All Change

One of the defining trends of 2011 was the ongoing migration of AAA talent to social development. This has taken two forms: leading companies like Zynga tempting industry veterans with new contracts on the one hand, and the formation of companies like Row Sham Bow on the other.

Formed by a group of people from EA Tiburon, the home of Madden NFL, Row Sham Bow intends to bring AAA experience to bear on the evolution of social gaming, placing greater emphasis on compelling game mechanics and good old-fashioned fun. In this interview, Row Sham Bow's CEO Philip Holt and CTO Nick Gonzales discuss the value of a swift start, consequences and loss in social games, and how admitting you know nothing can be your greatest asset.

Q: Row Sham Bow was only founded in April, and you had your first product to market in a little over six months. Most companies don't start with such pace, even in social development. Was that part of your strategy?

Philip Holt: Yeah, actually, it was from the get go. We assumed when entering this space that most of our instincts would be wrong. We wanted to launch quickly and get our products out in front of customers so we could start learning from their behaviour.

So that was a goal from the start, and we made choices around that regarding the scope of the product, what features we'd include at launch, and features we wouldn't include at launch. And I'm very glad that we did, because I think we've learned a lot since we launched [debut game Woodland Heroes] in late October.

Q: Did you do much research, or was it more a case of learning on the job?

Philip Holt: Well, the first day of operation was April 18, and in our second week we built - in, like, four days - we built and deployed a game on Facebook; a very, very simple rock, paper, scissors game. We did that first for the primary reason of getting the team used to Facebook APIs and going full lifecycle, from an idea to out in the field. We got maybe 100 users, but that wasn't the point.

That was really valuable, and then after that there was probably two or three weeks of very focused playing of the top 50 games on Facebook at the time. Concurrently with that, the team - and the team at that point was probably 8 or 10 people - everybody had ideas about products that they wanted to make, so we literally let people work on whatever they wanted to, just two or three day prototypes.

We selectively chose down from half a dozen ideas to two, and did some testing on Facebook against the concepts that resonated most strongly with the team, just to collect some demographic data. And we used that data as one of the filters on our decision to select Woodland Heroes.

Q: Your background is at EA, your co-founder, Nick Gonzales, was also most recently at EA, and many of your initial staff also have that traditional publisher background. The sort of dynamism you're describing in Row Sham Bow's early days isn't associated with companies of that size. Is that why you wanted to make the transition?

Philip Holt: At EA - and anyone that's worked in the industry in a primarily retail oriented business - you look at second hand sales, you look at declining user attention spans, the consolidation of sales in the top 5 titles versus what used to be the top 20 sales; it's just really, really difficult to be successful in retail these days.

The fastest growing and most dynamic part of the market is in mobile and social, and so we thought a couple of things: it's a really interesting space to understand; the speed at which you can deploy is really, really fast; the iteration and learning times are very, very rapid; and the barrier to entry is very, very low, so you don't need a 100 person team and $20 million to get to market.

Q: Did you feel the AAA market getting smaller?

Philip Holt: Not necessarily smaller, but more concentrated around the top 5 titles. Working at EA, we had the benefit of the Madden franchise, which has commanded a top 5 spot pretty much for the last 10 years. So it's a good place to be, but it's increasingly challenging. If you're looking to do new stuff... I think a huge draw for a lot of the team that came from EA was the opportunity to do something new and different. Some of these guys came from 15 years at EA Tiburon working on football titles.

Q: Nick, you worked at EA in a somewhat different capacity, on Facebook and free-to-play properties...

Nick Gonzales: Yeah. One of the things we find really exciting about the f2p space is the ability to make changes quickly, and respond to how the players are behaving in the games. We have a direct feed of data that tells us how to make the game more interesting, more fun, more compelling for the players.

Q: So you were involved in these areas already. Do your reasons for being involved in Row Sham Bow differ from many of the others?

Nick Gonzales: My passion and motivation is really just around being in this space in general. Luckily I had that opportunity while I was at EA, to release some products in this space, and just taking that next step, having that creative freedom and ability to move quickly and deliver on our creative vision, that really excites me about being with Row Sham Bow.

Q: The assumption that most of your instincts about social games would be wrong is quite refreshing. Many social startups formed by people from the more traditional side of game development seem to begin on the assumption that their presence will inevitably make social games better.

Philip Holt: I think that there are certain things we look at, as just gamers, about social games and we feel that there's a lot lacking. The game that we want to play just hasn't been made yet, so there's a big desire from us to push games in that direction, but at the same time I think we all have a healthy appreciation for the people that have come before us. There have been some amazing trailblazers, and they really opened a new market and a new consumer, and they've done it in a way that was non-intuitive for people who had been making games.

I think it would be a little foolish to come into the space and say, 'Look, I've been making games for 20 years, I don't need to learn anything new.' That, to me, is the excitement of new technology, new platforms and new business models - the ability to learn and bring your own kind of take. We don't want to compete with Zynga, we don't want to compete with Playdom, because that's not who we are. We bring something entirely different to the table, so ideally, the next three game launches that we have, you'll play them, you won't know who released them, and you'll be able to identify them as a Row Sham Bow game.

Q: So what did you take away from that period of research where you played the top 50 Facebook games? What did that period tell you about what the games you want to play should look like?

Philip Holt: Well, I suppose there are things that have been done really well. All of the successful games and the successful companies really understand user experience and how to reduce friction points. There's no inherent investment in your game from consumers... So if they don't understand what the game's about, if they don't understand how to play it, if they're not having fun instantly, they're gone and they're gone forever. That was really cemented by playing a lot of those games out there.

