When Hao Su Wang was finishing his Master’s in Marketing & Strategy of Packaging in 2008, he surely didn’t imagine that 10 years later he would be an expert in game publishing and production.
It all started by chance while he was looking for an internship in order to complete his Master’s. “I threw my CVs around in France and a small game company in Marseille accepted my CV and gave me an offer. And there I started my gaming career”, says Wang.
When siblings Isabel and Andrés Tallos set about creating Age of Aces, an arcade game for mobiles based around World War II planes, with another partner in 2012, they surely didn’t imagine that they would become experts in the free-to-play industry.
If creating a successful game is hard, imagine what’s involved in laying the foundations of a new AAA franchise at the dawn of a new console era. The successful franchise has now reached 11 main games, eight spin-offs and more than 100 million copies sold. That’s why, at F2P Campus, we are so grateful that Stéphane came to share some of his production knowledge on how to turn an idea into a successful video game.
With more than 1 trillion games played and more than 5 million years invested by players in the game (enough to build 6,257 new Empire State Buildings!), at this point it’s clear that it has been a huge success for King and Krogh as well as for the free-to-play videogame industry. As a result, many people ask themselves the same question: How do you get a game about candies to break all records?
On Thursday, August 2, we were lucky enough to have two experts in free-to-play videogame art and marketing, Isabel and Andrés Tallos from Everguild, at F2P Campus.
Their conference, which took place in the auditorium of the Vitoria-Gasteiz Artium Museum, gave us the opportunity to learn about their experience in the industry and take home some tips for making better games.
When Nacho Pintos burst into the videogame industry eight years ago with Flee, a game that emulates the old Nintendo Game & Watch games, he was fulfilling his childhood dream. After years as a software engineer he took the leap and turned the final project of his post-graduate course in videogames into a title acclaimed by critics and players alike.
F2P Campus, the first campus focussed on the development of free-to-play videogames, was launched today in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque Country. The ceremony took place at the site of the campus, the Artium museum, and included institutional representation from the Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council, the Álava Regional Government and the Basque Government.