sports 31

Develop TV Seller Office

Entering Application Information

sports, lifestyle, information, education, etc warning service categories cannot be changed while certification and verification processes are in progress once the processes are finished, this restriction is lifted for apps serving a global country if the country of service includes china and other countries , you cannot select a videos category unless the app is allowed you cannot also select a category in which the mapping category shown in bracket is videos notethe mapping categories shown in bracket are those that will be provided instead if the original categories are not available new categories are not available on tvs under 2017, so they are classified as the old categories shown in bracket yes rating choose the age rating of the content in some countries, an additional rating certificate may be necessary if the application content is not suitable for the selected age rating, the service may not be released, and if this issue occurs after release, the service may be discontinued all applications must not contain violence, pornography, or abusive language applications with an age rating of 18 years or older cannot be offered in korea for more information, please refer to the age rating guide yes language enter the application languages the user can select when using the application yes privacy policy if your application collects personal information from users, you need to register the privacy policy url so that it can be explained on the smart tv yes seller information according to korean and european laws, register seller information to service your application need to the seller information such as the seller name, customer support email address, home page url, representative name, phone number, mailing address, and registration number duns, vat number, lei code, ein, ust-idnr, company number, siren, abn, acn, korean business registration number, etc if your group's account type is "individual", no registration number is required notewhen registering an application, a seller group's information is used for it by default, but you can change the information for each application note that the seller group's information changes, the application's seller information does not change accordingly, and vice versa to change the seller information displayed on the tv, you need to edit the seller information in the application, not the seller group information yes doc for eaa if you intend to release and register your application in eu member states except bulgaria , you are required to declare that your application conforms to the requirements under the european accessibility act, or the eaa if applicable, please attach the doc declaration of conformity document for the european accessibility act no if the applications collect user's personal information, you must enter a url where the user can view privacy policy to comply with legal requirements related to personal information, review samsung's privacy guide, as well as the legal requirements of the countries in which the service is offered after entering all service information, click the "save" button to complete the registration setting service country in the "applications > service country" menu, you can set the country/region where the application will be released partner sellers can launch tv application services in any country, including the us, whereas public sellers can only launch in the us input field description displayed on tv rating certification if you are issued a rating certification, you must register the certificate no country or region select countries where your application is offered no some countries require a certificate to launch the application in order to release the application for the brazilian market, you need to select an age limit and upload a certificate issued by mj/dejus the age limit may be changed according to review by samsung sidia applications with an age rating of 18 years or older cannot be launched in korea for vod applications if the service category or mapping category is videos , you cannot service global countries, including china, unless the applications are specifically allowed to release the application, you must also either exclude china or set the application to only release in china when you change the service country of an application that has already been released and is being offered on the tv, you must enter a reason for the change, and the change is deployed after samsung reviews the reason therefore, it is recommended to contact the samsung content manager first before making any changes, as changes made without prior agreement may be rejected warningthe service country and certificate cannot be changed while certification and verification processes are in progress or while an beta test or an alpha test is in progress once that process is complete, this restriction is lifted the same restriction also applies if a previously requested service country change has not yet been completed after setting the service country, click the "save" button to complete the registration if the service country of an application being offered on the tv is changed, the change is not implemented immediately, but only after samsung's review process entering billing information in the "applications > billing info" menu, you need to enter whether the application has a payment function if there is no payment function, select 'free' feature description samsung checkout select if your application uses the embedded billing function in samsung smart tv 3rd party billing select if your application uses a partner's own billing function you need to also select the billing type, either transaction-based or subscription-based free select if your application does not have a billing function if the samsung checkout option is selected, you need to check all items in the integration checklist after reviewing the guidelines presented checklist guide test in-app purchase in dpi sandbox environment at least once before submitting your app before submitting an app for qa, we require you to complete testing the in-app purchase with actual payment methods for any items enter your company's bank information correctly for settlement and remittance, we need your company's bank account information please enter your bank account information at samsung checkout dpi for more information, see the managing bank account information guide make sure that your product sku is created at dpi before submitting your app to test your product, you need to create your product at dpi to sell your product to smart tv users, you need to create the product at dpi please make sure that you register your product at dpi the app must check checkout-available country before calling the billing api ensure that the 'billing service available country check api’ is integrated to your app to check checkout-available country please ensure that checkout is supported in your service country by using the billing service available country check api once confirmed, your application can call the billing api at checking billing service available country/location in addition, to use the samsung checkout function, the related privilege api must be defined in the application package configuration file applications that do not have the privilege defined cannot be submitted for more information on the api, refer to the billing api guide after selecting the billing function, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application warningif your billing information is checking from samsung checkout, you cannot change this information and you cannot change this information if you are joining or moving a group entering application feature information in the "applications > app feature info" menu, you need to check whether smart tv features are implemented in the application the feature you checked previously is selected by default as a feature of this application, so the same information will be applied when you submit a new version unless you change it if you change this information, it will be applied from the new application version you will submit if none of the features are applicable, select "not applicable" but please note that when you select "not applicable" if you have previously selected features, all of them will be deselected feature description caption select if your application supports caption this feature does not refer to subtitles, but ip video closed captioning which is used mainly in the us subtitles are located under player features external devices select if your application uses external devices such as usb storage, camera, or microphone, and describe all external devices used game platform integration select if your app supports game platform integration service on samsung tv hdr select if your application supports high dynamic range in-app ad select if your application is connected to an advertising platform for monetization an application is not considered to be ad-supported if the advertisements are not connected to an advertising platform an embedded, static image in an application is not classified as an advertisement importantif you are using in-app ads, but do not specify as such, your app may be rejected also, apps that support in-app advertisements must be updated to use relevant api’s documented here mobile device select if your application works with mobile devices and attach the corresponding mobile application however, if the mobile application was developed using the 'samsung smartview sdk', select the 'smart view' feature instead overlay select if your application supports overlay pip the overlay technique means the pip is located in an html element in a tizen web application player select if your app uses a video streaming solution smart view select if your application supports a mobile application developed through the ‘samsung smartview sdk’ tts select if your application supports text to speech umd search make sure to select this if your content ingested on umd for universal guide/universal search if you unchecked this, all you content catalogue on umd are not populated on universal guide/universal search if you have any question for this feature, please contact your app spm/tam after selecting all implemented functions, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application if you select the caption, in-app ad, player, or smart view functions, you need to additionally enter detailed information for each function in the sub-menu importantcaption and tts functions must be implemented in order to release an application to a model group subject to fcc regulations applications that do not support caption or tts functions cannot be submitted to model groups subject to fcc regulations caption information if the caption function is applied, enter the caption application method and details in the "applications > app feature info > caption" menu to comply with the fcc's ip video subtitle rules, content providers must support subtitles for ip video applications are considered part of the device and strict rules apply, and cps must use their own or manufacturer's solutions for captions you can download and refer to the 'video caption implementation guide' and 'user interface accessibility compliance manual' through the "fcc guide document download" button input field description displayed on tv solution for captioning select what solution was used for captioning select cea-708/cea-608 or smpte-tt/sami if using samsung's solution, or application ui if you use your own solution no content title and location provide the video title and url to play with caption no after entering the caption details, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application importantcaption and tts functions must be implemented in order to release an application to a model group subject to fcc regulations applications that do not support caption or tts functions cannot be submitted to model groups subject to fcc regulations in-app ad information if the in-app ad function is applied, you need to enter whether to use tifa tizen identifier for advertising in the "applications > app feature info > in-app ad" menu tifa is a device identifier that is compliant with the iab guidelines for targeting and ad tracking in accordance with samsung terms and conditions,, tifa is a required parameter to be passed from the application through samsung’s ads api if you select yes/no and your app uses tifa in ways that don’t match your answers, the app could be rejected during pre-testing in this case, resubmit the app again after you correct the answers or fix your app following tifa guideline in addition, to use the in-app ad feature, the related privilege api must be defined in the application package configuration file applications that do not have a privilege defined cannot be submitted for more information on the api, refer to the adinfo api guide if the application is using tifa tizen identifier for advertising , you must select "yes" and then review and check the requisite guidelines and terms and conditions input field description displayed on tv use tifa select if your application uses tifa for advertising purposes collecting or using tifa information for any other purpose is prohibited no confirm tifa guideline select the check box after reviewing the guideline content and terms and conditions for using tifa no after entering the in-app ad information, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application player information if the player function is supported, enter the details of the video streaming solution in the "applications > app feature info > player" menu feature description video codec select the video codec spec between divx, h 263, h 264, hevc, motion jpeg, mpeg1, mpeg2, mpeg4, mvc, rv8/9/10, vc1, vp6, vp8, vp9, wmv7, wmv9, xvid, and other audio codec select the audio codec spec between aac, ac3, adpcm, aiff, alac, ape, dts, flac, he-aac, lpcm, midi, mp3, vorbis, wav, wma, wma/dd+, and other container select the container spec between 3gpp, asf, avi, mkv, mp4 fmp4 , mpeg-ts, mstroska, ps, vob, vro, webm, and other drm select the drm spec between aes-128, playready, verimatrix, widevine classic , widevine modular , and other streaming engine select the streaming engine spec between hls, http https , mpeg-dash, smooth streaming, and other player api select the player api spec between avplay, c#, mse, and other subtitle select the subtitle spec between close caption, smpte-tt, webvtt, and other other describe if there are other player specifications not listed above after entering the player details, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application smart view information if the smart view function is selected, enter detailed information about the smart view function and mobile application in the "applications > app feature info > smart view" menu input field description displayed on tv service logo upload the mobile application icon or website logo no service title register the mobile application title on the app store or website no service access provide at least one of the following application source, website url, other no additional features select features you added on your smart view enabled application, between ble bluetooth low energy discovery, wow wake on wireless lan , and speaker no for the logo image, upload an image sized 512x512 or 1020x1024 pixels, in the 24-bit png format, and with a file size of 300kb or less images with transparency are also permitted depending on the service access method selected, upload the application source directly or enter the url information to access it if there are other ways to access the mobile application, explain them after entering the smart view details, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application entering verification information this information will be used by the samsung smart tv certification and verification team, and the process may be rejected if it is missing make sure you can fully test your application with the information you provide before submitting input field description displayed on tv app description file provide application documentation to help samsung testers understand the application's workflow and user scenarios for detailed specifications of the application description document file, refer to the application ui description guide no geo ip block select if geo-filtering is used for application content make sure that all ip addresses used by samsung testers are allowed on your servers no test accounts if your application requires a login to use, provide the credentials for test accounts you must provide at least 1 test account for each model group that your application supports each test account must have enough credit to comprehensively test all the application features on a specific platform importantthe application is tested simultaneously across all requested model groups consequently, you must provide a number of test accounts equal to or greater than the number of requested model groups insufficient test accounts can cause your application to fail verification at the testing phase additionally, if the content and user experience vary depending on the account, provide accounts that can test each specific scenario example if the presence of ads, live tv, or premium vod differs by account id samsungtest1@samsung com ads provided id samsungtest2@samsung com 4k content provided id samsungtest3@samsung com live tv provided no voucher code if you have content to use after payment, enter voucher information for testing no after entering the test information, click the "save" button to complete the registration any changes made are reflected when you submit a new version of the application

https://developer.samsung.com/tv-seller-office/guides/applications/entering-application-information.html

Learn Developers Podcast

Episode 4, Roger Kibbe

sports course so let's say i'm watching a sports game like, oh man, i want to hear more about that player or i don't know i'm watching a football game and they call clipping and maybe i'm new to football, and they're like, what's clipping? wouldn't it be cool? if i could ask the tv? hey, watching the warriors on tv? hey, tell me how many points for game is stephen curry or who's stephen curry it is me overlays some information about stefan curry there and i can go back to watching the game or a football example hey, what's clipping and show me what's clipping is and i could better understand the game i think that's incredibly powerful to bring kind of interactivity, to tv a in and kind of empower what i see this kind of younger generation seems to want when they have their, their phones with the tv and quite frankly, i will often say we have we have some smart speakers next our tv and we'll pause and ask it a question so we want it to, yes, build that right in the tv, build it into where it just shows up and then goes away if you gave permission, you know, and i think there's some privacy implications to this, but about what you are watching on the tv to the voices, and then it could be really incredibly contextually aware and give you a really amazing information so i'm really excited about the devices that are that are coming out for samsung, and that's a differentiator the second big differentiator is really related to those devices all those devices have screens so if you look at the voice market today, and you look at let's talk about because they're obviously our competitors, alexa 85 to 90% of their devices are screaming just a smart speaker okay, on the google side, there's a lot of them, they do have on the phone, a lot of uses on their smart speakers that are in the home so most of what's being built is voice only with samsung devices, because all those devices i talked about, and it's fair to say in the future, most samsung devices will have a screen you need to build not only for a voice experience, but also a screen experience, that kind of multi-modality, which i think opens up a ton of opportunities and quite frankly, in some cases, some challenges around multi-modality and building that but it's a new frontier and a lot of ways to build truly multimodal experiences, where you can interact with voice and screen and think about how they interplay with each other tony morelan 18 49 so i hadn't heard of that term before so multi-modality that is where you have voice and screen at the same time on the same device roger kibbe 18 59 yeah, actually, i really refers to kind of you actually are using it today when you use the mouse and the keyboard so to put a different input mechanism, i say into that is multimodal, you know, i was talking about swiping and typing as the two prompt dominant modalities right now voice being a third one, i will tell you it's pretty interesting if you look at kind of the rise of those modalities we went from kind of keyboard and then about 10 years later, the mouse arose in the gui and then that and then about 10 years later, ah, smartphones with touchscreens were introduced there so swiping became and tapping became without, well guess what? smartphones of screens are just a little over 10 years old so by that 10-year cycle, it's about time for another modality to kind of arise sure and voice definitely looks like a modality it does not replace typing and swiping what it does is it augments, there's things where voice is the very best way to interact with technology there’re things we're typing in the very best way to interact with technology, there's things we're swiping in your smartphone, the very best way to interact with technology, it opens up a different way of interacting with technology and kind of powers us to do more with our tech tony morelan 20 21 so then, let me ask you, where do you see voice going, you know, in the next year, and then even beyond that, you know, for talking five to 10 years give me give me your thoughts, your ideas of where we really could be taking voice roger kibbe 20 33 yeah, so voice is in its infancy right now i like to say that we're at the point where we're kind of barking commands okay, at the voice assistance another one, which gives me a laugh, is we're in the fart app stage so that was the original apps on smartphones were all apps that party, right? yeah so we're kind of in that stage with voice right now really early what i think i'd like to see in the next year or two is a little beyond just parking command and actually get some things done i'm actually pretty bullish about voice commerce and if not actually going and buying things actually starting the buying process, and actually kind of that top of the funnel kind of marketing and there's a whole idea of paid marketing by listening to the radio or tv, it's a one way push toward me voice if i could have a conversation about a product or right, i want more information i don't kind of more of a pull marketing, i like to call it that and then i also, um, let me just jump in really quickly it sounds tony morelan 21 35 like what you're saying that maybe where this could go is like, if i'm actually listening to an ad on the radio, i could, in a sense, have a conversation and ask more questions about that product that's being told to me yeah, yeah, because that would be amazing roger kibbe 21 51 yeah so it's interesting because i'll mention so both spotify and pandora started you know, they have a free ad tier yes, and many are experimenting just in the last month or two in 2020, certainly, with this idea of, if they're on a device that has a speaker, and that and you're using their client, they'll play an ad and say, do you want to hear more? if you say, yes, get more information, you say, no, you don't right and that's really kind of infant kind of simple stuff works yeah, that's pretty exciting to me is, hey, you know, i, like all, many of us, you know, i kind of tune out the ads when i want to, but every once in a while, there's something i'm like, oh, that is really interesting i'd like to learn more about that or i'd like to call book market, of course so i think there's a huge opportunity there to say, hey, remind me of this or wow, that sounds really interesting i'd like to hear more and start a conversation there so that kind of interactive audio advertising i don't know when that's all going to happen but i'd sure like to see that happen in voice in the next few years i think you did ask about like longer term by 10 years out there tony morelan 23 03 yeah, definitely roger kibbe 23 04 yeah so i guess the industry likes to call this idea of ambient computing just computing around us that just does things for us and sometimes it's just ai that knows we need to get things done and kind of preemptively does it for us but voice is a big part of that i could just walk into my house and start talking to it, or in my car or in my office and talk and get things done i'm reminded of there's a funny scene in one of the star trek movies, i think it's one of the early ones when they go back in time and they go back to earth, in a running lead to a hospital and scotty sees a mouse and he picks it up, he starts talking to the mouse and of course, he doesn't do it he kind of mumbles under his breath about, you know, how advanced they are you know, maybe we're going to get there where voice works well enough, where much of our interaction with tech is done through voice scores yeah, like i said, i think we'll see keyboards have been around forever, they'll probably still be here in 10 years, and miles on swiping and typing, i just think there's a bunch of things that if we think about it, we can do better with voice or voice is part to that multi-modality, part of that interaction with our technology so that's what i like to seek out five or 10 years be kind of a, not a novel thing, like it is now in a lot of ways but it just you expect yeah, tony morelan 24 26 and it's, you know, it's crazy to think, you know, it seems like smartphones have been around forever but it was not that long ago that truly the first smartphone was introduced to us and 10 years from now is not much and just think about the advancements that definitely voice will take over that time roger kibbe 24 42 yeah, absolutely absolutely you know, like truly understanding yep human voices really hard i can say something to you in 10 different ways can you understand i'm seeing the same thing? oh, yeah that's really hard for an ai to do that yeah part of the challenges we have right now voice is when you're developing a voice application need to be pretty deterministic about if a user says this this way, then this is what you do and here's some variations and how they say, because the ai gets better, you won't have to be so deterministic in your development they'll just say, when the user intends this is their intention right? thank you yes, something like that that's going to be huge, huge unlock for the industry but it is a really hard ai problem tony morelan 25 32 yeah, you know, actually some of the biggest laughs that we get in our house, so it's when we listen to my wife try and talk to one of those voice automated systems that you see on phone systems when you're asking a question trying to be transferred to a different department and the phone system doesn't understand what my wife says she doesn't say it any differently she just says it more aggressively she gets mad or she gets angrier, but she's still saying the same terms and it's still sending her to the wrong department and you know, myself, the kids, we all are just laughing as she just gets have tried to deal with this really, you know, low level ai system roger kibbe 26 05 yeah, you know, this industry calls us ivr so they mostly been around for a long time and you know that the driver there was cost reduction right so it's expensive for a csr to answer phones cause reduction we all understand it, but sometimes doesn't put people first and i think you saw that with ivr it's funny when you were mentioning your wife getting frustrated and i likewise, um, you know, i will say hitting 0000 in an ivr often kicks you out of it but uh um, there's even websites that actually tell you how to if you're stuck in ivr hell, like this is how you say or this is the buttons you press to get out of that which is pretty funny but that you caught up in something i think is pretty interesting we can all feel as humans emotions in our voice, happiness, sadness, excited, bored that the there is a lot of research being done around voice assistance, understanding kind of the emotion in there because just hearing a voice we as humans hear obviously the words we also understand the emotion they're subtle cues and how we say things obviously, they're face to face there's also a body language one of the challenges and then ai i talked about, is it just understand it's saying, here's the words, what are those words mean? if i could understand the emotion of the user, that could be another input into my understanding, or if you're pissed and angry, and you're talking to an ai voice assistant, maybe you don't want it to be happy, full of personality and cracking jokes you want it to be direct and to the point and the other hand if you're having fun, maybe the personality of the voice assistant the personas industries likes to call it is more fun and crack some jokes in this kind of friendly i think there's a big unlock for voices systems to understand kind of the emotional cues that we as humans are giving with the tone and how we say things sure tony morelan 28 17 so let's talk a little bit about discoverability oh, you know, i can only imagine if there's a lot of third-party apps out there what's bixby doing to help make discoverability? a little easier? roger kibbe 28 27 yeah, there are a lot of third-party applications for all the voice assistance and part of the challenge is, you have to use the name so if i use if i call my voice app would say voice, the podcast helper okay, if i want to use the podcast helper, i have to say something like, ask podcast helper to start or ask podcast helper to play my favorite podcast the problem there is that ask podcast helper, i have to remember that phrase and i have to remember that term for the name of application the problem with discoverability is people don't remember that and so they don't use it and so if i just say, tell my voices to play my favorite podcasts, it's going to use whatever built in functionality it has to play podcasts as an example, and not podcasts helper, and not podcast helper on the other hand, podcast helper may be a better experience sure i, as a user, feel that podcast helper is my favorite way to listen to podcasts so what we did with big suzy, introduced late last year, somebody called natural language categories, and it's really to address that and the whole idea is, is these categories are way categories of interactions so like playing a podcast, podcast is one of our categories i'll give you another example and give you an actual real-world example weather is one of our categories so if i ask bixby what's the weather like? whatsoever like today, what's the weather like next week? what's the weather like? he will answer that in the built-in weather capsule i answered that, but i actually in my big city, so there is a weather capsule called big sky that i really like goes into more detail it's kind of for weather geeks, and i like weather and so in bixby once i enable big sky what i can do, because it's part of the natural light, the weather natural language category, i as an end user can go and say, i want this to be the default so the next time i say, hi bixby, what's the weather, big sky answers, built in weather functionality so what lets you do is choose and personalize your voices system the closest thing i mean, look, look at android phones look at samsung phones if you install two different map apps on an android phone, the first time you go to launch a map, it says hey, you have map app, a or have that be which one you want to use? and do you want to make one-year default? well, bixby has really exactly the same thing but for voice so what's the weather? like if i've enabled two of them and say, hey, you have weather capsule a, or you have big sky? which one would you like to use? would you like to make one the default? so i said, hey, use big sky and make it the default and from then on big sky answers that i can always go into settings and change that or i can always go back to that old kind of invocation name and say, ask weather app pay for the weather and it'll override, right because then i'm specifically addressing the name of a capsule, and that will answer so we've had this in about 20 different categories we keep on building these and thinking about it we think it's a big unlock to not only developers kind of solving this discoverability problem, but to my mind, even more importantly, as a consumer i said, i like big sky over the in weather app, but everybody has their own preferences there so let the consumer choose what they want their experience to be sure their favorite provider for x, y, or z, and really personalize the experience to the consumer so suddenly, it may come across in how i'm describing it, but we're definitely super excited about because he thinks there's such amazing possibilities there tony morelan 32 21 yeah, no, that sounds that sounds great so let's talk about getting started if developers or designers want to think about getting into voice, what advice would you give them? yeah, so a couple roger kibbe 32 30 things come to mind the first is when you're thinking about what you want to build is voice the best interface for it right so, you know, obviously, i'm a fan of voice i think it's amazing i also think there's areas where typing on a keyboard, or swiping on a screen or better interfaces, right for what you're trying to do so you need to think about if it's easy are faster or better to do it swiping or typing i probably shy away from it okay on the other hand, if it's hard or difficult, i always like to think about things where i'm like, wow, i got to go through 12 different menus to go do this wow voice might be really amazing there so if you're going to replace some functionality, think about stuff that were voices a better interface or where voice is just brand new, it would not work well without voice being the kind of the modality with which you interact with that technology so that's number one number two, i'd say is follow your passion okay, you know, the very best apps, pc, a phone or for voice are typically where the developer had some passion about it so it really comes through so if you're passionate about cooking, hmm, maybe there's something cooking voice experience you can build if you're passionate about exercise maybe there's an exercise voice experience you can build so i say, follow your passions, because you're going to build something that passion will come through to people using your app and you know what? it's going to be a heck of a lot more fun to build yeah if it's something that follows your passions, you want to build something that you use right, exactly this is fun i'd use it this is so cool i want to share it with the world tony morelan 34 28 yeah, yeah, i think that's a lot of great entrepreneurs get started as they're doing something that they want, that they're excited about and then they worry about, you know, the money in the marketing later but yeah, completely agree with you so, in doing a little research for this interview, i, i discovered i learned that you actually host your own podcast tell me a little bit about the bixby developers chat podcast that you host roger kibbe 34 56 yeah, yeah so just started that in january this year, you know how to get started, i went and told my boss and said, i want to start a podcast he said, go for it i don't know what that means i mean, he knew what it meant but it was kind of like, go for it let's figure it out and see how it works and really the genesis is, you know, every time i go to a voice conference, i have these kinds of long in-depth kind of conversations with people around hey, what are you building with voice? what's your thinking about it? where can you go in the future? and i really wanted to share some of those conversations with the world you know, i'm passionate about voice and these great conversations with it to my earlier point about what you're passionate about, go share it, so wanted to go share it with the world and so i think we're done we've done 11 podcasts right now we do one every two weeks on breeding, typically people in the voice industry in when we talk about what they're doing, what they've built what they think the future will look like on these our general conversations we definitely talk about bixby somewhat, but i really the whole idea was a little bit kind of a halo effect is hey, people who are interested in voice would go listen to this podcast and yeah, absolutely we want them to go listen and go, hey, i got to go check out that bixby and go try it out or develop something on it i like what those guys are doing yeah but the podcast yep, wide ranging i've talked to voice designers, i talked to some podcasters i've talked to developers and i continue to think of who would be an interesting guest to talk about it it's a lot of fun um, i continue enjoy it listenership seems to be growing pretty well so i don't know for one podcaster to another yeah, i think podcasting is a lot of fun tony morelan 36 48 yeah, definitely so for our podcasting fans how can they find your podcast? where are you guys hosted? what's it called? roger kibbe 36 54 yeah, great question bixby developers chat so any of your major podcast players, if you start searching for bixby, your bixby developers that'll come across we're also built in the bixby capsule so if you enable it you can say hi bixby, play bixby developers chat and then we're online if you just search for bixby developers chat, and you can see it and please listen, and then let me know what you like your what you'd like to see in the future i think a lot of the value of podcasting is listening to your audience and they'll say, i love this i'd like more of this, less of this love to hear about it tony morelan 37 31 wonderful so you've been around voice for a long time in fact, you know, not just with your podcast, but prior to that with all of your work with voice i'm sure you've got a lot of experiences around voice so tell me some of your favorite experiences and why roger kibbe 37 43 yeah, i'm going to say maybe my favorite capsule and bixby is something built in it's the yelp capsule and why i really like that is i talked earlier about i said, grace is a great way to interface in many ways, but not always so voice is a really great input modality so if i wanted to find a chinese restaurant in san francisco, that's open past 10pm on saturday nights that's a pretty easy you, you can understand exactly what i'm saying sure, um, there's a lot of information than that now think about that if i was to search using a typical web interface, right, there's a lot of clicking and typing and things like that and drilling down i need to do there yeah, but if i just ask the bixby oh, capsule, something like that, it could parse all that input, and then show me the results so it's great for input modality on the other hand, i get a list of restaurants and a list of restaurants via voice may be kind of overwhelming so that's a great place where the screen etc screen, this list here and then i kind of go back to touch when i swipe through those and touch and find more information why i like that is it's a great example of multi-modality and kind of using the mix the modalities together so the yelp capsule and bixby the other thing i'll say one of my favorite things to do on voice is, or just generally is i love trivia there’re some pretty fun voice trivia experiences one i really like on a very popular question of the day it's actually quite simple but really well done so boom, start question of the day aspects be hi bixby star question of the day, it gives you one question, multiple choice answers if you get the answer right, you get a bonus question and you can ask that what's really well done in that is the content is really well done so the questions are great, the content is great i'm going to say our content is king invoice and that's a great example it's incredibly simple what they built but incredibly great because the content so great, there's experience that isn't on bixby i'd love to see come to bixby what's that? it's a trivia game called feel the pressure feel the pressure which is on alexa yeah and you've done great content and really great sound effects the sound effects in that game made me want to play that game more and i love the thinking of what set sound effects and the impact upon your kind of psyche are so i love that game but yeah, those are two examples of things that i think are done really, really well with voice tony morelan 40 22 excellent, excellent laughter definitely check those out so if people want to learn more about bixby or even you as an evangelist, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? roger kibbe 40 29 yeah so for bixby so www bixbydevelopers com that is our website and by the way, that is where you can go i mean, today, you can start developing for bixby so you download the bixby developer studio or id, you can do all your development there's even a simulator in there so if you don't yet have a samsung device, you can go and build that simulator and just from a phone to watch the tv and smart appliance so you can build all that so that's www bixbydevelopers com kind of your home hub for everything big sweet the other things i'd say follow us on social we try to be pretty active on twitter so at bixby developers can also find us at facebook bixby developers search for bixby developers on social myself i am definitely pretty active on twitter at roger kibbe i love to talk about voice what people are doing, what's happening, learn about new areas that people are exploring so let's connect and continue the conversation on twitter tony morelan 41 37 excellent, excellent so let me ask you a few questions about bixby studio so that's the software that's used to create your capsules tell me a little bit about getting bixby studio is this free? does it cost? roger kibbe 41 49 yeah, hundred percent free you literally it's on the homepage of bixby developers calm for mac, windows and linux you download it it's a full-blown id with develop debug, there's a testing suite in there there's a simulator, like i said, so you can go from end to end testing and you all do it in that id, there's no it automatically syncs to the cloud that's actually kind of a big competitive advantage for us is our idx some of our competitors require you to do things and kind of sync to the cloud or use two different interfaces everything in bixby developer studio isn't one you can do it all there and do all your development there until you're ready to submit to the marketplace and then you start that within that, that studio as well so is there a process where developers have to be approved to publish their capsules? yeah, so much like what happens with the other voice assistants and happens in various mobile phone app stores there is a process so you submit your capsule with information for the marketplace and that is some information with the reviewers if necessary, and then there's a review process and they make sure you know, there's certain rules around, you know, appropriate content, or have you does that actually work particularly tricky with voice, right? people won't always phrase something the same way so you want to build over flexibility you create these things called hints, which are kind of phrases that will kick off your voice experience or capsule you want those to work so the reviewers check all that and make sure it all works and if that's all working, then we'll go live in the marketplace and if it doesn't, they'll give you some feedback one of the things we're particularly proud about is our developer kind of outreach in a lot of areas around there and if somebody doesn't pass, we try to give really useful feedback about hey, here's what you need to fix and we also get feedback around hey, this, maybe this went live, but this could be even better x, y or z because it's always in our interest to have really great capsules on the marketplace, so our developers spend our, our capsule review team spends a little more time reviewing things, because part of their job is to give some constructive feedback on sure you know, good degrade, i like to say, tony morelan 44 18 exactly so not just does it work or does it not, you know, pass or fail? you're actually giving more insight on how to improve this to get more success yeah, roger kibbe 44 25 absolutely tony morelan 44 26 wow that's great that's great all right so i am going to finish off with our last question here, our last topic, in doing a little research on viv labs and adam shire i came across this penn and teller video of him doing magic so and i've been found some other videos of adam doing magic, and i'm wondering, does magic work its way into viv labs i mean, a little bit about that roger kibbe 44 53 yeah, so absolutely this so adam is actually this pretty talented amateur magician he probably kickoff professional if you really put his mind to it so he loves to talk about magic and he seems to know everyone in the magic industry, he's incredibly well connected there um, so a couple things happen one, we have what we call friday magic so every friday afternoon, kind of near the end of the day, we have a magician come in use of magic, which is really kind of a cool way to start the weekend, you know? sure all right, you know, the work week is over, well laugh and be entertained with some magic and then we all we all go home that happens it's a lot of fun we definitely when we go to trade shows, we often bring magician in place, sometimes very entertaining results there but yeah, it's just one of these fun little side things that happens we had that friday, magic we talked about it we do it at trade shows and yeah, it makes me smile thinking about it tony morelan 45 59 yeah no, that's awesome that those things were great it was a it was a nice discovery well, hey, roger, absolutely appreciate you taking the time this has been a great interview i love getting to know more about you and also about bixby and voice so again, thank you very much for joining me on today's podcast roger kibbe 46 13 oh, my pleasure always love to talk to voice thanks so much tony morelan 46 17 so before i end this show, i want to do something a little fun with bixby bixby said she can rap but i want to know hey bixby, can you beatbox? roger kibbe 46 28 check this out outro 46 39 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

