From Prototypes to Hits: Inside Rollic’s Playbook with CEO Burak Vardal

[Music] hi Barack V thank you for for having me at your office it's great having you here in istan yeah well it's it's great being here my fourth time but um I want to talk a little like I want to talk a lot about roic just for as a as a like a summary of your company so you're a CEO and a co-founder of roic you founded this company in 2018 in 2020 uh with Denise Amendment and then in in 2020 after the success of go kns picker 3D you got acquired by Zinga 80% stake 168

million was the reported number and then after the acquisition you didn't slow down so multiple chart topping games in hyper casual you got the uh tangle Masters hair challenge high heels old download is millions and millions of times and then 2022 so again a two years later uh Zinga gets acquired by take two yeah that's a positive the negative is the idea fade that probably to on the hyper casual so things change again uh you become a part of this large gaming Empire a much larger gaming Empire and then your business model changes so now it's hybrid casual now what like you're 70 80% of your revenues coming from Ina purchases where in the beginning it was all Ina ads you've gone through a lot in like a very short amount of time what's the secret SCE of Ric being on top of you know pretty big changes in the industry so I think like the First Quality skill set of the team I'll start from that is being Gamers so when you talk about hyper casual game companies the the perspective in the market is

mostly that the teams are more focused on adtech and marketing and and but not mainly on depth of games and systems of games and being core Gamers but the difference of Ric team being too adaptive to every change in the market the first thing is like the leadership team is a core gamer team you know the biggest social element of most of our Lives is playing games besides mobile and besides rooll so uh so that I think that's that if you don't have that it's very hard to adapt the team to the to the changes of the industry so I don't like calling genre names like hyper casual hybrid casual we we tend to call mobile games in general but I think the moving from hyper to hybrid was a natural course of business because since 2019 to 20123 we kept developing better hits every year so if you take uh the games you just mentioned go onut Pier 3D and then if you look at 2020 releases which is tangle Master High hair challenge high heels those those are

better games than the previous year and then we launched field the fridge which is another great puzzle that we ever done and then and then last year we launched our first series of hybrid games which call which we call hybrid series one twist tangle boss Jam screw jam heway and timeline up five five grossing top grossing games so if you look at that even if we didn't have idfa probably we'll be doing more hybrid stuff because uh every year the team has the tendency to build a better product right the only difference of the culture of high casual uh backgrounded companies are we're more focused on building new hits compared to live operations right so the the the energy in the company comes from launching a new hit every year or or a couple of new hits every year that we try to balance it out right now being a part of Zinga intake too we learn a lot about live operations from especially from Zinga at the moment right but but I think again um the skill set of the team on and on top of it uh the natural course of progress

in our in our game design mind mindsets I call it and that's that's this is a natural outcome the hybrid model you said two things you said the um people being Gamers and and the uh the sort of excitement and and the tradition of new hits yeah and you kind of walk around the office so you have big gaming room like I've not seen that in a long while you like a you know Riot type of a room with with all those seats and and and you know there's consoles everywhere and you wouldn't expect that Hy casual even a mobile gaming company like I I've seen it in AAA Studios but I've never seen a mobile gaming where you actually have a gamer room yeah and um and then you the second part is like right behind you the gong yeah the gong the new hitong yeah yeah we are like the team loves like again um it's it's quite challenging for our first of all live operations teams because like they tried to create longevity around the title we launched last year and it's the hardest job in Mob in general whatever game you're

producing the hardest thing is to create ongoing B beats big updates to an a year old or like 5-year-old title so kudos to that but of course the new energy is is something different and every I call it the power of new not just in games I think the whole entertainment sector loves new right so if you're even Warner Brothers when you do Barbie movie it becomes one of your top hits in history right so if even if you're a movie producer you need a new hit so this is the reality of entertainment the excitement around entertainment mostly comes from building something new a new hit so I think that's how we balance it and the gong when we have a soft launch or a new launch or or the the excitement in the company Something Something Different yeah when when I saw the gong I thought um I thought it's for revenue or downloads and they're like no no no it's for the new game launch kind of I was surprised cuz like usually when talking to Hy you know hyper casual

hybrid casual even Publishers it's more about money but for you it's more about games new games interesting yeah interesting yeah um what makes turkey such a successful hub for game development because there's so many great companies casual puzzle mainly yeah but that's the biggest category at the same time yeah um I'll give a long answer to this sorry sorry sorry sorry for that so like I have this analogy of uh comparing Turkish ecosystem to a child education cycle okay back in so I start from generally 2010 and I called the first 10 years of period before 2019 I call it the primary school right so we had great Studios succeeding with more App Store optimization in Mobile organic downloads some good stuff in PC and console but the ecosystem was not brought together and in late 20110 there is like a peak gram all those mobile examples started scaling up and going up to a great great uh position in the

