How to Start a Mobile Studio, with Travis Boatman

Jordan: 00:00

Welcome to Playmakers, the game industry podcast. Whether you work at a studio, publisher, service provider, or startup, this is the podcast that will give you all the information and entertainment you need to succeed in the game industry. Who am I? Just your friendly neighborhood veteran designer and producer, Jordan Blackman.

In each episode of Playmakers, I go to work uncovering insights, tactics, and know-how from a wide range of game industry luminaries. My goal? To help you win the game of making games. Are you ready? Then let's begin.

All right, we are back. It's another episode of Playmakers podcast, but something is different, and here's what that something is. I'm on vacation, so I'm on a different microphone. I've got a whole different vibe going. Feels good. It's nice, but it hasn't stopped me from making sure that we get our episode to you because we have a really good one with this interview with Travis Boatman.

Travis is the CEO and founder of Carbonated, an LA-based mobile game studio. He's also a 25-year veteran of the game industry. He's been in mobile alone for 20 years. He served as a senior VP at Zynga and at Electronic Arts, where he led global studios and mobile game strategy. So, Travis is a really intelligent and effective leader and thinker in the mobile game space. And we have kind of a deep dive into his process of working with his founders to think through what he calls the thesis of his studio, the thesis of their studio.

That thesis consists of these pillars that he has, which is the technology side, the business side, and what he calls the appeal side. In fact, I think he says engineering, business, and appeal. So, we go deep into those. We also go into some of the decisions that they made creating Carbonated around things like: Are they going to be a single-game studio or a multi-game studio? Should they start with work for hire or should they start by doing their own project? So, we really dive deep into all that sort of stuff.

If you are interested in starting a studio or kind of understanding the considerations that go into that, you're going to love this episode. If you know someone who is doing that, then please share this episode with them. It's going to help them. It helps the show. And it's going to make you look super cool. So please do that if you know someone who would enjoy this. With all that said, I know that you are going to love this interview. So, let's get right down to it. Here we go with Travis Boatman.

Travis, welcome to Playmakers. It's really great to have you on. It's funny, 'cause every time I want to say "It's Travis Boatman!" I don't know why. Do other people want to just add that in there? That might just be me.

Travis: 02:45

It's possible, might not be the first time somebody's modified my name in conversations.

Jordan: 02:50

I think the most important thing to know about you, Travis, is that you are the person who convinced me to get AirPods.

Travis: 02:55

There we go.

Jordan: 02:55

Made your life a little bit better and more expensive. I'm like seven pairs in now, but I see you've got... what are those? The new ones, right? The new Apple?

Travis: 03:03

Yes, these are the AirPod Max's, and they're very expensive. Normally I wouldn't do that. I can't remember who—maybe it was Zach Norman, one of the founders of Jammed Up—but he originally told me, "Do a pie chart of your life, and you look at the time you spend doing things, that's where you should put your money. So, you should have a really good bed because you spend eight hours a day in it." And I thought it was a very wise thing to say.

Travis: 03:24

So, I thought about the time I spend building video games and on this topic, and a lot of time in front of a computer. So, I invested in good equipment: good cameras, good headphones, a good comfortable chair, good ergonomics for the office. I spend a lot of my time sitting there. I see you have a much better mic than I do, so that's on my list of to-dos—to get a better mic. So, I'm jealous.

Jordan: 03:45

I mean, I've been kind of doing the same thing. I imagine a lot of people have been during the pandemic. It must've been very good for mic sales and headphone sales and fancy chair sales.

Jordan: 03:55

So, you're a guy who, when I think of you, I think of a really awesome producer who very quickly rose up to executive producer, to vice president, to senior vice president, and now runs your own studio. And I sort of think you, and correct me if I'm wrong about this, Travis—when I think about you, I think of a sort of classic EA-style producer who is essentially a born entrepreneur type or intrapreneur, where you're doing similar things that you would as an entrepreneur but inside a corporate environment. Would you say that's a fair description of your background and skillset?

