Finding success in mobile games the second and third time around

[Music] I mean I think most of you you guys don't really need introducing parts in case somebody has been living in a dark cave forever let let could you introduce yourself you want to start wetting yourself yes um so my name is Sarah barrister I'm the CMO with next games um next games has been founded in 2013 were now a couple of years old published two games the comp respond twist which is our first game and then the walking dead no man's land our second game which is based on the hit TV show we're about 70 people right now and working on some exciting new stuff as well cool Willam I [Music] [Laughter] vilhelm head of games at rovio been

doing mobile games myself for since 2004 for Reza it's been a good it's been a good ride it's been a fun ride I'll see the industry change actually quite a few times along the way join rovio in 2014 and became head of games this year rocio is known for especially its 52nd game which which was angry birds and and now we we tried to take very good care of the bird while while also trying to accomplish many new things we're a few games that are doing doing really well in the US at the moment angry birds to enrich pop anguish friends and nibblers encourage you to to to to download all of them and and pay tons of money for the iaps in those games and and enjoy and look out for for for some new stuff coming out from us soon and hi everyone on Petra and the chief

creative officer at seriously one of the founders of the company been working with games since 1995 in companies like remedy and as well as rovio and overall games are super exciting and it's a wonderful field to work in definitely enjoying third time around yeah and I think this is he really wanted to get to the bottom up because obviously you know we have your golden Robbie early on i remember when i think i put the first pop Arabiya game live no one's been proved me wrong yet the darkest fear I'm so a huge fan of darkest fear some of those do remember this I keep keeping lobbying to get in to bring it back but that's just because I'm sad like that but you know we're gonna bring it back with play man Oh bringing back we play men winter sports anyone know what playin with the sports was any yes so you and you will remember the sauna games imagine being British and releasing a game that has basically

finished sauna sports in the game and I did we did it right with it didn't we we actually did okay with anyway enough of that side track but the whole point of this is that there's something magical that seems to happen with people you have a success not necessarily managed to get the next success from it but then go and do something else so we're just trying to break this up into sort of pieces so first thing is is the is the hit and the initial hit a curse as much as it is a benefit so new in terms of your experience brick building games getting involved in games what was well how do you describe this this first hit experience um of course you have to sort of define for yourself what's a hit first if we look at next games we did very well with compost point west which is our first game launched with the new team it's not huge it's not on the you know

top 10 grossing charts but we think it was a great success we have a community that's super excited about the game very passionate about it even though it's a small project if you compare it to the book in the no man's land which is our second game and initially we we feel that it's a hit for us we've been consistently working very very hard on that for for the past ten months we've learned tons and we're actually at a very good place right now before the next station of the walking dead starts and very excited about you know what levels of fitness we can hit our next fall but we're even comfort from West it's tough I don't you know unequivocally a hit but the team that makes that are new to the block they they've had experienced before and how much value did that previous experience bring to making their sure

that that project was as good as it was well first of all the team is everything especially when you start from from you knew the team is everything and you know when you search for funding for your company because you know that's all you have and you know those are the people who are actually gonna make make things happen everybody can have great ideas but then you actually have to execute and that's the hardest part um [Music] what was the question of work out how much the skill of the unity experience of the of the it does I mean you know when you have people on board who have actually done it before they failed which is very important but they've had success as well and when you bring that all on board on your new project that's that's imperative yeah so I'm gonna Petrus because I think we have a slightly different journey we can talk about but I think it's a nice for segue to you cuz obviously did the pc thing and an obviously the bird and and then

you've left that do the slugs and how how is that process in that changing of mindset that must have come from that perfected you it's a every time you are starting something new it's a it's a massive recalibration basically if I'm looking at to work in a trophy of weed we have an incredible amount of resources we could put teams to 30 people to work on on product new products when needed then going from there into just having six people in a single room starting to build a new game starting to build a new company from scratch it so it's a recalibration that certainly takes time it's a kind of getting into the mindset of like this is all we have let's let's start building up again is both we're both kind of scary but it's also super exciting on because you are literally

starting from from a clean slate but all of you guys are so you know hugely established in your backgrounds and you know and I know Andrew very well because he used to be my commercial guy back in the days of three and he's not a gamer at all i'm randall if he's changed since but he never used to be but my point where that is his expertise is really clear your expertise is really clear you know that all of your team's expertise and you will work together or I think you mostly work together so you had this incredible bomb is that is that really that's what I see is that absolutely and kind of working through through any sort of intense free shipping or even our that unifies people on you not so without a doubt and if to elaborate a little bit more about the experience concretely helping and so on one thing that I I find super useful is just or more and more you start seeing patterns you start going like okay

