interviewer: All right, so can you start off by giving us
a little introduction
to your applications and your company?
de Halleux: Sure. My name is Sebastien de Halleux.
I'm one of the founder of Playfish,
and we are a social games company,
so we make games for friends to play together
in a social context.
So what we're here to announce today
is one of our most popular game,
which is a top-ten game on Facebook,
called "Who Has The Biggest Brain?"
released for the first time on Android.
And this is very exciting, because, for the first time,
you can play with your real-life friends
on your Android phone.
So you start the game,
you're given four 60-second tests,
which spits out, you know, how big a brain you have
in cubic centimeters in a very unscientific way,
and then the fun starts
by comparing that score with your real-life friends
on Facebook via a Facebook connecting permutation.
And that's really exciting, because you see
pictures of your friends on your Android phone,
and you can play anytime anywhere.
Um, so this is the first title that we're announcing,
but we have a range of titles that are coming on Android.
Overall, Playfish has around 30 million monthly active users
playing our games, so, you know, there's a huge community
that really wants to extend the experience from the web
onto their Android devices.
interviewer: All right. So, can you tell us a little bit
about your decision to use the Android platform?
de Halleux: Absolutely.
So, you know, the Playfish founding team
has really deep roots in mobile.
We've been doing games on mobile phones since about 2001,
and one of the key reasons why we sort of moved away
from the mobile platform and onto the web platform
was for distribution.
And now that Android, you know, comes into being
as an open platform on mobile,
we are incredibly excited to bring back, you know,
some of the best of the web when it comes to distribution,
marketplace, and connectivity on the internet,
allowing to connect to third-party APIs,
something that's always been very hard to do
in a standard mobile ecosystem.
So, you know, those distribution decisions were key
you know, for us to move on to the Android platform.
In addition, you know, the great interface,
the touch screen, and the relatively high-end device,
are making for great gaming experiences.
And our game have been designed with touch screen in mind,
so it makes it--
It makes a very compelling end-user experience.
I think, the third aspect is the business model.
So, you know, one thing is you have great distribution.
The other one is to be able to monetize
and build a business, you know, on the mobile platform,
and traditionally, carriers have been famous
for really, you know, squeezing the publisher
and getting really high revenue share for themselves,
and with Android as a platform,
the ecosystem has been rebalanced, so to speak,
with, you know, the revenue share
that's publicly been announced as being 70%
for the developer, and that's great news for us,
because that means that, rather than spending time and money
negotiating agreements with every single carrier,
you know, four per country,
we can focus all our energy and budgets
on the product quality
and benefit from the Google infrastructure
and the Android marketplace to monetize our games.
interviewer: All right, uh, what's the biggest challenge
you've had on the Android platform?
de Halleux: I think, you know, the biggest challenge is
that the platform is new,
and with new platforms come unforeseen challenges.
You know, some are technical,
and I think, you know, games are usually very hungry
in terms of device resources.
We've pushed, I think, the OpenGL current capability,
you know, to their limit in terms of getting
a high frame rate, getting a smooth experience,
and similarly, you know, getting audio,
getting really time-based mechanics, you know,
that feel right for the user.
It has been a learning experience for us.
The good news is that what we've learned
is reusable in terms of framework for our next game,
and so, you know, the game which we're already working on,
is being developed, you know, at least twice the speed,
if not more.
interviewer: All right. What's the biggest differentiator
of Android versus other platforms?
de Halleux: Well, you know, it's the openness of the platform
is really the true differentiator.
For us, you know, our web view is around 1.5 billion people,
who are using the web on any given day,
and there's 3.5 billion phones out there, right?
And there's no open platform,
so I think Android is really addressing a need
that is very, very strong for us of offering an open platform
cheaply to handset manufacturers.
And with the announcement, you know, today
of the number of new handsets that are coming,
we'll see Android getting more traction,
and we want to be part of that wave, you know.
We want to be one of the reasons why people, you know,
move to Android, and making them realize
that there's great content available
for those open platforms.
interviewer: Uh, are there any tips or tricks
that you were able to do on the Android platform
that you weren't on other platforms?
Anything fun or interesting?
de Halleux: Um, I think, you know, one of the great,
uh, realization of Playfish and "Who Has the Biggest Brain?"
has been that social connection,
so the ability to create a very, very transparent
end-user experience that, within two clicks,
you know, connects you to your social graph,
wherever it might be, in this case Facebook,
you know, is a really powerful experience,
because, suddenly, you see your phone in a different way.
You see your phone as a window onto the real web,
and you should see people, when they first experience this,
there's a big "aha" moment, going,
"Oh, you know, all my friends
who don't have an Android device,
but are part of my group of friends,
are suddenly invited as part of the experience on my phone."
And that's a really cool moment.
interviewer: Right, right.
Um, what's your favorite aspect
of the Android development process?
de Halleux: I think it's definitely been
the development program.
You know, the team has been incredibly supportive.
Our development has been spread across continent,
and from London to Mountain View.
We've had, you know, fantastic support
to answer some of our technical challenges,
some of which were platform-related,
some of which were, you know, our learning experience,
and addressing those together
has been really a tremendous experience.
interviewer: So you have a game
that's about to be released on iGoogle?
de Halleux: That's right. As a matter of fact,
it is the same game we just released on Android,
"Who Has the Biggest Brain?"
which is now available in the sandbox of iGoogle,
using your Google friends,
so that's another social graph we're trying to tap into.
And for people who are using the iGoogle page,
they'll be able to find "Who Has the Biggest Brain?"
as a gadget on the web,
um, and then they'll be able, when they leave their PC,
to take their Android phone and continue the experience,
and this is the exactly same application,
so they can practice and train their brain
and share scores with their friends, you know,
on their phone or on iGoogle.
interviewer: All right.
Well, I want to thank you for your time
and sharing your story with us.
I hope you have a great rest of your day.
de Halleux: Great, thank you.