Story of Pet Shows

Year 2012, October

We needed to find couple of concepts fast to present to an investor. I was playing a few different manager games at the time and we thought that manager game would be one possibility. Idea was to publish the game to Habbo hotel so we wanted to use a theme that suited both boys and girls. Our friend Ari gave us an idea to use pets as a theme and we liked it.

Basic idea behind the concept is to manage a team of pets. Pets have three different age phases. When they are puppies, player can train them, when they are adults, they can participate in competitions and when they are seniors they can breed with other pets to get new puppies.

It has taken about two years to complete the game. During that time almost everything has been rewritten or changed. Even tools that we use to create the game has been changed. Basic idea behind the concept is still there, but the whole game experience is totally different. Latest big change came at the beginning of this year when Pet Shows was accepted as AppCampus project. We added mini-games to the concept that are used to train the pets and to compete with other players teams.

This is just a beginning

Few days ago we got the news that AppCampus review team has accepted our release candidate and we can publish the game when we see fit. This is a huge step and allows us to continue to the next phase. Now we can start gathering feedback from the players. We will carefully go through the feedback and develop game further to give best possible experience for the players. It is hard to describe how exciting it is when you are just about to get real information from the real customers and to learn what they think about the game. All the feedback is good. If players don't like the game, we try to find out why and make the game better. If players like the game, then we are happy and continue to bring new features for them to enjoy.

Pet Shows

What is it about? Pet Shows is most probably different than you have used to see with pet themed games. The game has over 300 different pet profiles to collect, 5 different mini-games to attend and possibility to compete against other player teams from all over the world. It is about being best pet trainer in town. There is no payment wall and everything in the game can be achieved without using real money. Real money is used only to buy in game currency that can be used to help player to progress faster.

Pet Shows is now available in Windows Phone store. Check it out.

Onto something

Three years

Long ago, I had a dream. I wanted to create games. Over 15 years ago I realized, that I don't have to do it alone. I tried, and I failed. I wasn't ready. At 2011 we studied the feasibility of an idea to start a game studio. Result of that study is Seepia Games. We managed to put together a small dream team without game industry experience. Fortunately we got a good adviser to our board to help us learn quick. Still it took about three years before we feel that we understand what it takes. Succeeding in game industry is really not the easiest way to make living. It really needs that cliche of passionate and dedicated team every investor is trying to find.

Experience

You can study and research as much as you like. Before you have real life experience, it does not matter much. We are very fact driven team. You can imagine how much more fun it is to estimate product revenues after you have some. Before that we can use some industry averages from the web, and oh boy how far from the truth that takes us. We have been lucky. Our first game Tetrablok was published by Sulake in Habbo hotel and we got a one million downloads for the game. A good number for the first one you think. It did not perform well in monetisation, but gave us a valuable experience about synchronous multiplayer game and free-to-play business model. Our second game Permia - Duels has been one of the top ranked collectible card games in Windows Phone store and has gathered about one million downloads so far when all the platforms are combined. We really succeed with ASO to pull those numbers. Product is good and we have ideas to make it great. After a couple of next updates we will know how it goes. More experience is coming soon with our next AppCampus game Pet Shows. It is combination of everything that we have learned so far. The concept itself is already two years old and the journey with it has been really long. We have practically developed the game three times during this time. Thanks to Visionplus for their patience with us.

Pet Shows - Main menu first concept

Ready

We started with the vision to create free-to-play cross-platform multiplayer games. First three years we used to learn. Today our vision is to create free-to-play cross-platform games for mobile and tablets. We know what it takes from the product perspective and we are ready to unleash our full potential. For that we have started a process to get investors for the company. We are looking for investors for seed round. We hope that we can find ones with good knowledge about paid marketing. That is something that we don't have experience yet with our team because we have not used paid marketing to get current figures. Our first step is to participate The Web Summit - Dublin next week and Slush later this month. We will release Pet Shows on Windows Phone store later this month and we are also preparing Permia - Duels for Apple store and Google Play. It looks like we still have something to do before year is done and should have something to write about to incoming blog posts as well. Stay tuned.

Pet Shows - Main menu from the game

AppCampus

Today we reached our first #1 position in Windows Phone store in the card games category in Brazil. This is a good moment to look back at how we got here.

