Should Vietnamese develop games like Pokemon Go or Flappy Bird?

VietNamNet Bridge – Both Flappy Bird and Pokemon Go are well known worldwide. However, the level of investment in the two games varied, especially in content and graphics. How can game developers succeed?

Rubycell’s representative at the event (middle)

Google in late October organized an event designed for Asia-Pacific apps and game developers in Singapore.

Buu Dien reporters, who attended the event, cited stories about Flappy Bird and Pokemon Go and asked how Vietnamese developers and developers in emerging countries can gain success globally.

Flappy Bird has simple content and graphics, but it succeeded in attracting gamers. But Pokemon Go uses complicated techniques.

Purnima Kochikar, Director for Google Play’s Apps and Games division, said simplicity and complexity will be needed depending on the development stages.

Niantic’s Pokemon Go appears to have a simple gameplay, but it was built up meticulously. Millions of people like playing Pokemon Go, but few people know that the game utilizes AR (augmented reality) technology.

AR is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer generated sensory input.

She said some of her friends are attracted by Pokemon Go even though they had never played online games before.

Kochikar thinks that simplicity is necessary for a game to touch the hearts of many people. However, some things need complexity, such as the building up of business plans.

There are many questions to be solved when building a business plan. For example, which one out of hundreds of markets should be conquered first? Which groups of users should be targeted? Should the game go global or be focused on certain markets?

In a second event Google Play Playtime organized for app & game developers in Asia Pacific, 200 invited partners participated. These included a representative from Rubycell, Vietnam, and five others from South East Asia.

The representative from Vietnam introduced outstanding music playing apps such as Piano+, Violin, Magical and Guitar+.

All of them have been added into Editors’ Choice, the group of products that Google Play suggests to install. Piano+ and Guitar+ have had 10 million downloads, and Violin and Magical 5 million.

Piano+ was introduced three years ago and is the company’s most successful app with 2 million regular users every month.

Dinh Van Hung, vice president of Rubycell, said his firm had previously developed games but did not succeed, and he decided to shift to making apps and to target foreign markets.

Source : http://english.vietnamnet.vn/