1. twitter.com/largeanimal
Surviving the Squeeze
Wade Tinney
CEO, Large Animal Games
largeanimal.com
twitter.com/largeanimal

2. Overview Whining and Complaining
What to Do? (upgrade boat, buy bigger one)
The Choices We Made
Results
The Future (open ocean)

3. Shrinking Shelf Space

4. Rising Production Values vs. Lower Budgets

5. Increasingly conservative catalog management (fewer genres = less interesting to us)

6. Outsourced developers. Kicking ass and charging less.
A few years ago, the North American developers would say “yeah, they charge less, but they don’t really understand the US market. They won’t be able to make triple A hits.” Well, we shouldn’t have underestimated them. They figured it out. And publishers got better at working with them. Increased segmentation and focus on fewer and fewer genres didn’t hurt either.

7. Disconnected from players

8. Not innovating on the business model either.

9. Not enough flexibility

10. Portals not sharing ad revenue

11. Games not actually reaching a mass market demographic.
Increased segmentation

12. Investors were telling us the same things.
Investors interested in our company, but not the casual download model.
Feedback from investors confirmed that the things we’d been complaining about were also turn-offs for them.

13. What to Do? Choices We Made
Web Games
Getting back to our roots. Built the company by making flash and shockwave games.

14. Widgets
Long-abiding interest in user-created content.

15. Instant Messenger Games
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

16. Social Network Games Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit.
Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.
Self-publishing model.
Closer connection to the audience.

17. Social Network Games Platform
Toga was a way for us to attenuate the risk of over-reliance on a single network.

18. Service, not packaged goods.
New development model.
Service, not packaged goods.
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

19. Virtual Items
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

20. Advertising
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

21. Licensing
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

22. Where are we now? Three games on the toga platform.
All have virtual item economy.
Connected to iPhone.

23. The Future: Open Ocean New platform partners
New games with more social value
We’re still learning and adapting.
Social network ocean is reddening quickly. Looking for ways to differentiate and reduce cost.

24. The Future: Open Ocean Asynchronous to synchronous and back
Worlds based on social graph data
Mobile devices extending the network
Geolocation
Metagames
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

25. Take-away Too much complaining is a sign.
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

26. Take-away Too much complaining is a sign. You always have choices.
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

27. Take-away Too much complaining is a sign. You always have choices.
Not innovating is risky.
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

28. Take-away Too much complaining is a sign. You always have choices.
Not innovating is risky.
Articulate your fears.
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

29. Take-away Too much complaining is a sign. You always have choices.
Not innovating is risky.
Articulate your fears.
Don’t stand still.
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

30. Take-away Too much complaining is a sign. You always have choices.
Not innovating is risky.
Articulate your fears.
Don’t stand still.
Partner relentlessly.
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

31. Take-away Too much complaining is a sign. You always have choices.
Not innovating is risky.
Articulate your fears.
Don’t stand still.
Partner relentlessly.
Invest in yourself. Kaizen.
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.

32. Contact Me Wade Tinney CEO, Large Animal Games
Follow me on
Social networks turned out to be a perfect fit. Platform required innovation, from both a design and business model perspective.