Pick A Pet targets female game players

THE advent of the smartphone has turned women in their 30s and 40s into casual gamers and made them a key target market for games companies such as SixMinute games in Dublin.

Set up in 2013, SixMinute preparing for the global launch of a new game, Pick a Pet, which will be aimed primarily at the female game player.

“The smartphone has put a games device into the hands of everyone. Players of casual games come from a wide demographic, though the most typical spenders are females aged between 35 and 50 who have time to play and who have the disposable income to spend on game micro-transactions,” says CEO Rory Walsh.

The smartphone not only puts games devices into peoples hands but it also opened up the games market creating opportunities for companies such as SixMinute which were not there when games consoles dominated.

One of a number of new games developing companies which were set up in Ireland in recent years, SixMinute was founded by a group of five games experts who worked for the Dublin operation of international games company PopCap before it closed in 2012.

“We had discussed the possibility of setting up a new games company even before PopCap announced that it was closing.

“Our founding team includes the lead developers on games such as Peggle which won a Bafta for Mobile Game of the Year and Apple’s iPhone game of the year PvZ. Our team has the capacity to develop multiple games,” says Mr Walsh.

When news broke that Pop Cap was pulling out of Ireland the group, which includes chief technical officer Seadna Long, received an offer of assistance from Enterprise Ireland which is keen to support the fledgling games industry in Ireland

Setting up at an incubator unit in Games Ireland early 2013, the five founders began working on building a games platform and set to work on developing “fun, social, memorable and long lasting gaming experiences for people of all ages across mobile and other platforms”.

Early fundraising activity helped SixMinute secure investment last summer from Delta Partners, ACT Venture Capital and Enterprise Ireland which also enrolled the company on its high-potential start-up programme.

The first game, Monster Mini-games, was launched on the market on Facebook last summer and on an android app last October.

“We published this ourselves and it has built up a loyal following and is being developed further,’’ says Mr Walsh.

While the company employs a range of people with skills in developing games, he says the key difficulty has been in finding staff in Ireland with experience in publishing games.

But the presence of Google and Facebook in Dublin has been useful and he says the company has worked closely with both of them.

While Monster mini-games has been moderately successful SixMinute has more ambitious plans for its second game Pick a Pet.

This has been released to a test market and is expected to be ready for launch in the summer.

The game is mainly being targeted at the female smartphone users who make up 60% of the market for casual games and who are responsible for the success of Candy Crush Saga which is estimated to be generating over $1 million (€720,549) a day for its developer King.

SixMinute is now working on a third game which is expected to be released early next year.

The company operates from premises at Camden Street in Dublin and now employs a staff of ten. Mr Walsh is hoping to recruit more games developers and sales and marketing people and increase the number to 20 by the end of the year.

In getting Pick a Pet out to as many users as possible SixMinute is now exploring the possibility of partnering with a publishing company.

The company’s aim is to get millions of players for Pick a Pet by the end of the year and long term to gain international recognition in the games space.