market and that told us something I guess right and then uh I called the start of rolic in 20 early 2019 late 2018 I call it the start of the high school uh uh if you compared to a kids child education cycle and then what happens in high school is you find your own craftsmanship you start finding that yeah you start getting to know yourself sometimes you do reckless decisions you you want to have fun you maybe you ski the lessons but you you you balance things in your life but throughout the last two years especially in the last semester of high school you have an idea of life and what you want to do with life right so I call 2019 to 24 our high school period as Turkish Mobile gaming ecosystem and or total gaming ecosystem you can call it and now we are going to the university phase with 2025 that's what we call because the change we did at Ro roic worked with almost 160 turkey

studios in its life cycle of five years and the total crowd is like 3,000 people that we've seen and we worked together with and and sometimes we had good experiences sometimes we had bad experiences we launched great games we launched very bad games so we we learned but throughout this five years we learned a lot together with the studio partners and with the team here right so I think now what we did is for next three years we created craftsmanship per genre to our studio partners and to our team so we don't now B bucket up the puzzle games Runner games and action games we have separate teams separate Studios producing different sub genes of mobile so that's the that's what we call the start of craftsmanship at the moment at roic and three years from now we think that this system will have more graduates and then rolic and Turkish gaming ecosystem will be more ready I call it for PC console and different

General so this is the general view I have and I think in terms of talent perspective the reason we are so good at mobile especially mobile right now is our University system if you take Turkish SATs the greatest uh programs that you can get into our industrial engineering pro programs and that gives you a certain understanding about everything yeah so if you have data if you have knowledge then you can figure out everything right so our best people in the country are mostly IND engineers and then when they come to the mobile they make great product managers right so that's one of the key strengths of of the of the country and I I think second and third things are there are a lot of gamers in Turkey the youth is playing a lot of games the street if you look at the streamers how much they are being watched whatever it's a huge ecosystem and the third thing is the youth population is too big yeah so the the number of uh University students are over 3 million so like that's that gives you a like a huge talent pool that you

can educate and improve so I think all that coming together we are in a great position but we are just at like less than 50% in our potential at the moment I think in next 10 years we'll see a lot more many things to dive into industrial engineering very familiar with that it's also in Finland number one um why do the smart people come to games in Turkey U for me the reason was I was a gamer since I was a child okay so so just like games yeah so I just like right and in Turkey um we used to we have a game called for example sex which is like you draw some uh some paintings we have in the entrance of the office by the way you drove some some squares in the in the in the on the floor and you have a jumping game so this is the first game they teach you when you're just at three years old like four years old right you're are growing up with playing games that's the culture of Turkish families always the child is playing a game right it's like it's coming in the world as well but I think turkey as a bigger step

into that and for me the reason was I was a core gamer my top team here Rox top leadership team they came from very they we have some from uh medicine we have some from uh automotive industry and like these guys the only thing they had in common as they were educated really well the second thing was they're core Gamers yeah right so the most of the successful people I've seen in Turkey I've seen them there were Gamers and the second thing was uh the people who succeeded in Turkish ecosystem some part of it was great marketing people as well right so either you're a core gamer or you're a great marketing person if you combine that together or if you're just one then both Works actually this is the main reason right now and of course the Acquisitions of R Peak Graham made a huge fuss in the in the in the country that's why now we get a lot of uh talent coming into the gaming world as well yeah so now the parents approve if they're child goes into games so yeah it's like in my first

interview I I with a Turkish local magazine they asked me like how do you define your job and I told them if your family doesn't get what you're doing you're probably doing the right thing right and and my father called me afterwards and said like I open the magazine to read my kids interview and you called me that but like it's kind of true like the families were a bit against the entertainment ecosystem mainly uh but now this with this success stories now the kids are more like the students are more comfortable in terms of joining a mobile gaming or a gaming company yeah so you talked about how the ecosystem evolved from you know Elementary School to getting into University how has roic evolved during this time like when you started your business and where you are right now and how are you evolving your operations throughout this time I think we were uh we were much impatient in terms of game design so we were basically building

