Exploring the Mobile Industry with Nadav Ashkenazy | Game Dev Unchained Episode 230

[Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev unchained the number one game development podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof i am your host brandon pham and joining me this week a special guest nada ashton kanazzi how you doing i'm good at how was that thank you for having me was that close that was great it's really comfortable yeah it's kind of impossible but i got it you doubted me uh so this is the part of the podcast actually in the dev uh thank you for joining us where you introduce yourself uh to the listeners and viewers out there who you are where you're from and where you're heading yeah my name is nadav i live in israel in tel aviv and i'm i founded and heading supersonic which

is a relatively new gaming company became quite big today in the industry doing everything in different subgenres around hyper-casual head-based games idol games we've released nine games this year already and most of them top the charts and this is it i've been in ireland so before for a couple of years leading their business around gaming and and technology for game tech and and this is it for now that is amazing i just want to double check here on the auto audio on my side to make sure everything's good you can hear me just find everything right all right so uh this is actually a very uh important topic i believe i mean we're hearing across the industry that the game development industry have been benefiting uh with a mixed bag right i think a lot of games that are already out that are on mobile that are free are

benefiting a lot uh games that are obviously in development is is there's a lot of delays happening obviously uh because even with remote working some are very productive i would have to say most who haven't done uh remote working before aren't really productive there's a whole lifestyle that comes with that uh creating barriers uh i'm if for family not to bother you you know defining work home uh you know these are things that you learn over the years when you do it a lot especially for freelancing or things to do on the side but when you go right into it a lot of people honestly won't even finish the transition but i would love to kind of hear your perspective of that uh if you're experiencing that or you know a lot of your friends colleagues within the company like how you guys are are kind of adapting to this new world

yes so i actually think that for supersonic is it's pretty unique case because we founded the company in january six months ago and when corona started it was i think at the beginning of march in israel at least when when we moved to work from home we were around 12 people and today we are 60 people so the company was actually grown and built while working from home and and i think that this is quite advantage in that perspective because i 100 agree with everything you said it from from efficiency perspective uh corona and working for mom and coffee can can definitely be a bottleneck and i think that if you fund the activity and you build the company while working for home recruiting people training people building the processes the right person from day zero for us today is pretty a a easy and straightforward to work in this structure because in ninety percent of the time of the company we are gonna work from our model although we all live together in the

same cities not that we have a remote a company distributing over several locations so so in that perspective i think that supersonic was lucky and i think it's one of our strengths today comparing to even other gaming companies that used to a specific work methodology and now they need to adjust themselves so we have already adjusted and built in this infrastructure including everything doing communication how to work on different games and to combine different teams that are working on games and and this is quite convenient for us but but i agree that for many of our other a a company that we see there are challenges and there are adjustments needed to be done in order to maintain the level of efficiency while working for a moment i think that it's in in two different layers it's it's first of all each one is to do it in his personal a a environment how he finds and building the right environment for him to be efficient and of course in the company level how do you connect teams

how do you work together on projects when everyone is walking from a different location this is from the uh um efficiency and work methodology perspective from the impact uh overall so so again although coverage is it is a very bad thing for all of us i do think that the gaming world is one of the only industries that actually sees a increase this day the main thing that we see although we are living throughout the quran is that first of all it's it's it's it reminds a little bit the the the behavior of users and in summer vacations or i would even say during a late december and christmas where there is kind of a flat a curve between mid-week and and weekend so in regular days we we used to see a specific engagement in the middle of the week and much higher engagement in over the weekend and and since kavid is spread it out and and it's kind of a four months of the weekend

we see it got pretty much flat by the way a couple of months ago or one or two months ago it started to behave the same and i think that now it's getting flatter again because of the second wave that that many other many countries uh suffer from so so i think the main thing that we see is that users have more time like over the weekend they have the play time is is longer users are more engaged with us with games they they want to play more games they are looking for online entertainment and i think that the entire online industry uh sees more traffic during the coverage and i actually think that that covet will expedite the a transformation of our world to be even more digital from everything you can imagine right even from gambling he will move to a more social casino and online gambling from shopping and gaming of course and i think the entire world will find himself much more

digitalized after a coffee will over yeah i'm always um i'm actually myself very curious of the long-term impact because i come from the aaa industry and i think the that industry that side of the industry is very closed off i think to remote working uh more than mobile more than of course indeed right but just like everyone uh they were forced to be working in this type of situation and uh to to see what the remnants of of this looks like for them i'm very curious about because i i have a feeling a lot of them as soon as the office can open again they're going to make everyone go to the office because that's how they maintain control right so uh with indie and mobile we know the advantages a lot of the stuff in our setups i feel are at least more embracing of this the way to work it's a lot more

