Let’s Play a Game – Todd Green on The Product Experience

Todd Green knows a few things about creating and managing things that attract a lot of attention – before he joined King (makers of Candy Crush etc), he helped to define the digital experience for The X Factor, and the [Your Country] Idol and [Your Country]’s Got Talent franchises.  We talked to him about how to keep innovating when your old work is some of your biggest competition, how to approach research and discovery for casual gaming, and what it takes to be a great product person in his space.
Quote of the Episode
The eternal mystery which has always absolutely fascinated me about radio, TV and games – and you can also see this in art, or in literature, and in movies – is, how do you make something fun? And how do you make a business out of that?
So when we’re building new products, in discovery for example – it’s all about fun, does it feel fun to us first playing in the team? Does it feel fun to colleagues? Then we’ll start reaching out to players. Can we build something which is really fun? The feeling of capturing that feels like lightning in a bottle when you’ve got something good.
Listen if you’d like to learn more about

* Gaming apps
* How to make products fun
* Interactive entertainment

Links mentioned in this episode

* Find Todd on Twitter and LinkedIn
* Want to work at King? They’re hiring. 

Hosts
The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.
Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. Now the Product Director at Symec, Lily also runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media and entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. Now a trainer, Discovery and Leadership consultant, he’s spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg and Manchester), the Business of Software, Turing Festival, a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford, and Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe.

Music
Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. Listen to more on their Facebook page
Suggest a guest
Have you seen someone give a great talk? Suggest a guest to us here
Talk to us

* Tweet at us!
* Use the #podcast channel in the Visit the podcast's native language site