Atomic Scaling with Ludovic Bodin | Lessons From the Games Industry to the World!

hello everyone and welcome the gaming industry potentially holds important business lessons for many other kinds of Industries or product areas and in fact gaming has been the lead in driving platforms like home Computing VR mobile applications and Innovative consumer business models like freeo playay so today we are joined by Ludovic bodden who has basically a 20-year experience in Tech and gaming globally he was early in social games and free-to-play games with the largest Unity games on browser on Facebook a social shooter called Uber strike I remember those games very fondly Ludovic you then shifted to investment around four years ago and you've already had a couple of unicorns I believe in your Investment Portfolio and aside from other things I think you are most recently the author of atomic scaling which is the focus of our discussion today in which he shares with us his journey leading to this book and really where he talks about how small team can create huge growth and

trying to take this topic that I mentioned before applying the lessons learned from the games industry and from gaming to other areas thanks for joining us welcome Ludovic thanks for having me Joseph so I thought I'd just start with like the the whole this thesis right why do you think it is that gaming has lessons for other Industries and what kind of was the origin story behind your motivation to write this book yeah absolutely I mean the the origin story for for me actually start around 2013 it was in in January 2013 so at that time so I I own a video game company as you said we were doing like Shooters and so on we had Studio we have we we have studio in Asia we have investor in Silicon valet and I'm

traveling a lot back and forth between Asia and silicon valet and doing a lot of fundraising and that particular day in in January 2013 it's it's a Tuesday and I'm in Finland I'm in elsi it's very cold it's like 8:30 in the morning and I'm about to meet uh one man uh for the first time uh we having breakfast downstairs of his building and this man is also the the CEO of a video game company it just launch his mobile game about 6 months ago and and I know at that time already that he's on his way to be big to be billionaire also and that mine that man here on my on my left is actually hilka hilka panaman the the SE of of supercell so hilka is is wearing these jeans like with his black T-shirt with the supercell logo on it and we exchange a few wordss and very quickly even if it's the first time we we meet I feel

very at ease with him and I start sharing with him how how I feel so I I'm explaining to him that all game is growing and we're hiring a lot of people and we're raising funds but I had one specific problem is like the more people I add to the team the less productive I I feel our team is and also the more pressure I I feel both on the financial and just for our audience lovic you're saying predictive and not productive right uh productive productive sorry oh productive productive okay yeah okay sorry yeah predictive also yeah yeah we can talk about that because I I I did read parts of the book so yeah but please go ahead so the the the team is getting bigger and bigger and the my problem is is not getting solved basically and I mean you you're you're an entrepreneur and part of the audience if they entrepreneur they probably know know the feeling like I feel like kind of running into a circle

just the bigger bigger team more and more financial pressure but you know my problem is not getting solved and I I pose and I basically look at Ila and and then Ila say why don't you stop Haring and instead focus on your existing team and I I pause and and then why don't you stop hurrying and instead focus on your existing team and and then then he start to explain to me supercell and he he Bas you know which is on his logo on his on his t-shirts and he's basically saying that his team at supercell who are developing game are usually three to five people and his objective is to keep the team as small as possible for as long as possible while growing successfully as much as as possible and that was very much kind of the first seed in in my mind

and fast forward when I became investor a few years later I have to decide in which company and which team I want to invest and I I over the years I saw I see many more companies succeeding and I realize this importance of this first principle kind of stay keep the team as small as possible for as long as possible and this kind of became a a mentra for for me and ultimately culmina cul culminating into the the creation of Atomic Atomic scaling so stay as small as possible for as long as possible that the atomic part while growing you know financially as much as possible that's the scaling part and that's that's kind of that was the first seed and how I start working on Atomic scaling oh that's great to hear and just for our audience I have actually run the numbers on kind of Revenue per employee for a number of gaming studios in the world and supercell is absolutely one of the highest in terms of Revenue per employee

