September 2010

I managed to convince Emil to join me on this new venture that we called Brickmark. We had worked together on the Mag+ project at Bonnier R&D before so I knew that we would work as a team. Our first project and focus for the upcoming months was to be kids games of some sort. And the research began. Emil went to the Playful conference in London and came back very inspired.

October 2010

We hired our first game designer Jens Peter, and started to explore the world of touchscreen based games properly. A lot of play testing, mapping, segmenting and reading. We found that the available games pointed in one direction, while they way that kids played pointed in several different ones. This led us to start looking at physical toys instead, and approaching the topic of play from a broader perspective. Also, a lot of sitting around in a small, temporary and fairly dull office.

November 2010

In search of developers, we invited Cocoaheads Stockholm over to the office. We showed them a few examples of how a new wave of games and play on the iOS platform were using the available possibilites. A particularly enthusiastic guy in the front row of the picture turned out to be Andrey. He is our all-time favorite Ukrainian, and joined us as a playsmith.

We started making our product development process. It has an evolutionary theme, and involves a lot of testing with kids before making it into production.

We had our first thoughts and discussions around the name and visual identity of the brand that later became Toca Boca.

December 2010

Our second game designer Chris joined us, and things started moving for real. We had our first idea generating workshop, and came up with about a hundred different themes to investigate.

We tried to get our new office in shape which required some unconventional seating initially:

We met with Mats Johansson from ACNE JR that made our beautiful logo, and we did the first play tests with kids which we filmed and tried to learn from. The concepts worked well overall, but there’s a lot to be learned from this way of testing.

Just before Christmas, we went to Malmö and talked with Media Evolution and local game developers like Mandelform and Binary Peak about what was lacking in the games value chain. Quite a bit, it seemed.

January 2011

Go time! We started production of our first two games and an internal league of iOS-gaming. Our art director Emil Berner took on Helicopter Taxi, and for Toca Tea Party we worked together with Mathilda Engman. Since we were waiting for our second developer, Jack, to start, we got some great help from Axolot.

We made a teaser website and launched the game studio name in public. The Brewery and Anton Lindqvist made us the site.

February 2011

We started planning our game trailers, and recorded them slightly later. Production started to round up, and we decided on our third game. Some additional game testing, and a load more of bug testing! Requiring the team to lie on the floor while doing it.

March 2010

We’re here! Our first two games are released in the App Store and it feels amazing! There’s loads more to come and a lot of hard work remains, but we’ve really started up this company in a fantastic way. Make sure to stick around and watch what we’re releasing next! Try out Helicopter Taxi and Toca Tea Party if you want a better feel of what we’ve been doing.

These last few days we’ve been introducing our team here in the blog. We have a few more names coming up but we’re more or less good to go. Since we’ve come this far we thought it might be appropriate to reveal what we’re actually doing. So let me introduce our game studio: Toca Boca.

- But wait? Isn’t Brickmark the game studio?
Not really. However, it is the first project that we have been working with. Brickmark will have several parallel activities, but for now Toca Boca is our main focus.

- Okay – so what will you be doing?
Toca Boca is a Swedish game studio focused on touchscreen fun for kids. We make digital toys and games that encourage self-expression and stimulate the imagination. Our first two products will be out in March, but if you want to follow us up until then – check out our Facebook page, our Twitter account or sign up for our newsletter.

A special thanks to Mats Johansson at ACNE JR that made our great logo!

Name: Andrea Mazey

Role: Business Developer

When I’m not working: I’m watching scary movies and doing crossword puzzles (not simultaneously, if I can help it).

Hidden talent: I would bet my apartment on a game of six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Favourite games: GTA and Doodle Jump.

Favourite children’s games: Donkey Kong, Mario Kart and Crash Bandicoot.

Name: Ashley Sullivan

Twitter: ashannsu

Role: Business Developer

When I’m not working: I teach swimming lessons, so I’m at the pool quite a bit. I’m also trying to learn more about photography, mostly how to take nicer pictures, so you might find me at Fotografiska these days too.