experiences for 7 to 14 days for 3 years now we are building user experiences in our games for 180 to 365 days so for almost up to a year right now and that phase of learning is is fun but tough at the same time right because now because you need to figure out what is the greatest user experience that you can create for your for your for your games and sometimes the mobile gaming companies have the tendency to to Focus too much on the systems and big futures right for us we have a different view we want to make the core uh essence of the game core gamepl core levels more fun right that's tougher by the way because like you can add a lot of systems to a puzzle game or an action game and you think you could think that you have a great game but as a gamer my experience is when I go to a console game I probably see the similar systems in many games but the thing that attracts me the

most the combat system the mobs the story of the game so the core game play core layer is very important so uh and when you have a team of talented like 15 leaders it's not easy to get them into a room and like with the same vision so my job was mostly getting them in the same room and try to uh tell this again and again that this is the most important L let's focus on this part uh and then I think we did a great job there what we changed in Ric was focusing on more longevity in our titles with with still keeping the fun uh as our priority in the game design yeah um two things here so you talked about like how you've been focusing more on long-term retention which of course makes sense and with hybrid casual games or casual games let's put it that way long-term retention also means that your business model changes significantly because the longer the players play the less money they generate through ads so you have to go to not purchases um

how has this change of of business model affected the organization I think um the hybrid model the balance between in our purchases and ads was not a strategy it was an outcom so because of the uh reasons I just mentioned about making the levels and the gameplay more fun we figured out that we could monetize three our purchases we don't need more ads anymore right so so but of course since we still have a very broad audience for some of our players some of our levels are very hard right and those are mostly like ad based users so we still keep some portion of our ads in the game for that part of the audience but we can still Target more engaging users with our level systems and level design so I think it was not a like a strategy that we didn't come to an office and said we need more in a purchase we just said we need better games right and then the mation comes on top of it but of course with long-term attention you need up purchases to make sure you you have a

sustainable growth in the game I call it and that was a natural outcome of our business I can I can say yeah and the focus on core game kind of makes sense because core game is what monetizes and especially in Puzzles yeah and so the evolution of the core game is the main driver for long-term retention that you have and it's the hardest part it's the hardest part because it's very hard to predict how you're going to evolve this type of a puzzle for year or two years and so forth is there enough room to evolve and there's not in all of them not everything is match three yeah hardest job in Mobile gaming is figuring out your 900 levels right because like you can build like 500 levels it can they can be fun but what about the one after that right you need to launch 50 to 100 Levels every week to your users and you need to do it do it in a certain quality with introducing new things right and at some level your creativity should be very very high to make sure you can ongoingly do that and for me

that's the main that will be the main separator for next three years between us competitors and the industry how creative are you how in how Innovative are you when you're building a new game right or building late levels in your game I think that's what we have here in terms of a great talent at the moment so I'm curious to understand how roic operates because if I look at the uh other Publishers in the same SE there're kind of similar ways of operating one is many of the Publishers are very geof focused as you are probably like probably most of your content most of your Studios you work with out of those 158 yeah most of them are probably Turkish yeah uh the other one is the business model itself so with Hyper casual used to be probably a lot of Revenue share or acquisition of the assets the games themselves but not the studios necessarily uh and then when looking at how Publishers nor these days

operate they've kind of moved away from the revenue share model yeah to either acquiring the asset where they develop it in house as you said you have group of experts and genre expertise or they acquire the entire Studio yeah and continue to that has does this kind of describe how your model has evolved so I think um the question is mostly what's the vision for not next 12 months but for next 5 to 10 years for for the ecosystem we have right now we have the tendency to become more of a more of an investor to our studio Partners compared to a publisher right that's why we want our studio Partners to have more craftsmanship in certain general areas Design Elements and core gameplay elements so that they know how to create fun as much as roic team right of course being a publisher is tough because sometimes you have great experience with a studio they're happy sometimes you have a bad experience with a studio they're un happy sometimes it's your

fault sometimes it's others fault but if there's a fault that's mostly on Ro like in that's how our perspective is but I think having maybe less amount of Studios but with more quality and craftsmanship that's the future so and then Rox slowly becoming not a publisher but more like a fund more like an investor in these Studios that that will be the longevity of the model that we have currently of course this can't happen from today to tomorrow that's why I call three years more of an University and then we'll see so so but that that should be the long-term model so that Ro can because this is something we learn a lot from Take 2 as well take 2 is you know owns all of these Studios and they they have they do a great job managing all these Studios right so when we have such example that we can foresee uh that I think and I I find that model very applicable to Turkish ecosystem as well and and and and take two is and Zinga is very supportive on that as well they love the development ecosystem that we

