🎮 Habby finally SPEAKS: The template evolves! First-ever Habby Western interview

I can't speak for him, but I don't think that's what he wants to do. And it's very clear because he still wants to focus on trying to he wants us and our partner studios to continue to release games that can be completely genre defining especially for mobile. It's 400 a.m. and we're rolling the dice. M drops knowledge made of golden eyes. Felix with ads making those coins rise. Jack up designs worlds chasing the sky. We're the two and a half gamers. The midnight crew talking UA adverts and game design too. M feeling shaku bringing the insight. We're rocking those vibes till the early day master eyes on the prize. Tracking data through the cyerspace skies. Feeling stacks like a wizard in disguise. Jackcraft real to the high. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey sick. Got your back. Ads are beautiful. They light the way. Click it fast. Don't delay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.
Hello. Hey, welcome to Two and Half Gamers, where we stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry. My name is Martial Charich.
I'm Felix Broberg.
I'm Yakubier.
My name is David Pan.
And we
we are
are
your
It started so well. It went so well.
I know. I know. I know. I know. It's fine. David, welcome. Welcome to the podcast. So, we have a special episode. Can you introduce yourself, please, and tell our
Absolutely. Guys, I'm so honored to be here today. I am a former viewer and fan turned in now into a guest. As you guys all know, my name is David Pan. I'm currently spearheading business development, investments, and all types of fun things at Hobby.
Hey. Woohoo.
Legendary Hobby at the podcast at last.

Thank you so much for coming.
Yeah. What? It took us what, like three, three and a half years?
Three and a half years. By the way, Yakob, before we join, please keep the mic close to your mouth because I suffer in the post-prouction quite a lot.
Okay,
you are like like five decibels lower than all of us and it really hurts my ears. But today we're going to talk about hobby and all the fun around your games and how you do stuff. It's important and everybody is interested to hear. Absolutely. And then I want to say before we kick this off, I'm curious too a lot of people have mentioned before like, oh, it's so hard to reach out to Happy, but I do know that like there's quite a like there's quite another large population of people who have made contact for you guys previously. You guys have spoken with Stfan. Have you

met uh managed to meet like some other people from Happy in the past?
Oh, Stefan only. And I don't think he's the CEO for those who don't know.
I don't think Stefan remembers us from the days where we actually worked with Boomit and we met Stefan in which was a long time ago and
when he was showing us the initial build of Archer.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
So it was a long time ago.
All right. So this is like probably 2018 then, right? The 2018. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Do I get it right? But ba but basically this is like first time like western interview with someone from a hobby. No. So, so have you guys ever heard of my predecessor Shakant?
I don't think so. I don't think so.
Yeah. Like, so basically Shant like he was running this whole show including things like, you know, PR and all that stuff for the longest time since 2018 as well. And then he basically put all the frameworks together. He's made it so it's like this transition for me from

being formerly product guy now to business development. He's made it so smooth as well. So, I just want to give a huge, you know, shout out to Shant if he's watching. He might not be watching, but yeah, it'll be great if I can connect you guys with him, too. He's still doing business development right now at a company based in the UK, I think. Yeah. Over mobile games.
Nice.
There we go. Light grenade.
Light grenade.
We got the boot
now. Yeah, exactly. Now, it's the real deal.
Yeah. Anyway, can you introduce a little bit of what's your current position? And I mean like work and stuff. David at hobby currently because director of publishing is one thing but I guess every single company have their like in
Yeah. What does it even mean?
It basically means I just get to talk and they pay me. In all seriousness like so for happy when shant he decided that he wanted to move on to his new opportunity. the company basically was in had a bit of what's the word kind of like a void for a long time because like for happy unlike like not to throw shade or anything but I think a lot of

