lessons learned in the transition from AAA to mobile development

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

3. Our Portfolio

4. Zynga With Friends • Formed in Fall 2008 (Newtoy) • Based in McKinney, Tx • ZyngaWith Friends: Nov 2010 • 4 million DAUs • 14 million unique users

5. a fresh start

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

7. 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

8. 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!

9. a fresh start | New Ideas!

10. 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!

11. a fresh start | Our Approach Strive to build games in a fewmonths Constant state of productivity Innovate, make mistakes, and adapt

12. 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

13. the people

14. 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

15. the people | The Circle

16. 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!

17. the people | Focus and Productivity • Remove everything that hinders productivity • Minimizeunnecessary meetings • Put in a solid 8 hours and then go home! • Library days designed for productivity

18. how we build

19. 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

20. 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

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

22. 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

23. how we build | Easy Prototypes!

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

25. 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

26. 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

27. the process

28. 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

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

30. 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!

31. the process | Pivotal Tracker

32. the process | App Distribution

33. 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

34. the process | Long Term Success

35. 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

36. moving forward

37. moving forward | Post Acquisition • The Jetpack • Biggercompany != bigger processes • A culture of collaboration • Lessons learned in both directions • Amazing capabilities of metrics

38. 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

39. 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!

40. | QUESTIONS? vthakkar@zynga.com http://zyngawithfriends.com