have here so I think it's more of like a 10 years plan compared to next year plan but uh that's how the model will evolve probably so let me see if I understood this correctly the model you want to take in in a 10 years period so we're talking about a very long-term thinking is that you invest into Studios that have proven to be good to work with with you know repeatable success and and great relationships and those are viewer then you know you don't need to work with 150 Studios perhaps but maybe like tens of Studios yeah and you make an investment in those and you invest basically into their growth and autonomy so they can operate independently um You' be still their publisher so that's the question so some studios will have a great skill set of marketing some studios will have a great skill set of development so engineering I don't want to make it like a full definition of what's going to happen but the idea to get to know our partners

better educate them in the areas that they think they have potential because for me the studio potential is mostly the founders potential so if it's an engineering founder who is running the studio then it's a different plan if it's a product person then it's a different plan if it's a marketing backgrounded person or a talent person that's a different plan so we don't have one exact model that we're going to chase but I think it's I can Define it in a way that we're going to be much closer with the studio Partners in terms of the relationship that we Define with them based on their talents and you will still keep this team of Excellence team of publishing in roic that supports these we'll see we'll see okay interesting yeah we'll see interesting so you're taking a little bit of your own path but learning from from take to how they built the Empire and trying to do the the similar one in turkey and you still going to be Geo focused um so we have Partners abroad but not many three four we we did before we did a lot of St Partnerships before we we bought popcor

as you know uh I think there ups and downs on that front but for now all if the potential is looks uh sustainable in Turkey we're going to continue with the Geo Focus yeah yeah that makes sense yeah are there other Publishers that are trying to get to Turkey of course what's their success whenever we launch a hit there's some new offices is I think it's like three third fourth time so like every year we had one but like I think that's great because of we love competition because like competition teachs you more than anything you know the reason we are here in this position is the big competition we had back in 2019 2021 that was a very competing era for hyper casual and the ones succeeded was the ones that adapted very well so the culture comes from competition most so that's why we are always open to it and and I think overall as a Turkish found I love that the companies abroad have focus in

turkey and I think that will only make this country or the ecosystem at better place yeah I mean this is the mobile gaming capital of the world right now numbers wise the most investment has here yeah and if you look at top grossing charts there are many Turkish games ex so like it's it's good to have it so for me it's like I don't like the news of Investments yeah I like the news of products yeah so when I talk to Turkish media I always tell them like you're making great news on the money coming in but I think there's the more educating part of it is making ongoing news on the products right we have the top grossing title in the world is a Turkish title right so like like it's it's it's great to see that there and many new launches are coming and many studios are adapting so I think ongoing product success is the key for future Investments we need to keep that up we didn't do a great job from the Investments we received in 21 and 22 too because the product outcome of those

Investments should be should have been much higher right so and but right now I think that was a pandemic situation as well there was slightly an overinvestment in the world for so but right now I think we're doing a great job in terms of sustainable Investments and growth in in Turkish ecosystem well Grand Gams just beat the uh the record of fastest they're doing great I'm a fan of their job and like I think they're they're evolving the hybrid model very well so there are many studios that are up and coming as well and the the lucky thing about Ric is most of these Founders ecosystems whoever we probably work them at some point of time right so like it's a great great scouting opportunity having Rox publishing ecosystem and that's what take transing loves as well so yeah well I'm I'm curious to understand like what's the competition like from your perspective inside Istanbul like between different Studios like is it a healthy competition is it

overaggressive compet and how has it evolved Ro is mostly on hybrid model so for us it's always healthy right but for casual Studios sometimes it becomes unhealthy and it's very hard to compete sometimes it comes to a place where it's very hard to compete with each other and it makes the the it gives a harm in the total of the ecosystem I don't like that a lot because in tur turkey shouldn't be an ineffective investment place yeah in general right we should keep up the products but we should keep up the effectiveness of investment and return of investment as well that's very important to keep so so therefore uh I think uh for us there there's no problem generally because our talent pool is always also a bit different we are we are generally at roic we're looking for more and more core Gamers Mobile gaming puzzle casual puzzle studios are have a different perspective in hiring not good or bad not right or wrong but we just want to see people if I give you this glass and