First concept

Already in 2011 we had an idea of collectible card game Permia - Tournaments. We started working with the title and in March 2012 we hada a working prototype of the game to show in Game Connection - America. (Concept demo) We met with over 20 publishers and most of them liked the idea behind the game. The concept was early stages and we were a brand new team so we did not manage to start co-operation with any of them. We believed in the concept and we continued working towards the closed beta launch. In June 2012 we launched the closed beta mostly because we promised to do so. It really was not in any shape for release, but it was something. At that time we concentrated on selling the idea to the publishers or some funding partners that could help us to continue with the product. For that purpose we produced a new trailer to be shown at Gamescom 2012. (Trailer)

The result was quite similar. People liked the concept but were not ready to take the risk with it. One of our last hopes for the product was AppCampus. They had started the program where they give grants for promising projects with a 6-month exclusivity period. They had an event here in Lappeenranta where they presented the program to us. We sent the application and started waiting for the results. After a couple of weeks they granted 20k€ for our project. That was not enough for us to really deliver the first idea of the concept, but it definitely helped us. It was part of the bigger picture where we managed to get a Tekes project approved as well.

Birth of Permia - Duels

We did not start immediately with the design milestone. The reason was that we really did not have enough resources to continue with the original concept and our hands were full with the other projects. Almost half a year passed before we were ready to continue with the program. One of the close colleagues came up with an new idea for more simple card game that might be more feasible to do with our resources. We created a design plan based on this new concept for AppCampus and they approved it. We were in a hurry because financially it was really tight situation at the time. In 3-4 months we passed the first release candidate to the AppCampus quality team and at the time they were not satisfied with it. There was one big feature missing and the quality of the game was not good enough. That was the first wake up call to really take Windows Phone environment seriously.

AppCademy

We continued to work with the missing feature and decided to apply for the AppCademy (AppCampus acceleration program). We were really sceptical about the acceleration program at first. One month away from home listening to lectures and coaching. Participation means that product would be on hold during that time. However, from the first day we were satisfied with the decision to join the program. We were given top level coaching in all areas from production to branding, marketing and user experience. The time spent there helped us go towards better quality than we would have been able to do without it.

Promotion

We don't have plenty of resources to promote our app. I think it is a same situation with most of the independent teams at start. Today it is crucial to get visibility for your app to have any possibility to really succeed in the market. After we released our game at December 2013 in Windows Phone store we really did not know what to expect. We knew that we have possibility to get some promotion from Microsoft and Nokia if we have good ratings. But the amount of support we have had from AppCampus program has been amazing. First month went almost on our own. It was Christmas time and we were little too late to be part of the Christmas promotions. We used that time well and noticed that downloads from Russia were progressing well without any promotion. We discussed with our Nokia contact about possibility to have local campaign in Russia that we will support by localizing the game. Our Nokia contact was successful and the result was whole week featured in Russia. At the same week we were featured all around the word and it was really good campaign for us. We still have most downloads from the Russia and they are really important market for us. After that we have worked closely with our Nokia contact to plan different campaigns and we have supported those campaigns with game content whenever it has been possible. We have updated the game often and have developed it further.

Final words

If we think about the support from AppCampus. The first thing is the grant. It can be something from 20k€ to 70k€. Money is always welcome and helps. The real difference comes from the other forms of support. They really push for the quality and help us developers to get good ratings with better quality apps. AppCademy is excellent acceleration program and is valued much more than any grant they give. And after those they put so much effort to really help us to promote our apps in store. That is something that is hard to buy with the money. I can imagine that without them Permia - Duels would not have over 260 000 downloads today and our #1 store position in Brazil.

Big thanks to the AppCampus staff. You have been a great asset on our journey to app developer. You have shown the possibilities that are in Windows Phone environment and we are really happy to be part of the program.

Twenty fourteen (and a little about 2013)

Happy New Year and… drum roll please, happy 2^nd birthday Seepia Games. Yes, we’ve been at this for two years now. Little longer in fact, Seepia Games was accepted into the Finnish company register in January 2012 but we did get our hands dirty a couple months earlier.

Anyway, 2014. We released Permia ‑ Duels for Windows phone and on Habbo Hotel last month and will now start working to bring the game to other platforms, namely Google Play and App Store. We also have a lot of new players to take care of now so staying in touch with you all is a priority.

The feedback we have received has been great. Our players have supplied us with useful bug reports, helpful feedback, good suggestions etc. Even those who have disliked the game have been very forthcoming – we do like to also hear from those who tried the game and for one reason or another did not find it enjoyable. Keeping an open mind and listening to the players is paramount. In our first update, we added a number of new languages (e.g. Russian, French and German) and made some changes to our ranking system.

