Pulse


GAME DEVELOPMENT - AFRICA INCENTIVE GAMES


Incentive Games: Mastering the art of devolving games


John Gordon, CEO of Incentive Games, explains how the developer devolves its games for the African market's less developed architecture. John offers a compelling argument for operators to truly look after their customers through entertainment, rather than viewing them as commodities.


How do you approach the challenge of effectively adapting your free-to-play and pay-to-play products for the African market?


It was a baptism of fire when we first tried to adopt what we had created in the UK around seven years ago. We took our high-end native apps over to Africa for some of our clients in the region and we found they just didn't work. Te handsets that could receive the material just weren't working quickly enough and there were multiple issues with the network.


We had to attack each one of these barriers individually to essentially devolve what we create in the UK and US, so it was suitable for use in the African market. For every high-end game that works for smartphone and desktop, we then have to create a different application that works on Opera Mini Extreme, Nokia 3210 and other network browsers.


From a technical perspective, how do you


adapt games to users on low-end handsets and restricted java-script browsers whilst maintaining gamification mechanics? How do you deliver a compelling UX whilst remaining light and accessible on low-end devices?


With great difficulty. We start off by designing the high-end version using the gamification mechanics we think will work best following focus groups and testing. Once we have the desired conversions, metrics and data, we then begin the process of devolving the game into a lower end version.


Tis means removing all JavaScript and any dependencies for high-end handsets. We reduce all the data, so any images are converted into icons, but we try to keep the colours the same and make it look as close as possible to the high-end version.


Tere is not a lot of material available on how to write code for Opera Mini Extreme, so


We start off by designing the high-end version using the gamification mechanics we think will work best following focus groups and testing. Once we have the desired conversions, metrics and data, we then begin the process of devolving the game into a lower end version.


P98 WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS


troubleshooting is more a case of trial and error. We are now at a point where we are efficient, but it has taken about six or seven years to get here.


Are Incentive Games the best in the market at devolving high-end games for markets with less developed architecture?


We are the number one worldwide for free-to- play in terms of entries per day and we've got a rich history of doing just that for eight years. In the UK, one of our games was the number one application on the App Store on a few occasions, and we have standout products in the US and Asia. We have built up a strong catalogue of games and shared experience.


Our methodology of examining the science behind game design works and we're lucky enough to have caught the attention of some of the world leaders in gamification who are investors in the company, such as Yu-Kai Chou (who wrote the book Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges and Leaderboards). We are steeped in a tradition of being at the forefront of gamification and putting products first and creating free to play games.


Our clients then started asking us to do virtual products and jackpot games, specifically for Africa, which we now use worldwide. Incentive Games has branched into other verticals, but


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