you're not in dealing with the same with this problem for the first time you can relate to on a previous time we had this issue then what happened was this therefore let's at least try to fail in a new and innovative way to make new mistakes not always but you're coming out of the blocks really on you because you've you've got rid of all of the kind of legacy that you had to do it because the history of how you got there and now you're zooming in on some of our kind of three small teams can move super fast you and you don't have any of any of the previous commitments so you can focus on on the essential the other thing that I find I've found super useful is just in general having such a wonderful network of people there's our first of all by now I'm actually much more able to say i don't know i don't have any idea on how how to actually approach this problem but let's call up somebody that I know

neelam probably is dealing with similar things so let's ask a more similar and whereas previously like I would move or to say 10-15 years ago I would always think that later has to have all the answers and even if I didn't know I'd probably you know get my best guess as the answer and and listening to people going like hey I don't have a clue what do you think is actually something that makes a big difference as you wonder if that's all we should covered in the panel we talked about white white Finland because I think having the ability to say I don't know is actually something I think is particularly good but I reason I was laying with you is because I think you kind of doing your sit journey in some ways because you've done do your own thing and you've done you know the old earlier early early days when you were selling me games and so long ago and and then now I tend to refer to that as the era where mobile games was a really dumb idea too dumb idea yeah yeah we were so such a dumb

idea I mean being early is wrong that's all it is it's not it's not smart it's not future thinking you're just wrong anyway but but point being is that you're now in backing rovio a company that's handled that success historically was you know let's face it struggling a little bit to move forward and now you're sitting there and you're starting to sort earn those but the you you're you're coming into this life third fourth it it's you know you tell me how many numbers but you know that well how does that change it you coming in fresh to a company like that how does that affect your ability to function that's a great question ah let me know struggle through the answer um the the it's been like first of all it's been it's been an exhilarating ride over the past two years that I've been part of of of rovia which is just the whole the whole history of rovio was remarkable in any sense of the word at

and the truth to be told like just a remarkable amount of mistakes have been made at rovio along the years and there's no there's no reason to to say learning all she's learning opportunities and and and I think that that that the company has grown up so much throughout the years i joined 2014 a literally it's three weeks after we started the first large large scale reorganization which was which was needed and the year after there was another one which was needed and i think now we are we are we're better equipped where organized much more focused than we have been and and the part that I think the the industry doesn't doesn't know and and and Anna truth be told hasn't really been communicated was that the games business was was from a revenue point of view growing throughout these these periods not against business I mean of

course we we had phenomenally high ambitions and and maybe at some point those those ambitions were actually not reasonable now but it was growing from from a top-line revenue point of view throughout these times so with the focus exercises and with with the product vision exercises many of the things that but Petra was there actually putting in place and then yummy was there to to to to to further work on I'm sorry i was actually also there we all we all have our sheriff over history was was there putting in place on say this year is it's all coming together and and it's it's it's not it's not really about what has happened this year or last year is just it its it's all now finally coming together and do your units reaping new rule to all these are exactly as well thanks / 3

but actually that's a really poor focus on is that you talked earlier but your toga oh you talked about not don't believe the data because the data lies to you and all this kind of stuff and I think it really is that if that may be that the point is that when you are starting a fresh you're creating a clean slate with those lessons to build on but how do you actually focus on the right thing to move forward with you well again having having been through with the same process a couple of times is very useful in in terms of identifying some of the chord patterns patterns and ultimately it all comes down to very simple like just focus on creating great games it's it's all about building substance but being able to focus on that being able to the other thing that I find very useful is in stir in genomic or you can just look for the

people who fit your company and culture and you can early on when building the company you're actually what you're doing is you're building the culture of the company that's going to define it for the next five years or hopefully next 50 years and being cognizant of that most most people just when they start building a company they go like product product product and don't really think about the implications of what kind of environment they build or or how they form the culture it happens mostly accidentally and now it's something that we've been able to prioritize from the start them and let's actually think let's talk with internally we've talked about what kind of culture do we want to work in what kind of values do we believe in and our values are always be shipping I think but let's focus on the product and price product or the PO PowerPoint but at the same time these are cognizant conversations I suppose the things that just happen when when you start a company so sorry from your

