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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 10, Chris Shomo

season 1, episode 10 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 chris shomo infinity watchfaces in this episode of pow, i interview chris shomo from infinity watchfaces chris was one of the first designers to start selling watch faces on galaxy store and has become a very successful app designer along the way he has inspired many other designers to start creating for samsung with his willingness to share his knowledge and expertise listen download this episode topics covered galaxy watch studio for tizen galaxy themes studio galaxy store galaxy store badges social promotion jibber jab reviews jibber jab reviews live chat iot gadgets samsung galaxy watch facebook group tap reveal galaxy watch3 asset creator lifestyle photos chris shomo sdc17 video presentation 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 0 02 hey, i'm tony morelan and this is pow! podcast of wisdom from the samsung developer program where we talk about the latest tech, trends and give insight into all of the opportunities available for developers looking to create for samsung on today's show, i interview chris shomo from infinity watch faces chris was one of the first designers to start selling watch faces on the galaxy store and has become one of the most successful along the way he's inspired many other designers to start creating for samsung with his willingness to share his knowledge and expertise in fact, it was a video i saw of chris who inspired me to start designing watch faces, which eventually led me to my gig at samsung so it is an absolute honor to bring him on to the podcast and let me warn you chris, and i'd love to talk and sometimes we go off on a few tangents, talking about how his house was not only featured in an episode of ghost hunters, but was also used in a big time hollywood movie and of course we talk a lot about designing and marketing apps for samsung enjoy tony morelan 0 58 i am super excited to have on the podcast today chris shomo from infinity watch faces so let me first actually start by asking who is chris shomo? chris shomo 1 05 hey, tony, thank you so much for having me on the show who is chris sharma i'm, i'm a lot of things i am a designer, which you know, initially, you know, when someone is a designer, they can be quirky, they can be geeky, sometimes they can be introverted sometimes or they can be outgoing it depends on my mood and the time of day, i can be a little bit of everything so, but you know, i can be the shy person in the room, but you get me talking about something that i'm interested in, and then sometimes you can't get me to shut up so i can absolutely relate to that, that you've pretty much have described my personality definitely, you know, being a fellow designer, and that's why i'm really excited about this podcast is that we can kind of geek out a bit as we're talking design cool so how did you first get your start in graphic design? oh, geez well, i guess it goes all the way back to when i was a little kid my mom always had me doing artistic projects for school actually, i would always find a way to make some sort of artistic project if i could for homework, i would always go to the art route it was a lot more fun and then in high school, i did a project it was a pennant drawing of the shakespeare globe theater and i did it for an english class and i decided to take an art class as an elective and mrs martin, my art teacher in high school, she asked for some examples of my previous work and out of my bookbag, i took out a folded piece of paper and then i just like unfolded it to this, this gigantic poster size of the shakespeare globe theater it was that that artistic drawing i did, and then she said, okay, lesson number one, do not fold up your artwork so, that's how i kind of got started and that drawing was pretty awesome and she kind of excelled me through she put me into the higher level art classes real quick they kind of skipped me a couple classes and i want a lot of awards against other students and some regional awards in the area and then afterwards, i decided to go to art school and my brother discovered the savannah college of art and design down savannah, georgia and yes, so yeah, i attended there wow so for a good while to almost like a van wilder experience but multiple degrees tony morelan 3 33 wonderful again, i could relate to that i definitely took the long route through college so straight out of college, then did you work for a large company? did you start your own your own gig? what did you what was your first step coming out of college? chris shomo 3 46 okay, well, i graduated with my undergrad in computer art with a focus on 3d animation and that was in 2005 and right after the i interviewed for some companies, and i just really did not want to be stuck in a cubicle, just you know, for the jobs that i was offered so i ended up taking a job for a contractor and helping build a house from ground up oh, wow and after that, i decided i was interested in architecture and i put together a portfolio and scad gave me a portfolio scholarship to come back and they paid for the masters and i got my masters in architecture tony morelan 4 21 wow i did not know that chris shomo 4 23 yeah so and of many secrets, i guess, some hidden talents there but i did graduate after the economy crashed, and it was really hard to find a job in architecture so i started a website design company and from there, i just kind of, you know, word of mouth i just kept on gaining clients until eventually i had clients all across the east coast so you went to school in savannah, georgia are you currently in savannah? is that where your offices based out of? yes, savannah is where my heart is i love the city and i'm actually president of the neighborhood association for the neighborhood that i'm in, and it's one of the largest neighborhoods in savannah okay and southern living magazine actually ranked the number one neighborhood to live in in the south as well right before all the craziness this year, we got that nation sure so it is quite interesting because it there's so many local businesses and residential neighborhoods in this neighborhood so just dealing with everything from alcohol licenses and giving our blessing and, you know, zoning issues and, you know, just figuring out what's going on with crosswalks and trash cans and all that kind of stuff you know, it's interesting tony morelan 5 40 so i actually heard a very interesting note about not just the neighborhood but the house that you live in yes, you once told me that it is actually haunted chris shomo 5 50 it is haunted and it's documented on a ghost hunters’ episode i believe it's 2010 home is where the heart is okay yeah, it's all about the current a family that was living there and their experiences with a ghost they say they've seen this ghost this little