Interview

Ngmoco's Neil Young on Freeverse, company culture and active user curves

Distinctive studios make good games

Ngmoco's Neil Young on Freeverse, company culture and active user curves
With its purchase of Freeverse combined with the raising of $25 million in its third investment round, US iPhone developer and publisher ngmoco has signalled its ambition to make a mark in the iPhone content space.

In the first of two interviews with ngmoco CEO Neil Young, we ask about the reasons behind the purchase, why the companies are a good match, and what the deal means in terms of the longterm strategy.

You can read the second part of the interview concerning Young's views on Android, future acquisitions and the freemium business model here.

Pocket Gamer: You've just closed your third funding round and bought Freeverse. Presumably the two are related?

Neil Young: We actually closed the financing round before the holidays [late 2009]. We've just chosen not to announce it until now. It felt it would be better to communicate it and the acquisition at the same time.

But the two are related in terms of raising cash for the acquisition?

You can pay for things in lots of different ways but certainly one use of the funds is to accelerate the growth of the company.

There's strategic growth and organic growth. Strategic growth will come from the acquisition of companies that share our vision, have the right talent and IP mix, and are complimentary to what we are trying to accomplish. That's certainly the case with Freeverse.

It can also have the case of the acquisition of applications too. We just acquired Charadium, a paid application that we think is great.

You haven't bought its developer though?

In that case, we acquired the game and are working with On5, the team that developed the app, to convert it into a free product.

We will continue to look to for apps that will thrive on the free side. Because as well as strategic growth, we also make games and we definitely want to continue to do that and accelerate the business. We're going to be expanding the number of titles we're release under the ngmoco and Miraphonic [Epic Pet Wars] brands.

You mention complimentary businesses but Freeverse hasn't released any freemium games has it?

When you think about the value of a company, the thing to think about isn't necesarily the titles, although those can be useful. It's the creation of those titles that matters.

Freeverse is a group of incredibly talented people who have a knack for building games that have been buoyant and able to stay in the charts for a long period of time, and have active user curves.

This is what we think about when we think about our business model - how many users can a game have, and how long can it retain those users? What's important with free-to-play games isn't that they are free, but that when a customer starts playing them, they stay committed to that game and keep playing it for a long period of time.

Freeverse has an uncanny ability to create games which fit that model.

Will you be retrospectively making Freeverse games free-to-play?

At this time, we don't plan to take games that are already in the market and make them free. We're not going to start charging people for balls on Skee-Ball or anything like that.

There are games in Freeverse's pipeline that will do very well as free-to-play games though so we'll have to do a bit of work to adapt them. And there are some that won't. For example Warp Gate will be a premium paid game.

In terms of new games, we want to build as many of those as possible under the free-to-play model.

Some of Freeverse's best selling games have come from thirdparty studios so what happens if the likes of Strange Flavour (Flick Fishing) or Graveck (Skee-Ball) decide they don't want to make freemium games?

Being a publisher doesn't mean you start work when someone hands you the finished game. A publisher works with a developer at the outset of the process dealing with issues like: What should the design be? How should we build this thing to be as successful for as long as possible? How can we bring more resources to bear than the independent developer has themselves?

Also talent can found all over the world and part of the job of a good publisher is to seek it out and to find the best ways to unlock its potential.

Obviously independent companies may not want to participate in the freemium model. But we think there's a compelling case why this a great model for both customers and developers and a good way to generate a meaningful business from the App Store.

You've stated Freeverse will continue as a separate business and brand. Won't this be confusing?

A lesson learnt from the early years of Electronic Arts is that the culture people work in is an important influence in the quality of the games they make. EA would acquire companies and then subsume them under its brand, which ultimately ended up killing the culture of those companies. We want to help companies retain their culture and grow it.

So when we think about the collection of companies that could ultimately make up ngmoco, we want a rich tapestry that's constantly evolving and growing and changing based on the people we bring in and any acquisitions we make. I think it's healthier for our company to have as a diverse a culture as it can possibly have.

And I know it was the case for Freeverse, as it was for Miraphonic, that part of the reason they've been bought is because they have an identity which is reflective of who they are and the games they make.

That's an important reinforcing factor in the types of products we will ultimately create together.

Thanks to Neil for his time.

You can keep up-to-date with what ngmoco does in future via web, and Twitter.

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.