CEO of Flying Wisdom Studios Talks About Emerging Mobile Game Design Opportunities

CEO of Flying Wisdom Studios discusses their mobile games as well as new game design opportunities for mobile games

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

Or listen to it here…

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

Josh: Hi, I’m Josh Rose. I’m the CEO of Flying Wisdom Studios. For a long time I was very proud to be a game designer, and now I’m not so proud to be a CEO. [laughs]

Interviewer: So, what kind of games do you guys work on at your studio?

Josh: We like to live at the intersection of social and mobile. We’ve been doing a lot of mobile product, mostly on iPhone. We shipped our first Android product just recently, and we’ve done a couple iPad products as well.

If you look at what we’re doing, every single one of our projects has a social component to it, meaning that when we did a karaoke product, when you sing karaoke, you can post that to Twitter. You can record yourself singing. You can post that to YouTube, and then that YouTube link can be put on your Facebook page.

So, we look at our products as really an ecosystem, and there’s a lot of on ramps to the ecosystem. Right now, our primary on ramp is the mobile, but we want to extend to have as many on ramps as we can.

Interviewer: Can you talk about, I guess, the response? How do people or how do players take to this idea of just doing karaoke posts and stuff like that? Is that too complicated for people? Are they looking still for the quick, short traditional mobile game play that isn’t really connected to the Internet but just something you download and play?

Josh: Right. So, in the case of the karaoke product, we were very focused on making whatever classified as a karaoke replacement. At one point, we actually had a television out so you could plug the iPhone into the television. The karaoke would show on the television, and you could sing through the iPhone which meant we had to do dual [?], once on the iPhone screen and once on the television. There were a lot of other complexities that came up with that, so we decided to stop.

That focus of building a karaoke replacement, that was our first project, coming out on console. What we learned was that the things that would work on console are the things that wouldn’t work on the PC, you can do them on mobile, but they aren’t going to have the same payoff.

For example, chat is the killer feature in a PC game. At this point you’re not going to have an online PC game that doesn’t have chat. I haven’t seen a lot of evidence that a mobile game really benefits from the inclusion of chat. I think there are other social hooks that a mobile game can benefit from.

In the case of karaoke, I would start the project differently now. I would actually say, “What is the karaoke experience, and how do we create that karaoke experience in a delocalized mobile environment versus the karaoke experience is the experience at a party, and we are going to assume that people are doing this at a party and, therefore, we want to plug it into a television and then… So, it’s a slightly different perspective.

Interviewer: What are other design opportunities that you see are unique to mobile that have a lot of potential for game developers and game designers to utilize?

Josh: Wow. The thing I really like about this space – well, there’s a lot of things. The two big ones for me are the fact that there is so much territory in front of us. We’re just scratching the surface and that we can iterate so quickly.

In the last year and a half in social mobile I’ve shipped more product than in the entire 16 years leading up to it because of possible dev cycles, a year and a half to two years. So, that means that we have an opportunity to get some new stuff out, move out of the investment, try it quickly and succeed or fail and try to iterate. Iterate could be within a product. Iterate could also be over simplified.

I think FourSquare, Gowalla, Booyah, I think they’re all thrilling in the space of I would classify as geo content and geo locator content and geo located gaming. And I think there’s something in that space that is going to be really compelling for people.

Interviewer: What about augmented reality? Where do you see that going in terms of mobile and the opportunities there?

Josh: We were experimenting very early on with augmented reality, before the iPhone actually had come out. And we were trying to do it with just the accelerometer, and we didn’t find that it works too well. I know that now it does a lot better, and we’re actually going to go back to it in some of our future products.

I think that augmented reality, especially as our access to the information becomes more transparent, it’s going to become more and more interesting. I don’t like to quote science fiction writers too often, but there was a very interesting book I read recently called, “Altered State.” The main character walks around wearing sunglasses that are connected by Bluetooth to his cell phone, and he’s constantly experiencing augmented reality.

It could just be he walks by a street, and the street sign is recognized and it tells him, here’s the bars that are down that street. It’s working augmented reality in terms of game playing, but I think augmented reality really is just about an increase of information flow. So, augmented reality could just be as simple as identifying the other people who are playing a game who are near you and connecting you with them in some kind of visual way.

Interviewer: Where do you see mobile gaming going? I know you said we just talked about iTouch. We’re just barely getting started with it. Where do you see things going? There’s been talk at this conference about that people are just going to take the successful titles of the casual genre and just apply it to iPhone or mobile. How can an indie or smaller game developers get into the foray without having to do traditional games?