girl apparently, her name is tony clark and she's been appearing i guess for the past hour well, the previous owner salt or 200 times that's what they said 200 or more times, and ghost hunters did believe that there were dual entities in the house as well think okay, well, monique clark she is the daughter of the guy who built the house back in 1896 and he owned a lumber mill and he inherited this lumber mill from his father when he was 26 years old and he built a house known he was one of his daughters and apparently, she was one of the first women to receive a pacemaker for her heart and that led to her dying somehow i don't know what happened to it but she died when she was in her 50s but supposedly she's coming back is like a 12 year old girl i've never seen i've had some strange things happen in the house door slamming things disappearing from one place appearing in another place not my imagination other people have experienced things too but how she was identified is that the lady across the street had apparently, i recognize the description of the nightgown that she appeared in because she had made that night gown for her when she was young so getting a little cold chills thinking about it right now but it is interesting, but yeah, i don't feel scared in the house i think the house accepts me i have never had to smudge it or whatever you call it or you know, try to clear spirits out of there but it's an interesting story and it's always fun when somebody else experiences something tony morelan 7 46 oh, that is absolutely wild to hear you know, and we'll circle back to the whole aspect of design in this podcast i will note before i'm going to jump ahead just a little bit your designs have a little bit of a quirkiness to it and sometimes i'm seeing, you know, ghosts and aliens and the crazy thing so i think that may be where you're getting some of your inspiration chris shomo 8 08 yeah well, i mean, you live in a dynamic city, it's actually one of the most haunted cities in america sure you know, and it's one of the most wild cities in america too i mean, you have this, this local field, but then, at the same time, you know, it's one of the few places in america where you have an open cup, and, you know, take a drink from one bar to another downtown so it leads to a little bit of craziness but i myself pride myself in being a little crazy, you know, you have to be in this crazy world and i love surprising people with designs to light like one second yeah, you'll have a butterfly that looks realistic landing on your, on your watch and then the next moment, you know, you have some zombies that are appearing with your step, go biohazard z tony morelan 8 57 that's a great one yeah, definitely so we were fortunate actually to come out and visit you at savannah college of art and design where we came in hosted a session with your students, teaching them all about theme designing for phones and watch faces and that connection actually came through you so that was my opportunity to come out to savannah and get to meet you in person what a beautiful city i mean, it really in the campus itself to is pretty unique because from what i understand savannah college of art and design, they're like the number one occupancy of buildings in downtown is that correct? i mean, as far as the campuses is put together, chris shomo 9 32 yeah, it seems like it's every other building and it's really amazing what they've done for savannah they encouraged a lot of businesses to move in as well to cater to the students and they really played a huge role in where savannah is today you know, we get millions and millions of visitors every single year and schools to thank for a lot of that, you know, just the restoration projects and encouraging restoration and then of course, we have a great hit preservation society alone just in savannah being the oldest plant city in america, and in a genius plan to just how it integrates with all the giant oak trees that are in all the squares and people are really jealous of those, those oak trees and, you know, as a person living there, i always try to make sure that i go out and i do what the visitors do, just to remind myself, you know, what a beautiful city it is and then, you know, just going to school in those historic buildings as well it just it helps with the creativity and yeah, the location definitely helps with the whole artistic side of things tony morelan 10 39 yes, and for those who don't know, savannah is actually the city where they filmed the scene of forrest gump on the bench yep, that iconic moment in forrest gump where he's sitting on that bench that was in savannah at one of the squares i actually walked by that to take a look at that for myself just an amazing city chris shomo 11 00 and it's actually known for a lot of movies as well like the lady in the tramp that's on disney plus that was filmed they actually looked at my house to potentially film it there but they said that the lot was too big so they actually filmed it a few blocks down and yeah, and then also, my house is where the movie legend of bagger vance was filmed there's a scene where it's where the little kid lives the caddy and there's a whole scene at the dinner table where they're, they're talking and stuff that's my dining room oh, wow it was one of the houses the few houses around there that had a dining room with a view to the kitchen as well and they needed that for the scene so robert redford picked out the wallpaper it's kind of cool tony morelan 11 47 absolutely crazy yeah oh, wow i knew this podcast would be fun, but i have no idea so let's circle back around and let's talk a little bit about design okay, tell me how you first heard about the sample galaxy watch chris shomo 12 00 okay, well, i'm a tech geek i love any type of mobile tech, especially before the watches came out on i was like a cell phone fanatic like, you know, first we wanted them to get small and now they're getting bigger yes now we need the biggest phone ever, which i absolutely love but i was eyeing smartwatches for a while and finally i was like, okay, i'm getting one at the time i'm like, i couldn't really afford it but you know, i don't care i'm getting one so i went down to the best buy and i got the first gear s to sport i just loved it it was great but there was one thing that bothered me i needed more watch faces i was bored with the watch faces that were available and went on the it was galaxy apps before but now the galaxy store and you know, i even paid like i think it was like five or $10 for a watch face it looked like the coolest one out there then like, alright, how do i make my own? so that's when i just googled and i found it was the galaxy watch designer well, at the time, it was the gear watch designer 1 0 wow and, like, right when it first came out, i mean, i think i might have actually caught it within days of it coming out and i downloaded it, and i just started playing