this eyes can you build me a game in an hour that's the question of Ric when we are doing the hiring so it's a different culture different perspective it's not applicable out of like out of 10 candidates it's like three or four of them are applicable to us or even less so that's why we are competing in a totally different talent pool compared to them so for us it's healthy overall sometimes it gets un healthy sometimes it gets healthy again so I've heard the stories um so so talent wise you you are kind of entering in the area of the U you know the dreams and the peaks of of the world because you're making more and more casual games rather than hyper hybrid whatever you want to call them like you're putting more effort in the quality of a game and you're putting more effort into live operations making sure that the the players stay for a longer time and through that you must be in some way competing for the same Talent yeah like level yeah I think like so I think the mistake that the most of the

mobile gaming Founders do is you shouldn't mix execution quality with ideation and creative quality I think these are totally separate different different things right most of the mistakes that new Turkish startups or any mobile startup makes is they think they can build a great game with a moderate idea but with great execution I don't think that happens anymore because of the competition in the mobile gaming market right now I think it turned wise vers right now you need to have a great Innovative creative way of building core gameplay with a moderate execution you can build that right this is the new hybrid games by the way you don't need a full quality execution to go to the top grossing but you need a creative way of looking at the new world and the new mobile gaming space right so I think for us we're therefore we are still not competing with the for the same Talent

right but of course a lot of companies will figure this out in next three to five years then maybe we start competing but our focus is like not the quality of execution of course we need a certain moderate or plus execution quality but our focus is like how fun is to play this game yeah how fun is the are the levels right sometimes fun comes from animations art quality I know but it's not the most important thing the most important thing is to create a great game first of all so to do that you need you require very different Talent you can't educate that you can't teach that to person some of that creativity comes from the personal uh part some of that creativity comes from again being a gamer so that's why I'm not quite sure how many gamers out there in the Turkish Mobile gaming uh ecosystem at the moment I think in terms of a talent perspective percentage perspective roic has the highest percentage in terms of having Gamers and more creative people in the

company because think of that yeah we just launched a game called blockchain this game didn't exist three months ago now it's top 50 grossing so you made like the from idea to launch three three months the way we survive is basically build on being creative every day damn probably we'll have another top gross in game three months from now that we don't even heard of a game manager in this office is already ideating that with a studio right right so like this is how tough sometimes our job is but this is the job's definition and the company's culture so I think that's why we we are still not competing for the same T at the moment I agree actually uh because when when looking at all the copies of Royal match which I believe you made one as well so like looking at all of them and everybody focus on that perfect execution yeah and none of them found a market space because there was a one clear winner and everybody thought they could take a piece of that chair but that didn't happen and I think what

you're saying where the ideation is much more important in these days yeah is very positive message yeah cuz like if you are creative yeah then you will find a space in the market in the market yeah but if you're not yeah it doesn't matter how much you polish the pixels yeah it's just not there sometimes you learn it through the hard way yeah sometimes you learn it through the easy way but yeah you're right I think the ideation and creative quality is still the essence of mobile Gam and if you look at the top game awards of the year you notice that as well right Baler balers gate last year astrobot this year like it's not just about building great big projects of execution it's also about being very creative around them so I think the mobile gaming had had the wrong perspective for a while now it's slowly coming back I and I hope us and our competitors hyper casual to hybrid space should be the uh should be the presenters of that vision of finding new Concepts which you can still engage on a

top grossing level yeah right so that's the hardest job by the way interesting and so you're definitely not following the zinga's like old proven better new type of approach where it was always like taking iterations of the market yeah but rather just like new better Pro that's why roic represents a whole different culture with zing and take and they love it and like we have a lot of debates we learn a lot from them but again live operations is a different thing right so like we learned that from them but we try to give back the new Concepts new ideas how to build new hits how to test it because we have we are very harsh on testing so like most of the mobile gaming companies are not as harsh as Ric in terms of game testing we kill it right away if you don't see a great metric right but most of the Studios have have tendency to go on and on and on and until they figure out something in the game that may be a good model for some of the generals but for the generals especially for puzzles or

whatever we are functioning at I think it's not a good thing to do you need to kill your game very soon so these are the stuff that we're trying to share with they're shocked amount about the amount of games we kill in a month how many games do you kill in a Year ah more than a thousand more than a thousand yeah of course how many games go into H soft launch I think over let's say 40 40 out of a th000 yeah so it's quite a funneling because of that because you trust in your creativity everything is set on creativity and coming up with new ideas yeah um you trust that killing an idea resonates in three more ideas so it's a culture right we we all we used to produce around 250 games a month now we dropped it like I think our competitors did as well not that much in the in in the space and we are trying to balance it out like with more deeper ideas less production but still of course we produce a lot compared to any mobile gaming company out there

