I am always playing games and therefore always thinking about what I like and dislike about them.  I’ve noticed three “likes” that have been popping up a lot lately.  The first is critical for almost all games while the other two are tailored to my specific game play needs…and therefore I decree that they must be implemented in all future games!

Like # 1: Rewards, rewards, rewards

World of Warcraft (the MMOG, I am not talking about their mobile apps at the moment) is the most profitable video game ever and took several years of my life from me.  If I had to pick a favorite game play mechanic from WoW, I would say it is the constant rewards.  You are running around killing everything in your path—and there are LOTS of things in your path—and every time you kill something, you get to loot it.  There’s huge anticipation there driving game play as every time you loot—ok, almost every time you loot—you get a reward.  Most times it’s a small reward, sometimes it’s an awesome reward, but you are always getting rewards!  This is, well, rewarding for the player.  Rewarding often is key.

Some mobile games do just this.  I started playing Zynga’s Dream Zoo last week and think that Dream Zoo does a nice job constantly rewarding players.  Zynga was able to take their timed-re-engagement mechanisms, that they have become so good at in Facebook games, and evolve those mechanisms for the mobile platform.  Instead of waiting hours or days to collect my rewards, which makes sense for Facebook games, in Dream Zoo I can collect basic rewards from my animals every four minutes.  In-between those 4 minutes, there are several other secondary game play mechanisms—visiting other zoos, building up my zoo—that also deliver rewards.

The net effects are that I) I play for long sessions—do basic gameplay for rewards, engage in secondary gameplay for rewards, and go back to basic gameplay for rewards and II) I play for multiple sessions per day because I am getting rewards every time I play.  It’s important to note that I do not have to play for longer sessions or more frequent sessions—there’s no penalty if I do quick infrequent sessions—but if I want, I can play often and reap the rewards.  Longer sessions and more of them…that’s great for any game.

Like #2: Multiple player accounts per game

I have two game-playing kids and they always want to play games on my iPhone and iPad, and I love to let them do so.  They love to play many of the games that I like to play, which is great.  The problem occurs when I play the game first.  Take Angry Birds for example.  By the time my kids started playing Angry Birds, I had finished most of the levels and finished them at 3 stars.  My kids had to play in the same account, meaning that almost all of the levels were already unlocked and had very difficult scores for them to beat.  My kids did not get the joys of a) advancing from level to level via their own achievement or b) going back to levels in order to get 3 stars.

The solution here—and it is not very difficult—is to allow multiple user accounts in your game.  This allows for parent and kids to all have full fun playing the game without anyone spoiling it for anyone else.  Peggle does this and it has been great for my kids and me.

Interestingly, having multiple accounts has increased Peggle’s lifespan on my iPhone as well.  When I finish a game, I often delete it from my phone in order to make room for other games.  But if I know my kids are working their way through the game at their own pace, I’ll keep it on my phone until they’re done.

So please…give us multiple accounts in your game.

Like #3: Single account for iPhone and iPad versions

I like playing games on both my iPhone and iPad, and I use each device at different times and circumstances.  I play on iPhone throughout the day, whenever I have a spare minute.  I play on iPad at night, sometimes while watching TV, often while going to bed.

What bums me out is when I have played a game for a few hours on my iPhone, switch to iPad to play the same game, and I have to start all over.  This is the way it happens in Dream Zoo and it effectively forces me to play the game on one platform or the other (no Dream Zoo at night for me).

Words With Friends, however, allows for one central account regardless of the platform.  Thus I can play WWF during the day on my iPhone and then continue the same games at night on my iPad.  I love it.  Another example where the same can be done is UniWar.

The difference between WWF/UniWar and Dream Zoo is that the former are multi-player games (where the gameplay data resides on a server) and the latter is a single player game (where the gameplay data is stored locally).  I’d like to see more single player games sync data to a server and allow players to pick-up the same game regardless of device.  The concern would be loading times, so it would be a balance—but something to try regardless.

At Brandissimo!, we are always batting around what we like and do not like in the games we’re playing.    It provides for great debate and without a doubt makes our games the best they can be.