Hidden talent: I know a LOT about atomic physics. Long story.

Favourite games: Monopoly-the board game, Sudoku-in any and every format, and Angry Birds for iPhone.

Favourite children’s games: Mario Kart and anything else involving a race.

Name: Andrey Zhukov

Twitter: andreyz

Role: Play Engineer

When I’m not working: I’m learning something new.

Hidden talent: Finding the positive side of almost everything.

Favourite games: Fruit Ninja in the duel mode, Gran Turismo and other
driving/flying arcades. Looking forward to Journey release.

Favourite children’s games: Baloonimals.

Name: Björn Jeffery

Twitter: bjornjeffery

Role: The boss!

When I’m not working: I read a lot of magazines and blogs, and occasionally I try to fold some origami models to calm down.

Hidden talent: I’ve been known to be able to rant about almost anything. Seems to run in the family somehow.

Favourite games: On the iPhone, Tap Tap Revenge 4 and Push Panic. Otherwise the Fallout-series is good.

Favourite children’s games: Fruit Ninja, Balloonimals and Cupcakes!

Name: Emil Ovemar

Twitter: eovemar

Role: Product Manager

When I’m not working: I play a lot with my kids Abbe (5) and Annie (3). I love reading beautiful books and magazines when everyone else is asleep. I also enjoy reading comics and playing games on my touchscreens.

Hidden talent: I know an awful lot about old Japanese Tokusatsu heroes and monsters.

Favourite games: Right now Papa Sangre, Push Panic and Kosmo Spin on the iPhone. I played a lot of Super Monkey Ball and WarioWare on the Gamecube. Mastermind is probably my favourite tabletop game and I really love baseball.

Favourite children’s games: The Lego series from TT games, Animal Crossing and Donkey Konga.

Name: Emil Berner

Role: Graphic Designer

When I’m not working: I watch animated movies from the 80:s.

Hidden talent: I can ride a unicycle.

Favourite games: Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Streetfighter 4 and Machinarium.

Favourite children’s games: Donkey Kong Country

Name: Chris Lindgren

Twitter: chrismarie

Role: Play Designer

When I’m not working: I practise yoga, knit scarves and read Dr Slump over and over again

Hidden talent: Guitar Hero

Favourite games: Carcassonne (app or table)

Favourite children’s games: Mario Kart (Wii), Tickle Tap series (app), Cooking Mama (app)

The studio team now consists of six people and a seventh member, Jack Nutting, is joining us soon. We thought it might be a good idea to introduce ourselves so let’s start with Jens Peter:

Name: Jens Peter de Pedro

Twitter: jenspeter_

Role: Play Designer

When I’m not working: In my spare time I run a family. We have two daughters Zoe and Sasha, 4 and 2 years of age.

Hidden talent: I can mimic the sound of a spraycan in a very realistic way. Fsssshhhh!

Favourite games: Nobi Nobi Boy (app), WarioWare (Wii), Perplexus (toy), Basketball (sport)

Favourite children’s games: Talking Carl (app), Parappa The Rapper (PlayStation), Pokémon (card game)

When I checked the AppStore charts this morning I noticed that the game was the number 1 free kids game in 56 of the 90 Apple AppStores. I also noticed that the game was the top grossing kids game in 56 countries. I downloaded the game and quickly found out why. The game lets players purchase Smurfberries much like Farmville let’s you buy virtual goods to enhance the game experience.

I was a bit surprised that you could buy 1000 Smurfberries for $419 with one click. Additional password confirmation is not required within 15 minutes after your last password input, as described here by the BBC.

When I checked the top in app purchase items I realized that the price was actually in Swedish Kronor, the game simply added the dollar-sign regardless of currency. This just added to the confusion I suspected parents around the world might face. I got the feeling that some of the purchases this weekend might have come from kids happily buying berries on their non-suspecting parents phones and it looks like I might be right. I don’t mean to point fingers at this particular game (there are plenty of very happy adults playing the game obviously), but the problem comes from the categorization of Smurfs’ Village. Apps in the kids and family games categories may seem free and safe to parents, but parents need to carefully read the detailed information before handing over their phones to the kids.