so but they don't take these Productions in a way that these are very this is these are like more core gameplay tests with like 10 levels you know so there nothing like complicated it's just produce the core gaml in a proper way test it very fast you don't need a lot of content to do it just figure out if the users are liking it or not yeah sometimes it's one level like we we launched hair challenge back in 2021 the game had 56% they want retention with three levels yeah I haven't seen something like that it's like users are playing it like 20 minutes three levels and they're looping and they're playing 56% of them playing other day same three levels I that's a hit by yeah so like sometimes people are too complicated when they're thinking of hit games hit game is a hit game without the content as well exactly so well well this is a hit game chess yeah it doesn't have much up yeah now it's growing a lot yeah but

it's I'm a chess player since childhood uh since primary school now it's it's in best times.com yeah best times yeah so so yeah there's you know and Tetris and other ones like you know color block Jam is kind of in that region as well it's like yeah some things are just inherently very retaining and novel um talking about like how roic has evolved um how has it been going from an independent company to working under Zinga to working under Take 2 like how has that changed the way you operate I think the biggest reason I'm still running the company is nothing mostly changed so like I think that's the great home of Zinga first of all because uh Peak joint gram joint we joined and we knew that from the gr guys especially that um Zinga doesn't change much when they acquir so that's what that was one of the reasons we said yes to joining in a very early stage then since then Ro is being ran like a startup and still being ran by a startup because roic is just 5

years old so like although it's it's doing very well in terms of bookings whatever but like it's it's still a very very young company so therefore the most important for me thing for me to is to have the autonomy and and I'm not like maybe personal personally I'm not that um I like investors I like audits because it teaches you right because if you think that your idea is the best idea in the world that you can't then you can't learn so we're trying to um partner with T2 and zinga in the areas that we think they're not great right and I think Zinga is great in terms of live operations and profitability and long-term Vision into into Mobile gaming take two is great in terms of sustainable profitable growth and they managed to do that with very creative and very different teams right so it's very it's it's amazing to learn from both at the moment and I think roic is slowly becoming a mix of those those cultures right so that's why it's

personally it's great for me I think it's great for the team as well but but overall not much changed I can call it we just learned from each other yeah it's wild roic is older than five it's we start 2018 it's actually December 2018 yeah oh wow so it's January 2019 I call it sometimes yeah wow it's a baby yeah it's a baby a toddler it's a baby yeah wow well it's impr a huge baby but it's like it's incredibly impressive how quickly youve built the company it's it's it's insane and it's still growing thanks yeah uh well how does take how does roic fit into the strategy of well I kind of understood how it fit in the strategy of Zinga yeah but how does it fit in the strategy of take two because when you think about take two I think about well everybody thinks about Grand Theft Auto yeah and kind of like very very type of a different games but like and en rolic is almost the opposite in terms of like a

product strategy yeah it's like so I think what take to loved about rolic I don't want to talk behalf of them but like the things I heard from them is the fast execution and the flexible production right because those products comes with a certain concentration maybe 10 years now right billion doll or or like very big projects but rolic has a very quick execution quality that can be applicable to different areas for example the IP partnership like UFC slab now we're building another one maybe Barbie partnership that we just announced we're building a bar made a power slap game yeah yeah so those all came from take to by so it's not just like uh we we we went to poers lab it's a mutual collaboration with T and tto loved it because we launched a game together with UFC in eight weeks wow and like and that's a new business for everyone right so I think this is that's that's where roic sits in like quick Market opportunities that you can take

yes are out there and roic has a great studio and and development ecosystem which can take that opportunity and turn it into a real product very fast right so I think that's the area of the the where Ro extends and that's the gaming space and on top of it there's the of course like being a being a hyper casual backgrounded studio and and a publisher we have a great learning in terms of attech and marketing yes which is which is quite Advanced compared to and also and monetization space so the ad Tech vision of five next 5 to 10 years and how to set it up for take to Zinga or whoever I think that's where roic plays a huge role in terms of guiding the company and with the latest fresh data that we have in terms of scale so I think those two areas are are looks looks highly positive on our end and again we try to learn and adapt at the same time yeah interesting and and what other learnings have have you applied from take two apart from the sort of a 10year think of building a a little Empire not little

