14 DAY TRIAL // ZQGame is a mobile video game developer and publisher from China, best known for its iOS and Android titles Brave Brigade, Pocket Knights and Soul Guardians: Age of Midgard.
Tommy Williams, the company's public relations manager, was kind enough to answer some of my questions, during Game Connection Europe 2014.
Softpedia: Hello, could you please introduce yourself and your company?
Tommy Williams: I'm Tommy, PR manager for ZQGame, and it's awesome being here for Game Connection and out here for Paris Game Week in general.
So, we're here showing off a couple of our games, one is Soul Guardians: Age of Midgard, it's an action role-playing game. It's really an anime / chibi kind of game, it's a side-scrolling action RPG, and it's for mobile, so it's for both iOS an Android.
Softpedia: So I see you have a couple of posters here, for Soul Guardians and Captain Heroes, are these your upcoming projects?
Tommy Williams: Soul Guardians is already out, we've soft-launched it over the summer, but now we just had a big, major update. There's a really big community playing the game, and we've just had an update that adds more characters and more dungeons.
It's an action RPG that uses card collecting elements. The cards are used for high skill attacks called Soul Arts, and they're just these weird, wacky attacks. One of them is a shark, he comes out and he's like in a shopping cart...
Softpedia: The old Final Fantasy was kind of wacky stuff, where you had enemies like fuzzy pairs of dice and all that kind of crazy stuff.
Tommy Williams: Exactly, they kind of look like Final Fantasy Tactics characters, when you look at them like that. Now, Captain Heroes, that's a shooter. We want to call it an endless shooter, it's more like an arcade shooter, and it actually uses the same IP, the same characters as Soul Guardians.
It's kind of a different way to use those characters, but with different mechanics. It's real simple, but it's just really fun to pick up and play, and it's coming soon to Android and iOS.
Softpedia: Do you think that in the future MMORPGs are going to be focused more and more on mobiles, or do you believe that they will continue to be a strong presence on PC as well?
Tommy Williams: I think there's room for both. I think PC is always gonna be there, I think it's getting better, getting stronger. With mobile platforms... everybody has a mobile device, which is really cool, so you're going beyond core gamers, you know, with casual games, whether it's something like Candy Crush, match three, or one of our games, that focuses more on core gamers.
I don't think one is going to overtake the other, I think it's actually a great time, as a game developer, to make games, because the market is out there, everybody's got a smartphone or a tablet, so it's a great time to be in games, to see all these new products come out.
Softpedia: So the MMO market is opening up more in Europe, North and South America, do you think people are warming up to more silly or chibi characters, to games that are traditionally more popular on the Asian market?
Tommy Williams: I would say it's still kind of a niche market, when it comes to MMOs for mobile. You see companies like Perfect World, who are huge in China, and they kinda have a different strategy, so when they came out to the United States, or the western market, their strategy was to purchase western-made IPs for a western audience.
Us, as a third-party publisher out here, or at our China headquarters, we focus on MMOs and things like that, because that works. In the western markets it's a little bit different, the audience is not focused so much on MMOs, but more on the role-playing style games, but not like massive multiplayer games.
Softpedia: Like Diablo, only for mobiles, like some of the things Gameloft is doing?
Tommy Williams: Oh yeah, Gameloft is doing very well, and a lot of those, I don't want to say clones, but they're inspired by games like Diablo, and there's definitely a market for that. You can see the numbers from App Annie or things like that, you can see that they have a higher retention rate, a higher user base. If you're not gonna be sitting at home on your PC, you wanna whip open something like Order & Chaos, if you're on the road.
It's really kinda specific to region, when it comes to the European market, we're in this era in our business model where we're figuring it out, right now, so that's why we're here at Game Connection.
Softpedia: I've noticed this trend of card collecting game mechanics slowly making their way into MMOs and other such games, especially on mobiles. How does Soul Guardian use them?
Tommy Williams:Yeah, it's interesting. So, the card mechanics come up say, when you're going through a dungeon, and you'll drop a card, and it's that role-playing game element that people really like, where you can take a Soul Arts card for a wacky, fuzzy-dice skill attack, and you can upgrade it using other materials, and evolve it, enhance it, fuse it with others.
It's a little bit different from those Magic: The Gathering or Hearthstone type of games, it's based more on random effects and random drops, on what prize you're gonna get, and it's really popular with gamers, the random drop box mechanic.
I think, in a wider spectrum, games like Hearthstone have really brought in the casual gamers, who were kinda scared of the Magic: The Gathering kind of card-collecting game.
