“A successful app is 50 percent made of luck”

Presents as speakers in Romania at Digital Marketing Forum 2016, Tibor Gulyas (Innovative Technology Lead, Possible Hungary) and Andras Nagy (Project Director, Possible Hungary), talked to AdHugger.net, during an exclusive interview, about the power of mobile apps, virtual reality and the gap generations that are closing more and more.

AdH: Do you believe it exist a recipe for a successful app?

Tibor Gulyas:  No. If a recipe like that would exist it would be worth a lot of money first of all and, second of all, everyone would just do that. But even for incredibly successful companies, like game developer companies, a lot of times they had a really successful game making hundreds of millions of dollars and the next one was a fail. And some of those companies went bankrupt. If they knew that recipe they would follow it or at least put a few million dollars into researching that recipe.

There is a recipe, but is 50 percent luck.

Andras Nagy: Luck is always a really important factor and it’s one that you cannot have any control over.

AdH: But do you think that there are some genre/ domains that work better for apps?  

T.G: I really think that every domain can be somehow gamifyied, can be somehow interpreted to mobile. I am not saying that this is an easy thing to do or an easy process, but for example we are right now working on gamifying the current house process for young people and that is something that you wouldn’t normally think as fit for gamifying. Or museums. Basically anything can be. If you want to you can come up with solutions to make it stand out, make it more interesting.

And that I think it is because today is hard to keep up with the pace, in every domain that you would look at. The mobile is trending and is helping.

AdH: Also for museums it works wonderfully the virtual reality, no?

T.G: Actually, museums are a great example for augmented reality, that it can be used in many ways and forms.

A.N.: Think about the fact that you have a museum and there is an augmented reality solution that can be used and tried on by any of us, even by our kids. For example an old, middle aged medieval armor and the helmet and all the equipment. You can see on a big screen how it looks like, you can take pictures, you can share them instantly and generate visibility for the museum as well. That is just an example of behavioral changement. Peoples’ expectations towards experiences are changing and any kind of organization could find a reason to think about how it could change / adjust its offerings to the costumers, how can it use the new technologies in order to be able to offer new, interesting and engaging experiences.

AdH: Can we still talk about age barriers or not? (because we see older women staying online and playing games on Facebook, for example, and being very competitive or sharing flowers and special recipes, etc.). Facebook may be basic for everyone, but what about the mobile in general and mobile apps in particular?

T.G: I think that we shouldn’t all together deny that there is still a little bit of age barrier, but I wouldn’t actually call it a barrier. Is more of a trend. Once you go towards the younger generation, they tend to stick to mobile more, but the older generation is using mobile now as well and is catching up. I would rather call it a soft gap.

But the trend does not apply only with the older generation (60 +), it also visible to the middle-aged generation (30 years old). What I mean by that is that the currently young (14 years old) boys are playing a lot more games on the mobile compared to the 30 years old ones, because the latter group plays a lot more on consoles, on PC.

AdH: What about the tablet (is it growing, is it stable)?

T.G.: It’s definitely growing, especially for gaming. We already have special gaming tablets that are especially designed for gaming, which we didn’t have a few years back, there are still young products (1-2 years old). Tablet gaming is a huge friend again, which also shows to me that people are ready to invest in mobile only. Therefore, the mobile phone is not only a connectivity platform. It’s here and it’s meant to be and innovate every day.

AdH: You have an innovation department at POSSIBLE Hungary. How is that department helping you?

T.G:  The innovations is part of the POSSIBLE Games, that is also a part of POSSIBLE. I couldn’t separate the games from the innovations and I’m involved in both. They work hand in hand. The production team is working in many projects on virtual reality, augmented reality, gamified projects. Even some very innovative applications. Therefore, they can’t be separated and they complement each other very well.

A good pattern that we are using is to create and have our games produced and then pour them into virtual reality or augmented reality platforms, which is a good way to reignite us and give us a new perspective. The players love to see their game told from another perspective.

A.N.: Whenever a new technology appears and draws our attention we really spend some time to be able to do some demos and build some rapid prototypes to be able to see what this given technology is capable of offering us, trying to find out how can we use it and what form can it take.

More than that, when somebody from the Games department comes with an idea we all try and think how it could work better, how can innovate upon it. We ask ourselves how can we make this given technology or given solution turn for the use of our clients, for their benefit. How it can be evolved so that our clients can use it? This is what we do on a regular basis: being proactive with our clients. We either held a workshop for a couple of clients and introduce that given technology or we show them what we did as rapid prototypes. Also in some cases we come up with a couple of ideas that translate beyond our services and go towards their marketing and business purposes.

We want our clients to be able to position themselves as innovators and leaders in their fields, not as followers.

Also, we always share our knowledge within the organization, because we believe that creatives, account managers can later on identify a problem or come up with a concept that uses that given technology. Therefore, is not something that pays out immediately, but it might come handy later on the process or the business activity. And it also helps to keep the brains within the agency well informed, up to date and on a permanent creative and strategic thinking level.

AdH: You also had your own products, such as Totoya Creatures. Do you intent to keep on producing new ones for other clients or not?

T.G: Personally, I think that smart toys can be a big thing and they will be a huge thing, like Totoya. But I think that our main focus is not that now.

From a company strategy point of view I don’t know what comes next, but from what I see, it’s something we would like to do, given the opportunity.

A.N.: Right now we are not investing in this kind of hybrid. It’s not on the table. When we did Totoya Creatures we have been thinking a lot about how to create a hybrid, but we needed to have an idea first. If there is an idea on the table, that we all believe in or the majority of the decision makers believe in, then we would be more than happy to do it.

A physical project come with more financial and production risks than a digital product, therefore it needs a lot of thinking and courage behind it.  We will keep on monitoring this aria and weighting any kind of good idea that comes up.

AdH: What is your favorite game, but not created by you. Why?

T.G.: For me the best game app is 2 Cars from Ketchapp. I like it because is really simple as idea, is one tapper and really challenging on the other hand, as a player. Is really competitive. Overall I believe that the best game in the world is eVoline. Is set in space and I think that in terms of complexity, in terms of mimicking the real world there is not even a close runner up behind it. Is the best in the world.

Still, currently what I enjoy the most in League of Legends, because of its competitive nature.

A.N.: On mobile, mine is Monument Valley.

Possible CEE is delivering digital creative solutions for curious clients for more than 18 years now. They create, design, develop, research, plan, measure and optimize. Technology-bred. Thriving on fresh ideas. Asking questions. Lots of them. Meticulous with the details.