When I first started in the world of game creation, I was developing simple, easy-to-play card games and selling them directly to phone carriers and manufacturers. My small, Minneapolis-based, bootstrapped operation was working hard to bring mobile applications to the digital market space at a time when the industry was just taking shape.
In 2004, our team developed “Aces Texas Hold’em” which performed exceptionally well for our partners at Nextel. From there, our company grew exponentially as we began to develop mobile games for major video game brands such as Tetris and UNO.
Over the past few decades, the way we interact with digital products, especially applications, has completely changed. As a developer myself, it has been thrilling to watch the modernization of the mobile gaming ecosystem – from right here in the Twin Cities. We went from charging up to $20 a game to free, from limited phone support to more than 10,000 phone models, and from simple games to complex live games. I’m proud to have built a team of highly skilled tech professionals that love what they do, and to have the support from an incredible tech start up community. Of course, being able to reach customers around the world and allowing them to easily play our games anywhere has been crucial for our growth.
The days of pre-downloaded games are over, and consumers have access to a wealth of entertainment at their fingertips. Being able to shift our role and work directly with consumer marketing apps through platforms like Google Play changed everything for us. The ability of phones to process higher quality games allowed our team to expand our app development to include major sports games. Most recently, we’ve conducted a successful partnership with the PGA Tour that has already passed two million downloads in its first two years.
The modern app marketplace has become much deeper and sophisticated, to the benefit of developers. We now have a plethora of feedback points from our users’ experiences using an analytics platform, which we use to turn around better products. We also use tools to get information on issues that may arise in our games which we can then fix before customers have to come to us.
Using analytics to preemptively fix issues or community feedback to improve experience, we can create products allowing users to play their way. The internet age we live in allows us to develop and capitalize off dynamic advertisement and purchase strategies within our games. For example, we’ve leveraged an innovative ad mediation tool to maximize ad revenue by allowing companies to “bid” on a spot in our games. This has the benefit of allowing our homegrown, community-based company to diversify our revenue streams along with increasing access to our software through free versions of our games.
I do not know how my team would coordinate across the complex fields of game development and production without the support and structure of the digital marketplace and the tools we have been provided. The data-informed designs we can create – thanks to the analytics that app stores provide – have been paramount to getting connected with customers beyond what was imagined when the app world was created.
Of course, no marketplace is immune to scrutiny. And the digital marketplace has certainly seen its fair share of policy and regulatory consternation. But I hope our elected leaders here in Minneapolis and in Washington, D.C. will recognize the possible unintended impacts that our developer community could feel if this scrutiny leads to over-correction. As I encourage my own team to do – let’s recognize the diversity and competitive nature of the app ecosystem today. That will allow companies like mine to continue doing what we do best.
As the app developer community grew from a handful of at-home app makers to tech and startup hubs across the country, it was an exciting process to watch and even more thrilling to be a part of. I love getting to be on the front lines of growth and innovation in the industry, especially as we continue to expand our operations here in Minneapolis with reach around the world.
Keith Pichelman is the founder and chief executive officer of Concrete Software Inc., based in Minneapolis.
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