This sponsored post is produced in association with Murka.
Never put all your eggs in one basket. It’s the cliché advice of never investing everything you’ve got into one project, because if that project were to fail spectacularly, you’ll be left with zilch. Sure, it’s corny, but it’s solid advice nonetheless.
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You can’t rely on a single product to dominate your business. For your business to grow, you need to diversify. Diversify your products; diversify your teams; and diversify your ideas.
Game developer Murka didn’t rely solely on Slots Journey, the company’s first successful venture into the mobile market, to drive their business into profitability. They analyzed what worked and created two games simultaneously: Scatter Slots and Infinity Slots. Both games share the same Vegas inspiration of Slots Journey, but deliver completely different experiences in settings and mechanics. Infinity Slots has managed to crack the Top 5 New Games chart on Google Play and is on par with its successful brethren Scatter Slots.
Creating several projects at the same time became possible because of Murka’s Unity-based developing platform for producing new slots-related cross-platform games at a faster pace. This not only allows the company to take advantage of mobile market trends in a timely fashion, but makes it easier to experiment with their winning slots formula, without wasting too much time. Developers who wish to corner a specific niche in the market should consider similar measures for their games.
Murka isn’t the only mobile developer valuing multiple game sales over one. Social mobile game publisher SGN discussed last year at the Mobile Gaming USA event in San Francisco that the company has stayed profitable because of its incredible portfolio of strategy games. The same holds true for Kabam Studios, which isn’t looking for an unpredictable mega-hit, but is instead relying on multiple game releases of different categories to drive business. So far the plan has worked — Kabam Studios doubled its revenue in 2013 to more than $300 million.
Of course, money isn’t the only motivation to simultaneously work on multiple games. Sometimes spending months or years on a project can drain a lot out of you and your team, working day and night with no end in sight and nothing to show for it. Sometimes you need to take a break and create something than can be completed much sooner to inject much needed morale to your team.
Experiment with new ideas. Create a simple game in a month, or even a week, and earn that sense of accomplishment when it’s finally done. It’s a way to invigorate your creative and development process — and you may well think differently about the project you were working on before.
Another reason why you should have multiple projects in the pipeline is because it will keep your staff together and away from your competitors. Just ask Naughty Dog, the successful PlayStation developer behind Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, and the Uncharted series. After the critical success of Uncharted 2, the developers at the Santa Monica studio split into two teams. This not only allowed them to work on multiple projects, but stopped rival studios from poaching talent in the hopes of making their own Uncharted.
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“We have this incredible collection of talent across all disciplines,” Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells told Game Informer. “So many people here at Naughty Dog that are environment modelers, designers, or animators could be leads or directors at any other company and could be given a lot more responsibility.”
But because Naughty Dog established a second team to develop games simultaneously with the first, many of those talented employees stayed with the company. The second team went on to create The Last of Us, a survival horror game that shares the same engine as Uncharted, but uses it to create a completely different experience. The game went on to become a critical and commercial success on the PS3 and PS4.
With the benefits of multiple game development already established, now comes the talk of how to execute the task. It’s recommended that you create several small teams of 15 people max. Why limit it to 15? Why not go for 30 or even 100? Because too many cooks spoil the broth. Assigning over 15 people to a team creates an environment where everyone won’t be heard. Marginalizing voices with potentially significant ideas.
Large-scale teams also run into the problem of creating factions within the groups. Different factions that could collide like a bull towards a matador, if a disagreement over game design were to arise. Creating small-scale teams lowers the chances of conflict. It also allows the project to be more personal than manufactured.
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Finally, it’s important not to take too long on the second project and risk becoming irrelevant. The mobile gaming market is always changing, so what could be trendy today could become a mere fad tomorrow. If you’re aiming to take advantage of a specific environment, try not to take longer than three or four months of development. Don’t overcomplicate the project — just do what needs to be done.
Remember game developers: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Instead, just buy lots of baskets!
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