efficient and uh as a game industry as a whole i think we're hurting a lot less like you kind of mentioned than everyone else uh but like you you're kind of like demonstrating there's a lot of user habits that they're kind of shifting um everyone's more connected than ever uh more spending way more time on the phone especially as the primary device so of course naturally they're looking at uh games such as like games that you guys produce at supersonic and and other ways to kind of distract from i feel too much time now everyone has too much time now uh than before and they can't go out and uh if you can speak to that more uh i think the data you can we're kind of demonstrating that the wednesday through through uh friday usage uh there's it was a slump can you kind

of expand on that a bit for for people who are not used to mobile uh user data and what what what you analyzed from that yeah so most of the year what we usually see is that the engagement of different users with the game is is lower over the weekdays and longer over the weekend we see it both in terms of the amount of session play today and and the session length each one of them which which results in the play time the daily play time of the user and and and you can clearly see the curve and the curve with overplay time over amount of sessions over revenue that is lowering the in in the midweek and then in in friday it starts to climb saturday and sunday are it's picked and then monday it goes back down to the midweek numbers in all aspects engagement fashion play time revenue everything and and and and during summer time and during mainly during christmas we

see that this behavior almost stops meaning that we see that the engagement through a wednesday and sunday is about the same during this period of time and and i think that corona covered it generated kind of a similar atmosphere meaning that just like in in christmas we just see the same engagement on wednesday as on sunday and and it's because although people should be walking on midweek they some of them by the way are not working anymore or even if they are they are working for women they want to clean their head and to play for a couple of minutes between different tasks and and and we almost saw the the exact same engagement with the game over the midweek and the weekend which is very very not typical for such a long period of time and what's your general feelings i i would believe that when things ease a little that

it would be a midway point right where people actually us will be around because it's going to be a transitional period obviously not everyone's going to be out and about right when a vaccine happens right so uh what what do you feel is the long-term effect from these new user habits that are formulating around their mobile device playing games uh to how to what actually sticks after we're we're healthier as a world yeah so so i actually think it's it's even not related to games actually think that the world will behave different even after coffee is over i think that again i think that first of all it's going to take some time until until we'll get there and i think that by this time first of all people will get used to a different setup and they will also see the benefits of of new sets up and and and i believe that the world will not look exactly the same

like it was before uh january this year i think that working from home and working from office will be kind of a mixed setup by the way i if you're asking my opinion i think that mixing these two options is the best setup even on the long term i think they're really there are advantages for working from home i think that if you are only working for mom there are also disadvantages and i think that mixing between these two is probably the optimal setup in the long term this is this this is in my eyes but i think that many many companies or many many different people see it see the same i think that people will will will have to be and and to be more online and do more things on on a digital a a way than than on a physical way they will get used to do shopping even going even a grocery stores i think people will do much more shopping over on online even after coffee will will end and i think it definitely

games it's part of the digital world will uh have the same impact meaning that if if the actual wall will will change a bit and and we won't have this this clear midweek and clear weekend like we used to have before we will have a mix of these two at least in some areas in some countries i think that the mobile wall the mobile games world will will see the impact of this and just like any other online service provider yeah i actually agree with you 100 percent like um i kind of equate this moment in time as kind of like the the awakening when people get unplugged from the matrix because we're at least in the states we're very nine to five right you go to work you come back and like he said there's a clear cut weekday and weekend mentality that has

been we're forced to kind of believe into like uh this is how life is uh for the last 50 years plus right since the industrial revolution at least on our side and so now that people are seeing the benefits of being around their kids and having time to themselves at the same time you know getting better at balancing work life and getting things done i wonder how many people feel comfortable enough to be unshackled or unchained right just as a show and then go back to work like it was before like i i don't i think there's gonna be a lot of not like crazy protests but i think there's gonna be some ill sentiment if the employer is going to be forceful and like hey we got to go back to the way it was and that life that you had for a year oh i i mean i think if anything it's going to be about a year we're about seven months in or six months in already of that lifestyle to go snap back to

what it was i think a lot of people i don't know there's going to be a lot of emotional charge uh conversations around how we used to work and how how different things are and for game development especially i think it'd be a nice conversation to have with everybody um but yeah like it's it's it's it's insane like never in at least game dev history let alone the world right um we've ever experienced this kind of awakening right it's a it's a huge momentum shift um back to mobile though like i because i i feel in a lot of ways mobile is kind of like working in that space i only worked in mobile for a brief period but the glimpse that i saw there was the effectiveness of data tracking efficiency of understanding a cause and effect