companies when they hire for business development it's more on the business side they're looking for someone with true experiences on how to lead contract negotiations for things from mergers to just investments as well but then for for happy they were really looking for someone who could evaluate a product like mainly from a publishing perspective as Well, so that's how it kind of worked out for me. But like uh to get to the crux of the question is um the business the business development director for Habby is expected to of course find leads of course to lead all the talks with potential studios that we might want to partner with investments etc etc. But most importantly is we're expected to lead our teams into trying to find a product that is truly going to be the next hopefully Art Shurro, Survivor, Cappy Go, etc., etc., Souls, all of them. Yeah,
it's pretty good. Regarding the company itself, um,
it's pretty good.
I'm still like lots of people are, I

think, finding habit under the shroud of mystery of like who they are, what they does. So, if you can elaborate a little bit on that as the company itself.
Yeah. So, it's like you guys know too, you guys have met our fearless leader Stefan. He founded the company in 2018 inside Singapore. And like the company started off, right? Like there was a bit of like what is Habby? What are we going to do? Are we going to develop? Are we going to publish? Etc., etc. And of course, we're primarily a mobile games publisher. Like that all said, we do have some pretty big goals to see if we can do our own games as well as well. And we're quite involved in the publishing process, too. By that I mean we're quite involved with our development partners inside tweaking the games. But I think the best way to think about it is we are a mobile games publisher. So all things from user acquisition to all the other publishing related services. That's something we do and we're quite good at it as well.
We can we can see we can we can see that since Archer one uh Survivor and even

Arro 2 and Capy Barago and all the others. That's pretty.
Yeah, those titles aren't bad.
Yeah, I mean, we did cover all of them. Well, I I think instead of the Archer Row one, but all the others.
Well, I got one for you guys. Have you guys played Punball? Have you guys played Penguin Isle?
Yes.
Flaming Core.
Kinder War. Yeah,
you played Flaming Core. All of them.
All of them.
Of course. I was doing some research on so I played all of them.
Nice. Nice. Paradise.
Yeah. You don't see the template if you don't play all of them.
Oh, hobby template.
True.
Yeah, the fame hobby template.
Yeah.
Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry.
Oh, no, no, no. It's fine. Go for it. Go for it.
Well, regarding the like, let's say western expansion, there's been recently an investment in Turkai by Hab. Can you talk a little about that because that's I think was opening a lot of eyes here in the west.

Yeah, that's something that was really cool because that happened a little bit right after I joined. And then so like basically the company as we all know they're called Mavis Games and they're led by a great husband wife team and uh the CEO's name his name is Sean and he is probably one of the most intelligent and nicest guys you can get the chance to speak with. He's not only been in the gaming industry before this, he's been in all types of things related to uh technologies and etc etc industries. So when he decided he wanted to start games like that was back when it was literally just him and his wife and then they made the connection with Stfan and then it just all happened so quickly. Slidy Block Puzzle was Hab's first ever game. So, it's so funny when you think about how we've made our name now publishing these rog light games. When the first game we did was kind of like a uh you guys have played slidy block

before, right? It's kind of like uh that one one specific uh kind of like the subg genre of you know puzzle games where you move the block along and whatnot. And like that was a hit. It was a hit. It was quite profitable. And from there though, the relationship we had with them was, hey, we want to give them some space and some time to continue to explore to see what they want to do. And not so long ago, we had a discussion with them and they really want to get back to it and not only get back to game development, they also wanted to put their foot down and see how big can they do this all by themselves. So that's where the $2 million investment came from. And it's something that was a long time coming, I'd say, as well. We're just really excited to see this next game that they got the specific name. I'm sorry because it's a prototype name. It's escaping me, but it was kind of like the something something color and it's still going to be in like the casual puzzle thing. Yeah, I know. I'm not doing a great job. I can't remember the name.
No, don't worry. Like it's it's still quite early. We discussed this with