I mean UB ubisoft's kind of at the bottom but they do an incredible job and so it kind of sounds like what happened is that you have been talking to various game industry experts you have a background in gaming yourself and based upon those Lessons Learned maybe they were kind of germinating in inside of your head and then when you shifted to an invest to become an investor you were trying to create a framework for yourself and tell me if I'm right or wrong on this but it sounds like you were creating this framework for yourself or how H how are you able to kind of create this kind of way of thinking about successful companies based upon your experiences with in the gaming industry and talking to these leading game industry experts is that would that be fair to say little bit yeah absolutely and and actually ilka planted this idea in my mind in 2018 but it kind of was in my mind and and stay there when I start writing Atomic scaling I was that's at the beginning of covid and I was basically already like a

full-time investor and is starting to do pretty well I got indeed two unicorns pretty pretty quickly in my in my portfolio which was which was nice but actually the idea of atomic scaling came from someone else and from actually another gaming gaming guy and that's actually also a gaming entrepreneur who has around 350 employees Mega hit game he has a few very good game and one very big PC platform game yeah and and as you said is his company is actually the most profitable company per employee in USA in front of Apple and Google and Microsoft and so on he's based in Seattle and yeah he's a bit of a legion in the gaming industry he's a founder of valve with games like Counter Strike and DOTA and steam obviously so that's that Gabe so Gabe at the beginning of Co kind of threw some scene at me that's kind of like wow it was a bit of he basically say just this like just this simple idea that the sets of lessons we learn in the video game business will be true of a

much wider range of Industry tomorrow but no one yet has shared the the lesson learned from the video game business and how this can apply to much wider range of of Industry so it was kind of an epiphany for me and I was at the beginning of my new life as an investor I was looking to kind of formalize my investment tasis and it became my my call so I wanted to make an impact and share the lessons we learned in the video game business not just for the people within the gaming industry but also for the people outside of the the gaming industry beginning of covid you know everything was was going online gaming industry was doing great everyone start to kind of notice it because we were 100% online and other people suddenly had to had to shift and yeah that's that's that's how it that's how it all happen got it and I I want to say like I was actually going through the book and going through some of your end endorsements so you are quite I I don't

I I would have to say that the endorsements for this book are just incredible right so from Peter Vester Baka from roio Ila Kevin Lynn co-founder of twitch Gabe Newell who you mentioned there are like so I could go on and on but like the endorsements have been pretty crazy how did you meet these guys what how did you build such an incredible Network in the gaming industry and be able to speak to these guys to be able to learn learn some of the insights that you have used in your book yeah I mean I've I've been uh I've been in the gameing industry for and it's a tech industry for a while and travel a lot of Asia where I'm based Al of the time from Europe and right and and spent a lot of time in in USA or close to close to 10 years I I think like one of the reason why people are so excited about this is like people want to share and everybody knows that the gaming industry is is doing extremely well and we we actually share between

each other we I mean all everyone I think in the gaming industry is very generous but we kind of live in this bubble and I think with covid at least for me that was really like kind of this big shock like I had investment in gaming industry I investment outside of gaming industry I knew my companies that are 100% focused online are going to do amazingly well but I had also stress about the company where to suddenly go from 5% online to 10% 20% 100% online so I think that's that's that's a reason like people want to share and want to share beyond the the the the gim the gim industry right and I hear that is something kind of specific to The Finnish gaming culture as well right where they like to share a lot and I know in your book you do talk about kind of the difference between finite and infinite games not So Much from the perspective of zero Su versus infinite games but in other aspects but to this point do think that's one great thing

about our industry is that there are so many people who aren't seeing each other so much as competition but wanting to help each other and to help the industry grow and I do think that based upon some of the things that I I saw in your book I I would highly recommend folks to check it out because there is certainly a lot of wisdom from a lot of the folks who you spoke to and so I kind of understand how you kind of came about with the idea for the book and kind of the thesis behind it but then what was your motivation as well to to actually write the is was it to share with with more folks broadly about hey guys this is the games industry this shouldn't be a secret this can be applied to many other Industries what was the specific motivation to to to write the book yeah the the the you're you're exactly you're exactly right like the the first the first motivation was to was to share this Collective wisdom not just with the people within the gaming industry but with the people outside of of the gim

industry and I wanted to also have this ability as an investor to read and to basically formalize my investment thesis but as an entrepreneur I also wanted to create this kind of navigation system where you basically have this like big principle from the gim industry that make the game industry so so successful today and you try to kind of apply that to outside of outside of the game industry not just within the Gimme industry but also outside of the Gimme industry certainly if if the book does well it could help increase your reputation we're living in a reputation driven world at this point or like the social media influence world so maybe that would also help you with your investment businesses was that also a motivation yeah it's it's also you know it's also a way to kind of attract the right uh the right company that you want to to partner I mean the the more the companies are aligned with atomic scaling principle the EAS easier for me it is to to give a go and and want to