uh to game development which used to be before mobile very chaotic and mostly ship and pray uh type of mentality you know i'll make this game with you for three five years and i don't know what it's gonna sell and a lot of people you know get laid off at the end of it right that was the way games were made for a long time until mobile happened and the glimpses in a lot of what you're saying is that it was a very daily tracking type of mentality you know the place i worked at was at pocket gems and there were like uh stanford harvard statisticians that that just graduated or getting beginnings like why why are you making games like shouldn't you be a doctor or something but they're there with all these sheets and they know how user acquisitions uh you know a lot of these terminologies that i've learned for the first time and i would love to you know for you to kind of dive into the general terminology of mobile that you guys are used to every day

uh to to track user habits to to project uh uh acquisition to project success and failure uh ahead of uh any any any danger so i would love to kind of hear more of your thoughts about that is this something uh that you knew coming in or like or or something that you kind of learned on your first job and or so yeah so so i think that it's quite interesting because first of all just like you said the thing that the the advantage of mobile coming last to the party of games is that it it kind of shaped with the most advanced uh quality processes or or technology or or ecosystem around it and and even if i go further and and we will focus even on on let's say the trend the latest trend on mobile games which is hyper casual in the past two three years

i think this even took it even to the more advanced extreme end that you can have for a using data to take any decision and and maybe just to share for instance what we are doing in supersonic to to to to show how how true what you said is so we are working on on several games simultaneously and and and we are trying to release a new game every couple of weeks and and this is the the more hyper casual ecosystem and and the first thing that we start with when there is even just a concept for the game is to build a very very very very minimal mvp and and to and to upload it for marketability tests over facebook with untargeted audience to understand the cpi and the marketability uh potential of this title before building the game we probably have like three four five levels top in the game it's not even a game just a

couple of levels into unity project but what we care at the most about is to see how marketable the concept the game is to users and what would be the cpi and 96 97 of the concepts are being killed after this very very initial test this is why we also recommend not to build a an advanced product in this stage under the assumption that 97 of the games won't survive this initial test and and the goal here is exactly what they said we don't want to walk on a title for a weeks month or years and then to find out that users don't like it either from the marketing perspective or from the product perspective and we always look at these two different hats because because in our eyes and in hyper casual specifically in order to to generate a big profitable scaled hit it needs to be marketable and it needs to be a good product it's two different

areas many many times we see great games with with super high retention and play time and and and alpo and and many and many good kpi that we measure but if the marketing side is not working well if if the odd the potential audience is very very limited or the cpi is very very high it probably won't be able to be scaled to the side that we are looking for and therefore we always always always start with with a marketability test on a very very very early stage and and if it's not there we just kill it we just kill it after it was a concept and with few levels and we move into the next concept and and we are testing several concepts a month in under this methodology only measuring cpi ctr understanding the user behavior to the ad itself not even to the game we don't really care how the user will behave behave within the game what would be the retention we don't care because there is no real game it's just a couple of levels that are being grouped because the whole idea

is to generate something that can have an ad to understand the marketability potential first only if it survives and shows potential from the marketability perspective then we say okay now let's build the game now let's build much more content several levels progression meta now start working on the day one day day two day seven day fourteen day thirty retention and play time after we do this now let's work on monetization on and adding the meta and progression and to make sure that we are able to monitor it and only then we are moving into soft launching the game which is another a a beginning for a very very data focus process just like you said marketing today and user acquisition there is no today in the mobile industry or exists in the leading players in the mobile industry there is no brand awareness marketing almost at all almost at all only few right you can see moon active

doing some influencers and and others but but the very very very very majority of the mobile game industry is not doing any brand awareness marketing everything is performance everything is being measured every user that you are paying for you are tracking its behavior afterwards within your app you understand how much revenue you are making per user or per group of users and then you adjust the price or the cpi or how much you're willing to bid or to or to pay for this type of users to the margin goal that your game is aiming to get so so i can't agree more that today at least whoever is doing it right taking all of all of their decisions based on a a on the data and and and the mobile ecosystem allows you to do it and this is what's great about this this ecosystem because it was built on the right way with tracking companies with mmp with everything needed with analytics with the ability to understand and to a a analyze

