Development of a new game genre, SOLAR games

A discussion with the CEO of Tonchidot about developing innovative mobile games

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/cc-arg-solar.mp3

Or listen to it here…

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the Casual Connect Conference in Seattle, and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Takahito: I’m Takahito Iguchi, CEO. We released our first AR game. It’s Kaboom. It’s like a social bombing game.

Interviewer: Sure. So, you guys have a social platform based on augmented reality in Japan, right?

Takahito: We are first company to provide a social gaming platform. It’s just only one now.

Interpreter: So, basically what he’s saying is it’s an AR social platform. It’s not just in Japan. So, we’re the first in the world.

Interviewer: So, to clarify to the audience, basically, there is also a translator here. So, if anything’s confusing, it may just a little time to clarify things. So, this is the first social augmented reality platform. What inspired you guys to come up with this idea?

Takahito: Augmented reality, just now it’s like navigation. But we think augmented reality makes another dimension. We call it beyond reality. We hope to provide a new experience beyond the iPhone. It’s our vision, so gaming function is core body of our augmented reality platform.

Interviewer: How do people get started with this platform? It seems like you need an iPhone or an Android. Can you talk about how people can actually download and use this application?

Takahito: We cover iPhone platform and Android. Just now, our game platform covers iPhone. Application is free. It’s just only to download. After downloading our application, it’s easy to access our game application.

Interpreter: This gaming icon is within the Sekai camera application, and there’s easy access to the games category or the catalog.

Interviewer So, let’s just talk now in detail about the game, the first game that you came out with, and this augmented reality platform. It’s called Kaboom. Can you give a little description on what it is and how people play it.

Interpreter: OK. Kaboom is a bomb defusing game, using bombs. The goal of the game is to defuse as many bombs as you can and win more points. Basically, you can team up with your friends in the social graph and make more powerful bombs, or you can choose run away. But the social aspect of this bombing game is what makes it very interesting. This is so awesome. It also works with Twitter. When you defuse a bomb or when you run away, the action’s complete and you can notify your friends what you’re doing within the game.

Interviewer: What’s been surprising about making this game, releasing this game and just seeing people playing it? What’s actually been surprising in terms of interaction, and has it reached the engagement that you guys were hoping to do when you introduce these augmented reality games?

Interpreter: So, basically, right after lunch we saw several thousand bombs being planted across the country with many active users. Moving forward, we are planning on adding new features, stronger bombs, better ways to defuse, trophies, medals or what have you, increasing the social aspect as well as enhancing the virality of the game itself.

So, I think we’re on the right track, and there’s been a lot of good feedback.

Interviewer: Great. And, you know, can you talk about, I guess, the mobile game experience in Japan and in the U.S. Most of the listeners in the U.S., it’s not as prevalent, the mobile usage, compared to Japan. Based on your experiences in Japan, where are the games going? Where will the mobile games be?

Takahito: It’s, like, SmartPhone that has a broadband connection and GPS and touch panel and with sound performance. That is very common. So, Japanese mobile gaming player has sold so much higher. Ultimately, it is very new. It’s like sci-fi. It’s beyond the mobile gaming experience. We are releasing a new title about 10 each year, like a fishing game, a gardening game. We hope our real environment, real world is becoming gaming field.

Interviewer: And do you see a concern with actually having to hold up the phone to use augmented reality as something that might get in the way of people actually using it? Normal use of the phone is just placing it down, just looking at it. Holding it up might be challenging.

Takahito: That is true, that is true. We need to change the use style for mobile SmartPhone, but I need to say…

Interpreter: So, actually you don’t have to have the users hold up the SmartPhone to view the surrounding environment. It’s just sort of like an intro into the virtual world except, for example, when you’re looking for a bomb, you need to hold it up. But once you encounter a bomb and when you’re defusing it, you don’t have to. When you’re working on the bomb, defusing a bomb, it works like a regular game. It’s not necessary having the phone up all the time.

Interviewer: You know, what’s interesting is in the pre-interview you guys were mentioning that you are really kind of co-developing these games with the users. Can you talk about how they provide you feedback? You know, there’s not really… I don’t know if they can even access the forum through their mobile phone. How are you co-developing these games with your users? So, your players will communicate and give you feedback via Twitter.

Takahito: Any time we are looking at the reaction, so every time we are tweeting about our game play, every time.

Interviewer: Can you talk about some of the other social aspects of your platform itself? I mean, so you have this game. But, what are other things that people are doing with your augmented reality platform that you find useful and interesting?

Takahito: We make it very easy by all of our users. We make it easy to add comments. We have a social function. It’s very easy to catch the action of the attack. It’s easy to find the comments.

Interpreter: All of the actions, for instance, your friends within your social graph can show up as time lines so you can follow people. You could, for instance, put people in certain places so you could archives in time lines. You could also filter certain comments so they only show up. There’s a vast amount, a variety of [?] in the surroundings, so you could filter that, too. There are a lot of social aspects.

