Big Point to Prove
Bigpoint's Philip Reisberger on money, tablets and going beyond social networks
Oh they desperately want to. I mean, what's the website called, the portal they're working on? Z-whatever. They have plans, they've had plans for the last two years. Everyone wants to reduce their dependence on Facebook I think. Eventually it will come, but as some attempts have shown in the past, it's not as easy to understand the world outside Facebook because it's a totally different world.
That's why Bigpoint is in a very good position: we're not just the ones developing, we've mastered, to a certain degree, the distribution.
We have included in our company, well, included is the wrong word...We took over the Planet Moon stuff, the Radon Labs stuff, more recently the 49Games stuff. In total that's 150-200 people. We love acquisitions, we're looking for acquisitions all the time.
For me it's not a matter of if you're doing that, but what one is buying. Once a company has a certain power behind it, this is just a regular way of acquiring technology, talent, market share or whatever it is.
As for the other side, let's not comment on that now - let's leave that to the business side, not the games side!
"To us, revenue and money is always a consequence. Always. The first thing is always games, it's concepts, it's game designers."
Actually the whales are everywhere. That's just where you hit the wall in terms of the level curve. Progressing from level 5-7 might take an hour, but progressing from level 67-70 might take three days, four days or a week. Because it takes a lot more time you can potentially spend a lot more money.
To us, revenue and money is always a consequence. Always. The first thing is always games, it's concepts, it's game designers. My brother and I are from a finance background, so we love numbers, we love optimisation, we love KPIs, but that is only for optimisation.
True innovation doesn't come from numbers. True innovation comes from creative people who, I don't know, spend most of their waking time when the sun is down and stuff like that! [laughs]
I totally love my creative guys because they are the guys who really drive new ideas and get the most out of them in terms of user timespan and everything like that, and as a consequence money. But it should always be a consequence, not a prerequisite.
Of course. If you look at games like Battlestar Galactica, eventually the Mummy and others to come - especially our Unity 3D engine based games, they are a lot more aiming towards the console market than our casual games or 2D Flash games.
So new technologies, like our internal engine, the Nebula engine, or the Unity engine, whatever technology there is, this is something which is a huge opportunity for traditional console developers to use their strengths.
This is where we are focusing as well. I totally love it. I want an experience where you don't have to download, where you don't have to pay up front - you just login to the browser and play. Who wouldn't want a 3D, full AAA experience in the browser? Or on mobile?
That's like the holy grail of having the user play your game or portfolio 24/7, wherever he or she is. I think it's still a long way away, because the technology is just emerging where you can really port - and you have to bear in mind that developers are going to focus on the different aspects of the platform. A mobile platform has different requirements to a browser.
Don't just copy a game and release it everywhere, it won't work.