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Episode 3, Biodome Games

season 3, episode 3 previous episode | episode index | next episode this is a transcript of one episode of the samsung developers podcast, hosted by and produced by tony morelan a listing of all podcast transcripts can be found here host tony morelan senior developer evangelist, samsung developers instagram - twitter - linkedin guest tobias thorsen & peter holm, biodome games, galaxy store not only do we chat about their award-winning mobile game gold digger frvr, but how being acquired by a larger game publisher has allowed them to focus more on game development, while the publisher handles the marketing aspect of producing games listen download this episode topics covered biodome games studio spelunca frvr best of galaxy store awards publishing on galaxy store marketing discoverability galaxy badge generating revenue integrating iap music diversity and inclusion helpful links gold digger frvr - golddigger frvr com facebook gold train frvr - facebook gold train frvr - goldtrain frvr com biodome games - biodome games frvr - frvr com frvr careers - careers frvr com galaxy store badges - developer samsung com/galaxy-store/gsb-promotion galaxy themes - developer samsung com/galaxy-themes samsung developer program homepage - developer samsung com samsung developer program newsletter - developer samsung com/newsletter samsung developer program blog - developer samsung com/blog samsung developer program news - developer samsung com/news samsung developer program facebook - facebook com/samsungdev samsung developer program instagram - instagram com/samsung_dev samsung developer program twitter - twitter com/samsung_dev samsung developer program youtube - youtube com/samsungdevelopers samsung developer program linkedin - linkedin com/company/samsungdevelopers transcript note transcripts are provided by an automated service and reviewed by the samsung developers web team inaccuracies from the transcription process do occur, so please refer to the audio if you are in doubt about the transcript tony morelan 00 01 hey, i'm tony morelan and this is the samsung developers podcast, where we chat with innovators using samsung technologies, award winning app developers and designers, as well as insiders working on the latest samsung tools welcome to season three, episode three on today's show, i'm joined by the founders of biodome games to be a sourcing in peter home not only do we chat about their award-winning mobile game gold digger, but how being acquired by a larger game publisher has allowed them to focus more on game development, while the publisher handles the marketing aspect of producing games oh, yeah and we also chat about how their game studio is now called studio spelunka enjoy hey, i am excited for today's podcast to be interviewing, not just one, but the two founders of biodome games to be a source in and peter home hey, guys, welcome to the podcast thank you thank you so let me first start by asking who is to be as thorson? tobias thorsen 01 04 well, i'm 40 years old, i grew up in rural denmark far out west, i would describe myself as a programmer with somewhat of an artistic sense i like programming not because i'm particularly good at writing beautiful code, but because it gives a degree of control, and you get a final say in the product you're developing and i really like that tony morelan 01 28 that's great and now we also are joined by peter home tell me who is peter holm? peter holm 01 36 well, self-taught game design, usability, user experience, business, creative direction type of guy yeah, i enjoy making games tony morelan 01 47 wonderful so toby, let me get back to you what is your role at biodome games? tobias thorsen 01 53 i'm the lead programmer, and gameplay and vendor and then i'm a co-founder, tony morelan 01 58 wonderful and peter yourself, what is what exactly is your role? peter holm 02 04 aware of many hats i'm the ceo formula game design, producer, artist tony morelan 02 13 so let's talk about the history by a dump because i know that you guys were acquired by fr vr and actually recently changed your studio name to spell blanca but i understand that your history goes way back that you guys were actually friends in kindergarten so give me that full history of, of the two of you how you guys started working together, and how that led up to biodome games and eventually now spin like a studio peter holm 02 38 well, it all started around the lego bricks in kindergarten tobias thorsen 02 45 it's true, somewhat, peter holm 02 47 somewhat true, at least professional working together, but started animation studio and could make where we did 3d animation and space, spare time we started making a game and that spare time project kind of got out of hand and turned into a game that we actually released and that was 24 years ago or something? tobias thorsen 03 10 yeah, we released it in 2000 peter holm 03 14 no, no, no, we didn't the first one was in 98 it was really tobias thorsen 03 20 so long ago tony morelan 03 23 the internet was just, you know, starting out what was the process for releasing those games? tobias thorsen 03 29 well, the game was kind of an experiment it was called chases and i was just getting into game development while working at his animation studio, where peter also works i kind of pivoted back to programming, which i did a lot of when i was a teenager so i tried experimented with programming, a small game, which was at first only meant for our own enjoyment i wanted a top-down shooter that i could play in split screen with my friends so i made that, and it was quite fun and it just turned more and more advanced and like when you're young and new to project like this, it just takes it on its own life and you develop and develop and then at some point, we figured that, hey, this is a product, we are having so much fun playing it every weekend, we played it and so we figured that other people could enjoy this and so we decided to do it ourselves and back then it meant making our own cds and sending them by mail so there was quite a task, but there was really there was how game distribution was done back then wow and tony morelan 04 38 what was the platform that you guys built it on? that was tobias thorsen 04 40 windows and to my great regrets i programmed everything in visual basic because that was the language and you back then yeah, and visual basic was definitely not made for game development so i had to do all sorts of tricks to make it work and it just got more and more advanced and then at some point, we figured now it's enough and we made the cds we made 1000 cds and sold them one at a time from our website tony morelan 05 11 i know my brief experience with gaming back in the late 90s was using flash and i understand that you guys have some experience also, using flash back in those glorious days of the of the late 90s tobias thorsen 05 26 yeah, well, after, after our game chasers, we sold like 200 copies and we kind of realized we couldn't make a living from that so we had to get a real job so we started doing advertisement games and other flash games and that that was really the platform for gaming back then on the web was flash peter holm 05 49 and it kind of happened by accident that that what we did back then turned into becoming an actual game company because i think at that point, from my, my perspective, at least, making games was kind of a side gig, hobby, hobby thing but what i was desperately into was actually flesh and getting 3d animation onto the web using flash magic that was kind of the big thing back then tobias thorsen 06 17 yeah fancy ui designs and stuff like yeah, peter holm 06 21 fancy ui designs, and wow, transitions and whoa, what not? common colleague, and i found a company focusing on just that, and, and we kind of figured out along the way that hey, wait a minute, maybe we could just do some flash games and it seems like people want to buy those, and so on all of a sudden, we had a gaming company, with a ton of clients all over the world and tony morelan 06 45 that was fun and what was the name of that gaming company? peter holm 06 48 there was a tunic, like titanic but cartoon instead, so tony morelan 06 53 okay, yeah and the success yeah, the success of that, did that go down? peter holm 07 00 it went down? eventually yes but i will say that we left it to be as an ai, we left the company in 2007 a year after that it went down so nothing on us it was a series of unfortunate events that led to the company crashing tony morelan 07 21 so i understand that you guys built a company, cape copenhagen, correct that actually, like flourish, you had, you know, lots of employees over 30 employees you learned a lot of lessons from that company and some of the challenges that came out of that tell me tell me a little bit about cape copenhagen peter holm 07 38 yeah, so cape copenhagen came out of the out of chasis the first game we've made way back, and titanic so actually, we left that company in order to make a new version of chase as that was the big dream, we established the company that in turn turned into cape cod and that company was focused on chasis to begin with, and we worked on a demo for a long time, and we pitched it to publishers, and we didn't seem to be learning the right deal at any point so we left it and returned to flash games, tobias thorsen 08 12 i fell into the trap that many game developers to programmers, particularly that i want to make my own engine sure that was possible back in the 90s, and beginning of the 2000s, but at that point, 2008 it was the scene was so diverse with graphics cards, and sound cards and hardware all over the place and multi-platform so it really was a too big of a task again, i made a lot of programming that turned out to be dead code, because you can't maintain such a big code base for so many cases and get out into all the corners with your own tech at least not one guy peter holm 08 54 yeah, we painted ourselves into a corner with that project and tobias thorsen 09 00 share yeah, multiple times peter holm 09 03 so learning from that we return to the stuff that worked in titanic and return to making flash games for clients and then at some point later on, we finally made the jump to unity and 3d games tony morelan 09 21 and was at the beginning of biodome games no, the peter holm 09 25 beginning of biodome games is later so keepcup magnet almost existed for 10 years wow and i think we were almost 40 people at the peak and at some point we had a lot of stuff lined up but it all fell through and having a business that rely on client work and all the client work disappearing that's, that's not really healthy sure and we hadn't really managed to build a really solid foundation because i think we wanted too much on the same time really wanted to do great plant work but we also wanted to make our own games, which is by definition underfunded yeah, so that was a very difficult balance to strike tobias thorsen 10 11 for 10 years, we kind of swapped between the two, and we couldn't make a clear path we didn't really want to focus entirely on client projects and we didn't want to take too much funding and get economically dependent by taking big investments and not having our own company yeah, sure so we were kind of flip flopping around for 10 years, until we could no longer flip flop peter holm 10 38 yeah so we were stubborn, and flip flopping and refusing to take other people's money and so on so it was it was kind of yeah, maybe not that smart of a choice but anyway, it was fun tobias thorsen 10 53 it was it was a great company i really loved my colleagues, amazing company tony morelan 10 59 so it sounds like then eventually, there came a moment where you decided that it was best that you just close the company, correct? peter holm 11 07 yeah, at a at a at some point it was basically out of our hands we had, within the same week, we had three almost signed deals that disappeared and that was really enough to take us out of business so we had to close down and that was the beginning of biodome games tony morelan 11 28 so then, so then you interbase decided to still continue working together, you obviously are determined to find success, peter holm 11 37 we actually had a conversation at some point where we were looking at each other than just meeting room and things were just collapsing around us and we kind of okay, so what we're going to do get a job i don't know how to get a job we basically we were unemployable at that point, i guess we didn't have a choice tony morelan 12 01 so that was it it was just you looked at each other and said well, you've got me and i've got you so let's figure out 12 