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MEET THE DEVELOPERS GREEN JADE GAMES
Green Jade Games: Te point of impact
Green Jade Games offers slots, K.O. slots and arcade games. In our latest Meet the Developer interview, John Chasoulidis Abela, Head of Games, explains how the design process for these respective game types differs and the learnings that can be gleaned from hyper-casual social titles.
you have a great time playing. I was always finding things that could be changed whether visually, mechanically, coding, math. From a very young age, I was always trying to modify games or create new levels in games that weren't always legitimate.
What does a 'successful game' mean to you?
John Chasoulidis Abela, Head of Games, Green Jade Games
How did you become involved in game design?
Game design came naturally to me having started as a 3D animator, a programmer, and a level designer. I found it was my passion because of my love for structure and experiences in a game. We used to be called 'game developers' because we usually came up with most of the elements for the game, so I came into game design after six or seven years in the industry starting with web games, then with mobile and console, before moving into gambling games.
Where does your passion for design stem from?
I always like to see how things work and how to make them better. With games, this is about how your experience can become better so that
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Tat's a question I always find difficult to answer because I don't mark the success of a game purely financially, but when it has an impact. By impact, I mean in terms of visuals and what the game made you feel when you played it. In most cases, even just having word of mouth lets me know a game is successful; if people talk about it, that's a successful game.
What game are you most proud of at any stage of your career? Why?
I'm proud of plenty of games. I'm really proud of a particular one that wasn't a game that released massively; it was released in the first version of the Windows 8 store and tackled the ability to use gamepads with Windows 8 games, which had never been done before. It was actually created for a competition run by Microsoft (that we ended up winning), which was to develop something with an innovative feature in it.
Te innovation that we wanted to include was to counter the fact that you could download games from the Windows Store, but couldn't play them without a mouse and keyboard - you
couldn't play them as a gamer. Xbox existed by then, but the connection of an Xbox controller wasn't possible with Windows 8. So we made a simple platformer featuring a steampunk cowboy trying to save his cows called "Never a Cow-ard". I'm proud of the team and the whole production (that we did back then in just five days). Te whole competition and the technological challenge was a good experience.
How long does a typical game take to produce from concept stage through to going live on operator lobbies?
It varies, especially now with Arcade that we're going to be introducing; it's vastly different. To give you a straight answer, a slot can take two to three months of total development from concept to release, but then there are cases where they have taken six to eight months. Tis depends on the number of new features and innovations that we're trying to include and the amount of polish over the final product.
I don't mark the success of a game purely financially, but when it has an impact. By impact, I mean in terms of visuals and what s game made you feel when you played it. In most cases, even just having word of mouth lets me know a game is successful; if people talk about it, that's a successful game.
Te number of markets and the compliance challenges that we have also affect timings, so it's a very broad development cycle.
How does the design process differ between slots and arcade skill games?
A 100 per cent difference. Te only similarity is that we're trying to provide fun gambling and gaming experiences. Given that we are
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