Group4-Digital Chocolate Final

8/3/2019 Group4-Digital Chocolate Final

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What can you tell us about Digital chocolate?? (Arjun)

Tell us something more about Hawkins?? (Aashish)

Where is the company present and how did he decide onthese places?? (Ashish Badyal)

What are the major challenges he faced?? (Ruchir) Hows the game distributed?? (Ankur)

Core values & Performance review?? (Kaushik)

How did he handle the global operations?? (Arjun)

What can you tell us about great game developers??

(Aashish) Embracing the iphone. (Ashish Badyal)

What is social gaming and how did he spot an opportunity inthis area?? (Ruchir)


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About Digital Chocolate

Founded in2003 byMr.Trip

Hawkins

CrossPlatform

Mobile Gamemakers

Thephilosophy

of adelicious

snack

Madeunique

brand ofgames

Over 100differentaward

winninggames

Present in 80countries withover & above200 channel

partners


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Education

Strategy & AppliedGame theory Major fromHarvard

Stanford BusinessSchool Alumni

Career

Director of BusinessStrategy, APPLE

Founder ElectronicsArts

Founder 3DO

Founder Digital

Chocolates

Recognitions

8th person on Academyof Interactive arts andScience Hall of Fame

Among 26 most

FascinatingEntrepreneurs

Trip Hawkins


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Locations

Critical for co-ordination.

India :Good English speaking college graduates.

Spain: Creative team and good entry into Latin America.

San Mateo : Proximity to cutting edge developers.

Finland : best teams for electronic development.


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Major Challenges

To select Locations

To find a cultural fit

Time differences

Difficulty in standardization of cross platformapplications


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Game Distribution

Buyers Poweris high

Key decisionmakers

WirelessCarrier

Through Appstores

HighCompetition

CustomerMarketplace


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Core values & Performancereview

Young, Multicultural team with global view.

Focus on creativity

Focus on Attitudes

Performance review

3 questions

Last year performance

Most important strength of employees

E-I-E-I-O


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Handling Global Operations

Staff from 32 different countries

145 in Helsinki, 140 in Bangalore, 25 inBarcelona and 40 San Mateo

Took the role of Business Developmenthimself demonstrating Flexibility

Twice a year to Finland and once a year to

India and Spain 100 mails a day and texting, phone calls &

Instant messaging


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Handling Global Operationscontd..

Monday morning meeting with 40 senior teamcalled T-staff

Whats going well??

Whats not going well??

Opportunities & threats

Any asks??

Decisions made with after all the boardmembers are in accord


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Game Development at DC

High creatively exhausting process

Games of all genre created, puzzle, word,action & adventure, sports, racing, social

entertainment and cards & casino. 2-3 games per month to cater to large demand

Multi platform supported games

Published on app stores and websites likefacebook


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Game Development process atDC

Suggestions

Sought from allemployees

300+ ideas

Filtering

Based on targetaudience

Characteristicsof Top 10games

YDC

PPTs on ideas Validation

discussion withtopmanagement

Development

3 months ondesigning

3-4 months ondevelopment

Testing

Online playedby anyemployee


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Embracing the Iphone

Hawkins was little apprehensive initially tostart going into Iphone games development

Major Reasons were

1.Rate of development of new platforms ishigh and risk to reward ratio is not desirable

2.Apple didn't have a store and Apple

emphasize more on applications rather thangames

3. There are serious billing challenges


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Embracing the Iphone Contd..

4.Hawkings don't want to distrupt the currentprojects in the pipeline

However, on seeing the exponential growth in

acceptance of Iphones games The digital chocolates team responded well by

converting top selling games into iphoneapplications

and the result was astounding with first fourgames made up to top downloads and iphoneplatform turned out be most profitable platformfor future development


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Why Social Gaming

Multi-player interactive games over differentplatforms

Awareness from childhood-designed board

games Devised characters & strategies interest

Increased.

DNA @ 3DO No hardware/software support


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3 ways ahead

Acquire a SocialGame

developmentcompany

Create dedicatedsocial Gaming

office for avoidingdistractions

Designated groupof employeesfrom eachlocation

1 2

3


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Group DiscussionPros

Cost saving Experts Save Time

Cons

Quality mismatch Culture mismatch

Pros

Dedicated work onsocial games Quality control

Better resource mgmt

Cons

Difficult to find

specialized teams Lack of edge on

normal games

Pros

Geographiccoverage

Cons

Poorcoordination

Poor skill set

1 2

3


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As The Future Revealed

Digital Chocolateacquired Sandlot Games,which is based in Bothell ,

USA & St. Petersburg,Russia.

Sandlots founder and CEODan Bernstein will becomeVP of Digital Chocolate for

St. Petersburg, Russia,and in Bothell.

Documents

Group4-Digital Chocolate Final