Interview: CrowdStar Devs On Facebook Policy Changes, Social Game Stigmas

Major independent Facebook developer CrowdStar stands among the largest companies in the social games space, with 41 million monthly active users across all of its titles. The company currently specializes in Flash-based games for Facebook, with Happy Aquarium and It Girl among its most popular releases. A number of the company's developers originally moved over from the console space, and have since been forced to adapt to a range of new development habits, as game cycles were slashed from one to two years to just about a month. By making games quicker, the company says it can more easily prototype concepts and avoid wasting precious development resources. Among the other unique elements of social game development, CrowdStar also faces a constantly shifting platform, as new Facebook policies can instantly change the way games operate or reach new users. Gamasutra spoke with CrowdStar's Adam Lipsky, Jonathan Cook, and Jeff Tseng to discuss the rapid speed of social game development, how the company manages its titles amidst volatile platform changes, and why developers are still "wrapping their heads around social mechanics." The Transition To Social Games Some of you were working on console games before you got into social game development. Can you talk a bit about the differences between working in each part of the industry? Adam Lipsky: They're pretty large. There are differences in terms of the industry, and there are differences in terms of working in that industry as an engineer. I think one of the biggest things that people point to is time, development cycles, the amount of investment and people involved. I think all those are really huge. I find that it takes a little bit of getting used to. In console development, your task for a month is to finish that feature, and out here, a month is almost a product lifecycle from start to finish. You might even complete an entire project and then scrap it in a month. It could happen that quickly, depending on the product of course. It's interesting to have your day in a console world be more like, "I came in and I helped make this feature happen. That's going to be done in a few weeks," rather than, "I came in today, and I made an impact that affected millions of people today." You know, from conception of the idea all the way down to the release and the feedback that you get from your users. That loop is much tighter in social gaming. So, I think that experience, working within this industry is one of the biggest draws, I think, the biggest different in your day-to-day experience. I would assume that the differences could be different depending on exactly what you're doing on the console side. I mean, a lot of the programming isn't exactly that similar anyway because, rendering and things like that are very different, right? AL: Not totally. I mean, there's always some investigation to be done in terms of rendering. You're working with a totally different tool base. The rendering on the console side is a lot more granular. You have a lot more fine-tuned control than you do in Flash, for example. But I don't think that's going to stay the same forever. And you do have to pay attention to how Flash does its rendering if you're going to do your job effectively. But yes, the types of tasks you get are very different across the board. The amount of knowledge that you need to know of hardware is different, for example. On console, if you don't know your hardware very well, you can get into big trouble, but with Flash, you assume that you don't know the hardware at all and you don't really need to make those decisions. Flash and Adobe has made them for you when they make their Flash player work on different browsers and different platforms. So, really you end up focusing a lot more on the game, which is what people want. That's what the developer wants. They want to be able to focus on their product and not worry so much about, you know, the conduit between product and hardware. So, that's an advantage definitely. Do you guys primarily stick to Flash? AL: Right now, yes. Almost all of our games in the present and in the past have been Flash. Originally, we were working in PHP, doing more text-based stuff. You know, the standard Mob Wars, Mafia Wars-type thing back when I first joined. I believe our first project was World War II, which is, you know, a text-based RPG style game. We moved to Flash pretty quickly after that. We realized about two years ago that Flash was the thing to do, and we worked on a number of Flash titles. I actually learned Flash here, and I didn't know I was going to learn Flash until that time in the job. And since then, Flash has done very well, and it's available everywhere. It works. Although Flash has become the de facto standard of Facebook games, audiences are getting more sophisticated and there are opportunities to move into things like Unity, HTML 5, among others. What's going to dictate the platforms that you work with? Is it audience? Is it the game design? Is it just the way tech moves? Jonathan Cook: I think it's actually all of the above. I mean, every one of those is very important no matter what. Audience is huge, of course, but without an audience, a game doesn't have a life really. People make games all the time that never see the light of day, and because of that, they die. That's just the state of the industry. Flash has a huge audience at this point, and it's very hard to turn your back on something like that. But of course if the audience decides that they're willing to invest in something like a plug-in for Unity, or if industry tech moves forward with all the browser compatibilities supporting HTML5, then the capabilities become greater. You know, that's something we have to look at. I think everyone's going to be wanting to make sure that's where they are. Being able to make the best product as possible for as many people as possible is the end goal. I don't know how you feel about that. JC: I've had a lot of people ask me about HTML5 specifically, and one of the things that's actually a challenge is you're pretty much giving away your code in HTML. Like, let's say we build one of our complex games in HTML5, every single time you're downloading it, it's the code, so anybody else can easily steal it. And that's one of those things we have to be aware of looking forward. We can protect our IP to some degree, but like it's really easy to steal ideas. Rapid Production, Sudden Cancellation You were talking earlier about games getting developed and scrapped in a month. I mean, games get cancelled all the time on the console side, sure, but once there's a certain cost, it's