around with it and i never even planned on releasing any of them for anybody else i just, you know, wanted to make some for me and then i'm like, alright, look, i can, i can load some and see if i can make a few dollars let's do it so i think i made like $17 off of two watch faces the first day and then i'm just thinking to myself, like, you know, what if i have like 300 watch faces on there, you know, how much how much can i make her? so i mean, sure enough now gosh, i have about 394 watch faces and themes published wow, that's amazing and how long would you say this has been? oh gosh i started in i think it was february, early february of 2016 okay, so when i started, and you can actually kind of look back at some of my very early designs, and see how the design has improved over time sure the very first one that i did, i just called it gear spin and i didn't really know much about the designer, the software and everything i was just getting into, it didn't really think that i could even put a graphic on, you know, a watch hand and use it other than a watch hand at the time so i even animated a gear using adobe flash exported the frame animations out and threw it in there just to get a gear spinning sure now, i'll just put it on a second hand but i'm thinking coming from a designing standpoint, not a watch standpoint and, and that's something that you that you really have to start doing it start thinking, you know, i'm also a watchmaker in a way exactly, you know, so you got to start thinking, that language and that starts you know, meshing with the creative ideas and then you start, you know, you got to focus on functionality at the same time that you're trying to focus on dynamics and what it looks like, that sort of thing so tony morelan 15 11 that's true and you know, i do a lot of teaching to students just learning how to watch design and the challenges are that they've got this tool that can allow them to just do amazing graphics and amazing animations and then they forget that really, this is a time piece where people need to quickly tell what time it is so even though you can have a lot of fun with your graphics in your animation, you still need to make it where you know on quick notice, you can actually tell what time it is i mean, that's the whole the function of the watch and that's what i love with your designs as well i mean, you've got some amazing, fun, quirky, crazy designs i mean, everything from dogs and butterflies to spooky, eyeballs and reapers so let's talk a little bit about your approach to design and some of the tools you're using you had mentioned adobe flash so we're going back in the day oh gosh, yeah chris shomo 16 03 well, i don't use that anymore but i used to use that all the time tony morelan 16 07 so tell me kind of that your workflow, you know, when you know, from concept, your tools, are you sketching on pencil and paper when you have an idea, or do you just dive right into a software program? chris shomo 16 18 well, i guess this is where professors are going to want to smack me and i should be sketching more than that you know, scat always says, you start with the basics, and you start sketching, and i need to carry around a sketchbook but no, i kind of jump into the software first but in a way, i kind of sketch digitally i'll start with a program like adobe illustrator, just to get the basic shapes done and i'll move them into photoshop, of course, to get the nice effects to get the textures, some of the shadows or to create the shadow layers that you'll export separately later you know, those are our two the main tools of getting i guess, the framework of the of the watch, but of course, i like to do animations, so using a lot of after effects and premiere, and sometimes when i have to maya and all that kind of stuff, and then you know, getting it out to the, the frames, and also being very cautious about file size as well you know, we are dealing essentially with an app, even though it's very focused around design, which i'm very thankful thank you samsung for giving me awesome design software, where i don't have to code everything but, but you do have to remember that, you know, people will get frustrated if you have a, you know, a 50 megabyte watch face, which i mean, i could easily make one that large but it's all about understanding the compression and understanding your tools to make sure that when you deliver that watch face, it's fine, it's dynamic, it has all the effects but it doesn't take forever to install or it doesn't, you know, someone doesn't have an issue with it so understanding the technical side but really understand or design software tony morelan 18 02 that helps, you know, and you had mentioned a little trick that i may have actually learned from you in that where you had said that you know, your first animation was done using flash and bringing those in as animated gifs but you then said, hey, i could have just made this a watch hand and that's one of those tricks that when you realize that watch hands don't actually have to be watch hands it's the watch and feature is basically just a rotating graphic that you can then set its direction that it rotates, you can set the you know, the time that it rotates so again, another tip that came from chris that helped me in my, in my success as a watch face designer and i'm actually going to take this moment to thank you again, because it was your you had mentioned, you started in 2016 i think it was at the developer conference in 2017 that samsung invited you out to actually speak at the event was that correct? yes, that's right so tell me a little bit about that that experience, because it was after that conference, they posted the video online and that's how i first learned about designing for samsung it was finding this video of chris shomo from infinity watch faces speaking at the conference, that then got me excited so tell me a little about that chris shomo 19 20 uh, that moment, the whole experience was awesome at first late, like when you get an email saying, hey, would you like to come to the samsung developers conference? i'm like, what, at first, i'm just kind of like, samsung sees me this is cool you know how to play i'm getting so excited the experience was great meeting the team was wonderful and just, you know, the team itself were, you know, the designers of the software, the galaxy watch designer, and all that they were so embracing of everybody that came it was such a wonderful experience and then also talking with them and understanding, you know, their process and what goes into creating the software that was amazing too but i guess one of the, the most awesome and rewarding parts of this is all the designers led you, to me that have come to me, it's just like, just been like, thank you for giving that presentation because you guys showed me that, you know, anybody can do this and, and, you know, and then if you have some fun and, you know, wonderful