https://developer.samsung.com/developers-podcast/s01e04-roger-kibbe.html

Learn Developers Podcast

Episode 7, Tomas Joscak

season 1, episode 7 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 tomas joscak head designer, vienna studios in this episode of pow, i interview tomas joscak from vienna studios tomas is an amazing watch face designer, winning the 2019 best of galaxy store award for best indie watch face designer some of his designs? he's priced them in the hundreds dollars and people are buying them and, the software he uses to create the graphics? it's typically not used for designing watch faces you’ll want to listen in and learn not only how he designs high-end watch faces, but also his tips on marketing listen download this episode topics covered galaxy watch studio for tizen galaxy store coupons galaxy store badges banner promotions social media multi-language support best of galaxy store awards transcript note transcripts are provided by an automated service and reviewed by the samsung developers web team inaccuracies from the transcription process do occur, so please refer to the audio if you are in doubt about the transcript tony morelan 00 02 hey, i'm tony morelan and this is pow! podcasts of wisdom from the samsung developer program, where we talk about the latest tech trends and give insight to all the opportunities available for developers looking to create for samsung on today's show i interview tomas joscak from vienna studios tomas is an amazing watch face designer, even won the 2019 best of galaxy store award for best indie watch face designer some of his designs, he's priced them in the hundreds of dollars, and people are buying them and the software he uses to create the graphics it's typically not used for designing watch faces you're going to be surprised enjoy so thomas, tell me who is thomas joscak tomas joscak 00 48 welcome, i just check interesting question oh, well, i will describe myself as somebody who has to learn as an example and cool class storage goals i said one goal a few years ago, i wanted to run a marathon so i prepare myself one year long and afterwards, i barely use the sport shoes so then i have other goals again tony morelan 01 18 so it sounds like maybe a short attention span that you're into something for a brief moment and then after that you move on to the next challenge tomas joscak 01 27 yes, definitely tony morelan 01 29 so tell me, how did you get your start in design, tomas joscak 01 32 design was always kind of a hobby of myself and even if i do have two phds in natural sciences, i always have to be somewhere in a field where nobody had been before so it is a research where i'm working on something new, or i'm producing something new in the field of design i love it tony morelan 02 00 so you're so your education is not design base you said you have two phds in natural sciences tomas joscak 02 05 yes, yes, i never studied design tony morelan 02 08 wow it's pretty amazing because i mean truthfully you are one of the top sellers on the galaxy store when it comes to watch faces and you know your quality is amazing so to hear that that is really coming out of as a hobby is pretty impressive tell me how did you first hear about the samsung galaxy watch tomas joscak 02 26 the exact moment i cannot remember right now however, i cannot forget the first day after my first launch phase having published on galaxy store and after i looked at the statistic and there have been more than 4000 downloads for this first model myself i was surprised shocked and i definitely knew that this might be something you how did you first hear about selling tony morelan 02 53 watch faces, you know in using our software galaxy watch designer at the time which is now a galaxy watch studio tomas joscak 03 00 okay, i was starting designing workspaces in a phasor creator studio before so i had some basics already learned before and so switching to galaxy stir was actually nothing new from the big difference was only the market, which seems to be extremely huge from my point of view tony morelan 03 26 so the market for the galaxy watch faces is much bigger than the market when you're producing them through facer? tomas joscak 03 32 yes, at least, this was my impression one year before tony morelan 03 36 okay, so how long have you been designing watch faces tomas joscak 03 39 right now it is three years i know it before i got my first model, which for my brand as a present to my 14-year celebration party and since then, my i'm just playing with watch faces tony morelan 03 53 or so is this what you do full time or do you have like a is this a side gig for you? this is, you know, what's your main focus? for income tomas joscak 04 02 at the moment is my full-time job and he has is creating nice income actually the best i ever had before even if i compare it with my company in vienna a few years ago tony morelan 04 15 in what was that company, tomas joscak 04 17 this was a pure research company at a field of renewable materials so completely different staff we had up to seven employees but however, from the revenue point of view now it's even bigger tony morelan 04 31 wow so you are based in austria but tell me where are you originally from? tomas joscak 04 36 so i was born in czechoslovakia, in slovakia in part where am actually right now as we are speaking, this podcast together, i was doing my parents and afterwards i got few opportunities in austria and germany and so i stayed in austria tony morelan 04 53 and is it just yourself or do you have employees tomas joscak 04 57 at the moment? my brother is strongly supporting me creating also some brands, domino's martinez, a luxury brand from our portfolio is coming from him so we are two full time now working at this project and sometimes we are cooperating with tony morelan 05 16 freelancers in this globally he'll reach out to freelancers from around the world to have you help with some of the design aspects tomas joscak 05 23 yes, we use platform where different designers are implemented or can make some projects corporation tony morelan 05 32 do you work out of your house? or do you actually have a place of business tomas joscak 05 36 i started as maybe also other designers in my kitchen so my first project so first watch faces have been created in a kitchen afterwards, i go to one room in my flat, and at the moment, we do have an office with my brother and as a next step, we would like to establish a full time or full-size photo studio tony morelan 06 02 okay, okay so i noticed that you have actually four different brands when you go to your website vienna studios com there's actually four different brands on their vienna studios masterpieces we are watching as well as dominus matthias, can you explain the different brands? tomas joscak 06 21 we have many different brands and actually the basic order first one has been vienna studios, which started everything else domino's martinez is luxury brand for my brother, as i mentioned before, is really creating original design i'm more focusing on the functionality and if you're asking about many brands, we are dividing different products into brands, according to price segment, basically tony morelan 06 52 yeah and let's talk a little bit about that because, you know, one thing that's unique with your brand is that you've got some very high-priced watch faces i mean, it's my understanding you have watch faces you know, you've been in the above $100 $200 tell me about those high-level price watch faces and why is it that you decided to offer them so expensive? tomas joscak 07 16 well, we started, i started to sell my watch faces at 199 $1 99 yes, dollar 99 for a piece however, this space is so competitive and it's really hard to be a good designer in this place that after i could feel skills and i was able to prepare high complicated watch faces, i decided to offer them for higher prices and actually, at the moment, you're correctly we are offering different special watch faces up to 400 was dollar per piece tony morelan 07 55 wow, that's amazing so another amazing aspect to you is that you actually won best of galaxy store award in 2019 can you tell me what the award was that you won and what that means to you? tomas joscak 08 08 i can remember well, this call will shout and charlotte called me and mentioned in a wonder indian designer 2019 only after nine months really to be full in the business, so i was completely shocked and even more impressed by the fact that we are to four bestsellers worldwide, so i would never expect it such a sexist after a few months tony morelan 08 39 that's amazing that's amazing and that's when i actually first met you is when you came out to the award show that i was hosting, to give you the award for best indie designer, so congratulations again so i want to talk a little bit about marketing and some of your tips and approaches for marketing tell me about your use of coupons tomas joscak 08 59 coupons is a big project for us it's excellent instrument however we use coupons very solely and actually, as a customer or a fan of vienna studios or dominus martinez, you can win a free coupon once a mount so this is the way how some people could get our expensive watch faces even for free tony morelan 09 28 okay, that's great that's great i also noticed that you when you go to your website, you actually are doing promotions where you're giving away actual watches so tell me a little bit how you're utilizing that as a promotional giveaway tomas joscak 09 42 yes, after a few months, as you mentioned before, we are pretty successful in the business and we try to give something back to nice community which is growing and we do have more than 3000 subscribers at our website and everybody who is subscribing there has a chance now to be not only free coupons, possibly, but also a smartwatch galaxy watch active two at the moment we are running this giveaway until end of this year, and we will think about something new for the next year tony morelan 10 19 excellent that's a great way to build your subscription community it's interesting, i can tell that you've got a lot of marketing experience so tell me a bit about how did you gain that marketing experience? is this something that you're just learning, you know, on the fly right now? or do you have a background a little bit with them with when it comes to marketing? tomas joscak 10 36 i think a good opportunity to learn this stuff was to have my own company so i am partly not only a designer, but also a kind of businessman so we are always forming activities and evaluating it and checking what is working for us, where we do see some revenue streams who are not and this elevation happened maybe on a daily or weekly basis so there's a lot of adjustment and trial and error actions we are using tony morelan 11 13 that's great it's great to be so active when you're, you know, figuring out your marketing approach, or using any social channels like instagram to promote your watch faces tomas joscak 11 23 we are in instagram right now we do have a couple of thousands of followers however, we are not sure if this will be our future instruments, at the moment as a best a marketing instrument for us is to collect email addresses through subscription of our website, which was also in a recommendation from around from samsung, who don't know us this feature could bring something even after maybe three months of my activity at galaxy store thank you okay thank you here's tony morelan 12 02 ron's got a lot of great advice ron's the one who he runs our forums so yeah, much appreciation to ron what about galaxy store badges? are you using any badges on your on your platform to help promote your watch faces? tomas joscak 12 17 yes, we are using standard general veggies for our different stores and those are placed actually in description of our watch faces as well as the instagram on or on our website tony morelan 12 33 excellent and i know that badges are a great way for you to go back and see the analytics you know the data on what's driving your sales so always happy to hear when designers are using the using badges what about banner promotions, have you had a chance to be featured on any of the banner promotions on the galaxy store? tomas joscak 12 50 yes, we are featured in the banner promotion is always a great and profitable issue for us or the banner can drive the revenue really high so the laughter banner promotion and we are happy that we are in tony morelan 13 11 sure and for any new designers out there that are listening in band promotions they run for is it two weeks? is that what it is on the on the galaxy store? tomas joscak 13 19 yes, yes, two-week periods tony morelan 13 21 and this is where you provide a graphic of a banner it's basically an advertisement that appears that helps drive users to your to your store and i know speaking from my experience of banner promotions are huge so great way to get your name out there and drive up your sales so one thing unique about your business is your quality of your photographs and your videos tell me a little bit about that do you have some experience? are you hiring an outside photographer to come in and do that or is this something that you're actually doing yourself? tomas joscak 13 55 and my short fuck us character i was happy to be a photographer as well for a few months before so i have pretty nice lenses and some good technique from that time so i just use the good quality stuff i have already and maybe the pictures are now good or we are we are happy able to quality however, i started just to be in the front of a window and making my first video with a smartphone only so all of this you can actually see it our youtube channels where we delete the old videos where the quality is so poor however, to have a visit video presentation seems to be really important at every watch face so 99% of all our watch faces do have a promo video tony morelan 14 48 okay, and it's you can always spot a vienna studios watch face video because of the white gloves that's something unique i always see these white gloves you know, holding the watch very elegantly are you? are those your hands inside the gloves? or do you have a professional model that you're bringing in to wear the white gloves tomas joscak 15 10 these are my hands the big advantage of making these videos was that before as i work from home, i prepared a small mini photo studio close to my computer so after which phase was ready, i just turn my position into this photo studio beside me and making a video really in a short time in the best possible quality and then i sell off the first two videos that at this magnificent because the watches are so small, have different displacements or some few nice places of my fingers have been there in a really big screen so i started to use goals and find now so i don't need to care about my nails quality anymore? tony morelan 16 01 got it so you don't have to hire a professional hand model that you don't have to worry about getting a little dirt under your fingernails because you just put on the nice fancy gloves love that tomas joscak 16 12 that's the point i think customers like it too tony morelan 16 15 sure, sure so how many watch faces have you published to date? tomas joscak 16 21 published maybe together it will be more than 700 wow, think about this number the three years? yes i think the 700 are solely on galaxy store so like count also my former watch faces it would be somewhere around 1000 and more watch faces tony morelan 16 40 i do understand though, that they're not all available that you actually utilize what you're calling a pop-up brand, which is where it's just for a limited time this watch faces available which kind of helps drive up you know the uniqueness behind the watch face which increases the value so tell me a little bit about your approach on offering a limited release, watch face tomas joscak 17 00 okay, we are playing with different business models and this was one of those we created a brand out there limited, which is a lot more available and to store it delimitation was only 30 days during this time we sold a nice amount of this ultra-limited brand so we'll prepare something for the future as well tony morelan 17 26 excellent no, that's it's a great a great approach again, showing off your marketing experience to help drive your sales so tell me where do you get your ideas from your watch faces tomas joscak 17 39 it's hard to say i'm just walking through the streets or driving and has the hardest time when i got some ideas under the shower tony morelan 17 51 so in the shower, tomas joscak 17 53 in my shower tony morelan 17 54 yeah, typically people are singing in the shower but you're actually designing watch faces in the shower tomas joscak 18 00 well i'm singing to, and then i find myself as i'm running to the corridors our white paper and putting ideas on it and then i can dry myself and doing other stuff tony morelan 18 14 that's good it's great yeah, you're already on the paper so is your approach into first sketch? or do you start designing your watch face straight on the computer? tomas joscak 18 23 yes, i'm sketching a lot i have much more ideas let's say it's time to make a real product out of it tony morelan 18 32 okay tell me a little bit about the tools that you're using so what software using like adobe photoshop adobe illustrator? what are you using to create and design your watch faces? tomas joscak 18 42 well 95% of all my vote faces are created in powerpoint tony morelan 18 51 powerpoint yes, the microsoft program for doing slideshows you're using that to create your watch faces? tomas joscak 19 01 yes, yes, definitely a lot of designers surprised whenever when i mentioned this, however i am is a really powerful instrument of powerpoint tony morelan 19 12 that's crazy i mean, i've used a lot of powerpoint, you know, in my years in fact, i often tell new designers, if they're looking to start a career in freelance graphic design, they really need to learn powerpoint, because people typically don't like using powerpoint, you know, when it comes to putting presentations together and if you can become, you know, a master of powerpoint, well, there's a lot of work out there because people just hate using powerpoint so to hear that you're using powerpoint to create the graphics on these luxury watch faces is just mind blowing i mean that that is absolutely amazing that you have figured out a way to use powerpoint at that level so that's excellent so tell me to date i think i read somewhere that you have over 1 million downloads, is that correct? tomas joscak 20 04 oh, well done 1 million, i think tony morelan 20 10 no, actually at the moment we have more than 5 million downloads 5 million wow that is just amazing so congrats on that tell me a little bit about leveraging free watch faces i know that a lot of designers they'll offer some of their watch faces for free but then the others are paid give me your idea on utilizing free watch faces to help raise your brand level tomas joscak 20 44 free workspaces are great however we are using it very rarely maybe there's one or two per brand and in our stores where we are offering luxury, luxury watch faces which we did $100 plus, we don't use any of those free watch faces so my recommendation would be it's a nice to have some, but not a lot tony morelan 21 11 got it? yeah and i agree with that because you want to really drive your sales so, you know, utilizing free watch faces to help raise brand awareness is excellent but don't over saturate the market with free watch faces so yeah, totally agree with you with that having been a designer now for watch faces for three years and millions of downloads i'm sure you've come across a few challenges so share a little bit about some of the challenges maybe that you've had to face tomas joscak 21 39 well, at the moment, i cannot remember any issue according to brands selling points or design, however, are big challenges right now, according to the coronavirus i spoke to other designers and currently we are the most hated at this crisis at the moment so our sales go to really down in everyone met this year and what we saw was that actually the elect luxury segment a lot of watch faces was actually stopped selling in this time really? tony morelan 22 17 yeah and that's not surprising considering all the you know, our world is going through right now that can understand where people are wanting to you know, watch where they're spending their money so hopefully that will change in a soon enough time so tell me are there any features you would like to see added to the galaxy store or to galaxy watch studio? tomas joscak 22 38 well, i'm personally very adaptive person so i, i am working, whatever is on the table, i try to squeeze the most possible out of it and i asked myself, what can i change to be successful at the market or with the two which is provided to us so basically, i could have some issues but i'm focusing on the on the market right now and on the on the revenues we are able to produce tony morelan 23 12 okay okay so tell me what is in the future for vienna studios do you have any, you know, any updates? what's your plan for the future? tomas joscak 23 23 we will definitely launch some new limited additions to the code successful pilot project we ran before and we have a plan to make a really, really very realistic digital watch face version of a real mechanical watch i cannot tell you any more to this project we are right now speaking to possible licensing partner, but these will be i think, very original offer at the galaxy store tony morelan 23 57 awesome super excited to see that when it actually becomes available so can you talk a little bit about multi language support and how you're utilizing that feature on the galaxy store to help market your watch faces globally tomas joscak 24 11 in the galaxy store, we are starting always with only english version of our watch faces however, if this one particular watch face is popular in other countries, so afterwards, we are translating all the descriptions and promo pictures into the language where the sales are growing tony morelan 24 31 okay, so just to just to help new designers understand, when you first publish a watch face, you publish it in english, that's the preferred language but seller office allows you to create alternative pages that you can put in the native language for different countries so that if a user from that country is viewing your seller office page, they'll see it in their native language it's great to see that you're united in the future, and it's a nice approach when you're just looking at you know, if you've got increased sales in those different regions that it's worthwhile to then translate it so who's doing the translation? tomas joscak 25 10 basically, we are using automatic translations, okay and for example, german language is familiar with me so i look at the languages where we are in and rest is automatic at the moment tony morelan 25 24 okay, nice so i also understand that you're doing something that you're calling an outlet store so tell me a little bit about your outlet store and how you're utilizing watch face watch faces on that tomas joscak 25 36 outlet store is a really another success story of vienna studios as we started promoting and selling, high priced looks at a watch faces there was a lot of people who would like to have one but i don't want to pay as much are cannot afford for these high prices so afterwards we have a certain amount of dyslexia watch faces, we decided to put the oldest one into a new creative outlet store with a huge discount so at the moment the people are able to buy alexa watch faces even for much lower prices in the outlet store tony morelan 26 23 that's a great approach it's the first that i've actually heard of someone using that approach to sell some of their older watch faces so very interesting i love that so i'm guessing you're familiar with some of the other top watch face designers out there on the galaxy star can you tell me you know, give me some names who are the designers that you that you are impressed with that you follow with the names that kind of jump out for you? tomas joscak 26 48 okay, there is a lot of great designers out there i can i could mention a few x9 studios, infinity watch faces however, the best one for myself and now level four for himself is matteo dini a few of his watch faces, and he could claim be like designing every pixel so i'm really impressed by work of matteo tony morelan 27 18 yeah, he is he's an amazing designer based out of italy you know, one of our top watch face designers i think a lot of people are impressed with what matteo dini has done some of the other names that you had mentioned x nine i actually am doing a live chat with john from x nine studio tomorrow so we're going to be doing a live chat and i'll be talking to him about theme designing and watch faces signing he's also another past winter with the galaxy store awards let's say you had mentioned infinity watch faces that's chris shomo he's an excellent designer he's actually the one who i first discovered when i learned about galaxy watch designer at the time, which is now galaxy watch studio so, you know when i first learned about chris and what he was doing with galaxy watch, and let's see, you mentioned your rarity oh urarity yeah, he's got just amazing designs and if you have a chance to look at his videos, the work that he does with his videos is just outstanding is definitely someone that can inspire a lot of people tomas joscak 28 25 yes, uratity tony morelan 28 27 yet another guy? yeah so bergen is great he's an excellent designer again, one of the designers that has been there for a while, who does some very nice realistic watch faces so definitely some designers to go in and look for when you're looking to get inspired for creating watch faces so i have one more question for you when you're not designing watch faces what do you like to do for fun? tomas joscak 28 50 oh, fine and except designing watch faces, which is really relaxed for myself if i am looking for fans my buddy, i love to visiting sauna tony morelan 29 02 oh, asana yeah oh, nice that's a good time to relax good time to relax now, i also heard that you are the father of twin four-year olds is that correct? yes, correct good i'm sure you're looking for a lot of time to relax i can only anticipate that that would be a little crazy at times tomas joscak 29 23 now, and they have been my twins have been at the beginning of my business, actually, because i couldn't work only during day slept so we started to get actually tony morelan 29 33 oh, nice nice nice wonderful okay, tomas i absolutely appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me and record this podcast, tons of fun lots of great inspiration so keep up the great work and i'm looking forward to seeing what vienna studios puts out in the near future so thanks tomas joscak 29 48 thank you thanks outro 29 50 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 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

