Podcast Interview: Co-Founder of Mockingbird Games

Troy, co-founder of Mockingbird Games, talks about creating the "YouTube for Games"...

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http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/mockingbirdgames-podcast.mp3

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Show Notes:
Indi Game Pod Cast Show
You are listening to Indi Game development Podcast show. Visit www.IndiGamepod.com for more podcasts. This Interview is inspired by a quick meet up at the Austin game developers conference.

Host:
I am here at Austin game developers conference and with me is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself.

Troy:
My name is story Gilbert and I am a co founder of mocking bird names.

HOST:
Ok and what is mocking games about?

Troy:
Well we make a product called mocking bird the name making game which is a kind of a web 2.0 platform for casual players to build there own casual games.

Host:
Awesome and what inspired that?

Troy:

Um! Couples of year’s back we were looking at things like you two then flicker and we were wondering why there was equivalence for games and make sure there websites like congregate or tools like game maker but they really target a more devoted user hobbyist or amateur or independent we wanted something that only take something about five minutes and didn’t require any more skills that it takes to play a game virtual.

Host:
Ok what was the platform you developed this on since you wanted to be very casual? You just developed it in flash or in the web.

Troy:
Yes it’s built on top of a flash and its all custom stuff on top of flash. The games are flash and don’t require any kind of custom plug-ins or anything like that. You can play YouTube videos you can use our tools and play our games.

Host:
Ok and so you had this idea and how did you go about developing and what was the process? Because you said the challenge was to make as simple as possible.

Troy:
Right and so kind of our Montero was how we can make making a game is much like playing a game. So the first thing we did was here eliminating anything that resembles programming. So there’s not even no flow chart or logic or anything like that its all like legers where you plug box together. The next thing we did was we tried to eliminate all unnecessary numbers and choices that users have to make. So you know you drag a flighter ranges from more to less or lots to a little and things like that and in the middle is the default and so its very intruder for the user . The final thing which is a real big thing is that while you are editing the game you are playing the game so there is no kind of two steps process where you go use a level at try to build a game and then you click play and try it out and jump back. That process is a very fun and so basically you play the game and if you want to make a change you click on something in the game and move it or change it or making go faster or slower just like that.

Host:
Ok so when you are developing there something got your product type out. Did you tested as you are developing or did you wait until the entering?


Troy:
Yes so we developed a ! Basically three or four major proto types that we released not to the public but to a group of a hundred or two hundred that we knew and we got a lot of feed back over the last year it was a lot of a feed back was great about you know we wanted to be able to do this or that this seems like extra stuff but we don’t understand how to do this. We wanted to eliminate basically all instructions or all our need for instructions for my application. We finally got to something that we really liked in April of this year and since then we have actually revised it twice two major revisions to the application including introducing a whole new version of the application that makes a kind of a wizard gear in interface instead of an application like interface.

HOST:
And umm!! What were some of that what were the top three I guess challenges that you encounter while you were developing this game.

Troy:
Well the biggest challenge was figuring out how we could have people create kind of game play that felt like it was something they made up without having a program. So the problem was how do you decompose like classic arcade game play into the pieces you could blew together in whatever order in whatever combination and no t be able to make something that break serves seems to not work that’s not fun. We didn’t wanted to be a problem solving exercise for the user at least not anymore so then a puzzle game is. Another big challenge was basically building a user interface that did look just like an application we wanted to be fun looking we wanted it to be a colorful to have a lot of animation but not have alot of traditional looking you eye widgets. So there was a lot of trying to figure out how we can represent a certain control without filling like a user work processor and I guess the third challenge was really the game engine itself is how do we make a kind of a general purpose game engine that’s intruder for the user and really similar to products like little big planet on the play station three we found that having generic physics engine underneath the hood is really intruder for the users because I understand if I run into something it bounces off and things like that and so there’s a generic physics engine under the hood that drives all the behavior.