point of view is that is that meriden next services that something has been key to you the ability to really focus on not just building a product but also building a company he actually it's interesting what you said better about being able to say I don't know that's that's where Knicks game started from when we were establishing the small team and growing that we kind of made made this promise to each other that were never ever no one's gonna pretend that they know something when they don't and you know there's a lot of stuff that we don't know we're gonna say that aloud out loud and figure figure things out together as we go so I think that that too is very important the other thing you know as I mentioned team is everything you have and the team is you know who's essentially then shipping the games and making the products we started to work like really focus on our culture from very early on and of

course you know how you work on that it changes when the company grows we were 10 people and I joined so it was very easy to get together in one room talk about our values what we believe in you know what are things that you know how we want to behave towards each other towards our partners what kind of games do want to make how we're gonna put the players first that's very important for us the very first thing that we think of but then as you grow you need to really carefully sort of design you know the way how you you know bring the values that you've just decided on together how you bring that in your daily work you know in your daily practices are you talking about them how you encourage people to you know live by live by them so it's not something that you know the founders or the management team decides on or creates for for the employees but that's something that you work on together and you know from you know we do a lot of small things at the company for example one of the big things in

addition to saying I don't know out loud is saying thanks and we play pay a lot of attention to that and we have this small thing every Friday after the work day on fridays we all of us get together even though we're 70 right now we get together and your Lee round of saying thanks you know from small things from big things you know something nice that your colleague has done for you whether it's work related whether it's just that you know this guy next to me went to the gym with me over lunch or something you know small things that's very important what is looking after me you're coming in you came into ravio again relatively fresh of eyes there's a lot of people in the team who also you work with previously new people you bringing in you've got lots of experience how do you sustain a cultural identity around rovio when you're in that kind of circumstance and how important is that it yet another great question I'll struggle through the

the history and background is is provides its own set of opportunities and challenges the fact is that bro via had this massive hit game in 2010 and just kept on kept on growing and the company decided to scale itself and grow with it at at an astonishing rate going from 12 people to 850 in in in a quite a short period of time and that that itself presents its own challenges and and has a knock-on effect on on on a company's culture in a quite the fundamental fundamental way and that that spirit that that was there at rovio at the time where where it was truly felt that we can accomplish anything we can do anything is it something you you want to preserve that

spirit you want to preserve like this feeling of week and we can really accomplish big things while while of course the exercise in 14 and 15 was very very much one of focus so trying to focus that spirit and that attention to to something which is a little bit more clearly defined what it is and in a direction where where we're heading and I think this this year and the years before has been all about that now I think I'm losing the question a bit along the way but it is that that has been kind of a key exercise for for especially the games business unit that I that I speak mostly for in in sessions like this it's preserving that spirit but but trying to crystallize especially who we want to be in the future because a lot of things have changed i'll also also along the way we

games were premium when when angry birds became a big phenomenon and and and and flipping around that 22 free to play something that but pitre was there doing and it that is culturally a very very big thing to do a huge change culturally for the company at the same time as you're growing at this rate and we we that that really doesn't happen overnight and i think that that over the past few years it's it's gradually really turned around and and and and and we see we see now that we truly are a free-to-play company in the in the game space from from against business unit point of view i think yeah that the least you know where we had that background with Angry Birds a bit considering at likely service with the continued release of new content that's correct so like from from that point of view there's there's certain aspects of what what rovio did did under under

under pettis and the team's leadership which was quite bomb breaking at the time Leah like the idea of doing updates constantly in and bringing out new things constantly to players was wrote that wasn't a new idea for rovio per se mm it's the way that you do with this is different but the but the mindset for of putting fans right front square and center in your in your attention was there it's just the ways and the means have have changed dramatically along the way of the history of angry birds and rovio games so but you actually to continue a victim on that same vector for me one of one of the biggest learnings that rabia which which I found super exciting and exhilarating was the incredible level of foundation within the company we set the goals far far higher than I would have ever expected I'd look let's literally

shoot for the moon yeah you you place the bird in space like I really did don't it yes but but at the same time kind of it that was wonderful experience in and like if you aim ridiculously high you you set the goal so high that you feel really uneasy with them on like I'm not really comfortable at aiming this but let's give it a shot anyway and you're going to get somewhere pretty pretty amazing anyway it's you may not hit the original target but it was a great experience in especially here here in Finland we tend to often approach things from deep lets you know we're just working as hard as we can on let's say whatever that leads was we went like no way we're going this I let's start doing it and I'm not the kind of it there has to be a healthy dose of crazy in when you're building up things you need to really drive beyond what you believe is possible and then