considerable Empire of the studios but like through Investments but what other ways have it affected you how to look at products in terms of quality and protection that was something we learned from them and I still I'm still learning from them because like there are many examples in the PC console world where the IPS were couldn't be kept in that amount of uh consideration or quality but roic is as we're producing new titles with more longevity and more more engagement that should come slowly with more quality perspective as well right so every new thing that we do is a mixture of how we should how we were looking at it and now how we should look at it and in that part personally I have great mentorship from take two and Zinga especially and then we try to apply that to the team because the decision making prog processes is not easy when you have when you constantly have a new hit what about the games were aeit last year right so to mix that up to keep the quality in

both areas that needs a certain certain way of thinking and I think uh the biggest area that we learned a lot again is also profitable growth so roic is is like in since we joined take two and learned the perspective how to run things sustainably while growing I think Ro it was a game changer for us in terms of how we manage the data business fantastic yeah um well you've been running this company for what six years now yeah what's uh you can't say like what would you done differently because you shouldn't have done anything differently on this but uh but what has been the most surprising thing about growing during these six years I think um not doing differently but I think the hardest job I had was when did when we were startup we were 10 people right and it was very easy to get everybody in a room I line on One Vision one operational perspective and then do it and and then go back to your desk everybody is doing

whatever we just talked about but having a bigger organization especially with very talented leaders I think my hardest job is like I I'm a I'm like a manager of a football club right now like it's very hard to manage but like it's it's it's a positive uh curse that I have at the moment is is not easy to manage great talents in terms of with different craftsmanship right and the hardest part is to make everyone align in a single vision for next 5 to 10 years M right so that's why I'm a bit repetitive these days and and to to keep everyone in the same page and I think uh the difference of being a startup and a big company this is the biggest one right and I think that's that's the that's the role I'll personally be more focusing and I'll try to engage the team in a in a even in a better communication moving forward that's the hardest job but but overall uh I think this is this is a

pain of growth but it's the greatest pain I have ever had in life so like it's fun at the same time yeah yeah because you mentioned you know maybe half an hour ago that your job is to help teams to concentrate to focus on certain aspects yeah and to communicate that but it seems like your job is still that like you said it was that but no it is always that I think like for like play games align the teams yeah right so like it's like there's no better job for a founder of a mobile gaming company play every game in the market play more games like know your product know your craftsmanship and also on top of it align your talents in a single Vision that they're being successful at right so H because like whoever you have what kind of talent you have they have the tendency to go in different paths yeah like marketing gaming exactly live operations creative Central Tech whatever if you don't align them together then you're a mixture of small products which doesn't speak to each

other that's that's the uh that's a very uh dangerous thing for a mobile gaming company I guess or any company in the world you can call it so that's my my job is to avoid that yeah well yeah of course um Drive alignment across the team yeah what would be your advice or like what would you tell the people who are trying to become better leaders what should they do like what should they read what or or you know how can they do that yeah cuz there's so many ways but it's like but what has been your way what you would advise I think like I have the saying of like first of all keep it light keep it moving yeah that is the biggest rule of any company like just just don't get heavy yeah you know like in any way don't get heavy as a company we did that we got heavy like and that those are the mistakes you learn from but it's like it's it's actually a radio head song lyric by the way this is like don't get heavy keep it keep it moving but like it's quite my my

thing right it's like keep it as light as possible that is the advice and and the second advice is um just get to know yourself better it comes with aging of course but if you learn learn more about yourself and your skill sets then you can surround yourselves with people who are who have strengths against your weaknesses and then you can use your strengths Pro properly when you're building a startup or a mobile gaming company or a gaming company right so if you're a gamer then you may have more data people together with you right if you if you're if you're not a gamer if you're focus more on marketing then you need great creative people around you just like an example so so but I think first thing is as a Founder as a startup uh entrepreneur is just to get to yourself better and then surround yourself with great talent who will keep up with your weakness bu and like and and put the company in a better place it's a it's a

really good advice because we are very keen on deconstructing others success yeah but we never deconstruct our own oh oh yeah that's the biggest mistake and it's and then it's yeah that's it's like and when if you don't get to know yourself properly then you won't be deconstructing others property yeah exactly because like when you're I have this like um when when you're deconstructing other mobile games other games in the world when you're looking at what they're did what they did great you'll probably miss something that you even thought of if you don't get to know yourself exactly it's like it's like a it's like a creative skill set that you need to continuously have for yourself and ask questions to yourself yeah it's it's impossible to replicate what others are doing if you don't understand what you're capable of doing yourself and what are your dreams yeah uh you mentioned this like don't get heavy what does it mean in practice it's like keep