https://developer.samsung.com/developers-podcast/s01e07-tomas-joscak.html

Learn Developers Podcast

Episode 2, Tan Nguyen

sports which is isn't easy all the time to motivate yourself but yeah, i'm going to click on that there’re two funny books, movies games tony morelan 32 29 well, hey, tan, thank you very much for being on the podcast absolutely appreciate you taking the time tan nguyen 32 35 thank you for having me, tony and thank you for all the opportunities you're giving to us it's really great to be part of your ecosystem and the relationship we have with you guys it's really amazing thank you very much closing 32 52 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 33 08 the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan

https://developer.samsung.com/developers-podcast/s02e02-tan-nguyen.html

Learn Developers Podcast

Episode 9, Morgan Parker

sports and staying outside nice cover is a beautiful place it's on my short list of places to visit once the lockdown is removed, i will definitely be up there soon yeah, once tony morelan 01 07 they opened up the borders exactly so you are the program manager for the knox partner program morgan parker 01 14 so what exactly is knox so samsung knox is a security platform that's, that's really built into all samsung smartphones and other devices as well as wearables and tablets and what it does is really secures the device from you know, boot up, you know, and during runtime to ensure that the data is stored and secured in the most secure way there's also a suite of solutions built upon the knox platform, you know, enabling, you know businesses and other secure organizations to, you know, ensure the devices running and operating in a way that meets their needs, you know, the most secure needs as in government and financial and other really highly secure industries and as well, you know, we as the samsung knox partner program provide a bunch of different sdks and development tools to build on top of that knox platform as well so, you know, we extend that functionality to our partners to build, you know, kind of those next grade solutions and really, you know, provide tailored solutions to our customers as well tony morelan 02 13 excellent so what exactly morgan parker 02 14 do you do? hmm so we, we break down the program really into for different areas so we provide a bunch of resources that, you know, our developers and partners can come in and really discover and learn what we do as a program you know, what we offer is the samsung knox partner program and, you know, the different tools we offer to build upon samsung knox and the other technologies we provide, and then, you know, moving from that, you know, it's really the sdks and support and, and other development resources, so people can get started building and then really facilitating, you know, better go to market activities to, you know, get more exposure to these solutions and then also further from that, you know, the growth phase which is really building a deeper connection in relationship with samsung so, what i focus on is really providing more resources under each one of these kinds of four categories so right now, that's really been more focused on, you know, increasing, go to market resources and activities for our partners and really, you know, working to build out the benefits we provide to our partners and looking internally to see what else we can provide and extend to our partners from kind of each one of those segments as well so really focused on building out a really rich program for our partners that delivers a lot of real-world value tony morelan 03 29 yeah, that's great you know, my role as a developer evangelist for the samsung developer program, you know, kind of falls in line a bunch of what you're doing as far as trying to help a lot of developers with different tools so that they can be successful creating for samsung so i think a lot of our responsibilities kind of intertwine absolutely, morgan parker 03 47 yeah and as samsung as well, i think like we're so big, and i think it can be pretty easy for us to extend you know, some things that are kind of like small exposure things from our channels, but some of our partners are very you know, big opportunities so i think looking for more of these things where, you know, they're the channels there, and everything's ready and extending that further to our partners is, is a big win for us and our partners tony morelan 04 14 so i understand that that you actually had an opportunity to go work for a year in korea at our headquarters i did tell me a little bit about that and how exactly did you end up in this role at samsung? morgan parker 04 26 yeah, that was an interesting one so i've been at samsung now for almost six years and this was about after my fourth year so i was on a business trip actually in california and i got a phone call, you know, stepped out into the hall to take the phone call and it was my boss then at the time, who said morgan, i've got a job that i want you to go and do by the way, it's in korea, and also, i need to know right now so without being able to think of a reason, you know, not to go you know, i committed to it and essentially, it was two months later, and i wasn't real you know, fantastic experience, i think it was really good as probably the first time i felt truly out of my element and maybe probably the first time i felt truly stupid in a while where, you know, you look around, you can't read anything and, and it's, you know, you can get yourself pretty lost but overall really great experience, i think learning how the company operates from, you know, an hq level in korea, and working with a lot of really, you know, talented, intelligent people was really fantastic and enabled me to, to kind of figure out how to make a bunch more things work when i'm back home and venture tony morelan 05 34 you know, i actually had an opportunity to spend a week in korea at hq and one of my fondest memories was getting on the subway there and not having any idea what my exit was because i just couldn't read the language and by the time i realized what my exit was, we had missed it and i looked at the map and saw that it truly is just a big circle the route oh, yeah, i thought you know what, what a great way see, seoul, korea so i just stayed on it for an hour and just got to see all the sights and to loop back around to my exit so morgan parker 06 08 oh, yeah, some of the infrastructure there is pretty fast yeah, exactly and still miss the food it can't get quite as tony morelan 06 13 good absolutely, yeah i love that in cycling too i'm a big cyclist so when i was there, i rented a bike and just took off for the day and just rode along the river it was absolutely beautiful country definitely so can we talk a little bit about the samsung enterprise alliance program? because i understand that was originally in place before the knox partner program, correct? yeah, it morgan parker 06 36 was so yeah, the samsung enterprise alliance program was i think it was up and running for, you know, about five or six years before we transitioned that into the notch partner program you know, the, the program was great i think the difference in why we wanted to transition is to really have another go to build out the program to you know, take all the great things that were in the samsung enterprise alliance program, roll them into this new program but also, you know, expand our focus not just on the enterprise, which, you know, obviously was in the name of that something enterprise alliance program, but look at other ways in which, you know, samsung knox, you know, it's really applicable to, to more than just, you know, the enterprise segment, i think, you know, smbs is a great play i think there's a lot of, you know, b2b to see examples that are really good you know, even looking at some, some b2c examples, potentially, and other ways that knox can be used in that in a great way and i think, you know, by changing the name, you know, and really trying to push the what we're doing with knox platform forward, and how are, you know, offering some of these development tools to our partners and developers, you know, we just get to really, you know, move ahead and build these things out to use these in a different way tony morelan 07 48 so what are some of the development tools that you're offering to partners? morgan parker 07 52 yeah, so we offer a few different developer tools and resources so the first being the samsung knox sdk is a collection of, you know, a few hundred unique samsung api's that really give our partners and developers the ability to have more granular control over the device mostly based in security, authentication, and device and app management so those are typically used by a lot of our utm and mdm partners you know, the next is knox so it's a way that our partners can have a little bit more control over the air firmware updates and how those are handled on the device there's also knock service plugin which enables our developers to really save you know, ongoing development costs and time by integrating with the knock service plugin to have more automatic updates amongst other benefits right so when there's a new knox feature released, the use of the knock service plugin helps the you know solution kind of update to the latest knox you know, version and solution that is available and the last one, knox mobile enrollment so this really helps our partners figure out how to enroll thousands have devices at once easier, and really controlling how those devices are, you know, enrolled and rolled out into an enterprise environment so that's a, you know, very, very high-level view, but encourage people to go to www developer samsungknox com to go dig deeper into those tools and see, you know, how they may fit in with, you know, what is desired for the partner developer solutions being created? tony morelan 09 21 that's great that's great, you know, because i know one of the biggest challenges when developers are creating their solutions are staying on top of the latest devices so you know, you put all this effort into making compatible with a specific device, but then when there's a new release or a new update, you've got to you know, start right back into it so exactly great to hear that you guys are making that a little easier that's morgan parker 09 40 that's the goal, right? yes tony morelan 09 43 yes, what would you say is the primary goal then of the knox partner program, morgan parker 09 47 really is to increase the success of our partners so what i really look to do is just find ways in which, you know, we can provide those resources, additional resources to our partners to help them make more sales you know, when our partners are successful, we're successful and so i think looking for ways to increase the successful partners is really what we're trying to do tony morelan 10 07 charge a fee to join the partner program nope, everything's totally free morgan parker 10 11 and there's a lot of really great, you know, free resources in there as well, including, you know, one of the biggest ones is really technical support as well so, you know, anyone who comes in and joins the program starts building, they can actually put in support tickets and get help when they're when they're building their app, so they don't get tony morelan 10 27 stuck what would be some of the other ways that the knox partner program is supporting partners? morgan parker 10 32 yes so i think, you know, while they're building, as i mentioned, the support is very important our documentation is fantastic you know, there's support forums that, you know, obviously, you get peer, you know, feedback and support through that, but also those are monitored by our support professionals as well so really, while you're building, you know, we do everything we can to help support you you know, moving from that, you know, when you're going to market the program is really designed that when you start to have some in market success, and you're actually serious about going in selling and creating a business with this, you know, we take notice so the, you know, we can see whose kind of activating licenses and who's making some sales so we have really good regional contacts and people that work with the program around the world so we work to, you know, once you start having some success really start working with you and this is where we really can build our relationship and start to promote you even further where, you know, once you get some notice, you know, we can promote you on our different websites there's a solution catalog on www samsungknox com as well as starting promoting solutions internally to our sales teams as well so, you know, once you kind of build some momentum, we work to help you, you know, increase that momentum and get more exposure and conquer, you know, make more sales is really the goal is tony morelan 11 43 this where the different tiers start to come into play, because i understand that you do offer i think it's four different tiers morgan parker 11 49 exactly yeah so everyone joins that, what would be a bronze tier, and really that is you get all the development resources and you can come in and start building and doing what you need to do to get your app off the ground, when you start making some sales and you know, started getting some notice, that's where, you know, we as the program would bump you up to what would be a silver tier partner, put you in contact with regional contacts and start you on that journey from there, you know, as you start to, you know, get in more and more sales, you know, we bumped you up to gold, and then platinum, those right now are pretty large partners, platinum partners right now are no blackberry and sony so at that level, you know, that is just more, you know, obviously, like joint pr and doing events together and that type of thing so yeah, we just really want to, you know, create more silver and then create more gold and hopefully create more platinum partners as well to really start growing our ecosystem so then what is it that you're doing for the small and medium sized businesses? yeah, that's why i think it's really the promotional, and connections with samsung that are really important so that's where the solution catalog comes in where, you know, we start to, you know, do things to jointly promote the solutions to you know, our base of customers and potential customers so i think, you know, doing that and having the relationship with samsung to pull you into more deals at that phase, i think is a really good and important, some really important benefits tony morelan 13 13 sure so giving a lot of visibility then exactly, morgan parker 13 16 yeah and that that comes back into, you know, with our global scale, i think this is one of the best ways that we can we can do this is, you know, providing more visibility from a very large customer base to our partner solutions tony morelan 13 30 so, tell me a little bit about the knox validated program morgan parker 13 33 yes, we just launched that this year so the nox validated program is for our partners and really what it does is it validates the implementation of a couple of our samsung knox products essentially so with that, you know, having no these rich implementations of samsung knox, we do a check to see how those are implemented make sure that you know both from a technical and security perspective, as well as some degree of you know, user friendliness, that these things are done in, you know, a really good way to then give our customers confidence that if they're buying these solutions that, you know, these things are implemented in kind of the best way possible so really designed to give our customers more confidence of these partner solutions, and to, you know, give our partners that, you know, go through this validation process, you know, even more promotional opportunities to promote those solutions further, as you know, kind of our chosen top, you know, validated solutions so, can you give some examples of these additional resources? yeah, absolutely so, first of all, it's really collecting all the existing sales and marketing resources that we do provide, whether that be you know, device imagery, and a lot of the latest device imagery, you know, then other sales and marketing collateral as well so, you know, our partners get to see you know, what we use and how we sell some of those solutions to our customers and get a better understanding of what those are and those can also be reused with, you know, their customers as well to show you know, what is the knox platform and if you're putting all this effort into integrating with the knowledge platform, you obviously would be good to have an understanding of what that is, and then convey that to your customer as well so those are a couple of, you know, kind of key areas of the sales and marketing resources and there's a bunch more in there as well and then really, as i mentioned before, really pushing ahead, and, you know, even doing the active promotion of those solutions, so, you know, getting in front of the obviously more customers, as well as our internal sales teams and other internal business units as well tony morelan 15 29 it sounds great now, you had mentioned the acronym utm in, for those who might not be aware of that, can you write exactly what are those acronyms? morgan parker 15 38 yeah, so i guess in the world of mobile device management, which is mdm, people can classify their solutions in a different way so ucm is unified endpoint management, enterprise mobility management cmm so they're all you know, basically a different way of managing mobile devices or endpoints and i think, you know, depending on guess who you are, you may classify your solution as a different way uvm could be the latest, as you know, endpoints can be more than just mobile devices it can be, you know, other type of smart devices or dongles or whatever so yeah, i think how you classify your solution and what you manage, you can name it something different tony morelan 16 18 so what is the next partner program done to drive awareness? morgan parker 16 22 yeah, i think the biggest one, and we'd work pretty hard to just get our solution catalog launched on www samsungknox com which is what i've mentioned before, so that is taking our silver and above partners, you know, getting what we call a solution brief or a solution profile off them and then putting together a full catalog of the solutions to promote to our customers and anyone coming to that website, essentially, you know, we also work hard to promote a lot of solutions more internally as well so we have some features coming later this month that will really help you know, promote a lot of these solutions more internally again, taking that solution brief solutions profile and working to support are no sales and technical sales teams so if they're working with a customer, and they identify a need that a partner solution they fit, we give them the catalog that they can go and search to find the partner solution that, you know they're looking for to fit that customer needs so, really working to promote that solution sale so, you know, i think a lot of times it's, you know, samsung knox and samsung devices plus partner solution or partner solutions, equals like that full solution that our customers are looking for tony morelan 17 32 you know, right now our society is going through a big transition, dealing with covid-19 can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges the that your team is facing? morgan parker 17 44 right, yeah, this is a, you know, as i mentioned, you know, trying to put together a lot of new features and things for our partners you know, we still have a lot of development on the program that that we're doing i'd actually say where we're probably more in still the growth phase, you know, coming out of something enterprises lines programs still, you know, pretty freshly transitioning before, you know, covid-19 happens so, you know, it's challenging with, you know, keeping our development timelines and still adding lots of new features quickly so, you know, we've had some, some delays with that, i think, you know, i'd like to see a lot of richer features in the program that we've had to wait a little bit more forward but yeah, i think, you know, just really keeping our heads down working more as a team globally to still get these features in the program as soon as possible excellent tony morelan 18 27 that's great to hear so, can you tell me what are some of the success areas for the next partner morgan parker 18 32 program? yeah, we, i mean, even as you know, the covid pieces, one example i mean, you know, having partners come in and use our development tools and new and innovative ways to, you know, solve for real world problems, whether it be social distancing, or, you know, contact tracing and that type of thing you know, there's some great uses of our tools for that, you know, other you know, large partners, you know, doing really great implementations and you know, again are the demand for the knowledge validated programming, how many partners we've had past that, so far has been really good to see as well and i think for what i look at successes, as, you know, people coming in and really using those development tools to make something great that, you know, has success in the real world so there's the opera world need for these things and that happens quite frequently so, you know, there's, there's lots of those successes and i would say, you know, a good way to see a lot of them is go to www samsungknox com and check out that solution catalog and see those solutions and see other success cases on there as well tony morelan 19 31 are there any companies or solutions that you can talk about that are built on knox? morgan parker 19 36 yeah, so, you know, i think, you know, starting with our platinum partners is blackberry and sony, you know, really full rich implementations of samsung knox really, you know, giving those customers using those solutions and samsung devices, extremely rich way to manage those devices and tailor them for you know, different business needs so i think starting with those guys is the probably the reason just implementations of a lot of them, you know, samsung knox sdks and those api's they use that's great tony morelan 20 08 any upcoming news? any webinars or events that you guys are participating in? morgan parker 20 13 yeah, i think i mean, you mentioned how covid slowed a lot of this stuff down so obviously, you know, not as many physical events this year but we do have lots of webinars that we run typically we do at least a monthly webinar, covering, you know, other more technical topics, or you know, how to work with samsung so those are actually posted on the blog at its developer, samsung knox comm so yeah, keep on checking there, and we have events going all the time online tony morelan 20 40 so what advice would you have for companies looking to morgan parker 20 43 join the next partner program, but really just come in and join? i think, you know, it's a very easy thing to come and join to sign your company up you know, come poke around and see, you know, what we have and you know, how we can start working together and really just don't get started you know as it's free and registration only takes probably about 1015 minutes yeah, just come and join and come see how we can work together tony morelan 21 09 so now are there any requirements that must be met in order for a company to be eligible to join the partner program? morgan parker 21 15 we just asked that the partners register with no corporate email address and their corporate details so other than that, there's no real strict requirements it's just we asked for it to be a company and we do a quick duns check for the you know, company registration that's actually it's nice to hear that you've tony morelan 21 33 made this so available to companies to get started to create opportunity morgan parker 21 37 absolutely yeah low barrier to entry is really the way that we wanted to make it so you know, people can again come in and check things out and see what we have to offer and tony morelan 21 47 just get started quickly and again, that website is www partner samsung knox com exactly morgan parker 21 53 and there's the you can go straight to the development tools that guide www developer samsung knox com as well so we've made that quicker for the more technical audience to really get started tony morelan 22 03 okay? are you guys active on any social channels like youtube or twitter? morgan parker 22 07 we do work with our, you know, developer teams as well so you're yourself and we actually have a little sub channel on your youtube channel, where we post all of our more technical webinars and everything they're so tony morelan 22 20 excellent, a great way for people to, you know, get online and check out some more of what you guys are doing so, absolutely, yeah happy to be a part of that yeah, it's really great to work together morgan parker 22 28 yeah, i think yeah, you know, one of the things that is really top of my mind is, you know, how we work together as one samsung, right, i think, you know, coming across to our audiences is not really fragmented, even though we're, you know, quite a large global organization it's really important so, you know, keeping working together with yourself and your team and other teams globally to make sure that, you know, we're working to, you know, come across as one unified front tony morelan 22 52 yeah and i think also one thing that we push how accessible we are exactly, you know, i mean, it's obvious that you guys are very accessible with the program being free and how easy it is to get started i know from our side that we're extremely accessible i mean, i'm constantly, you know, reaching out to people when they're posting questions, whether it's on youtube, or they're contacting me, you know, directly, whether it's linkedin or twitter or whatnot, that we are here to absolutely help so we've made it really easy for developers to get a hold of us whenever they have that, that need absolutely, morgan parker 23 21 yeah, yeah, i sit next to some of our support staff, and they're really great and, you know, they're, they're right on every ticket that we have yeah, i think, you know, i would echo that, that, you know, there's a real person behind, you know, every ticket and every issue and, you know, really working to solve these things as quick as possible tony morelan 23 37 definitely us too you know, we work as a team, i sit really close to some of our support people, and a lot of times it's a team solution that we're putting together so absolutely that's great it's really great so when you're not working, what is it that you do for fun up and up in vancouver? morgan parker 23 52 yeah, as i mentioned, i mean, vancouver's got a wealth of things to do so in the winter, it's really snowboarding and spending every moment i can in the mountains and yeah, just getting as much snow as i can in my life in the winter when there's a lot and then lucky enough as well once the snow starts to kind of melt, i start riding motorbikes so dirt bikes and street bikes and do a little bit of racing here and there so really, yes really full season of activities around and tony morelan 24 19 outdoors person and outdoors morgan parker 24 21 person exactly you like tony morelan 24 22 the wind blowing through morgan parker 24 24 yeah, exactly i mean, it feels good gone gone quick, sometimes tony morelan 24 28 sure excellent well, hey, morgan, absolutely appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me and talk about the next partner program so thanks very much appreciate it thank you outro 24 37 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 www 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

