Opinion: Finding the right gaming app developer
The demand for quality social game developers has never been higher, illustrated by recent big-money deals such as IGT's US$500m acquisition of Double Down. In the week that bwin.party is set to announce a similar, albeit far smaller investment, Popcorn Games CEO Lawrence Gouett explains just how hard finding the right supplier can be.
Finding the right supplier to design and build your gaming app should be easy, right? You just have to Google it and you get thousands of contenders from all corners of the globe that can build your app in days and for next to nothing pricing.
Not so fast. Our social game start up, Popcorn Games, required a team to build our first bingo social game for Facebook.
After a full year we have yet to find the right team. We started our miserable journey by selecting five of the biggest development agencies in Silicon Valley. After talking to over 20 suppliers of all shapes and sizes, our thought was, they have to be good, they have to be fast and we will get an amazing product in the end.
We selected a final supplier, they showed us all kinds of related projects and we were comforted knowing we had selected a winning team. However, their final quote for the project was eight times bigger than our budget reserve.
In a panic we did the unthinkable, we started to hack out all the visionary features that got us excited to build an app in the first place. However, the developer barely budged on their initial quotation.
Then, out of the blue, we stumbled upon the perfect situation. A two man team with some great related games on Facebook. We said we had work for them for the next 10 years if they dealt us a good hand with this first project. Their quote was better, but with one small detail: they would not design to launch phase but just to internal testing phase and they had an elaborate pricing plan to then get us live. Basically hold us hostage all along the road to riches on Facebook. Needless to say, that ended with a short email response.
We finally went to a runner up supplier and they offered us better rates as they had offshore design ‘talent’. There are many companies that have developed great products using teams in locations like Eastern Europe, Argentina or India. Just not in our experience.
After two months of trying to get even a decent logo out of them and a basic app design we had to pull the plug. They didn’t even read our branding documents and after weeks on the job had asked us if women like bingo more than men? Clearly we were in trouble again, this time it was costing us hard dollars in development to get below standard work.
We terminated the contract early and now have to pay penalty fees. One year on and half our development budget gone, all we have is a logo.
We had only one last choice remaining, to move our existing gambling design team onto our Facebook development project, stretching our resources to say the least.
Facebook development clearly is still in the Wild West phase. Too many suppliers, and even more dreamers like us trying to capitalise on the viral social movement is a recipe for disaster. We know of several partners in the sector that have even paid for app development and had the designers take off with their code and designs once the money stopped rolling in.
For now, my advice is to stick to what you know and don’t assume you can outsource the most critical of solutions in a market full of experts willing to take your money for a ride down the social highway.
Lawrence Gouett is CEO GameVillage and Popcorn Games. He has over 12 years’ experience in online bingo consulting and currently runs a play for cash bingo community in the UK.