Playing by instinct

“He hasn’t burned through millions while developing Game Creator. His team has done a great job of building the software on the side, while doing regular subcontracting work to pay their bills. For me, as an investor, Dan has taken the risk out of the equation.”

Milward’s innovations haven’t been as popular at home as he would like. He’s “very disappointed” that Vodafone and Telecom haven’t bought Game Creator. Two years ago, he developed a tool that allowed mobile users to access Wikipedia on their phones. Telco giants in Singapore and China grabbed the software immediately. Vodafone and Telecom eventually came on board, but took a lot of convincing. Some Kiwi telco executives, Milward says, haven’t got a clue what young customers want.

“Mobile operators spend too long trying to come up with their own YouTubes and Wikipedias. Finally, they’re realising that they are just channels for other content. When we started Instinct, we were in our early 20s, dealing with marketing execs who didn’t seem to get that. It was really frustrating to see a lot of crap cellphone content going out there. There’s an old guard of baby boomers trying to tell us what content is cool and what isn’t. It’s very difficult to convince them that gaming is worthwhile.”

Gaming is only half of Instinct’s portfolio: it also has e-commerce projects in motion. Instinct was first to design a freely downloadable shopping cart plug-in that allows bloggers on the Wordpress platform to sell their goods via Paypal or Google Checkout. The plug-in has reaped 300,000 free downloads and over 10,000 paid upgrades. Competitors have popped up, but sales are still rising.

Naturally, there has been growing interest in Instinct’s assets. Four years ago, Wellington creative agency Chrometoaster offered to buy Instinct but Milward refused. He now plans to sell in two or three years. Whoever buys Instinct will be buying a whole community, including projects like the user-created product review site Get Shopped and an enterprise offering SMS services such as text-to-win competitions.

Milward’s post-Instinct plans include finding new ways to market green technology, but for now the company keeps him busy. He is talking to New Zealand Post about an e-commerce project; he is running Wordpress camps around the country; he has requests to speak overseas and to contribute to books about gaming and business.

The self-taught gaming guru didn’t see any of this coming.