Cyprus LIVE #1 What If Cyprus Becomes The NEXT BIG Tech Powerhouse?

Uh, hey everyone. It's Phil Black, uh, co-host of Deconstructor Fun. I'm here in Cypress at GDC Y and we are in a winery of all places. We're actually in a wine celler right now. You can see the barrels behind us. And you can also see a glass of rosé here. Uh, I'm trying to get what I can out of my Swedish citizenship and represent my people. Not not quite as good as the Swedish wine, all three bottles that are available in the world. And I'm joined today by
uh my name is Alex Bdanov and I see the studio 42. It's like game development and I want to greet everyone. Hello. Hello everyone.
So you're making puzzle games and I see a lot of puzzle games here in Cypress.
Yeah, mostly it's like we developing the casual puzzle games because it's our main experience. We have been doing that for 7 years. So like casual puzzle uh mobile games.
I think about Turkey as another puzzle

hub. Uh I think about Stockholm, my beautiful Sweden, as another puzzle hub. Do you think Cypress could actually emerge as a second hub opposite to Turkey in terms of puzzle?
This is a good question because right now the Turkish company they really strong if we talk about the puzzle games uh and especially in the hybrid monetization. So we know some of them, we work some of them and they doing a great great job because like these days it's really hard to compete on the uh mobile gaming as well as puzzle games. Uh it's like facing the really huge competition and it's because of the genre crisis. nothing new come by if we talk about the like genre and of course the user acquisition uh so like crisis because it's became really expensive and competitive and these guys from Turkey they strong to find new core game play

and they really strong in analytics stepby-step improvement of their game and they're really strong in user acquisition so we're doing such kind of games as I said se six seven eight years so like we're also the strong and and I truly believe that this team is one of the best. So like yeah, we will show all of them.
So normally like when we think about Turkey or even just like any game development hub like you know in Sweden, DICE is what grew a lot of the games industry. I remember there was some Swedish industry report a number of years ago that something like 30 or 40% of the Swedish games industry is like within 10 square blocks of dice. And with Turkey it's very easy to see like Graham Games, right? And as soon as the company gets acquired, the founders leave, the employees start to go different places. You get in economics what we call knowledge spillovers. Uh then you get acclamation effects. People start to go there if you want to make puzzles. And so when I think about the lineage of Turkey and I think about the lineage that's coming into Cypress, it

seems like a lot of that lineage comes through plays.
Is that fair or do you think there's more lineage here? you know like the play was uh like pioners in this uh if we talk about such kind of like complexity of the genre because the player they change all the genre I don't know like seven eight years ago so it was like some revolution so yeah I could agree here but then we saw royal match it changed genre also it's like It became more simple, more fast and less meta game. So like more about the core game play. They have a huge matter. It's like the completely different world and the royal match. It's more simple, but it's successful. It became really successful. So like it's a new trend.
Do you think that lineage will continue here in Cypress? Do you see Turkey and

Cypress having different approaches to puzzle?
Uh no. I cannot say anything like that because we are working like the similar process, the similar analytics. So like I don't think there is any huge differences.
So if we were to think about what it would take for the next dream or the next Graham to come out of Cypress for puzzle, what do you think it would take? Is it improvements to infrastructure? Is it bringing more people over? What would it take? put Cypress on top
you know like uh the dream they have made a lot of test of different core gameplay mechanics before they found this game successful core mechanics so like I think the main idea it's about how much you spend time for finding this new core game play how you do it and of course it's also about the people the

mindset So if you found the right people who can create these new core mechanics with a good analytics skills and see what market brings, how it could be used, changed and stuff like that bringing the core mechanics. So what I see right now and what I have been seeing previous two years and for for right now it's like this company they try to take popular mechanics from hybrid casual. Hybrid casual it's like short-term games like based on the ad monetization and they try to find the successful mechanics which work which already work and cover it create the completely new game colorful with some meta so like it's royal match but with the different mechanics no match three no match two so like this is the main idea and Turkey they like really strong in that but I don't see any you know like completely difference between

Cypress game development, Turkey game development any so like we are really close and connected people work from all over the world in different teams so like I don't see any big difference
how about