Travis: 04:29

Yeah. I'm sort of a... I don't think I'm that unusual in this space, but I've always been a really good problem solver. And I think my driver for being in video games and why I love this business so much is that my primary driver is I love making something and entertaining players with that thing that I built or was part of a team that built it.

Jordan: 10:46

So when you say they're in order, what do you mean like chronological order in terms of how you think about them as a studio? Like what does that mean for you that they're in a particular order?

Travis: 10:54

That you need to sort of appreciate them in that order because obviously if you don't either partner with technology—and these days, you can use that relatively easily, something like Unity—you need to solve for your technology first. Ultimately, your game sits on a technology stack. There is no game without technology, to put it simply. A lot of business entrepreneurs move into games and, I think, overly discount how important the technology part of this industry is. It's also where a lot of innovation comes from. Truly, even game mechanics are often pioneered on top of technical innovation but are forgotten about.

Travis: 11:25

I think a lot of the reasons why battle royale genres and multiplayer genres are doing so well right now is because of multiplayer tech that scales. You can do these multiple hundred-person matches all at the same time. That technology powers these new game modes, which in turn powers the appeal, and then the businesses sit on top of it.

Jordan: 11:45

So engineering is kind of like the whole thing of what is unlocked right now by the current technology. What does that enable?

Travis: 11:52

There's always this technical arms race in all games. It's true in mobile, and it's not always graphics. A lot of times today, there's a lot going on with NFTs and blockchain. I'm not an expert in that, but that is a technology driving innovation. It wasn’t just a business idea, it's technology powering it from the bottom up. Unity is a great example—it's an amazing technical engine provided to studio creators to build amazing products. Unreal, with a lot of their new technology, is also pretty amazing. These engines are powering new kinds of games. Service providers like Amazon and Apple are pushing device capabilities with Apple Silicon and the M1. These devices are getting more powerful.

Travis: 12:37

That's a really big technology driver. It's pushing the quality and business models of games forward. I think understanding the foundation of all video game industries, sitting on these technology pillars, is just a wise thing. It doesn’t mean you have to build them yourself—you can leverage them—but understanding what's changing and why is key. It's also one of the reasons people can sustain long careers in video games. You have to keep learning the new technology, devices, systems, software, and services being provided.

Travis: 13:14

That's all technology moving forward. I think the fashionable part of games, like the appeal, look, feel, and brands, always changes and is fluid. But it doesn't march forward the way technology does. Technology is progressive—it just moves forward. To stay relevant in games, you've got to keep learning and moving forward with technology.

Jordan: 13:40

I love that. One of the things about games that appeals to me is there's always something new to do and learn. And your point is: "Hey, this is opportunity." Essentially, where the puck is going is what's happening in tech, and you can build a studio around that space you can see.

Travis: 13:59

Yeah, and I’ll be funny here. The first platform I ever worked on was Philips CD-i in the late '80s, early '90s. Imagine if I was the best Philips CD-i studio in the world. You'd be out of business today because it doesn't exist anymore. Same with Genesis, PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2, early PCs without graphics cards, first-gen graphics cards, the first flip phones, the first iPhone.

Travis: 14:25

All that stuff is gone. So if you build expertise and never advance in technology, you become a dinosaur. To stay relevant, you've got to keep learning the latest thing. There's a downside to betting too hard on future technology and missing timing, not having a big enough market, or it being too complex to build a game on top of it. But like you said, if you can figure out where the puck is going and time it right, you're on the front edge.

Travis: 14:52

Ultimately, what that means is players get something new. They get to play a game in a new way, maybe with better graphics, more players, or ownership of items through NFTs or blockchain. Whatever those technologies are, they power new experiences. And people like new stuff—they want to play new, cool experiences. While not all games are powered by technology, a lot of them are.

Jordan: 15:22

So for you with Carbonated, how did you approach the technology opportunity at that time?