When you are building a product – ANY product – there are a few items that are not negotiable:

On time – there’s always going to be a deadline – even if it is self imposed. Projects without deadlines always end up falling victim to other priorities – getting continually push down the to-do list until they are irrelevant.
On budget – there no such thing as a free lunch. Cost is a key component for any thinking company, and hitting a budget requires discipline and creativity.
Complete – is everything that was laid out in the spec (you do have a spec, don’t you?) completed? Getting things done on time and on budget aren’t going to do much good if you didn’t achieve your goals.

So this is the full list for every project, right? Make sure those three things are done, and you’ll be a success and everyone will be happy. Right?

Yes. As long as you aren’t talking about something that is supposed to be FUN.

Fun is a very nebulous, elusive term. Everyone knows what it is for the most part (some people find bungee jumping fun, but I’m not one of them), but sometimes it can be hard to describe. If you are building a game (or anything for kids, really), if MUST be fun. No fun – no product. So how do you build that into the process while still hitting the key points above.

It’s called creative cycles. We all understand that there is a point in time at which you are going to have a “playable” game. The first step is to be sure that is built into the schedule. If you wait until the thing is done before you start deciding if it is any fun, you’ve already lost. You need MORE THAN ONE pass at making sure a game PLAYS well, before you start to refine it for details like appropriate sounds, or voices, or interfaces, etc, etc.

The second step is understanding how to iterate. The key here is brutal honesty. If you think a game is “neat” or “interesting”, you need to seriously rethink it. It needs to be FUN. As in “I played it for an hour straight last night”, or “I had to yank it out of my kid’s hands this weekend”. Now is not the time to be tactful. People need to develop thick skin, and leave the defensiveness at home. Now is the time to create a GREAT product, not an OK product.

Once you have that, you can go through loops that look something like this:

Deploy test version
Allow exactly ONE DAY for testing and feedback
Compile all feedback into a single document for review
Meet to discuss all points. (If this meeting takes more than 2 hours, what you have built is likely garbage)
Make changes as required
Repeat

How many times do you iterate? Relax – it’s not “As many times as necessary”. Twice should be plenty, thrice is the absolute maximum. Any feedback coming in after that is from people who weren’t paying attention in the first place. Exclude them from the process in the future.

It’s clean, it’s tight, and it’s focused on your goals. Follow this plan, and you can’t fail.

Assuming you have good artists, that is….

Who can deny the appeal of making the world a better place?  Who wouldn’t want to change,  for the better,  the way kids learn?  In our business, lofty goals are abundent.  Here’s a list of worthy goals that walked through Brandissimo’s magnificent doors and into our studio this past month alone:   

• Improving how kids learn the three R’s
• Building better citizens through a mastery of civics
• Help kids face the challenges of the 21st century through improved critical thinking
• Help kids make better food choices
• Inspire kids to exercise    

It’s easy to get drawn in to worthy causes and projects that earnestly pursue ‘lofty goals’ for our audience, we all want to be making content that matters.  We love the ability to open up a dinner party conversation with a pithy “We’re making content that’s going to cure the teenage obesity epidemic!”    The key thing to remember when pursuing these goals is to NOT lose your audience because you’re so busy “improving their lives”!   We’re entertainers first and foremost.  We build entertainment for entertainment platforms – not education for entertainment Platforms.   In order get kids to engage in your content, you need to remember not to sacrifice entertainment while you’re pursing the ‘lofty goals’.  If this were a food blog, I’d suggest  four parts Entertainment to one part Education.      When you combine worthy goals with entertainment in equal measure,  it becomes a messy soup that more often than not feature the worthy goals negating the entertainment value and turning off the end user before they’ve even engaged in the content.   

Here’s four rules that we live by here in the hallowed halls of Brandissimo!