invest money and and network and support and time and so on to these to these companies right and so I think the the kind of Crux of the the book or that that the kind of framework that you're describing is what you call the 3ps 3 RS framework people prediction Playbook Revenue reach retention I thought maybe we could just kind of briefly I mean I I I think I again I would highly recommend the audience to to get the book and to check it out on their own but just to give the audience kind of like an a high level understanding of the topics that you cover could could we walk through the 3ps three Rs and then and then how did maybe you could even give us a little bit of backstory behind how you came to this specific framework of 3ps and three Rs yeah absolutely so the the the people part you know start with this first principle which is to keep the team as small as possible for as long as

possible that's really like like the the the atomic part of it and within within this within this first principle I basically deconstruct like how do you actually create small team that are extremely capable and have extraordinary output and around that there is multiple ideas that we go we go through that I'm not going to go into uh into details before but we talk for example about this ability to go from Left Brain to right brain this ability to create this magical pair and all the all the trust aspects behind beond the team and so but maybe before I address this like because there is a bit of elephant in the room when I talk to people about Atomic scaling is if we want to keep the team as small as possible for as long as possible like what does it mean for the employees of the companies who are actually going to adop Atomic scaling a lot of them by default are like okay that means we're going to start like

firing people and having less and less people do that means we're not going to hire people etc etc so the kind of the elephant in in the room here is like we're we're not there is there is the old way of of scaling and the old way of scaling is like you you grow and you just hire more and more people and you become bigger and bigger and bigger I've personally seen time and time again the the damage to companies and Friends running this this company and some of them with quite dramatic outcome and when the when the bubble burst and it always does the the the fall is extremely painful and and dangerous on the other hand you have like all this traditional company like I I call them kind of the fat company that the one with maybe big Revenue big Workforce and maybe even pretty good profit and this company today clearly at risk of of of disruption from company are adopting AI adopting the atomic

scaling principle and so here with atomic scaling we're not trying to kind of it's not like a job killer it's like the idea of we it's more about having instead of a large team working on one project it's it's about having multiple small team like cells work like cells in organism walking on smaller and smaller and more and more focused projects so from there there like we basically want to give more ownership to employees but also more benefits to to the employees the we're encouraging to feel more empowered to have greater trust between the people to work better together and also to reward financially much greatly than the traditional the traditional model yeah and and I I did read that part of the book which I thought was great and again I would highly recommend the audience to get the book and read some of those Concepts there but maybe I

could also push back a little bit or ask for a clarification because the the general themes that you talk about in terms of empowerment you talk about like the supercell notion of reverse pyramid in the book for example and and I actually think that it's quite Fair some of the Notions you talk about in ter in terms of like sharing some of the the the outcomes of of employees that actually deliver better results but I also think in some cases there are for example so Steve Jobs was famous for a quote in which he mentioned that the best employees don't need to be managed and I I and I believe that to be true that there are certain employees the people part where you have people who are really great who are overachievers Steve Jobs talked about W being a 30X engineer but that's not necessarily the mindset of all people right and so there may be people in a company who don't have that mindset and for

example I started a company in India and just for our audience ludi's an investor in in my company as well but like the historical context in India has been a Services oriented company tell me the job I do the job I finish the job I go home and so in that context do you think it's is it only certain companies with those kinds of people like the Steve Jobs kind of people who can who can take advantage of some of these principles or how do you how would you create an organization to get those kinds of people who can move the needle in that way to empower those people because some people even if you Empower them they're going to be they're basically going to be like well I don't know what to do tell me what to do and then once they do their job they're going to be like okay I'm I'm done I'm going to go home I don't know what else like that mindset has not been taught to them for example and just wondering how you think about

situations like that yeah absolutely I mean one of the first thing is to look at the size of the team like if with that toic scaling we're trying to keep team that are like pizza pizza size type of type of Team like a small team like three five seven people like a type right so if the team is much smaller you basically suddenly start to see a lot more who is doing what basically there's a lot more transparency the plws become very visible at that point I see what you're saying yeah exactly yeah the the second point is we focus on magical pair so if you have a small team but if you don't have a magical pair on leading the team there is a good chance that the team is not as performant as as it could be and magical pair within the magical pair you have like this this leadership happening so you don't necessarily have one boss out of the two but you have this two people constituting the magical pair that basically become somehow the the management force of the leadership force