HOST:
So you mentioned game play um! Did you have to go with the specific game play or do people have different choices of arcade, classic game plays?
Troy:
They have different choices in which they actually break down into building block so I mean you could build an asteroids game or Mario plat former or kind of a top down Zelda adventure game. All are using I think we have about a dozen different actions for the players that you can mix and match or whatever combination you want then we have a kind of twenty additional you know secondary behaviors making an object disappear and reappear randomly and you can combine them with whatever combinations you want and we have accentually tested it so that all the combinations do something sensible and we eliminated all the option where two combinations cancel each other out or no work for break and so that was a huge part of the process is creating those thirty building blocks that can actually make a verity of game play. Right now we have got twelve hundred games on our website that are users have built up through last couple of months and you know I would say I have seen at least a dozen different kind of joiners and game on there right now.

HOST:
So you mentioned twelve hundred games. How do you built that community? And how is building that community going In infact in terms of challenges while you were developing were there any people issues or you know In terms of getting this thing out because took a while to get it out. So?

Troy:
So what are the big things that we decided from the start is that a real easy road for us would have been try to tackle the traditional game making crowd hobbyist and independence. People who use game maker or tools like that but we didn’t want that crowd that crowd is already well served by a lot of other options and we felt we would go off on the wrong path trying to serve features they wanted and So as far as community goes we focused on a kind of building on a static to the website and to the art work we used and everything that was very inclusive that’s why kind of the art work we provide instead of being kind of classic aliens and fantasy characters and kind of sie phi themes or military themes it’s a tall much more like a Looney tones character you know you can almost think of it like the act me factor is delivering all the bits of pieces for your game and we findded that’s much more kind of inclusive way to built it at the same time we have not yet have started any kind of a marketing first so the idea is a kind of our first public appearance we haven’t done any marketing at all and we have really just done one other interview with the press at this point. So this is we are considering it as the beginning of our marketing question in October we will have a kind of a major advertising campaign for movie that would be using our platform allowing users to built a movie inspired game as a promotional item.

HOST:
And how do you? You know you are going to talk about marketing I mean the success of you flicker was actually the games themselves or the videos and the pictures doing the marketing for the site. So how is that working and are there any challenges?


Troy:
Definitely some challenges so um! You know I wanted that things that were facing right now and a lot of this is its just besides the audience we have right now is that. We have a lot of people who are playing with it and they enjoy the process of making their games but their games are necessarily interesting then other people. Our primary goal was people to enjoy the making process and for that reason we eliminated a lot of tools from the application that weren’t fun to use you know there are no spreadsheets you know tile editors or anything like that because they can be very predictive tools they are the test use they are not fun part of making a game. So that in some way is limits that kind of games can be made because we wanted the process to be fun first and playing is to fun secondarily . AS a result we have not had any big kind of viral hits we have had a few games on our home page that have got a quite a bit of play and we actually made one game with our tool kit that we put on addicting game that got millions of plays on addicting game so a big aspect of it is where the games are played so we think as kind of our marketing campaign kind of picks up people start taking games in it better get them on the web site so the games are just like you tube videos you can imbed them on the website you can submit on the dig and things like that so easily and we just have it yet hit by critical massive users for one of those games kind of pop up and get real popular and get a spike like it.

HOST:
So Flicker and you two upload the pictures and videos relevant to you. Can you talk about the challenge of creating a viral game? Do you allow people to upload their own picture and or idoms into the games so that it’s a kind of a personal joke or a personal game for the person that interferes?

Troy:
Yes! Absolutely one of the things we introduced about a month ago is what we call our game kids which essentially all of the games play are a kind of pretty fad an so really all you doing is you are doing level editing and you are doing the skinning of the art work in the sounds. A big part one of our most popular kids what we call is the worst person in the world kid which you know where you go and pick tour bosses picture if you want to in the game or whatever your favorite or most unfavorite politician or something like that and build the game around that concept and another element we did to really kind of make it a personal experience besides just uploading pictures is putting a strong focus on encouraging the user to give the game a title ad a story ad that makes it similar to the description of youtube video or more closely to like a blog post we wanted it to be like you jump on there and you spend five or ten minutes you know making the game that is much relevant to what happen to you today and that’s what we have really focused on is emulating something more like blogger as suppose to something like pork something like that.

HOST:
And how is that going because that is an interesting way to look at gaming as a way for expression?

