Interview: Fatfoogoo

CasualGaming.biz: Why is the digital river acquisition important and what does it mean to the company?
Martin Herdina: There are two reasons why this important to us. Number one, it was really important for us to get the proper financial backing because we have been funded by Austrian VCs, and having a brand like Digital River as mother ship is something that gives you a huge amount of credibility, specifically when you deal with e-commerce when dealing with financially sensitive data like we are

It helps a lot in market positioning when you have such a strong partner as the  new owner of the company.



The second reason basically is simply the global reach. We’re really strong in North America, we’re really strong in Europe. Through Digital River, on one hand we get a very quick exposure within North America, and at the same time Digital River has a lot of customer accounts like Electronic Arts and THQ, who basically will look at solutions like those we provide in the future.

There’s some natural synergies on those large accounts in those markets that Digital River is already working in.


So is that kind of business development an ongoing focus for Fatfoogoo are going to see more expansion in this regard?  

Yes. Basically we are now have 12 titles, so things developed quite a bit since we last talked. We are really strong in Europe, and out of 12 titles 10 of those are based in Europe, in different segments; in the social gaming stage, in the Facebook gaming space and in the MMO space.

So basically this has been very successful in the last six months, and in fact that will increase our business development efforts, specifically in North America, in order to go into the East and focus on the Asian markets.
 
That kind of expansion to the East, America and in Europe is very ambitious and impressive on its own, but you are handling perhaps one of the most dynamic sectors in gaming in terms of the kind of games you support.

What are the challenges, especially as the casual gaming model and online gaming evolve?
The main thing for us is to build maintain and operate a common set of features but still be able to adapt it for the specific requirement of partners, because specifically when you;re picking up clients in the MMO stage the in the social gaming stage or the casual gaming stage of course they all have individual requirements and individual needs and desires.

But still at the same time there still a common set of requirements like revenue recognition, like fraud, and like payments, which are common across all those different segments. For us the greatest challenge is keeping a stable software and basically leveraging its best practises from one customer and bring this over to another, or from one market segment then try to make use of learnings into other client segments and projects as well.



What is that makes you so confident that micro-transactions are and will continue to be the main monetisation solution in the type of games you deal with?
Well there are different indicators, right? The one we have the best knowledge of is from our own clients. We have tremendous growth rates; our trajectories are running stable, and are done on a monthly basis: just from our existing clients who are all in the micro-transaction space. It’s really encouraging and exciting to see those growth rates.

At the same time when you look at market developments like Turbine going free-to-play with Lord of the Rings, like Electronic Arts taking over PlayFish and therefore heavily investing in the free-to-play microtransaction space, these are really important indicators that this will be the model of the future.

So you can address casual gamers and you can address other target areas like the triple-A MMO were you have huge development costs and were you have long developments cycles and you have to engage with the hardcore players who are willing to spend £10 to 15 pounds per month to really be able to play the game and be in the community.

Another question I wanted to ask is what it is that a game operator gets from working with Fatfoogoo? What kind of freedoms do they get in terms of what you handle for them and what kind of responsibilities you take on for them?
We don’t take on a massive amount of clients, so basically we have a really small number of clients; as I told you we’ve not more than 12 currently live, and we work very closely with those clients. Of course we have all the features, we focus on all the spaces; the payment phase, the virtual currency space, the virtual good space.

Something we really help our clients with is allowing them to focus on the game in particular. When doing that we work a lot with our clients we help a lot to maximise their revenues we work a lot around usability testing, AB testing and revenue maximisation, just to make sure our clients do perform well and have a strong partner and that’s why we’re here.



So you offer a very thorough service for anyone would start working with Fatfoogoo?
Yes that’s correct. Like you said we’re not a sign up platform where we sign up 100 game developers per month. We are very eager to build up a partnership with our client and really develop growth and revenue together.
 


Another thing I wanted to talk about is almost looking at the wider field of online games and games that rely on monetisation. What kind of trends do you see dominating those kinds of games in coming months and years?
Good question. We see a lot of course and its really exciting to see what you can do through platforms like Facebook or other social networks like the ITunes App Store were they have relatively low development costs, you can reach massive user groups, you can build up a community within super short time lines and you can monetise very quickly.



You can see very fast if your games perform as well, and change things, and it’s totally a new generation in comparison to triple-A games than they used to be.

Personally I’m curious to see how consoles will develop, and if they will also follow the trends that we see now in the PC space. Will they have casual games in the future? Will they allow micro-transaction models in the future? Will they somehow interact with communities and social networks?

This is something I believe is the reason why casual gaming has reached these levels; because of the community and interaction and basically going one step further. 

And really I’m interested to see how platforms like Onlive will do in the future – if this kind of cloud computing and distributed computing power principle for triple-A games will be the future. I do like the concept but I'm curious to see how this will be accepted in the market.