07 something like that tony morelan 12 11 so with the with the closing of cape copenhagen was that the beginning of biodome games, peter holm 12 17 at cape copenhagen we had a third partner who, brian, who we work with for many years, he had left the company i think, one and a half years before we went belly up basically, he had to he had to do something else with its life at that point he was he was kind of burned out on client work and stuff like that but around the time that we went belly up, and we had the infamous conversation and in the meeting room about having no choice but to start a new company, he had probably around that time joined, joined a little startup called frvr and we kind of followed along and looked at what they were doing while we were doing other stuff because we still wanted to do our own games we had a client project that could get biodome games running, so we didn't have to take any funding and stuff and that was basically our plan just to chug along, do a project end and then fund another game that we wanted to do tobias thorsen 13 22 yeah and i remember brian liftin, in melta, at that point, and he was back in copenhagen and he was really, really trying to sell this idea that we should work for frvr very hard we are skeptical what's, what's this? and it's hypercasual? and is that really our gig peter holm 13 43 instant games? what is this? yeah tobias thorsen 13 48 it felt like a return to something that we left many years ago in titanic and flash games sure so we weren't, we were not really convinced in the beginning and we had some other projects and very artsy projects lined up for ourselves and i remember we made this calculation at some point, if we're going to succeed with our own game and distributing it and making a steam version of that game and becoming a hit it was it was really unlikely and the numbers just told us well, we really just have so much better chance of succeeding if we go with prime and this tony morelan 14 26 is because i mean, it's really was just the two of you still, i mean, it's not like you had employees it was the tobias thorsen 14 31 two of us yeah, yeah peter holm 14 33 yeah and then we really tried to stick to gut feeling about making our own game and realizing our artistic ambition through that game, but as at the same time, we really wanted to achieve that commercial success and i think the message that that brian came with, why don't you shove your artistic ambition and allow yourself just to be commercial for once, sir and i think, as you said, to be as that it would be a marathon to maybe get the game finished and maybe get it shipped and so on but because the scope was smaller, and the tech was more accessible and they had good channel relationships and could get our game out there, i mean, that would just make a lot of sense and it played to all our strengths and so on tobias thorsen 15 23 it turned out to be a no brainer, because what we lacked they had, we didn't have any connections in the industry to publishers, and we didn't know how to put a game on facebook instant or steam and let alone peter holm 15 38 samsung galaxy store yeah tobias thorsen 15 43 so we kind of saw well, maybe we don't have to sacrifice our artistic integrity just because it's an instant game or just because it's a small casual game, who still make something that that would be ours and feels like something we want to work on so tony morelan 16 01 sure so then you decided to work closer with frvr and they acquired biodome games? tobias thorsen 16 08 no, not at this point okay, peter holm 16 11 actually, we decided to enter a publishing agreement with them so we basically made an exclusivity deal with them we got to use their tech and in return, they promised to try to publish our games if we made something good, of course and that was just a huge relief to take that step and start making small games and then yeah, fast forward two years and four games, and they acquired us because we had proven that that we have something that actually worked tony morelan 16 48 and just so i have a good understanding frvr is basically handing like the publishing and the marketing but that you guys are still pretty much a standalone team, your own your own studio, correct? peter holm 17 00 yeah, the new setup is, is 100% frvr own studio, but we have full autonomy we can do what we want basically, as long as we try to make long term business sense of course, in our industry, it's a first party studio, meaning that the publisher owns the studio and we keep working on our games on the games from biodome games that would transfer to this new entity, it feels like our studio and be treated like our studio tony morelan 17 30 now now recently, you decided to change the name from biodome games to spelunka correct? peter holm 17 37 yeah, that was that was part of the of the setting up a new studio so biodome games guild formerly exists now it's basically a holding company okay but, but yeah, so the new studio is called frvr studios belong? tony morelan 17 53 and what is the what is the meaning? what is the thought behind spelunka? tobias thorsen 17 58 spelunka means cave exploration and if you go spelunking you explore caves no, it's quite suiting for gold digger tony morelan 18 08 yeah, is very appropriate i myself actually have spent a very little time but did one day of spelunking definitely was during my, my youth when i didn't have a fear of small spaces and claustrophobia i can't imagine getting back down into the earth like i did when i was younger and climbing around those caves is exhilarating peter holm 18 31 i wouldn't last a second environment; it would be so horrible tobias thorsen 18 38 it's good thing we can do it in a games and tony morelan 18 41 yeah, wonderful so tell me now about spelunka how many employees are you guys? peter holm 18 48 for? so us and two other guys and we were still looking to hire more people with can still kind of figuring out what kind of people we need but more developers needed? yes yeah, we tobias thorsen 19 02 are three programmers now and then peter so we are going to need some more assistance with the graphics and game design and these parts tony morelan 19 13 wonderful well, i know a lot of people who listen to the podcasts are always looking for opportunities for work so i'll make sure to include links in the in the show notes are there any links that we'll be able to share related to maybe applying for a job at splunk and studious? peter holm 19 28 yeah, i think we have one opening now on the fob career side but i think we'll add some more in the near future tony morelan 19 37 so let's talk about the relationship with samsung how did that actually come about? peter holm 19 41 again, we have to point to two ffvi they seem to be really amazing with the challenge relationships and that's, i mean, that's a huge win for us because we can really focus on game development that that relationship with samsung that ffvs been able to build them? in part on our behalf? is it something that we're really grateful about? tobias thorsen 20 06 yeah, i think at first our games were mostly published on facebook and then when they were kind of proven that they worked and the generator revenue they expanded to the newly formed channel on bixby i think back then it's a couple years ago tony morelan 20 25 so i wasn't familiar with that so bixby, our voice assistant, is that what you're referring to? peter holm 20 29 yeah, i think there's still on older devices that hadn't received updates, you would still be able to swipe right and then you would open a discovery surface called bixby as well, where the games will be featured and that was the first appearance on samsung devices to my knowledge, so yeah, it seems to be a lot of samsung channels that the game is feature tony morelan 20 58 so last year, you guys were the winner for the 2021 best of galaxy store award best instant play game tell me tell me what did it mean to win that award? peter holm 21 11 that was pretty special i'd say we had not seen that common i mean, we hadn't imagined in a million years that we made an award-winning game i mean, we knew we made a great game and a fun game, but we haven't seen it as a as a game that would win an award so it was super happy about it tobias thorsen 21 32 in retrospect, i could see that the game stands out a bit it's a combination of gameplay and, and style that's that i haven't seen many places tony morelan 21 44 so let's talk about gold digger i mean, i played it because i was part of the team that was going through all the nominations and selecting who was going to be a winner it was a very addicting game to play but tell the folks out there what actually is gold digger tobias thorsen 22 00 i remember when we when we came up with the idea, because we were i think we were talking about digging game peter holm 22 08 yeah you mentioned you mentioned boulder dash as i remember it, you look over your screen and say, you remember the tony morelan 22 15 boulder dash? i love that game peter holm 22 17 as a yeah oh, yeah yeah, that was that was a great game maybe we should do something like that use it and i said, oh, yeah and we can that match three elements so you match the gems and i think that was the conclusion of our game design and brainstorming session, as i remember it it was tobias thorsen 22 37 very, very brief and which, which is, i guess, a good thing that you could describe a full gameplay with the one minute of talk hey, let's try that that could work and i peter holm 22 48 think it was only a couple of days later, you had the first prototype running us, i remember it at least and then of course, a few months until we had tobias thorsen 22 57 playable in the frvr bible when they recommend gameplay ideas to pursue one of the key points is mashups of, of different genres so not don't make a clone but try to mix and match different areas and see what that leads to tony morelan 23 18 so the gameplay there's this little there's like this old man miner who's going around smashing rocks looking for gems correct? peter holm 23 27 actually, when you play this kind of a fast-paced mining game, which is kind of a maybe because mining is, is in real life, it would be really slow pace but i guess that was the inspiration we took from balderdash that we wanted it to be speedier and like an explorer it's so it's i think it's as much an exploration game as its mining game, taking game but yeah, you view push rocks around and match them up and when you align three or more rocks, they explode and, and help you excavate and then there's a lot of stuff to discover and pick up, buy and sell tony morelan 24 07 so i remember seeing at the time when you win the award, you guys produced a meme a great photo graphic of your first dollar that you earned on gold digger side by side with winning the samsung award tell me about that peter holm 24 23 yeah, it was quite a revelation for us to allow ourselves to be focusing totally on making something that made money so making our actual first dollar was quite an event so we made ourselves an award to celebrate the moment and we awarded it to us so thanking us for the award so yeah, that was that was how it started making our own awards and how it's going winning actual awards from samsung that was that was quite a tobias thorsen 24 58 in many ways goes to go has become the game that we dreamed of making for many, many years all the time in cape, we were talking about how it would be so great to have just a small game that would make a little bit of money to support one guy who could work on this and it took the end of cape copenhagen and the rise of a new company before it actually happened for us peter holm 25 20 in a way you could say we've been working on this game for 22 years tony morelan 25 28 so i understand that gold digger is not the only gold game in your in your franchise that you have another game called gold train, frvr tell me tell me about gold train? tobias thorsen 25 39 yeah, that was the first we made it was it's a more traditional, proven gameplay in many ways it's a based-on pipe mania, also a very old game where you match train tracks to make the train run okay and since we kind of knew what kind of game we were doing with, we chose that game for just getting to know the tech from frvr so it was kind of a training game training train game tony morelan 26 10 that's great peter holm 26 11 at that point, we had decided, of course that we wanted to make a game that would make us money so in order to cast the rights bill over the game, we needed something with gold and it seemed to work okay, tony morelan 26 25 so tell me what is the platform that you're building your games on tobias