of the company not necessarily playing the boss but they actually driving the the direction so if if First Step you the team instead of being a big team meaning more than seven or eight people if it's a smaller team like three five seven people suddenly it's a lot easier to manage and second thing if you actually have a magical pair leading that suddenly there is actually leadership there is some kind of of of management right right and I think the next p we we mentioned prediction versus production I I think I was kind of preempting you because I I I did look through through your book but could you talk about what you mean by prediction yeah prediction like we we're talking about this idea of PVP so not player versus player but prediction versus versus prophecy so pre prediction is something that you actually you have a set of hypothesis and you actually measure you measure meure you set of hypothesis you see basically the your

hypothesis versus reality like Zinga probably is one of the company who kind of brought this to the gaming industry at at the level where we are where we are right now like this ability to constantly have hypothesis and constantly look at your hypothesis and measure versus what's happening right now as you are developing developing the game as you actually running their games in liveops and and so on so the first things that we look at on on the prediction part we also have like four principle within that is actually how you actually bring you give back the the power of prediction to the people like if you go to most company like gaming company and traditional company like non-gaming company most people don't know how to predict most people have not been taught how to predict you don't you don't really learn how to predict at school or at universities and so on it's not something like it's not something that we've been we've been taught so the first thing is like okay everyone here

has the capability to make prediction we encourage everyone to make prediction and we're going to teach people how to make a prediction uh within the prediction uh part we actually go through twitch who has been really famous within the industry to empower the people to uh to make more prediction and also using like mathematical kind of prediction and teaching people how to predict and since they got bought by Amazon uh this also kind of you know really match well the the culture of Amazon then once we actually agree on the fact that we should bring back the power of prediction to people and we we should start teaching to people we also teach people not only to predict but how to differentiate prediction versus prophecy prophecy is typically what happens in a meeting where people start to say okay we should increase by you know 20% of Revenue we should increase by 5% or activation rate or we should do this or we should do that and there is not no measurement there and people tend

to just follow who has a louder voice in the in the meeting so prophecy is not a bad thing it's actually necessary as you come up with hypothesis you look at gut filling you look at Benchmark and stuff like that but you need to start to be able to differentiate the PVP the prediction versus the prophecy and start shifting prophecy toward toward prediction and you do that and we go through how Gabe also valve recommend this this cycle you go through the cycle of hypothesis measurement and change and the faster you are at this the the better the more productive your your company become G Gabe has actually a code that I really like that I use quite a lot in in my workshops and in in this in this chapter he said predictions matter as much as production so prediction matter as as much as prodiction the ability to

predict to make proper hypothesis measure change quickly and and basically have your hypothesis match in reality as quickly as as possible is actually more powerful than the production capability and also take example of of traditional company like lvmh like the the French Luxury company everybody thinks lvmh is really good on the on the right part of the brain you like the creative part and so on which is true they have very designers and they both very expensive company with very good designers and so on but actually the core of lvmh and the core of Bernardo who is actually an engineer uh from the the top engineering school from France poly technique the core of Bernar Aro a little bit like Jeff Bezos is his capability to make a prediction and to have all his subsidiaries because it's actually all fairly small team within the lvmh group uh been really good at prediction and the result of that is they have almost

zero waste if they produce a luxury bag the luxury B get sold and they don't do discount and they don't do this because they're really really good at knowing what they should produce based on their capability to to to predict and L when when it comes to prediction how how wide or how broad is a scope of prediction that you would recommend for company so for example Zinga is famous for expected outcomes which is largely product driven right so we introduce this feature we think this change will have this impact and so from a product perspective I I I can totally see it absolutely makes sense you should be trying to predict those kinds of things related to product production of number of handbags that we're going to sell things like that but then internally and not necessarily product or manufacturing oriented do you also apply predictions within the

organization and the company itself or would you just apply mainly to like product outcomes for example yeah some of the example we take with with twitch for example and that's while we're writing the book we're also running Workshop to with gaming and non-gaming Company to test the materials and so and one thing that really resonates with with a lot of all of companies is how to apply prediction also to your production capability for example if you're developing a software encouraging your engineers to come up with prediction on how many days it's going to take to develop this or that features and once you actually ask this ask them like what percentage chance do you think it's going to if the engineer say oh I think it's going to take three days to develop this feature then ask the question what percentage change do you think it's actually going to be complete within 3 days well well and that's actually some of the example we