https://developer.samsung.com/developers-podcast/s01e09-morgan-parker.html

Learn Developers Podcast

Episode 1, Eric Krause

sports netflix animated series arcane working at riot games diversity and inclusion helpful links riot games website - riotgames com riot games linkedin - linkedin com/company/riot-games riot games twitter - twitter com/riotgames riot games facebook - facebook com/riotgames riot games instagram - instagram com/riotgames league of legends esports - lolesports com eric krause linkedin - linkedin com/in/erkrause samsung developers homepage - developer samsung com samsung developers newsletter - developer samsung com/newsletter samsung developers blog - developer samsung com/blog samsung developers news - developer samsung com/news samsung developers facebook - facebook com/samsungdev samsung developers instagram - instagram com/samsung_dev samsung developers twitter - twitter com/samsung_dev samsung developers youtube - youtube com/samsungdevelopers samsung developers 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 one on today's show, i'm joined by eric krause, global head of marketing for the league of legends group at riot games not only do we chat about the latest success around wild rift, their award-winning mobile game for the league of legends franchise, but also riot games unique process for game development, and how diversity and inclusion play an important part of riots culture internally and within the gaming and entertainment communities well, yeah, and all of the music you'll hear in today's episode, it's from the wild rift soundtrack enjoy hey, eric, i want to welcome you to the to the podcast eric krause 00 57 thank you for having me it's a pleasure tony morelan 01 00 who is eric krause? eric krause 01 04 good question my wife, i think is asking the same question i am german so by my accent, you might be like, where is he from? so i'm super passionate about gaming you know, we're really trying to be part of, you know, making people feel better to be a gamer all around the world but beyond that really love technology, talking about anything technology so that's why i'm super excited to be here talking about, you know, partnership with samsung, because samsung is known for technology, but also loved cars so i'm very stereotypical german that way, because i also really love football and i mean, real football, not the american football thing tony morelan 01 40 no, i you know, i appreciate that they did bring the mls to the us for all of the soccer fans here but yeah, i can only imagine you're probably a big fan of the european leagues eric krause 01 51 yes, i still wake up early in the morning and watch some of the games the good ones in europe still live? it's an addiction, maybe? i don't know but it's a good one tony morelan 02 02 so what is the what is your team? what team do you follow? eric krause 02 06 being german, i have to go with a german team so that's brucea, dortmund right now a second plays unfortunately right behind bayern munich but maybe this year, maybe we have a chance i'm cheering on i'm going to sit there with my jersey on when they play and i have a small figurine, that is like dressed up as a barista don't want a character and depending on how they play, that the finger is allowed to look into the living room? or if they badly have to turn around and then just stare the wall it's kind of the you don't you didn't do well so go into the tony morelan 02 37 so what is the current state? is he is he looking positive and into the into the future? is he in a timeout? eric krause 02 43 it just turned around? actually, because two matches ago, they last had a turnaround but the last one they actually won so it's allowed to look back into the living room yes tony morelan 02 54 nice so riot games, you are global head of marketing for league of legends tell me what exactly is that role? eric krause 03 01 yeah so in that role? no, i have the pleasure of overseeing all the amazing teams that do all the crazy and awesome marketing work across liga legends on pc, and wildrose, which is the old version of liga legends and we've kind of created this as a group, because it's kind of the core of of league of legends and that's how people perceive it and it's actually very similar in terms of what we're trying to promise to players, right in terms of, hey, if you play this type of game, this is what you will get out of this in the state ultra competition i had and that is kind of the whole purpose of that group to really defining you know, what does that competitive aspects of league of legends look like? what does it mean to, you know, build a platform ecosystem that's built around celebrating mastery? sure but also, through league of legends, a lot of people do get to know our characters, and our champions that they know and love so we're also taking care of that, right, making sure that, you know, as they, as our fans, you know, have their champions that they really cheer on to give them as much love as possible for the champion that they love tony morelan 04 11 so, yeah, yeah, no, i know, it's a huge, huge community how long have you been in that role at riot games? eric krause 04 18 fairly recently, actually, um, you know, i was, i was given that role last summer and before that, i was actually leading up the marketing team that launched all draft, so okay, from that roll into this new role that started to exist as of last summer got it tony morelan 04 38 and you've been at riot games for how long? for eric krause 04 41 over five years, and it's so weird, because i always think of myself as somebody fairly new to riot sure but when i now meet new rioters, they're like, oh, we've been there for five years you're a veteran, and then myself, like, don't say that to me that's not true i feel like i just joined yesterday but yeah, it's over five years tony morelan 05 02 wow, no, but you are originally from germany so there has to be some sort of journey that's led you from your home country of germany, to i understand you now live in southern california eric krause 05 12 yeah, right now i do live in sunny los angeles and the passion for gaming eventually, you know, moved me over here because at the beginning, during college, i started to work for an agency that was working with ea back at the time and through that i became a community manager being coming and kind of the phase and local go to person for various games and franchises that ea had in central europe and eventually, through that work, ea was like, well, can't you just move over to the west coast, because you're working with all these teams already and you're, you're, you're flying over so many times, sure, just move, just come over and i did that and that was more than 10 years ago, at this point, our move to los angeles, and from there kept working for a couple more years, at ea working on things like mass effect, command and conquer and others, and moved on actually to a korean company, also in gaming, which gave me a new side of learning about like free to play and life service operations, which obviously is a big part now of gaming and then eventually, that led me to working at riot which, as we said, it's more than five years ago, which crazy to say, tony morelan 06 32 wow, now riot got their start back in the in the 2000s correct? eric krause 06 36 2006 yeah, as a tiny, tiny startup just with a with an idea and, and now it's like, it's so obvious, but back then it wasn't tony morelan 06 47 yeah, cuz i know, back in the early 2000s, you know, when gaming really started, you know, becoming extremely popular gamers were kind of looked upon as this is just like this, this little hobby, and, you know, go spend your free time but i mean, with esports, it is just blown up over the years eric krause 07 05 yeah, totally and i can proudly say that we're part of that i have because we believe that and we actually spend ridiculous amounts of effort to really promote and build up the professional esports circuit around liga legends and when we did that originally, which is also now more 10 years ago, people laughed up on us i had they're like, what is this? like? this is not a sport, right? like, it's just four people in the basement i had like, doing these things and now we look at it and you're like, yeah, if we look at our world championship i had has more viewers than most sporting events that americans know and love, like nba finals, we have more viewers in the nba finals, right? that's so easy it has come a long, long way since then tony morelan 07 51 so league of legends, they got their start around 2009 set, right, the first eric krause 07 57 version of the game came out 2009 because over the years, it has changed drastically for the better if you look at clips of the original league legends in 2009, it's pretty rough but again, it was 2009 you know, that's the beauty of life services, and also being really player focused, right, is that the game has come a long way not because you know, we necessarily had the most grandest vision for it but because once you put something out there, your players will tell you, well, we like this, we don't like that and we just kept listening and that's kind of our thing and we'll keep listening and evolve the game, you know, based on how our players really think, you know, what they believe is best tony morelan 08 40 league of legends has become a franchise and i know there's a whole bunch of games that have come out of that talk a bit about some of those individual league of legend games, eric krause 08 49 for talking about the games, but and how they've been talking about the ecosystem behind it i think it's important to understand why because most of the time, like yeah, just you know, making more games cool, you're making more money, right? that's, that's the traditional answer, if successful, if he just makes more of it for us, it's a little bit different because what motivates us really, is to create that ecosystem that allows people to express fandom very differently, okay, because right now, you know, as we all human beings, we all have different ways and how we play, right how we consume entertainment so we want it to be built something a large ecosystem that people can be really proud of, because it's not just forcing them to play one game to remain to be a fan of this thing that they might have started playing a 10 years ago but now they all these other different ways that depending on how their life changes, how they interest changes, how the new friends might play, different things are sure want to be entertainment and things we want to build them an ecosystem that it can be proud of and that's how we started to be like, okay, part of that is not only to make music and tv shows and what that's also making more games, right and through that lens, we actually announced a bunch of them doing a 10th year anniversary of league of legends, which was a big surprise for people and a good surprise and there, we announced a bunch of games ranging from like legends from terra, which is, you know, a card game that we made digital card game, then also tft team fight tactics, which is this auto bed law genre, which is a new upcoming one, which is really kind of chess meets, you know, game strategy put on top of it it's really, really weird one, but if you really lost strategy, like that, one is for you but we also announced brand new things through the lens of, you know, working with indie companies to really make games that are go really deep into very specific area that riot probably wouldn't make through our riot forged label and those have been received pretty phenomenal as well and last but not least, we also announced our first new ip, which is valorant, which we've launched now, as well, which is right now, first person, tactical shooter, tony morelan 11 06 it's really interesting so you've got this franchise, and you found all these different ways for different types of personalities to in to engage in the game so you know, from runeterra, being that that collective card game, it's similar to something like magic the gathering, but in a digital format and then what i'd love to hear about is how, you know, you're looking at the mobile space, creating a game to be played on mobile devices and that's where samson kind of comes into play with the game wild riff so i love seeing how you've taken this, this single game league of legends and turned it into a franchise to really expand the community and in the different ways that people can play and interact eric krause 11 43 part of it as we think about all these new games has been mobile, i'm actually pretty committed to mobile, because i'd wildwood is one that is built natively for mobile, which was one of the really big challenges for us but also, as we thought about some of our other games, like legends of runeterra, team fight tactics, they all have a mobile component of it, too so you can actually play it on a mobile phone as well because that's where, right if you think about trying to give players what they want, if you think about even today, right, the way people consume entertainment, which i include gaming in, has changed drastically in the earlier days, people have really made dedicated time for it, either, like, i'm going to be on a pc, thursday night for four hours, you know, i'm going to meet up with all my friends, you know, online, and then we'll just play or spend time on a couch or, you know, really make a block available, where i can just watch movies and whatnot but now, it really changed right now, you know that the trend that we're seeing that we're trying to lean into is, you know, people just whenever live gives them a small sliver of time yeah, in that moment, no matter what the situation is, people want to have the highest quality form of entertainment available to them no matter if it's on pc, tablet, tv, mobile phone, right, truly, wherever it is and that change pushes us as game developers to adopt, and this case to really embrace mobile ai, because it's not just about that trend it's also for a lot of people mobile is kind of the first and maybe only gaming platform they ever own yeah, so for us, it's also so important because they're all these hundreds of millions of people all around the world, that define who they are, as a gamer through the lens of a mobile phone and we want to be there because we want to show them what it could look like to be a gamer through the lens of riot, because we really want to make sure that they get the best possible experience and that's why we've started to embrace mobile and this took as a really long time, arguably too long because it's paired with other beliefs that we have, that we really want to deliver the highest quality form of entertainment and mobile took us a while to get there at the beginning, it was like the technology wasn't really there for us to have the capabilities to create these deep and engaging experiences because we didn't just want to use rip and you know, put something on a phone that when people look at me like right, what you put on a phone has nothing to do with the game or the ip i know and love over here so where’s that game? like the gameplay that made that pc game so special? we wanted to make sure that when people pick it up, and they're like, hey, this is a league of legends game that the mechanics to the quality that they can be like proudly say yes, yeah, this is a league of legends game so it took us a little bit longer to get there but now it's definitely part of how we think about the entertainment world right that mobile is a big part and arguably more growing part compared to pc and console tony morelan 14 50 so last year, riot games won a best of galaxy store award best strategy game for league of legends wild rift, tell me what did it mean to win that award? eric krause 15 01 people can see it right now i'm still smiling just kidding about it, because it's so awesome to see i called validation i because you can say all day long, right? that, hey, we're trying to, you know, really build the best things possible on a device on a platform to make players proud but it's really hard sometimes to quantify that right, as hundreds and hundreds of people are working on this day in day out so when do you know that you're probably on the right track? and one part is, obviously, players will tell you if they're happy or not yeah, but the other one is also, you know, recognition by the industry and that's why this actually means so much to us, as a team that is working on the game because it is that signal, i would like, hey, you know, samsung galaxy said, you know, this is one of the best games of the year and that makes us proud and that's why we should not only share that with, obviously, our fans, to make sure that they're like, hey, you know, we won this thank you guys, all out there yeah, to make it ultimately happen because without players, we wouldn't do these things but there's also now a very important part of, you know, how we think about the game and trying to recruit people because it's also the thing i'd like, as we all recruit for talent, i have so many choices of course, using it like, hey, this is an award-winning team definitely helps riot as well as a company to get more super awesome talent and to make even better experiences down the road so it's a very important thing for us yeah, tony morelan 16 33 i know, i've done a lot of these interviews with past winners this is the first time that i've heard that a company actually uses that award is a way to entice and encourage, you know, talent to come their way so while griff is fairly new, when was it actually released, eric krause 16 50 radware was released or started to release in fall 2020 and as they started to, because what we did is we launched in multiple waves, we started in fall 2020 launching in southeast asia and slowly over the course of time, up to our more recent launch in china, we just did a wave by wave and start to expand the availability of wildlife globally tony morelan 17 17 what's the what's the reason behind that sort of rolling release? eric krause 17 21 it was more of a technical nature, trying to because you find the balance right between when is everything totally ready for a global launch? versus when we have something we believe in? how fast can we deliver player value? yeah so finding a balance, sometimes it's this inner pole between you because one side i really wanted, like, don't do it, don't do it other than that, go push it out, push it out, of course so we decided to do that way to really, you know, get more player feedback along the way earlier, but also still give them experience in the earliest stages of the rollout that we still believe then being a good experience for them tony morelan 17 59 got it so it's almost like doing a beta release for software? pretty much yes so you know, knowing that league of legends was extremely popular on pc, and then you decided to come up with this mobile version wild rift, tell me about what is the process for building a mobile version game? eric krause 18 16 it was a long one you know, we spent several years trying to figure it out, really and what it led to was rebuild everything because the first instinct, right, when you have something that is working on pc is all let's just see what we can port over right? and, sure, we tried, but it didn't feel right when we want to be on a platform, right? when we want to put a name on one of our games, we want to proudly say that this is the best we can do it it's that's the best possible experience you can have right? and but just porting it, that didn't feel right, because a pc game wasn't made for the different screen so we decided we need to rebuild everything, using a different engine, you know, rebuilding all the art assets because when we started that approach, that's when it started to really click in terms of making use of the capabilities that a phone has, and also making sure that it just feels right, because now the thing is with the touchscreen, right? you can almost feel your champions and i obviously say that in a crazy way but if you just think about right like now you drag like an ability of a champion really on the screen, you see exactly what the tell the champion reacts to it it's almost some degree more direct the interaction with your champion, so it needed to feel super crisp so we decided to rebuild everything but it also gave us the opportunity to touch up a few areas of the game that you know, as you can imagine, at that point, you know, the game being more than 10 years old on pc that didn't hold up, you know, as well over the course of time so we actually started to rebuild a bunch of things to even like in terms of what champions look like, visually, to get them kind of on par with a modern for 21st century, it was kind of an opportunity as well and for us tony morelan 20 11 yeah, no, you know, we are really proud and excited that you guys decided to bring your game over to the galaxy store tell me are there any unique aspects or optimizations to the to the game that fans download from galaxy store? eric krause 20 24 yes, i'm not going to voice with the technical details but at the end of it all, is we wanted to make sure that no matter if you have a high end, samsung phone, or if you have, you know, a more entry level one that the game really gets the most out of the phone is that you get the smoothest possible experience and that require actually really working with samsung, they were super open for him to really work with us and help on optimizing the engine, but also working with us on some new sdk functionality that really allowed to make sure that the fight between terminals, like how much heat is being generated on one end, but also, how much power do we really put into all the components like cpu gpu, that we always find the right balance, that no matter, you know, how heated the fight is that your phone doesn't overheat, yet still gives you the smoothest experience, and been working endlessly for a couple of years, you know, with everybody at samsung, and we believe, you know, we achieved what we wanted to achieve, which is really giving you the best possible game experience on a galaxy device tony morelan 21 37 yeah, and knowing that, you know, we have so many different form factors with our traditional phone, as well as the z fold, and the z flip, all of which can be used to play wildlife correct? eric krause 21 48 actually, in fact, i do play wild rifts on my phone tony morelan 21 52 that's great so tell me about this relationship with samsung how did that first start? eric krause 21 58 it's fun sorry, because you know, samsung and right, we're thinking very similarly, about the space and that is really, how can we provide the best possible entertainment experience on the go? i had that is true for samsung, right through their products but it's also true for riot with our games and software so through that those early conversations, we pretty quickly identify like, it's pretty obvious for us to work together on this site and from there, it was all history, i had started to partner and really figuring out the ways on, you know what that means for us as two companies collaborating with the sole purpose of giving gamers the best possible experience on a mobile device and that partnerships now ongoing for like, last two, three years tony morelan 22 47 yeah, that's one thing i do love, you know, working at samsung, they really do push that the partnership side of things i mean, i made myself totally available to the community when it comes to my areas of expertise at samsung and they've really pushed out with a lot of the people here so it's not just that, you know, we're a platform for you to deliver your content but we want to work with you to make the experience truthfully better for all those that are using our devices in your content so with wild ruth being such a new game, i'm sure it is extremely important and challenging to do that, that initial marketing, to promote your game so tell me about some of the tools and techniques that you guys are doing to help let the community know that hey, there is wild riff, and it's time for you to play eric krause 23 28 yeah, absolutely um, so in today's world, but when you think about it, you know, you have to really be where players are, you can't be as selective anymore as you might want it to be 1015 20 years ago, and that really is the guiding thing for us when we thought about, you know, marketing the game and you know, celebrating the launch of it and specifically being a mobile game what does it mean being where players are for us that was, you know, heavy emphasis on social media, on content creators, and just general video platforms, because that is the core circle of you know, how people on mobile phones consume content these days so that was a very big investment of ours, to really lean into that, you know, and work with the right parties but the other thing that's exciting is when you think about mobile is, you know, the capabilities that it brings that you weren't really able to do on a pc, even when it comes to marketing what i mean by that is like, guys, a great example is, you know, using ar and vr technology, you know, on a mobile phone, it's actually pretty straightforward so we played with a bunch actually made microsites for events and launch events we turned them into three dimensional things you can actually walk around in and up there we did 180-degree videos so as you watched it depending on you know, what you were looking you saw a different thing of the scenery and of the story being told that video, and all these fun things i did you can start doing and creatively unlock if you embrace mobile as a platform, not only what the game is app, but also how people consume content, right? and then the other aspect being a mobile game specifically as it sounds, it's mobile, right? it's on the go deck will have it everywhere, even real life so for us, it was also important component to figure out what, how can we promote it, where people are out there when they use a phone, right, so not just being on the phone, but in the actual real-world context so obviously, with the covid, 19 situation happening was a little more tricky for us to do so but we still were able to find, you know, arguably great and yet safe ways to do that in the real world like, for example, in southeast asia, in some markets is all about food, right? like people love food there, they'll go to street vendors, you know, just grab something and even make it a social hangout space, i will just meet around a food cart sure, we really leaned into that aspect in southeast asia and actually created a campaign that celebrated some of the fruit that you find in the game on the map, brought it to real life actually created something that looked like it but felt very specifically, i guess, different, sure, and created an activation around it and we're really proud of that one because again, not only were we able to pull off, despite all the constraints around us but it also was more recently recognized, winning a grand clio, for one of the best marketing experiences over the last couple tony morelan 26 26 of years wow, that's exciting and for those that don't know, the clio awards are basically the oscars when it comes to marketing and design so and i understand you also did something pretty creative with youtube, as far as an event, so yes, eric krause 26 41 we also did something, youtube, which we also want to clear for and that was really the concept of while people are waiting to play the game, because we're doing it in rollout stages, like one wave after the other what can we give people in a cool interactive form, to kind of experience the game without playing it and wanting to come to mind is as part of the game key objective, and the game is bare nasher, which is this massive, giant warm thingy, that that you can slain as a team and we made a game on youtube, about that experience but it was kind of an all versus one kind of experience we're all players watching the stream had to come together, and actually work together to in this case, slay and bear nowshera through various inputs that they could give through chat and whatever the chat inputs were that the community decided something would happen on the screen, in terms of fighting him with a specific attack called different champions and for help heal yourself and things like that so it's kind of a massive, interactive game, that that people play it and it was really cool to kind of again, test the waters with what's possible, with all the platforms out there tony morelan 27 59 wow, what a great and super creative way to truthfully build a community to, you know, act as one so all total to date, how many downloads? how many users would you say i've played while drift? eric krause 28 11 it's hard to say, but it's definitely high up there to 10s of