thorsen 26 30 html5, and built on the engine that frvr provided it's all javascript, very old-style javascript, so no modern shenanigans it's, you have a script as it looks 1015 years ago so it's in many ways, it's, it's very easy and very simple to get started with but when a project gets really complex, it's it has its own challenges as well tony morelan 26 57 yeah, i think there'll be a lot of limitations with it but you guys have found a way to work within those limitations to create something that's that successful tobias thorsen 27 05 yeah, i'd say some of the bigger challenges has come now that we've hired new programmers who has to take this two-year-old code base that i've been working on exclusively, and try to figure out what's going on our first-time employee, he was really, for a month, and he was so confused so we decided to make a major cleanup of the code and we've been working on that for a couple of months now, tony morelan 27 32 how funny i can take that as like, you know, you take this really top-level auto mechanic, and then you throw an old ferrari at them and say, alright, yeah, get this going here peter holm 27 45 but about the limitations, i think part of the charm of working with this is actually the limitations that you have to impose on yourself and your ambition and that's, i think, part of the reason that we can make it work tony morelan 28 00 it's interesting, because, you know, my, my background truly is in graphic design and i often teach the opposite of that, in the sense that, you know, when you're creating a logo, you don't want to limit yourself by diving right into a program, like adobe illustrator to start designing your logo that really, you should grab pencil and paper and start sketching so that you don't have any limitations but it sounds like you know, your approach having to work with him in this javascript, you've got some limitations but i would think that, you know, that that must trigger certain parts of your brain where you really have to think like, how are you going to get this done? peter holm 28 39 yeah, i think i think would you say about logo design is totally true, i would definitely go for a pencil first but again, that's the pencil is a conceptual limitation that you put into the process at that point true so i totally agree with that one but in this case, i think one of one of the great benefits about the limitations we have on the platform is that there's a lot of stuff we just can't do period so we don't have to get distracted by ambient occlusion or real time shadows, or hdr lighting or stuff like that that's completely irrelevant to the gameplay but if we had every single tool, we could so easily get distracted by stuff that's not super essential to get right tobias thorsen 29 27 yeah but essentially is it's a sprite engine, you can display sprites, and you can display a lot of them but that's it there's no spinning stuff, and no 3d had hardly any animation system we had to make that ourselves also tony morelan 29 45 oh, wow so i would think that the process i mean, tell me is it would you say it's quicker i mean, i know that some of these game developers that i've that i've chatted with, it takes them years to go to market on a design that they're working on those limitations actually help speed the process could you can't go down all these different avenues and work on things such as 3d and lighting yeah, definitely tobias thorsen 30 06 in the beginning, it's a, it's very, very fast to make a prototype and try something out and i think the challenge really comes when you're when you're continuously working on a project, and it gets more and more complex, because then yeah, this group really has its limitations sure peter holm 30 25 yeah and i think the platform's says a lot about your shadow choice as well, you wouldn't, you wouldn't go ahead and make a first-person shooter and that wouldn't make sense i mean, you wouldn't have you would pick another tool for it from the first prototype until gold digger went live i think that was about three or four months or something tony morelan 30 44 like that it's so quick peter holm 30 47 yeah, and it's a great joy to work with that quick turnaround, because you get something done, right? tony morelan 30 54 yeah and you get the feedback so quick, because as soon as you put it out there, you start i mean, you had mentioned that you would first release like on facebook instant i mean, you almost using that as your testing platform so you release it quickly like this, you get that feedback and now you can get back into the studio and start finding ways to really improve on it before it gets out to the to the larger audience peter holm 31 13 exactly exactly and you have actual people playing it and having opinions about it and telling you what, what they think about it that that's just so much more fun than sitting deep in the trench working on the same project for two or three years without it seeing any type of reality tobias thorsen 31 35 and a lot less risky, of course, saves a lot of money, too i peter holm 31 39 would say yeah oh, yeah, definitely tony morelan 31 43 so i'd like to talk a bit about the marketing i know that frvr is handling all of this for you what were some of the tools that work because i've seen some banners that you guys have done on galaxy store peter holm 31 54 yeah, for us at least privileged situation that that frvr handles most of that and we basically just supply them with, with assets that they can they can build banners and stuff from tony morelan 32 07 the end if some of these banners were related to different seasons, whether it's halloween or valentine's peter holm 32 13 oh, yeah, yeah yeah so what we did recently was, was some seasonal updates for the game we had a super nice christmas update for it with a snowy landscape and you could explore the mine and find christmas decorations and stuff and i think you could even get a santa hat and yeah, i think we had a very nice feature from samsung on that and of course, that's so nice to see that they will yeah, spend some nice storefront for the game tony morelan 32 58 so tell me, are there other games that you guys have produced outside of gold digger and gold train? peter holm 33 04 yeah, we have we have two other games we have the pot rush, cool rush mini golfing game and a pool game tobias thorsen 33 13 it's a very casual approach to pool and a very casual approach to mini golf it's a sure something that a hardcore pool player woods would find appalling because you just you just sit there and you shoot balls, if the balls and get them in that into the hole it's very simple and it's not even on a pool table it's an endless trek tony morelan 33 40 lsa check that out tell me so where are you guys getting your ideas for games? peter holm 33 45 i don't know i mean, sometimes it's just like what we talked about with gold, they got this two reference points, and then they have a weird connection other times it's, it's more like, what type of interaction would be fun? what would feel good? okay, and then in turn, how could we turn that into a game? i think that the pool russian portrush games kind of grew out of that approach we kind of wanted a very simple interaction that would be fun and quick to repeat i think we had a few iterations of that before it kind of gelled into a pool game and a mini golf game tobias thorsen 34 28 and it was very much inspired also by one of our vrs biggest hits, which is a basketball game, where the only thing you do is to flip basketballs, okay, and have to hit the hoop so the gameplay style is quite similar you just shoot balls again and again and again you can get really good at it and you can suck at it tony morelan 34 52 i remember there was a game a long time ago, very similar where you would just throwing trash into a little trash bin peter holm 34 57 yes yeah i think that that's that, for me at least that's been that's been kind of a fascination all the way back from the first flash games that how much can you boil down the experience? how small can we make it and still make it enjoyable? i still think that's very much motivation for me at least two or a driver for me at least to see how, how tiny can you make it? how much of a great experience can you make with the smallest mechanic possible, basically? tony morelan 35 28 so tell me what is your process for designing, developing in and then publishing a game, if ar tobias thorsen 35 35 vr has a set of goalposts, you have to reach first you make a prototype that the guys there review their game designers, and they look at the game and try to give their input on whether or not it would succeed, or if it has potential than if, if they approve it, and think we might be able to do something with that we make a prototype, and it's been put out on a very limited market so there's a small subset of players who get to play it and then during this process, the retention is measured and you see how many people are actually returning to it and these are paid users, they are advertising, and people come and play and then there are a set amount of iterations where you try to improve in each iteration to see if you can get the game sticky enough and this process is, in large part to avoid working a lot on a game that doesn't have potential that's not going to work in the real world so if you pass through these goalposts, you, it's published to a wider audience worldwide peter holm 36 41 okay and i think and i think if we should just talk a bit about our internal process as well, it would be more something along the lines of running with a gut feel, up until the point where we felt we have something that would show some kind of potential yeah, and then trying to find the smallest subset of that, that we could take to a level where it could actually be tested in in live circumstances tony morelan 37 11 so we've seen a lot of success around gold digger, can you tell me like how many active users do you guys have playing the game? peter holm 37 19 across samsung channels? i think we're seeing about of course; it goes up and down with stole features and stuff, but an average about 100,000 active users a day wow so that's, that's pretty neat tony morelan 37 33 yeah, that's, that's crazy to guys just creating a game like that and you've got over 100,000 people playing it daily tobias thorsen 37 40 it feels really weird in the beginning, when it started to take off and i remember, at the start, we were extremely popular in vietnam, and poland tony morelan 37 51 really, yeah, tobias thorsen 37 52 there was some strange demographic that we never fully discovered why, but yeah, peter holm 37 58 yes, sometimes like that, you suddenly get a spike in in a market that you didn't expect at all tony morelan 38 03 so obviously, revenue needs to play a part somewhere when it comes to the success of a game so tell me what is it that you guys are doing to help generate revenue while playing gold digger? peter holm 38 15 well, the very basic stuff is, of course, that the main revenue is coming in from ads, we try to find convenient, or you could say, quote, unquote, natural places to show ads and hopefully, some players would click those ads and when they do that, that generates some revenue back to us also on platforms that support it we have in game purchases, so you could actually pay real money to buy stuff tony morelan 38 46 so what are your what are your key learnings? when it comes to iap? peter holm 38 49 the key learning i think, is that people actually want to pay for stuff when they enjoy the game so if you make a great game, people will definitely pay for stuff in the game tobias thorsen 39 00 i remember in the beginning when these in app purchase issues came up with some smurf game where people bought smith berries, and i was very skeptical of them, but who's paying for this? but again, it's uh, if you make something that's actually fun, and people want to play, then they'll pay tony morelan 39 19 yeah, i was listening to a podcast once different market that they were talking about ip in a sense that, you know, they could have hundreds of 1000s of people interacting with this, but all it takes is a small percentage that are willing to pay and that truthfully can generate a decent amount of revenue that because the reach is so big, and it's a global audience, that it just takes a few people you know, interested in actually paying the they can really help bring some money your way? peter holm 39 46 yeah, yeah yeah it is it is a game of volume, because you need a lot of ads to be shown and you need a lot of players to have enough players that would actually want to spend money on it as well tony morelan 40 03 so one of the things that