take with with twitch well maybe 60% okay that's 60% that's not a 100% that's not 80% so why 60% and then you actually go back through back and force and you realize that maybe it's not a three days uh prediction but maybe it's actually a four days or five days and it's much better to have this conversation early on and have high confidence that this will happen within five days for example rather than just get the answer from the engineer yeah yeah I'll do it because the boss said we should do it quickly so encouraging people to have this conversation back and force put mathematical hypothesis like 80% chance and so to kind of have this back and force conversation is something that twitch encourage and got really good at in valve and other company and I know like for for engineers like doing time estimates for engineering tasks is something that's controversial some some like it some don't but I I think that to

your point at least if you start having a conversation about why why three hours versus 5 hours or half a day versus a full day or whatever then you can start to think more critically about it and I can certainly see that for example it could be applied to other kinds of disciplines and processes right so for example you might have a certain HR or recruitment process or you have by adding a written test or changing who the interviewer is what do we think the the the probability of making a successful hire or a or a high performing hire is or things like that I can see that being potentially applied to many other areas but I I'm just not having done that practice in terms of trying to predict those things I do think that it's worth reading the cases in your book where it has been applied and understanding how it has been successfully applied by companies like zinga in at least from a product perspective and to try and at least

think about where else can we apply these kinds of principles of prediction to help benefit the company in some ways yeah and we also took the example of voodoo the upper casual game developer like one one of the things that I think one of the big revolution that happened fairly recently with the hyper casual game was the fact that we could test an idea by running Facebook ads very very quickly before actually really investing in making making the games and I think it applied to to many things like when when I wrote the book for example like I need to take take a while to write a book like seven seven different manuscripts editor publisher you know a lot of back and forth and so on did you predict how long it would take you well I I I had very bad prediction that was more prophecy back then yeah yeah and one of the reason is I I it's actually my third book but it's actually the first book that will pass the finish line and being being fully

published the book is actually going out next month is going is going out actually for for GDC so in March yeah so one of one of the way to reduce also the the risk is as you're actually writing the book or as you're developing the game well you have beta testers that means you actually test your content with other writers with companies gaming non-gaming and you kind of and the content change a lot by doing that right so I I guess one of the other aspects of prediction that you're promoting is this notion of like testing and iterating very very rapidly yeah that's the the quicker you do it the the better yeah I mean especially in gaming industry it's it's been a little bit better in the last few years but it's so easy and I've done it multiple times as a as a game entrepreneur like it's so easy to have an idea and think this idea is going to be the best and you start working on it and suddenly you enter the tunnel and you think it's to take six months and two years later you're still walking and

it's and you're like I mean been there done that and yeah lost lost air in in yeah no that's so yeah the the quicker the quicker you do that the the better and I I I actually invested in a few fintech company and some of my favorite Investments where I spent quite a bit of time with this actually algo Trading Company and I just love algo Trading Company because they come up with an idea and within days they have the ID tested and and if it works well you start printing money basically and you can see on in real time your hypothesis versus reality which the reality actually are the trade the hypothesis is your win rate and and and so on and and this is this is beautiful like if you have almost no intermediary between your assumption and the market right and the third p is

Playbook yeah Playbook we talk a lot about about alignment and we talk about play to win and we talk about like different different things but maybe kind of to kind of share like the the the idea of of Playbook I'm going to maybe like just share a story that maybe illustrate illustrate illustrate this please the idea of of Playbook and and Alignment so I was actually not that long ago I was at the I was at the park with with my daughter with with Mia and with my oldest daughter and we we basically meet meet of friends and very quickly I I told them hey guys like what why don't you start playing the playing with the ball so I I throw them the ball and they start they start playing so you have one kid who is like kicking as hard as possible uh the ball another one who grab the ball with the hand start chasing the other and throwing and trying to tag the other kid and very quickly everyone is exhausted and boom suddenly you got one kid who got hit in the face and game over like kids start

to cry and it's so I I go and I I basically look at the damage I look at the kid and and and then I realize oh yeah so I told the I told the kids hey why don't we actually play soccer few of us are actually French so it's easy we know the rules we create two teams and there is one team with one player short so I end up playing as a as a good as a as a goalkeeper and you know we play for two hours and it's a lot of fun everybody enjoys it and no more injuries and the The Epiphany for me after the the kid got hit in hit in the face is I actually realized that they were playing the infinite game we talk a little bit about infinite game versus infinite game so in in gaming infinite games are basically game with no common rules so literally the game can change every time and every time there is a new player join in well the rules change and nobody

