14 DAY TRIAL // Greg Richardson, the former leader of developer Pandemic, believes that the gaming industry is at the moment experiencing the biggest inflection points since it was created and that companies need to adapt in order to thrive in the new environment.
The executive, who is now leading a company called Rumble, tells GamesIndustry.biz that, “It’s a switch driven in large part by the fact that we are now surrounded by great connected gameplaying devices all day long, on phones, on laptop computers, and ecosystems that make gameplaying easier on Facebook, tablets.”
The biggest change is that smaller numbers of players are willing to take out two hours of their day and spend them in front of a television set enjoying a dedicated video game experience.
Modern players want to access the same experience on all devices, spend less money on games and get the option to play in short sessions wherever they are.
This means that traditionally publishing models that rely of home consoles and on the PC will see a decrease in their overall audience.
Richardson adds, “with free-to-play you don’t have to spend $60 to figure out if you want the experience. You can try the game, and if you fall in love with it end up spending a lot of time and hopefully some money on it.”
Rumble is both a developer and a publisher of content and the company plans to offer its business experience and its backend technology to other interested studios.
At the moment, Rumble is working on an action role-playing game called Kings Road, which is currently in beta stage and will run in a browser.
The developer is also working on Nightmare Guardians, a game that will offer cross-platform play between mobile devices and a web-based version of the game.
Both games will use a free-to-play core business model.