really stood out for me when i was playing gold digger was the music so let's talk a bit about the music of gold digger peter holm 40 11 we're fortunate to work with a really great composer that is also happens to be a friend and former colleague, his name is rasmus hdmi, and if anyone is out there listening and wants to music, you should definitely know because this is so great actually, we work with him in our past company and, and he's, he's working with the fob as well tony morelan 40 34 yeah, so the song that we just heard leading up to this question that was from gold digger, and a few of the other songs that one that we started the podcast off with, and one that we'll be closing with those were from gold train so yeah, absolutely beautiful music that you guys are creating there and frvr it's tobias thorsen 40 52 actually something that people come and done we get a lot of feedback where people say, hey, what's up music? peter holm 40 59 actually, there's a funny story about that composer back in the day, we made a game for lego and it was for a disney themed ip and we needed some music for that game and our composer was patmos, who made the music for these games as well he made some disney inspired music that was completely original he made it all from scratch and once disney had to approve the game, they were kind of going out okay, where's that music from? what movie? did you rap? tony morelan 41 35 really? peter holm 41 36 oh, it's totally original music it's so they were they were kind of impressed with him so tony morelan 41 44 wow so he does music for not just you guys, but for many of the other franchises underneath fr vr, correct? yeah peter holm 41 52 yeah he said, i think he's the closest thing they get to a house composer tony morelan 41 57 so what advice would you give developers looking to bring their games to galaxy store? tobias thorsen 42 02 work with a great publisher? peter holm 42 05 yeah, the advice we took was, was work with frvr yeah, tony morelan 42 10 that's great and i love hearing about that because i know a lot of indie developers, their challenges, they've come up with a great game but these are not marketing people these are not publishing people i mean, these really are great game designers and then where do they go? how do they take their game out to the public? so it's wonderful to hear that there is a resource with a company like frvr that these indie developers can turn to, they can actually bring their game to market tobias thorsen 42 35 yeah and it's hard work doing publishing and it's hard work to maintain the relations with different outlets like the galaxy store, it's not something that you just walk in from the street and say, hey, can you put our game on the store and featured? i think a lot of game developers forget about it i did for many years, i thought it would just make a great game, then it'll all come by itself that's not true peter holm 43 03 selling is hard, right? it's not something you want to do next to you making the game job you want dedicated people to take care of that tony morelan 43 12 yeah and i would think that really game developers they've got that their brain is wired for being creative in wanting to code or, you know, figure out the technology behind it the last thing i want to do is like get on a phone and try and start doing the marketing yeah, making those phone calls to try and you know, get their game out there to be seen peter holm 43 32 yeah, exactly it's, it's liberating to hand it off to someone who knows what they're doing tony morelan 43 38 so what is in the future for spelunka? peter holm 43 41 well, the near future is way more gold digger and i think we have a lot of fun ideas for making the game even more fun for players and yeah, and we're just looking forward to dive deeper into it tony morelan 43 57 and i know you guys are a small company, you just are a few people what are in your future plans related to diversity and inclusion? peter holm 44 06 well, right now we have to be totally honest, which is for white dudes all the same age, all sporting the same beer guard and stuff like that so it's kind of i mean, it's not really diverse, but, but we really want to change that up we strongly believe that diverse teams make better decisions and better games sure and we're super happy to first experience when the game kind of came out that it is a very even 5050 split male female really, okay yeah and it's a rare thing to get something like that yeah so we really want to emphasize that and i think the age wise the audience is extremely wide as well we have young kids playing it and we recently had a very nice letter from 70 something year old gentleman who we enjoyed playing it with his wife wow so i mean, it's a, it's a very, very wide audience and we want to cater to that tony morelan 45 08 yeah yeah, that is that is very unique now and the game is very new i mean, it is it is a young game, do you have plans of maybe like offering the ability to skin your character to be able to create something that maybe somebody relates to a little bit more? peter holm 45 21 yeah, i don't think everyone wants to be that red bearded, grumpy old minus i think it would only be fair to enable people to make their own characters and so on that's, that's part of it of the scope as well as some points yeah, definitely tony morelan 45 38 so to me, it's tell me what is it that you do for fun outside of work, i understand that you actually are a pretty artsy person tobias thorsen 45 47 well, when you sit all day and program and stare into a screen, it's quite nice to do something physical so i've been doing lots of stuff over the years with the painting and arts and lately i've been doing a lot of comics, so it's quite new hobby for me tony morelan 46 04 ceramics really? so pottery yeah, pottery tobias thorsen 46 07 and modeling and doing crazy sculptures i've never thought much about these things until i really tried it and when i when i held an item that i made, which was all glossy and looks totally finished, yeah but it was quite a nice experience so i dove more into it it's very rewarding to have to eat out of a plate that you made yourself tony morelan 46 40 that is wonderful so and peter, let me ask you what is it that you do for fun outside of work? i understand that you actually like to pretend to be a lumberjack peter holm 46 50 yeah, i do i do i have a big, big, badly maintained garden and a small strip of forest that that i can joyfully call my own and once in a while we have a storm that that troubles a tree and i get to cut it up and chop it for firewood and stuff like that so i really enjoy you could say rough gardening like that also woodworking, artsy, artsy, do it yourself projects with all the kids, which of which have four tony morelan 47 26 wow, that's excellent so i have one more question for you since you guys became friends you said back when you started kindergarten tell me who is better at sharing to be or peter tobias thorsen 47 40 sharing tony morelan 47 42 yes peter holm 47 44 that's definitely to be as to be as a very, very generous soul that shares all these good ideas tony morelan 47 55 that's great you guys, it has been absolutely wonderful to chat with the two of you you guys are doing great work at splunk and i'm looking forward to seeing much more down the road on galaxy store tobias thorsen 48 06 thank you very much thank you peter holm 48 07 it was a it was a pleasure to talk to you closing 48 09 looking to start creating for samsung download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding at all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung tony morelan 48 26 the samsung developers podcast is hosted by tony morelan and produced by jeanne hsu

Episode 11, Diego Lizarazo

season 1, episode 11 previous episode | episode index | next episode this is a transcript of one episode of the samsung developers podcast, hosted by and produced by tony morelan a listing of all podcast transcripts can be found here host tony morelan senior developer evangelist, samsung developers instagram - twitter - linkedin guest diego lizarazo senior developer evangelist, samsung developers instagram - twitter - linkedin in this episode of pow, i interview diego lizarazo, senior developer evangelist at samsung diego is a self-proclaimed tech geek and he is all about coding apps both diego and i work together as part of the samsung developer program and i have invited diego to be a future guest host on the podcast where my specialty is design, diego’s specialty is coding, and his tech geek personality shines as we chat about his path to samsung and how he is helping the developer community listen download this episode topics covered journey to samsung developer conferences covid-19 future of gaming game development global developers spanish webinars learning to code hackathons tizen tidbits helpful links getting started developer tizen org freecodecamp org w3schools com codepen io phaser io scirra com unity com sketchfab com coolors co gimp org photoshop alternative - pixel based inkscape org illustrator alternative - vector based transcript note transcripts are provided by an automated service and reviewed by the samsung developers web team inaccuracies from the transcription process do occur, so please refer to the audio if you are in doubt about the transcript tony morelan 00 02 hey, i'm tony morelan with this is pow! podcast of wisdom from the samsung developer program, where we talk about the latest tech news trends and give insight to all of the opportunities available for developers looking to create for samsung on today's show, i interview diego lizarazo just like me, diego is a senior developer evangelist here at samsung and i actually work pretty closely with diego since we're both part of the developer program diego is a self-proclaimed tech geek and he's all about coding and i wanted you to get to know diego a little bit because i've invited him to be a guest host on some of the upcoming podcasts where he can let his inner tech geek personality shine enjoy so i am super excited to have diego lizarazo on the podcast today first let me ask who is diego? diego lizarazo 00 49 mystery man i am a senior developer evangelist with samsung and in general, i'm a developer that likes to create with people who likes to talk blog, so you're going to hear that during the podcast during this episode, that you're going to ask me one thing, and i'm going to want to answer like 20 different things, because that's why i do what i do i really like to talk, i would like to connect with people, and to try to figure out the kinds of things that people really are passionate about i really like to spend a lot of time doing things that are like, and people can like notice, you know, and that's the kind of thing that i like to find in other developers so i started my career as a developer, i still do coding bad in general, what i do right now is to use the technical knowledge, to be able to connect with older developers, and try to find their passion, the kind of things that really take them and the kind of things that they would like to create tony morelan 01 47 so for those of you who don't know, both diego and i are developer evangelists, we actually work together we've been working together now for how long has it been? it's over a year, i would say yeah, diego lizarazo 01 59 over a year now yeah, absolutely tony morelan 02 01 that's great so before you join samsung, were you already an evangelist for another company? diego lizarazo 02 06 yeah, yeah, i actually have been doing developer relations for like seven years now so different companies, the first time that i did, it was with microsoft, and he had the same chance to do something similar way that red hat and also with a company that franken automotive, you're going to be able to find that a ca technologies that one get acquired and now well, i've been doing that with this role with samsung for a little bit over a year, like i said, tony morelan 02 35 so how was it that you actually first learned about this role at samsung? diego lizarazo 02 39 well, at samsung, he, i think i was looking for another opportunity like it, like i said, ca get acquired so i wanted to continue doing things on developer relations and i started looking and well, obviously, whenever you see something like a name of samsung, that's going to pop into a search, you know, so it's such a big company so influential that immediately like, wow, developer relations with samsung so i immediately honing into that and well immediately applied and fortunately for me, it worked out tony morelan 03 14 yeah, no, we were really excited when you joined i will say diego is an absolute