designs that people like then then you can really succeed at it as well and i just i love that yeah, that i could influence someone to start a watch face design career there's another one in particular, that is with usa design he started a little bit later he was doing some games for the watch and he was there at the presentation as well and now he's like one of the top sellers it's amazing he jumped into it he founded as a design formula that works really great with the active two, especially when that came out without the bezel at the time, and is doing phenomenal and i just absolutely love to see that and the fact that i might have played a part in pushing him in that direction is just, it's rewarding it's humbling it's, it's cool tony morelan 21 28 yeah, no, that's, that's great it was you know, when i watched that video of your presentation, and you had mentioned, the first thing was that you can create these watch faces without coding you know, i've done a little bit of coding, but my experience is a lot like yours i mean, i had my own freelance design company i did a lot of website designing but when i learned that you could create these watch faces, really without doing any coding so it's just such an extension of photoshop or illustrator in using like after effects with the timeline you can have so much fun doing it you had mentioned earlier little secret again, just like the watch hands rotating how you could actually have buttons that you could tap and reveal things by using a transparent png that didn't have any pixels in it, you use that as sort of like a cover button well, when i learned about that, i then dove into this whole idea of being able to tap certain areas of the watch and have it reveal new things like, you know, if you wanted to show your step counter, you could tap an icon and it would then show the numbers so you could customize the look of the watch face, cleaning it up by not having all the graphics show, but tapping to reveal whatever sort of data you wanted to see your heart rate beats per minute, i mean, all sorts of different elements and it was from you the that i learned about that i then have totally expanded on that creating videos on tap reveal, that are shown on youtube and doing a whole thing around that and i've seen that a lot of people really enjoy, you know, learning about that and that again, came from you in that presentation so thank you a big thank you from the crowd of designers that really appreciate what you've what you've inspired chris shomo 23 09 thanks yeah, i mean, it's fun and that all kind of spawned from figuring out a solution to putting all this information on a watch face, but not making it look too busy and so kind of hiding it and revealing it there, it kind of making use with the tools that are given to you, and how can you make it work to simulate something when you when you don't have all the code underneath it so tony morelan 23 35 that's great so we've talked a lot about watch faces i know you also are doing theme designing so what was that progression? you first were designing for watches and then learn that you could actually do something very similar with theme studio and creating themes for our phone devices chris shomo 23 52 yeah, no, the whole idea is matching your watch face to your theme and having total continuity between the two and for example, the shock theme that one's actually a free one just called shock, you can look it up that's the most downloaded theme that i have and it has a matching much face called shock as well so you just be shocking everybody with the shock but, but yeah, in those i also like to i like to make fun and exciting something that you wouldn't expect from dancing frogs to lightning bolts to oh gosh, and i got so many more that are just about to come out i'm not going to ruin the surprise, but y'all are gonna love them tony morelan 24 34 wonderful i'm looking at your website and the one that jumps out to me is martian bash i know it's a great dancing alien you know, how is that is there been a lot of success behind some of these quirky dancing cuz i've seen like santas dancing and you've got a lot of fun ones chris shomo 24 48 well, yeah, because i want to reward people for taking some steps a lot of these characters that are on there, they change what they're doing based upon step gold percentage so if you want the aliens dance you're going to have to meet your step goal so in the morning, he might, you know, he's standing there, he's waving at you and then as you proceed during the day, he's running one direction and towards you that another direction and then finally, yeah, he's dancing whoo, you just read your step goal one of the points of these watches is for health and to encourage people to, you know, get out of the chair and you know, move around, and so why not make something that's fun and exciting and encourages that at the same time? that's great so even the one called bolt that has lightning bolts that go across it starts as like a tiny little bolt and as you proceed through the day with your step, go, more electricity comes out and i'm getting ready to release another one with a fun little loving alien that does a lot of other stuff to your step goal as well so that should be fun tony morelan 25 45 super excited about that tell me watch face designing and theme designing is this your full-time gig or do you actually still go back and do some of your website designing or anything beyond design? chris shomo 25 55 oh, this is actually full part time gig chris shomo 26 00 between that and website design and i'm also the cto and creative director of the picker joe's brand you probably heard of antique pickers, vintage pickers, they go around and find really cool stuff and bring it to people yes so yeah, there's a store in savannah, georgia called picker joe's antique mall and it's 10,000 square feet 25,000 items that change daily, about 65 antique pickers that go out and find all this stuff we like to say that it's an experience like no other because it really is we have people that come in from different parts of the world, from across the country, and they go, wow, this is the best antique mall experience that i've ever had and we've also been on oh gosh, i don't know how many interviews so far with the same production company that does american pickers and so they are still considering us possibly for that show oh, wow but, but i designed the branding and do all the advertising and we do crazy videos usually filmed with the latest samsung phone as well and if you go to our instagram if you look at our youtube and stuff, you'll see some of the, the wild and insane advertisements that we do all the time and that's one of the things that really sets it apart from other stores i mean, if you ever heard of an antique store that you know for halloween has monsters invading us and appearing everywhere and like all sorts of things, no, probably not but i