® lessons learned in the transition from AAA to mobile development Vijay Thakkar, Technical Director and Toy Maker CHANGING THE WAY WE MAKE GAMES

® ® Our Portfolio

® ® Zynga With Friends Formed in Fall 2008 (Newtoy) Based in McKinney, Tx Zynga With Friends: Nov million DAUs 14 million unique users

® a fresh start

® ® a fresh start | AAA Games Study in 2010 reported between $18 and $28 million $44M $55M $100M

® ® a fresh start | The Problems Massive games lead to massive investments Difficult to be agile and flexible Scheduling slips have a large impact Difficult to sustain

® ® a fresh start | A New Space with Mobile User base is ‘everyone’ Devices are always with you and connected New methods of interactions and features Small and concise experiences Embrace these strengths!

® ® a fresh start | New Ideas!

® ® a fresh start | The Ideal? Shipping successful games is fun Working on games you love is fun Working with passionate, talented people is fun Have fun while shipping great products!

® ® a fresh start | Our Approach Strive to build games in a few months Constant state of productivity Innovate, make mistakes, and adapt

® ® a fresh start | Minimum Viable Product Build the smallest core experience Grow and develop with something running Allows for more creativity and flexibility Identify potential problems early Less wasted time and effort

® the people

® ® the people | Small and Flexible Scrum / Agile development Preference flexibility and general knowledge over specialization Hire only the highest quality (force multipliers) Everyone is a Toy Maker

® ® the people | The Circle

® ® the people | Small Workflow The entire game may be completed in less time than a single system of a AAA title “Let’s try it” Tools are minimalistic and created as necessary Don’t fear the mistakes, they’re going to happen!

® ® the people | Focus and Productivity Remove everything that hinders productivity Minimize unnecessary meetings Put in a solid 8 hours and then go home! Library days designed for productivity

® how we build

® ® how we build | The Core Tenants Experiment until you find an nugget of fun Remove everything that doesn’t augment that nugget Polish, polish, polish

® ® how we build | Find the Nugget Anyone can come up with it Open, pie-in-the-sky phase, search for the positives Creative ideas come from happy people, and rarely from the office

® ® how we build | Indie Fridays Days for growth and exploration of new ideas Foster the creativity of your employees Open, creative collaboration across teams Lightning quick prototyping! No less than 25 new game ideas

® ® how we build | Dream Big, Build Small Let your ideas be as grand as possible, but understand your limitations Razor sharp focus on what could be built in a few months Get a first version up and running as quickly as possible

® ® how we build | Easy Prototypes!

® ® how we build | Be Willing to Change Remain open to iteration and changes Get as much feedback as possible Augmented by transparent team communication

® ® how we build | Stay Connected Utilize the ways that mobile devices connect people Opportunity to grow features with your users No feature is cut because of time, only pushed

® ® how we build | Simplicity and Polish Remember your audience! Devices are made for pick up and play games Launch times, responsive UIs and simple choices absolutely matter Polish phase never compresses, only moves

® the process

® ® the process | Don’t Rebuild Middleware is easy to embrace With smaller projects, each piece has a huge impact Literally thousands of developers solving the same problems as you Open source is huge! Use it and give back Reuse your own code, make a Toybox

® ® the process | What We Use Cocos2D CocosDenshion FBConnect UISpec JSON UIKit GHUnit Ruby / Rails Memcache Redis ActiveScaffold MySQL Perl PHP

® ® the process | Know Your Limits Compromises with team size and schedule Contract out work to make additional content The feature cuts at the end of the project are often the best!

® ® the process | Pivotal Tracker

® ® the process | App Distribution

® ® the process | Games as a Service 1,000 moves made per second 220,000 requests per minute All started on slicehost Profile and scale up the pain points as they appear Keep 24 / 7 maintenance outside of development team

® ® the process | Long Term Success

® ® the process | Learn from Your Users Metrics give you insight into your users If it’s at all important, track it Combine with direct player feedback Constantly evolve your tracking

® moving forward

® ® moving forward | Post Acquisition The Jetpack Bigger company != bigger processes A culture of collaboration Lessons learned in both directions Amazing capabilities of metrics

® ® moving forward | What Next? We prototype fast, lots to execute Balance between live development and new products Never stop improving and growing our processes Contributing back to the communities

® ® Wrapping Up New strengths of the mobile platform Small, agile approaches have huge potential Start everything with a small scope and grow Leverage existing work and fellow developers Make mistakes and evolve!

® | QUESTIONS?