Think Toys
Build a toyset, not a pile of assets.
For the client: a plain-English way to talk about the game.
TV as a Games Platform
Casual games before the casual boom.Agile before it had a manifesto.An app store before the App Store.
How a small studio in Scotland shipped more than 150 games on a set-top box built to show television, not play games.
“…the only platform in the world where we could finish development at 5pm on a Friday, have the game live in front of six million people by 8pm, and know by 9am on Monday morning whether or not it was a hit.”
— Colin Anderson, Managing Director, Denki
The surface
The box was built to show TV. We taught it to play games.
Sky’s digital box sat in one in three British homes. It was made to decode broadcast streams, not run games, so every game had to embrace constraints.
- 47 different box models in the field
- A remote read six times a second. A console reads 30 to 60.
- One key at a time
- Music or sound effects, never both
- 600–800 KB for the whole game
- No saving until 2007, so players used four-digit pass codes
- Games broadcast on a loop, not downloaded
- A box update could break a live game overnight
“They’re not meant for playing games – they’re meant for broadcasting MPEG streams, so it’s an abuse of the box in many ways.”
— Gary Penn, Denki, 2008
Casual games · An app store before the App Store
It was an app store before the App Store. For players nobody yet called casual.
Sky Gamestar sold games the way app stores would years later: a free taste first, then pay to play. A new game launched every week, and the favourites came back with new episodes.
Free to try→60p a credit→Day pass→Pay per minute
billed through the phone line.
- Almost two million people played every month.
- About two-thirds were women and most of the rest were kids.
- Players ranged from six to sixty: not your typical PlayStation gamer.
One Denki word game, Word Crunch, brought in
2.5%of Sky Active’s entire annual revenue in 2005.
“Interactive TV was the first platform in the world to offer game developers digital distribution with micro-payments.”
— Colin Anderson, 2009
Agile before it had a manifesto
We didn’t run a traditional games studio. We ran creative assembly lines.
Each Entertainment Product Architect had two or three games on the go at once, each at a different stage, like orders in a restaurant kitchen. Clients named a backup title four weeks out, so a broadcast slot never went empty.
- 6–10 weeksfrom idea to live on Sky
- 4–6 weeksfrom idea to live on DirecTV
- 2 weeksfor each new episode(DLC before it went mainstream)
- 2–3 gamesin development at any time per Product Architect
“Because you have a process that’s been scaled to fit the time available, the wastage is minimal – sometimes there isn’t any at all.”
— Colin Anderson, 2008
There were four distinctive qualities to Denki’s development process
Four rules kept the line moving.
Think Lateral
Build in layers on placeholders, adding detail as needed.
For the client: a sense of scale early and a rapid feedback loop.
Think Editable
All components are malleable, modular and editable.
For the client: maximises convenience and speed of iteration.
Think Reusable
Use understood and/or established repertoire (e.g. concepts; tools; software).
For the client: derisked development, and future iterations quicker and cheaper.
Written down in June 2000.
The phases
Production is only a fifth of the job.
Most studios spend the majority of their time building the product. We spent the majority of ours:
- defining what is to be built;
- proving critical components and concepts early and cheaply; and then
- polishing the final product to create the most satisfying, stimulating experience possible.
- Preliminaries (before the clock starts): the Product Architect defines the game with the client before a dev team is committed.
- Pre-production · 40%: design it, specify it and prove the critical components of play, then the game, on the real hardware.
- Production · 20%: build the full product in its true form (audio, visual, tactile). The client has already approved the functional product pass.
- Post-production · 40%: edit and embellish the spectacle, and test on every box in the field.
- Postscript (after the clock stops): archive everything, create the marketing assets, capture lessons learned and get ready for the next episode.
The evolution
Every game was playable before it was pretty.
Shrek for Sky, at four of the gates it passed through. Each build was a deliverable the client could play, review and feed back on.
Concept Preliminaries
Visualisations of play, to establish the feel, form, function and scale of the concept on the target hardware.
Play 1.0 Pre-production
The core concept running on the real box, with simple shapes standing in for everything. The only question that counts: how does it feel to play?
Alpha Production
A first pass of depth and detail is added. The first time it looks, sounds and feels like the game.
Beta Post-production
Polish, effects and spectacle, then tested on every box in the field.Feel and function first, form second. A game that isn’t fun in grey boxes won’t be fun in full colour.
The Product Architect
The Product Architect turned client wants into live games in 6–10 weeks.
Brought in to expand the portfolio. I joined in 2006 as Denki’s third Entertainment Product Architect. DirecTV was about to open its Game Lounge in the US, and it needed games on its shelf from launch day. Before Denki I’d worked at DMA Design on Grand Theft Auto and GTA 2, then produced for web and mobile (J2ME games, pre-iPhone).
End-to-end ownership. The Product Architect led the design, development and delivery of each game: pitching concepts; defining client requirements; designing the game; prototyping play; enabling iterative development and incremental delivery; coordinating stakeholder feedback; managing risk; and ensuring final delivery to time, budget and quality.
Mastered the flywheel. I didn’t rewrite the process. I learned it, refined how I ran it and optimised it for end-to-end flow of value. It led to me becoming Producer on what Denki did next, Quarrel: BAFTA Scotland Best Game, 2011.
“I’d been producing stuff for years, but this felt like the first time I’d had a real chance to hone my craft… Something a lot of people overlook is that muscle building which is so critical in building your skill or your specialism.”
— Sean Taylor, Eurogamer, 2012
The output
More than 150 games, from a team of 20.
- ~75%of everything Sky Games published in 2006
- 1m+plays for Denki Blocks! in its first six months
- 2networks: Sky in the UK, DirecTV in the US
Super Breakout was rarely off air from its first broadcast in 2002. Develop’s Best Emerging-Platform Developer, 2003. TIGA’s Best Developer, 2007.
“Having a team of 20 people building 150 products in seven years – that’s a lot of development skill.”
— Colin Anderson, 2008
What transfers
Everything is a games platform now. You just need the right creative assembly line.
In October 2025 Netflix put games on the TV, with your phone as the controller. Two of its five launch titles were new takes on Boggle and Tetris. Denki had shipped both for Sky by 2007, played with a remote. Netflix now has a games team called TV as a Platform.
The problems haven’t changed: a ten-foot screen, input lag, a room full of mixed abilities, and going from a show to a game as easily as pressing a button.
- Embrace constraints. Define what good looks like on the target device, and design for its input first.
- Be the most valuable partner. Put as much into the client as into the game. Respect every IP. Create more value than you capture.
- Invest in people, not ideas. Small, exceptional teams beat clever concepts every time.
- Build creative assembly lines. Front-load risk, back-load polish. Iterate in layers. Ship in short, fast loops.
- Think like a player.
- Hook in 5 seconds.
- Hands-on in 10.
- Delight inside 60.