going to make it, right? AL: [laughs] Yeah. That's true. And since the cycles are so long, it's not like someone can figure out within a month whether a console game is working. That's still preproduction. So, what's the impact of that new timeframe for you guys, on your ability to say yes or no? AL: It allows us to learn much faster than in general. It's so much better than taking guesses, stabs in the dark, to be able to test and prove out a product very quickly with no cost. I mean, cost is really the limiting factor for a company or even for a hobbyist. I have a limited amount of time to work on something. Is it going to be fun? I don't really know. If you can't prototype it that quickly, if you have to work on an Xbox Live title that you're doing at home, and it takes you three months to find out if it's going to work, then that's really daunting to some people who don't have that much time. I think that this kind of environment is pretty much ideal for experimenting, for exploring, for learning. We're trying to make that time cycle even better than it is, obviously. Even one month in our space is such a short amount of time because everybody is on that time scale. So, in terms of the real world, one month, believe it or not, is very small for console development. It's all relative. For us, we can do that in like a week. If we can have a prototype ready for you in a week and done, then we would be even better off. JC: Yeah. I mean, I definitely agree. The thing that's nice about having that kill switch, which I think is the critical important thing, is being able to basically say, "We're in this phase where we don't know if this is going to go to market, but we can get a playable version in front of a bunch of eyes." So then we can have this discussion and say, "Is this something we want to invest more time in and more money in to go with that?" And we have the ability to say, "It seemed like a good idea on paper, but once we actually started building it, we realized there were some problems with these game mechanics and they aren't that fun," so we just shut it down. And you look at what you actually spent in a month, it's still a lot, but it's better than spending two years for a busted game. Would you say it's as important to be able to shut down games that aren't working games as it is to make games that are successful? AL: Almost more important. I mean, the ability to make a successful game has so many intangible factors to it. Fun is a very hard thing to plan, you know. Fun is one of those things that just happens. For entertainment in general, it just works or it doesn't. It's really difficult to capture that and write a formula for it. And so in the end, you really want to get to that point as soon as possible. If you are spending resources in time in the wrong direction, you need to know as soon as possible. I find that a lot of console games have come out with great brilliant designs, really awesome ideas, but just aren't that fun; some part of the execution didn't work. There was just some major flaw that people couldn't really see until it came together, but by then, it's too late and you have to send it out there, and it becomes a failure. That can be the end of a company right there. So, there's just a huge amount of risk when it comes to a one-year-plus development cycle for anything, much less five years for some games. For us to be able to cancel games that don't work is a huge asset for us as a company and really just for anyone who wants to make good games. It gives you a chance to jump back into the right direction. I think part of it is that this is a hits-focused business. If it's not a hit, then you need to know that, and the sooner you can figure that out, the better. If you think about small team size -- we're not dealing with the large console game team sizes -- you could take that same team on a game that's failing and get them on another game that's doing well; that's got a higher turnover. And to have people kicking a dead horse is just a waste of time and effort. Finding Success On An Evolving Platform Do you think that the space is becoming more hit-requisite because Facebook just floods with more games, and the games are getting more elaborate and complex? JC: No, I would say the definition of a hit is actually what's changed. Look at the old definition of a hit. In my opinion, it would be one of those massive games that have like tens of millions of people a day playing. I think one of the things is that the space has shifted now. It's like you can have kind of wide appeal, or you can go more for the people that are really going to love the game because it's a game that speaks more to them. And I think that's the shift. What is a hit? Well, do we see a hit as a game with lots of people playing it, or do we see a hit as a game that people love to play and that they will play forever? Yeah. You know, there's the theory there can't be too many FarmVilles, you know, hits so huge and so broad. So, you see games going for more dedicated audiences, and hopefully there will be a lot of those, right? JC: Absolutely. Part of it is we are not isolated from changes Facebook makes, obviously. For any platform that a social gaming company builds on, they are kind of tied into that directly, so any shifts that that platform makes will affect their plans. And we've definitely seen that with Facebook more than once. AL: Yes. That's what's happening on the iPhone, too. And sure, some of the recent consoles have changed somewhat. The Xbox 360 has changed since its release, but it hasn't changed in the same way. It's more evolutionary. You guys have to deal with more of the ground shifting. AL: Right. The 360 changes have never been so fundamental that you could never adapt whatever project you were working on to them. They will probably add things on, but I don't know for sure; I'm speculating of course. But Facebook's changes are more fundamental because the games are presented in a way that is very much tied into that platform. And on that platform itself, you know how to get things. Earlier in the social games space, it seemed as if a lot of games were focusing on the whole virality thing, by spamming messages and the like. It was more stick and less carrot in the past. Now the idea is you want to get people to be genuinely interested in sharing. AL: Yes. [laughs] As a developer, does that change your mentality towards games or the way you communicate with users or the way your users interact? AL: I can only speak personally, but I've always been about making sure the game is fun first. I know there have been a lot of cases where people will try to make the bare minimum product and just get as many people as