character he is so much fun to work with but outside of his very outgoing personality, he is truly a tech guy i mean, i am amazed at the knowledge that you have that you that you brought to the team i do remember during the interview process, you were the one of all the applicants that really blew us all away because you went above and beyond already creating some great code as part of the process that we just said, oh my gosh, we need to we need to have this guy now something unique is that even though diego and i work together in the same team, we are actually on opposite sides of the country so i'm based in the west coast and you are on the east coast so tell us a little bit about why you're there on the east coast where you are and how did you end up there? diego lizarazo 04 06 well, i am in atlanta in atlanta metro so in georgia, i have been here almost seven years so i moved here for my first developer relations position so that was a position that i mentioned with microsoft and they had an opening here and i end up moving before that i was living in, in texas before that i lived in michigan for a couple of months before that i lived in spain and before that, i was living in colombia so it was kind of like a long road to make it all the way here tony morelan 04 42 and your birthplace is colombia, correct? diego lizarazo 04 45 yeah, yeah, i'm colombian and that's where i started my career so that's where i went to school to be developers so i'm going to start working as a web developer so from then they move to spain aid candidates some consulting so that's going working for yeah, like a company better and you really like your client in my case, it was our telecommunication companies so like for anyone that is in europa, they may have heard like telefonica or bts, or british telecommunication and which one orange, orange was the other one and but after that, i started doing something a little cooler that was the making designer so i had the chance to work as a game designer in spain with a spanish company and the funny thing is that i really well, it was like getting to hang out that's when i had kind of like these big realizations, but i could do something else with my background and is that as a game designer, you don't really have to program you don't really have to code but you have the chance to work with developers so i well, i was a developer, so i had to create game documents and talk with the developers but also had to talk with artists with publishers with marketing so i figured out like, i can take that technical knowledge and actually learn how to explain that to people that may be technical may know how to program or that have no idea about those technical issues or problems or aspects of a game so at the time is kind of like, well, i don't know what to do with this cool and but later, like at two positions later, when i move here to the us, it was like oh, do supposition that actually does the entire point, like, program and talk with other people so i'm sure that it really worked out yeah and i think that's one of the best things that you bring to the team is your ability to communicate so not only do you have all this amazing knowledge when it comes to coding, but you do a great job as far as teaching so i am i am super honored to work alongside you so i have to ask you though, too so do you do a lot of gaming yourself? i mean, do you play games now not as much because most of the time, or i'm working, or my kids that have several kids, they are calling jumping on me literally, i'm playing with them so and the other times that i have to opportunity to do something with games, usually i'm creating game demos, you know, like small games and things like that so i don't really have much time i have a few, like, mobile games that i play constantly bad note, like serious gaming, like i used to do, like, the times when i was single back didn't have any worries in the ward and then the xbox was feeling my free time and that that is not happening anymore tony morelan 07 36 so originally, you were a gamer that coded, but now you're a coder that games when from time to 07 43 time 07 45 yeah 07 47 that's correct tony morelan 07 48 that's great tell me you've been with samsung now for a year we've actually done a lot of events together we've actually done some traveling together, which has been great went to korean and both visited our headquarters there we've been to many conferences across the us, i'm sure you've come across a few challenges so tell me similar, like, what are the biggest challenges you faced in your role here at samsung? diego lizarazo 08 09 well sometimes is the entire thing of trying to figure out what's the best thing that you can, the best knowledge that you can bring to a certain audience so samsung has a lot of technologies and fortunately, we have a lot of fans around the word but sometimes, some people are going to be more interested in some technology or another one so i don't think we have anyone in the company that can know everything about every single aspect of samsung well, obviously i have a focus like watches smartwatches phones, gaming, bad sometimes some people can only come in like, hey, do you know about this screen or like, i didn't even know that we had that screen? do you know what is the price of this older device? i didn't know so many times i have to go back and tell them like look, let me check or give me your email and did not respond to you and i'll try to figure it out because seriously, samsung is covering a lot of different technologies yes, samsung electronics, betty vehicle by they brought her company, and we have hundreds of thousands of employees around the world so it's really hard to know every single aspect of samsung other times it has to do a little bit more like with challenges in in conferences, and things like that but fortunately for me for something, i think most of the conferences, most of the events, they have gone really well and it's more like trying to figure out like, what is it that people want to do? what is it that people want to talk about and bring that content to them? tony morelan 09 38 yeah, you know, and i have to agree with you because when i joined samsung as an evangelist, this was the first time that i actually not only was in a role like this, but the first time that i worked for a company prior to that my entire career i was just a self-employed freelance graphic designer and that was my challenge was when somebody when we were out at an event someone would ask me a technical question that i just didn't know the answer i felt like i was supposed to know that answer so it took me a little while to understand that you know what, you don't have to know everything fortunately, we've got great contacts and you know, pretty quickly, i could probably get an answer for you but, yeah, as an evangelist, we're here to help teach, but sometimes we have to go do a little research ourselves diego lizarazo 10 23 yeah to understand, but he's, i think part of the like, the fun thing, the questions you get during the conferences tony morelan 10 31 oh, yeah no, and i love how eager you are, whenever there's a new challenge that's posed to you or someone said, hey, can we you know, can we try this? you're like, give me a little bit here and let me let me figure that out but yes, definitely so that being said, what is the best part of your role? diego lizarazo 10 46 those weird questions, those ones that that you are kind of like, wow, i didn't have any idea that someone is even interested in dad, you know, or the people that come and tell you i have really weird story, and that you are like blown away because like, wow, like the really are doing things that i didn't even know that you could do, you know, so with samsung technologies or other technologies, and i have had some people, some developers that come to me and show me like a small demo and then i even like wonder, like, how did they do it? you know, like, if i was going to kind of like, start doing that by myself right now, i have no idea how to do it, or like, it's going to take me some time and then that kind of like forces you to say like, hey, what kind of thing do i need to learn next? and specifically with samsung, i think we really get a lot of innovation we get new devices every year or sometimes even like, two three times a year and then you are never short in terms of like, what is it that i need to do next, there's always something that you can do some sort of like project but it could be like a personal project, where we could be whatever, but, but you are always going to like you have something it's not static even before we started, like working under covid circumstances, i think almost every month we were trying to figure out like, okay, what is the next event? what is the next conference? what is the next thing that we're going to do? and now it's like, okay, how do we do the same things without even like, really reaching in person, you know, like older developers into different communities so it's always challenging and i think challenge is one of those words that is quite interesting because a lot of people see it as something then i usually see it as something good if there's a challenge that means that that i have something new to do something new to learn and, and data that i really like about my job and about this position you know, tony morelan 12 54 it was just this morning that i was reading one of the comments on a tutorial video i had posted on youtube the person asked like, you know, so how do you do this it was he wanted to show the rotating progress bar on a watch and i had i had known how to do it i just hadn't put that out to the community yet and i thought, you know what, this is a perfect time for me to do that so i quickly just threw up, put together another video tutorial, posted it to youtube, basically just answering this question but you know, here, it was a great opportunity for someone in the community to reach out to us and ask a question and, and, you know, i'm able to respond right away with another tutorial video so, yeah, that interaction with the community is great and also one of my highlights you had mentioned a little bit about covid and how it's affecting, you know, the world, our group so give me some specifics how is that actually impacting your role and your challenges as an evangelist to reach developers? diego lizarazo 13 53 well, one of the things that i guess we, i would say did work and unfortunate is that i did you know, this year, we were thinking about doing more events live so we were what are you putting our calendar, and we're going to take it easy we were going to, to figure out when to start doing that so really the big change is that we have to accelerate that response we have to move to create content online faster than we were expecting but we were already in the process so that's something that i think we're fortunate that we didn't have to come up with something out of nowhere, if we were already in that process but apart from that is sort of weird, not traveling as much as what we were doing not having the chance of like going to the booth is something smooth and getting all these people sometimes like the randomness of conference when people just only walk by you and you're like, hey, you have like a couple of minutes to talk about something that you can already do online but then you have older kinds of randomness like the ones that we get on our youtube channels or to forums or, or other or things like that so that i think is like one of the biggest things the other thing is that i think right now it would one after so many months is beginning to get a little bit of like online like a little bit like tired a little bit jaded is like i don't want to do another videoconference i don't want to do another, like video call, because everyone is doing that you know, so you have to, like figure out like, okay, what kind of like new content is going to keep people entertained? how do we change the format and things like that, i think is a big challenge for anyone living in these times but at the end of the day, it's part of the challenge and the challenge i am looking forward to the time that we can start like doing again, conferences are going to be a little bit of refreshing and i think a lot of the ideas that we had four this year that we're going to jump to start executing on that bad but yeah, you it's his day to day thing and personally, i have felt always going to change like everyone else but i've been working remotely for over seven years so it was not like a huge process of a patient i think it was more for you, for example exactly yeah tony morelan 16 16 so our