the a loss return on expand roi behavior ltv rpo versus cost and cpi of each user in your game and and we are going in the most granular level after we are publishing a game or launching a game we are doing our user acquisition in the most granular level possible meaning that we are monitoring the the alpha and the ltv of the most granular level of users from appsource to device to country to city to whatever whatever possible in order to try to predict what will be the ltv of similar users we will acquire tomorrow and and and the whole mission here is to understand what should be the cpi that we are bidding currently to pay as much as possible to get the right skill but on the other hand to be profitable with a very very stable and good prediction for the income that will come from this type of users and and if finally while you are hitting

the margin goal that you aim for it means that you did very very very good job on analyzing the a historical data predicting the future and bidding accordingly if you are not hitting your margin goal for good or for bed either your margin is too high and and you missed potential scale or the margin is too low because you predicted you're too optimistic about your prediction then it means that you are not doing good enough job on on analyzing all this data and taking the right decisions accordingly yeah everything you say i agree uh just to kind of highlight some of the terminology though because i my terminology you know working at the mobile space for a little while is still very very new so you mentioned mvp which is a minimal viable product correct and then lpv which is lifetime product lifetime value right right so that's like a user over the time of playing a game how much money they're actually spending to support the game

a lot like uh the freemium like fortnight right how much money they actually spend so this is actually well there's so much about this topic that i feel that is the knowledge behind is so underserved i feel like the game industry although very exciting have like these bubbles that uh don't really talk to each other or learn from each other right we have these conventions and everything like gdc it's a mixed bag but there's no one really curating the contents like hey guys you know this space over here like the indie market you guys are struggling and understanding uh your how viable your product is right before even developing it and you're kind of crap shooting it like as if you're a triple a game that can afford that right um the triple a is the same thing with a lot of these senior developers who's been in the industry for a long time have no idea what you're talking about uh it's like what you can project data to see if you know the thing i'm working on the last five years

actually matter uh so i feel like even so the indie market the triple a market even uh double a market right i feel like every developer even if they're just an artist or design need to go through kind of like a mobile game school of thought to understand exactly these terminology i feel would avoid a lot of the issues because like i feel one part of the industry is very in the dark who's still in this old mentality if we work hard and we just ship and pray right and then we have this mobile industry that's very successful in analyzing and understanding uh how to be successful and how to not over invest in a failed product and just making money uh and i think the the only games that have been doing well with this model have been maybe the freemium games like fortnight or the games you pay for like accessories and stuff

and they're understanding and i think a lot of is because you mobile guys went into these companies and like what are you guys doing and trying to change things up um but there's no like center of like hey guys we're a great industry it's a fun industry we want to keep the talent in here so they're not forced to leave and look for other jobs so let's kind of recondition how we do business uh and i i don't know i don't i guess other industries i don't know i don't feel like other industries are as scattered as we are like we have kind of like a solution which is the mobile space i think the structure that you have set up for your company but like a lot of your peers who are in this space understanding exactly um the time and effort that needs to be put in for a successful product and analyzing everything that you're doing uh with a cause and effect mentality uh a large part of the game industry isn't doing that uh as

like i'm i'm just so appalled and and and afraid that there's like these two different directions that we're just like distant cousins that never talk to each other and it's very odd to me i don't know if you kind of noticed that pattern if you have any uh perspective or opinion on aaa because like yourself you know me and you are avid gamers and we hear these kind of you know especially in this time a lot of studio closures are happening because they can't ship or not making any money on a daily or even monthly uh basis like what was your overall perspective of this other world uh to me it looks archaic um to you probably like why are you guys still working like that so so i first thing that many many triple h companies did open and and stepped into the mobile because because they believe that that doing both uh uh

desktop and console and mobile can give them added value managing a brand learning from the different industry right if you look at the ubisoft that that not only stepped into mobile but did a few big acquisitions within the mobile games of french companies and i'm sure it's one of the leading a incentive for them if you look at ea that released many of their games on mobile or if you look at disney that stepped into mobile a couple of two years ago a couple of years ago so so first of all i think that if if i had a big brand outside of the mobile i i would definitely try to step in into this industry as well either by by launching games or or by doing an acquisition because because i think that there are many many opportunities by managing multi-platform a gaming activity uh both from brand perspective but also for

of course from from learning from from each a platform and adopting a different needs so so i i think that wherever it's possible it should be done i i see that others are not doing it and and and and i also understand by the way that it's harder to to to get as granular in data in other platforms like in mobile because because it's not only your decision or how sophisticated you are building the company is also what the ecosystem allows you to do and i think that what mobile today allows you to do is is much more advanced than than other platforms in terms of granularity and and data analysis by the way this is also something that can be in risk right we know um ios 14 by apple and we know that privacy and gdpr and ccpa and and and and there are many many a privacy and regulation processes in the past a year around mobile because there are there are many

