“You can’t make a game for the current market, because people change and the way they play”

Game development is a business. You need to find money to take it on, and you need to fight them off to survive. Plus, you need to know how to manage people and sell games. The problem is that you can’t learn about it from books about programming, design and art.

Once a year, the Finnish organization Aalto University Developing Entrepreneurship (hereinafter Aalto ENT), which is related to Aalto University, conducts a training program for executives from the gaming industry. Her task is to help in running and building a successful gaming business. During the program, which lasts a week, students listen to professors and speakers, as well as visit leading gaming companies in Finland. The purpose of the course is to learn the necessary know-how to launch a successful gaming business.

We talked about the course and the industry in general with Aalto ENT program Manager Walid O. El Cheikh.

Alexander Semenov, Editor App2Top.ru : How did the program start?

Walid O. El. Cheik

Walid O. El. Cheik, Aalto ENT Program Manager: The program started in 2014. It was when Supercell became famous, and Rovio had been doing fine with Angry Birds for a long time.

Aalto ENT started the program together with many public and private companies. For example, with the state website TEKES (2014\2015), with the non-profit organization Neogames, which helps the gaming industry, with several game studios, like the already mentioned Rovio and Playraven.

Before launching the program, we talked with a number of Finnish industry experts, including Samuli Syvähuoko and Lasse Seppänen.

We asked everyone what the gaming industry needs, how we can help it.

After, say, a dozen meetings with various experts and many studios, it became clear to us that the educational program for the gaming industry should focus on topics such as management, entrepreneurship and business development.

There are a lot of talented developers in Finland who are good at creating games. The problem is in the sale of these games. Many do not have an answer to the question: how not only to create a game, but also to make money on it?  The desire to give them an answer was the main reason for launching the program.

We saw the need to create next-generation leaders who will be able to take the concept of the game and launch a successful game studio with an excellent IP.

This is how Game Executive was born – a program designed for managers that can help managers and directors of the gaming industry in creating not only successful games, but also successful companies.

But you have a very short program. It lasts only a week. What can you learn in a week?

Walid: The program was developing. It has changed a lot since the launch.

In 2014, it lasted about 4 months and was primarily aimed at those who live in Finland.

We tried to fix it. This year we made the course last a week.

We wanted students from other countries to participate in the program. And we have succeeded in this: in 2017, 13 different nationalities participated in the program. We had 12 Finns and 13 people from abroad.

Now, for a student from, say, Germany, the course has become much more accessible. He will have to spend not months in Finland, but only a week.

By the way, earlier we had people from Iran and Argentina. The guy from Argentina took 48 hours to get to us. The last time we had a student from Guatemala. He saved up for a year to go to Finland.

The program costs about € 5 thousand and covers many topics that are read by world-class professors, popular speakers. Some of the topics are revealed during a visit to leading Finnish companies.

This is a very intensive program of a very high level of teaching.

By the way, I was shocked when I found out the price.

Walid: The price reflects the quality, content and the number of hours we spent talking to people to improve the program.

For example, next year we will have John Romero and we are thinking about inviting Ilkka Paananen, CEO of Supercell, with Kazuki Morishita, creator of Puzzles and Dragons.    

We will have a world-class event focused on game developers, executives and students. The topic will be very specific: “Monetization in games: past, present, future”.

If we talk about the program, then it is divided into academic hours, visits to company offices and TED talks.

In one week, about 20 speakers, 7 professors usually speak and 6 visits take place.

There are a lot of topics. We usually cover up to 50 topics per week. So this is a very fast track and very demanding for students.

Even before the start of the program, a lot needs to be prepared. Read something, take some online courses.

This is a big investment in terms of time, money and effort, but it’s worth it if students want to develop their company, their employees and themselves.

There is a popular opinion that the best way to learn how to work is to get a job in a company. So is there any point in such courses? Maybe it’s better to get a job in some popular company?

Walid: Yes, I agree. If you read development sites, search for information on YouTube, just Google, you can find a lot of information. You can do self-education. The next step after that is: “So, I need a project, I’m going to work for the company, I’m going to do it!”.

It’s natural. Everyone can do it. But I’m going to tell you the main reason why people are coming to us.

They don’t come because they know they can’t learn something themselves. They don’t come thinking that once they talk to the leading game managers, then they will be able to solve all their problems.

They sign up to participate in the program because they want to get inspired and learn the necessary business skills. They want to learn together with other managers and leaders, and networking is an important part of our program.

When you are engaged in self–education, you have one approach, your own. In the classroom, we change the composition of groups every day so that each student has time to work in a team with each other. So you learn different approaches to management, learn different methodologies from different countries.

You meet people, discuss problems with them, share successes.

I do not know how things are in Russia, but in Finland it is customary to share information and study together. This methodology is something like the Finnish approach to learning.

You just talked about inspiration, about sharing experiences. It sounds like a story about a conference where people are also looking for inspiration and sharing their stories and approaches.

Walid: We are not a conference. I always start with this when the program starts.

One of the most important differences is that we invite professors. For example, professors who really know a lot about strategy and entrepreneurship. And we give students what any leader in the world should know.

Being at the head of the company, you have to understand what is happening in the world. This is what the program provides: an ultimatum summary for everyone who manages the project, the company, and even the IP.

Today you need to understand how to find out your position in the market, how to determine the competitive advantages of your product, and so on.

In the gaming industry, people still don’t think that way. And that’s why it’s so hard for them, because the competition in the market is crazy. There are so many clones, so few innovations, and if a cool idea appears, it often does not get to the market.