1. “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him watch your TV show or become instantly addicted to the game you just made”   Make sure the content is engaging,  interesting,  and fun before you start applying  your curriculum.  
2. “Kids don’t watch “eat your green vegetables television”  in fact they rarely eat their green vegetables period – and certainly don’t enjoy being told to.   Unless you’re creating a ‘homework helper’  kind of app, I’d recommend avoiding looking anything like school work or something you’d find in the waiting room of your doctors office.  Kids today are hyper scheduled and programmed and when they finally get spare moment to unwind with their choice of media, the last  thing that they’re looking for is more school.
3. “Never ever eat in a restaurant that advertises “Fine Food”  Kids will smell a rat faster than us “marketing experts” any day of the week.  Over-pitching the fun causes kids to look for the lesson plan.  Make the entertainment value real and engaging and you’ll be in a better position to capture them with your content.
4. Aim for small targets and know your audience.  There’s a difference between a 5 year old and a 6 year old and an even bigger difference between a 5 year old and a 7 year old.  A quick climb up the age ladder and differences expand and contract depending on when kids jump into larger age pools.  Moving from pre-school to Kindergarden may not be a huge step – but from Kindergarden to First Grade thrusts the youngster into a reality where he is the youngest, smallest, least dexterous member of this new food chain.   The jump from grade 6 to grade 7 can be a mind-boggling loss of innocence.  These changes deeply effect the media that these kids consume.  A 7th Grader may wear Phineas and Ferb pajamas at night but deny he even watches the show during the day.  Those media choices that were once so critical and dear to them are very quickly discarded when they are associated with the previous age pool.   When your targets are too broad you end up diluting the value of both the entertainment as well as the education.

So you’ve just developed the most amazing iOS game of all time. Good for you. Now you need to promote it.

Yes, you could spend marketing dollars on advertising. You could build a fantastic website and buy Google AdWords to push traffic there. You could spam every game review online magazine with your carefully-crafted press release. You could create a Facebook page and inundate your friends and family with links to it. But all of those paths rely primarily on crossed fingers and hope.

If your new game is really fun to play, there are five features you can implement directly in your app to nudge it towards becoming a viral hit. The best promotion is word-of-mouth, and if you build your app the right way its users will become your best evangelists.

1. Allow — But Don’t Force! — Facebook Connect

If you believe the six o’clock news, every single man, woman, and child on the planet has a Facebook account. (My friend’s dog has a Facebook account!) Facebook has certainly replaced the local coffee shop bulletin board — and maybe even the refrigerator — as the best place to learn about what is happening in your circle of friends and family. Allowing your users to publish their love of your game to their Facebook wall is an incredibly inexpensive way to spread the word.

You should be considerate, though, and not require users to authenticate with Facebook in order to play your game. Many people are wary of sharing their Facebook credentials with an app before learning exactly what it does and what it might publish to their walls. And, of course, some people simply don’t have Facebook accounts. Let them play your game and give them the option to connect with Facebook. If it’s really fun, and if you make it simple to discover how to connect to Facebook from within the app, they will.

2. Tweet Scores

Twitter is only slightly less popular than Facebook these days. The fact that Apple decided to bake Twitter integration right into the latest version of their mobile platform should be evidence enough of that. If you let your game’s users Tweet their high scores and / or achievements — but don’t harangue them about it — some percentage of them are going to do so. Let them add a hashtag, or a link to your app’s iTunes page, or your app’s website. Many of the most popular iOS games — including Canabalt, Flight Control, and Angry Birds — utilized Twitter word-of-mouth marketing to great success.

3. Challenge A Friend

Even if your app is single player only, allowing your customers to brag and challenge their friends to beat their scores directly from within it is a good move. An avid player may be too shy to post a link to your game on her Facebook wall, but not too shy to challenge her mom to beat her score. The simplest and most intuitive way to provide a “challenge a friend” feature is to let the user choose from her Facebook or Twitter friends, which is why connecting your app to those services are the first two points on this list.

4. Location-Based Leaderboards

Several iOS apps — including QRank and the wildly popular Flight Control — include leaderboards listing high scores of other players based on their relative location to the device. Why do they do this when it’s highly unlikely that a player is going to actually know any of the random users playing their game in the same city or state? They do this because players want to see themselves near the top of leaderboards, and it’s much simpler to achieve success in a smaller pool. If your app has even just a few hundred players it will quickly become exponentially more difficult to rank in the top ten out of all of them. It is, however, possible to vault into the top ten of your home town, or the nearest city. The positive reinforcement of seeing his own name at the top of the Anytown, USA leaderboards can be just the incentive he needs to keep playing, or, more importantly, to convince his friend to start playing.