questions asked did this industry get too far in terms of how granola how how capable are you to follow a user across different applications within the mobile and to target him and to understand exactly what he likes to do when and and and and did we did we go too far in terms of balancing between privacy and efficiency to allow a very solid ecosystem and and and and i think the next year is going to be very very interesting in this perspective as well to see where the industry goes to uh apple announced many many changes in ios 14 that that will get live very soon and they will they will impact the efficiency of the ecosystem on favor of of the privacy of users and then maybe the mobile industry will go a step back to to be more in line with other platforms unless the technology will allow different things so so i think that first of all the different

platform and different ecosystems allow different things i definitely think that there is a lot to be learned between them and if you are capable you should have a multi-platform activity and and i also think that we are still not stable definitely not in the mobile which is a very very very very very young ecosystem we're still not stable and i think that as as an ecosystem many many things will change around this area of of tracking of data of versus privacy and how how far and how optimized should you be to balance between these two edges yeah that's an interesting point like um being so data driven and uh it's it's a very i would say uh i wouldn't even say spoiled but it kind of that's the word that's coming like very spoiled perspectives like you guys gone so far at user acquisition or understanding use acquisition uh and the questioning of if you're just cutting the plant too soon before

letting it grow is is a very uh it seems a very natural uh way of going about it because now that you know you're trusting the data so much that you're not leaving room for potential possibilities to that that isn't on that sheet right um is that something that have been kind of popping up like are there instances or examples um that you've heard you've seen or done where anomaly such as that where you guys weren't able to track why exactly a a certain week is very profitable or a certain week isn't um or were you guys able at least to connect like uh trending news or with the news and updates that people are reacting kind of like looking at the stock market or something right uh is there something like that that you guys can that you can share with everyone listening about like these anomalies that that isn't trackable uh within the mobile industry

yeah i think that first of all because it's still a young industry a relatively young industry definitely in this scale i would say two three years top in the scale that mobile games have have today i think that it happens a lot and and and and many many times things that that are being understandable a year after we don't understand them in real time because you don't have many previous years to compare to and and and you kind of understand as you go you see a trend and you don't understand why and then a year after you see the exact same trend on the exact period of time and then you understand okay probably because of the holidays there or because of the behavior there because of the economy system because of many many things this is why we see the same trend year over year but it can take you a couple of years because there is no more than a couple of years of data for this industry in this scale still it takes time to connect the dots like i would say that

again for for for the user requisition process the the level of granularity and and and the ability to understand today is almost a maximized in your ability to track and to understand and to optimize your marketing effort but when analyzing your user behavior within the game this is something that is is more difficult because because this is something that many many times depends on on environmental stuff that are either unique or either you don't have enough data to understand to predict them and suddenly you can see that the engagement drops without understanding why and then and then a year after you'll see that it happens exactly in the same month because probably february is a weaker month because people are after christmas they are working harder to finish their test network accumulated during january in december or day after and holiday and only then you understand okay it happens every year in the same time it's it's environmental

impact that the change of the user's behavior within the app and and i think that this is where we are still learning we don't have all the answers yet and and and this is probably the hardest thing to predict because unlike user acquisition where it's all databased to understand user behavior it's it's harder because it's not only connecting different data points it's it's it's to connect many many many different things that related to your game or to the this specific yield this specific week or this specific weekend that can impact the user's behavior within the app and i think we are getting better and better every month and every year every month and every year passes we better understand we have more data we better understand user's behavior and why we found correlations to different things that impact it and we are a bit better in predicting it but still ltv wise not marketing-wise ltv-wise and and users behavior-wise we are still learning and we are still missing things and i think

it will just get better and better as the industry will get more solid and experienced and less young with a lot of new things happen [Music] uh so this is kind of going back to um you know a lot of the the the pioneering of the mobile industry have have uh worked out and are using and are constantly evolving and you're completely correct like the mobile industry is very young the ecosystem is very new but i feel like you guys leapfrogged in advance since uh and i think a lot of that is just inviting other other people outside the game development bubble inside to kind of rethink well not even rethink they just approach it in the most efficient way as possible they're not having to deal with years of like emotional scarring of aaa development right um i would love to kind of hear your thoughts more on uh what comes to mind of course fortnite i feel like they're they're very traditional