possible. When the opportunity is there, people will take advantage of it. When there's money involved especially, you do what you can to make money. Some people have that mentality. I don't think that's changed my perspective at all. Even in my console game days, it's always been about making a really fun experience. I'm very passionate about making a product that people want to play. Having the ability to spread it to a lot more people has been a huge thing for me, but I don't think that Facebook's stance using a viral channel to get more people in has really changed my perspective on gaming at all. Jeffrey Tseng: Yeah. There was that fundamental shift, but as we understand it, that's what Facebook intended. What they're looking for and what we're looking for, too, is just a better player experience. What this does is it helps clear out the tricky virality and places the dependence more on true social virality based on the quality of the games. In the long run, we think this is definitely better for us because it means that we are not given incentive to trick the players, and the rest of this industry is not given incentive to trick the players, and the playing field is based on product quality. Social Stigmas It almost seems as if there has been this tension between the traditional game developers and social developers -- sort of a stigma against social games, perhaps. But with less of an opportunity to rely on viral tactics, I think that negative feeling sort of filters out. JT: Yeah. If there is and was a stigma, it's hard to quantify, not just within the gaming community but within the general public; it seems to be very polarized, right? You know, when the feeds were up, you really appreciated them or you really hated them, from what I understand. So, the recent Facebook changes should help to eliminate the negative stigma about these games, and maybe that will attract more people, too. Going back to what you were talking about a little earlier, a lot of console games have gone way overboard when it comes to relying on the audience having some sort of built-in knowledge, and that is going to be real detrimental when you're going for a crowd that's less willing to spend time dealing with that kind of stuff. JT: Yeah. And that's been a big learning experience, especially for the people in the console industry. To really understand that mindset and that audience is completely different. But I think we've done really well. I don't know. [laughs] AL: I think that, yeah, it is a lesson that has been learned several times. It's actually a huge benefit for us to have come in at the time that we did because we were experiencing that education first hand. If a large console gaming company, for example, decided to jump into social games, they would take some examples and learn from the games out there, but they wouldn't necessarily understand the reasons behind a lot of the decisions that are made at this point. They wouldn't necessarily know that the users are at a certain point. Or even if the core of the social gaming audience does get more educated, there's going to be still more people coming in. I don't think that the audience has grown anywhere near its capacity. So, that education is still ongoing. And with the same number of people starting from scratch, you're going to have to deal with that audience for quite a long time. For CrowdStar, we just have to remember that there's this beginning audience, and also this growing sentiment that's getting more sophisticated --being able to handle both audiences from the get go is a huge advantage for us. JC: Yeah, it's something you kind of have to build from the beginning mentally. Sure, we're going to get a lot of users from our existing games. We told them these ways to play certain games based on the other things. And as Facebook itself is still growing, we're going to get those brand new people who are like, "What is a social game? What is this thing?" And so keeping that mindset and not assuming anything regarding the state of our users' knowledge is a real strength. You said earlier that games are often very, very social, I think that actually social games have not been very, very social a lot of the time. There are some social elements in the games, but not very much meaningful social interaction. First of all, is that what the audience is demanding? And second, is that what the platform is actually good at? JT: I would say that's where the industry is right now, but it's not where the industry necessarily is going to be. I think what you're seeing is what we're talking about, look at the games two years ago, look at the games a year ago, look at the games now. There is tremendous progress. It's still a very, very new platform. Everybody is still learning how you can do things on the platform. You can see this with the release of any console system or anything like that, where developers are still trying to get a handle on what you can do with the platform. You'll see something come out that everybody apes later on that no one thought of or thought you could do. So, I think that's where it is with social games. Social gaming is such a new mechanic that everybody is still wrapping their heads around it. So, what you're seeing right now is a lot of games that use game mechanics that are somewhat well proven and then they try to integrate social. But what you haven't seen is these huge break-outs based on social mechanics. So, we have some idea on what those are going to be and where those are going to go, but, you know, we'll see where it goes. And there is also the point of whether the audience is ready for it. Because the other side is there's an audience education that's happening, and so we need to make sure that the audience is ready for these things, too. I had a kind of interesting conversation recently with another journalist on Twitter. I said, you know, "Social games aren't very social". And she said, "I don't want them to be more social because that will make them more of a responsibility," essentially. It kind of blew my mind, you know. JT: Well, how much of a person's life do they want the game to be? And so, how do you think the mass market would answer to that? Our audience is broad. It's like, you know, the grandma to your kids. And social games are a new idea to people. If there's one thing that we know, it's that when you're trying to present these new ideas to people, it's sometimes difficult for them to get it. And there are people who have just been introduced to social networks and how they work and how they impact their lives. The younger audience may adapt quicker, but how are you going to teach these people the new social mechanics in games and how they work?