Travis: 15:28

Two ways. One, shout out to my co-founder, Lloyd Tullues. I wouldn’t have started the company without a strong technical co-founder. I spent about nine months looking for the right partner—someone full-stack, loves tech, loves games, hard-working, always learning new technology. And when I found Lloyd, I knew we could start the company.

Travis: 15:52

Lloyd and I have worked together for a long time now. We have multiple conversations weekly about where tech is going, how much risk we're taking, who we should partner with, what tech to build versus buy, and the advantage of building certain tech. Carbonated wouldn’t be where it is without Lloyd.

Travis: 16:15

So I started with the technical co-founder, as the way that I did that. And then through our relationship—we’ve worked together for a long time now—we have multiple conversations a week about where tech is going. How much risk are we taking? What should we tackle? Who should we partner with? Which tech should we just use off the shelf? What tech should we build? What is the advantage of building that tech? Is it defendable? We have lots of these conversations about technology. I mean, he's just an extremely talented co-founder, and Carbonated wouldn't be where it is today without him.

Jordan: 16:45

And I remember seeing some of your demos. Was that at GDC? So I know that you do have some pretty incredible and unique tech that you built.

Travis: 16:53

Yeah, it's sort of interesting. We had a particular thesis that one of the reasons why we started the company is what I call traditional publishing technology is getting commoditized by the big players, whether it's analytics, distribution, user acquisition, or engines.

Travis: 17:11

My favorite, simplest example is all the big studios. When I used to work with them, they had internal big engines. They put tons of resources into building unique engines for a unique game. And now you have these engines—Unreal, Unity, and we use Lumberyard—these commoditized engines that you can get essentially for free. That’s pretty amazing. So as we set up the company, we asked ourselves: how do we want to partner? What do we think the future looks like? In our view, with the kinds of games we’re making, live operating services—simply put, having a long-term relationship with your customers where you can keep giving them cool stuff to do—had to be foundational to our studio.

Travis: 17:46

When we think about LiveOps or this ongoing relationship with customers and players, we knew there was a lot of great tech out there, cloud services we wanted to partner with, and we knew a lot of great folks at Amazon. So we ended up partnering with those guys, working with Amazon on a lot of their tech. And that’s also what led us to evaluate Lumberyard and ultimately use Lumberyard for our game tech—for the game engine, I should say.

Jordan: 18:11

Got it. Okay. And let’s move on to the second of these pillars—business. Let’s talk a little bit more about that. What does that mean to you? This business pillar and it coming after the technology pillar?

Travis: 18:22

Yeah, so to quote my boss for a long time, he used to say, "Games are not just entertainment. It’s not about art necessarily, or it’s included in it, but it really is a business at the end of the day." If you're in the games business, you're an entertainer, you're doing an exchange of value for money. And that also fuels the ability to pay your engineers and artists, which just makes logical sense. So we took that to heart and said, "Well, if we're going to run a proper business behind this, we're an entertainment company exchanging happiness for money, as it were." You need to build it on a proper business.

Jordan: 18:53

If I can buy happiness for money, I’ll take that deal.

Travis: 18:55

I think it's actually kind of a noble cause. People work really, really hard for their money. And when they have enough money, what do they want to do with it? They want to have a good life. They want to take their kids to the movies, play video games, go on vacation, drink booze by the beach, whatever it is. But all of that hard work ultimately manifests itself in being entertained and enjoying life. I think video games are a big part of that these days. There are a lot of people who love games—it’s great for them. So, as a business, that's the exchange we’re in. As a founder, obviously, you have to pay your team. So, the business component of this is important.

Travis: 19:33

I think it's two parts. It’s the business of running a company, but also the business of your game generating revenue so that you can run the company. When it comes to the game generating revenue, that's where you get into monetization and all that stuff, which is obviously a super deep topic. But I think there's a well-understood discipline about entrepreneurship and running a business, whether you bootstrap it, raise money, or have a lifestyle business. Ultimately, businesses live and die by customers feeling good about the exchange of entertainment for money.

