Feature: 'The Glu That Binds: Greg Ballard On Mobile Game Publishing'

Today's main Gamasutra feature talks to mobile publisher and developer Glu's president and CEO Greg Ballard, regarding everything from how to get good deck placement for mobile games, through development cycle questions, mobile gaming competitors, and Ballard's own intriguing past at Capcom and Digital Pictures. In this extract, interviewer Brandon Sheffield asks about what it was like coming from the console gaming space into the mobile gaming space, eliciting the following reply: "Well, I've spent a fair amount of time in the mobile space. I like it better here [that in console], though. In fact, when I was talking to Robert Nashak [senior VP of production] about his coming onboard as the creative head of our studio, he was coming from Acclaim, and I was using some of the same arguments that I had found exciting for me. 18 month development cycles for a videogame can be a real bummer if you don't like the game that you're working on. Or if you feel like the project's not on track, it's a long time to be stuck on one. Whereas here, over an 18 month time period, these folks will do probably five or six products. And each one of those products will advance their knowledge and understanding, and any mistakes they made on that product, they'll come back and do it differently the next time, and better the next time. I like the fact that the games don't cost a lot, so you can take fliers. We did Jamaican Bobsled, which frankly was pretty controversial here. Nobody knew if it was going to be a good game, or a bad game, or what the heck we were thinking about, but I am delighted that we're able to go off and do something that's sort of wild and crazy and different, and a little bit of a flier. You can do that when it costs you $150,000 to do a game – it's really hard to do that when it's a $15 million game." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).