5. Unicode Distribution

Distributing your game as a single version playable on the iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone is a great way to keep it in front of your users at all times. The additional revenue potentially gained by forcing users to buy multiple copies for each of their devices won’t outweigh the negative feedback.

Epilogue:

There is no way to guarantee that an app will “go viral”, but including these five key features will at least give it the *potential* to become a viral hit.

5 Tips on the Serious Business of Making Fun.

After several hundred episodes of animation, over 175 games, a few game worlds, and a panoply of ideas that didn’t quite make it off the launch pad, I have some lessons learned and some battle wounds to show for my experience.  The art of entertaining young (and grown up) minds through stories, games, and play is a big business. Here are 5 valuable battle-tested lessons I’ve learned through trial and error.

1 – Whose idea is this anyway?

Whether it’s a game, an online world, an animated series, or a stick figure running into a wall, it takes a talented group of people—all focused on a singular vision—to make successful content.  It’s OK to not get your way.  Sometimes the best ideas come from someplace else.  Working in a collaborative style has many challenges.  Although it’s true that someone has to lead, that leader’s role is often about empowering others to contribute in positive ways.  Having a sense of ownership over an idea keeps a team more invested.  In a creative industry, letting others be creative leads to better results.

2 – Details, schmetails

Be thorough – ‘nuff said (hah, just kidding).  When a producer is looking for something specific, they need to deliver specific details to their team.  There have been many times when I think people know exactly what I’m looking for, but the reality is that I haven’t fully expressed a vision or an idea.  Even the most talented team in the world (which I am certain I work with right now) needs to receive specific background and detail information.  Otherwise, they are left standing around in the dark, doing their best to guess at what is wanted.

3 – Underpants are funnier than underwear.

There’s a subtle difference, but underpants is a funny word and underwear is just… well… less funny.  Finding the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways to infuse humor into your project will keep fans more engaged for longer.  Let’s be honest, it’s not high art, and it won’t bring home a Nobel Peace Prize, but scatological humor is funny.  If done well, that is.  For me, subtle use of this knowledge often leads to success.  In 2005, I made a game called “Wedgie Toss” that was very popular and in 2006, we made a sequel called “Wedgie Toss 2:  Back in the Crack” which has over 35 million gameplays and continues to be popular.  I’m not advocating for the “Fart, Poop, Underpants” game (although I’m sure it would find an audience), but understanding how to integrate humor into any project is important. It’s not for every show or every game or every brand, but keeping an open mind and finding a smart way to integrate things that we know make kids laugh is a great way to keep your audience engaged.

4 – Girls like pink

This will be a 180 from point number 3, but why deny it?  Girls love pink.  I’ve had a great opportunity to work for strong girl brands such as Totally Spies, Polly Pocket, Cabbage Patch Kids, and others, and I’ve never understood why some girl brands are pink-a-phobic.  I have a friend who directs horror films.  His wife is an ER doctor who also plays on a kick-ass, all-female ice hockey team.  They have a daughter who was never exposed to anything girly… and yet she loves her pink princess dress with unbridled passion.  Pink is 100% OK for girls… it makes them happy and you don’t want to disappoint a sweet little girl, do you?

5 – Take a hike!

Go for a walk, get out of the office, see something new.  Inspiration finds you in the strangest locations.  One of the hardest things to do is sit with a blank piece of paper (ok, maybe it’s a blank word doc, with your e-mail and music player beneath it) and create something from scratch.  If you find yourself stuck, go ahead and embrace it.  Make good use of the off time.  Take a walk, grab a piece of fruit, or just get out of your chair and stretch for a minute.  Resetting yourself is a good thing.  That being said, sometimes you need to just start typing.  It’s exactly what I did when I started writing this… so thanks for reading and good luck!  I’ve got to get back to making that Fart, Poop, Underpants game… in pink, of course.

