from time to time (especially on longer flights, when I am tired and unable to focus on reading and the inflight entertainment is boring).

So, if you have the time and care to have a non-realtime football game, you should give it a try.

Just Enjoy Good News

By Bobby Voicu

solitaire-arena-numbers

This month MavenHut is hitting some awesome fine round numbers and I am taking a break from the regular posting to revel on it:

1. We’ve hit 1 million Monthly Active Users for Solitaire Arena (we’re actually closing on 1.5 million)

For Facebook games, this is a really important milestone, since this means we are going to the 1-5 million tier, with the “Big Boys” :)

2. Since we’ve improved a lot on retention and acquisition, we keep growing really well and, as a consequence, we’ve hit, for the first time, top 100 Facebook Games. Which is awesome!

We’ve posted on our company’s site a little bit more numbers, but for the moment I am extremely, truly happy that the company is doing well. So bear with me for not writing something else and just enjoying the moment. In a startup, happiness rarely truly lasts, so I am taking as much as I can now :D

A Personal History of Games

By Bobby Voicu

I’ve been playing computer games pretty much for ever. I am 35 now, and I have seen the first computer ever when I was about 5-6, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum (pictured above). My best childhood friend’s father, a Maths professor, had one of these brought in from UK, a rare occurrence in the communist Romania I was living in. That’s when my long love relationship with computer games has begun.

The first game I’ve ever played is either Lode Runner or Jumping Jack. Yeah, it’s been 30 years ago, do you really think I would remember exactly? :)

The thing is, I played a lot of games on that specific computer and I’ve played even more once my parents managed to find, through some connections (as with everything during the communism), a Romanian clone called HC85.

That’s when I started to play everything from the Dizzy series to Manic Miner, from Match Day (the precursor of FIFA games) to SimCity. But the games I fell in love with were the adventure/quest games like The Hobbit, Dizzy or Seymour. This is the main reason I started to learn English, after all, to understand the long lines of text that the characters of these games spoke to each other.

My fascination with adventure games continued into the PC era, with games like Larry. I remembered now that I’ve contributed to the KickStarted campaign for the re-mastered Larry – also, I still remember the happiness when I finally got the “Undress Her” command right. Space Quest, Indiana Jones games or the great Day of the Tentacle (not to forget Sam and Max hit the road, the weirdly funny game) were also games that I would spend my time on over and over again.

30 years later, I still love to play games and I book entire weekends just for this (not as many as I would’ve wanted, unfortunately). The last games I’ve played? The Last of Us, Dishonored and Bioshock: Infinity, on PS3, Runaway: A Road Adventure and Score on iPad, while on my MacBook the last download is Braid. Of course, I am not including here the throng of casual games I play on all devices to learn as much as possible for MavenHut, the gaming company I am part of.

What are you playing now? :)