Jordan: 20:03

How did you kind of approach that at Carbonated? So you’ve connected with Lloyd, you guys have agreed to do something, you’re talking about the technology stack and how you're going to differentiate. How do you think about approaching the business challenges?

Travis: 20:14

It’s a great question. We wanted to go with our thesis. So we had a particular thesis. We brought in two other co-founders at the time, so it was four of us who ultimately founded the company together—Colby and Chris Morph, so the four of us sort of founded it. We figured out our thesis, and then we went out and started to shop that thesis to both investors and publishers under the idea of maybe doing some bootstrapping or work-for-hire.

Travis: 20:39

Obviously, we needed to bring in money to start paying both ourselves and talented creators to join the company. What we found was that our thesis was a little bit early. Part of our thesis was that high-end 3D hardcore games would get into the top-grossing charts and stay there. This was in 2015. There had been games that hit the top-grossing charts but often fell out, whether you look at something like Infinity Blade or CSR Racing. These games would hit the top 10 and then drop off quickly. The common thinking back then was that the markets were too small to drive core games, that they wouldn’t sustain monetization, and that the art assets were too heavy to allow for LiveOps. That was the common thinking. We, of course, said, "No, this is going to be the future. These games are going to dominate."

Travis: 21:27

So the investment and valuations we were looking at weren’t great. We ended up doing work-for-hire, partnering with Glue early on. We used that as a bootstrapping mechanism to start bringing in money. One piece of advice we were given early on, and I think back to it now and smile because it was good advice, was that we had a bunch of really talented founders and early employees. And one of the things investors asked us was, "You’re all talented, great folks, but have you ever worked together as a team?" We said, "No, but we’re going to figure it out." They said, "Well, there’s something to having a team that’s worked together before."

Travis: 21:57

Ultimately, we worked together, and we’re still all together. All the original co-founders are still here. We’ve been at it for more than five years, so it worked out that way. But I do think it was wise for investors to ask us that question—it’s easy to say you have great folks, but can they work together? I think the work-for-hire we did rather than raising money in the first couple of years was really good discipline for us to work together, refine the thesis, and figure out where we wanted to go. It was also a way for us to bring in money and start hiring folks. We did work-for-hire, and then what happened in the industry around us was that you saw the launch of these premium LiveOps hardcore games on mobile—PUBG, Fortnite, Call of Duty, Free Fire, the list goes on.

Jordan: 22:37

That's right. Genshin Impact.

Travis: 22:38

That's right, Genshin Impact, and they're all in the top 10 grossing and they're staying there. So once that happened, all of a sudden investors were like, "Hey, wow, look at that. Hardcore games can stay in the top 10 for long periods of time." And then I think you saw a lot of investments starting to flow in, and you, of course, started to see a lot of companies exiting and having great acquisitions outbound.

Travis: 22:59

So it started to spin the investment ecosystem pretty aggressively, and it's even spinning faster now. So we were able to then at that point, raise money against our original thesis and switch from work-for-hire to building our own product, which is what we're doing now.

Jordan: 23:14

As far as that transition for those games, I mean, for the ones that have console versions, which a lot of the games you mentioned do, what's the revenue split between mobile and PC/console?

Travis: 23:25

I would suspect that what I think is going on is there's just this huge demand for those games—they're great games. Take Call of Duty, for example. You could argue—and we've talked to a lot of players who play games like Call of Duty—a lot of our research has been about figuring out a thesis and which direction we want to go.

Travis: 23:41

When you ask those players, "Hey, how do you compare Call of Duty Mobile to Call of Duty on a PC?" They're smart. I mean, these are very, very astute players. And they know the mobile game doesn't have the best interface compared to a PC or console. They get that, but mobile is often their primary device.