team, our team is based in the bay area in northern california diego works remotely in atlanta so yeah, i can totally understand that you kind of already had your set up for us, it was a little bit more of a shock because we no longer went into the office, you know, we all kind of had to put together our home offices i was fortunate because i had done it for, you know, close to 20 years so i still had my nice little setup here at home so it's worked out well i would agree with you that the, you know, one of the biggest impacts has been that face to face opportunity to meet with designers and developers at conferences that that's, you know, we're missing out on that you are correct when the new year began big push was, hey, how can we broaden our reach? how can we make our teachings or information accessible globally? so we were already, you know, five steps ahead towards that type of content delivery yeah, like you said, we just had to put it in gear and move a little faster once this all hit yeah you know, when i think of diego, i think of a tech guy like i said, i'm totally impressed with how much knowledge you have, you know, up in your head, where did that start as a child? i mean, were you always like, motivated by technology when you were a little kid? diego lizarazo 17 37 i like technology itself i think it was a little bit of like knowledge i think my entire life i've been quite geeky so there are some people that dad account like find the term offensive like no, i've always kind of like known that i'm geeky and i embraced it so it's like i really have perhaps they have a little bit of ocd and he's like, okay, if i if i get to know something i just really love to learn about it so that helped and, and really, the thing is that for me, most of the programming especially, it comes as a problem you know, it's like you have a problem in some almost like puzzle and then the coding is really the process of solving the puzzle so it gives me a lot of, like, almost personal pleasure, you know, to see like, okay, i want to do x, and i have no idea how to do it, and then start putting it together and solving it the big difference has been an evangelist is that many developers stop there, you know, then you solve the problem, and then perhaps move to the next problem as an evangelist, you're supposed to kind of like take that knowledge and somehow figure out to share it with someone else so it could be a blog post, it could be a podcast, like what we're doing right now, which could be a media bad, but then you have to do that part of sharing what you learn in in that is also kind of like an additional layer of like what i do, and apart from that, like you mentioned about like being a gamer or being a programmer it really, the funny thing is that i actually started learning how to program because i wanted to create games so that was sort of my main motivation back in in colombia, i didn't really have any degree appealable to me, at least on game programming game designing and so i say like, okay, i'm going to the closest thing that he's learned how to program and i started the career there and then the gaming part coming like he pretty much later, but it was kind of like a really roundabout way to get around things better well, it's kind of like the path you sometimes you don't even like have a lot of control on how you end up getting to the place that you want to be in tony morelan 19 44 that's, that's great so let me ask you them what is the perfect game for you? are you into action games role playing games, puzzles, sports? i mean, what is that perfect game for you role playing games, diego lizarazo 19 56 you're playing games, like i mean, i enjoy all kinds i really suck at action games so all shooters i think my brain has kind of like a disconnect on 3d on a screen so i tried to shoot in one direction and i'm kind of like getting killed and the other day i cannot really coordinate that but role playing games it has always been countered me thing because they usually tend to have a story something engaging and at the same time you have the interactive part so to me it feels almost really interactive book and then having like to develop that story and trying to figure out like all like how all the characters interacting and making this story a little bit my own story that's like one of the things that i really like, obviously, like i said, i don't have the time sometimes to kind of go into these deep stories so right now i'm not doing a lot but if you asked me like what are like my, my favorite games, pretty much all of them are role playing games so like, final fantasy six, fable and wonderful latest ones that i didn't play the original one, it was my kid that ended up picking it for switch, sell the breath of the wild and that thing totally blew me away i still haven't finished it because it takes so many hours and they cannot just do like the main, the main path through the game, i have to do all the side quests and that takes forever so if they go into one of these online sites and tells you like, hey, this game is going to be 100 hours if it's sort of a role-playing game for me, that's going to be $300 so i can't know just sue did the main quest so yeah, like i think we're playing games is really the thing that is close to my heart and competitive well, they're complicated to create and there are some that are much more engaging than others but tony morelan 21 49 yeah, that's funny you know, i can tell you, this is what we're the opposite i am not into role playing games i need games simple so i am into racing games so, you know, speed is pretty much it or like, you know, just the simple arcade style games, the, you know, the old retro games, two dots, you know, just using really simple puzzles yeah, that's about as deep as i get when it comes to comes to gaming diego lizarazo 22 18 well, but believe it or not, like when i actually create games, those arcade games are the ones that i really go for because usually, it's about a mechanic, they can have like one or two mechanics that are incredibly polished, and they're repetitive, bad, bad day, and it really gives you the, the satisfaction as a player to accomplish something so like a platformer, or like the typical thing of like, space invaders that you just really get into sown and your brain is not really like thinking much is just kind of reacting those are also great, you know, and especially the old style of the old school games oh man, i don't know how many hours i spent going out like playing dos, an actual arcade but even at home in an arcade? tony morelan 23 05 yes, much of my childhood was spent out it was called merlin's castle, down in saratoga in california that was the place to be every night, we would go down there and drop our quarters in, play asteroids don't kill the plays close up so i'm going to actually date myself here for a moment when i was growing up, one of my friends, his father worked on the very first game, which was pong, very well known that this is the very first you know, computer generated game he actually brought it home before it was publicly released he's like, he got to come over here i've got this game that you hook up to our television so i actually got to play pong before it was out into the public and let launched obviously this amazing genre of games diego lizarazo 23 58 i would have i would have left in the house of your friend, if, like i would have tried to break him somehow and well, everyone is just leaping, tried to just play into their living room or whatever they have the game so yeah, that that that is a little bit of an addiction that i had growing up but it was kind of like the cool thing it was not the thing that i it was like, let's escape and let's do this really cool thing for a few hours and then let's go back to the ad well, in my case, the ad is reality that it was around me and then well, let's go and check the next game, you know so it was it was really cool and somehow, i think those simpler games in many ways were kind of like, more fun that some of the orders i think people didn't take it didn't take them as seriously, they were just to steal games the it was not kind of like the entire thing like my life revolves only around this game it was like, well, they're incredibly cool, but i know how to count like braid the two so i think the perhaps like the entire thing that you begin to listen that it like simpler times, so perhaps they were in immediate games, at least they were simpler and i think their interaction that he had with the players were simpler to him so i recall, you know, tony morelan 25 16 yeah, definitely so if we could then jump into the future, how do you think or how would you like to see games evolve? diego lizarazo 25 25 now you do see the trend already of the esports so they are going to turn more into kind of like a well i sport so like, global entertainment so just watching the game is going to be part of entertainment, which i don't particularly like because i think one of the coolest things about games is playing the games you know, but well, i've also enjoyed watching some people like it really cool ones really good ones, but they do doing dad but i think you're going to count like how it's kind of weird to say it on one end stream like more complex, more technically advanced games and then on the other hand, you're going to have the hyper casual when you when we start getting like even more and more mainstream technologies like ar and vr, then you're going to start having like more of those games that are going to get to the general public, not just like gamers, but kind of like everyone else, and then more gamified experiences so then you're going to have things that i don't know, you could go to the store, and they directly own the stands, you're going to be able to have like minigames you know, because there's going to be so simple that you could pretty much put a game on anything clicking the wrapping of candy or something like that it's going to be possible and then some of these interactions, at some point is going to be similar to what happened to the two technology in general they're just going to be in so many places that's some point you're not even going to realize that you're just playing a they're going to be just so immersive and so, so commonplace that you're just going to be playing without realizing that you're playing or you're going to be working with some gamified aspects and i think all that obviously has some good aspects to that and some aspects that we should reconsider our society but well, that's not really up to me to decide what's right and what's wrong i think the those who are going to be kind of the main things that we're going to see more and more tony morelan 27 34 yeah, no, i definitely agree you know, my son's a gamer and when he's not gaming, i'm like, okay, cool he's off, you know, the game and he's just chilling out and then i'm like, so what are you doing? he's like, oh, i'm just watching videos of other people gaming that's when i realized that like, oh my gosh, so there's this whole you know, social community around gaming that is more than just individuals playing the game i mean, there's just so much to the community so, yeah, that was that was interesting so let's talk a little bit about building apps you know, i want to know what your approaches when you want to develop an app do you first like outline what the concept is? or do you just start like playing with a code and kind of build out from there? what's your approach to that? diego lizarazo 28 19 usually, for me, it has been, at least have a problem or have a, like, at least the concept, you know, that i build the app around so it could be i'm trying to solve something, or somehow, i was able to, for example, with games that happens a lot that i already have a game mechanic that i really like and he said, like, where is it going to, to fit? so usually, i don't just come and start playing, i usually start playing with the with the code when i already have like a skeleton like a base that is the year and then it's like, okay, let's figure out like all the other aspects, the ones that may not be as important how, how can i do that? obviously, to solve that initial core concept, or that initial problem solving it, you end up calling like trying different approaches but additionally, and that's something that i do in many other many other things, i like to at least have an outline, you know, like a, grab a piece of paper, and say like, i want to do abc, and c, and then try to figure out how to do that and then that mabel, or dan may stay in into those original ideas bad but usually, i like it i prefer it, when there's something that guides me