Mark Skaggs still remembers the weeks after the hit Facebook game, FarmVille, went live. As one of its co-creators, the game industry veteran recalls how it started out as a social Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game, before developer Zynga pivoted it to the avatar that became well-known across the online world. “We wanted to develop a fun, fast and simple game, because that’s what the audience wanted. We released it at 8 p.m. on a Friday night, and our product manager announced a targeted DAU (Daily Active Users) of 9,000, which we thought was insane. We went on to achieve 25,000, and in two weeks, crossed a million. Then, it became a question of: how can we continue giving players what they want? How can we keep going?”
A lifelong fan of video games, Mark started off with arcade space war games and fell in love with early Nintendo and PC titles.
After a stint at Texas Instruments, making software for chip designers and later making desktop publishing software, Mark decided to cut his teeth on making games. “I had done programming, graphic design and also played music. Once I had my MBA, it felt like a good combination, so I started a game company, which is not a path I recommend,” he says, adding, “Doing an industry study of making games is very different from making one.”
Four years and three games later, Mark decided to move on and joined Westwood Studios, which was acquired by game giant Electronic Arts (EA). This is where Mark worked on some of the games he is best known for — Command & Conquer: Red Alert and C&C Generals, apart from the critically-acclaimed Battle For Middle-Earth, based on The Lord of the Rings books.
It was when he joined Zynga that he began working on web-based social games such as Mafia Wars, FarmVille and The Ville – a transition that was just what he needed.
“By then, making PC games had become what I like to call the 50-million-dollar dice roll, where you spend millions on developing a title and hope it works out. So, I took a break and eventually went to Zynga, where I worked on these games that had to load like web pages, instead of massive projects. So rather than complex gameplay, the focus shifted to raising production values.”
This new ecosystem came with unique challenges. Where PC and console games used to stick to defined parameters that changed slowly over product cycles that spanned decades, online social games depended on platforms such as Facebook that were evolving every day.
“The only thing moving faster than the games industry was the web industry; so, games on the Web developed rapidly. There was a time when FarmVille helped drive Facebook’s growth; over time, that changed as Facebook expanded. Keeping up with it all has been a whirlwind,” he agrees.
Having worked on large-scale PC titles and mobile games with a social component, Mark does not subscribe to the idea that the popularity of one is the death of another.
“When someone says PC vs. mobile, I look for parallels in other industries. When television came, movies kept going, and now we have web episodes, which are impacting television, but it is still going. It’s a different package for a different part of your day. While waiting to meet someone, I may take out my mobile and have a short session, while the PC is geared towards longer sessions with more complex controls. It’s the social aspect that has changed the game most. Earlier, you used to have a network of friends you played against, and now you have your entire social friends list available to you.”
Mark, who has now left Zynga and joined as director of Bangalore-based Moonfrog Labs, a mobile games start-up founded by ex-Zynga India employees and famous for the Android game Teen Patti Gold, is looking to apply his experience in developing games for the Indian mobile market. He is, however, adamant about not reinventing the wheel. “It’s about trying to understand the consumer and play patterns in different regions. Teen Patti has already proven that familiar concepts such as card games work well here. New isn’t always the answer. A few years ago, you had Indian branded jeans and foreign ones. Everyone wanted the latter, but now Indian jeans are in. Give the consumers what they want instead of going ‘Look, here’s an import’.”
