Our lives have been changed by apps. Whether it’s Peggle or a Productivity suite, the way we interact with our phones have been altered forever. But how are these treasures created? We decided to go to MindSnacks, an educational game studio, to hear about the process firsthand.
At eight workers, MindSnacks is a small app studio—which is not to be confused for an office. “Offices are boring. Printers, scanners, pigeonholes. At studios, things are more fun.” The Creative Director, Pasquale D’Silva relayed. Though MindSnacks enjoys an unquestionably relaxed environment, the team works just as hard as they play.
Currently, MindSnacks has three learning-based apps, that use minigames to teach players French, Italian, with plans for Portuguese and ESL (English as a second language) next. CEO Jesse Pickard doesn’t feel restrained to language apps though. “We think that we can teach anything with MindSnacks.” He says. He and Pasquale excitedly rattle off a list: how to program, how to cook, how to fix your car, how to make really good meat cuts.
Even in the planning stages of a new app, MindSnacks works collaboratively like this. As a group, everyone from the Creative Director to the Programmers brainstorm dozens of game ideas. In these early phases, they rely heavily on meetings where everyone stays standing, which keeps most meetings mercifully short. Eventually they whittle the enormous list down to around double or triple the games they’ll actually end up producing.
This little slug goes from mini to monsieur as you progress through your French.
With the ideas in tow, they mock up “these really ugly games” and then beta test the games for functionality. The games are designed to be raw, functional but not yet polished, so they outsource much of this work to save the Programmers and Creative Director’s time. After further refining of the game mechanics, the games go to new play testers.
MindSnacks uses analytics to determine which games everyone plays and where they get stuck. Most of these rough games won’t make the cut, and the ones that do finally go through advanced prototyping by the staff. Then the games are produced and sold. But that’s not the end of the road for MindSnacks.
One of the minigames in MindSnacks French has you answering right answers to plug holes in a fishtank. Hold on little fella!
Unlike the masses of apps collecting dust on our iPhones, MindSnacks reacts to written reviews and information they receive using data analytics. They constantly improve the games, and are never done really polishing. “We think of MindSnacks as this never-ending service, not a static app.” Says Jesse. “We’re working on a product that constantly improves over time.”
Apparently the same goes for their workspace. Everyone’s packing up their bags to find piñatas to hang from the rafters in what’s being called their “first annual piñata hunt.”
MindSnacks returning from their first annual piñata hunt.
Work as an app developer and want to share your studio’s story? Do something else you think we’d like to know about? Shoot us an email at nic[AT]maclife.com.
