Who would you consider as your target audience for Backyard Monsters and how much has player feedback affected the game’s development? Also, how do you balance the tasks of appeasing your current fan base and attracting new players?
Our core audience is 97% males. The reason I made Backyard Monsters, was to be able to play an RTS game in short sessions. I like to think that we’re providing some of that RTS magic to people who used to play them quite frequently, but now have a job or maybe a family, and just don’t have the time. Having said that, we have a lot of players who have racked up a few hundred hours of game play, and we still see people playing who were amongst the first few hundred to install the game.
We have a very active community with 132,000 registered members on the forum, 1.4 million message posts, and around 1000 players browsing at any one time. I read pretty much all of the comments and post as much as possible. It’s important for us that the fans have an open channel of communication with the developer. We’ve made several changes based on feedback from players.
It seems like browser based RTSs, like Backyard Monsters, are becoming increasingly popular. In fact, I’ve seen a number of similar games (RTS aspects and “check back tomorrow”) being released this year. What do you think the reasoning behind this?
With the release of Backyard Monsters and then Battle Pirates, and more recently War Commander, I think we’ve proven that it is indeed possible to have success on Facebook with a hardcore game and a much smaller audience.
Facebook has become a bigger medium for games. Why do you think that is, and what 
motivated the decision to put Backyard Monsters on Facebook?
We’ve always seen Facebook as a gaming platform. There is no reason why it should be treated differently from Steam or Xbox Live. I look forward to the day when I open Facebook, click on “games,” and see a wide range of titles that range from racing and action RPG, to simulation and sports. I think as more developers realize that putting a game on Facebook does not mean it has to be watered down or have to look like a cartoon, this will happen.
