Flaregames hires Marja Konttinen, the resurgence of simple games, and how Super Evil Megacorp created Vainglory
When you think about mobile eSports, one of the games sure to come to mind is Vainglory, a MOBA that has slowly built its way up into one of the biggest competitive games on mobile.
It's been a long road to get there, and our interview with Super Evil Megacorp's CEO Kristian Segerstrale detailing how the company built itself up over the last three years certainly intrigued our readers, making it our most read article of last week.
Second on our Hot Five list is an article from Kwalee CEO David Darling, who stopped by to write about how mobile games today are a lot like games on the old Commodore 64.
Jobs, IPOs and interactive fiction
Third up, Flaregames has hired Rovio's former Marketing Director Marja Konttinen as its new Head of Brand Management to take over marketing for its titles.
And finally, Jon Jordan takes some time to deconstruct what Rovio's IPO actually means and Jam City breaks out of its usual genres to try its hand at interactive fiction.
Click the link below to find out more about the stories that caught our readers' attention over the last week.
#5: Jam City pushes into interactive fiction with soft-launched choose-your-own-adventure game Twist
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Jam City pushes into interactive fiction with soft-launched choose-your-own-adventure game Twist »Jam City may be best known for casual puzzle games like Panda Pop and city-builders like Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff (now it owns TinyCo), but interactive fiction is certainly a new one.
But if Episode and Choices are anything to go by, the genre is ripe for revenue-generation, so it's digging in with its own soft-launched interactive fiction portal Twist.
Taking a pure text-based approach, Twist has players reading through stories across numerous genres and making decisions at various junctures to influence how the whole thing will pan out.
It's also taking some monetisation cues from its predecessors, with some choices locked behind paywalls, and no doubt some kind of energy mechanic to stop players storming through every story in an evening.
#4: Deconstructing Rovio’s pragmatically Finnish IPO
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Deconstructing Rovio’s pragmatically Finnish IPO »When Rovio officially announced its plans to IPO, there was a lot of things being said, and a fair amount of confusion around what any of it actually meant, or what the developer was even planning on doing.
Rovio has since cleared up the confusion with concrete plans, projected valuations, and preliminary prices for its shares, but before all that happened, Jon Jordan waded in to deconstruct the IPO.
"Rovio’s IPO appears to tick all the boxes when it comes to company stability and IPO timing. To that extent, it’s a very Finnish IPO," he writes.
"This looks like an IPO aimed at sensibly taking advantage of the long-term opportunities of being a publicly-owned company, not one out to maximising the amount of cash it puts into its founders’ pockets."
#3: Flaregames hires former Rovio Marketing Director Marja Konttinen as Head of Brand Management
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Flaregames hires former Rovio Marketing Director Marja Konttinen as Head of Brand Management »Karlsruhe-based mobile game publisher flaregames has hired former Rovio Marketing Director Marja Konttinen as its new Head of Brand Management.
Konttinen's role will see her taking charge of brand marketing across the company.
This year has already seen two of its major brands, Zombie Gunship and Nonstop Knight, launch sequels in the form of Zombie Gunship Survival and Nonstop Chuck Norris.
During her time at Rovio, Konttinen spearheaded the launch of Angry Birds Space and secured brand partnerships with NASA, Samsung, and 20th Century Fox.
She was mostly recently CMO at Lightneer and co-founded her own company called VAU.
#2: From Commodore 64 to hyper-casual: David Darling on the resurgence of simple games based on elegant ideas
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From Commodore 64 to hyper-casual: David Darling on the resurgence of simple games based on elegant ideas »It's a brave person who opens their article with a quote, but Kwalee's David Darling picked a good'un: "the more things change, the more they stay the same."
Probably not written in reference to the simplicity of mobile games, Darling's chosen quote does highlight the fact that modern mobile game design does share some similarities with the games of old.
It's not just the games themselves that feel old-school - the development process too is similarly low-key for some teams.
"Without letting my rose-tinted glasses overwhelm me - development during this period was simple, innovative and had a ‘hacky’ feel to it that made the entire process wonderfully creative," wrote Darling.
#1: Building a mobile eSports giant: Super Evil Megacorp reflects on creating Vainglory
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Building a mobile eSports giant: Super Evil Megacorp reflects on creating Vainglory »Enormous eSports aren't just born overnight (unless you're PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds), and it's especially a struggle to get one going when your given platform is mobile.
But Super Evil Megacorp is still battling away, growing its mobile MOBA Vainglory from a game that didn't even have a spectator mode to one of the most recongiseable mobile eSports in the world.
"If you look at the sheer volume of mobile devices – three billion – versus 700 million gaming PCs, mobile has the potential to outgrow PC-based eSports," said Super Evil CEO Kristian Segerstrale.
"But all cultural shifts take a long time. ESports on PC took more than a decade to break into mainstream awareness. We would expect mobile eSports to also take time."