Dutch Games Association's Martine Spaans On The Meaning Of Games And Their Evolution In Blockchain

[Music] thank you hello worlds welcome back to the pg.biz podcast with me your host Brian baglow and the ever wonderful Peggy and salts hello Peggy how are you today I'm doing well Brian it's been a while you know the team is in Seattle right so it's a little quiet there I'm on the way to to Mao how about yourself I am currently in the east coast of Scotland I'm overlooking the riverforth I'm right next to the beach and enjoying what can only be described as slightly cold rain but that's okay the view is spectacular and it's heading for summer you know it's we have the same summer every year it's one afternoon and then we can get on and start preparing for winter so we're all good we're all happy our expectations are set

so like it's predictable it's predictable it's something something regular which is our podcast we are weekly and we are keeping a fantastic Cadence I have to say so you know like a high five to us absolutely well there's so much going on in the world of mobile games and and you know we've started to each of our tentacles into other areas like web being the next verse Ai and so on so you know there are just so many fascinating people out there and today I'm delighted to see ladies and Gentlemen people of the internet is no exception absolutely we've got someone who I would say that's a great that's even a better segue than I thought because she does so much and I've seen her so many places I've seen her at PG events and uh here she is and she's going to tell us about that as well because martine's funds is our guest and she started her career in online gaming back in 2006 right when flash browser games were booming Brian since that time she's worked with more than 1 000 game

developers in various stages of her career in 2013 she founded tomalaki games to publish casual games on mobile and in cooperation with the partner company FGL she brought several hidden objects and match three titles to the top of the app stores and since one job is clearly not enough for this woman she is also the general manager of the Dutch games Association since 2022 something we're going to be speaking about and a fun fact you won't read on LinkedIn an obsession with cars so Brian we usually ask our guests their favorite game but I have to do it I have to ask your favorite car of all time um well I mean I'm biased because I own one but that will be the 1974 Aston Martin V8 which is an absolute pleasure to drive and beautiful to look at uh not so much fun to work out at and there's always a lot of work to be done with these old British cars the yeah it's uh

it's it's the love of my life and so Martin it's a pleasure to welcome you thanks so much for joining us today um as Peggy said a very well known face to the the PGC Network and the events that we run um but also you've been doing so much um across the board there and free to play and now moving into to wave three um but but let's start sort of on the the big picture in in terms of the the induction developers Association what's the community like in the Netherlands is it is it really is it driving what are the sort of the Specialties of the region as it were yeah I would say it is it is growing um well so one of the for fun trans strands there to see is um every two years a report is brought out a games monitor uh by the Dutch game garden and you can really see a trend like following the reports of the last 10 years whereas uh eight to ten years ago there was really a lot of startups

um and then about four I have four years ago or something you really saw a lot of hiring so a lot of companies were growing and now with the latest reports you really see that the the the the revenue is growing a lot so that's a logical Trend you know startup growth phase and then the phase of of fixed success so I'm very happy to see that that Trend in the um in you know among like the Dutch Studios there's about 550 Studios now registers in the Netherlands um I mean all all sizes you know that that goes from Freelancers all the way up to like Guerrilla games which is the biggest studio in the Netherlands uh so there's there's really you know there's a big representation all across the board that that's incredible and in terms of humps you know where they sit with the hot spots for games um in the Netherlands this should we be taking the PGC eventual is what I'm asking um it's there's not really like one specific Hot Spot uh Utrecht has always been good in terms of Studio

representation there and that's also because of like um the hku university there that offers several programs in terms of the game development so a lot of students that roll out of there start a studio there as well but for example also when you look at Breda thanks to initiatives like Breda game city um the amount of Studios there is also really growing and they're getting some great great support there from from the local governments um and of course you know Amsterdam Rotterdam the Hague um I mean the country is so small they keep GitHub from one city to another in like half an hour our tops um so it also makes it really easy to just like you know settle down your studio wherever you want to still be connected to the rest of the studios how do you find it the two hats with you know your own business or did your own businesses and the um the developers Association do you find trying to actually kind of get that Synergy yeah there's um I have to say there's not sort of a lot of overlap immediately