With over 500,000 apps in the App Store, the one question in every app developers mind is “how do I get my app noticed?”

While there are more than fifty things that an app developer can and must do in terms of app marketing, in this article I shall focus on those that in my opinion are the basic 5:

1. Quality is King – Create a high-quality engaging app

The most common response to this statement is  “Duh! Of course!” Though this is the most obvious necessity for any app, were you to browse through even a small set of those 500,000+ apps you will be surprised at how few apps meet this most basic of basic needs. While we may employ the best artists, most skilled programmers and best-of-the-best game-play strategists to come up what we, as a developer, think is a cool, engaging app, what we often times forget or do in a cursory manner is real “audience testing.” Put your app in the hands of your target user to see if they find it as engaging and interesting as you do.

Audience testing is quite simple. Pick 20 to 30 individuals who represent your core users and let them try your app at both the Alpha and Beta stages. Do this in batches of 5, with a dedicated observer for each user. Each observer should take detailed notes of what they notice. At the end of each session, the observers get together to share notes and decide on the game plan for round-2 of observations. Repeat this process for the entire batch and at the end consolidate the learnings to make a list of i) greats, ii) uglys and iii) can-be-better features. Retain the greats, change the uglys and figure out what needs be done to change the can-be-betters to greats.

Ideally audience-testing should not be a one-time exercise. For consistent results the exercise should be performed periodically, especially with every major feature update. For best results couple this manual exercise with automated analytics built in to the app and evaluate learnings on a weekly (or daily) basis depending on app type and usage.

Now that we have a killer app, what next?

That leads us to step 2.

2.              Rank high in the App Store – Know what it takes to get up there

Until recently it was largely assumed that download numbers determined an app’s place in the App Store’s rankings. Earlier this year reports surfaced that Apple has changed its ranking algorithms that determine App Store rankings. Flurry, a third-party analytics provider, picked up the change that was reported on the blog Inside Mobile Apps. Apple however was tight lipped about the same. Flurry reported sudden shifts in the rankings of the Top Free apps on the App Store around mid April, with apps like Facebook, Netflix and Pandora — that presumably see heavy daily use — rising dramatically in their rankings. This led to a hypothesis among industry experts that the new algorithm, in addition to new installations per day, also factors in “active usage” – number of daily active users and ratio of daily to monthly active users (aka sticky factor) – to determine rankings.

Until Apple issues an official statement on this subject we have little proof whether these observed shifts would indeed lead to an overwhelming shift in what it takes for an app to get in to the App Store’s top charts. That said, however, these changes do seem to indicate that Apple is moving in the direction of factoring in utility and on-going relevance of apps, in addition to a weighted average of daily app downloads/sales, while determining the rankings.

What does this mean to a developer? It means that getting users to click on that Install button alone will not suffice. For sustained success, quality and relevance of app become more relevant for an app to rise and retain rankings in the App Store. This, in our opinion, is good news for bootstrapping, talented app developers as it levels the playing field to some extent with deep pocketed rivals who can spend lavish marketing dollars to gain App Store visibility.

Bootstrapping developers can now focus their attention on creating a quality app that keeps their audience coming back for more, build in hooks for repeat engagement (timed re-engagement), encourage audience to submit reviews (& feedback) about their app experience and focus marketing efforts on driving organic growth through community building, word-of-mouth recommendations & fan-base expansions. Because in the long run, good apps with loyal users will benefit and bad or average apps, no matter what promotional tricks they use to rack up downloads, will struggle.

3.              Get Noticed – Convert eyeballs to downloads:

A simple poll Brandissimo conducted amongst the target audience for our Luna Kettlebottom & the Magic Cauldron Society app told us that most of our prospective customers’ download decisions were made while browsing through the top kids apps listed in the app store.

A catchy name, popping icon and relevant description thus go a long way in ensuring that those scouring eyeballs convert to clicks on the Install button.

Do your homework, see what your competition is doing, and come up with a unique name and icon. An informative description that highlights the benefits of your app, and not just the salient features, is also critical.

