Social games are quickly becoming the biggest news in gaming and with billions of gamer dollars up for grabs, more and more developers are turning their energies toward the game industry's newest genre.
Since 2009, Moscow-based social game company Pixonic (not to be confused with the New York ad agency of the same name) has published 40--count 'em, 40--social game titles of all shapes and sizes and is so prolific, it's earned the nick-name "Little Zynga". We spoke to Pixonic's CEO and founder, Elena Masolova and asked her how PIxonic got its start and how it plans to take on "Big" Zynga.
NJ: So...”little Zynga”. How'd your company get that name and how do you feel about it?
EM: The journalists invented it. On May 30th we raised $5 million from three venture funds. The event was broadly covered in the media including US websites and news agencies. Journalists knew little about us at that time. So when we were explaining who we are, we said we were doing things that were similar to Zynga. We are obviously smaller and from Russia. East-West Digital News originally called Pixonic, “little Zynga”.
NJ: Why did you decide to start a social games company?
EM: From the early age of six, I wanted to build a business; an atypical wish for a kid in the Soviet Union. Later, while in school, I played games where you would build business empires or trade between countries and grow personal wealth. I believe building a company should be fun.
My previous company Darberry, a successful startup which we sold to Groupon, became the fastest growing Russian e-commerce business ever. The founders left the company right after the recent IPO. We worked like crazy, but it was always like a game. And, I should tell, real money is much better than a virtual business empire.
In parallel, I was head of early stage venture fund and we were looking for a target in social gaming to invest in. We couldn’t find anyone in Russia, so decided to launch a company inside of the fund ourselves. The experiment worked so well that I left the fund and am now I am full-time CEO of Pixonic.
NJ: Do you play social games?
EM: Of course I play games. I play our titles including Russian super hit, Little Helper, The Island: Castaway, and many of our competitors’ games, as well as games from Zynga. This is the best way to learn. As a CEO you can’t delegate game development and must be super hands-on in this process. Miracles don’t happen, we’re in a hit driven business, and if you want an ‘Avatar’, prepare to work like Cameron and check every detail yourself.
NJ: What's your goal as a company? (Aside from making a profit, obviously.)
EM: At some point every new Zynga game was a small revolution in the industry. Everyone said, “Have you seen this. How simple is that. I should have thought of that myself!” Then Wooga appeared and people were like, “Look, they’re from Europe, a small team and they’re 2nd on Facebook overnight.”
We want everyone in the professional community to look at our games and say, “Wow.” We want players to get excited about our games every day. We’re not building small regional publisher in Pixonic. The goal is to create something really big that is global and significant. Zynga is still the same company. They are a legend now and an example for the whole industry, for gamers’ community.
NJ: Do you think social games need to compete with massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft? If so, do you think one day they'll win? :)
EM: They almost don’t compete. People play PC games and social games for different reasons. Social games help to “kill the time” when you are on the lunch break, in a dull meeting or in the airport waiting to board a flight. Social games compete with casual games (and it’s obvious now that social games are winning).
PC games are different: people play them because they like the gaming process. This is separate activity, like playing bridge with old friends or going to the cinema. The social games audience is women 25+, PC games are mostly played by men. PC games are for passionate gamers. Social games are for non-gamers who just need to take a break.
NJ: Your company uses “predictive modeling, analytics and economics” to aid in developing its titles. Where does “fun” fit into that approach?
EM: We believe building games is science not art. We use our own analytics system comparable with Kontagent or Mixpanel. It measures almost all user activity inside a game in real-time. PixAPI analytics tracks thousands of in-game events simultaneously, and it finds where users are experiencing difficulty so that we or other developers can improve the game.
We can build funnels, and create graphs and tables for different user groups. We predict their behavior depending on date of registration, country, age, gender, and ad campaigns. When you improve game metrics (e.g. you increase average money spent per user 8 times). That’s fun!
NJ: How does game development differ when making games for an American audience as opposed to a Russian one?
EM: We believe a hit is a hit everywhere. I’m sure when EA launches Sims in Russia, it will rise to the top of the charts. There are outliers, though, based on local content, like this crazy case of Russian ‘Prison’ game (imagine GTA in 2D, which looks like it was made by students). It acquired 19.5 million users mostly due to the fact that the slang and gaming process appealed to players.
NJ: How important are games to the average person from Russia or the Ukraine? Is there a smaller audience? If so, is that what drove you to open an office in San Francisco?
EM: Russian social networks account for 250 million registered users. These users overlap in three networks and have 10 million of game DAU. We have almost one million Russian players daily. This is a huge market, but we want to be a global company. And since this is our goal, we need to be where the heart of global gaming industry is. Every visit of mine to San Francisco brought great contacts and some killer ideas. So instead of flying in every three weeks, we decided to launch our San Francisco operation.
NJ: In your mind, what's the key to creating a successful social game?
EM: There are four “must’s”:
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The art must be polished shiny glossy
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The game play must be interesting and addictive for a mass audience
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The user interface must be so easy to understand that even if you’re playing in foreign language you still must be doing things right intuitively
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The user easily understand the game goals every second
In short, great developers make beautiful games that are interesting easy-to-play games that work (and don’t shut down suddenly).
NJ: Most social games are some kind of city/garden/business-building sim. How much room for creativity do you think there is in social games?
EM: The genres will remain the same: farms, city-builders etc. This is a matter of mass human psychology. People like to build, create, develop and preserve. There is significant room though for creativity inside the genres: new art, unusual quests and game elements. This is where social gaming can continue to change and evolve.
NJ: What part do you see a social games playing in the future of games as a whole?
EM: Using a three-year horizon, social games will become one of the most significant sectors in the industry, if not the most significant. Social games will expand onto new types of devices (e.g. mobile devices) and merge with casual games. Actually, casual games will cease to exist as a separate and important part of the industry.
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