Travis: 23:56

Oftentimes mobile is the device they want to play games on when they have free time, and they love Call of Duty. So they're willing to take a bit of a sacrifice—maybe with controls, the interface, or the screen size—just to get their Call of Duty fix. What that shows you is there’s a massive demand for these high-quality games.

Travis: 24:17

Games like Call of Duty, Fortnite, and PUBG on mobile phones. Obviously, the audiences are much, much larger on mobile phones, vastly larger. And you have embedded payments, so you can do microtransactions relatively easily when you have embedded payments on a phone—a little harder to do on a PC. So yeah, I think there's a super bright future for mobile as it pertains to those games. How that dollar splits out, I have no idea.

Jordan: 24:41

You mentioned these users, and I'm curious how you think about the audience in this framework. Putting the games business aside for a second, a lot of direct-to-consumer businesses are kind of audience-first businesses these days, where it's about building and serving an audience. The products are, I want to say, secondary, but they’re always in service of that built audience because it's a direct-to-consumer business. So the consumer is really at the head of the line. Is that something that, strategically, you think is relevant to where free-to-play and mobile games are now?

Jordan: 25:11

It doesn’t seem like that’s how most people think about it, but when I think of a company like Blizzard, for example, it always seems like they've taken a very audience-first approach. Not a great question here—I’m just sort of musing about this, and I’m curious how you think about it.

Travis: 25:23

Yeah. I mean, as you know, the way I think about the business is customer-first, right? You’re a good problem solver. I want to create content for customers, and I want customers to enjoy the content. So I'm always, always, always customer-first. So whether it's a feature, art, or a game design—or anything we’re building—we always think customer-first. That’s ultimately what it’s for.

Travis: 25:43

I think one of the reasons why LiveOps is so dominant and will continue to get more dominant is that it's the best way to put content in front of your customers and see if they like it—listen to them. Through LiveOps, essentially what you're doing is a little like what a comedian does when working on material, right? They go up in front of an audience, tell a bunch of jokes, and listen to the audience. Did they laugh or not? And if the audience laughs, they say to themselves, "Okay, that joke works, that content works."

Travis: 26:33

And then that comedian flies around the country, tries different jokes with different audiences, and starts to build out a set of jokes. But they're testing things. They’re experimenting. When they feel like they have a really good set, then they can roll out their Netflix special or whatever it is. Video games, particularly LiveOps, are very similar to that.

Travis: 26:33

You start testing content, putting it out to players. Players play it, and they tell you whether they like it or not through data and analytics and talking to your customers. Through that relationship and content testing, just like the comedian tests jokes, you listen for engagement, purchasing, or other signals. Then you start to figure out what these customers really like, and you just give them more of that. And then they enjoy it. I think that process continues over time, and studios that are really good at it and continue to service their audience with what they want are the ones that stick around.

Travis: 27:07

Those are the LiveOps games that don’t go anywhere. They stay stuck in the top-grossing charts. You get that with Candy Crush. I used to have a list of all the top-grossing games over five years old—there’s a lot of them. They just keep talking to their players, "Hey, did you like that last level? Let's give you another one." They just keep supplying content, and those games tend to stick around.

Jordan: 27:29

Makes sense. Kind of thinking about your strategy and how you're positioning yourself at Carbonated with the new opportunities that are available. And to me, this question is sort of relevant to what we're talking about. Do you see it as a one-product-at-a-time kind of studio, or is it a multi-product strategy? And how have you thought through that decision?

Travis: 27:46

It's a great question. Yeah. So our studio is designed to be potentially a two-product studio. And the idea there is we'll reuse our service. We'll reuse our technology. The games will be relatively similar in the sense that they'll target the same customers because, as we're learning from one game and what those customers like, we might learn that, "Oh, they love this game, but they might like this other game."

Jordan: 28:05

Okay. Yeah. Perfect.