because he ca he came to attend our our event in in Istanbul last week and he is really an really really nice guy and he also said like him and Stefan goes way back when habi published their like first game which was a long time ago when they still still kept close and now it's like when the opportunity was there it's like look let's do this.
Exactly. Here's the investment.
I like to take this moment to basically put our company on kind of like a pedestal too, as like kind of gross that might be. A lot of people in my talks with like these studio heads who are like, "Hey, we're thinking about working with Abby, they always ask like, oh, like when we do the business side of things, there's not that much that makes us seem so different from ABCD publisher." I don't want to name specifically, but
Yeah. Yeah. Like the one thing I go back to is the fact that Stfan, our leader, our boss, he is so keen on long-term relationships. And then I always bring

up that story, right? It's like, hey, they were our first ever, you know, game development partner and they made a game that now is technically not in our, what's the word? Not in our, it's not technically our forte. Yeah. Yeah. Genre. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. not our strength, but hey, we're still willing to continue this relationship like because of all the sentimental the value that's been there, whatever. But, uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely it. And I'm actually curious too when you were speaking with like the when you were speaking with kind of like the Sega, it's like did he bring his whole team along or was it just
He was Yeah, only he was there because you know when you're attending the the events, you can't work and someone needs to needs to work on the side as well.
Someone needs to be there. And he's so nice, too. It's like what you mentioned, like I'm going there for like the moedictum, but my plane lands at 4:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. or something. And then and then he basically volunteered. Like, I'll pick you up at the airport. I was just like, no, Sean, it's okay. Call a taxi. And then he's like, "No, I will pick you up at 4:5

a.m. at the airport." So, a super nice guy, super humble.
That's how it should be. The relationships are very important.
Absolutely.
It is a people business after all. As much as those as much as especially console players will be like all mobile game developers, publishers, marketers are evil. It's like we're people too, man. Regarding the current mobile games like I would call them like pretty much like the second generation now after the first four or five we talk about like Archerro, Karan, Survivor IO and Pumball. So we have now Capy Barago, Archer 2, Whittle Defender released recently. A lot of these games and I mean like all of them when we look at them a little bit closer and in our reviews we see them skewing much more towards microtransactions and ad revenue than was done before in habies like let's say design style any comment on that or as like just confirming the move from hybrid casual to like heavy IP games. I think from the start and that's something that internally I think I

brought this up before in our previous talks where it's just like internally we actually don't like that term uh you know hybrid casual. It's not saying that we don't like
you're being credited with the invention of it.
I actually was speaking to someone. Ah jeez it's totally escaping me but I was talking to someone not so long ago. I think it was I think it was at uh Gamescom and then like they were telling me how they invented that term and then I have talked with some people and then they're just like no it's because of you guys when you guys made art you guys uh but the point is internally we do see ourselves still as midcore midcore through and through
and albeit midcore with a very easy ramp into onboarding right that all said though uh going back to the question We have yes like we do want to move more into the IP space. IA has been something where it's like, oh, it's great. It's there and it's working. But with each new game that we develop or ones that we

develop in in tandem with our partners and we publish, we always want there to be a specific focus on inapp purchases and longtail retention. Cuz one thing that we talked about during China Joy, too, is as you guys know, user acquisition for us, right? Like we don't have that same manpower and those same tactics which a lot of our counterparts here might have. So rising UA costs are something that we do we feel the pain from it as with a lot of publishers do and we do believe that as long as our games foster really high long-term retention and if we try to get that IP conversion rate as high as possible it's something that we can live with. If I can just tag on to a question here which kind of is about ad revenue right because yeah you used to have a lot more higher percentage of ad revenue and now you kind of made this move right what were kind of the discussions going on backstage to make that move happen right because it's still nice to monetize the user base that's not converting