aaa and then suddenly fortnite came and they were able to to adapt pretty quickly in my opinion uh this this new idea and made it a mega success uh i don't know if you you look at fortnite and you look at epic and look at these other companies for fun or something but what is it that they did that kind of changed that company from a traditional way of game development to something that is i i feel like a lot from mobile game development type of thinking i'm sure they're they have a lot of these guys in there to keep fortnite going and and i would love to hear your thoughts about that yeah i think that again i think if if someone didn't notice the super massive growth of mobile in the pa in the past couple of years it probably missed it and i think this is what epic and and many many other aaa studios did they understood okay mobile is is is growing a lot it is the most growing uh platform for games right might not be

the biggest yet but but in terms of annual growth there is no other platform at all that goes in this space and it already gets got to a very very very skilled opportunity and again if i look five years ahead i think that mobile is the only platform that will keep growing and more and more and more because because all around the world by the way because because this is where technology is is moving forward the fastest and and i think that what these these these companies did very very well it is first of all they understood and not now that couple of years ago the trends of the mobile a platform and ecosystem and and and what is left now is to understand what is different because because playing over mobile and playing over console is is a very different experience and and and and you cannot just take the game from console to adjust it to mobile of course and and to hope that it will work

you need to understand everything that around mobile how users interact with mobile when users play mobile games versus console games it's it's different timing in the day in the day and different places where they do that and i think that if you are investing enough either by by by first of all giving resources into analyzing and investigating what happens around mobile games where the users consume mobile games and and then if you are if you're on the other hand doing either a equihire or taking the right people that are experiencing on mobile to build the product from ux from control from from experience perspective to be as as good as possible over mobile then then there is no reason in the world why a successful game over console will not succeed also over mobile if you are doing it in the right way first of all analyzing what needs to be different and then execute it with with experienced uh teams that know how to build it on the right way and i think there are

still many great games over non-mobile platform that still didn't do this move and i think that it's a shame because because i think that the potential and and and it's not only a thought anymore right it's clear seeing many many triple a studios are doing it the potential to to if you're doing it right the the potential here is it is very big and i think it will only get bigger and bigger every year and and and if you delay your entrance into this platform and in into this world you will just it will just get harder and harder for you to do it in in four years when other competitors of you are already dominating this this platform so i think that epic is an example this is a great way both on the step of analyzing and then executing and this is the two things that are that are important i think that other are doing it is a great as well and i think that if you are not doing it it's a mistake in in my eyes every gaming company that that is looking for a long-term growth and to dominate the gaming

space on several platforms should be looking at this opportunity because it's a big one and and it's very very hard just like the coverage it's very very hard to predict how gamers will will feel and and will interact with games in in five or ten years from now but but i'm confident that mobile will play a a and an important holder and i think that mobile is the device that is should be a most improved over time right because because this is where the technology is getting better and better the fastest and and allow you to do more and more around games on mobile if you look at games today versus three years ago it's two different worlds right mobile games three years ago and mobile games today the capabilities are 10x better and and in two years it will be another 10x better and this is why this is an interesting platform to explore into and to grow with because because there is no doubt it will keep going yeah i think you're you're bringing up a

very important on a important point oops my video just went so i'm gonna switch to you real quick but you're bringing up a very important point because um what we're seeing is that a lot of these game development studios are are trying to adapt and some have succeeded like epic uh and are swinging pretty well right um but what i'm also seeing is that i i completely agree with you like in terms of what the next five ten years in mobile space is gonna be in the growth rate it's just gonna be enormous compared to the other industry uh other parts of the industry the other parts of the industry in my opinion are kind of going the other way like the aaa development teams you know i still have a lot of friends that are working on the next gen playstation 5 which we're all really happy and exciting we want that just like movies right you want the big blaster movies and yeah you want the indie movies you want all types of flavor but like those teams are actually trying to be smaller like at least their internal studios they're trying to keep

people uh their main teams really small and they're trying to outsource or use code development to kind of balance balance up the sheet because the risk is higher now right so they're kind of going the other direction they're they're they're doubling down they're tripling down and you know that one bad flop it's just it's not just them it's just their mom their cousins everyone's gonna everyone's gonna be involved in the bankruptcy right so it's like it's it's a crazy direction to keep going knowing that this i i kind of equate this to always playstation 4 error right it's just easier because there numerically makes everything easier playstation 4 error you know we've getting we've gotten a lot smaller uh in terms of that bigger part of the studio but the mobile industry have been gotten more efficient uh there's more people with better devices every day and like you said technology is improving every day and uh and it it's still uh uh alarming to know that a lot of game developers have no idea about the