Travis: 28:06

It will be the same kind of audience. The other thing I'll throw in there too is that the team sometimes wants to do new stuff. They don't always want to work on the same game forever. From a team standpoint—which is important because none of these games exist without a great team—you need to keep your team happy. Sometimes, after working on a game for three or four years, they say, "I want to do something new." So having a second game that people can experiment on and express their creative freedom is important.

Travis: 28:29

I think having a two-product studio where one is in LiveOps and one is being incubated from the data you learn from the LiveOps game is a good strategy. That’s the one we’re ultimately pursuing.

Jordan: 28:39

That is such a good point because, like you mentioned, games are a world of changing technologies, and a lot of people get into it to do something new. Then, you get put on a LiveOps game that's really successful, and it can feel like punishment, like, "Oh wow, we're doing so well that we gotta just keep doing this." I was here to do something new. I think it’s a great strategy.

Travis: 28:59

And there are different kinds of people. Some people love LiveOps—they love the constant engagement with customers, they love telling the joke and getting feedback. They love putting out content: out goes the red dragon, out goes the green dragon, out goes the purple dragon, and seeing what the players like. Then, to your point, some people love new technology—they love new things, they want to try something different. Games, particularly LiveOps hits, are created by both types of people. You have someone who creates the new game using new technology, and you have folks who love entertaining customers daily.

Travis: 29:28

We try to hire for both. I think the best way to keep people happy is by having two products. More than two products gets complicated, and these days, a single mobile hit is plenty big. So if we had two successful mobile LiveOps games, wow, that’d be a home run.

Travis: 29:45

So if we end up having two successful hits, come bug me again, and you can say, "You said only two games." But, we look at the big players out there, like the Supercells of the world, who have multiple hits running as LiveOps games. I’m so impressed by that. We envision ourselves one day having two successful LiveOps games. That would make us very, very happy.

Jordan: 30:05

And you're talking about pretty big-scale games too, so that’s already a massive place to be. I’ve heard it said that, in war, the conquering force should not be the same as the occupying force. And I think that’s kind of what you're saying about these game teams, where sometimes the people who might love creating the new product might not be the ones who love live operating it. And I’ve certainly seen that to be true.

Travis: 30:26

Yeah, I think you're right. They are different problems you're solving. One is the creation without data, necessarily, and the second is live operating based on data. Although I will say, these days, during the creation process, you can test a lot of the creative ideas, and it's very similar to LiveOps. All of our creative ideas we test—we put out on Facebook, we test with customers to make sure that we’re not just doing something in a vacuum. More and more, even the creative process is feeling a bit like LiveOps, which is not necessarily a bad thing because you're getting feedback from players.

Jordan: 30:58

So this is perfect to transition into your third pillar: appeal, and how you think about that. It sounds like you’re doing some market testing. How do you think about appeal, and how does that fit into your process?

Travis: 31:10

Appeal, I think, generally depends on your personality, but it's also one of the fun parts. It's the graphics, it's the excitement. If you remove technology and business from games, what's left? That's all the appeal stuff. It's the art, it's the graphics, it's the gameplay, it's what's innovative, new, and fun. It's surprise and delight. It's kind of all that stuff wrapped up in a big bubble. So, we break it down in a bunch of different ways internally. We look at the brand appeal or the visuals.

Travis: 31:36

I always say it's everything you see before you ever play the game. That’s your icon, your splash screen, the art of the game. It’s maybe how it’s exposed to you through your friends—what they say about your game, "Oh, you gotta play this game." It’s everything before you actually interact with the game. I call that the appeal bucket.

Travis: 31:53

Then next to that is the actual gameplay—what you actually do. That's how you control the game, what you're tapping on, the result of your taps or your interactions. So there’s the appeal bucket—everything before you play the game—and then there's the playing of the game, how you're actually interacting. Those two things are separate but deeply intertwined.