you know the magic world will have actual happen but to build on that though you you've got this company with all these resources and this crazy ambition and now you're coming into your new company you don't have those resources anymore we're still crazy ambitious though we have a massively big vision that we want to build with West pins and we're executing on Datsun I mean we have set the target of we want to be the pics or mobile we we want to build from scratch starting with with a few people in in a single room we want to build one of the big global entertainment creators entertainment IP creators on a very massive scale and that's a vision that's going to take several several years the realness or possibly a decade will find out but I need land with we've started and at the same time if if I'm looking at back up the early days of max payne nobody had

shipped games in finland console games were basically nobody had done one and we started with like well we want to create this massively big film noir film noir title and and going for for a crazy level of ambition is generally it's a good starting point then dealing with that reality and how do you actually get there is is challenging and sometimes painful but sometimes it also works out and you never get there if you don't target that level off but again that's a good experience a good example in point because you didn't just make a first person shooter single player game you made one that changed the way we look at how you do first-person shooters you know that bullet time thing changed people's don't you can't hardly go away from a single plugin that hasn't got some mode like that you know i think that crazy it really defines it and it's crazy in next game which I mean you way I want I know this is true but anyway

you what's the crazy look like in that game uh well I think it is pretty crazy to think of that you know five guys would you know make a game out of the world's biggest TV show to start with you know with no team around them essential at the time you know and that that it is you know it's it's a big ambition and we made it happen but there's a sort of there's all kinds of crazy under the hood as well on how we think about creating partnerships with the IP holders that's actually very important how you construct that because IP based games have you know traditional have had a very bad reputation among the gamers because they're usually like projects that are hurried through you know they have a set date they need to go out at a certain time and that usually ends up with a you know low quality product or something that you wouldn't necessarily want a ship whereas with us we started looking at the partnerships in a totally different way we wanted to partner with them on a

much more deeper level you know then what you would traditional do and that's one of the reasons why AMC and Lionsgate are investors in next games as well so that they also have a steak steak in what we do and where the company is going and on a total different level beyond that you know one project that you you're working on at a time so there's a lot of sort of big thinking behind those decisions as well which don't necessarily sort of our they're not like inherently visible but then you know we believe that that results in in great games and a and a better execution on the brand and the and the IP and really bringing the TV show into life when we have creators on board for example from TV shows like a knot in a different way than then you know what you would normally do because I wasn't in the guys that made the other Walking Dead game one based on the cop the comic in Vancouver earlier this year and done

you know clearly the brand's incredibly loved and and the level of detail of knowledge is enormous enormous how do you deal with that listen that's intimidating as a process it is and and The Walking Dead fan community is it's huge and it's ridiculously passionate about the brand so it is actually quite intimidating to to make a game for for people who know that IP better than you know the people who actually make the TV show and they have a lot to say as well so you know you better let not let them down otherwise you're not going anywhere so we did you know we did a lot of research when we started with the game development a lot of choices on you know with the game design as well on how we're gonna bring bring the TV show into life and and that sort of the ambition level that were were headed towards in our next projects as well so basically

world-class IP that's that's um so I mean I was getting that IP needs it needs the connections and is the you know the confidence from the IP holder that you can deliver on the goods we got a lot of in you get game developers out here what advice would you give them in terms of their setting up now do they need to find somebody with that background and experience to be part of their team are their tricks that they can use like they're less as they can learn from what you've learnt already and be able to be successful as they are um well there's a lot of things that you need to take into consideration first of all obvious you have to look at your own team if you if you have one already on you know what what they're passionate about I mean you know if people are passionate about first-person shooters don't necessarily make sense to make a match 3 game with with that team so so there's that first of all you know looking at the IP that's out there and

finding out what you're excited about well then there's also with a lot of commercial aspects to it you know sort of boring sounding stuff like not being cheap with deployers and whatnot making sure you have you know sort of that that's I covered and all of that but then there's a lot of things like you know how and this really is like a bulk of the work getting to know the partner in the process of negotiating the contract basically how are they able to support you you know from a marketing perspective you know from a creative perspective is that possible first of all and then the second follow-up question to that is are they willing to do that it's not like you know it's not common to have such a close relationship in this pace as we as we do with AMC for example so there's a lot of considerations that that go into there and then how you're like in practice are building up this the collaboration are

not on a day to day basis because that's how you want to work with with the creatives on the IPS I'd it's it's not you know checking up every six months or so it's that that will not work so much sharing a flat so well you know what's the lesson that you would like to share with these indie guys what's the what's the mistakes that or the kind of success is that you found that if they pick on to that they're going to be more likely to be successful first time around so when when when setting up I even if it is a new company or if it's in pivoting strategy or turn around or whatever what what bit ly touched upon is really important and actually saw you followed up and I was rambling around the subject myself as well which is culture and it is it is like that that is basically the end result of people products and IP and everything that goes around in your company and poop and putting that in focus which quite honestly rarely companies do is really important and as