between it because uh with my own uh game publishing I mostly work with Studios outside of the Netherlands so for example I work with the studio in Seattle uh when in Poland when in Indonesia but currently not working with any studios in the Netherlands um so you know there's not sort of an overlap there but of course there is a Synergy when you look at the um the things that studios are challenged with uh so you know like the some of the typical things that the studios are struggling with and then it's it's just wonderful to also be in touch with the Dutch community and to sort of you know rely on on their hive mind so one thing you get to do in the position you are is you get to make a strong case for games and I think that's also necessary because Netherlands has a bit of an interesting view of the games a bit of a divide can you tell us a little bit more about that when you look at sort of the development of the Dutch game industry in the Netherlands over the past 20 years there's always been a strong

representation of serious game studios um Series games or applied games those uh terms are kind of uh you know use used both to describe the same thing um but yeah there's there's you know it's been sort of a thriving sector there um but obviously when you look at the the size of the the representation of entertainment game studios there are you know there's there's a larger representation there you know the Dutch game Association was founded in 2008 and likes in the history of it it's gone a little bit like from one side to the other where first there was more of a focus on serious games and then more of a focus on entertainment games but you know I think it's really important to balance it out and represent both sides and really sort of hear what their needs are and try to help them Thrive as much as possible so I have to ask as a follow-up you know I I'm looking at different research around the world I just looked at research from Mina you know what are the challenges that games companies developers Indies in

particular face there um does come back to funding but it goes beyond that to things like marketing know-how what are the challenges in the Netherlands in the Netherlands I think funding is one of the uh one of the challenges um and also because of the competition that we see from other countries just for example looking at our neighbors uh in Germany there's a 70 million game funds and in Belgium there's a 15 million game funds so that helps the studios there to really sort of build out better and greater products and in the end it's the developers also from the Netherlands who do need to compete with these products so uh the fact that there's currently no Government funding or no government support in the Netherlands for game studios that I think is making things slightly more challenging and on the other hand it's also a risk for the Dutch game industry because you know thanks to sort of or the borderless system within the EU indeed in the EU what is stopping a Dutch game Studio to say like you know what I'm gonna register my company in

Germany and then get some of that game fund over there so yeah one one of the big things that we're also trying to accomplish with the with the Dutch games Association is really to uh to talk to our government and basically Lobby for for a game fund it's going to be a very long and slow process but uh we're already making uh making some great progress let's talk about about your companies about your businesses um if that's okay because how did you how did you get started in the game set and what was your what was your first organization uh I first worked for uh spill games uh nowadays spill games is part of azirion um but yeah back then it's when I started it was a relatively small company I think it was employee number 25. they already had a network of game portals so basically gets game websites where you could play flash games for free and then you know they their revenue model was the advertising that they showed um and it's a bit it sounds a bit strange but uh as as I came in as employee number 25 they were like oh

yeah we need someone to like actually be be responsible for the games because so far that was at that point at the company something that was just like handled but you know a little bit by this person a little bit by that person but there was no one sort of really responsible and making sure there was um constantly a new flow of of games coming and when I started it was still a little bit like wild west um basically a big day a big part of my day I failed with just like you know uh like combing through the internet for games that we didn't have yet on our websites and basically just copying pasting them on our website um and it sounds a little bit like stealing but yeah you got to realize that all those games had their own advertising built into the game as well so actually we helped them to sort of distribute get a bigger reach and uh gain more from their from their ad revenue and of course in the in the years after that sort of cleaned up a lot more and it became a lot more of the business model to actually license the games

um get the the advertising from the developer out uh only have sort of our own spill games advertising in there and then that became the model uh so that's when I I you know sort of the role Grew From A game manager into a licensing manager and in that time uh I was licensing up to like uh I think in the my most my busiest year there I think I licensed about 500 games in that year uh but you know we're talking about small flash games we're obviously not talking about sort of these huge AAA titles um but yeah still I can say that yo I was keeping busy but that definitely laid sort of the foundation for my my knowledge also for what Gamers really like um because when there's all these games that your licensing you're analyzing how well they're being played you kind of get a good feeling for kind of what's you know what makes the player tick and what doesn't so you went from there and moved on and eventually hey you have your own games company you are a games publisher deeply into free to play tell

us more about tamalaki and how you got there from where you started how I got there also basically links back to that period that I was at spill games because like part of the licensing that I did went through a platform called FGL and FGL was short for Flash game license so you can kind of see what what their business model was they were kind of a Marketplace for developers and Publishers so I already knew those guys quite well just from working with them and uh yeah like fast forward to 2012 2013 they were also kind of transitioning into the mobile market and they were setting up their own platform for making it sort of easier for developers to publish games on the App Stores and they quickly realized like if we want to make this successful we really need someone with Publisher experience to kind of act as a middleman that's when they reached out to me and they said like well would you like to sort of become a mobile game publisher using our Tool Set uh sort of using our back ends