Travis: 32:08

My simplest example of this is match-three games. It's the same mechanic—you're always matching three gems. But the appeal, the brands, or the skins, or the graphics that sit on top of them—there’s tons of different ones. You've got Puzzles & Dragons, you've got Bejeweled, you’ve got Candy Crush. There are a whole bunch of them. They generally have the same mechanic—matching three, and you get level after level. But the skin, the look, and the feel are different, and they target different markets. I think that’s true of lots of different genres—first-person shooters, racing games, battle royales.

Travis: 32:47

So we look at those two aspects carefully. When we were testing, we tried to figure out what we were excited about building—both from a brand look-and-feel standpoint and a game mechanic standpoint. We looked at those two separately and figured out how to merge them together.

Travis: 33:01

Then we tested those with players and generally got some pretty good feedback early on. Of course, you have to build the whole thing, which is what we're doing now. But we think about those two buckets: look and feel—everything before you play the game—and then the mechanic: how do you play the game, how do you master it, what’s fun about it, the moment-to-moment.

Jordan: 33:19

Before you play, I think it's pretty easy to imagine the process that you’re testing—well, maybe easier for some than others. But I imagine that means running some test advertisements and you're basically trying to get a sense of what user acquisition would cost given a certain concept, a certain brand look and feel, and certain creative. Do I have that right so far?

Travis: 33:41

Yeah. Also, we talk to our players. We'll go on Reddit and Discord chats, and we’ll talk to people about the genres we’re interested in. We're sort of a dystopian presence, maybe a little tropey, but we love it. And it turns out there are lots and lots of people who love that stuff. You can look at a game like PUBG and say, "Yeah, there’s a lot of people who like these kinds of games." So we talk to those players—"Hey, what do you like? What don't you like? What are you sick of? What do you think would be cool?"

Travis: 34:05

We glean a lot of insights from talking to players in those look-and-feel buckets. I hate saying "genre" because genre combines look and feel with mechanics. So we say look and feel, or appeal, separate from mechanics. We start at the top of the funnel, which is look and feel, because you haven’t played the game yet.

Jordan: 34:22

So you're saying you’re having these qualitative discussions about look and feel on platforms like Reddit?

Travis: 34:28

Yeah, Reddit, Facebook, Facebook groups, Discord groups. We just go in there, chat with folks, and talk to them about it. We have our own ideas and opinions, and we’ll throw out, "Oh, wouldn't it be cool if this happened?" We look at what people are talking about, get a sense of what people are sick of, and what they're excited about or what might be different. That’s kind of the appeal—the look and feel, graphics, and the brand side of things. Again, the stuff before you play the game.

Travis: 34:53

Then, on the game mechanics side, we're doing a little bit of innovation there. We’re doing some traditional stuff and some new stuff. I won’t go too deep on that because we haven’t announced it yet, but what we have announced is that we do have some AI-supported gameplay. It tweaks some game mechanics in new ways to give players a different way of playing familiar stuff. We’re adding some innovation through technology, hopefully making these games a little bit different, easier, and more fun to play. So that’s where some of our technology is powering a different kind of mechanic—similar but a little different.

Jordan: 35:25

And is there anything else in terms of appeal that you think we've missed or should make sure to cover?

Travis: 35:29

No, it's such a tricky thing. Like, you know, there's no process that's ever going to get it right. I think it's such a vast, great area to experiment. You've got brands that are coming back, and I looked at the sort of explosion of Pokémon Go, not just Pokémon, but Pokémon married with this new mechanic—this location-based mechanic.

Travis: 35:49

That's amazing. And then you've got great new innovative products that are coming out of just the industry, like some of the Supercell games. Then you have games that are being brought over to mobile, tried-and-true on PC, coming over to mobile phones—the PUBG's, the Fortnite's, the Free Fire's. Then you have spins on proven mechanics. But I think all of them are ultimately voted on by players at really large scale.

Travis: 36:15

One of the both benefits and curses of mobile is that it's so big you can almost do anything. You can make an argument that any game could be successful on mobile because there are just so many people and everyone's so diverse. So there's lots of different stuff you can build, which is great.