We’ve had many questions about our pet-themed game, Pet Shows.  We are (finally) making progress on this front! The game is coming along and 2014 has given us some new ideas. There is not much more to say yet, but we hope to have the game in alpha stage quite soon. It probably comes as no surprise that the alpha launch will be made in Habbo Hotel. Just bear with us a little longer!

 I don’t like to make New Year’s resolutions (no one ever keeps those promises anyway) but I will say, promise even, that Seepia Games will continue to interact with our players, listen to feedback and make great games.

Have a good year!

Thinking agile

Personally, this is my first ever blog post. I am the CEO of Seepia Games. It means that you can blame me if anything goes wrong. If something does not go wrong, please ask me and I will tell who you should thank for it. For me, it is good to start with agile way of thinking. That is something I am known for if you trust LinkedIn endorsements.

For Seepia Games, agile means focus and readiness for change. It is also good not to be afraid of making mistakes.

Ready for a change

Things very rarely go as planned. There are different reasons for that. Sometimes plans are way too optimistic. Those who know me know that my plans are always way too optimistic. Sometimes you don't have all the information available that will affect the execution of the plans. That one has drastically affected us. Agile way of thinking gives us the possibility to change our direction. There have been multiple situations already on our journey to use this possibility. One of the biggest one was changing our target from creating Permia - Tournaments to Tetrablok and Pet Shows games. First eight months of the company were used purely for creating a hardcore collectible card game. We created the working prototype and even a first closed beta version of the game, but we did not manage to find a funding publisher for the game during our trips to the different parts of the world. Then we encountered a possibility to have some funding for a couple of smaller games targeted at the Habbo hotel. It was a very fast decision from our team. On Thursday we had a discussion with a project funding organization that they think that we should make small games to Habbo. On Friday we had a board meeting and on Monday we had two game idea suggestions for the project funding organization. Few weeks after that we froze the development of Permia - Tournaments and we started building two new games.

Focus

Small team do not have time to do wrong things. Keeping the focus is one of the most crucial and hardest thing to do. Ilkka Paananen from Supercell said in a presentation that for them focus means saying no. For us it often feels that there is about three times more things to do than we have people to do it. I think that it is quite common with startups. This means that the team has to prioritize all the time what to do. We have had a very good understanding about our vision and what are our strengths. We have not been very good at explaining that to others though. Even so, we have made quite many mistakes that can be counted as loss of focus. One of the biggest mistakes for us was to start doing two games at the same time. We currently have a team that can effectively do one game at the time. About six months ago we decided to concentrate on one game even when we have a pressure from the customers, partners and from ourselves. That is the only way for us currently to keep the quality of work at a high level. Agile way of thinking reminds us to prioritize most valuable tasks at the top of our task list.

Mistakes

Everybody makes mistakes. It has been less than a couple of years that we have been working to build our game company. I can count multiple mistakes during that time. Mostly the reasons behind the mistakes have been lack of experience and knowledge. Some are based on our personalities and some just because we have not had time to process the information enough. When you make mistake based on lack of experience and knowledge, you may think that if you had used more of your time making studies and plans before making the decisions, you would be making less mistakes. One can use all the time in a world just learning, studying and analysing. When do you know that you have enough information. For me I don't even try to fool myself to think that decision I make is the only possible one. For the current information I have, it feels like it, but tomorrow when I have more information my decision might be different one. The agile way of thinking gives us a possibility to make decision based on current information. With keeping the focus we go full speed ahead and if or when we encounter new information we can change our direction based on new current knowledge and experience. It is not a problem, if you make mistakes. It is a problem if you don't learn from them.

Results

Our focus is in cross-platform multiplaying games. We want to give our players good entertainment with some need of using brains during the game play. We have created platform that enables us to create good quality multiplaying experience and that enables us to concentrate on game content in a long run. There is still much to do before the platform is ready and productized but it is in a very good shape already. We have published one game in Habbo hotels globally. It has been translated in 11 languages and over 850 000 people have tried the game. Earlier this week we delivered our first real release candidate for Windows Phone 8 store review of our Permia - Duels title, the first Permia-themed collectible card game. Release date will be published in near future.  Our third game Pet Shows is close to be ready as well. It has been in that phase already about half a year, but because of our concentration for one game at the time, we have not had possibility to finish the game. Currently we are three full-time entrepreneurs, one part time architect, one advisor and a partner organisation. We thank all the customers, trainees, board members and subcontracting partners from the journey so far.

Please, sign up for the Permia - Duels beta.

- Jani Tietäväinen / CEO of Seepia Games