In app purchases for kids is a tricky area. It involves both Apple, game developers and parents. The whole problem arises from a design compromise with password caching:

This entire situation came about because of a design compromise. By requiring you to enter your iTunes account password for a purchase or free download, Apple ensures that an authorized user is in control of the device. That’s a good thing. And by caching the password for 15 minutes, Apple reduces the significant annoyance of typing passwords (especially strong ones that include numbers and punctuation) on a virtual keyboard. In general, that’s also a good design, although it can obviously have unintended side effects.

Apple probably did the right thing with the 15 minutes caching to make it easy for users to buy multiple items without asking for the password every single time. Not all parents are aware of this though. Apple also lets parents restrict the use of their devices with the possibility of turning off in app purchases and password protect the AppStore. Parents should be using these restrictions to avoid surprises, but that requires them to be aware of this possibility.

App developers need to find ways to give families great gaming experiences. That includes the purchasing of games and maybe buying things within the app without feeling tricked. If we don’t, people will learn about it the hard way.

We are setting up a game studio for kids apps here at Brickmark. Currently we feel that we need to stay away from in app purchases since there are so many things that can go wrong. We will do our part of educating families on what to look out for, and how you can set up your devices in the best possible ways to get rid of unintentional purchases. There is so much fun that can be done with touchscreen devices and we want to keep families smiling even after the purchase.

Brickmark is up and running. We have our visual identity, we’re hiring people and we’re moving to our new headquarters this week. We’d like to take the time and thank Viet Cuong Truong for the brilliant work he did for us with the looks of Brickmark. Cuong is a very nice guy and great to work with. You should really check out his work.

Thanks Cuong!

I did a photo shoot for Bonnier today, and we tried to find a playful background. I think we did pretty well.

“It’s OK if a query is slow as long as it is always slow, it’s inconsistency that causes confusion and unhappy users.” – Mark Callaghan

A delightfully simple, yet interesting quote that can be applied to a lot more than just MySQL queries. From ReadWriteWeb.

On the topic of digital products that people are willing to pay for, I liked the elegantly and fiendishly designed price calendar that Gowalla has for their featured spots. It incorporates the same time-stress that flash sales manage to profit on, but does so in a more laid-back way. The longer you wait the more expensive it gets. Clever.

We presented our thoughts on kids play on the iPhone and iPad platform while serving some pizza and beers.

The slides are available on Slideshare if you are interested, although most of the presentation was made up by videos and me talking.

It was a fun night and we managed to capture some of it. Thank you CocoaHeads Stockholm!

But this is the thing, and I told the sales guy this on the phone too: if we don’t have people that make the products that we’re selling, then we have nothing. When we dive into new areas that we might not have done before, the answer is not to outsource it to a consultant. For Brickmark right now, our challenge is creating kids games for touch screens. Not something that we’ve done before, and therefore even more the reason for us to create a killer team that can do it together. If this is the business we’re in – this is what we should excel in doing. It can’t be outsourced.

Sometimes I wonder how many things the media industry has outsourced that they should have kept, and vice versa. Simply because they haven’t decided what business they’re actually in.

We’ve been busy setting everything up with this new company. Finding the right people, getting all our processes in order, making sure everything looks and feels good. That last part we’ve had a lot of help with from Viet Cuong Truong that has done a brilliant job of creating the right look for us. We’ll do a separate post about the full design scheme later on.

Right now our main focus is finding great people that can help us get our first project up and running. We are creating a game studio for kids, and we’re currently looking for both graphic designers and developers. You’ll be hearing a lot more about that during the coming few months.

That’s all for now – we’re super happy to have launched the site and even though we’ve been working intensively for two months, this feels like the real beginning. Catch the RSS so you don’t miss what we’re up to!