Troy:
Yes right impersonal expression is exactly what we wanted we want people to make relevant games relevant to them selves or other peoples that are our formal personal expression. Its going well we have some people really get it and we have users to make tons and tons of games and they make it really fast I mean go and sit down like first time they use it they will make ten or fifteen games just because they can do it so quickly and then can play with it and you know and about other people it’s a different enough concept that its not quite clicking what the possibility is and a lot of that Is we still trying to figure it out how to get that massage across the people as quickly as possibly a lot of people are finding our website through some of the games we built so they come here kind of looking for a games portal and they find a bunch of games that are sure simple and they don’t quite understand whats going on and so we are hoping that as we do like independent game festival for the things like that people will come visit the site with some idea of what they are heading for and so don’t have to write context getting into it but we are working on building their eye contact into the site itself.

HOST:
And what are the top three surprises you have seen from your users in terms of either their behavior or how they are using the maker or what?


Troy:
Well one of the biggest surprises is the games that people make so we have had several games that I don’t think we would have ever seen from people who had used traditional game kits I mean we have had like one of the games we had in the first look after this was a game about illegal immigrants crossing the border I have never seen a casual web game about that anywhere we have also have some very simple kind of political games people have made we have a mom who made a game about changing the TV channel to kind of change between political ads and its like using a remote control I mean its kind of a weird kind of combination a game play bit it works in it apparently you know is born out of her frustration of amount of local ads on TV or something like that so what has been really interesting is people who would have never made games before exactly like what blogging did for people who would never have a website before now they are able to share ideas and we really thinks that’s critical thing that’s missing in the game industry right now as there is no way for an un initiated audience member to really participate the process ad we a re really kind of break that glass ceiling so it sneaks with that.

HOST:
There are other competitors out there so how do you! You can do. You consider them competitors I mean you are going out of it from different way yours is more in gaps?


Troy:
Yes well interestingly we have been working on this idea for about a year and a half almost two years now and last summer when we had our kind of a early offer version we went out and talk to a lot of people in the game community and outside the game community about it and we got alot of responses of the people They really want to make games of there own you know this is something people really want to do and we were really convinced that it was but we had a lot of trouble trying to convince other people of that. When we were released in April with in thirty days of us releasing there were three other products with almost the identical concept released including electronic arts Sims carnival.

HOST:
Oh! Yes.

Troy:
Which almost have exact same breakdown of process that we have a website called firebug and several others well we think we really distinguish ourselves from those games or of those website is on how users are able to actually build there game for example in Sims carnival if you want to write your own rules you senctually have to do programming I mean its like a flowchart but I mean its just a programming with pictures instead of you know with words its still difficult for the un initiated users for ours it actually write the rules its literally you choose two or three pictures and there’s no order of pictures or flow of logic or anything like that its more like tagging as oppose to a higher key and so we find its. We think that we have a better work flow for the non advance user accurse it limits which the advance users can do but we think In the same way that you tube limits it ten minute video clip it’s a necessary limitation in order to kind of you know meet the unmet mean of the larger audience we are aiming for kind of a eighty percent that can make game up to Twenty percent better but if you better they can do it.

HOST:
Now games are usually made clevertivly so is that you are going to do something in the future? Where you actually have ace intern ace type of development?

Troy:
Right now! What we offer is the ability for users to change any other users game so you can do a nit of the Collabra process that way and a very kind of anonymous collaborate process where you play any game on the website that you like but you say Well I want a bit more of this game or make a bit easier or no time limit you can go in there you can make those changes you can swaft the art work out. So you can kind of build on what other people have done as we go down the road we definitely want to have more collaborative features and so a lot of kind of the . The kind of community infrastructure aspects of the project where we are learning the whole lot from the world of blogging software and blogging platforms so we will definitely seek kind of collaborative you know multiple offers on a single platform and options like that and infact later this week or next week we will be rolling out a kind of a new version of the website that provides more flexibility for the users as far as editing games and working collabory.

HOST:
And yes! How is the editing going? The fact that you could edit other people’s works is that happenal orders that still not used as much?

Troy:
It doses happen quite a bit the changes are usually fairly shallow where they just changing the art work and they are just kind of experimenting with it. We do have some people that go in and kind of change the levels now we knew edit someone else’s game you basically make a copy of it so it’s a kind of multi play its more evolutionary as a post or collaborative thing where he builds version one and I go and head it towards version two they are both still on the website but you know they are related we do not have this feature on the website yet but one of the things in our list is to let people navigate the game based on kind of what they are based on so you can start with one game and say O! well this game is actually derived from this other game or these twelve games were based on this one and you can kind of explore games that way and so since all of the games are built inside of our tool set we have a really rich set of matrix about the game the kind of game they have the art work they have the goals of the game if so we can build some really interesting recommendation like things for the games that’s simply are possible with the website like miny clip where the games are all independent flash games and they have to rely on there users to tag the games or you know we don’t have to rely on that because we know how the games are actually constructed.