I think what's lacking in a lot of those games is they're not really fun; they're very compulsive experiences but they're not very fun. Some elements of traditional game design are just lacking. The risk-reward calculus that you make in a game just is not really there on Facebook. So we wanted to create risk for players where they had to make choices, and then let there be consequences to those choices. That's the biggest thing we concentrated on with Woodland Heroes: we wanted an element of strategy, we wanted people to be in a loss state so that the wins would be that much more satisfying.

Q: Social developers seem reluctant to make losing a big part of their games, when it has been central to so many forms of gaming. Is that down to a fear of scaring away customers?

Philip Holt: I don't know. I'm sure that Zynga has a ton of research around how much risk people are tolerant of, and I think some of it comes down to the sort of audience that you want to attract. Companies like Zynga and Playdom are going after mass audiences; they have to be aware of frustrating the players.

For inspiration, one of the places that we looked is to the classic arcade days: the risk-reward scenario was only 25 cents, you only ever have a quarter on the line, and as long as the game felt fair, and you felt like your mistake was the reason for some kind of failure, that represents challenge. People like mastery - it's a fundamental motivation for play, usually, the ascent to mastery.

We're not necessarily focused on attaching to 200 million people. I mean, it would be nice, but I think the kinds of games that we're going to make are going to serve a smaller audience.

Q: It's really about the opportunity to be successful in a niche again, which the traditional AAA industry seems to have lost altogether. The sheer size of the Facebook audience means that even niches can attract millions of potential players.

Philip Holt: Exactly.

Q: There's a lot to learn, obviously, but the sort of AAA experience behind Row Sham Bow is still an exception in social development. What sort of edge does that give you?

Philip Holt: The first focus in everything we do is to answer the question, 'Is this game fun?' And I think a lot of that comes from years and years of working on sports games, where the rules of the game are defined for you by the sport. When you present the sport to the user it has to be a really fun and engaging experience to keep them coming back year after year. The requirement for innovation around game mechanics in a sports game is very, very high. That unending focus on making a game the most fun experience possible is one advantage that we have.

Q: During that free-form prototyping period in the early days, did you find any game styles that would work on Facebook that, at this point, are still largely absent?

Philip Holt: I think there's a big vacancy in the market for really compelling competitive and co-operative games. Games where enlisting your friends in play is an integral part of the game, and I don't think anybody has really done that well yet. It's an area that we want to focus on - obviously we haven't done it yet but it's on the road map. Ultimately, playing computer AI has its limitations, and playing with real people is inherently a lot more interesting.

Q: Woodland Heroes has been out for nearly two months now, and that early post-release phase is crucial for a social game. How has it been received?

Philip Holt: Yeah, it feels like 20 or 30 percent of the effort is getting to launch and the real work comes post launch. As Nick likes to say, 'This is when the team grows up,' and we really have. We've gone from, during development, two or three week sprints, to pushing almost daily to add new features and tuning the game.

I think the team has placed a lot more value on understanding the data coming off of the users' performance, and making changes based on that data instead of just our hunches. A lot of arguments are usually concluded with, 'Let's test it.' It's sort of the great equalizer in arguments.

Q: How have you approached the move to data-driven design? Social skeptics often cite the reliance on data as a problem with social games, on the grounds that it cuts out the wisdom and experience of the designer.

Nick Gonzales: It really depends on how you use the data, or what you're trying to solve. We can use that endless stream of data to identify problems in the game, and find out where we're losing people. At that point we gather as much data around that as we can, and that's where it stops. That's where creative problem-solving and an experienced team comes in to come up with a creative solution. You don't use data as the solution; you use data to help identify the problem.

Q: Are you also trying to find your own path on monetization? The games you're aiming to make aren't as welcoming to micro-transactions as the farming simulators that dominate the space.

Philip Holt: It's about understanding what the customers buy, how much they value it, and how much they're willing to pay for it. That's the big balance that you have to strike, and there's a lot to be done there. I think the average monetisation rate across the industry is something like 3 or 4 per cent, but we question why it's 3 per cent, y'know? Why isn't it 20 per cent?

Q: Do you think the more entrenched social companies making effort to address that? Is that a high priority for Row Sham Bow, to get that number up?

Philip Holt: Yeah, and I think there's a real lack of public data in the social space. AppData does a really good job of understanding reach, but that's basic, and unless you're a public company are have filed an S1 it's really hard to understand how people are monetizing, the ways that's happening, the average revenue produced per user. There's a lot of groping for, 'What numbers make sense? What's a reasonable expectation to have?' We're struggling with that probably like everyone else is.

But ultimately we lean on this whole value proposition: if you create a high quality game that's really fun to play, and that people want to play, these are the intrinsic motivations that will make those people want to return, for people to invite their friends, and for people to pay money. They value the experience.

Q: I talked to Playfish's John Earner recently about The Sims Social, and he seemed very pessimistic about the opportunities for a start-up to achieve any more than niche success in social gaming - that you now need either an established player-base or a brand to challenge at the top. Do you agree with that on any level?

Philip Holt: Well, if we did agree with that we'd probably just close up shop right now, but I think he makes a fair point. The playing field has changed, and there are certainly advantages for established players with a large reach today. But it's still early days in the life of social games, and I think that what's more fundamental than Facebook as a gaming platform is free-to-play as a business model.

This is not just flash in the pan; y'know, the table has been set, and if you're not there yet you're not gonna get dinner. I think this is very early days, and there's still going to be a lot of innovation that drives the market... But it changes the way you make your games, so you can rely less on spammy viral tricks to grow audience and you come back on how to build a quality game that people are going to tell their friends about.

Q: So the new basis for virality in social games becomes recommendations by word-of-mouth rather than the more empty virality of the past?

Philip Holt: Yeah, and you talk to any marketer in the world and they'll tell you that positive word-of-mouth is the most powerful way to grow an audience.