like, in goal, even if i if he didn't stop changing, but at least have a general idea where i'm going tony morelan 29 42 so tell me about some tools or tips that you may have, that you can recommend for someone creating their first game app diego lizarazo 29 49 well for game, so i have a couple of things that that i can share so for games in general, i think one of the things that will people don't realize is that games can be sometimes hard to program so i have like two tools for a person that has no idea how to create games that i recommend and the first one is construct three, i think that we can put the link in the notes so the company is called sarah and you can create games like javascript games that are going to run on your browser and you don't really need to do a lot of programming so it gives you a good idea of how to start creating games without doing a lot of the understanding what of what goes behind so that's really good if you already have a little bit of experience programming or want to learn how to program a also would recommend something like phaser, but it's also a javascript game, but you do have to write the code so it gives you the idea if you're going to teach a kid perhaps then you can find things like a scratch so those are a little bit more visual programming languages and it helps you to understand, like a lot of the logic on how like, yeah, well eaves, wiles loops, things that you still need in programs and you know, in apps in general, and specifically for games if you're currently trying to create a new app i have, well, the game is a good way to do it but there are like several code several like places that you can learn how to do some programming i think javascript is really great not just because of the language itself bad is because you can find it almost anywhere whenever you visit a website usually it has a little bit of javascript so i know that a lot of people are going to complain and say like new it's better to start with python or is better to start with other programming languages but i think for someone that is starting to learn how to program is really easy to create a piece of code with notepad and then it means run it using a browser so you don't need a lot of tools and you can see results right away and it's so extended a they can find so many resources, look at no free code camp org or w three schools, that they give you a lot of tutorials on how to start creating and those are counting gen now, if you're a little bit more experienced, and perhaps you know how to code and you want to create, let's say, your first like big game, unity is a great way to go about it it could be a little bit hard at the beginning, because it has so many options it has so many buttons, the ui is really complicated so if you open it for the first time, and you don't know what you're doing, just go to youtube, or go to one of the unity pages, because you're going to be overwhelmed so that's why i'm saying like, i think it's a great tool it's just that if it's your first game, you may be a little bit like whoa, whoa so that would be a good thing and if you're going to start creating apps in general well, i would recommend to start creating something with android so it could be android studio or even with tyson or for samsung, it could be like a, you could go to tyson org or the developer something com page and you are going to also have the chance to start creating mobile applications or applications for smartwatches and well even look like if you just want to see something with a smartwatch it's a no that follow tony, because he's going to give you a lot of places where you can go and well, i think i'm going to share with tony like a lot of older things that data developers are counting tips and things that you can use so places like if you are like most developers a little bit design challenged there you could find like cool images like pixels or game art that is open game art or if you want to just kind of like find like colors, the right colors for you ui you could go to places like wireless coolers not colors but cool or schoolers casio and immediately gives you like a palette that you can use in your in your application so you break now there are fortunately, a lot of resources that you can find online and well, quickly we can put some of the links in tony morelan 34 18 yeah, definitely yeah so as you'd mentioned, we'll include everything in the show notes you're giving a lot of great information, a lot of great resources so we will link to all of that down in the show notes so thank you thank you a bunch for that so one thing that's been wonderful, you joining the team is see speak spanish so you've been able to reach out to the spanish speaking community, you've had some very successful live chats and webinars that you conduct all in spanish so and our reach is global so as you know, you know, when we're doing or live chats or videos and whatnot, they are reaching countries all around the world so i want to ask you, how do you think the developer communities differ? around the world, diego lizarazo 35 02 i think it's a little bit of a level of, of engagement, you know, like it in the us in particular, a lot of the technical content is already created an english, you know, so sometimes is really easy for a developer or anyone that wants to be a developer, just go online and search for whatever and you immediately are going to find a response no, like it's right there in other places, especially places that have where english meaning have become like a yeah, kind of like as extended, then then it could be a little bit more of like people that really want to get the answers though sort of ones that somehow or have to learn english or try to kind of like understand more of the content that there is there but also, sometimes even they are the ones that try to translate, you know, they figure out like, hey, i have this i found this awesome video and no one has that in spanish or a translation in english and then be recruited that same content so i think it's a matter of kind of, like availability of tools and resources and sometimes you see a little bit more of those dynamics in in user groups, you know, so a lot of people kind of like, some are more motivated by that and notice, on the other hand, feel a little bit shyer you know, it's kind of like, well, i know that i'm not going to get older with all the responses that i needed so you have to kind of like work around that whenever you're coming, like reaching older countries in and people from other languages, but yeah, it's really interesting and also, you see that sometimes certain technologies are more popular in certain countries and sometimes you don't even understand why he knows like, why that that programming language is so popular in brazil i don't know that it is more popular in brazil, you know, or websites and things like that, because well, they'll be communities evolved differently tony morelan 37 01 sure, you know so my specialty is design so i help a lot of developers from the design aspect for their apps and i'm always amazed at how many russian watch face designers there are so when i've been communicating with them, you know, exchanging emails, or responding to different posts and whatnot, you know, i'm conducting all this in english, and we're having these great conversations well, i reached out to a couple of them the other day to invite them onto a phone call, and came to find out that they don't speak english they've just been using google translate in their comments exactly it just hit me and i'm like, so for all these months that we've been carrying these conversations, this is all just been russian translated using google translate though exactly pretty neat to see the board is really, you know, taken down diego lizarazo 37 50 yeah, and exactly so sometimes, certain content like videos i personally prefer videos, but then in order to places they may prefer the text, you know, or code, because it's something that you can easily copy paste somewhere else and get a translation so in a video, you may not get the accent, or you your understanding of the language is not as great so then you still can have like a barrier there but it well, people, if they really want to do it, if they really want to, like get to the content, they figure it out it's just like the how, like how the solve that problem could add like a couple of steps there in the process tony morelan 38 32 so we've talked a lot about conferences, you know, we used to do a lot of outreach in person so can you tell me about some of the experiences you've had at these conferences? have you had great experiences? have you had any challenging experiences? tell me about maybe unique people that you might have met at some of these conferences? diego lizarazo 38 52 yeah so i'll tell you one, like that it was challenging that was not what samsung but i was going to man booth in a conference for another company and we had a product and a like, this is called like the entire thing about demos, whenever you have some product, if you don't pay attention, or if you don't cross your fingers long enough at sometimes a demo is going to fail and they told me like, okay with the confidence, let's say start tuesday, 9am and i came there early, set up everything, everything's ready to go and they put my computer there to show the product everything's working, and it suddenly stopped working so i had like half an hour before people who started coming to the floor, and they had to show things and i literally had to call like go outside of the of the conference floor, and start pretty much figured out what was the error and at some point, it was called, like calling someone from the team and trying to figure out it was of course the most stupid thing like a package got updated last minute automatically and then bad one had a company with something else, and then you just can't change one file and magically everything is working but it is incredibly stressful to try to solve something like right before you have to show it and i have had some things like that, even in webinars and things are dead and you're like, what do i do now? and you have to figure out like the solution right in but that one was, like really stressful for me a really cool one on the other hand, for example, in adobe max, which you were last year, so like a good portion of our team was there last year, i had the chance to talk with a really cool developer so his name is derek miller and he went back and talk with us and what really blew me away for ones is that well, he's a teacher i have his video that's something we did we never really just share outside of our team, because we wanted to really give it the promotion that we wanted, but it was a little bit hard sometimes to promote some of these things but the thing is that he had a real-life problem sometimes we're talking about apps and, and games and, and really well if a game does work or doesn't work usually doesn't change anyone's life but in his case, he was dealing with diabetes and he wanted to be to have well pretty much a regular life in and figure out how to do it use technology because he knows how to use technology he lived he teaches a lot of like, maker things who are things with raspberry pi's and things like that and pretty much he designed and implemented a full system to be able to check his level, his blood level, you know, like glucose and everything in in to be coming in that regular stable state, regardless if he was on the road or if he was changing his diet, etc , etc so he kind of like told us all about that and he was using something technologies and i was blown away again because at the time it's one of those things since i don't have dad disease, i don't have that problem, that health problem i never thought about that, like how to solve it and then he was already explaining, like, hey, i did this and i can't create the keys for him for my sensor and this is how it connected my phone and i was asking, like, how long do you meditate? he was like, oh, well, like one or two days and was like, really, it would take me forever for me to do that, you know, and it is because obviously, he had a personal need and he had a personal problem, a real-life problem and he really wanted to put his knowledge into something that that could be used by him or by anyone else and he figured it out without even having can like a commercial solution for that and he was still able to figure it out so that was one of the times that i felt good at that i get kind of like a personal satisfaction to see someone using their knowledge to solve a real problem and it was amazing and he was, again randomly we were in a