space like if i didn't spend a year and a half working at a mobile company i would have been in the dark completely it's like whoa like what these guys are just looking at uh data tables every day this is not what game developers do i'm an artist by trade right so it's like you're just looking excel sheets all day that's what you do is like maybe i should start looking at this so with that with that too i would love to hear your commentary because of obviously along with um mobile development there's a lot of uh especially now in this code world a lot of people uh going into or at least entertaining the idea of indie development right the teams have gotten smaller there's a lot of tools especially available that weren't available before to make it possible to even combat against really high uh quality games right both for mobile and console you can make these games with a very small team that used to take three plus people to me um so someone

who's kind of new in that space uh you know with with your knowledge behind mobile and and understanding you know mvp and lifetime value uh what could what advice would you give to these guys who are starting out it's like test about testing your product and and and and understanding you know the risk uh how to mitigate risks uh in creating a successful product uh for all parts of the industry so so i think it's it's very interesting because because i 100 agree what what you say and i think that this is what i like the most for the mobile gaming industry is that it's probably the only a infrastructure or ecosystem that allows almost anyone a one-man show that is walking from his basement in i don't know in berlin to express their creativity alone and and to build the mobile game and to

release it to the market and to have it being played by by millions or to have a millions of people entertained by your own product there is no other a industry that allows it right there is no other platform that allows a one man to build a movie that will suddenly present it in netflix and in hollywood and everybody will watch his movie or to build a a um i know any other entertainment a product and and games allow it right we did with it and this is also one of the things that are getting more and more advanced over time from unity to unreal and and build boxing and the engines that allow to build games are getting more and more sophisticated today it even allow to build games without coding which is which is crazy right if you are using a new engines today you can actually build the full mobile game with almost no coding at all only by using a platform that allow it and i think that this is what

shaped a new industry in the new ecosystem and and and sharing for instance what supersonic is doing so so we are we are working on two different fronts we are we are developing games in-house with our own in-house teams that are experienced and and developing games for years and it consisted of game designers and artists and and and of course unity developers and and everything but we're also doing publishing which is exactly this and and and publishing activity which is very common today is exactly the infrastructure infras infrastructure to allow to indie developers to get their game published so for instance the process that supersonic is doing is we have built a self-serve platform that that anyone in the world even if you are one person 21 years old with just a crazy idea for a game you can just log into our platform and and to run a first marketability a test that we are paying

for that we are financing for you and if your idea if your very mvp shows promising or or interesting results then we will start communicating with you and we are we will work on a publishing deal where well we put our resources our experience on user acquisition monetization or building games on building the right economy and the right progression and the right meta with your idea and together we can build again we can publish together and this is exactly the goal here because once we understood that anyone build can build a great game out there and and and the only problem they are going to have is that they don't know how to make this great game into a great business they might have a great idea they might have a very good gameplay but they don't know how to build it into a full game and how to market it and how to acquire users and to be profitable and monetize them this is why the ecosystem evolved into a very sophisticated publishing developer a relationship where big publishers that are very

experienced in this world are working with a very very small developers and and and if you take as an example we as i told you in the beginning we have released nine games this year almost all of them are being played by millions of users around the world most of them got to be number one in the us in the top charts and and the most installed game in the us and and and two out of these nine games a game that were developed by one man show is it one man is doing the art that the game design the coding he's doing everything a to z and and we work with him as a publisher and and two out of our nine games exactly in this template and and we are building all of our company in all of our technology to accommodate it and to allow everyone in the world that has a passion into games and and has a great idea for game and and to try and work with us to test this game with us and if the metrics will will show the potential we are here to do this path with you

and and i think that after publishing one or two games with a very strong partner it's even easier for you to to jump and to move into the next step and building it your own studio and start doing the publishing by your own after understanding after better understanding how the industry works and and and i think that this really allows a great opportunity definitely again if we're looking back to covet and people working from home i think this is a great opportunity and and the opportunity to to allow people to to build games that will be played by millions from their own home without risking a lot of money or anything similar it's something you need that we are we are very proud of yeah and that that's a tremendous resource that you're providing on behalf of supersonic to to a lot of these people because i again i i feel education uh for this is very sparis um a lot of people are diving into this too uh too fast right not

not knowing the risks just a lot of it it's just gambling i feel like even if you are the most talented game developer not understanding the business side and marketing is a tremendous gamble and it scares me it horrifies me when people are like taking equity out of their home doing something they've never done before uh and just praying for it it's an it's a smaller form of ship and prey on a triple a development size but to a lone person right so it's crazy that a lot of that side of the industry thinks that way it's it's very old it's outdated and uh the dangers are even more immense i think uh now than than before because games before used to take a very small amount of teams uh because the quality um i don't know like it just i mean right now there's a whole mix of retro there's a whole mix of what quality is but i feel a lot of these people who feel like yeah i can make a triple game by myself