encourage everybody to check it out and if you're in savannah, you've got to experience it you really did tony morelan 27 31 definitely in i can see in your designs you definitely have a lot of fun humor happening i'm looking at the watch face for joe, joe's, your character of the dog that seems like his tongue is actually bigger, bigger and then his head and wagging more than his tail yep, chris shomo 27 53 yep and i actually have a dog named joe and that's actually what picker joe's is named after do oh, that's great figure so he's a jack russell and he actually looks very similar to joe and he likes all the time he's always happy and always mischievous as well, too so, again, he'll react to your step go, he'll, he'll do some fun stuff at 50% as well so definitely check that out tony morelan 28 18 so, are you doing all this design work yourself? or do you have a team of designers that work with you in producing watch faces and themes? chris shomo 28 25 most of this stuff is just me but i do have a another a friend and fellow colleague that graduated with me, jonathan maillard he's over in denver right now so i do pull him in on tons of different projects we're working on some right now some interesting apps and hopefully in the very near future, some game designs as well oh, that's great that's great yeah, games are a big push for samsung so super excited to hear that you're going to bring your brand over to that side and let's produce some amazing games it's going to be fine do you work out of your house? do you actually have an office space? okay, i have multiple locations that i can work out of i definitely have the house set up and with the cool gaming computer and all that kind of stuff and then we have the office which is actually right above a florist it's really cool you can walk up the stairs and you smell roses love it always say i always get to stop and smell the roses every day and, and then also working out of picker joe's as well in the side office there tony morelan 29 26 so we talk a lot about savannah is that where you were born, or were you born and raised somewhere else? chris shomo 29 33 born and raised in the mountains of virginia and pulaski, virginia? oh, wow yeah so a little town called pulaski it's in the middle of the blue ridge mountains and it's your cool i guess mainstreet hometown recently it's been hit kind of a little hard from the economy my master's thesis in school for architecture was actually called the polanski institute of art design, which was taking the million square feet of the pulaski furniture plant and change it into a design school, which would in turn, hopefully help the economy and encourage businesses to open up to cater to students and yeah, that's pretty much what my master's thesis was first seen on my hometown but then, of course, i moved to savannah in 2000 and i've been there ever since tony morelan 30 29 so let's talk a little bit about marketing i mean, you are definitely one of the most successful designers for samsung tell me some of your tips and tricks when it comes to actually marketing your watch faces in your themes are you using social media? are you doing any additional advertising? what's your what's your approach to marketing? chris shomo 30 49 okay, so first off, i started out with the website, and just really making sure that it crawled on google so i'm always getting some sort of traffic and so either way website at any given moment can get like 200 to 500 hits a day, which, you know, that really helps just get the brand out there tony morelan 31 08 and share the url chris shomo 31 10 oh, it's www infinitywatchfaces com, and also social media, instagram and facebook we used to use google plus a lot it was a big designer community, but of course that's gone but that has shifted over to the facebook groups now and like the facebook group, that ash with iot gadgets, runs, it's one of the largest facebook groups out there and they have great moderation some good people are definitely running it and it's a great place to really show off your designs and spread the word to everybody and it has just a great following so i always recommend you know, get on social media and you just scream out your brand's everybody i actually tony morelan 31 55 interviewed ash iot gadgets on the podcast nice if you haven't listened to that yet, go back a few episodes it was a great, great time he's an excellent interview, great person doing amazing things and yeah, that facebook group is huge it's crazy chris shomo 32 11 yeah, it's crazy it's got to take a lot of time to moderate i'm sure it does but um, oh, and also on youtube we got our favorite watch face reviewer andrew tony morelan 32 22 jibber jab reviews yes and again, that came out of your presentation when you spoke at the conference you'd mentioned jibber jabber, and first thing i did when i became a watch-based designer was track jibber jabber reviews down on youtube and get him to review some of my watch faces i have just done a live chat with andrew, that we published last week great interview, he talks a lot about strategies, not only using youtube, but even beyond youtube for marketing your app so and i know you've got a great relationship with andrew, can i say this? can i share this? you're helping him with a new website that he's launching is that correct? chris shomo 32 59 yeah as the website is in the very beginning stages, it's going to grow over time doing some interesting work on pulling his youtube channel and all over the place and yeah, it's going to be something you're going to want to visit very often cause he's going to have some cool giveaways and a bunch of other stuff so, yeah, andrew is great to work with and it's interesting, because, you know, in the very beginning, he's tracking down watch face designers to do a review, and now everybody's tracking him down, of course, which is wonderful but, um, but yeah, he's done a phenomenal job and he's just, he's very vital to the community i totally agree i mean, andrew is a great guy and a lot of watch face designers owe their success to, to andrew so your watch faces and themes have a lot of animation so i want to ask about instagram a lot of times people just post pictures on instagram are you utilizing videos on instagram? oh, probably more video than anything else and a lot of that video is just taking my galaxy phone and just reading according the watch on my wrist, this is the first thing i want to do actually, as soon as i have a design, like even almost done, it's a work in progress and it's fun sometimes for your customers to see works in progress to see the early stage and, and all the work that goes into it as well and you'll find that you'll get a lot of a lot of following on there, which is great and, and a lot of times customers will, will critique it and you'll end up getting a better design in the very end because they kind of helped with the design process ah, that's awesome i think