right I think this might make I think this might make you know Felix upset but at happy it's it's like the guy's in charge like there still is this feeling which is like the more ads we have, it's only gonna Oh, no, we lost Yaku.
No, don't worry.
Like,
he'll be back.
He'll be back.
It It's like the more like it could be rewarded, it could be in terrials. Whatever it is, it's going to impact the user experience. And at its best, it might make your play session a little shorter. At its worst, players will churn. In our minds, too, we just want to make sure our retention is as high as possible. That makes sense. But every I mean I guess you you have AB tested all of this uh just to get this retention as high as possible.
Yeah. Yeah. And then it really just goes back to it's all it it it's all connected really intertwined where it's like hey if our retention's high and our UA costs are going up then it's not that big of a deal. If our UA costs continue

to be as high as we do see them, then a low retention rates, it's basically be probably the difference of a couple hundred million even.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
So basically, if you look at it like Survivor IO compared to Whit Defender, if I saw your retention numbers, it would be way higher on Whittle Defender compared to Survivor. I do want to share something which is like in terms of longtail retention. There is a game that you know I recently uh uh uh talked about this like Survivor io and the first art show their long-term retention is is like the chef's kiss. And then I I'll just leave it at that. Yeah. One thing
I mean we we saw the the retention numbers for Archiro when it was early on and it was already like chef's kiss with on steroids. So
yeah, Stefan was showing us actually.
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
It was a long time ago. So but still Yeah. And I I mean we can see the huge success of Survivor IO. So again, we can

understand like where where it lands.
You know, Survivor IO and Archiro, they're really they're really special, I think. And then that's why Survivor.io is in a lot of ways the true successor to the first archer. So yeah,
one thing I I want to add here regarding the context of this discussion like we're currently looking defender on screen is that I think it was after legend of mushroom where I noticed that basically the like infamous template got upgraded with lot of their perks and stuff that legend of mushroom was running. So I put it out now at something like version 2.0 know or maybe 2.5 especially with stuff like mentioning
of course it's two and a half
yeah okay two two and a half then the lifetime privilege cards and like stuff like that because that's that's basically the push from the ads into like more IP territory like for us as you said like if if hab itself was always looking at itself as a midcore for us in the west it's always was like hybrid schedule but now it's like even

for us it's midcore because it's it's
as core as it can get and and with defense by the way it's like the most scorish game you have if I understood correctly because just the meta the spend dep like it's a squad based game which you don't really have on the other hand like all all the other games have just inventory systems of a single character and so on so forth
yeah but look uh before you go a little bit deep on the template side uh David you mentioned the the rising CPIs and all of these and honestly the ads part can help you with that because on because it's going to if you add like the blended R campaigns or the ad R campaigns that can drive the CPI down but you're going to get very different player profile. So I mean I can I can get the movement towards more IIP because it's way more quality users
that retain longer. I remember having a conversation with our director of user

acquisition actually about this not that long ago like a month or two ago and like let's just say it's all things we're still working in like we're still trying experimenting we're really excited because we have a very special game that isn't soft launch it's not the one that you guys have seen or people talk about for that game we're going to try to do a lot more with that we're going to try to break how people view what Happy has been doing with Our last few launches from Cappy bar go to hard show to the will defenders.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That one's going to be interesting.
You're going for a Forex template, fake ads, fake no no. That that that I don't want to basically generalize an entire population of CEOs out there. But there is a joke in China that if you're a mobile games founder, CEO in China, you will try to do a 4X SLG at one point in your life and then that might be the last game decision you ever try to make

too as well. But I don't think that's I don't think that's the case with Stfan. I can't speak for him, but I don't think that's what he wants to do. And it's very clear because he still wants to focus on trying to he wants us and our partner studios to continue to release games that can be completely genred defining especially for mobile. And with that comes a lot of expectations like I've talked about this before as well like we see Arch hero like a lot of people say vampire survivor clone but then in our minds it was like we refined this genre to be literally perfect for mobile just one thumb gameplay super responsive yada yada yada. Yeah.
Which studio is it you guys look up to the most? Is it like the Supercells of the world or is there any studios that is just you guys go like that's cool?
I like to say I'm going to give a really diplomatic answer here and it's that there are so many studios with and publishers that do something so good and maybe they do some things that aren't so