millions but i think the best number that describes you know, when we think about league of legends, you know how big it is, is a number we just recently announced and that was for the end of last year, we had 180 million people in a given month, play, you know, a league of legends game wow and the majority of that is driven by wild drift actually, i have because, you know, people were waiting for having finally a mobile part of this ecosystem available to them and that that is really, you know, the promise that we delivered upon, giving them something that they could proudly call legal legends is now you know, available on a mobile phone, because it is league of legends, it is the core game and people pay that back to us by coming, downloading and playing the game and we're really proud that we were able to expand the ecosystem for our players the way we did tony morelan 29 15 that's amazing and that is that is huge, especially for a franchise that just shows the longevity of the of the brand, after all these years to still be creating new experiences for the community and seeing the community grow that big eric krause 29 28 it's the proof point that the product lifecycle curves that they teach people during the mba is that they can be defied if you just really have a customer focus, tony morelan 29 38 but how do you guys come up with your ideas for games? the beauty eric krause 29 41 of making video games is really, if you can dream it up, you can make it sure and so that really the creativity in your mind is kind of the limiting factor here and because of that inspiration can truly come from anywhere for making a game and finding like what what's fun about different experience, being it reading a book, you know, watching just our fans talk on youtube about something, right, playing a board game, or just generally just sitting there in a rocking chair and you know, thinking about, like, what could be better in the world, you know, truly, ideas can come from anywhere and that's the exciting thing about gaming as a medium, because it's like creating these things that are interactive, for people to then explore themselves and be surprised and delighted by and because of that, you know, an all push for finding new ways to give players what they would want and that is that more robust ecosystem, we now have invested into a pretty robust pipeline of r&d games so that visit different genres, to really make sure that one day we can give as many players as possible, kind of the ecosystem that they deserve tony morelan 30 54 i love what you said about if you can dream it, you can make it a game and that's true, because i remember the first time i picked up cards against humanity, absolutely love playing the game and as soon as i was done at a notepad, i'm like, okay, how can i make my version of cards against humanity, it just was so simple but so, so much fun and that was true you know, for many years, i've often come up with ideas for, you know, game boards, or collectible, you know, items even going so far to pitch some of these ideas none of them worked out i ended up deciding to go into tech but yeah, i love what you said that if you can dream it, you can make it eric krause 31 33 yeah and that's the thing i had, it's like it all, it doesn't have to always work out, right? even was trying to see if there's something there with your idea as crazy that might be sure there's a high chance it will not work out that's the same for us in our r&d pipeline and just because we're starting to invest into a game, it doesn't mean that we're going to make it ibm has a high chance that as we go down that rabbit hole, and we're like, yeah, we weren't really able to find the fun or like, yeah, i don't really know how to make that game it just possibility i so there are a bunch of things that are being canceled internally or put on a shelf but the things that you learn from it, probably inspire something else and that's something else might become the next big thing it might change humanity forever beyond yeah because a lot of the things that we now take for granted in all worlds, sometimes were accidents, i will people will actually try to invent or find a different solution to different problem and then as a side product, they invented x, right? yes and that is what's always keep trying tony morelan 32 41 so when it comes to like developing a game and pitching that, that that concept i can imagine it must be a little bit like actually pitching a movie i mean, with storyboards, storylines, characters, i mean, games have become so involved that that's how i think it would be but tell me, is it? is it anything like, you know, pitching an idea for a movie? eric krause 33 01 it's, tony, it's definitely a process because a lot of people think about making games, just pay a bunch of people get together and just make a thing, and then they release it right and sure, that could be a way but probably will not give anybody the results they're looking for and players probably would look at me like, what is the scam? is it's not fun, it doesn't feel right so that's why it's really going through that process of multiple stages that kind of really stack on top of each other in a sequential, right, because we want to make sure that first, the core idea of what makes that game fun, potentially, is really thought out i've really thought and it goes through the process and figure out like, hey, do we believe that this will be true? then it kind of when that is happening goes to the next stage of like, can we actually make that game before even really making the game? because that's the other thing you might dream up this crazy idea, but nobody has an idea how to actually make it clear and that will also be problematic so that's really about focusing on all the kinks i'd like so what would an animated character look like? and feel like? how much work? is it actually to make it or whatever it is like, what would this open world feel like? and what's the visual quality target? we're aiming for all these things, trying to figure out these answers to all these questions to before the game actually goes into full production that's when you actually make the game and again, it seems a little counterintuitive, right? because people like well, why waste all the time at the beginning but it's really part of the process for us to make sure that when we release a game as riot, that players can be proud of it yeah, when they pick it up it doesn't just feel awesome but it really changes and provides value to their lives, right as a gamer we want to have that high borns high bar that's why not every game will make it to that pipeline it's okay everybody knows that but that's really important aspects of it tony morelan 34 55 so how long would you say it takes to go from concept to actually a published game? eric krause 35 00 it's really depends on, you know, the genre, the type of game, the scene, the scope of it, either you can see games that are actually done in two years but you can also find games that will take five years plus, i had to go through that pipeline so it's really variable based on kind of the project tony morelan 35 18 and that is quite an investment, you know, to have to forecast out like, hey, this is we're not going to see a return on this for another three to five years that just shows you the commitment that riot has eric krause 35 29 well, i think we're right, it's not it's not even that it's not that we're thinking about, hey, you know, what's, what's the investment for just putting a game through r&d? because the philosophy of riot, it's about that long term value to the player ecosystem? sure that that is kind of our very first way of thinking about it so rather than thinking for us, it's like, okay, it doesn't take two or five years to put it through, it's more like, once it's out, can this be a 10 plus your game that really pushes the genre forward, that really changes the game exchange that really adds to our ecosystem in a long term way, and provides value through that that's how we think about it and that makes it a little bit different in terms of sure how we approach games but again, that that's how the whole belief of the company is built around that and it actually makes for in our eyes for better outcomes for players tony morelan 36 22 sure, sure you know, there's a lot of competition out there with the with gaming, what has been your your strategy for discoverability? eric krause 36 31 it is, obviously, you know, people have choice there's no way around that but there are a couple of things that that we try to do a really put our flag down in terms of making sure that players actively seek out riot games, because obviously, there's the obvious answer of like, hey, you spent all this money on media on user acquisition, right? i mean, that's a fair way of doing it and riot is participating in that way right of pushing discoverability but there's also the other aspect, right? if you do create an environment that people cherish, i've been through a super recognizable ip that has stepped or through really providing highest quality entertainment options available, no matter the platform, all of a sudden, you get players that want to play your games yeah, i had that actively, you know, looking for the next strike game, not only for themselves, but even to the degree to talking to the friends about it and that is kind of the other part to us, either naturally, probably the leading thing, actually, for us to really invest into these high quality, ip driven ecosystems, that gives players the best experience and then through that kind of grow from the inside out what were people who are in within the ecosystem are happy to go out to their friends, you're like, hey, this is an amazing game, you should play it with me and that is the two components for us but as i said, the latter one being the more focus piece of tony morelan 38 01 it yeah and i think in another way, it's also evident how you don't have to pay to play that there is an opportunity for people who just want to pick it up and, and have a little fun with it but yeah, obviously, you know, you can generate revenue through wild rift so what has been your strategy for generating revenue? eric krause 38 20 all goes back to when it comes to how do we make money because yes, we do have to make money one way or the other because our philosophy is we want money to reinvest back into the ecosystem sure for us, we don't want to just do it in a way that feels bad that's like a big thing like, if somebody gives us money, we want a player to feel good about it, because they got great value and that means we don't want to partake in some of the more predatory monetization models that exist out there so as gamers, for example, you know, you hated when there are these energy systems that limit the amount of time you can actually play a game, or you have to like refill your energy or whatever to, you know, play another match or something like that we don't do any of that we don't want to limit how many times you can play we also don't want to sell anything that give somebody an unfair advantage in terms of making them stronger, or having all of a sudden different abilities that you don't have access to so it's really about, you know, allowing people to monetize to do by things that are more appearance based, more vanity based because that way it's about them deepening their almost relationship with their favorite champion with a favorite character and that doesn't have really any impact on somebody else playing with them in the sense of being unfair, but instead gives, you know our players actually more diversity for the champion that they already no love, and more different appeal, and almost celebrating it with them that they have gone so deep, you know, with the champions and that's really the majority of, you know, for us and how we think about monetization yeah and that is really the focus for us tony morelan 40 16 now, you know, the user experience on mobile is different than it is on pc what were some of the challenges that you guys face when, when it came to designing a mobile game? eric krause 40 26 it's, it's very different, right? that's why we really, really had to rebuild it in terms of design as you have a smaller screen, sure, but also completely very different input mechanics and how you steer, i had a champion so really rethinking all of that was a really big part of the prototyping phase of the game, to redo even some of the champion mechanics to better fit the, you know, mobile environment, to again, really make the best out of it or another great example, for the design experiences, you know, average game on pc is probably 30 minutes to play league of legends but nobody wants to spend 30 minutes, you know, into a heated match on a phone, actually, for people that think about phone more so is like, more bite sized experience that they can have on? sure so that was a big thing for us it's also well, from a design perspective, it's like, oh, how do we bring it down to let's say, 15 minutes i to make it more bite sized, without losing the core experience that people know and love from pc so that was like, as an example for, you know, how we thought about the design problems to solve going to mobile, but again, to really make use of mobile, not just a software for the sake of it, but to really leverage, you know, what mobile is giving you then when it comes to publishing is also very different we self-publish, you know, the game, on pc and that obviously, is only means that, you know, we use our own tools, everything sure but if you think about mobile, and we work with great partners like samsung, i had to get the game out to make sure that people have a great convenient and safe environment to get the game from so there, it's actually for us learning all the ins and outs of the tools and the capabilities and even working, you know, with samson to figure out if there's any functionality that might be missing, that would be cool to make it even better experience for players so that was actually also a big switch for us, that we had to learn and really invest into to teach ourselves what that looks like sure and then also the marketing aspects of it all as well you can't just copy whatever you're doing on pc from a marketing front and just call it day i like yeah, we did it cool because it's not only the way again, people consume media slightly different but as far as i can go back to opportunity, because people might notice that, you know, the game is actually called league of legends wall drift it's not just called league of legends or league of legends it also looks slightly different feels slightly different and that was purpose because as we think about wild rifts within the ecosystem that we've built, while two of more so is kind of to inspire the next generation of legal legends fans so what does that mean, for us, as we, as people consider playing us or not? yeah, are the changes that we should be making to be more appealing? and that's what we did because also the game is slightly different in some detail mechanics, we didn't want to mislead our core fans as well, but completely saying hey, they exactly the same because they're not core fans will immediately be like, hey, this ability, eric, that's that one is different so don't call this exactly collections, because, you know, that's slightly off and that's, that's, that's awesome, because our fans are as dedicated so we also didn't want to mislead them hence, also part of the marketing experience being slightly different be like i know, this is league of legends while drift, which still totally deserving of the name league of legends because yeah, it is that core experience, but it's still slightly enough different to give it that different tone tony morelan 44 01 yeah now, you know, one of the things that stood out for me when i first played the game, was the music i mean, it was extremely cinematic so tell me a little bit about the music of league of legends wild rift eric krause 44 13 yeah it's so interesting what music can do to an overall experience i remember, i had to play test at some point and it wasn't a music it was like a bug it was like, pre before release and it was so interesting to me because it felt so wrong but initially, i couldn't pinpoint what's wrong with it, because i actively didn't notice that the music was missing but it really felt i was like, what's going on? is this this doesn't feel right and then eventually, we were like, oh, yeah, the music is not playing any of this i'm like, ah, yeah, that and that now i feel it i and that's the thing it's, you know, most of the time people don't really think actively about music, yet it plays such a big part to connect you better to the experience you're having to how can music be part of that emotional connection to what you're doing so it's not just some fireworks going off on the screen but that also that you feel that if something is on the line, the music should help tell you that at least subconsciously like, hey, something's on the line but the same, so it's like, if you go back to, you know, your home base, your fountain in the game, the music policy tell you like, hey, take a breather, right? it's okay, like, this is a safe space and that's really how to think about music i'd like making that like a way to connect better with the experience, even though people don't actively notice tony morelan 45 35 and all of the music that you're hearing in today's podcast, is from the league of legends wildlife soundtrack so now that you've worked with samsung, so closely on bringing your game to the galaxy store, what advice can you give developers that would like to do the same? yeah, eric krause 45 51 i mean, being on mobile, for me is about reaching massive audiences, massive audiences that use their phone to really define who they are as a gamer and when you think about it that way, samsung is a massive part of it, i had, it's one of the largest phone manufacturers in the world dedicated to creating the best possible experience on the go and that lens, kind of, at least for me, thinks about as like, and it's a no brainer, i had to be on the galaxy store, especially, you know, as we found out through our experience, that the extra work required to do so it's actually very minimal so it's a great value add, add to reaching, you know, more players, and eventually more fans of your products, through again, a lens of quality and pushing experience forward so i guess the short answer is just do it tony morelan 46 51 wonderful that's great so tell me what is in the future for riot games eric krause 46 57 our ceo, nicolo, he just recently actually shared a blog post about that on riot games com that kind of spilled the beans a little bit of our next five plus year journey that we're taking on as riot games and because for us, it's really about that expansion of the ecosystem and how can we, again, make it better to be a player? how can we find better ways for people to express fandom? how can we give them more experiences, beyond the ones that we've already provided to give them a more diverse way of interacting with riot games, league of legends, ip, or maybe even new ips, and says long blog posts, it talks about all these things in detail but that's kind of really what you can expect for us to keep chasing, you know, our players and then needs that will see us invest in our existing games, but also many new ones across many new genres we will really push esports further beyond our games, because we believe that esports is just an integral part of the entertainment environment in the future i had so we'll try to innovate and push forward there but also explore different mediums i mean, we've just done it with arcane, that released on netflix, just several months ago, but expect us to do more things that are not just games again, the pursuit of providing super rich ecosystem that people can be proud of as a fan tony morelan 48 27 yeah, so arcane is the this new animated series on netflix i actually watched a little bit of it, it is hauntingly beautiful tell it tell us a little bit about that eric krause 48 36 you might think about like why is riot making a tv show? right? again, it goes back to you know not everybody has time to play games all the time yet, they're still a fan of thing that that you made many, maybe many years ago so how can we give them like a connection to their fandom back without telling them hey, play this new game or play this old game and that's where it is really about entering different mediums that have different accessibility bars miss case tv so for us though, and through that lens was very important to make arcane as kind of that first statement nardone to expand the universe really beyond just games for people to think about the league of legends, ip and ecosystem as kind of this multimedia experience that you know, crosses all these different mediums and this was the first kind of statement that we made and it goes really into the story of some of our most beloved champions and their background but there was also made in a way that if you are a fan of league of legends, and you couldn't really convince others why you're so crazy about legal legends that you could give them that show i'd be like, hey, let's watch it together it in an attempt for you to explain, hey, this is why league of legends is awesome, because you can watch it without any context of the league of legends world sure and that was also important to us to give our fans kind of an invitation that they could send to their friends and loved ones to be like, hey, you want to share my passion? he has a different way, how we can do that? tony morelan 50 21 yeah, so it really is obvious that riot games has become an entertainment company, not just a gaming company how big how many employees work for riot games eric krause 50 34 at this point, we're well past 3000 and still growing quickly because as you can imagine, right, it's creating all these dreams making them try to reality for our fans, you know, is requires a lot of people and, you know, we're not shy of investing into those impossible dreams come true across all of our offices, right? it's not just you know, here in la i know, we have offices all around the world and as part of our next evolution of riot, you know, we've seen more offices and games being made all around the world, and experiences being made all around the world it's really, you know, also capitalize on, you know, there's not just one type of gamer, depending on where you go around the world what means to be a gamer also does look and feel different so that is also something that we have to really think about, as we expand into, you know, the future of what riot can look like tony morelan 51 33 yeah, so people listening to the podcast if they're interested in working for riot games so what's the best way for them to learn about how to apply for a position at riot games? eric krause 51 43 yeah, i mean, you can find us on almost all the networks you can think of but generally, the two ones i do recommend is either go to riot games comm where you can learn more about riot, but also, you know, what we're up to, and you know, what positions we have open but also like on things like linkedin, where we all have our own presence and you can also check out you know, blog posts there and as well as our openings, and also even connect with writers and ask them about their experiences tony morelan 52 11 that's great and i'll be sharing all of the urls in the in the show notes for not just rankings, but also for wild rift and, and your social handles so with diversity and inclusion being such an important aspect of our of our society, right now, tell me what is riot games doing related to d and i eric krause 52 32 it's a very important question, tony and for riot, you know, the two lenses that that i described to people on how we are thinking about diversity inclusion the first part is obviously the one that people probably think first and foremost off, which is riot as an employer and, you know, me talk about my personal experience here, the way that, you know, riot has invested over the last couple of years into that space in terms of time, but you know, money and just general resourcing has been phenomenal i've never seen, you know, such a heavy investment being made to do the right thing because yes, it did require a wake-up moment for us as a company but that moment was really turned an opportunity, i had to make better to be a writer to work at riot games so now you know, it, there's not just an d and i team that exists, but also, you know, what they do and how they impact the company is part of all the processes all around i to ensure that no matter what might be, that riot is a welcoming, and fair environment for everybody and that is an extremely big investment, and actually really proud to have seen the reaction to arguably, you know, the not-so-great moments that we had in the past so i'm sure that that makes me actually pretty proud, based on my experience but the other part also that sometimes people forget when it comes to diversity and inclusion is right as a game creator, right? because with that, you kind of have a responsibility as creatives to create experiences for millions of millions of players around the world that kind of allowed them to relate or in better set like that, feel seen it through the things that you make sure, because you can quickly fall into a pit trap or, you know, just create the same things over and over again, that fit a worldview of specific group, but makes other people feel left out yeah and that's part of the responsibility that you have as a game creator so as part of the development process, to promote diversity and inclusion through that content that you make and a very recent example actually is valorant our shooter that we have because they're one of the most recent champions that just launched or agents it's called, is actually a female karen actor inspired by filipino culture because we want to make sure that you know, if you are, you know, not just one, but in the philippines, which arguably if you think about gaming, especially, you know, often a completely overseen and overlooked that if you are a filipino gamer, you're like, yeah, i feel seen sure i because there's now this agent in this game that, you know, celebrates my culture and i'm proud of them and that's an example of i had for how we as game makers also have some form of responsibility to promote diversity in our culture tony morelan 55 36 yeah, i love what you said not only about how riot is taking diversity and inclusion within the company, but then you're impacting your influence outside of the company into our society that is absolutely wonderful so tell me, what do you do? outside of all of your work at riot? what do you do for fun? eric krause 55 58 what to do for fun? getting to learn anything about new cars or old cars, so i spent unhealthy amount reading and watching videos about it tony morelan 56 08 so what was your what was your first car and what is your dream car? eric krause 56 15 my first car was, was an older audi a for a vons station wagon because in europe, we love our station wagons, which i know for americans like and don't like, of course, dream car is really hard, because there's so many amazing cars and sometimes actually fantasize about it like, i'll just pick one which one would it be? and, and probably right now, my dream car is a porsche 356 a, which is a very old school, porsche, but in terms of just the body lines, you know, just amazing unfortunate i never had a chance yet to drive one i'd probably drive so amazing tony morelan 56 56 that is so funny you said that because i was waiting for my turn and mine is also the porsche 356 ever since i saw the movie top gun, beautiful porsche just yes into the sunset i've always wanted to get my hands on one funny story my wife, she had asked me when we were dating, where do you see yourself, you know, later on in life when you retire? and i said, i see myself with a porsche 356 so hopefully, when that day comes when i do decide to retire, shall let me get that dream car, eric krause 57 28 if not some amazing fortune i get one i'll call you up and then we can ride together in the sunset tony morelan 57 34 thinking for a swim but hey, let's stay away from that la traffic eric krause 57 37 that's sure yes, that's we'll definitely have to go outside of las tony morelan 57 41 hey, eric, i really appreciate you taking the time to be on the podcast it was wonderful to hear not only about yourself, but the great things that are happening over at riot games eric krause 57 49 thank you it was a pleasure yeah, definitely thank you for having me closing 57 52 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 58 08 the samsung developers podcast is hosted by tony morelan and produced by jeanne hsu