Today it is very difficult to compete, for example, with leading mobile companies. They drain millions and hundreds of millions of dollars to buy traffic. Therefore, you need to be different, you need to be a visionary, you need to be a strategist.

That’s why we want to keep this program. We want to inspire the next generation of managers, developers and project managers.

Every day I talk to those who have been making games for 20-30 years. And based on all these discussions, conversations about how we can make games better, more successful, more profitable, we are adjusting the program to the actual needs of developers.  

To develop a game today is to develop a game of the future, the next three to five years. You can’t make a game for the current market, because things change, people change, users and the way they play also change. So if you start the game today, you need to look to the future.

For example, before the development started with a cool theme and mechanics. And only then they began to think over the design and monetize. The developers launched the project and somehow made money on it.

Today, the only way to compete, the only way to develop, is to go through users. Start with them. To begin with, who are your future players.

For example, let it be teenagers who love football, boys and girls between 12 and 20 years old. If you develop a game and start with that, you take that audience as your focus group. And then you start thinking about the theme, mechanics, monetization and design. So you have a support, a starting point.

This means that when you acquire users, you focus on this group. When you create mechanics, you test them on these guys. You ask them, “Which mechanics are better for you in the game.” When you think about money, you begin to adapt your monetization strategy to them.

The idea is that creating education is not an easy task, especially education for managers. We are not making something like a final product that includes literally everything, after which his listeners can solve any problem.

We create solutions that can inspire students to become better leaders. After all, you can really go to YouTube and start studying something that you really like, but it will take much longer than participating in the program.

You have talked a lot about business now, but there is a problem in our industry: many people believe that game development is not a business, but an art. But from what you say, it follows that developers should look at what they do as a business that is based on the needs of a future audience. You say that every game should be a business.

Walid: Look, I believe that games should be artistic. I believe that games should be beautiful, unique and, of course, fascinating!

The gaming industry is unlike any other. It doesn’t solve any real problem. Usually, if you launch a product, you solve a specific problem. But in games… the game can be boring, and it can entertain. It’s just a completely different type of thing.

There is one table that was created for artists, but is also great for game developers. On it, the industry is divided into three conditional segments.

The first segment includes self-oriented creativity, what you create for yourself, through which you express yourself. This is the main result here.

In the second segment there is creativity that is focused on your colleagues, which is created, for example, for IGDA or gaming experts. You want recognition, you want people to give feedback, you want people to know what you do.

The third segment is commercial creativity. It is created, say, for the whole world, the main goal here is to make money.

Looking at this table, any developer can decide for himself what he wants.

If a decision is made to launch a studio or if someone decides “I want this occupation to become my profession”, he needs to understand the process itself, how to make money on games.

This is a simple theory, but it is quite working.

Decide for yourself what you want. If you want to be creative for yourself, find a job and develop on weekends. There’s nothing wrong with that.

However, today 700 apps are uploaded to the App Store every day. It’s crazy!

And how to get noticed here? How to show what you can do? How do I get users to download your game? But some people have to pay their bills. If you have children, someone needs to feed them! Plus, not all investors understand who they should invest in.

These are all difficult questions.

Another reason why we launched the program is that we want to help answer them.

Last question. I have spoken more than once with those who make educational programs in the industry. According to many of them, one of the common problems is the lack of time for lecturers from the industry. It takes a lot of time to create even one lecture, which the expert may not have because of the main work. How do you persuade speakers to speak at your place?

Walid: I will say this: in Finland, almost everyone is ready to share. Usually it comes down to finding the time for it.

All our speakers are from the gaming industry and they all love our program, so, as a rule, they are somehow involved in its creation or support.

So I just write to them and ask: “Guys, can you do such and such a number?”.

And I always tell you who will take part. In response, they say “yes” or “no”, starting from who will be, whether they want to meet with them. It’s an opportunity to talk for one hour and meet 26 people you may have never seen before.    

But I never push. I send one email or meet them on IGDA and say, “Hi! Are you interested in this?”.

Usually I still throw them a little challenge. I offer them a topic that they themselves are interested in. That is, you don’t just come to talk, but you also learn a little at the preparation stage.

Speakers usually like it and they spend from 10 to 20 hours on their presentations!

What helps us a lot is the professors. Speakers usually like to meet with professors. Therefore, we invite speakers to spend the whole day with us if they want. In this case, they usually bring a laptop with them and listen to the academic part. It’s kind of a day off for them. Sometimes they even work together with professors on performances.

One professor wrote the book Camels, Tigers & Unicorns: Rethinking Science and Technology-Enabled Innovation. It’s about how science and technology lead to innovation. Together with this professor, I’m going to create something like a framework for the gaming industry. And I already know who I will invite to participate in this. It will help them themselves!

Participation as a speaker – anywhere in the world or in our program – is not only about sharing experiences and meeting new people. Such participation helps in finding employees.

For Rovio, it’s great if we have a speaker from her. In the eyes of the industry, Supercell, PlayRaven or Housemarque look great if they make a presentation. It is much easier to hire and retain employees if you are active within the industry.

I do not know how it is in Russia, but in Finland, the more you give, the…

And, you know, one hour a year for companies is not so much. And not everyone is preparing material from scratch. There are those who just like to talk. Like Peter Vesterbacka, the former Mighty Eagle of Rovio. He didn’t even have slides at his speech. And still everyone liked it. I just gave Peter the setup then, I asked him: “Peter, can you talk about branding? About branding and where can we apply it in the world today?”. And he just talked about it.

So everyone prepares as they see fit. I’m not forcing them. I just tell them, “Look, this important topic is here. Can you tell us about it?”. And they say yes or no.

I see. Thanks for the interview!