good. We just like to focus on all the good things that each one of them does and see which ones can we replicate, which ones can we do better. And for those things that we're like it's really clear like we can never achieve this. We just won't bother. Like for example, not speaking on behalf of the company, but let's just say if you're a company that's really good at huge budgets for user acquisition for Forex, that might not be something we're so keen on doing, at least not now or the near future. Yeah.
You know, like the the other answer is you look into the mirror and say publisher of the month hobby. And that's actually pretty cool, too, because we It's not that we specifically tune those press releases out. I just think the only one who's really paying attention to that stuff is probably me because the rest of the team is so focused on like what's our next game? How do we make this better? I'm the only one who's like, I'm on LinkedIn all day. I'm on like stuff like this all day. But that's why they hired me, right? I'm basically LinkedIn boy.
Okay,
moving on a little bit further then. We had an episode by Lemon recently on the

channel where he covered again the mini games market of widget games in China and there's a special section dedicated just to hab. So just wanted to go over it very quickly where there's uh capibar gori scheme version as he named it which is again something that we talked about before basically capibara version in I guess there the Chinese team there then there's the capibara go 2.0 O which is with hobby new meta system asset. This if I'm understanding correctly is the one that's coming from Whitler Defender because it's RPG much more deeper meta stuff like that. Again kingdom's team which is a China local team. So again very very localized. And then the last one is again I'm say like a little bit of surprise to me. There's a clash quest kind of followup which is the supercell game that was killed some years ago with the new meta 2.0 wheel defender system. Taking all this into account, just wanted to get your comment on like how do you see currently the WeChat mini games platform for you and especially in

your context of your soft launch strategy.
Yeah. So, I will say two things. One for the WeChat mini games, right? It's like it's kind of like the implication there that your game is published on this platform. It's going to have to go through some changes as opposed to if your game was specifically published for kind of like the traditional platforms. You might have to tweak how the game performs to make it run well on WeChat mini games because of that reason that we can push the game's performance to like things as simple as feedback responsiveness to how the graphics play out. So that's one thing if that makes sense on what I just rambled about.
No, no, all good.
Cool. Cool. Cool.
All these are things that we're very aware of and how we treat this platform. We're not holding it on a pedestal. I think that's something that's pretty interesting that now all these uh western developers and publishers are like, "Oh, WeChat mini games. We need to be Wechat mini games." Yeah. Right.

Yeah. But it's like, "Are you sure you want to be on there? Is it even worth your time to be on there?" And what I've noticed is a lot of old school publishers for mobile games, like these guys with huge IPs behind their games, they're so keen on breaking out of this space. I think that might be like pretty good or who knows what can happen. But more than likely what we think is if you just go on there, your thing's going to get copied. Your IP might not be too relevant to the local Chinese who are playing and you know the rest is history. But yeah.
Okay. Sounds like
people only see the
the revenue potential. Yeah. The revenue potential. Like ah people so you're going to earn so much money.
Yeah. Yeah. Like people are just like, "Oh my god, like the whole population's on WeChat." And then like, "Oh my god, my DAU can be like this much. I just have to Yeah. Yeah, that's all true, but how are you going to get people? How how are you going to get the people continuously playing your game? If you want to do AP, who's going to be your Chinese, you know, uh like what's it

called? The ISBN like whatever.
The middleman."
Also, like now to get it,
how are you gonna do the UA? Yeah, exactly. Like there's this one game in China called like the Shien Yuang and I don't know what it's called in English, but it's an uh it's like the fish game. It's like a uh idol RPG and then like they go hard on the ads too. Like I like my WeChat is flooded with their ads. So yeah.
Yeah. We had like a casual discussion at China Joy with Lemon. like ase guys like few few people like they're spending 2 million a day on WeChat mini on the UA like
Exactly. I'd love to share a story from when I just started in the mobile games industry and then at my first company they stopped trying to do China market because and then like I know this is back in 201 17 2018 they stopped doing China market

