We spoke to Della Rocca to get his opinion on the growth of the video games industry in Malaysia and Asia, and where he sees social and mobile gaming is headed to in the near future.
What’s your impression of how the video game industry like is in Malaysia?
To be frank, I expected things to be a lot more advanced and robust in the video game industry – I was a little surprised by the lack of maturity. I don’t really know enough having been in this country for a only short time, but my sense is that there’s an artistic talent pool here – there having been a focus on the animation and multimedia education here – but where video games are concerned, it’s still very nascent.
So what can the country do to move the industry forward?
It’s a tough question, and that’s what my consultancy group is set up to answer. On one hand, it’s important to have that aspect of talent – which this country has – but they don’t understand the aspects of business development, marketing, and revenue models. To have a viable industry, you need to have a mix between talented creatives and business-savvy people; otherwise video games will remain at an amateur level.
So the innovation needs to come from the business side, even though many don’t think that innovation comes from that aspect. To me, bringing in big foreign companies from the US is usually not the answer – they’re self-serving. They’re coming here not to develop the industry, but to take advantage of the local talent set or lower labour cost.
There are no obvious answers to that question. What we do is to understand what’s going on and see where the gaps are – be it in academia, government, or business development – and see what needs to be strengthened.
With the proliferation of mobile and casual games on platforms like the iOS and Android, do you see more young talent heading towards this direction, or are they still aiming towards the big game studios?
Young talent want to go into the traditional console game-space because that’s sexy. The flow of talent, especially the talent on the creative and production side see the most challenges in the console space, which can be a problem in many regions.
For example in South American countries like Brazil and Peru, you have up-and-coming talent who want to make the next HALO. ‘How do we compete with the Americans?’, they ask, but really, they shouldn’t even bother with it because in South America, the opportunities are in the casual and social games. This happens partly because of the lack of business understanding, so they blindly go into these marketplaces without pursuing what are more economically viable businesses.
Do you think the current trend of social and mobile games are a fad or bubble?
They’re not a fad by any means, especially if you look at the multi-million dollar valuations of Zynga, Playfish and Playdom. As far as bubbles are concerned – as long as there’s business innovation that continues on, then it won’t be one. If people assume they can do the same thing that Farmville did, then there’s a bubble about to burst.
With the rise of social games that are driven by the virtual goods economy, do you see more games being developed primarily to rake in more money from customers than it is about the playing experience?
The idea of design and business going hand-in-hand doesn’t sit too comfortably with many game designers. In the console space, the model was simple: here’s $20 million, now go make a great game that’ll get good reviews and sales. There’s no pressure on the designer to put in, say, a jump mechanic you need to pay for to enable further monetisation.
However, there is an interesting historical precedent to the microtransaction business model of social games we see today – which were the arcades. So many of these arcade games were designed to keep you putting quarters into the machine – the original microtransactions. Designers back then had to think: ‘okay, so how do we give players enough hope so that when they die, they’ll be compelled to put more quarters in?’ It’s not virtual goods, but it’s in the same realm, so I would say that the ones who frown on these social games are maybe just being snobbish.
What about the button vs button-less war going on between the Microsoft Kinect and PlayStation Move? How do you see that playing out?
It’s less about buttons or no buttons, but more about intuitive interfaces that are moving away from the 20-button controllers. My wife, for instance, loves playing with her Nintendo DS, and she didn’t even realise there were buttons because she uses the stylus – so she doesn’t see herself as a ‘gamer’ in the regular sense because she’s been intuitively playing a game. The touch interfaces on the iPad and iPod touch are other examples of intuitiveness moving forward – so it’s not that you’re using buttons or not, but more about intuitiveness of motion and gestures.
Photo taken from Wikipedia
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