and to me that seems like sort of a really good uh kind of a good way to set up my own company uh with kind of seeing FGL as uh yeah as a safety net and in a way because they were taken care of so much and like you know because of that I had to sort of invest Less in my own resources to to start it all up um so yeah that worked out pretty well and uh you know also in the big also you know just looking at that that also evolved so much in 2013 we just published games kind of the way that we were used to with the flash games as in you know uh create a hidden object game with 20 or 30 levels but put some ads in there and you know the user can finish the game in about two hours and then they wait for the next game to come out next week and that worked that worked out quite well and you know if people wanted to remove those annoying ads they could pay a dollar and just like play it like that um so we helped that model up for a couple of years but then obviously

things started going towards the free-to-play side already so that's when we also pivoted to you know creating larger projects um you know basically with endless gameplay lots of updates in the whole live Ops model uh and we've had some pretty successful titles with hidden objects Match 3 and time management um uh yeah us as free to play games what are your most successful games to do um through the company so some of the most successful ones were Hidden Object mystery Society where it's more of a detective theme hidden object game uh where you explore you know really a lot of locations I think if you want to finish the game you have to like put in at least like 200 hours or something to unlock everything uh there's there's really uh sort of a lot of content in that game and that's also why we saw that people kept on playing it for you know two years or more um the other one that's done really well is uh the home designer blast it's kind of a color block blasting game with a

meta game where you um yeah Design Homes for for your clients because you are a home designer um so yeah there I mean this was all sort of in the boom of games like design home and obviously we were lifting along a little bit but with their success uh to really also release a game with a meta gameplay like like that but that's also been doing really well and we integrated things like design contests and kind of a little bit of a multiplayer element there um and yeah people have been really enjoying playing these contests as well what I like about your career Martin is that it sort of like mirrors the game industry it's like a microcosm of that because you start off where you are you go to tamalaki as a games publisher and hey now with FGL getting into web3 what is that about and how are you bringing your EXP experience your talent you know these these traits to web3 yeah it's you know and I do think it's

important to also move with the market and not stay sort of too stationary for too long uh because in a fast evolving industry like ours uh you know it's also a way of survival um but yeah we got into whip three around uh 2021 uh right before like the big web 3 boom started where axi Infinity was all over the news and such um during that summer we were already sort of looking into it and um we knew some people working for the wax blockchain um and through them we also started getting more interested in like what it was all about and what is what the current state of the space was and we were kind of interested because they're saying like well there's a lot of players here eager for games but there's currently not really a lot of good games out there yet a lot of the games on the platform were uh so far still like really clickers um and without really a lot of sort of gameplay interaction um so they kind of got us you know it was was intriguing to us to see if we could actually build a fun game

taking into account all these sort of you know web tree uh the Webster economy and and how important that is for a game design to work well the problem that we saw also in a lot of games is basically that they were a little bit designed like a like a pyramid schedule and we found it really an interesting challenge to see if we could come up with a game where the game economy is circular and our free-to-play experience really sort of came into play there um where of course with the free-to-play design you're also working on trying to um balance out sort of the fun that the player gets also with the rewards that they're getting um and and sort of we used some of the things that we learned there uh to also put that into our web 3 games so we have three games out now in the wax blockchain the first one that we published in February 2022 yeah yeah so it's uh it's a little over a year old now that was Cosmic

clash and it's basically a PCP uh uh space battler where you know your the strategy is in how you line up your ships and then you know there's an auto battle happening against the lineup of another player um second one that we launched also about a year ago it was Mecca world where it's a post-apocalyptic uh world uh where only robots survive so the first race that we introduced was uh uh robot dogs um and there it's also it's a bit of a mining resource game but that's like a smaller part of the game that's how you basically find new parts to build onto your robots but the real gameplay is in uh uh you know battles where we we're going to introduce uh several types of battles the first one is a dice gameplay or dice battles and the second one is on its way that will have a little bit more of a turn-based battle style as we're used to uh from from other games um and the third one Outlaw Troopers is also a a real-time PVP