https://developer.samsung.com/developers-podcast/s03e01-eric-krause.html

Learn Developers Podcast

Episode 11, Diego Lizarazo

sports? i mean, what is that perfect game for you role playing games, diego lizarazo 19 56 you're playing games, like i mean, i enjoy all kinds i really suck at action games so all shooters i think my brain has kind of like a disconnect on 3d on a screen so i tried to shoot in one direction and i'm kind of like getting killed and the other day i cannot really coordinate that but role playing games it has always been countered me thing because they usually tend to have a story something engaging and at the same time you have the interactive part so to me it feels almost really interactive book and then having like to develop that story and trying to figure out like all like how all the characters interacting and making this story a little bit my own story that's like one of the things that i really like, obviously, like i said, i don't have the time sometimes to kind of go into these deep stories so right now i'm not doing a lot but if you asked me like what are like my, my favorite games, pretty much all of them are role playing games so like, final fantasy six, fable and wonderful latest ones that i didn't play the original one, it was my kid that ended up picking it for switch, sell the breath of the wild and that thing totally blew me away i still haven't finished it because it takes so many hours and they cannot just do like the main, the main path through the game, i have to do all the side quests and that takes forever so if they go into one of these online sites and tells you like, hey, this game is going to be 100 hours if it's sort of a role-playing game for me, that's going to be $300 so i can't know just sue did the main quest so yeah, like i think we're playing games is really the thing that is close to my heart and competitive well, they're complicated to create and there are some that are much more engaging than others but tony morelan 21 49 yeah, that's funny you know, i can tell you, this is what we're the opposite i am not into role playing games i need games simple so i am into racing games so, you know, speed is pretty much it or like, you know, just the simple arcade style games, the, you know, the old retro games, two dots, you know, just using really simple puzzles yeah, that's about as deep as i get when it comes to comes to gaming diego lizarazo 22 18 well, but believe it or not, like when i actually create games, those arcade games are the ones that i really go for because usually, it's about a mechanic, they can have like one or two mechanics that are incredibly polished, and they're repetitive, bad, bad day, and it really gives you the, the satisfaction as a player to accomplish something so like a platformer, or like the typical thing of like, space invaders that you just really get into sown and your brain is not really like thinking much is just kind of reacting those are also great, you know, and especially the old style of the old school games oh man, i don't know how many hours i spent going out like playing dos, an actual arcade but even at home in an arcade? tony morelan 23 05 yes, much of my childhood was spent out it was called merlin's castle, down in saratoga in california that was the place to be every night, we would go down there and drop our quarters in, play asteroids don't kill the plays close up so i'm going to actually date myself here for a moment when i was growing up, one of my friends, his father worked on the very first game, which was pong, very well known that this is the very first you know, computer generated game he actually brought it home before it was publicly released he's like, he got to come over here i've got this game that you hook up to our television so i actually got to play pong before it was out into the public and let launched obviously this amazing genre of games diego lizarazo 23 58 i would have i would have left in the house of your friend, if, like i would have tried to break him somehow and well, everyone is just leaping, tried to just play into their living room or whatever they have the game so yeah, that that that is a little bit of an addiction that i had growing up but it was kind of like the cool thing it was not the thing that i it was like, let's escape and let's do this really cool thing for a few hours and then let's go back to the ad well, in my case, the ad is reality that it was around me and then well, let's go and check the next game, you know so it was it was really cool and somehow, i think those simpler games in many ways were kind of like, more fun that some of the orders i think people didn't take it didn't take them as seriously, they were just to steal games the it was not kind of like the entire thing like my life revolves only around this game it was like, well, they're incredibly cool, but i know how to count like braid the two so i think the perhaps like the entire thing that you begin to listen that it like simpler times, so perhaps they were in immediate games, at least they were simpler and i think their interaction that he had with the players were simpler to him so i recall, you know, tony morelan 25 16 yeah, definitely so if we could then jump into the future, how do you think or how would you like to see games evolve? diego lizarazo 25 25 now you do see the trend already of the esports so they are going to turn more into kind of like a well i sport so like, global entertainment so just watching the game is going to be part of entertainment, which i don't particularly like because i think one of the coolest things about games is playing the games you know, but well, i've also enjoyed watching some people like it really cool ones really good ones, but they do doing dad but i think you're going to count like how it's kind of weird to say it on one end stream like more complex, more technically advanced games and then on the other hand, you're going to have the hyper casual when you when we start getting like even more and more mainstream technologies like ar and vr, then you're going to start having like more of those games that are going to get to the general public, not just like gamers, but kind of like everyone else, and then more gamified experiences so then you're going to have things that i don't know, you could go to the store, and they directly own the stands, you're going to be able to have like minigames you know, because there's going to be so simple that you could pretty much put a game on anything clicking the wrapping of candy or something like that it's going to be possible and then some of these interactions, at some point is going to be similar to what happened to the two technology in general they're just going to be in so many places that's some point you're not even going to realize that you're just playing a they're going to be just so immersive and so, so commonplace that you're just going to be playing without realizing that you're playing or you're going to be working with some gamified aspects and i think all that obviously has some good aspects to that and some aspects that we should reconsider our society but well, that's not really up to me to decide what's right and what's wrong i think the those who are going to be kind of the main things that we're going to see more and more tony morelan 27 34 yeah, no, i definitely agree you know, my son's a gamer and when he's not gaming, i'm like, okay, cool he's off, you know, the game and he's just chilling out and then i'm like, so what are you doing? he's like, oh, i'm just watching videos of other people gaming that's when i realized that like, oh my gosh, so there's this whole you know, social community around gaming that is more than just individuals playing the game i mean, there's just so much to the community so, yeah, that was that was interesting so let's talk a little bit about building apps you know, i want to know what your approaches when you want to develop an app do you first like outline what the concept is? or do you just start like playing with a code and kind of build out from there? what's your approach to that? diego lizarazo 28 19 usually, for me, it has been, at least have a problem or have a, like, at least the concept, you know, that i build the app around so it could be i'm trying to solve something, or somehow, i was able to, for example, with games that happens a lot that i already have a game mechanic that i really like and he said, like, where is it going to, to fit? so usually, i don't just come and start playing, i usually start playing with the with the code when i already have like a skeleton like a base that is the year and then it's like, okay, let's figure out like all the other aspects, the ones that may not be as important how, how can i do that? obviously, to solve that initial core concept, or that initial problem solving it, you end up calling like trying different approaches but additionally, and that's something that i do in many other many other things, i like to at least have an outline, you know, like a, grab a piece of paper, and say like, i want to do abc, and c, and then try to figure out how to do that and then that mabel, or dan may stay in into those original ideas bad but usually, i like it i prefer it, when there's something that guides me like, in goal, even if i if he didn't stop changing, but at least have a general idea where i'm going tony morelan 29 42 so tell me about some tools or tips that you may have, that you can recommend for someone creating their first game app diego lizarazo 29 49 well for game, so i have a couple of things that that i can share so for games in general, i think one of the things that will people don't realize is that games can be sometimes hard to program so i have like two tools for a person that has no idea how to create games that i recommend and the first one is construct three, i think that we can put the link in the notes so the company is called sarah and you can create games like javascript games that are going to run on your browser and you don't really need to do a lot of programming so it gives you a good idea of how to start creating games without doing a lot of the understanding what of what goes behind so that's really good if you already have a little bit of experience programming or want to learn how to program a also would recommend something like phaser, but it's also a javascript game, but you do have to write the code so it gives you the idea if you're going to teach a kid perhaps then you can find things like a scratch so those are a little bit more visual programming languages and it helps you to understand, like a lot of the logic on how like, yeah, well eaves, wiles loops, things that you still need in programs and you know, in apps in general, and specifically for games if you're currently trying to create a new app i have, well, the game is a good way to do it but there are like several code several like places that you can learn how to do some programming i think javascript is really great not just because of the language itself bad is because you can find it almost anywhere whenever you visit a website usually it has a little bit of javascript so i know that a lot of people are going to complain and say like new it's better to start with python or is better to start with other programming languages but i think for someone that is starting to learn how to program is really easy to create a piece of code with notepad and then it means run it using a browser so you don't need a lot of tools and you can see results right away and it's so extended a they can find so many resources, look at no free code camp org or w three schools, that they give you a lot of tutorials on how to start creating and those are counting gen now, if you're a little bit more experienced, and perhaps you know how to code and you want to create, let's say, your first like big game, unity is a great way to go about it it could be a little bit hard at the beginning, because it has so many options it has so many buttons, the ui is really complicated so if you open it for the first time, and you don't know what you're doing, just go to youtube, or go to one of the unity pages, because you're going to be overwhelmed so that's why i'm saying like, i think it's a great tool it's just that if it's your first game, you may be a little bit like whoa, whoa so that would be a good thing and if you're going to start creating apps in general well, i would recommend to start creating something with android so it could be android studio or even with tyson or for samsung, it could be like a, you could go to tyson org or the developer something com page and you are going to also have the chance to start creating mobile applications or applications for smartwatches and well even look like if you just want to see something with a smartwatch it's a no that follow tony, because he's going to give you a lot of places where you can go and well, i think i'm going to share with tony like a lot of older things that data developers are counting tips and things that you can use so places like if you are like most developers a little bit design challenged there you could find like cool images like pixels or game art that is open game art or if you want to just kind of like find like colors, the right colors for you ui you could go to places like wireless coolers not colors but cool or schoolers casio and immediately gives you like a palette that you can use in your in your application so you break now there are fortunately, a lot of resources that you can find online and well, quickly we can put some of the links in tony morelan 34 18 yeah, definitely yeah so as you'd mentioned, we'll include everything in the show notes you're giving a lot of great information, a lot of great resources so we will link to all of that down in the show notes so thank you thank you a bunch for that so one thing that's been wonderful, you joining the team is see speak spanish so you've been able to reach out to the spanish speaking community, you've had some very successful live chats and webinars that you conduct all in spanish so and our reach is global so as you know, you know, when we're doing or live chats or videos and whatnot, they are reaching countries all around the world so i want to ask you, how do you think the developer communities differ? around the world, diego lizarazo 35 02 i think it's a little bit of a level of, of engagement, you know, like it in the us in particular, a lot of the technical content is already created an english, you know, so sometimes is really easy for a developer or anyone that wants to be a developer, just go online and search for whatever and you immediately are going to find a response no, like it's right there in other places, especially places that have where english meaning have become like a yeah, kind of like as extended, then then it could be a little bit more of like people that really want to get the answers though sort of ones that somehow or have to learn english or try to kind of like understand more of the content that there is there but also, sometimes even they are the ones that try to translate, you know, they figure out like, hey, i have this i found this awesome video and no one has that in spanish or a translation in english and then be recruited that same content so i think it's a matter of kind of, like availability of tools and resources and sometimes you see a little bit more of those dynamics in in user groups, you know, so a lot of people kind of like, some are more motivated by that and notice, on the other hand, feel a little bit shyer you know, it's kind of like, well, i know that i'm not going to get older with all the responses that i needed so you have to kind of like work around that whenever you're coming, like reaching older countries in and people from other languages, but yeah, it's really interesting and also, you see that sometimes certain technologies are more popular in certain countries and sometimes you don't even understand why he knows like, why that that programming language is so popular in brazil i don't know that it is more popular in brazil, you know, or websites and things like that, because well, they'll be communities evolved differently tony morelan 37 01 sure, you know so my specialty is design so i help a lot of developers from the design aspect for their apps and i'm always amazed at how many russian watch face designers there are so when i've been communicating with them, you know, exchanging emails, or responding to different posts and whatnot, you know, i'm conducting all this in english, and we're having these great conversations well, i reached out to a couple of them the other day to invite them onto a phone call, and came to find out that they don't speak english they've just been using google translate in their comments exactly it just hit me and i'm like, so for all these months that we've been carrying these conversations, this is all just been russian translated using google translate though exactly pretty neat to see the board is really, you know, taken down diego lizarazo 37 50 yeah, and exactly so sometimes, certain content like videos i personally prefer videos, but then in order to places they may prefer the text, you know, or code, because it's something that you can easily copy paste somewhere else and get a translation so in a video, you may not get the accent, or you your understanding of the language is not as great so then you still can have like a barrier there but it well, people, if they really want to do it, if they really want to, like get to the content, they figure it out it's just like the how, like how the solve that problem could add like a couple of steps there in the process tony morelan 38 32 so we've talked a lot about conferences, you know, we used to do a lot of outreach in person so can you tell me about some of the experiences you've had at these conferences? have you had great experiences? have you had any challenging experiences? tell me about maybe unique people that you might have met at some of these conferences? diego lizarazo 38 52 yeah so i'll tell you one, like that it was challenging that was not what samsung but i was going to man booth in a conference for another company and we had a product and a like, this is called like the entire thing about demos, whenever you have some product, if you don't pay attention, or if you don't cross your fingers long enough at sometimes a demo is going to fail and they told me like, okay with the confidence, let's say start tuesday, 9am and i came there early, set up everything, everything's ready to go and they put my computer there to show the product everything's working, and it suddenly stopped working so i had like half an hour before people who started coming to the floor, and they had to show things and i literally had to call like go outside of the of the conference floor, and start pretty much figured out what was the error and at some point, it was called, like calling someone from the team and trying to figure out it was of course the most stupid thing like a package got updated last minute automatically and then bad one had a company with something else, and then you just can't change one file and magically everything is working but it is incredibly stressful to try to solve something like right before you have to show it and i have had some things like that, even in webinars and things are dead and you're like, what do i do now? and you have to figure out like the solution right in but that one was, like really stressful for me a really cool one on the other hand, for example, in adobe max, which you were last year, so like a good portion of our team was there last year, i had the chance to talk with a really cool developer so his name is derek miller and he went back and talk with us and what really blew me away for ones is that well, he's a teacher i have his video that's something we did we never really just share outside of our team, because we wanted to really give it the promotion that we wanted, but it was a little bit hard sometimes to promote some of these things but the thing is that he had a real-life problem sometimes we're talking about apps and, and games and, and really well if a game does work or doesn't work usually doesn't change anyone's life but in his case, he was dealing with diabetes and he wanted to be to have well pretty much a regular life in and figure out how to do it use technology because he knows how to use technology he lived he teaches a lot of like, maker things who are things with raspberry pi's and things like that and pretty much he designed and implemented a full system to be able to check his level, his blood level, you know, like glucose and everything in in to be coming in that regular stable state, regardless if he was on the road or if he was changing his diet, etc , etc so he kind of like told us all about that and he was using something technologies and i was blown away again because at the time it's one of those things since i don't have dad disease, i don't have that problem, that health problem i never thought about that, like how to solve it and then he was already explaining, like, hey, i did this and i can't create the keys for him for my sensor and this is how it connected my phone and i was asking, like, how long do you meditate? he was like, oh, well, like one or two days and was like, really, it would take me forever for me to do that, you know, and it is because obviously, he had a personal need and he had a personal problem, a real-life problem and he really wanted to put his knowledge into something that that could be used by him or by anyone else and he figured it out without even having can like a commercial solution for that and he was still able to figure it out so that was one of the times that i felt good at that i get kind of like a personal satisfaction to see someone using their knowledge to solve a real problem and it was amazing and he was, again randomly we were in a design conference that is adobe max last year it wasn't even about guest programming, he was more towards like the design part and he just came to our booth, you know, to be able to talk with us and show us the kind of things that he was doing so, so that wouldn't really blow me away tony morelan 43 16 that's, that's great you know, i think that for me, i've had a few of those experiences where i've met some really unique people from the design community since that's been my primary focus, whether it's meeting individuals that are just happen to be coming by our booth, or meeting some of the other people who are at the conference to present i've met some of what i call like my rock star designers in the community out there andrew kramer, who's done a lot of work with motion graphics he worked a lot on star wars i follow him he was the one who truthfully his tutorial videos are what inspired me to get into motion graphics many years ago and here i was at a conference right next to him and next thing you know, we're starting to open a conversation and we must have chatted for about 30 minutes, just the two of us chatting away and i just still couldn't believe it that i was, you know, next to him, mr doodle who's an amazing artist, he was at adobe max so just being able to see these people in person was just so rewarding i can't wait for us to get back out into conferences to get back into that environment diego lizarazo 44 28 yeah, absolutely and, and, and we think that's one of the cool things that are, you asked me before about this kind of rolls, sometimes we end up talking with some people that eat or know, that have such an amazing experience so personally, for me, like and well, you can share this one i have always kind of like beanie to, like you say to the role-playing games that are also games are not just like the video games, you know, like, also tabletop games and there is this one that that is numbered masquerade so it's called dungeons and dragons but couldn't like darker green here because it was the 90s and i was a real fan and i came here to georgia i had the bugs i played that and they didn't know that that game actually started here in atlanta and at some point, someone told me like, hey, you should come and talk with andrew sure and his name is andrew greenberg and right now he's the president of the georgia game developer association so he helps like videogame developers, but also tabletop game developers, and a lot of people in the gaming industry and entertainment industry and he started talking with him and then later, i found out that he was one of the original developers, not the creator, but one of the original developers of this game so it's one game that have been kind of like fanning out for i don't know how many years since i was a teenager and then i was able to, like meet someone that literally was in the offices creating the content that i was reading and all that and you don't know in these conferences or like when you go to use groups who you're going to be able to find me, it could be like someone that already has a lot of expense or it could be someone that 15 years from now could be the next you know, maybe the next genius, game creator or app creator, and you don't know, you don't know and that's why i really love to talk with people, because that's when you make these connections tony morelan 46 21 yeah, no, definitely which then leads me to hackathons in game jam so we've talked a lot about conferences and some of our outreach let's get specific and talk about hackathons what's your involvement around that? diego lizarazo 46 34 yeah, so well, a hackathon is pretty much usually they have this format of let's get doing a weekend or let's get for a few days and let's put together like an application or a system, or do some coding to create something cool sometimes the hackathon could have like a theme so let's create something around a specific technology or like any api, or let's create something to solve this problem, or it could be something more specific, which it would be like a game jam, where it would be a game jeremy's car, like, let's get together and instead of having a music jam, where we're creating cool things that sound cool, it would be let's create some games that look cool and play cool so sometimes they end up creating like a small game sort of times they are a little bit more polished, but usually that everything is created in that span of 4872 hours sometimes there's orders a little bit longer, like half a week or something but there's always this entire element of pressure of let's be creative, like pretty much on the moment and let's meet people that we haven't met before so sometimes some teams can like form right there on the spot, and have been able to kind of like it participate in many of those some are a little bit more professional, more enterprise sort of thing, or is mean in universities or game associations for example, usually around the end of january they have the global game jam so i had the chance to go there and sometimes a sponsor and sometimes, like talk with people i always go like in depth like not participating myself creating that i always click start creating like a concept that i'm going to end up doing and i end up doing something else so it doesn't work out but he's really great to go and see the results of the apps that people created hackathons or the games and the people are game jams and it's something that brings a lot of energy from young people creating cool things together tony morelan 48 28 yeah and i think that probably what i enjoyed the most around that is, everybody there is they're all there for like the same reason you know what i mean? it's to be creative i one time participate in a 48-hour film project so this is where different teams break up and you have 48 hours to put together a film and you know, so you're writing your script, you're filming it here, you're editing it, you're doing everything all within 48 hours, and just being around you know, like minded people so i can totally understand that when you're at a game jam or at a hackathon, just being around the energy of all those people i mean, that's got to be pretty, pretty exciting diego lizarazo 49 11 yeah, yeah and sometimes people come up with, like some things that you were like, how did you even come up with that idea? you know, and it's really cool so and last year with something we had one in washington dc, that one was created in conjunction with mit, and it was around health and coming up with liquid use to help people in the health industry and the health sector to well help people that will have actual diseases or health problems, etc , etc and we were able to talk with some teams that were coming up with so many incredible solutions so one of them and one team was kind of like chicken india, the smartwatches, the samsung smartwatches and have to do with elderly care so like, trying to check things around the gap, how it could take someone falling, you know, someone that is older and could be falling and maybe the gyroscope he did watch could help with that detection, or how they could collect information like i don't know, like the heartbeats or their sleep patterns, things like that so they were calling and saying like, we already have this awesome house record, how do we do? how do we use that to help others? and i thought that it was incredibly interesting, and usually don't do anything that has to do with health so that particular hackathon was kind of like, oh, that's, that's different than that yeah, that's the entire point, to bring some creativity and bring, like, two different things that sometimes don't go along and put them to work together tony morelan 50 51 yeah, no, that's, that's so true i once went to a meetup group, where people were presenting their apps and somebody had created app for the elderly, the chance of them falling down and this person who had worked their way through this app, not realizing that when people fall, they don't fall like a tree falling in the forest, they crumble so this app developer hadn't really thought of that, that the motion is not, you know, a tree falling it's just someone kind of collapsing down and that was because of the, you know, the people that attended that meetup group that then helped this app developer, you know, understand kind of, you know, a basic thing that it was just an oversight diego lizarazo 51 35 yeah, but i don't think you'd seen a bit of an oversight is that sometimes that happens a lot with developers, and you can see it with a lot of technologies that didn't have to be adopted and it has to be that way sometimes, developers end up solving problems that don't really exist, what are the problems, something different? tony morelan 51 53 so you've done a great job on reaching out to the community and sharing your knowledge and no one of yours a very popular series is the tyson tidbits yet you've been publishing on youtube can you tell us are there any other upcoming topics that that you have planned? diego lizarazo 52 10 yeah, actually, i it's kind of fun like how these things work and coming back a little bit more to towards the gaming side of things so i'm going to be putting a little bit more like short videos on showing how to create games with samsung technologies and in general, i'll try to put like different technology so right now we have so many technologies that you can use so many platforms like apple face or construct two dimensions before and unity and so it would be cool to solve the specific things that have to do with games and did help to publish them because i think, i think sometimes when you are creating a game or an app, if you are not forced to share with others, then it can stall otherwise, if you know that you want to publish it in the app, regardless if it's successful or not you still have kind of liquidity that a goal to achieve that is shared, like that game so, so that's where quite likely i'm going to start creating and you actually have to finish a video in the next couple of days around that so we'll see how that goes so i already have like a few that i need to record well, i have to start one by one so we'll see how long it takes me to create him and publish them tony morelan 53 24 so if developers want to get in contact with you, what is the best way? diego lizarazo 53 29 well, they can go directly if it's especially something technical, it's great to send me an email and you can use my samsung email so you're going to see it on the notes that's diegorivera@partner samsung com so like we'd like it's better that you check the notes so you can send me an email there and specifically we are talking about an error it's great that you send me like a screenshot sometimes people describe their and like, well, it's given me a lot of information, screenshots sometimes works best if not the still can find me online so the best thing that usually i go by helo777 so that would be like the translation of ice in spanish so that's h e l o 777 and you can find me like that on twitter, in our instagram, etc , etc so twitter, i receive a lot of messages so i can respond directly there leave dog, like i say to my email, that's a good way to get in contact with me tony morelan 54 28 when you're not coding when you're not working, what do you do for fun? diego lizarazo 54 32 spending time with my family, have a big family so literally get some popcorn, get in front of the tv and watch an animated movie i have still like little kids so we were still not at the age where we can all just watch like people on the screen they still have to be cartoons at some point we will graduate to real people and live action bad in the meantime is dad or going on some road trips so i'm kind of fortunate did an around the area, we have many other smaller cities and towns that we can visit and every other month we are currently going somewhere so that with my family that's its own adventure just like taking them one hour down the road that that's still interesting tony morelan 55 15 excellent well, hey diego, absolutely appreciate you taking the time to join me on the podcast this has been a ton of fun i am glad to even get to know you better than i knew you before so thank you again oh, thank you, tony outro 55 25 looking to start creating for samsung, download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding it all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan

