Spall: Casual developers must ‘pick their fights’

Matt Spall, founder of Playora and sister-company Gimme5Games, has told CasualGaming.biz that as the casual gaming sector expands, developers must begin to focus their efforts to stand out from the crowd.

"One of the factors is making sure you’re talking to your market," said Spall. "’Casual’ has been used as a catch all phrase for games that don’t appeal to, or aren’t aimed at, the hardcore games sector. So, really, casual can mean a Pony Trials game for a 12-year-old girl, a fantasy football league system, or a massively multiplayer gardening simulator.

"So I’d say one of the challenges is to pick your fights. You’re probably not going to appeal to the mass market, unless you’re Globocorp and have a ton of people, so picking a couple of sectors and addressing them will help you understand where your market is."

Spall is to speak at the casual-focused Evolve series of sessions at next week’s Develop Conference. The Playora boss will join Magnus Alm, CEO at Muskedunder Interactive, Niall Fraser, co-founder of TinRaven, and Bigpoint COO Nils-Holger Henning to discuss the closing gap between casual and traditional games.

To read CasualGaming.biz‘s full interview with Spall, click here.