the first thing i do, of course, is i post on instagram and then the next thing i do is i head on over to that large facebook group and i started announcing there and, you know, i'll do some, you know, some works in progress, like post and that sort of thing you know, making sure that i replace that post as opposed to adding another one with, you know, the final, you know, work and just, you know, keep on updating that that sort of thing because you know, everybody's notified at the end another picture to a post they like so, yeah, just knowing these little tricks with social media and with instagram, knowing how to use your hashtags, it's all about hashtags on instagram, yeah, then you don't have to, to pay essentially, we're on facebook, you know, you might want to, you know, every once in a while, on paid advertise a little bit, sometimes it works but the main thing is being active with those groups, getting people to recognize your brand and getting repeat customers that also want to share your stuff, too tony morelan 35 30 and glad you mentioned the hashtags, we actually posted on our site, which is developer samsung com if you go to the galaxy store page, we actually posted a long list of valuable hashtags that you can use, whether your marketing your watch faces or your themes or apps or games so it's a great place to start to go take a look at some really good hashtags that could work chris shomo 35 52 nice and i just need to give a huge shout out and thank you to everybody with the samsung developers program because like i've also seen that grow over time and the resources available are just amazing and it's so helpful and you guys have yeah, even great every step along the way thank you tony morelan 36 13 yeah, no, you're welcome you're welcome you know, one of the things that we've done to try and help designers like yourself promote their apps is galaxy store badges, which i know that you use so a little bit about your experience with that, and where are you using those galaxy store badges? chris shomo 36 31 well, these badges are great because first they make you look legit they make you look professional, because they know, you know, it's 100% hey, this is available on the galaxy store and also being able to track the clicks and where people are coming from you can you can make a link specifically for a facebook promotion and you know, how many people you know clicked on that to participate in that so how do you know how where to grow unless you know where you stand and that helps you understand this statistics and where people are coming from so it's a valuable resource tony morelan 37 03 what about banner promotions? i love chris shomo 37 06 banner promotions you will see your best downloads during then that when you have one of those and ron is great yes, yeah, he helps guide you along just making sure that the banner looks great definitely everybody needs to take in his comments, everything that he tells you because i mean he, he's saying him for a reason so he will help your sales tony morelan 37 29 my biggest success came from a watch face that i had done that was featured on a banner promotion and it was crazy the amount of downloads and sales that were generated by having that banner promotion so for designers out there, once you've got a collection of strong designs, then you can approach samsung about being featured on a banner there is no cost to the banner, but there are a lot of people requesting it you have to be approved proved to actually have your designs featured on a banner but definitely worthwhile pursuing for sure chris shomo 38 07 and make sure that you have your social presence as well and all your facebook page and instagram page and all that when you submit for the banner because you know it's going to make you a better candidate for one tony morelan 38 18 yes, definitely they actually look at that they want to see previous downloads how much success you've already had so once you've got some experience, it's definitely worthwhile to at that point to reach out and then apply for a band promotion going back to your video, so you do have a lot of animation in your watch faces and your themes and i know you leverage video so talk a bit about youtube are you taking like all of these designs each time and posting them on youtube creating videos to expand your reach? chris shomo 38 44 most of them the main reason to do the video for me on youtube is to really have something dynamic to show on the galaxy store when someone sees that video after they land on your listing it really can be the difference as to whether they're going to buy it or not, and since most of mine offer animations to them, it makes sense to have a video to, to show it off one thing that i, i wish that the galaxy store had was an animated preview, like on like where the icon is, that was really cool because then everybody would be gravitating towards mine and other animated faces instantly but, but yeah, the youtube video is what really makes a difference and there are some watch faces that need to actually go back and make some videos for sometimes you finish the face and then of course, you're like, oh, now i have this whole production i got to make tony morelan 39 35 sure i totally agree with that and let me explain a little bit further about what you were talking about creating the video so that people can see it when they're viewing your galaxy store page so on the galaxy store page for a watch app, you have what are called screenshots and these screenshots show still images of your graphics that you use your marketing graphics however, there's also a way for you to include a little link to a video on youtube so you grab your youtube url, place it into your, your application for the, for this app and the very first screenshot will actually show your youtube video instead of the still image so it's a great way for users like you had mentioned, that want to see the motion, they can actually click on that screenshot, and it will launch the youtube video so it's a great way to market, you know, motion in your graphics so you had mentioned that your top theme is a free download so let's talk a little bit about the approach of offering apps for free because i know a lot of designers utilize the ability to you know, give away their apps and some designers are a little tight with that and they hold on to them and they don't do it where do you stand? i mean, are you using this as a marketing tool? do you just want to like get your brand out there? chris shomo 40 43 well, it started as a marketing tool, because you know, there's also a free section on the store, and if you don't exist on it, then well, it's just another avenue that people are not going to find you so you definitely need to make a free one and a good free one too just don't pick your worst design and be like, oh, i'm just going to make it free no, no, not at all it's not going to do any good so, for