Thought Leaders in Online Gaming: Martin Rosinski, Chief Technical Officer Palringo (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I would like to spend the next segment of the interview double-clicking on those two areas. Tell us what you see happening in the casual gaming world. What does the lay of the land look like? What are the trends of the casual gaming space? We should talk both about web and mobile and separately. Then we’ll do the same thing for the in-chat gaming industry.

Martin Rosinski: In the case of the casual gaming industry, we’re seeing a wide array of game releases that are being made with beautifully executed visual concepts. It’s only matured as a result of the advent of higher-powered portable mobile devices that are relatively inexpensive. There’s an explosion of titles across genres and things are looking exciting and promising for the industry. One of the gaps that we noticed in what’s happening at the moment is there is this landscape of disparate games that users play but often felt relatively lonely in that gameplay. For the type of casual gaming genre that we operate in, we find that a lot of the social interactions and discussions around that has to happen on third-party platforms that are often imperfectly adapted to those kinds of conversations. This is something which we felt was well-placed to bridge that gap and to bring back the social and collaborative aspect to the casual game play landscape.

Sramana Mitra: I understand what your perspective is. I want to know, for example, what are the top trends in casual gaming in general?

Martin Rosinski: The top trends in casual gaming mostly revolve around developing relatively simple and addictive gameplay concepts but providing a visually beautiful, immersive world for users. King released hundreds of titles, all executed to perfection in terms of visual beauty and covering the broad spectrum of gameplay types.

Sramana Mitra: What are you seeing on mobile versus on the web?

Martin Rosinski: We’re seeing an industry-wide transition from Facebook games on the web, which were the dominant form of casual gaming over the last decade, and progressing more to games being distributed in the form of apps on mobile devices as platforms have matured to the point where the capabilities of mobile devices rival desktop PCs. It’s a very compelling platform for gameplay.

What we are not seeing much of at the moment is gameplay that works well across platforms between mobile and web. We tend to see either one or the other. It’s something that we’re trying to address. The next wave of products that we are creating are cross-platform and you can start off playing them on a desktop and continue playing them on your mobile.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about in-chat gaming. What does the landscape look like in in-chat gaming? Can you give us some examples of in-chat games that are doing particularly well?

Martin Rosinski: This is quite interesting because it’s a relatively new concept for us. I’m not really aware of anyone that has executed it this well or at any larger scale. We’ve had a lot of little games spring up inside chat environments but they were typically mediated by users with very simple games. In terms of these games that facilitate large collaborations between groups or wars amongst groups and bringing in users from the same group in a way that allows an ongoing game to last and survive the influx and exit of participants, this is something that was an idea that emerged while watching the dynamics of our community and crafting a whole new genre of gameplay that we’re still refining and perfecting.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s actually focus on the in-chat gaming landscape. What do you see as trends and opportunities in that area? I think the casual gaming landscape is more played out. In chats, from what I know and what I’m hearing from you, it’s less played out.

Martin Rosinski: It’s an emerging aspect of gameplay—new enough that no significant trends have really had a chance to emerge yet. We see a lot of players on desktop who do chat in game that’s usually closely linked to their games. In terms of focusing on this community chat, it’s so new that we feel like we’re leading the creation and establishment of a new genre, which doesn’t leave much space for established trends to have emerged yet.

Sramana Mitra: Let me put the question differently. What trends are you trying to shape? What trends do you like to lead the industry into?

Martin Rosinski: We are looking at exploring ways to create games that are ongoing between groups of people that are ad hoc and can be joined and exited at will in a way that parallels these multiplayer online gaming world, but revolves entirely around a conversation running in one or more groups. We’re really looking at creating gaming that has the social aspect and human interchange at its very heart.

Sramana Mitra: Very good. It was nice talking to you.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Gaming: Martin Rosinski, Chief Technical Officer Palringo
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