HOST:
And what’s next then or what’s in store for this project?

Troy:
Well what we are doing right now is kind of focusing on kind of our primary business model which is licensing the platform to other IP holders and brands to use for marketing purposes or to built kind of a categorated into there own communities as just kind of another activity there users can do so for example in October we are working with a movie studio to create a campaign where users will be able to create based on the movie they are releasing and so instead of them paying a hundred grant to a small flash studio to built one game you know they will pay half of that to us to built a tool set where there users can built the thousand games based on there property and instead of one game since our one website they got a thousands of games that can scattered all across the web so its huge promotional opportunity just as currently exist right now.

HOST:
In terms of business models have you thought of putting mockiaz on top of every ones game and how would that work?

Troy:
Its actually something that we are looking at in the really long term so if we start to see from a matrix prospective that are games are being distributed wide enough that we really had a worth wile advertising network its certainly something we will look into but right now the website itself and other games theres no advertising anywhere and we consciously made that decision to keep the experience is kind of uncluttered and clean and is focused as possible and not have advertising so for example nowthe whole page has no advertising you can jump in you can use all of it without even signing in you can use all of it and so if you want to save your game you have to sign in and nearly you have to buy the one you are membership which is 9$95cents If you want to write your own rules if you want to build the games from scratch.

HOST:
One of the other interesting things you mention is that people would have descriptions and titles for the games are you going to allow people the box art for the game s I mean make them feel like a game studio or how far would that customization goes that seems to work early while with the casual audience?

Troy:
Yes its on long laundry list divide is that we have tossed around is if we situate this point we are awake for the demand from our audience the idea that if someone wanted to choose a screen shot from the screen and I mean we can burn it to a disc as a standalone executable or you know something like that drop it to the DVD case so you know you imagine a twelve years old kid goes on there makes there own game and a week later they have like our actual game they think it pop it to there computer at home I mean even though they can do it on the website you know a piece of casual media seems cooler you know for certain people but yes we are definitely looking at that kind of customization aspect one of the things we really want to do is we call groups or game teams where essentially you know any combination people can get together and create a group and they essentially can kind of work collaboratively on games and make it have kind of there own game page that features there games on the website as you know if our audience starts demanding those kind of things that’s where we are going to shift our intension right now our intension on kind of business model side of which is licensing the technology.

HOST:
And what are the top three suggestions you have for the other Indi Game developers?

Troy:
My biggest suggestion would be to not focus on technology I mean before I started this project I spent six years working for company like electronics arts helping them plan technology decisions and so my entire life was about game technology and I got to say way to many resources are wasted on trying to build a better will when you got ugly looking car just put it top on the top of it you know I mean if you got to focus on the game for and that reason I would recommend that people really look at flash as a platform because it decides a lot of it the benefits as far as distribution and things like that the constrains that it places on the user and the kind of platform the features that platform provides is a perfect middle ground for building games without having to worry about you know pushing polygons or anything like that it really focuses the user another thing I would suggest in these is as quickly as you can to the kind of ditch the ancs tour triple a developer the triple a developers are what make the Indi development possible we have Indi developers have an audience because triple a developers are a kind of burning the path into peoples homes and so sure the games sell out or whatever but people just like there selves our working on them and love them as much as you love your game and so there’s no reason to fight its just you know two different business models and you know there’s no reason to kind of F the publishers and things like that you know it’s the wrong attitude and it aims up in the end just looking very amateur tom outsiders and if it’s a huge turn off to the potential audience for games and last but not least I tell this to people when I talk about Indi game development its about quality not quantity its much better to make five medio for games then never to make that one perfect game even if you not in person of the way there if you focus on the quantity the quality will eventually get there if you focused just on quality you might not ever get to one so it is quantity over quality that’s exactly what we focused on what mocking bird is this kind of taking me to the extreme

Take care,
Action