example, actually i did a watch face for jibber jabber reviews for andrew and that turned into my top downloading free watch face and that one at one time oh my goodness i think it was downloading like one to 3000 times a day tony morelan 41 22 wow so this is a branded jibber jabber reviews watch face yes so you so i actually remember when he posted his review of that i didn't realize that you were the designer behind that that's awesome yeah, chris shomo 41 35 but my name snuck on there like a little bit, but i wanted that to be mainly about him sure but yeah, not that one still gets downloaded like hundreds of times a day and stuff that very solid one and it gets reviews every single day to love it so having some free faces you can get discovered from people that you would have never discovered you before as well if you can get your watch face up to, you know, a certain section of the free section, which means it has to be good, essentially so, having done this now for several years, i'm sure you could face some challenges will first has been just the challenges of, you know, just growing with the software and understanding what you can do and taking advantage of updates to the software, like when the gyroscope became available and you could use that, oh my gosh, i was so happy when we could do that because that just adds a whole new level of dynamics to the watch faces and so it's really just, you know, learning your tools, but then also encountering that the watch face market has gotten a little bit congested with you know, there's a lot of people, you know, so you definitely have a lot more competition than when i first started out and, you know, i was just thinking the other day, i was like, wow, if i knew what i knew now, right in the very beginning, would i've been designing more sophisticated watch faces and have like a whole monopoly in the market or something like that, you know, you always think back like, oh my gosh, but no, no, i grew at a great rate with the software with the other designers you'll find that a lot of the other designers have become, you know, friends we all talk with each other yeah, we help out each other but yeah, it's a great community it really is tony morelan 43 22 talking about some of your favorite designers and who are the designers that you follow that you're inspired by? chris shomo 43 27 oh gosh, like jeweler broda like oh my gosh bergen of course like, those are great such clean watch faces i love those chris shomo 43 41 md matteo dini oh my gosh, like a little jealous there we'll have to say, but, but yeah, he's, um, the those are just a few of some of the amazing designers out there and a lot of great designers and, and again, the main thing is you know, everybody communicating and kind of working with each other? you feel like you are part of the community regularly tony morelan 44 07 yeah, that's what i've noticed i'm not too long ago actually did a podcast interview with tomas yes check from vienna studios yes yes great person yeah and he's done some amazing designs yeah, he's taken a different approach to watch face descending, where he designs extremely high end, very expensive watch faces that are in the hundreds of dollars and he is one of our top whitespace designers i mean, he has found a way to you know, make amazing revenue off of these high-end watch faces so yeah, i love the community it's been a lot of fun for me to not only be inspired by them when i was a watch face designer, but now being fortunate to be in a position working at samsung, i now get to have these conversations and then help out where i can with some of these you know, the rock stars of the watch facing design community chris shomo 45 04 that's awesome and i promise you that we all appreciate you too thank you so much tony morelan 45 09 thank you tony morelan 45 11 you've used galaxy watch studio for some time now, i'm going to ask you, what sort of features would you like to see added to it? so you'd mentioned about adding animations, maybe as a preview in the galaxy store but what other features would you like to see added to the galaxy watch studio, chris shomo 45 26 probably some little nitpicky things like being able to start and stop an animation with a click of a button that would be great to be able to have an animation react while your mobile for example, if i could have a guy that starts to run while i'm running, that would be cool to sure that would even take that joe watch face to another level, which would be awesome and then maybe in the future, and i think that someone was talking to me about this, but having the ability to do 3d and be able to put like a 3d mesh in there and have real shadows and that sort of thing who knows that that's really thinking into the future, that sort of thing sure and then if we look over to the theme side of things to my main one that i want right now is to have gyroscope action to have parallax effects i think that would add another dynamic to the theme designs tony morelan 46 25 yeah, i love that suggestion chris shomo 46 27 yeah so just, you know, just having like, you know, three to five layers that you could work with that could react with the gyroscope to mess with for like the regular background image people are looking at their phones, i don't even know how many times a day so let's make it like the best, most awesome dynamic experience ever and that would just be great tony morelan 46 48 that's what i mean wishes for that you know, and you were the first designer that i saw that truly leverage the gyroscope on the watch, where i can't remember the name of the watch face you had but as you rotated your wrist because of the gyro functionality these like metallic, big doors just like opened up to then show you know, the like data, you know whether it's the digital clock or heart rate, but it was so cool i could rotate my wrist and have these metal doors on my watch, paste, you know, collapse or open so that's how i first learned about the gyro is from your from your watch face design chris shomo 47 26 yeah, that as soon as they came out with the gyro is just like, oh, how can i use this to do like, tons of different things and i was thinking like a cuckoo clock, you know, when it opens up and that sort of thing so that kind of started at all and trying to think what the first one that i did using that is think it might have been digit glow spark tony morelan 47 45 that sounds right yeah so do you have any tips for designers when publishing on the galaxy store? i mean, we've mentioned a lot about marketing, but when it actually comes to, you know, creating the graphics behind their apps, what sort of tips could you give people and publishing on the galaxy store? chris shomo 48 05 definitely bone up on your photoshop skills, you got to design those thumbnails, don't just throw, you know, watch on a white background with the watch face on it because you really have to grab someone's attention talking