really know the rules and they're probably the most famous infinite game out there is actually business that's like it's exciting but at the same time human are not designed for infinite game we are made for finite games and in in fact actually as a gaming company as an game designer that's pretty much what we do all day we we design rules to play to turn an infinite game into into aite games so as as a player you know the first thing as a gamer you you do when you start playing a game is to try to understand the rules of the game so then you know how to win and if it's a team game you start to see okay how each teammate will actually play a specific role and how you will win the game but then think of business and think of your business like are you are you playing are you playing aite or in need game and specifically like you know

do do you know what it takes do you and do you teammates know what it takes to win in your in your business and if you're playing as as a as a team do you know do each of your teammates know their role in how we're going to to win and if you if you wake up in the morning like you know do you know what's going to be uh the Your Role at at winning at winning and and myself and many many people around me like if you if you're exhausted at the end of the day and you feel like you walk walk walk a lot but then you achieved nothing that's probably because you actually playing this infinite game and if you you know you might be confused about the rules and what you're trying to achieve and and so and and as a leader if I feel like this that means most likely the people working with me probably feel even more like this another sign of playing the infinite

game is if if you have a lot of traffic controls meeting what I call a Traffic Control meeting is typically when a team member comes to you and ask with for approval you know is we have this three a things you know additional clarification approval or appraisal so if a manager all day long and have done that as an entrepreneur many many times and it's prettyy painful and that's that's why also I want other people to not have this pain as much as I had in in the past if you play the traffic light meeting guy that means if all day long you're like okay green you can do it you know orange maybe not red no you don't do it if you do that a lot all day long but that's probably a sign that you actually playing an infinite game and that your team actually need more understanding of what the way that you're talking about a

finite versus an infinite game is really along the lines of understanding the rules or the bounds of the game and the importance to find alignment so it's a little it's less the sort of Simon sinic James car version of finite versus infinite games but I see what you're saying though in terms of knowing how to win and aligning the team is is kind of what you're saying is important in this case yeah and the and the The Playbook you have the the original Playbook we know which come come with like your your vision and your value and your and your why you know why we're doing this why why we created this company originally right and that's something that actually as an investor I remember for example with Lia game that you you have done extremely well I was very impressed when when you know when you've done that at the at the very start but then as you as as the game you know there is like maybe like five stage in the game game development you know from the game idea the formation of the team the game development the launch of the game and the liveops like while while the

original Playbook is the same the culture the value the why and so every time you actually transition from one stage to another your playbook needs to be adjusted to realign the team and usually there is also like reignment of the team necessary there's a lot of other lessons from your book I need to to take it to Le as well but yeah for sure but the the the the the this idea of Playbook actually this even this word that of this world Playbook it's it's a kind of a US US word you know was actually introduced to me the first time by Nicola lauron the was back then the CEO of Riot games League of Legion and yeah that that's he he was basically the one planting the seed of of Playbook and Riot up to this day has has been very very good at playing the game with a strong strong Playbook right all right and maybe maybe just more briefly there's that's that's half

the book and then the other half is revenue reach retention but maybe we could just briefly cover some of those in terms of what you mean by each of those Concepts yeah absolutely yeah so start starting with a revenue like if you look at the game industry like Mo most of the game industry right now in term of Revenue is coming from the free to-play so there is a lot of lessons from the game industry and from specifically how to optimize the premium model and how to apply the the free the free model to to other industry so part of the revenue chapter we have a big focus on how to accolate the IGI of of free how to actually optimize as you're designing the product how how to optimize your your your free your free your free model through the through the rich rich is something that you know it's every company in every industry wants to have more how to you reach more more customers more more users and so on we

go through a model that I call OB OB is for own buy and earn so own is like your own list like how you actually develop your own list earn is buy is obviously through you know buy advertising and so on through through different way and earn is like earn your way in for example right now I'm earning my way in into your audience through a podcast that's like the earn part so we go through each of it and uh each of the OB OB and we explain how gaming company do it and how this can be used better more within the gameing industry and outside of the gaming industry and within the within the retention well retention is a lot of focus is on liveops and that's what I call like the best kept secret in the from from the gaming industry um liveops is majority of the revenue like 58% but of the revenue of gameing industry is coming from liveops but company like EA and so on like it's more like 70ish per of the revenue is