Softpedia: It made card-based games much more comfortable to be around.
Tommy Williams: Yeah, and when you pair that up with a familiar IP, like Blizzard's World of Warcraft universe, it's not that intimidating anymore. Even Magic: The Gathering, I think breaking down that hardcore exterior is what's making lots of people feel comfortable with going in and playing these types of games.
Softpedia: They're making them less of a geeky thing and more accessible.
Tommy Williams: Exactly, I almost want to call it Marvelization, you can like a Marvel character, like Iron Man, without having ever picked up an Iron Man comic book in your life.
Softpedia: You get familiar to them to the point where it's okay to like them, even if you're not a hardcore fan.
Tommy Williams: Yes, and a lot of companies are picking up on that, that it's really about making something enjoyable right from the start.
Softpedia: Some people regard anime-style games as childish, what would you tell them in order to get them to try them out?
Tommy Williams: I would say "try it out." I wouldn't say they're too childish. If you're a gamer, you're kinda like a kid at heart, and everybody's a kid at heart, you grow up, you pay bills, things like that, and especially with anime stuff, it just looks cool, I mean you have to look at it as an art form.
Even anime style, people might say the stories behind it are kind childish, but just to look at it as an art form, I think it's for anybody, really. I mean, when you look at comic books, and we go back to the Marvelization of everything, it's for everybody.
If you open your mind a little bit and try out the mechanics... especially with cartoonish stuff, I actually think that with stuff like this, the mechanics are actually pretty good, when you actually start playing the game.
Softpedia: I assume you get a lot of requests from developers to try out their games?
Tommy Williams: We have a pretty robust business development unit, and we have developers from all over the world sending us their apks, so we can play their games. We go through maybe 5 or 6 games a week, and we have a team that's dedicated to playing through those games and looking at their potential, seeing if it's fun, first and foremost, and, of course, whether or not they can make money.
As a publisher, we look at the entire spectrum of it, so if it's not quite a finished project, we can see the art style, the background of the developers, one of the things we're doing is looking for potential, so we can maybe help fund the rest of the project, and help them along the way to make sure that the game makes money.
Every developer that we speak with, we always give them feedback, maybe they have a great looking game that still needs some work on something, it's all constructive feedback, in the long run, so as a publisher it's great to be able to look at all that stuff.
Softpedia: Do you have any plans to enter the Windows Phone arena?
Tommy Williams: It's tough. I know one of the guys who works as a publisher for Windows Phone, he speaks with a lot of developers, and even he said it's tough for them, you know, working for Microsoft and Windows, to publish stuff, because the market is so niche, so small.
Everybody's first thought is "I wanna create for iOS," but when you look at a global market, especially coming from the United States, most of these are still for iOS, but it's more like 50-50, but when you go global, everyone's on Android, the market share is all on Android.
We ourselves, we've actually been working on publishing games for Amazon, we already have a couple of our games, such as Pocket Knights, out, and we're working on Soul Guardians for Amazon. A lot of people kinda overlook small things like that, I mean they view it as small, but there's still a market there for money to be made, it's just a little imbalanced.
Softpedia: I'm curious what your thoughts are on Game Connection, on the convention itself. Do you think it's a worthwhile investment for aspiring developers to come here and meet publishers face to face?
Tommy Williams: In terms of aspiring developers, we as a publisher, we actually love meeting with all kinds of people, especially in the mobile world, anyone from a seventh grader, you know, who might be a developer to, you know, hardened veterans who've gone from consoles and PC to mobile.
I definitely believe they should come out here, especially since they tied it in with Paris Games Week, it's one of the biggest shows out there, so I think that because of the partnership Game Connection has with Paris Games Week, I think it's a must come-to show, especially compared to E3 and Gamescom.
Paris Games Week I think had about 250 thousand people last year? And they expect more this year. From developers to publishers, you know, whether you're business to business focused or just consumer focused, I think it's definitely important to come out here.
I think it's a great market, especially for us. We're originally a Chinese-based company, I'm from the United States office, and our next step as a global developer is to come out here and meet with the people who can't come out to E3 or ChinaJoy, or things like that.
Softpedia: Thank you for your time, and is there anything else you would like to add, in conclusion?
Tommy Williams: Play Soul Guardians: Age of Midgard, it's available now on iOS and Android, it's an awesome game if you like anime-style graphics, it's easy to pick up, you'll have a lot of fun, just check it out. Also, look out for Captain Heroes, if you like Soul Guardians, it'll have the same characters, but in an endless shooter, arcade environment.
