Brad Hart of Perforce Software On The Future of Gaming
Decide how you will monetize the game early. Will it be a classic purchase, download and go, or an ad-supported game? Will it be a combination of both? If ad-sponsored, how will you do it? Will it be intrusive to gameplay or part of the experience? These are critical decisions.
As a part of our series about what’s around the corner for the gaming industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Brad Hart.
Brad Hart is the CTO/VP, product management, Digital Creation and Planning at Perforce Software. In these roles, Brad is responsible for the product strategy of the Perforce Digital Creation and Planning product suite — including Helix Core, IPLM, Hansoft, Helix ALM and other clients and plugins. Brad has more than 20 years of experience in high-tech companies focused on optimizing development pipelines. He specializes in software engineering process, design, and implementation.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share the “backstory” behind what brought you to this particular career path?
I earned my degree in mechanical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and worked at United Technologies and Texas Instruments designing aerospace and automotive components. My interests quickly started to lean toward computer hardware/software, so I decided to return to WPI to continue my education with a focus on Unix, Scripting, Networking and C/C++. Armed with my new skillset, I took my first software role at Rational Software, supporting ClearCase Unix customers, where I then quickly moved into a sales engineering role. I left Rational to join Eprise as a release engineer and later moved to Nervewire, where I continued to leverage my expertise with ClearCase.
Eventually, I joined forces with other ClearCase experts to found AccuRev in 2001, building the next-generation version control product. I ran product management and sales engineering, helping numerous large software and hardware development companies transform their development process and displacing ClearCase, CVS, SVN, and others. MicroFocus acquired AccuRev in 2014 and a few years later, I joined Perfecto Mobile as the VP of product management for their SaaS-based mobile and desktop web testing platform. In 2019, Perforce acquired Perfecto, which resulted in my new role within the organization as the CTO/VP of Product Management for Helix Core suite of products, where I sit today.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Through the process of growing a start-up, I have many stories and experiences I could share, but one interesting experience completely changed my approach to the sales process. Sales engineers are often asked to attend sales calls and run a standard, well-rehearsed demo. Most sales engineers are happy to do so and are excited to show off the best features of their product. Early at AccuRev, I was in a very competitive sales process with an entrenched fan of a competing product. I had the key stakeholders from the prospect in the room, and I was about to dive into the demo. I knew this would be tough as there was a not-so-secret internal bias toward the competitor. I decided to do something different: I closed my laptop and approached the whiteboard. I ran my first real “discovery session,” asking many questions related to business goals, technical initiatives on how to achieve them, the current state of their tools and workflow and I kept digging for pain points.
On the whiteboard, I outlined an optimal process and desired state the stakeholders agreed would be ideal and dramatically help them reach their goals. Then, I re-opened my laptop and showed them how to do what I detailed on the whiteboard using our product. I looked at the competitor’s internal champion and asked if they could achieve the same vision — he reluctantly said no. We won the deal, and I forever changed my sales approach thanks to this experience.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Without a doubt, my parents. Both were entrepreneurs and provided wonderful examples of innovation and work ethic my entire life. They taught me to chase my dreams and not be afraid to take chances. They were very supportive and encouraging, especially in the early days of AccuRev, which, like any start-up, had its share of challenging times.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
Coaching is a big part of my life — I’ve spent numerous years coaching youth football and carrying that same passion for coaching to my managerial style. I am proud of how many people I have coached and helped grow in their careers over the years, and in some cases, completely changed their roles to better suit what they cared most about. Sharing what you’ve learned and helping bring out the best in others is very rewarding.
Helping our customers do their job better by improving how they work so that they can deliver better products to their customers is another area of success I’m proud to see through. Our customers make some of the world’s best video games and critical chips that are used in cell phones and cars — all of which are products that end-consumers get tremendous value from and enjoy. We help make that happen.
Ok fantastic. Let’s now move to the main focus of our discussion. Can you tell us about the technological innovations in gaming that you are working on?