effective teams don't over hire don't over buy like Studios whatever don't over produce MH you know uh don't underinvested sometimes gets heavy as well so it's just like this balanced and perfect setup and Harmony of operations yeah right because the success of your company is just the success of your daily tasks the total of your daily tasks makes the company right so that's why it's the perfect harmony of optimizing everything through get keeping lights you know yes so don't overextend kind of like in your case it would be if well others are opening up Studio like publishing studios here in in Istanbul you'd be like you know what let's open up an office in Paris that would be going heavy getting a lot heavy but it sounds fun yeah it's like or or like or just like let's put it this way yeah don't put too much expectation between two hits okay right

so we built the games that we called hybrid series one which were great top Crossing hits so if I go to hybrid series 2 which is that color block and own and if I say okay I want 50 more features in this one before launch that's wrong as well right that is getting the team too heavy yeah against their culture right so it should have a like small step we should keep it light and keep it moving while producing so that's that's the idea yeah can I challenge your actions against your own strategy of course you're working on a Barbie game with Mattel yeah it's like it's the so like I think um that's hybrid series four or five we call it like so I think it's an R&D yeah but it's a great product we always keep some small portion of our production in the games that we are doing research and development right because that also teaches a lot the fail of Mayor match

that haven't like we haven't learned from something more okay so Barbie probably will be a great game great hit but if we don't even succeed it we'll learn a lot from it right and then we apply that to the hybrid learning if we don't produce this R&D stuff then the hybrid learning is not pacing probably so that's why I think there's a way you you can do that with not getting heavy I call it okay I hope that was a good answer if I convinced you you don't look but well if you fail at least you learn but but yeah like working with an IP yeah is something that I have a little bit of well I have experience I can imagine and I as you know it's not light I can imag and like we learn a lot from Zinga as well it's and take to it's like it's not an easy job but like it's just about who are you developing who are you giving that weight too that's and if that excites the team that's that's a

couple of questions we have yeah well um I mean hopefully it's a success and you'll learn how to work with big I mean there's not many bigger than Barbie yeah um I've had like I want to ask like the F final question is like what would be your advice for other Founders who are kind of in in the beginning of the jurney not six years in as you are yeah yeah but but more like let's say at the beginning of their way yeah like how to um how to succeed I think um I think you're asking this in terms of a gaming perspective right so I think like um getting to know your products better than every like even the first company joining to your team is is quite helpful so U sometimes Studios have the have the wrong perspective about like I can hire this person to this position and that person can teach me that probably won't happen right so like I I

don't I'm I'm not a fan of growth with uh with too many talents that the founders of the founding team doesn't have a knowledge around right so that's the most one of the most dangerous things that can happen to a new game company so if you don't feel ready in terms of product knowledge just take your time play more games learn more learn more learn more talk to more people until you're ready for game design level design marketing every aspect of a of a mobile gaming studio right at least like 50% ready at least so that you can still make a conversation out of it right so uh I think that's that's one of the key points uh you can't build a car like if you like sometimes Tech businesses and app businesses are like since they are slightly easier to produce everybody thinks that there's less craftsmanship in that because like doesn't many people go out there and say that I'm going to create a new computer tomorrow yeah because they think they don't have the computer engineering skills right and

they don't have the production skills to do that they don't know anything about it so they don't go into but abs and gaming is not like that so people are have more tendency to join in such areas uh without much knowledge so I think first of all is the greatest knowledge is to play games and if you haven't played enough amount of games or amount amount of time in games then just take your time build yourself up and then wait for the right moment the second advice is when you in the time that you don't feel ready find a great founder to work together with it's I think the biggest successes in Mobile gaming or has a great mentorship background or an or an operational experience background right even if you see the Turkish succeed was or whoever like they have the tendency of having a culture that they knew and putting into a and like a one one one step ahead so I think if you don't feel ready just don't

stay home and like try to play games join a company that you think the founder team the leadership team can teach you stuff and that's that's the greatest University that you can ever have in life so like and then you can you can find your own way yeah I mean TI two is filled with with great leaders so like yourself so um thanks for that pleasure pleasure of of having this conversation yeah it was great to have you in the office and I hope we enjoy enjoyed it and I I wish good luck to all the all the members of the mobile gaming ecosystem for next two to three years I think we had Hard Times post pandemic now it's good times and it's time to grow again and I think all aspects of the industry had has a chance to grow in the next two three years so I'm quite hopeful about that time to get creative yeah thanks thank you so much cheers thank you thank you everybody for listening am