from my website design experience, on average, you have about three seconds before someone clicks the back button or continues to read on the website it's kind of the same thing with watch face listing you know that you can have written information, everything, people aren't going to read it they're their visual, they want to look at the thumbnails and it starts with the icon as well make sure that icons looking good tony morelan 48 40 that's great are you familiar with the tool that i created called the asset creator? chris shomo 48 45 yes and i've actually been through it and i've used some of it to create some of my thumbnails and, you know, pulled some stuff out of it and threw some stuff in and that sort of thing so tony morelan 48 54 that's awesome yeah so super excited you know, we just announced galaxy watch three yes and so i spent a bit of time recently updating the asset creator to include all of the new watches for the galaxy watch three i just checked, you can actually go download the new updated version of the asset crater that includes all that that was just published recently so, in addition to that, i also have created what we call lifestyle photo packs, using the same tools within photoshop that allow you to use smart objects to quickly copy paste your design into a watch and have the perspective change and have the blurred change so that it truly just simply photoshopped right onto the watch i am madly working on new photos that show the galaxy watch three i will be publishing those very, very soon so super excited those have been a big success, a lot of help for people because it's not just showing your watch face on the watch just on a simple straight, you know, top down picture we're actually taking the watch and putting it into a scene so whether it is, you know, sitting on water drops, or it's on a slab of granite, or you know, some high-tech texture, these are great pictures to help using your screenshots when you're publishing your app so, look for those new galaxy watch three lifestyle photo packs coming out very, very cool chris shomo 50 22 i'm excited and one thing that's cool about that is it allows the customer to relate to the watch and wearing that watch face more by having photos like that so that that's great you can get your customer to relate to your product, you're golden, an architecture professor actually told me one time that a building or a product, any type of product, it is 10% your ideas and 90% the way you present them so if you can't present it right then your product is not going to mean anything tony morelan 50 55 so what is in the future for infinity watch face design tell me what can we get excited about? what's happening? chris shomo 51 02 oh gosh, what is in the future? we got so many things in the future, we're going to have some games come out, you know, break into the, the other part of the app world still continues with wearables of course, we're going to expand our video production as well working on that and infinity watch faces is going to be getting really involved with local businesses really soon, and helping promote their businesses to other local people and visitors ever since this whole pandemic, things going on local businesses have been hit so hard, we've lost a few in our neighborhood i just don't want to lose any more so i'll be going out and you know, just really doing what i can to tony morelan 51 49 help that's wonderful yeah, these are definitely challenging times you know, it's been a while now that we've all kind of been in this sort of lockdown and we've realized the effects that this has really had on our economy, it's also been an opportunity for us to try and find new ways to, you know, to still do the work that we do and in the reach that we do so it's nice to hear that you're, you know, finding ways to sort of help out in all of that aspect so, going back to the fun designs that you create, i need to ask you right now, which if you have to pick one, and then you've got 390 plus, i want you to pick one design, what is your current favorite? chris shomo 52 36 i know this is going to sound a little goofy, maybe a little girly the butterfly named fred love it's not very i think because the way the flowers interact with your wrist and then that that butterfly just landing perfectly right there on it every single time it makes me happy and the dude's name is fred come like fred butterfly tony morelan 52 59 how did you come up? fred for the butterfly, chris shomo 53 02 i don't know i was just kind of looking at an insect one day and i named an insect fred and then i was like, ah, this butterfly should be named fred now, i mean, i could have called it something like beautiful butterfly or blue butterfly or you know, just some sort of whatever name but let's give him an actual name and let's make a character out of this yeah wow, that is a great story i'm going to close this podcast though by asking what does chris sharma do for fun when you're not designing these wild themes and wild watch faces? oh, i live in the city of fun i mean, just going around and you know, going to experience the different restaurants and just the atmosphere in the summertime, i guess staying indoors more because it's so hot and humid down there someone asked me one time what's it like living in the south during all this heat because like just the other day that heat index was like 105 degrees that's of course, when you combine the humidity and the actual temperature, that's what it feels like and i told him when i was like, alright, take the hottest shower that you can now get out of the shower, do not dry off and put your clothes on that's what it feels like oh, so it's a sauna out there tony morelan 54 22 that's crazy you know, and i will say i have to share we've had to reschedule this interview numerous times, because there was a hurricane going through savannah and you were losing your internet connection so yeah, living in the south, i think definitely has a lot of excitement chris shomo 54 37 well, the hurricane is actually one of the normal things for 2020 chris shomo 54 43 we were very fortunate that the hurricane mainly missed us we got some wind from the outer bands and locally, my internet was like, it was all over the place we didn't have it and we had a flood yeah, it's just something that we got to deal with but i'm glad we were fine hazleton connect and get this interview done tony morelan 55 03 yeah, this is great this has been a lot of fun so chris, thank you very much for joining the podcast much access to you at infinity watch faces and looking forward to all the great new designs i know they're going to be coming down the road for us so thanks again chris shomo 55 15 thank you, tony and thank you, samsung, you guys are awesome outro 55 18 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 the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan

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