https://developer.samsung.com/developers-podcast/s01e11-diego-lizarazo.html

Learn Developers Podcast

Episode 2, Derrick Lee

season 3, episode 2 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 derrick lee, polycube galaxy themes, galaxy store not only do we chat about their approach to designing and marketing compelling themes, but also how polycube is looking to expand their use of contract designers from their home country of korea to include designers from all around the world so that they can create for a global audience listen download this episode topics covered history of polycube best of galaxy store awards publishing on galaxy store galaxy badge use of stock imagery design workflow diversity and inclusion helpful links polycube facebook - facebook com/friends polycube polycube website - polycube co kr/v2/ polycube instagram - instagram com/polycube_friends/ polycube youtube - youtube com/c/polycubeinc 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 tony morelan linkedin - linkedin com/in/tony-morelan 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 two on today's show, i'm joined by derrick lee, content manager at polycube winners of the 2021 best of galaxy store award for best steam collection not only do we chat about their approach to designing and marketing, amazing themes, but also how polycube is looking to expand their use of contract designers from their home country of korea to include designers from all around the world so that they can create for a global audience enjoy hey, derrick, it is great to have you on the podcast derrick lee 00 51 hello, tony it's, it's great to see you thank you for having me tony morelan 00 55 so i like to start the podcast with who is derrick lee? derrick lee 00 59 um, well, i'm a person who appreciates and enjoys all forms of art, like paintings, digital graphics, music, everything i actually majored in industrial designing myself and i also love singing you know, as i said, all forms of art, tony morelan 01 13 i had no idea that you had a big appreciation for, for art and for music i actually do myself derrick lee 01 19 well, i see a guitar i see several guitars behind it right now yeah tony morelan 01 23 and the folks listening to this it's only for their audio but yes, we've got some cameras, derrick can see i've got a few guitars in the background i like to pretend that i know how to sing but still have yet to get the courage to actually sing in front of somebody so yeah, great to hear that you have that appreciation in that ability yeah, derrick lee 01 41 i'm not that good at singing either i just love it tony morelan 01 42 that's awesome that's awesome so derrick, you are a content manager at polycube tell me a little bit about that role derrick lee 01 50 well, that role is essentially giving out guidelines for designers coming up with something good visually, i think it could be better if somebody is giving out guidelines on which designs can you know resonate with people a little bit more, not just with themselves that's my role at polycube tony morelan 02 05 my background is really in graphic design okay, that's where i spent much of my career and i've worked with many art directors so it sounds like even though you call yourself a content manager to me, it sounds like that role really fits that art director derrick lee 02 20 role yeah, well, anyway, you can call it yeah tony morelan 02 24 so how long have you been at polycube? derrick lee 02 26 um, i have been at polycube for about three years now tony morelan 02 29 just about the same amount of time that i've been at samsung oh, okay so you had said that you that you majored in industrial design interesting i actually minored in industrial design okay okay, so we've got a few similarities, not just in music and singing but also with industrial design yes, we do i understand that coming out of college, you didn't just dive right into tech that you actually were selling donuts from a truck? derrick lee 02 57 yeah, i have been selling donuts for about, i think about 18 months and i really enjoyed it you know, don't get me wrong i didn't quit doing that, because i didn't like it but i really wanted to be involved in a design business in any way, shape, or form sure that's something i wanted to do more and i figured out that, you know, polycube was a company that was designing themes, and i thought it could be exciting so i jumped in that's great tony morelan 03 21 so now polycube is from seoul correct that's where your headquarters is? yes and that's where i'm assuming that's where you live? derrick lee 03 28 yeah, i live like 20 minutes away and it's a beautiful city, i hope in the future when there are no barriers such as covid-19 i hope our supporters all around the world can visit for a nice trip tony morelan 03 39 so you're in seoul, korea, but your english sounds so good i can tell you must have spent some time in the in the states here well, derrick lee 03 47 when i was five years old, my dad got a job in the states in new orleans, actually and we lived there for about nine years wow and then even after i came back to korea, i you know, i stayed in korea for a year and then in new orleans for a year and i've been going back and forth but in korea, military surfaces mandatory i stayed here for two years and then i started selling donuts as i mentioned earlier, so yeah, it's been a while and now covid yeah, so i've been staying in korea for a while but yeah, i do miss new orleans tony morelan 04 18 so i'm guessing that your love for music probably came a bit out of your time in new orleans derrick lee 04 24 oh, yeah, definitely i love jazz i love you know, stevie wonder cars, though those were the those were the artists that really, you know, you know, set a fire inside me yeah tony morelan 04 35 oh, that's great that's great now i was fortunate that actually a few months before covid hit i actually went out to seoul korea because that is where samsung's headquarter this so i got to spend a week there absolutely beautiful city so much to explore, but boy do i want to get back there was a lot that i did not see derrick lee 04 54 i would like to be your guide if you happen to come again one day yeah, tony morelan 04 58 i'll take you up on it for sure so, so about polycube, the company itself, they've been around for quite a while and i know that they do much more than just theme so tell me a bit about the history of poly q? and what are some of those areas that they also work on? derrick lee 05 12 you know, we have quite a history and actually 2021 was our 20th anniversary wow, we came a long way developing apps, making games and designing themes, watch faces and whatnot yeah, tony morelan 05 24 in the name polycube, i'm wondering, is there an interesting story behind that name? derrick lee 05 29 um, well, our founder wanted a name that emphasizes the importance of diversity in a group and if you look at the etymology of poly, you know, it means many sided sure so our founder thought that it was a perfect name cube was added, because, you know, if you look at the cube the shape and as it also has many sides, you know, you have to have many sides to form a cube, right so that's how poly and cube got together and formed the named polycube, you had mentioned that you do more than just themes well, we also make a lot of games, you know, one that we're really working on these days is a game called poker master it has been around, but we're trying to, you know, find rooms for improvement sure tony morelan 06 06 to update the game so that more people can enjoy it now, is that game on the galaxy store at the moment? yes, it derrick lee 06 13 is excellent and we're, we're trying to make it better and better, and has been around for a while, but we're trying to improve it all the time sure and we also design themes and watch faces, we're really trying to improve our watch face designs these days so i hope you know it will get bigger and bigger tony morelan 06 29 yeah, i was checking out some of your designs earlier i love the very classic feel of many of your designs derrick lee 06 35 that means a lot coming from you because you're a designer yourself tony morelan 06 39 thank you thank you that's actually how i got my start with samsung for those that don't know how, okay, when i was doing my graphic design gig started designing watch faces selling them on the galaxy store okay, got noticed by a few people at samsung made a few phone calls and before you know it, i was working for samsung teaching how to design watch faces, derrick lee 06 59 then that really means a lot coming from you tony morelan 07 03 polycube, i think it's you said it's about 30 employees derrick lee 07 07 well, 31 exactly and we have 11 designers among those 31 employees okay, tony morelan 07 13 now, are these split between full time employees? and are some contractors, you have derrick lee 07 18 full time employees and contractors altogether? 31 okay, and all of our 11 designers are all full, they work full time tony morelan 07 26 wow okay, that's great so, you know, i know a lot of designers and developers listen to this podcast always looking for opportunities to, you know, look for new work okay, by any chance is polycube looking for new designers, derrick lee 07 39 we are actually planning on recruiting a lot of designers from abroad sure, starting this year, because we want diversity in our group i guess the best way is you can look us up because we have a website but also, you can send an email, the email addresses master at polycube co kr okay and if you send an email anytime we will take a close look at it and yeah, we'll pay attention tony morelan 08 04 that's awesome so what is the web address for polycube? derrick lee 08 07 oh, it's very simple it's www dot polycube co kr got it and that's p o l y c u b e very simple tony morelan 08 16 how long would you say polycube has been designing themes? derrick lee 08 19 paula cube has been designing themes for about six years now because we started on 2016 tony morelan 08 26 so six years, i would guess that you were probably one of the first theme designers to get onto the platform so how did the people that polycube first learn about the opportunity to design themes for samsung and sell them on the galaxy store? derrick lee 08 39 you know, we were just normal galaxy phone users at first and you know, we naturally just got to know about themes on our phones, because we were using our phones, obviously and we kind of had some time to sit down together and talk about it because we thought we could really jump into and make a business out of it tony morelan 08 57 yeah, you know, it's funny, every designer that i have interviewed on the podcast, has said the same story that they were first just a user and you know, saw the opportunity to customize their own phone and they thought well heck, i could do this myself so what about some of the other areas of theme designing? are you guys also selling you know, wallpapers, aods, icon packs, things like that? derrick lee 09 17 yes everything you just you just said right now we do sell wallpapers, icon packs yeah, aods tony morelan 09 25 so last year, we had the 2021 best of galaxy store award show and polycube was the recipient of the best theme collection award yes, we were tell me what that meant to you and your company for winning that award? well, first derrick lee 09 42 of all, of course, we are very grateful for the awards and this award is to us is something that really started such a positive momentum for us because ever since we got the news that we were winning the award, we are feeling you know, we actually feel a positive momentum that started from that board so it's something that started such a positive momentum for us tony morelan 10 03 that's great yeah and you're a truthfully your collection is amazing i do sit on the board of the folks here at samsung, they get to vote on the winners yeah, i was very happy to see you win the well-deserved award for best thing collection oh, in what ways? have you promoted winning the award? derrick lee 10 21 through, you know, the mainstream social media such as youtube, facebook, instagram? yeah, we're everywhere tony morelan 10 27 are you using galaxy store badges to help promote what you do at polycube? derrick lee 10 32 we are always looking for chances to utilize our galaxy badge everywhere we can use it because it's a good system, you know, the galaxy badge, all you have to do is just click on it and then you can take a look at our you know, collection of themes tony morelan 10 43 sure and when it comes to discoverability, what are some of the platform some of the techniques that you guys do, just to help people find polycube out there in the in the world? derrick lee 10 52 we have, we do have links that lead to our facebook and instagram page and all of the descriptions and the themes that we publish tony morelan 10 59 so you had mentioned youtube, and i know that that is one of the best tools that designers are using to help promote their work so i'm assuming then you guys are creating videos derrick lee 11 09 yeah, we are creating videos i don't have the exact number with me right now but i think we have more than 4000 videos tony morelan 11 16 that's great and then you're leveraging those videos also on platforms like instagram yes, we are now you had mentioned facebook, tell me what is the best way for people to find your facebook page? derrick lee 11 26 well, it's www facebook com/friends poly cube tony morelan 11 32 yeah, that's easy i love that polycube friends thank you you know, when i started my company for doing themes and watch faces, i added the word buzz to the end so you could find my instagram axeirbuzz derrick lee 11 44 buzz? buzz? okay, that's a positive vibe to it tony morelan 11 47 so polycube friends, is that pretty much the handle that you'll use across other platforms? so like on instagram? yes, it is yes now you had mentioned 4000 videos, but i know you guys have a lot more when it comes to themes what would you say? your total theme count is right now, derrick lee 12 01 in total, we published 6387 themes tony morelan 12 05 that's crazy what would you say are the total downloads that you have on those 6000 themes? derrick lee 12 10 about 25 million? tony morelan 12 13 that's crazy i was excited when i got to my first million downloads i'm a long ways away from 25 it's very humbling when we think about it with that many themes, i'm sure that you're starting to look at different topics, different areas so you can see really what is resonating with the with the customer base? what are some of those categories that you would say your themes fall under? derrick lee 12 34 um, we're always looking for diversity in our designs, but there are some categories that really resonate with people more than others for example, design skulls, and butterflies and flowers i think those are, you know, some themes that really resonate with people a lot, you know, regardless of country, regardless of gender tony morelan 12 54 yeah, i noticed i saw one of your themes was school, but it was a steampunk school and i love steampunk i love that look derrick lee 13 02 oh, yeah, i think i know which one you're talking about tony morelan 13 05 yeah, that's, that's a great theme so outside of some of those areas, seasonal wise i mean, do you see like, importance to design themes related to holidays or two seasons? derrick lee 13 15 oh, definitely is especially christmas and halloween i think those are two holidays that really, i'm sure really boost the market, if you will i wish there were more designs on like mardi gras since i'm from new orleans yeah, but halloween and christmas are you know, the two holidays? tony morelan 13 32 yeah, i've heard that from many other folks as well great times to be stylizing your phone for sure derrick lee 13 38 yes, yes, it is tony morelan 13 41 so you know polycube, had a lot of success and you know, it's obviously this wasn't overnight, because you've been doing it for a while but tell me was there like one sort of pivotal moment in your history that you were like, oh, my gosh, this really is starting to take off? or was it truthfully, just a gradual growth that you've done over the years? derrick lee 13 57 it was gradual, to a certain extent but when we first started to actually design themes and tried to make a business out of it, the first six months, i don't think we weren't getting a lot of downloads to downloads that we were expecting and, you know, the support that we were expecting, i mean, of course, we had some, you know, very good supporters that, you know, kept us kept us going when we weren't getting the results that we wanted but after six months, we were seeing the growth when it comes to numbers when it comes to you know, this porters and things like that tony morelan 14 29 yeah, i know and speaking with a lot of other designers, i mean, it takes an investment and time before you start to see really any in any bit of return some of that comes to just getting your name out there and it's not just publishing your themes, your watch faces on galaxy store, but it's that additional marketing that you do so, you know, once you put some time into your instagram or into your facebook page yes that's when you start to see the return yes, definitely so you've got a lot of designers on hand yes where are they? designers getting their ideas derrick lee 15 02 first, our designers, you know, just come up with literally a sketch on their notebooks with their pens but also, where we get ideas is from the reviews, ah, our supporters all around the world, they are not just helping by supporting, they are actually really helping out through reviews, because when we read them, they really offer some great ideas and insights tony morelan 15 20 got it so when people are posting comments after they've purchased one of your themes, you guys are really looking at those comments to think like, okay, what could we either, you know, expand on this topic? or maybe the comment is, and this one isn't really for me, and then maybe your team, you'll start to look in other areas? derrick lee 15 35 yeah, well, you know, sometimes the reviews are very specific it's not just i like it, why i don't like it there are a lot of reviews that say, i don't like it, but i would like it if it was this, if it was that those are the reviews that really give us really good ideas that's great tony morelan 15 50 to hear so a lot of companies leverage stock photography, when it comes to creating their designs, yes which i know can kind of be a hot topic, because truthfully, you know, there's licensing that that gets involved whenever you're using stock imagery and also the reality that that anybody can go and, you know, purchase a certain stock image and build a theme out of it but what are you guys doing to help set yourself apart when you are leveraging stock imagery, derrick lee 16 18 of course, there are a lot of good sources out there that can be utilized and be modified, integrate themes but as you just said, there are some, some issues when it comes to just, you know, using those stock imagery and turning them into themes, right so we have a whole team that really looks into the licensing parts to prevent any legal issues, if you will and we have designers that really keep that in mind that you just don't take the stock imagery, and just copy that and just put it in your phone and that doesn't really make a theme, you know, we go through plenty modifying and we add ideas to it and, you know, all of a sudden, it's not just that stock imagery, it's something totally different tony morelan 16 57 that's great i've actually spoken with many other theme designers on the podcast, and they've all said the same thing that, you know, they leverage the use of stock imagery, but they take those images and build them into an image that is their own that is something that is unique yes, yes so you had mentioned pencil sketching, so tell me what the workflow is i mean, do you are your designers actually traditionally grabbing pencil and paper and, and starting to sketch some of their concepts? derrick lee 17 23 yeah, it's 2022 but that's, that's still where it starts, you know, first, you know, they literally come up with a sketch with a pen or a pencil and then we actually have a meeting, we look at all those sketches, and we discuss which ones we will actually go for yeah, once the designs materialize, we sit down again, and discuss whether there's room for improvement, or revising and then after that, we publish them in hope that our supporters enjoy them tony morelan 17 48 that is excellent to hear you know, in my experience, as a designer, i would often tell other designers that yes, that is the first step is to grab pencil and paper because you don't get caught up in all the tools that you know, software allows you to do or limits you to do you don't get caught up in colors or specific, you know, shapes that may be in the way you truthfully see the skeleton of the design and if that skeleton works, then you know, it's something that's worth pursuing yeah, yeah great to hear that the that you guys take that approach to design? so you know, the process of starting with sketch and then going through meetings and developing the designs all the way to publishing? how long do you think that typically takes your team to do? derrick lee 18 31 um, from just a sketch on a notebook? to an actual theme? i would say one theme takes four days, maybe five? tony morelan 18 39 i would say that's a pretty quick, aggressive timeline sometimes it would take me weeks to do derrick lee 18 45 yeah, because we don't want you know, we don't want to keep our supporters waiting so sure you work hard tony morelan 18 50 what applications are you using when you are doing your design work? adobe derrick lee 18 55 photoshop, adobe illustrator and after effect, oh, tony morelan 18 58 so after effects for doing videos, okay yeah are you doing any animated like wallpapers where you're leveraging motion graphics? derrick lee 19 06 yeah, we actually have a whole there's a team that really focuses on only the video parts, okay, the animation parts that really help out if another team comes up with the sketch shirt and you know, the basis then, you know, there is another whole team designing team that really helps out with sophisticated designing when it comes to the videos tony morelan 19 25 okay, okay that's great so i know a lot of designers utilize the strategy of free when it comes to marketing, their apps so tell me about your experience well, what's your strategy when it comes to free themes free? watch faces? derrick lee 19 42 yeah, we are offering free themes every week, and we promote them every friday and i think our supporters deserve free themes you know, sure, every once in a while and you know, if you check out our facebook and instagram page, you'll see that there are actually quite a lot of opportunities to get some awesome themes for free yeah, tony morelan 19 59 i think that i think that that's great i know what i teach typically is that it's nice to offer up a free app a free design but you don't want to inundate the market with too many of your free yeah, themes free watch faces because then everyone's going to expect that there's always going to be some good free stuff out there so use it as a way to encourage the community to get to try out your stuff, your themes, and then that way, they're more inclined and more trustworthy to actually put money behind some of their purchases and buy some of your items, derrick lee 20 30 especially for people who never, you know, use the theme before, but you want them to really get to know what a theme is, you know, why theme is exciting to have a theme on your phone, tony morelan 20 40 let's talk about some of the challenges because i know you know; this whole market is not as easy as just creating something nice and posting it so what are some of the challenges that you face when it comes to designing themes and marketing those themes? derrick lee 20 55 we hope that our themes satisfy as many people as possible globally, because themes are global but sometimes figuring out how the taste like differs depending on cultures and countries, it's not it's not the easiest thing to do you know, we come up with one design, but people here like it, but people there don't we are greedy, if you will, in a positive way we want to satisfy as many people as possible globally so that's not so that would be a challenge tony morelan 21 21 of course yeah no, that is that is and i know that a lot of times designers are leveraging the ability to have localization for their app so this is where you know, you're selling the theme globally but you can say, you know, in the us market, this is what the description looks like in you know, a market in asia, this is what the description looks like or in germany yes, i know that, you know, designers do see a nice increase in revenue when they are utilizing localization so i'm assuming are you guys using that feature as derrick lee 21 49 well? yes, we are the descriptions look all different, depending on the country, the language, you had mentioned tony morelan 21 55 covid earlier? obviously, we still are in the middle of covid how has that impacted polycube, derrick lee 22 01 of course, covid-19 is very negative but for us, it has done nothing but booster motivation, because covid-19 stopped people from expressing themselves through their faces by making them wear masks right so sure, we were more motivated to help to help people express themselves on their phones instead, through well designed customized themes tony morelan 22 21 you know, that was nice to hear it's something i hadn't really thought about that yes, the face is being covered by your mask so how else can you express? you know, your look your style? yeah and that's where people are customizing their phones, obviously, to represent themselves? derrick lee 22 37 yeah, because nowadays, i think your phone is your second face, for sure it shows who you are tony morelan 22 42 so what is in the future for public cube, derrick lee 22 45 you know, we are actually planning to come up with some very innovative designs that have never been applied to themes before you know, if you look at themes, of course, there is diversity, you know, you can see all sorts of designs in the themes market but sometimes, you know, you run into some designs that make you think that oh, this is nice, but it might not look well on themes, but we are trying to break that wall and come up with some very innovative designs that have never been applied to teams before nice tony morelan 23 15 i'm really looking forward to seeing what polycube produces out of that now, you had mentioned diversity and i love everything you've been talking about, like when it comes to diversity with your designs and the global reach for that tell me specifically about polycube, what are you guys doing when it comes to diversity and inclusion? derrick lee 23 34 we are actually planning on recruiting designers from abroad it doesn't matter where you're from sure, you can be from united states you can be canada, you can be from japan, wherever because we don't want to end up stuck in one way of thinking when it comes to designing and promoting yeah, and i think that's, that could be one of the best ways to stop that from happening tony morelan 23 55 sure because i know just culturally wise you know, people from specific cultures just have a way of approaching their designs so to hear that you are looking for designers, you know from other cultures, i think is a great way to ensure that that you really are offering up great work globally yeah, thank you so you know there are a lot of other theme designers out there a lot of companies have had success is there one company that really comes to mind when you think of a theme designer that you really like derrick lee 24 27 i think that a company called echo visuals yes yeah if you check out their themes they're excellent and we took a lot of inspiration from them tony morelan 24 35 yeah no i've heard that from many designers echo visuals does amazing work and i know that they are very active on facebook and other social media platforms really doing a lot of stuff around marketing so just another good example of how a company does more than just create their things but they have to do all that work behind the marketing yeah so i know you sound very passionate when it comes to your work at polycube but what is you do outside of polycube to have a little fun well, derrick lee 25 04 i obviously love themes, but i don't think about them 24/7 i need some time off to you know, re-energize myself i trained jujitsu do yeah, i actually had a dream of becoming a commentator in mixed martial arts really? yeah, um, you know, that never came to fruition, obviously, but i'm still a fan of the sport i really follow it and it doesn't just help physically it helps mentally which ultimately leads to better productivity tony morelan 25 32 i love hearing that aspect of it you know, for me, i do a lot of cycling now okay and it's not so much for the exercise part of it it's the mental side of getting out eating away being unplugged, either taking in the sights or enjoying the, you know, the fresh air derrick lee 25 49 yeah, i totally understand one last tony morelan 25 50 question for you derrick lee 25 51 okay tony morelan 25 53 what is your favorite donut? derrick lee 25 55 my favorite donut? um well, i always go with the classics chocolate donut scores yeah, well, not just with donuts, like with i think that's just how i am with anything i always go with the classic like hamburgers like everything i always like the original yeah and actually, do you know what being aids are? no, i don't know it's, it's kind of i wouldn't call it a donut but some people do call it call them donuts yeah, it's something that you can have when you come to new orleans oh, i'll tony morelan 26 25 have to give that a try is there anything unique to korea when it comes to donuts? derrick lee 26 30 i'll get to korea when anything comes to korea like what when pizza first came to korea? sure you know, it was a long time but korea like really likes you know, making 1000 flavors of pizzas 1000 flavors of hamburgers 1000 flavors of everything yeah ice creams yeah so yeah, i think that could be one thing that you can enjoy if you know people from abroad, travel korea, you know, there are things that you wouldn't have imagined tony morelan 26 58 how funny that you say that so when i was in korea, i remember going to a restaurant that it was strictly cakes it was like you said it was like 1000 different cakes and you would go in there and walk through all the showcases of everything and then you would pick your slice and it was amazing derrick lee 27 15 yeah, i can't even imagine like what flavors it has it was a tony morelan 27 19 dream but hey, derrick, i really appreciate you taking the time it was great to chat with you i'm looking forward to 2022 to see what more polycube does when it comes to creating beautiful designs? no okay, thank you closing 27 33 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 27 48 the samsung developers podcast is hosted by tony morelan and produced by jeanne hsu