Travis: 36:28

But it can be a little paralyzing. The only caution I would give—and I’ve seen lots of games struggle with this—is trying to be everything for everybody. That almost always fails. You do have to pick your audience and really give them what they want—super-serve them, as it were.

Travis: 36:44

I think you sometimes see people who are like, "Oh, I want to make a match-three, and I want to make it 3D, and I want to have a battle royale, and I want to have this, and I want to have that." And it kind of gets hodgepodgey, and then it's a game for nobody. That's the one danger that happens more often than not. It's one of the reasons why games struggle—having a very clear view of what your audience wants and super-serving that thing, whatever that is. More games are successful doing that than the ones that try to hodgepodge too much together.

Jordan: 37:10

Absolutely. It's a problem I see with clients all the time. A lot of times what it comes down to is fear—to actually make hard choices about their own product—and sort of this sense of, "Oh, there's safety if I just make it for everyone," when in fact, that's the one way to almost guarantee it's not going to work.

Travis: 37:25

You're absolutely right. And it's tough, right? Because you’ve invested so much of your life and emotion into it. Lots of your team members have ideas that are all good in their own right. You may have someone say, "Oh, look at battle royales—there’s like four in the top 10 grossing that are killing it. We’ve got to do that." And you think, "Oh, they're not wrong. Those games are really successful, but that’s not our game." So you have to say no, and then your team member is a little bummed out, and they’re not wrong, but you just have to say, "Hey, we can't do everything."

Travis: 37:55

We have to say no to certain things and pick our battles. That is a constant thing going on—whether it's NFTs, blockchain stuff, genres, graphics, how you do UA, the engine you should use, or the tool you should use. I think Bill Gurley said it best, "More startups die of indigestion than starvation," and it's sort of true. They try to do too much, and they just topple over. But if you're lean and mean and have a clear thesis, you try it, and maybe it doesn't work, but you're not out of money. Your team's not too big, and you can try again. But if you try to do too much and raise a bunch of money, try a lot of things, and don’t do any of them well, lots of startups struggle.

Jordan: 38:37

That's great. Travis, there’s so much I want to ask you about, but we don't have time today. I want to talk about bringing on new talent, raising money, managing the equity share, and some of the other challenges you've faced in your journey with Carbonated. But we’ll have to do that another time, unfortunately. This has been great. I'm so glad that we got through this engineering, business, and appeal framework. I think that was awesome and will be super valuable for people. Are you looking for any new team members or anything at Carbonated?

Travis: 39:02

Yeah, we’re always looking for talented folks. I think what's interesting right now, and even for us, is the industry is growing so quickly.

Travis: 39:10

There’s such a demand for gameplay engineers. So if you're coming out of college and you're a great gameplay engineer, lucky you, because you’re in huge demand. At Carbonated, we’re always looking for great gameplay engineers. So if you’re a good gameplay engineer out there and want to join us on our crazy journey and build some cool mobile games that scale to large audiences, we might be the right team for you. So reach out to us. We’re looking for gameplay engineers to join us and make some cool games.

Jordan: 39:34

That’s an amazing opportunity. Travis, Colby, Chris, and Lloyd are absolute badasses. If the right person is out there, I hope they reach out because it could be an amazing opportunity all around.

Jordan: 39:44

Travis, thanks so much for coming on the show. It’s been great talking. I hope we can do it again soon.

Travis: 39:49

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Jordan: 39:56

Another episode of Playmakers Podcast is in the bag. If you want the show notes with all the links wrapped up with a bow for you, you can find all that at playmakerspodcast.com. That’s playmakerspodcast.com. If you want to give feedback on what you'd like to see on future episodes, you can also reach out to me there.

Jordan: 40:16

In the meantime, if you want to support what we do, the way to do that is to write us a review and subscribe. I will see you on the next episode. We have some great stuff coming your way, so I will catch you then on Playmakers.