Once you catch your customer’s eye, the next question in their mind is  “what is in it for me?” Remember, people buy benefits, not features.  Ensure that your description answers this question, rather than just listing what in your opinion are the rock-star features of your app (don’t rely on your audience making the translation from features to benefits).

Include your brand name where relevant. This is especially important if you are planning a series of apps and would like to build a brand around the same. Once again, choose wisely, and feel free to experiment – learn – modify.

4.              Feature in Searches – Increase visibility

App Category – Carefully choose the primary and secondary categories for your app when you submit it to Apple. You can change these anytime through the SDK developers interface that Apple provides to registered developers. Feel free to tweak them and observe improvement (changes) if any to your App Store visibility.

Keywords – The most relevant keywords are the ones in the title, because if there is a match, the app will be shown in the quick-results list (the list that appears as you type your search phrase, and before you hit the search button). Secondary keywords come from the app description. Here too, trial and testing can be used to change the name and description to find optimal search rankings within the App Store.

App Name & Bundle Display Name – These are the two types of app names, and here is how you can use them to your advantage. The longer App Name will show up in the app store (the App Name can be set through the iTunes Connect account). This should be long and keyword rich as discussed earlier.

The shorter Bundle Display Name will show up on the user’s device home screen (the Bundle Display Name can be set through the info.plist file in Xcode). This should be short, crisp and catchy (as to-the-point as possible).

5.              Buzz & Launch – Plan your launch marketing smartly

The good news, especially if you are a talented hardworking bootstrapped developer, is that the success of your marketing plan is not correlated to the number of marketing dollars in your pocket. Instead, it depends directly on the meticulous thought, effort and follow-through you put in to promoting your app organically.

Do your homework – create a plan – implement – observe – learn – modify – implement – observe – learn – modify – implement – observe -….. you get the point.

Here are 5 things you can start with:

1. Draw-up your Target Audience Profile. Ask yourself questions such as who are my core customers? Where do they gather? What do they read, listen and watch? Who and what are their influencers? How do they consume media? Conduct a user survey if need be. Based on the answers you find, chart out your target consumer profile. Based on this information you can identify the specifics of your marketing plan.

For example, which social media tools are most relevant to your target audience – Facebook or Twitter or Hi5 or a combination? Do blogs influence their purchase decisions?

2. App Review Sites. Research app review sites relevant to your target audience and app category. Reach out to the reviewers early on. Engage them with the build-up towards launch by sending periodic (& meaningful) updates.  Ask them to pre-test your app and offer advice, request introductions to their friends in the reviewer-community who might also be interested – get them emotionally invested. Submit your app for review once it is ready.

3. Social Media.  Now that you have determined which social media platforms your audience frequents, you can start creating your brand on those platforms. Choose the Facebook fan page, Twitter account and/or Blog names carefully. Start early and engage your audience gradually and consistently (4 to 6 weeks leading up to product launch would be ideal in most cases). Build conversations, incentivize word-of-mouth, encourage engagement and show them that their opinion matters – once again, get them emotionally invested. Contests, opinion polls and offering useful nuggets of information (even that relate to competition) help.

4. Press.  Establishing yourself as a subject matter expert is the best way to start your PR effort. That’s where your company’s blog becomes important. Next, focus on developing symbiotic relationships with the media. Research the web, talk to industry experts and identify media folks who could serve as champions for your cause – editors, journalists, news directors and influential bloggers. Read, follow and respond to their articles or daily feeds. Build a rapport with them. Monitor all media mentions and traffic sources. Bunch up publicity before you go live to maximize chances of top app rankings.

5. Symbiotic Cross Promotion.  Instead of iAds and generic in-app advertising, which not only cost precious $$ but have yet to prove their effectiveness in generating worthwhile ROI, see if you can build relationships with willing partners to cross promote your app. Do not hesitate to reach out and ask. You will be surprised at how many would be amenable to such an idea, especially if you have a good quality app and are willing to cross promote their apps as well.

Making an app is only half the battle.  Standing out in the marketplace is the other half.  Taking the time and effort to diligently understand your customer and your competition, and then designing your product and marketing to take advantage of each, will go a long way towards your success.  Good luck!

