Biz Daily: Gumi Berlin's high risk, high reward strategy

hello and welcome to Biz daily I'm John Jordan for the news today is that Japanese freet toplay mobile developer gumy has announced that it's setting up its first development studio in Europe um so it's announced that um that's going to be set up in Berlin it already has some studios in Europe um so has one in Paris has one in Stockholm as well um in Sweden but those are aren't developing games they're kind of supporting the games that gummy already has kind of released in the European market so the most famous game it has is called Brave Frontier has been a massive kind of hit in Japan but as Japanese games kind of sometimes tend to be it is very focused on the Japanese market so it hasn't really um translated um incredibly well to uh the North American and the European market so it's

doing okay but gummy kind of understands as many companies do particularly in Asia that the games that it makes you know millions of pounds off millions of dollars off sh or Yen I suppose billions of Yen off um in in in its local kind of um Market don't really or don't often translate and if you do want to translate you can some have to spend a lot of marketing money to do that so it's kind of you made the decision that the most more sensible thing to do is have development in these individual regions so it's already set up um she knows in North America so it has one in Vancouver and also one in um in San Francisco um and so that comes North American market and now it's setting this one up in Berlin but what's kind of interesting is um they're going for a very kind of tight approach so they're looking maybe to only have like 10 to 15 people very experienced developers and they're going to spend a lot of time kind of thinking about the type of game they're going to make and the exact processes so they want to make a Strate strategy game everyone knows

games work very well kind of Clash of Clans clearly is proven that and that's a very something that works very well particularly in the North American and European markets um not so well in Japan necessarily so they're going to kind of come come at this design problem and spend a lot of time kind of experimenting so what we've seen in the strategy field at the moment is lots of people kind of redoing Clash of Clans with different themes or kind of adding C based elements riding Heroes and you know and not necessarily taking the basic gameplay on much further than it you know has the last couple of years and the idea with the guys playing gummy is they want to spend time and they actually want risk they talking to them they say we want you know have to have risk in our development process because that's any way we'll come up with something new um and I think that's kind of um quite Brave decision um because obviously the more risk you have um the more likely you are to fail equally their point of view is the more risk you have in that process the more like you are to have a big hit now obviously where we have games mobile games that are a billion dollar franchises that's kind of what you need to be aiming at if

you've got the money and so gum pretty well funded they they ipoed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange at the end of 2014 so they're well funded and they doing this kind of big expansion and I guess the other interesting thing is why they looking to go to Berlin the Berlin doesn't have a massive history of mobile game development and there are some companies like wuga already there but a lot of the German developers are in places like Hamburg um and Berlin to date has been really good for kind of mobile marketing and advertising companies and mobile um internet and generally internet companies indeed not so much for kind of games companies and I think now we're seeing a bit of a shift where um some of those mobile monetization and internet companies um that people are kind of leaving those kind of companies as they get Consolidated and bought and and kind of that market matures a little bit but now we're kind of seeing those guys who are always very smart and obviously know the industry and being kind of paired up with mobile game developers or console game developers and create the creating these new Studios so interestingly

there's another company called clang who um they're a startup from um the E online developer CCP um and they got funded um last week by London Venture London Venture Partners who were a funer of supercell in the early days so I think we're kind of seeing um these different levels very small startups um like clang and kind of more established companies like gummy um setting up in Berlin and I think this is what we'll see for the next kind of year or so that the kind of burlin cluster will start um kind of coming to the four and I think you know we've seen really you know for a year or so Germany kind of rising as a as a mobile freet to-play kind of power and I think we're going to see that continue so we keep an eye on what gumy get up to um certainly be interesting I don't think there'll be anything 2015 so probably waiting for probably you know a year or so before we see what they kind of highrisk high reward strategy comes up with but um should be interesting Anyway come back tomorrow and see what the news is then see you then