Interviewer: So, these tabs, a lot of them are used to generate. In Japan, is there a lot of use of user generated content in
games and in the social platform? Forums are for reference for professional comment. Does it even matter?

Interpreter: Yeah.

Interviewer: Well, in terms of games, is there any such thing, like user generated content in Japan?

Interpreter: So, in terms of user generated content in the game itself, we don’t think that is a game that is user generated; however, in the Sekai camera game platform we are currently working on integratin the user generated tags we have in the world already, of which there are millions and millions. We are currently integrating those user tags with the game play itself. So, that is the direction we are heading, and we will have several games in the future, in the next few months or so.

Interviewer: Can you guys talk about how does this augmented reality work with women versus men? Is the uptake the same with men versus women, or is it a different…

Takahito: Maybe, just now. iPhone users over in Japan…

Interpreter: The majority are men that use the SmartPhones in Japan right now, yeah.

Interviewer: You know, when you talk about some of these other mobile games, these mobile social games in Japan, is it fairly balanced, 50-50 men-women because that’s something that’s kind of intriguing that we’ve seen in the U. S.

Interpreter: So, this all depends on the platform. So, for example, other mobile social platforms, like [?] or Mobile Game, the vast majority are males whereas with [?] the majority is 57 percent. So, females are slightly – the female population is slightly larger than that of the males, so it all depends on the platform itself. In terms of Sekai eye camera, because the iPhone is dominated by the males it kind of reflects that itself. However, moving forward we are expecting this to change.

Interviewer: Where do you see SmartPhones and where are they going to be in terms of, like, one or two years in Japan? Is it going to be all SmartPhones, or is it going to be still traditional phones and then a smaller population of SmartPhones?

Takahito: Just now, SmartPhone market are growing so faster. [?] In this year Japanese mobile carrier will have many type of Android phones and they’ll become more popular. So, maybe, two years later the market share may be big change.

Interviewer: And so, are you guys doing anything for Android? Is that something that people in Japan are taking seriously, or is it iPhone all the way? And is iPhone on all the carriers in Japan, or is it only on one carrier, kind of like in the U. S.?

Interpreter: iPhone is carried by the third largest operator which has roughly around 20 percent of the pie. But the Sekai camera is also on the Android camera, too. So, we’ve launched on the iPhone. We’ve had 100,000 downloads in just four days, and we reached one million downloads in seven months. We’ve moved to the Android this month, but we’re also on the iPad. So, we’re on multiple devices now.

Interviewer: You know, you guys may have heard about this social gaming thing that’s happened on Facebook. Is that something that already happened in Japan before it happened in the U. S., or is there something that surprised you guys in terms of… What are you guys learning from this social scene that you’re seeing working on Facebook and stuff like that?

Interpreter: The social gaming has been very big, very early on in Japan because the mobile devices are there and the capabilities were there, the features were there.

Takahito: Japanese young people are allowed to play games and watching animation. [?] It’s very common. So, social gaming activity is not special in Tokyo.

Interpreter: But it also serves to reflect elsewhere, too. So, it really wasn’t a big surprise for, for instance, Facebook to come up with the same kind of trend.

Interviewer: Where do you guys then see the whole mobile, social augmented reality game thing going in the next two to three years?

Interpreter: So, mobile social gaming will be sort of like connected or more into our daily lives. So, nowadays if we talk about mobile augmented reality games, we have to switch it on. We see mobile AR gaming sort of like connected to our daily lives, so we just pick up the phone, scan the [?] and then we see a pet because we’re running a nurturing game called Why We Live while the phone is on and so forth. We feel it’s more integrated into our daily lives. That’s where we see it going.

Takahito: Maybe, child have imagination [?]. It’s very usual gaming activity. We provide some kind of imagination. Maybe, you can find the [?] everywhere in the platform.

Interviewer: Can you guys then talk about… You mentioned solar.

Interpreter: Yes.

Interviewer: What is that exactly? I know that’s an acronym for you guys. Can you discuss that and let the audience know what that means?

Takahitohito: Social game is very popular, and social [?] game is popular, too.

Interviewer: What about augmented reality?

Takahito: Powerful.

Interviewer: That makes up solar, then.

Takahito: Yeah, yeah. That is solar.

Interpreter: So, these other acronyms for solar, social, location-based, AR, augmented reality. We think that this combination sells, mobile, social, higher engagement, higher priviledged in Japan, location. Social, mobile location is also higher engagement in Japan as well. We believe the AR interface which is an intersection between two dimensional games and three dimensional games. And also, it’s the intersection between reality and virtual. So, this combination itself enhances the whole experience which at the end will create a higher engagement which will also lead to higher ARs as well.

Interviewer: Great. Thank you very much. Do you guys have a website that people can check out to find out more about your service and your game? So, it’s S-E-K-A-I-C-A-M-E-R-A.com, SekaiCamera.com.

Takahito: We will have new type of information as soon as possible.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.