um space battle where I think it was one of the first games on the wax blockchain to really introduce real-time gameplay um where you know a lot of the so far a lot of PVP was was turned by based you know same with Cosmic life and Mecca world but with Outlaw Troopers we showed that something real time can also work within a game that is relying on blockchain technology on our web 3 Journey we also as you can hear decided to take the role of a publisher developer publisher because of course the first you know the first game that you put out there there's a lot you have to learn so you better sort of develop that game in-house so there's you can basically take everything that you learned from that and then apply it to the other games that you publish uh you know with the help of of game developers um and sort of get them started into the web Journey if they're interested into that um and all the games are uh well they do have some interoperable assets that's also the big advantage of having multiple games there uh just that you

publish yourself because then you can actually deliver onto that promise that people are talking about from from web3 games you know there's all this talk about having a sword in one game and then using it to another game that's all fun but it only works if the developer behind those games um is actually making that possible so you know with us with our network of developers that we work with now we can actually establish things like that making that possible and all the games also operate on the same token so the FTL token you know you could say like hey I'm going to earn some tokens in Cosmic clash with my battles but then I want to spend them in Outlaw Troopers to sort of strengthen my fleet there so that's also how we sort of make it more interesting for players to to dive into the economy because it's not just bound to one game but it's like bound to uh to our whole our whole portfolio of games um and yeah that's that started on wax uh but currently we're also looking into expanding that to to other blockchains

because wax is obviously just just one of the whole network of blockchains um and there's being you know there's more bridges being built and basically more um interoperable networks made possible and I think that's also where we're going to see a lot of expansion through the end of the year it's always nice to have somebody who's taking kind of proactive approach to web for you the course and you know as you can imagine you'll get a lot of comments and opinions on the Pocket Gamer site and and there seems to be a bitterly sizable faction you have decided that when he has no value without having you know seen it in action or had a chance to create so it's wonderful to hear about a company that's not only taking a chance in a single game but is bringing you know a lot of the benefits out in terms of as you see having that catalog where you do have that interoperability and transfer opportunity um so that yeah that was rather cool yeah yeah I've heard people say about web3 that you know on blockchain that's

basically it's a solution looking for a problem and I don't disagree with that but what we saw there that uh you know blockchain is also it's an audience looking for a way to interact with new technology and we figured why not sort of true through our games and make it sort of a fun thing to do um you know it is a completely different audience um you know like of course there are some crossover between Gamers and and blockchain Gamers um but you know that's I wouldn't say it's the majority um I think a majority of the people who um who are interested in blockchain gaming are people who are generally interested in forms of investment and economy and um you know like trying to sort of um uh justify their their you know their time spent online um and you know none of our games are really geared towards earning because I think the whole sort of play to earn is it's not something that can be very sustainable so we kind of Market our

games more as play and own but if you are very active in the game and if you do compete in the tournaments then there's um you know there's a very high success rates that you can get your investment back so in that way it's just like a fun Pastime that doesn't really have to have to cost much and that's something where morally it's something a position that we feel very comfortable with new mechanisms new models uh that takes some lobbying but hey that's what you do right you do that in the games association with with the Netherlands so maybe you've brought some of that over but share how you've been able to um not just think of these new models but get everyone on the same page to say yeah let's let's try this out yeah yeah and there's there's definitely you know like you say being involved uh with development on this new technology and basically being on the Forefront of it does help uh with sort of seeing where we should steer the Dutch games Association in our in our talk with with

local governments I think that's also sort of the disconnect that we have with the government right now just like jumping back to the Dutch games Association where these people they're they're not Gamers um you know just the people in office and they don't fully understand uh what sort of the benefit of games can be and what it can sort of bring to society um so also having uh like ourselves directly being from the game industry and operating studios in the game industry and having that direct experience helps us to really sort of translate that better uh towards towards the government one of the simple things that it also comes down to is like the definition of what is a game um I think a lot of people who do not play games themselves only see for example sample Call of Duty as a game and and fortnite and those are things that they've heard of because they read the headlines about it uh what they don't realize is that um you know playing a digital crossword puzzle is also a game or being addicted

to you know a game like Candy Crush is also a game through my time as tamalaki I also did a lot of um uh yeah presentations at game conferences about designing games for non-gamers because the target audience that I was going for with my games at tamalaki were also basically people who do not call themselves Gamers and in a sense that also helps with sort of this approach towards uh towards the government and explaining to them that games are so much more than you know just something that is being played by 16 year olds in their basement and that games are really sort of an important part of life and also for the Next Generation Um because you know we can only approach it basically from from our own perspective but we really look at the the younger generation games are such a big part of their life not just for entertainment but also for example for communication with their friends when I see my nephew playing Roblox uh he's not really doing much in Roblox but you know