https://developer.samsung.com/developers-podcast/s03e02-derrick-lee.html

Develop Galaxy Watch for Tizen

Release Note

release note introduction release version 2 0 1_beta release date 01 september, 2021 known issues macos hotkey command+q makes program exit without asking to save current job swt issue the following psd features are not yet supported group show/hide status effects arabic language doesn't support icu format 'eeeeee' six 'e', two-letter abbreviation read-only attribute of text and combo control are ignored on macos when use specific language ex vietnam due to galaxy watch os version update to tizen 4 0, user may have to re-create distributor certificate in windows pc, if first component is text, bold and italic don't show properly in editor and preview with opacity change in mac os "about galaxy watch studio" and "preferences" in "galaxy watch studio" menu don't work designers need to use "edit -> preferences" and "help -> about" instead change history galaxy watch studio 2 0 1_beta new added invalid font popup when adding invalid font added validation of component name, app id and project name updated maximum length of component name to 50 characters updated maximum length of author certificate password to 128 characters removed psd file support when import image disabled ungroup option inside group disabled bmp and gif image import as animation frame disabled characters <, >, &, ", \ for bitmap font fixed an issue where application doesn't open in macos bug sur fixed an issue where text editing in aod mode behave incorrectly fixed an issue where name of the animation displays randomly fixed an issue where toolbar align options are enabled for locked components fixed an issue where properties ui jump when changing anything from text editing mode fixed an issue where custom font is not showing for multiple text selection fixed an issue where tag expression was enabled for opacity and rotate fixed an issue where bitmap font alignment is top in editor fixed an issue where bitmap font characters overlapped in native viewer fixed an issue where tool tip is still displayed although tooltip turned off in preference fixed an issue where properties doesn't show when component is unlcoked fixed an issue where rename a locked component was allowed fixed an issue where large animation image name gets cut off fixed an issue where user can click on any button when add device pop up still display fixed an issue where complication save with action image doesn't work fixed an issue where adding complication with bitmap font in newly unsaved project causes crash fixed an issue where invalid image can be added in editor fixed an issue where complication import in aod mode is not working as expected fixed an issue where outline of frame is showing in wrong position when editor is in animation editing mode fixed an issue where search function in timeline doesn't work for long component name fixed an issue where adding jpeg images cause unexpected behavior fixed an issue where component doesn't disappear from editor after undo the add component operation fixed an issue where components with same name exist when import same complication twice fixed an issue where undo of group operation doesn't work fixed an issue where component naming was possible with special character fixed an issue where search result in timeline does not update after renaming the component fixed an issue where palette was active in animation editing mode fixed an issue where native viewer watchface blinks while transitioning aod mode fixed an issue where "save as to original folder" and "show tool tips" in preference don't work fixed an issue where same character with uppercase and lowercase doesn't work in bitmap font character list fixed an issue where project save does not work when disable set as button fixed an issue where removed image still shows on preview for image change action fixed an issue where icu format text box is empty fixed an issue where divide by zero in tag expression is a valid expression fixed an issue where tooltip still have shown even though bitmap is deleted fixed an issue where backgroud component opened as image component when project loaded fixed an issue where saved project's backgroud open as image fixed an issue where action is not applied after save as complication fixed an issue where hide icon is missing after making a group with all hidden components fixed an issue where search text does not disappear after sort by region in language fixed an issue where 9 languages were not included to any region fixed other issues and ui improvement done galaxy watch studio 2 0 0_beta one ui applied in toolbar, properties and run preview added scrollbar for condition line layers added search feature for condition line layers added new tag "year" in tag expression dialog added sort by region feature in language setting dialog added search box in language setting dialog added lunar calendar support for digital clock component added group/ungroup button in timeline added style, gridline every, and subdivisions settings in preference view section modified preference dialog, language setting dialog and tag expression dialog fixed an issue where animation frame selection doesn't work when animation editing mode changed fixed an issue where auto update download percentage was incorrect fixed an issue where too long label is trimmed in editor fixed an issue where battery status action does not work with weather components fixed an issue where ip and port validation added in proxy server input pop-up fixed an issue where weather auto refresh time couldn't take minute value fixed an issue where custom complication does not work for aod mode fixed other issues and ui improvement done galaxy watch designer 1 8 1_beta added custom complication feature added support for two more islamic calendars added warning message when creating a new group disabled condition line for group components disabled resize and rotate for the components of a group removed "workout status" from preview -> health tab removed support for icu format vvv city name fixed an issue where auto update pop-up don't appear sometimes fixed an issue where remainder % operator doesn't work in tag expression fixed an issue where day of year d tag in tag expression doesn't work as expected fixed an issue where sync with device doesn't work without selecting it from time zone dropdown fixed an issue where complication -> workout -> digital_steps_b showing resource not found error fixed an issue where digital clock disappears with weather component when default language set to english fixed an issue where default language of digital clock doesn't work with weather component fixed an issue where bitmap font image modification don't appear in realtime fixed an issue where button for watch hand doesn't work with weather component fixed an issue where gyro and condition line don't work together on real device fixed an issue where view label is dimmed when ruler is grid is checked and outline is unchecked fixed an issue where clicking on project menu crashes application when project not exist fixed an issue where latitude and longitude displayed in run preview when current location has no city name fixed an issue where watchface does not launch on real device after re-installation fixed an issue where text does not show correctly in run preview while changing font type fixed an issue where component context menu is big when component name is too long fixed an issue where default language help tooltip does not work in language settings fixed an issue where precision property does not work when humidity display type set to "%d % " fixed an issue where language settings for digital clock does not work correctly with java 11 fixed an issue where id of android displayed instead of device's name in uninstall dialog fixed an issue where lightness and saturation of adjust color can take input value greater than 100 fixed an issue where city name displayed null when no city selected from map and changes the forecast data fixed other issues and ui improvement done galaxy watch designer 1 8 0_beta added watchface support for galaxy watch active 2 added multiple components property change feature for dimension, placement, rotate, appearance and text appearance property added layer color feature to draw outline of the component with layer color added horizontal scroll bar for timeline frame added show/hide and lock/unlock options in layer menu added change time zone change capability with action "time zone selector -> sync with device" added real time change in editor when properties value modified by mouse drag or arrow keys added multiple language support for bitmap font in digital clock updated layer item and component icon updated aod high enable popup text and button updated view > outlines sub menu order and functionality updated time zone selector notice popup text updated gwd help -> promote link updated opr value limit exceed warning pop up behaviour it will show each time when aod mode toggled and opr value over 15% updated tooltip texts in edit > preferences > apis removed align and font option from properties when weather type set to icon fixed an issue where gwd memory leak occurs when moon phase is used as text component or tag expression fixed an issue where bitmap font in digital clock doesn't work real device for different locale fixed an issue where bitmap font is changed to low-bit color image issue fixed fixed an issue where gwd can't connect to galaxy watch sometimes fixed an issue where application got stuck when fetching weather data from internet fixed an issue where rotated text gets distorted and much larger on watch in native viewer fixed an issue where both run preview and watch device display city name "unknown city" with icu format "vvv" for digital clock component fixed an issue where text overflows the text box if its length is higher than the text box in native viewer fixed an issue where run preview doesn't show watch hand simulation for rotation property "sync with conditions" with values step count and others fixed an issue where week number of year was shown incorrectly fixed an issue where time zone selector action doesn't work in native viewer fixed an issue where weather type icon isn't visible in native viewer fixed other issues and ui improvement done galaxy watch designer 1 7 1_beta added highlight options for components when mouse is moved in editor view additional action "change temperature unit" and "update weather" added for weather components run controller values can be changed by "click and drag" on labels slider values can be changed by mouse "hover and scroll" added arrows in conditional part to scroll frames icu more popup search options updated and redesigned run preview capture implementation is changed run preview ui is slightly changed and size set to 100% enabled "set as button" when tag expression used on opacity due to platform issue, time zone selector disabled for double tap on digital clock asset creator template url is updated sdb version updated to 4 1 5 sync with device option added on time zone selector moved text styles to text properties time zones values for few cities are updated fixed an ui issue where placement expression box can be seen when group item is being resized fixed an issue where gyro effect was not working for text and digital clock fixed an issue where group item name can be renamed fixed an issue where tap action did not work on other non-overlapping components, if action used on watch hand fixed an issue where selected languages would disappear on build project popup fixed an issue where watch hand position would be wrong if rotation is used fixed an issue where "space evenly horizontal" did not work properly fixed an issue where movement effect setting did not work properly fixed an issue where steps % over 100 is discarded fixed an issue where gwd may fail to update fixed an issue where "b" bold option for text style did not work in run preview fixed an issue where "&&" was showing on application installation popup fixed an issue where "steps goal" run controller value was not reset fixed an issue where weather controllers do not reset when no location is selected fixed an issue where device cannot be connected via wi-fi due to very large network size fixed an issue where weather type "main" text on run preview did not match with editor text fixed an issue where weather type "description" text language did not work on run preview fixed other bugs galaxy watch designer 1 7 0_beta run preview has been redesigned and added directly to main window few new run controllers added all run controllers are now separated into 3 tabs "watch", "health" and "weather" added run preview controller reset options watch preview added in run controller user can see how their watch looks on real device right from run preview windows version now only supports windows 64bit java requirement for windows is also changed from 1 8 32bit to 1 8 64bit or higher support for jdk 11 is added resource preview is removed gwd license agreement has been updated components and properties window size has been reduced to give more space on editor view support for band and rectangular devices has been removed support for tizen version lower than tizen 3 0 has been removed low color aod mode has been removed movement effect for placement, rotate, opacity tag expression added google location api has been replaced with here map api new font can be added through font properties second hand sweep effect can be used without any bindings tag script dialog has been redesigned tag expression sweep effect can be viewed on run preview capture image can be taken with watch and strap also through new dialog, user can go to directory where captured image is stored when installing gwd 1 7 0, previous font and res directory will be automatically migrated fixed an issue where changed background image was set as icon fixed forward and rewind issues in timeline fixed play head position issue for 'battery %' and 'steps &' conditions tab fixed a timeline loop issue fixed an issue where text position in run preview and on-device did not match fixed an issue where build did not work properly when opr value was high fixed an issue where rotation did not work for bitmap fonts fixed 'steps %' issue on tizen 4 0 devices fixed an issue where sweep effect did not work on devices fixed background and hand color change issue on actual device when opacity was used fixed an issue where second hand is not displayed in real device when an angle is applied fixed an issue where digital clock not displayed when all language support added fixed an issue where color and opacity could not be used together on text and digital clock fixed an issue where index did not work if color was adjusted fixed an issue where images could not be copied from normal to aod mode fixed tag expression problem for text component fixed an issue where hand did not show on actual device if filters were used fixed battery drain issue on certain watchface with weather data fixed an issue where application start popup is not displayed when tapped on run preview fixed script windows scroll problem on windows 7 fixed language settings issue on where after bitmap fonts are set, returning to truetype font selects all language fixed toast "invalid character" displayed when tab on outer pivot-x/y fixed and issue where color still applied when color picker is closed by close button fixed dropdown width issue on rotation properties tab fixed text left pad issue on gear device fixed hsl values not updated issue when style copy/paste is used for images includes various ui updates fixed various other bugs galaxy watch designer 1 6 2_beta fixed opr check error issue fixed gyro not working on the native viewer fixed gwd exception fixed km/mile condition add code to check resource available when building tpk disable opacity for group fixed bugs galaxy watch designer 1 6 1_beta fixed x,y coordination error for grouping hot-fix galaxy watch designer 1 6 0_beta changed application name gearwatchdesigner > galaxywatchdesigner add tag expression on rotate, placement, opacity add build option for target platform api to provide runtime permission popup changed mac installed style changed the latest tizen library add build option for changing app preview image fixed gyro opacity value error fixed mac freezing issue fixed km/mile display error on the lock screen modified circle hands resource name fixed bugs galaxy watch designer 1 5 4_beta added a floor condition in the run preview added the dummy value on preview image battery 100, battery level 4, pedometer steps 3457, floor 3 added and fixed shortcut keys zoom in/out, fit in window, actual size, locking added selecting action at edit text field in the properties window added a range label to indicated meaning of gyro xy range added an unloop menu for multiple layers fixed the opr check stopping issue fixed x, y coordination error with action fixed a "weather gwd" build stopping issue fixed errors of image component with action and condition status in the run preview fixed a gyro effect for weather gwd sample galaxy watch designer 1 5 3_beta fixed hand component editing guideline issue when button action enabled fixed image component location issue in the device when button action and timeline condition enabled together fixed 'precision' field not display issue for temperature text component fixed all component display issue in the native viewer that has 'loop' condition when aod -> normal mode fixed animation and second-hand sweep stop issue in the native viewer at midnight fixed 'maximize' button not working issue on the mac pc fixed crash issue in the device if bitmap font is not filled fully added gyro property to text, digitalclock components fixed 'step %' not working issue on the device if the group is used fixed tpk file generate failure issue even after the build galaxy watch designer 1 5 2_beta added gyro x and y property to support individual control added new sample projects and complication preset that includes gyro effect increased text component left-pad property range max from 4 to 6 added steps/distance/heart rate/speed/calorie injectors to the run window fixed precision property not working issue on temperature text in the device fixed 'select all' language property issue that property is cleared when reloading the project added watch face uninstall functionality on the device fixed value roundup issue when 'step %' condition used in the condition window fixed 1 sec delay issue in the device when loop is used fixed version compatibility popup text not correct issue when installing watch face that km/mile or multi-language is used to the gear fit, fit2 pro device fixed native viewer flickering issue after 3 0 fota changed a gwd file schema to increase functionality therefore, a new project can't be loaded in v1 5 1 or previous version fixed build stop issue at 40% that happens on the specific pc added button action support for hand component galaxy watch designer 1 5 1_beta increased 'change image' button action limit from 12 to 100 added km/mile condition tab that changes accordance with device ‘s health’ setting fixed project reload failure issue when bitmap font used that special character is assigned added 12h/24h and km/mile controls to the run window display overwrite option when try 'save as' with the same project name fixed combo dropbox width issue on the mac pc added bitmap font support in the low-bit color mode added 'on-next-second', 'on-next-minute' and 'on-next-hour' as animation play option support for multi-language digital clock when selected language type is not 'sync to device' galaxy watch designer 1 5 0_beta added unit, precision support for 'distance', 'speed' text sources fixed run in device failure when a native viewer is enabled and a package name has been changed in the build window added loop/unloop functionality in the condition window fixed a watch restart issue on a bitmap font enabled native viewer when switching from always on mode to normal mode added a 12h/24h condition tab changed a gwd file scheme to increase functionality therefore, a new project can't be loaded in v1 4 1 or previous version added gear sport model support added play/pause functionality in the run window galaxy watch designer 1 4 1_beta fixed bugs and compatibility issues in 1 4 0 version fixed a hand component loading failure when sweep property is applied in the previous version fixed a project loading failure when a project is generated with a previous version of 1 2 0 fixed a locked image loading failure which was locked with a previous version fixed a hang or terminate issue when running preview of the watch face added a warning for the not supported ttf font which is a 'symbol' type encoding 'unicode bmp' type encoding is supported only added fahrenheit, kelvin unit types to the ‘current temperature’ source galaxy watch designer 1 4 0_beta fixed a watch face display failure when an icu format string "h", "e", "e", or "ee" are used in gear s fixed a watch face bitmap font display failure when 'others' or 'custom' category items are used in gear s fixed a gear s wgt install failure when project name includes ' ' or ' ' fixed a gyro effect issue that happens when a timeline condition is added to a component added a weather support openweathermap apis are used fixed an icon resolution issue on a mac dock bar fixed a 15 frame animation sync issue 'jump hour/minute' property is added to hour/minute hand 'frequency' property is added to a sweep effect of second hand added a preference setting galaxy watch designer 1 3 2_beta fixed ' ttf' custom font import failure issue fixed gwd project file corruption issue when deleting files in the resource window fixed samsung account login failure when additional agreement is required for that account fixed gyro effect to become more smoother in the device fixed broken help link for gyro effect property added 4k monitor support windows pc only fixed deleting 'font' folder issue during version upgrade fixed sluggish animation in the device after updating firmware to 2 3 2 3 version fixed button action setting failure issue when custom app id is used galaxy watch designer 1 3 1_beta fixed component id renaming issue during always-on mode auto migration fixed install failure issue during 61% added appearance property in high color always-on mode fixed digitalclock dst issue in the preview window fixed 'package_not_found' issue during install fixed bitmap font display location issue that is not same with preview fixed to select layer window entry even if component is locked new project dialog concept has changed removed redundant resources in the project file fixed certificate creation failure issue when samsung account id is a phone-number added bluetooth connection to the device via android device fixed 'step %' condition issue that component is not displayed in the device added 'floors' app support for gear s3 open app button action added iap support added custom color functionality on the color picker window added gyro property support fixed battery drain issue when use 'alarm' app as button gear s3 only galaxy watch designer 1 3 0_beta added project custom location support added calendar & timezone property support on digitalclock component added snap, grid, ruler support in the editor window added gwd file clean up when close the project added experimental support for bluetooth direct connection support to the device if pc supports bluetooth windows os pc only added experimental support for importing photoshop file format psd the following features are not yet supported group, 2 show/hide status added complications support in the always-on mode fixed digitalclock issue that height become 9999 added drag & drop support to the editor window added new splash added mouse wheel scroll support in the editor window added group/ungroup support added gwd file encryption option added always-on mode analyze support in the run window galaxy watch designer 1 2 1_beta fixed adjust color property issue when happens turn on always on mode fixed image component angle issue that look is not same with preview if it is rotated fixed 'day of year' source issue that value is not correct in the preview fixed custom app id update issue in the open app action property fixed gear s issue that image component disappear when battery % becomes 100 fixed text component issue that location is not same with preview if it is rotated fixed 'minutes in hours' select fail issue that happens in the high color always on mode added low-bit color always-on mode analog watch automatically if high color always-on mode is turned on only galaxy watch designer 1 2 0_beta added gear s3 model support added 'schedule', 's-health today' and 'floor' to openapp button action gear fit2 only fixed tpk build fail when project includes text/digitalclock components only fixed tpk build fail when resource file name includes specific character like 'e acute' 'adjust color' property concept was changed similar to photoshop 'hue/saturation adjustment' fixed gear s issue that battery condition doesn't works for the image component opr onpixelratio limit in the always-on mode has changed from 20% to 15% added overwrite option to the file conflict warning popup added shortcuts - show pivot ctrl + p , send backward ctrl + '[' , bring forward ctrl + ']' , send to back ctrl + shift + '[' , bring to front ctrl + shift + ']' , align center ctrl + e , component copy alt + drag , multi select shift + click increased 'change image button action max count' from 6 to 12 gwd file schema was changed to increase functionality therefore, v1 1 1 or previous version can't load it fixed gear s issue that 'm', 'mm' icu format, and 'day of week' source shows 1 small value than normal in the device added 'day of year' source fixed to do not display decimal point for the 'steps %', 'speed', 'distance', 'calories' sources high color always-on mode supported gear s3 only galaxy watch designer 1 1 1_beta added experimental support for gear s model the following features are not yet supported on gear s launch after install, 2 always on mode, 3 button action, 4 hands tension, 5 steps % source, 6 adjust color hsb filter , and 7 text attribute bold, italic, strike-through fixed 'moonphase type' and 'moonphase position' display issue in the run window support for multi language text when selected font is 'sync to device' fixed 'copy device id to clipboard' issue fixed am/pm issue in the 'digital_neon' sample fixed loading v1 0 3 index components failed issue support for use of '-', '_' and shift key in the property name edit box display more detail on installation progress galaxy watch designer 1 1 0_beta gwd file format was changed to increase functionality therefore, v1 0 3 can't load it added gear fit2 model support changes in the editing window is automatically reflected in the run window 'frame' scale was removed in the timeline window whenever tool crashes, last project status will be restored in the next launch author certificate password will be required during build pivot concept was changed so that only supported by hands and index component display more readable device name on the runondevice dialog 'lock' and 'visible' status are shown when loading the project support for multiple devices distributor certificate added battery charging source added background component will be placed in backward automatically ctrl + and ctrl - key works for the editor zoom added kilo x1000 unit support for 'burned calorie' and 'moved distance' sources fixed icon file issue on macbook pro retina galaxy watch designer 1 0 3_beta added moonphase position and moonphase type source fixed runondevice installation failed issue when project name includes space character sdb update 2 2 72 —> 2 2 78 fixed runondevice installation stop issue on mac sync text component font fallback policy with the device change 'temp' font folder location; only those with admin rights can write to that folder fixed 'merged_' prefix issue on index component image file added 'disconnect' and 'copy device id to clipboard' shortcut in the runondevice dialog in the runondevice dialog, device that doesn't have a distributor certificate will be prompted with a warning replaced text box with combo box in the distributor certificate dialog, supports multiple devices increase device scan timeout from 10 to 12 seconds updated help —> tutorial menu link added 's-voice' in the button action galaxy watch designer 1 0 2_beta fixed crash that happens during change rotate/movement property updated sdb executable to fix connection issues on mac 2 2 67 —> 2 2 72 updated sdblib to fix installation issues on mac new version works for double quoted string parameter fixed ‘from_air’/’hippity_hop’/’climb1’ sample timeline condition fixed crash that happens while handling custom font fixed crash that happens during change button image action fixed crash that happens during copy/paste image after undo fixed crash that happens when ‘outline with label’ is turned on in some conditions fixed crash that happens during modify pivot removed not supported app list running, s-voice in the button app launch action fixed image disappearing issue while style copy fixed crash that happens when a non-numeric value is entered to start/end rotate property fixed crash that happens when a device is selected in the runondevice window without generating distributor certificate for that device fixed random crash that happens because of ‘no more handle’ exception fixed focus issue on edit —> image submenu fixed step% condition issue where the image/text is not showing on the device when the value exceeds 100 fixed text component rotate angle load fail issue when text has source add warning popup & texts for the author certificate overwrite case change icon file name policy to fix gear manager thumbnail issue icon png —> [project_name] png galaxy watch designer 1 0 1_beta fixed timeline condition issue where the last condition item close to 24 hour is not showing on the device fixed timeline condition issue that saves a wrong value for the condition item that has a resolution time under a minute added scan device progress ux in runondevice added ‘connect by ip address’ ux in runondevice added help —> community, help —> tutorial menu fixed on pixel movement issue when hand component become 180 degrees fixed launch fail issue that happens when a non-image file exists under the ‘res’ folder fixed launch fail issue that happens when the default font failed to load fixed crash that happens after adding swap image button action removed font popup during installation changed certificate relay server port number 8443 —> 443 to remove proxy setting updated index component preset that shows yellow color fixed crash that happens when loading specific complication more than two times fixed style copy issue when the button action is copied together galaxy watch designer 1 0 1_beta initial version

https://developer.samsung.com/galaxy-watch-tizen/studio/release-note.html

Learn Developers Podcast

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

https://developer.samsung.com/developers-podcast/s03e03-biodome.html

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These cookies allow our website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region your are in) and tailor the website to provide enhanced features and content for you.

Advertising Cookies

These cookies gather information about your browser habits. They remember that you've visited our website and share this information with other organizations such as advertisers.