actually coming from liveops so I develop everybody talks about liveop within the gaming industry but I think it's still lacking a little bit of common understanding we talk about Playbook part of the Playbook is also to have common language common wordss so I created in the in the the retention part I created a framework that I call the love framework that basically introduce to the gaming industry people people an acronym and outside of the gaming industry people what is what is liveops and liveops with a love framework with talking about live the L is for live product development the O is for organized event calendar the V is for very special sales and offer and and the E is for engagement and re-engagement things like ch ch prevention sh detection where company like cabam for example we talk about in

the in the game are really good at and for each we take example for example at smile gate in the shooter industry the top performing shooter talk about smile gate yeah Crossfire and how they they've done it and yeah and for for each of that we we go we go through it so this that's also one of the objective for me for the gim industry is within the game industry we have we have designers we have producer we have artists we have a game developer networking Engineers etc etc if we start to all have a common understanding of what it takes to actually build this not just as a game but as a business if we start to have common language then the meeting the brainstorming the discussion is a lot easier because yeah okay I understand why we're doing this because we're doing liveops liveops through the love framework is and we want this because we have this organ oriz the event calendar that is big part of what we're doing so

um that's this Collective wisdom that you mention and the endorsement that I got that it's also because we want to kind of crystallize this uh Collective wisdom that maybe was shared between the Theos and at GDC and around drinks and beers and slack groups and so and we want to make this this knowledge available to everyone so we all have a common understanding of the game we all have a Common Language common wording common rules and we play the game better together that's great LC and I I definitely personally I haven't finished reading all of the book but I have read some some part a lot of parts of it and I did quite enjoy it so I totally understand why you got the endorsements that you did it sounds like what one of your objectives is is it besides the things that we talked about is kind of this this notion about creating a common framework but if you were to think about

the the one thing you would love for someone in the audience to take away from reading your book what what would that be what would it be this common language or kind of just applying the Lessons Learned or what would what would mean success for you for for a reader to have read your book and and to have taken something away from it you know I think as a as an entrepreneur or as as anyone walking on and being very passionate about about making games like having this a little bit more piece at the end of the day when you go to bed and when you wake up in the morning and so on I think if if Atomic scaling can bring some of that to to the People by bringing them this navigation system if you feel stressed about everything well you can start looking at the 3p3 r the navigation system and you can start seeing okay where I maybe need to improve a little bit and if I improve a little bit here

suddenly oh Everything feels much better already and part of the things we do is if you go to Atomic scaling decom we have a quiz where we basically just in a few questions we identify like what kind of leadership profile you are and based on that we say okay this is your strengths and this is your profile and this is your strengths green and this is maybe on the on the right side like you know a little bit more red like this is your your things where you're not naturally good at and based on that if you are your strengths if your strengths are let's say align with like the profile called we call the dreamer then you will be very good at playbook for example and then how can you be even better at Playbook I see okay and if you are maybe not that good at for example at prediction okay you know it's not your profile Etc you know that's your your weakness so how can you be slightly better at that maybe by having someone in your team who become kind of the the

guy like really really really pushing for it or also by you paying attention to it so I think at the at the end of the day having this navigation system or this operating system or this navigation system that brings a little bit not just scaling and wealth and so on but also a little bit more peace at the end of the day when you know when you go to bed or or when you wake up in the morning right it's kind of like what you're talking about self awareness right so if you are suggesting that a lot of these lessons from the games industry can be applied to achieve success in many different disciplines and industries and then based upon this collection of lessons or skills to have this self-awareness about what you are good at and then if you were to build put a team together what else you would need in order to achieve success yep exactly great and I I will say Ludovic that I think this is a very interesting book I highly recommend people check it out but the book I would also recommend that you write next is

how to be a master networker because again I'm telling the audience you gotta you gotta see who has endorsed LC's book here and then some of your blog posts or Instagram I'm seeing you with all these famous people like Emanuel macron and all these other guys I just like oh my God knows everybody but uh anyway I just just want to compliment you on your masterful networking and relationship skills withc thank you and thank you for having me today always fun thank you very much I appreciate it and for our audience hope you enjoy the book and we will catch you next time thanks again [Music] ludic [Music]