Josh: Wow. So, where is it going and then I’ll talk about smaller developers and how to get into it. Where I think it’s going is this concept of multiple on ramps to a single experience, and I think that we’re going to see a lot of the traditionally hard core games. We’re already seeing that in the World of Warcraft. If I’m really into World of Warcraft, I want to be able to experience it on my cell phone and on my Facebook page as well. This is part of my gamer identity in a certain way.

So, I think that we’re going to see a lot of those big titles wanting to reach out and create on ramps in the mobile space. Where I hope that goes is a different experience that is touching the same world, rather than an attempt to work the same experience.

I don’t want the same game experience on Facebook that I want when I’m on my mobile phone. Maybe, on a PC when I’m on Facebook but I’m not firing up the 3D experience, like in Call of Duty or something like that. I’m looking for something different, and I think that if you wanted to put Call of Duty inside of Facebook, I’m not sure that that kind of experience is what people are looking for.

So, I think it’s about understanding each of these mediums and understanding what each medium is good at and what the user is looking for in an experience when they’re firing up their mobile phone versus firing up Facebook. I’d prefer not to see a bunch of [?], that’s the short answer. I don’t think it’s going to be terribly successful, but we’ll see.

In terms of for someone who wants to get into independent gaming, I actually…

Interviewer: Mobile, yeah.

Josh: I teach game design at the Academy in San Francisco, and I usually start by telling the students that if there’s any career other than games, go do it. This is a really tough industry, and it can be a really tough industry to get into. But on the other hand, I think a really focused, well done product is going to get you noticed. Even if that product doesn’t make you wealthy, other game developers recognize quality.

For anyone who wants to get started, I would say, think smaller and if you can make something that is even a minute of fun. Fun is a very elusive thing to find sometimes, and it’s about polish and about tuning. So, start small and polish and tune, and when you get to fun if you have time and resources to add more, then add more.

Interviewer: Let’s just talk about fun a little more. How do you suggest it, and what’s your process then of finding fun?

Josh: Well, finding fun in consoles or mobile or social?

Interviewer: Mobile.

Josh: Mobile, yeah, OK.

Interviewer: Mobile and social.

Josh: So, we really like to start with what’s the experience we’re going after, what’s the feeling that we’re going after. That’s something we brought with us out of consoles, but the thing about these touch screens and the accelerometers is there’s a new way to bring that experience to the player.

So, there’s something about tilting this device that feels a certain way and that lends itself to certain kinds of experiences. There’s something about tapping this device that feels a certain way, and that lends itself to certain kinds of experiences.

There’s a flash game, I don’t remember what it is called, but it was, like, a basket of flowers going up to heaven with this really nice music playing. It felt like complete peace. A very simple little game but whoever must have made it, they understood how to create an experience within that little environment that they’ve made. That’s really what I think I’d like to see more of happening in mobile.

How do we make something that’s a compelling experience, even though it’s going to be small? If we can find something that has some emotional content, that’s pretty interesting.

Interviewer: And where can people find out more about your games? Do you want to talk about them more?

Josh: Oh, no. We’ve primarily been doing work for hire because that’s how independent developers live. Our company, Flying Wisdom Studios, go to our website. All our games are there, and there’s more coming out. We’re averaging one or two every couple months, so there’s always new stuff showing up.

Where I’m going to be really excited is when we start putting out some of our original property which we’re working on in the back room, always. I think everybody’s got those. We’re hoping to bring them to the light of day as soon as we can. Stop by Flying Wisdom. Start and sign up for our Facebook page, and you’ll see what we come out with next.

We just shipped a really exciting game with SGN, social gaming network, not really a casual game but a great experience. It’s called EXO-Planet and it’s on iPad and iPhone, and it’s a zero gravity experience. Really, I haven’t seen anything like it, even on console. So, you’ll probably really enjoy it if you want to feel what it’s like to play and run around in zero gravity.

We’ve got player versus player, death match, four players. You can play local matches over Bluetooth. You can play over the wireless for free. We’ve got Capture the Flag. You can buy more weapons, buy more armor, level it up. So, it’s a very compelling experience.

Honestly, I’m really excited that SGN has decided that they wanted to bring this kind of experience to the platform. We thought this was coming. We just thought it would be another year or two before we were really going to be able to do this level of game. So, it was really exciting to be able to do it. For us, it was ahead of schedule.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.