as I grow up with this industry and as I as I grow up myself slowly but surely it is something that he just come to realize how damn important that really is secondly when you when you when you go at this for the first second third or whatever time I think some of the fundamentals fundamental matters of the industry itself and whatever industry that is is things you start looking at more deeply and the way that next games and seriously have both tackled that are different yet when in fundamentals it's quite similar it's about IP there's 200 games launching on iOS every day and it doesn't seem to be 450 was the last count is so it's actually like I quote the number that is two years old but yet there's a really hold number in other words which is crazy right that's that's so many games so so if you look at the fundamentals how are you going to solve that discovery challenge and what

how do you make sure that you convert more more eyeballs to downloads than the other guy out there and IP is probably the best way to do that you decided to do your own and have a have a grand ambition and looks like you've taken the first really credible steps in executing on that ambition and you solve that in another way Rovio solved that in a crazy way few years ago on in their own way and and and it's at a very different time in the industry there wasn't 450 games launching every day so how are you going to solve that and and the second bit to that is with which which I quote our friend Eric cipher to who coined that term neatly in a keynote is how to find a game for an audience and not the other way around how do we found an audience for how how do we find a game for an audience who are we actually targeting and how are you positioning this product for that audience if you get all these individuals things right and then you end up hiring the right

people that can actually make those games or if you're game make yourself you can actually make those games great then you're off to a reasonable start and as we've so many times before is defined as the luck usually isn't a good good strategy yeah and that hope is not a strategy hope is not a strategy it's better and our to add to that song I think a couple of pretty important things in general there's a lot of good guidelines already out there but to build a network it's it's really easy to stay home and build your game or stay within the company but meet up with friends go to go to conferences to meet up with other developers and building off relationships that you can ask for help when you need it everyone even the most experienced veterans out there actually the most experienced veterans out there dunno to ask for help whereas if you're just just all building your

dream game in a small company it's very easy to neglect our part the more connected you are the better you are able to read the market the better the more feedback you have going back into your system and listening it's all data points to everyone's going to happen have an opinion nobody's opinion is the god honest truth they're all very subjective it's all about context but at the same time enough of data points the 12 point to the same direction then you can probably make decisions based on those and i think that's that's also very important the last but not least to follow follow the thing that you are passionate about one of the reasons primarily reasons why we work on our own IPS is because we're passionate about creating creating our own world building our own characters we want to build IP that's that's why this company exists to begin with and we're going to be doing a lot more of that going forward and

following whatever your core passion is whatever your core expertise is stay focused and built and built a culture built the company built a product I don't that single niche and you should be fine Kanaan to to echo which what you said is really important about the network and talking to people I think we're fortunate being in an industry where people actually do talk we're in general people are not and in the games industry and people do do stop and talk and give their opinion and especially in the finish games industry we break em das all the time we we like we actually talk to each other we have a we have a great community where we aspire to learn from each other which is which is wonderful setting to be so move to finland which is the last bit this hey this might be mostly at her home audience I suspect but anyway so last thing ray Nina's quickly simply write can India's succeed first time around or is it inevitable they're gonna

have to try more than once in this can absolutely succeed on the first time around every year there are several examples on people in a basement formal or bigger teams there's there's no reason it's hard constantly being shipped there's not many of them and there's a lot of people out there taking shots but everything is possible there's agreed I i I'd contrary to some level of popular belief i do not think that discovery is broken i I fundamentally don't think the discovery is broken and what you said is pointing exactly to that direction the you you can succeed and and and and there are as you said there's several examples well that happens and there's several examples of where it happens the second and third time around and and and I love the fact that people don't tend to give up in this industry even have a passion something you believe in and you follow it

yeah here here on the discovery is not broken i also believe that is not it's just different things change at a very fast pace and and you know in these certainly can succeed there's no doubt about that but you just have to find your own way so that's that leaves us at conclusion i think which is having the experience of two or three attempts of working with successful companies can be incredibly beneficial that it allows you to focus and get out the gate fast but at the end of the day it's that focus and that annoyingly clever friend of ours eric's comment find game for your audience not an audience for your game and then you'll be coming out the blocks to the right level the right speed the right target then you can still be successful but don't give up if you're not you know there's actually you know put everything into being successful but don't kill

yourself in the process because you want to be able to make sure that you can build on whatever success you get whatever stage and learn listen and share thank you thank you [Music]