When is it OK to bend your brand rules?

The answer to that question is never, right? Isn’t sticking to your brand rules the whole point of having brand rules?  Brand rules keep companies and their products on track.  They set expectations for employees, retailers and, most importantly, customers.  Common marketing wisdom says that your brand identity and its attributes are sacrosanct.  You have your style guide and you have highly educated and well paid brand managers enforcing your brand rules in order to build brand recognition and brand franchise.  Never mess with the brand rules!

As a sports commentator that I think is an idiot (but watch regardless) often says: not so fast, my friend.  I am here to tell you that there are indeed instances when you should mess with your brand rules.

Bending your brand rules can have positive effects and prevent negative consequences.  The incident below is a good example and pertains to a company translating their brand into a video game.  Some of the names will be changed to protect the guilty.

In a past life I was working at a Big Video Game Publisher and we licensed the video game rights to a blockbuster summer tent-pole movie. Let’s just say the movie was called “Charlie And The Candy Factory” starring Johnny Pedd and directed by Tim Curtain.  Werner Bros. Studios produced the movie and licensed us the video game rights. However, the movie was based on a very popular book and the author’s estate—we’ll call them the Hall Estate—had approval rights on the game because it was their brand.  We started making a great game, befitting the Charlie And The Candy Factory brand.  We submitted all assets—the game design doc, all of the art, everything—to the Hall Estate for approval and they approved everything.  So we continued to build the game.

The trouble started when we sent them the “Alpha” build of the game for approval.  The Hall folks had a problem with it.  You see, Charlie was throwing pieces of candy at his enemies and, the Hall folks said, there is NO violence in Charlie And The Candy Factory. Never mind that they had approved the game design doc.  Never mind that in the book, squirrels kidnap little girls.  It’s not like we gave Charlie an uzi or anything like that; he was just throwing some candy in a manner appropriate for our target audience.  It didn’t matter.  The Charlie brand did not have violence and the Halls would have none of it in their game.  Nine months of work went down the drain.  We had to find a new game and we had only 6 months until the movie premiered (typical development time for such a game would be 18 months).  We scrambled and came up with a good idea that we could execute: we would do a platform game where Charlie had to make it through an adventure in the candy factory by jumping and running past various environmental obstacles.  It’s a proven fun style of gameplay and we could get it done in 6 months.  Let’s roll. Not so fast, my friend, said the Hall Estate.  There’s no “platforming” in the Charlie And The Candy Factory books either.  We cannot have platforming in the Charlie game.  Try again.  Without many options, we made a Charlie puzzle game.  Puzzle games had never been big sellers on the console platforms; and a puzzle game did not fit the youth audience we were going after.  But the Hall Estate thought it fit their brand, so a puzzle game we did.

I don’t have to tell you that the game stunk and did not sell well.  Charlie And The Candy Factory never became the video game brand we hoped it would be.

What if?  What if the Hall Estate bent their brand rules a bit and let us make a fun, action game with Charlie mowing down squirrels with an AK-47, er, I mean, throwing a little candy at his enemies?  I think we would have had a hit game.  I think we would have been able to build a video game franchise for Charlie.  I think the Charlie brand would have benefitted from millions of kids playing fun Charlie video games and engaging in the Charlie brand. I do not think that the Charlie brand would have taken any kind of meaningful hit from bending their rules a bit in this case.  I know the Charlie brand missed an opportunity by not doing such.

So the lesson is this: loosen up a little with the brand rules…when it makes sense.  Evaluate the entire big picture when expanding your brand.  When moving into new media, such as video games, it might make sense to let your brand evolve a little.  It’s ok to bend the brand rules.

By Kelly Bakst – EVP, Production – Brandissimo!, Inc.

People are fond of saying “The three options for delivering a project are good, fast, and cheap.  Pick any two.” – meaning that you can have something good and fast, but it won’t be cheap.  You can have it fast and cheap, but it won’t be good.  You can have it good and cheap, but it won’t be fast.  Those are the options.  The reality of life is, unfortunately, that you need all three.  Nobody wants to wait a long time for something – even if they got a deal on it.  And certainly nobody wants a shoddy product.  So what’s the answer?