There are many indie gaming studios in the market, with new ones constantly emerging. For many studios, their journey starts as a part-time job, something they do on nights and weekends when not working at their full-time job, often at a AA or AAA studio. Smaller studios typically do not have the administrative/IT expertise required to effectively manage their Helix Core server infrastructure, posing some challenges. At this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC), we announced partnerships with Microsoft Azure and AWS to deliver a turnkey Helix Core Cloud experience, effectively eliminating the administrative requirements to establish a fully functional Helix Core environment.
How do you think this might disrupt the status quo?
Even small studios need the unprecedented scalability of Helix Core. The Helix Core Cloud offering eliminates the barrier to entry for smaller studios, allowing them to enjoy all the enterprise benefits of Helix Core without taking on the administrative load.
You, of course, know that games and toys are not simply entertainment, but they can be used for important purposes. What is the “purpose” or mission behind your company? How do you think you are helping people or society?
Perforce strives to provide enterprise-grade DevOps products to our customers to help them transform their businesses to deliver their products to their customers faster, cheaper and of a higher quality than ever before. Our customers create the games people love to play, the phones that are entrenched in their daily life, the computers children learn on, the technology that businesses run on, the cars we drive, the planes we fly and the medical devices we depend on to sustain a high quality of life. We are proud to help them do that.
I’m very interested in the interface between games and education. How do you think more people (parents, teachers etc.) or institutions (work, school etc.) can leverage games and gamification to enhance education?
Learning is best done when it is interesting and fun. Gamification helps keep learners interested. As game engine technology has expanded its capabilities, it opens a new realm of immersive learning where worlds can be explored in an ad-hoc or structured way for students to look and interact with past, present and future worlds. The game engines embed real-world physics, so the interactions mimic real life in such a way that they can experiment and learn on the fly, visually, without relying solely on text in a book.
How would you define a “successful” game? Can you share an example of a game or toy that you hold up as an aspiration?
One great example of a successful game is Epic’s Fortnite. Their success has come with unparalleled usage metrics for quite an extended amount of time. Players enjoy playing the game and are loyal to it. So, it must be fun, engaging and open to users of all skill levels. Continued innovation, such as the Unreal Editor for Fortnite, allows users to create their content within Fortnite, deepening their experience and enable direct involvement with gameplay creation.
What are the “5 Things You Need to Know To Create a Successful Game” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
- Ask yourself, who is the target user? What do they care about? What do they want? It is critical not to make a “one size fits all” game. Determine the target users and tailor the game experience for them. Get the initial target nailed before looking to expand.
- How will you drive adoption? How will you build awareness? There are many channels, from traditional advertising, marketplaces, social media and word of mouth. It’s hard to be successful if no one knows about the game!
- Make it immersive. The game should be engaging, immersive and fun. People play games to reduce stress, let loose and accomplish new feats with skills acquired. They shouldn’t be easily distracted while playing.
- Keep the players coming back by continually challenging them. Continue to add new content with updates, enhancements and new levels.
- Decide how you will monetize the game early. Will it be a classic purchase, download and go, or an ad-supported game? Will it be a combination of both? If ad-sponsored, how will you do it? Will it be intrusive to gameplay or part of the experience? These are critical decisions.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 😊
“The Common Sense Movement.” I have always thought the world would be much better if we all used a bit more common sense. I think we tend to over-complicate the world, which leads to divisive and overly opinionated agendas. Most problems are more easily solved using a little bit of common sense. What’s the problem? What’s the desired result? What’s the most logical way to get there? What’s the simplest, most obvious way to accomplish our goals together?
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Seek first to understand.” Whether you are trying to sell to a prospective customer, lead a team, make a new friend or spend time with your family, you will always contribute to the conversation at a higher level if you ask questions and strive to learn what the other party cares about and what their needs are before you begin to espouse your opinions.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradburyhart/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/perforce
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