but you shouldn't do that because of the time spent into it right like you should test the game design idea so i think more services like that you know the podcast obviously is a way to kind of educate people to kind of figure things out and um we're about done here but i would love to kind of hear one last thing before i kind of hand the mic over to you uh you know what type of resources books um videos that you recommend for more people to kind of dive into this talks that help you kind of formulate these these ideas where you know you you feel tested is there anywhere that you can point people to to kind of help learn more about these terminology that you guys are so used to uh to adapt to their their to their product yeah so so first of all i think that uh again and the the industry is it's very rich in content and and there are several sources working people can learn about it uh supersonic and ourselves and level up

and and and and and even facebook and google and everyone is all about sharing and and taking this industry forward and and i think that besides just learning the terms and understanding everything what important here is to be connected to what happens in the industry because because it's a very changing ever-changing industry right for instance the top charts something that you don't have so dynamic in any other platform and and and and just start being connected being understand looking at the top charts on a daily basis understanding what games are being played the most are being installed the most currently on ios or or android in the us for example and and to play them and and to and to touch them and to understand different trends i think that there is no better a a lesson a way to learn and to get into the mobile industry than just

looking very closely at what happens because because the charts speak right you can see the top grossing you can see the top the most installed games you can you can install them all of them are for free right this is this almost the very most of them are for free you can play them you can understand how are they built how are they monetized what is working better what is the level of art and and and and and i think that this is the best way to dive deep into this industry and to and to learn what works more and what works less perfect i want to again thank you for your time to dove for coming on the show and educating us mobile's faith has been always interesting to me and even with me spending a little time there's so much that i felt like i should have i should have just dug through the excel sheets myself to learn more because a lot of these you know you guys are looking at it all day and that person is like man i got to make a game what are you guys doing it's like they are they are the

main reasons why we're selling the games so yeah i i wish i wish you know that that type of education like you said the resources are out there but i feel like um a large part of the industry isn't looking for those and so they're not uh they're just completely blind to it like uh and it although the ecosystem is pretty uh new i feel like since the first iphone you know 2004 or whatever it's been 10 years it's like it's time for us to like it's long enough for us to kind of notice what's going on and everyone kind of hears like the mobile industry is doing well but as a game developer they're just not paying attention to it and i think it's a huge mistake like you said i think in the next five ten years sure we'll have the next playstation or xbox but the space that's growing i think the future of game development is going to be these phones uh because one day these phones are going to equate to the next hottest console man we're talking about lifeline uh lifetime value right five ten years a

new console comes out you know phones coming out every three months so eventually the tech and resources and you know the money put behind it is going to be in the phones and if you don't understand that space and user habits i feel a lot of people are going to be left in the dust a lot of game developers are going to be outdated pretty quickly so i completely agree with you this is a very important hour and uh i want to thank you for your time i'm gonna as a thank you i'm gonna shut up now i'm gonna hand over the mic to you and this is a opportunity to kind of uh promote uh give attention to or tell people where to find you yeah sure so so i think that again i think it will supersonic is is all about mobile games from all different uh kind of mobile games from sport to puzzle and i think that they again that what's nice here is that there is so big diversity around mobile games and

and and we are very very looking forward to to see this ecosystem growing to to see it expanding i think it again covered just emphasized more how much important is it to grow as an ecosystem because it's so digitalized and it allows so many people to be involved in it working from home to to entertain their time wherever they are so we are we are here and we are we are happy to keep releasing great uh games for you and to keep walking with with great studios around the world that have great ideas for games and you can always find us at supersonic.com and and this is it thanks so much for hosting me and and always happy to share and and and to learn and to be part of the interesting discussions and and i hope that we'll see only a growth and good thing then the coverage will leave us soon and and will be able to focus only on good things and and and enjoying and entertaining people on the best way possible oh wanna

tag on to that message you know where we're here for everyone that's suffering through this just play through the games it's the best thing we can do it's the only thing we can do so uh like you i i hope like all the benefits that we're at least seeing from living at home and working from home uh that's gonna carry over after after covet's done but uh again the dove i want to thank you for your time for coming on to the show it was a i was really much looking forward to this because i feel you know a lot of this stuff is the future of game development and not a lot of people know about it so i want to thank you free time and coming on thank you all right have a good one [Music]

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