Clean, beautiful, adhered-to process.

Understand I’m not talking about “expectation management”.  That almost always means “try and get the customer to accept less than they really want”.  That’s not going to make you any friends (or keep you many customers) for long.  People want value for their money, and they want good quality.  But how can you accelerate the development of whatever it is that you are selling?  Funny you should ask:

1. Start with a clear set of GENERAL goals.  This isn’t the list of DELIVERABLES – it’s what you are trying to ACHIEVE.  You can deliver a fantastic product on time and on budget, and if it doesn’t hit the right target goals, you blew it.  You cannot believe how many people I have seen stand up and say “It’s all done”, and when told that it doesn’t accomplish what it set out to, they respond with “this is what we agreed to do”.  Fail.
2. Build a set of deliverables that absolutely, positively achieve the goals.  You now have a roadmap for a set of goals, so use it.  Remember though:  it’s not a 1-to-1 relationship.  Some deliverables only partially meet the demands of a goal.  Other deliverables fully meet the demands of multiple goals.  Just make sure that everything is covered.  By a lot.
3. Do NOT pick a date for delivery.  You read that right.  The second biggest mistake you can make is to just pick an arbitrary date and try and stick to that.  It’s not that we’re against giving clients delivery dates – we can and we do.  But just not until – wait for it – we know how long things are going to take!  Crazy!  I know that some of you are now yelling, “Wait!  What about projects that have a real deadline?”   Same situation, really.  Instead of giving someone a date, you are telling him or her that you either can or cannot do it on time.  And you’ll be sure.
4. Assign tasks.  This is where having a quality system makes all the difference.  At Brandissimo, we have a custom-built, super slick task management system.  Not everyone has awesome developers (who live on caffeinated beverages) to crank out killer systems like us – so find a good system.  It can be computerized, paper, or whatever – just as long as EVERYONE USES IT.
5. Have everyone put their OWN delivery dates on ALL of his or her tasks.  Sounds crazy, but maybe you have a better idea?  Maybe you think you should just TELL them when it’s due, without understanding what is involved?  No good.  The reason it’s OK to just ask the responsible party for a date is because a) If you have good employees, they are going to give you a date they can absolutely hit, without padding it, and b) If you have bad employees, it’s going to be obvious right away that getting an icon for a “cut” function that looks like a tiny pair of scissors shouldn’t take 4 days.  Good practice is show bad employees the door. Thus you have buy-in from good employees on deliverable dates and can hold them accountable for achieving them.
6. Build in review, fix and approval loops.  Most everything in a project – especially something that involves art/creative folks  – is going to need a round or two of revisions.  Make sure it’s in the schedule, with homework dates for the customer.  Everyone needs to get their stuff done on time – and that includes the reviewers/approvers.
7. Be transparent.  Let everyone (including the customer) know when it’s going to be ready.  This makes everyone on the team aware of how important his or her role is to the overall project, and it shows the customer that you are serious about a quality product.
8. Monitor.  Your project manager (you do have a PM assigned to EVERY project, right?) should be watching like a hawk, making sure that everything that has dependencies is going to be done right on time.  No – you can’t ask an artist to draw faster because a developer needs an art asset sooner.  But you can ask them to be absolutely sure that it’s not going to be late.  Remember – THEY came up with the date.
9. Test like a crazy maniac.  If you don’t have a formal QA team, I highly suggest you consider it.  Making people clearly responsible for testing is the only way to really deliver a quality product.  The test/fix loops you built in to the schedule in step 6 will need to be adhered to just like everything else.
10. Include sanity tests along the way.  Set milestones for reviewing the project AS A WHOLE and making sure that it’s still on track to meet the goals laid out in step 1.  It’s easy to make some small changes that everyone thinks are cool, but that destroy the goals that are most important.

Sounds like a lot, but if you go back and skim those points again – you’ll realize that NONE can be left out without almost guaranteeing a failure at some point.  Stick with this plan, and everyone will be happier in the end.  Your customers, your employees, and even you.