he is at the same time he has his Discord open to chat with his friends um and Roblox is just sort of a means of providing a sort of like a playground for communication um and uh I think it's hugely underestimate that's basically how the next Generations are operating uh with online worlds and how they are making use of it to really sort of be part of their lives we need to be in front of the government of the world and saying we have to have a seat at the table we need to be hitting their voice when it comes to education when it comes to health care when it comes to social inclusion it's because this is this this is the way as you see it's the Youth of the world are are working interacting playing you know finding out so much and and it's all kind of emerging from games you know we've touched on with the and of course the metadators earlier and pretty much everything coming um coming into that world is of games or

fun games so yeah I think you're absolutely right it's something that you really need to can Champion more effectively yeah yeah absolutely it also makes me think for a moment Brian when she was talking about games for non-gamers I mean through covid I hate to always talk about that but it was seismic it's a shift and it has changed everything and that's exactly what happened people who weren't Gamers became Gamers and that was a massive shift and everyone was sort of yeah what do I do with my time and and that has changed it all and so it's really about not games for gamers it's games for oh and and one of the things Martin you know you mentioned hidden object games you mentioned um you know a lot of the a lot of the games that kind of emerged from The Flash Market even back when flash was kind of state-of-the-art and in terms of online games the reality was outside the console Market you know the vast

majority of Gamers the female and over the age of Pharisees you know and and again that tends to get lost in in the mix so we've always had this enormous Global audience but again I think the the perception is it's just the consoles it's just the you know the the um paid the commercial side of the market and it really has ignored so much else that has happened outside our own little sort of perception of the industry and so you know I think you've clearly been there from the outset but it's great to hear it out to community yeah and like you say it's nothing new because I do remember also studies from like you know 12 13 years ago where they were saying like oh a majority of uh you know people playing games online are women shocking um and you still sometimes see reports like that dads and was like well how can this still be shocking it was already like that 13 years ago Martin thank you so much it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you and we could go on there

are so many things I feel we've just barely scratched the surface but sadly we're gonna have to bring things to a close um but it does mean that we have a perfect excuse to invite you back again to come and speak to us at some point in the near future thanks my pleasure our pleasure honestly it has been a total joy and so before you go we have a couple of questions that we tend to ask our guests because we know our listeners are massive Gamers as a real um and so we we like to ask um two questions one is what's your favorite game of all time and the second one is what's what you're playing right now that's kind of obsessing you uh my favorite game all time no question about it is Legends of Zelda Link to the Past uh so the SNES one uh sec I mean second place would be Ocarina of Time really um and I have to admit immediately I have not bought the new Zelda yet it just came out this week I haven't bought it yet um but you know that's something definitely on my to-do list

um finally what I'm playing right now uh like I'm not really playing anything right now on my console but I like on mobile I have been playing merch Mansion for quite a bit I really like the um the balancing of that game and you know how it is in the game industry you start playing a game because you want to study it but then uh you know some of the good ones you just get hooked into and uh you know you find yourself still playing it months later it's massively popular for a reason and it is because it's really well designed it's the balances is just it's lovely um and who can answer with Zelda so some fabulous answers and then obviously we know it's your favorite car and and it's an Aston Martin so if you couldn't be any cooler by loving Zelda and merge Mansion you became cooler because you're essentially James Bond so I'll take that well Martin it has been a delight to have you here and on top of it your cool

Factor has risen sort of astronomically or you're through the through the roof already so all the more reason to thank you for sharing but also thank you for our future date as well thanks for having me it's been it's been really fun uh and I already look forward to the next one this show is all about how to do your job better how to make an amazing game how to Market it and you have a say so if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on then we would love to hear from you we want to hear from you we want to reflect the reality of the mobile games market and all its wonderful complexity and strangeness so if you have any suggestions for us if you have any feedback for us you can always get in touch you can email us at podcast pocketgamer.biz you can find us on Twitter at PG Biz and you can reach out to us through thepocketgamer.biz website if you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts you can find them at

pocketgamer.biz forward slash podcast and we would love to hear your thoughts on future shows and we've got you covered on all the major platforms so subscribe to the audio podcast is Brian's said look for us on YouTube if you want to read it hey you can do that too because we have a companion post for you as well on thepocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the pokegamer.biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future until then I'm Brian baglo I'm Peggy Ann saltz and that's a wrap until next week [Music]