design conference that is adobe max last year it wasn't even about guest programming, he was more towards like the design part and he just came to our booth, you know, to be able to talk with us and show us the kind of things that he was doing so, so that wouldn't really blow me away tony morelan 43 16 that's, that's great you know, i think that for me, i've had a few of those experiences where i've met some really unique people from the design community since that's been my primary focus, whether it's meeting individuals that are just happen to be coming by our booth, or meeting some of the other people who are at the conference to present i've met some of what i call like my rock star designers in the community out there andrew kramer, who's done a lot of work with motion graphics he worked a lot on star wars i follow him he was the one who truthfully his tutorial videos are what inspired me to get into motion graphics many years ago and here i was at a conference right next to him and next thing you know, we're starting to open a conversation and we must have chatted for about 30 minutes, just the two of us chatting away and i just still couldn't believe it that i was, you know, next to him, mr doodle who's an amazing artist, he was at adobe max so just being able to see these people in person was just so rewarding i can't wait for us to get back out into conferences to get back into that environment diego lizarazo 44 28 yeah, absolutely and, and, and we think that's one of the cool things that are, you asked me before about this kind of rolls, sometimes we end up talking with some people that eat or know, that have such an amazing experience so personally, for me, like and well, you can share this one i have always kind of like beanie to, like you say to the role-playing games that are also games are not just like the video games, you know, like, also tabletop games and there is this one that that is numbered masquerade so it's called dungeons and dragons but couldn't like darker green here because it was the 90s and i was a real fan and i came here to georgia i had the bugs i played that and they didn't know that that game actually started here in atlanta and at some point, someone told me like, hey, you should come and talk with andrew sure and his name is andrew greenberg and right now he's the president of the georgia game developer association so he helps like videogame developers, but also tabletop game developers, and a lot of people in the gaming industry and entertainment industry and he started talking with him and then later, i found out that he was one of the original developers, not the creator, but one of the original developers of this game so it's one game that have been kind of like fanning out for i don't know how many years since i was a teenager and then i was able to, like meet someone that literally was in the offices creating the content that i was reading and all that and you don't know in these conferences or like when you go to use groups who you're going to be able to find me, it could be like someone that already has a lot of expense or it could be someone that 15 years from now could be the next you know, maybe the next genius, game creator or app creator, and you don't know, you don't know and that's why i really love to talk with people, because that's when you make these connections tony morelan 46 21 yeah, no, definitely which then leads me to hackathons in game jam so we've talked a lot about conferences and some of our outreach let's get specific and talk about hackathons what's your involvement around that? diego lizarazo 46 34 yeah, so well, a hackathon is pretty much usually they have this format of let's get doing a weekend or let's get for a few days and let's put together like an application or a system, or do some coding to create something cool sometimes the hackathon could have like a theme so let's create something around a specific technology or like any api, or let's create something to solve this problem, or it could be something more specific, which it would be like a game jam, where it would be a game jeremy's car, like, let's get together and instead of having a music jam, where we're creating cool things that sound cool, it would be let's create some games that look cool and play cool so sometimes they end up creating like a small game sort of times they are a little bit more polished, but usually that everything is created in that span of 4872 hours sometimes there's orders a little bit longer, like half a week or something but there's always this entire element of pressure of let's be creative, like pretty much on the moment and let's meet people that we haven't met before so sometimes some teams can like form right there on the spot, and have been able to kind of like it participate in many of those some are a little bit more professional, more enterprise sort of thing, or is mean in universities or game associations for example, usually around the end of january they have the global game jam so i had the chance to go there and sometimes a sponsor and sometimes, like talk with people i always go like in depth like not participating myself creating that i always click start creating like a concept that i'm going to end up doing and i end up doing something else so it doesn't work out but he's really great to go and see the results of the apps that people created hackathons or the games and the people are game jams and it's something that brings a lot of energy from young people creating cool things together tony morelan 48 28 yeah and i think that probably what i enjoyed the most around that is, everybody there is they're all there for like the same reason you know what i mean? it's to be creative i one time participate in a 48-hour film project so this is where different teams break up and you have 48 hours to put together a film and you know, so you're writing your script, you're filming it here, you're editing it, you're doing everything all within 48 hours, and just being around you know, like minded people so i can totally understand that when you're at a game jam or at a hackathon, just being around the energy of all those people i mean, that's got to be pretty, pretty exciting diego lizarazo 49 11 yeah, yeah and sometimes people come up with, like some things that you were like, how did you even come up with that idea? you know, and it's really cool so and last year with something we had one in washington dc, that one was created in conjunction with mit, and it was around health and coming up with liquid use to help people in the health industry and the health sector to well help people that will have actual diseases or health problems, etc , etc and we were able to talk with some teams that were coming up with so many incredible solutions so one of them and one team was kind of like chicken india, the smartwatches, the samsung smartwatches and have to do with elderly care so like, trying to check things around the gap, how it could take someone falling, you know, someone that is older and could be falling and maybe the gyroscope he did watch could help with that detection, or how they could collect information like i don't know, like the heartbeats or their sleep patterns, things like that so they were calling and saying like, we already have this awesome house record, how do we do? how do we use that to help others? and i thought that it was incredibly interesting, and usually don't do anything that has to do with health so that particular hackathon was kind of like, oh, that's, that's different than that yeah, that's the entire point, to bring some creativity and bring, like, two different things that sometimes don't go along and put them to work together tony morelan 50 51 yeah, no, that's, that's so true i once went to a meetup group, where people were presenting their apps and somebody had created app for the elderly, the chance of them falling down and this person who had worked their way through this app, not realizing that when people fall, they don't fall like a tree falling in the forest, they crumble so this app developer hadn't really thought of that, that the motion is not, you know, a tree falling it's just someone kind of collapsing down and that was because of the, you know, the people that attended that meetup group that then helped this app developer, you know, understand kind of, you know, a basic thing that it was just an oversight diego lizarazo 51 35 yeah, but i don't think you'd seen a bit of an oversight is that sometimes that happens a lot with developers, and you can see it with a lot of technologies that didn't have to be adopted and it has to be that way sometimes, developers end up solving problems that don't really exist, what are the problems, something different? tony morelan 51 53 so you've done a great job on reaching out to the community and sharing your knowledge and no one of yours a very popular series is the tyson tidbits yet you've been publishing on youtube can you tell us are there any other upcoming topics that that you have planned? diego lizarazo 52 10 yeah, actually, i it's kind of fun like how these things work and coming back a little bit more to towards the gaming side of things so i'm going to be putting a little bit more like short videos on showing how to create games with samsung technologies and in general, i'll try to put like different technology so right now we have so many technologies that you can use so many platforms like apple face or construct two dimensions before and unity and so it would be cool to solve the specific things that have to do with games and did help to publish them because i think, i think sometimes when you are creating a game or an app, if you are not forced to share with others, then it can stall otherwise, if you know that you want to publish it in the app, regardless if it's successful or not you still have kind of liquidity that a goal to achieve that is shared, like that game so, so that's where quite likely i'm going to start creating and you actually have to finish a video in the next couple of days around that so we'll see how that goes so i already have like a few that i need to record well, i have to start one by one so we'll see how long it takes me to create him and publish them tony morelan 53 24 so if developers want to get in contact with you, what is the best way? diego lizarazo 53 29 well, they can go directly if it's especially something technical, it's great to send me an email and you can use my samsung email so you're going to see it on the notes that's diegorivera@partner samsung com so like we'd like it's better that you check the notes so you can send me an email there and specifically we are talking about an error it's great that you send me like a screenshot sometimes people describe their and like, well, it's given me a lot of information, screenshots sometimes works best if not the still can find me online so the best thing that usually i go by helo777 so that would be like the translation of ice in spanish so that's h e l o 777 and you can find me like that on twitter, in our instagram, etc , etc so twitter, i receive a lot of messages so i can respond directly there leave dog, like i say to my email, that's a good way to get in contact with me tony morelan 54 28 when you're not coding when you're not working, what do you do for fun? diego lizarazo 54 32 spending time with my family, have a big family so literally get some popcorn, get in front of the tv and watch an animated movie i have still like little kids so we were still not at the age where we can all just watch like people on the screen they still have to be cartoons at some point we will graduate to real people and live action bad in the meantime is dad or going on some road trips so i'm kind of fortunate did an around the area, we have many other smaller cities and towns that we can visit and every other month we are currently going somewhere so that with my family that's its own adventure just like taking them one hour down the road that that's still interesting tony morelan 55 15 excellent well, hey diego, absolutely appreciate you taking the time to join me on the podcast this has been a ton of fun i am glad to even get to know you better than i knew you before so thank you again oh, thank you, tony outro 55 25 looking to start creating for samsung, download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding it all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan

Episode 3, Biodome Games

Episode 1, Drazen Stojcic

Episode 11, Diego Lizarazo

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Episode 3, Biodome Games

Episode 1, Drazen Stojcic

Episode 11, Diego Lizarazo

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