because they felt the UA was too expensive. I don't know how they feel now compared to what's been going on in the rest of the world. But yeah,
it I think that that's consistent what we hear from other companies uh when we go to China always that Chinese market is actually even harder for them than the overseas market in the western market.
Yeah. Also, people don't realize as soon as we we came to to China for China like there were already so many clones of the of games on WeChat with so many new like plus ones and iterations. Mhm.
So you push your your game into the into V chat and then next day they're going to be 10 copy clones.
Yeah.
Way better than your game.
Way better. Way better. And then like it's like the top two will do well and then like there's like a hundred that like did it okay, but they're still commercially failed or like they're considered commercial failures. Um it, you know, when kind of like the Lucky Defense when that came out, it was literally

That's exactly what I'm talking about.
Yeah. like two three days later it's like this one company they copied it on we try games and did really well and then like the scary part that I think we want all our friends in the west to really get is like the scary part is a month to 6 months well beyond this companies are still trying to copy that in China for mini games they're still trying to crack it and then yeah it's just that kind of hyper competition that's just insane
ruthless yeah that's the thing that people don't understand I guess that's why I wanted to bring here because to you know to hear it from a like local Chinese studio because witch mini games and everything we say about is great and everything but you know you need to compete in much higher gear compared to the western market. So that's there. Anyway, moving on. Thanks for that. Yeah. How
how did you guys feel about that one game though? I'm so sorry. How did you feel about that one? Like uh uh you know the fruit game that you saw the fruit and vegetables game.
Fruit Ninja.
The Clash Quest. The the one
Clash Quest. Yeah. Not Fruit Ninja.

the one taking on the Supercell's legacy there.
Yeah, because you guys found it and then Yeah, like there are quite a few people that are talking about this like a month ago, a month and a half ago. How do you guys feel about it? It's like, did you guys play it?
Uh, no, no, I haven't played it yet. Uh, but I know the game from
Will you share the link with us and then we can play?
Yeah. Yeah. You know us. We can go into the charts.
I don't I don't think it's up anymore. And then, you know, this is one of the titles I was like, I'm not going to talk about this, but because you guys, boom, it's right here in front of my face. It's like, yeah. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's going to be what you see now might not be what it is if
I mean like heavy iteration in the meantime.
Yeah, I guess.
Yeah. Yeah, like I'm like I'm keen on like what's there because if I remember correctly, this whole thing was actually taken from one of the PC Heroes spin-off games where they had this mechanic and then Topco designed it in Supercell, which is their pristine guy who did like Boom Beach,

Brawl Stars, and like Heyday, and like pretty much one of the best designers they ever had. And then they killed it actually. So, I don't know. Like I we don't really see that much puzzle RPGs coming out recently. Like the days of Empires and Puzzles, all those things are kind of long gone. So, I'm a little bit skeptical even though that somebody's still probably viewing something in this idea when you picked it off. So, let's see.
We'll see. Always great to see some innovation.
Yeah, we will see.
I think before Q4 ends, uh you know, before Q uh before Q4 ends, you guys should be seeing something pretty freaking cool. Pretty freaking cool. Yeah. Can't wait for How do you see the currently the biggest challenges for you in the western market as for hobby and its expansion, scaling and you know pretty much getting the market share that you need? I want to say it's something that a lot of publishers who have released titles that are pretty successful in the usual countries in East Asia like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan or I know China that like

we're all dealing with this thing which is like hey the games do great in these regions but we can't replicate the same level of success in the West aka the US. Um is it something we view as a challenge? Yeah, we definitely do. We're actively trying to see what can we do to make sure our games are in the like we don't specifically mention them but right now they're popping in my head like you know Supercell at least kind of like the classic Supercell. By that I mean like from Brawl Stars and Clash of Clans and etc. Like all these games they do so well worldwide period and that's something that we wanted to see our new games achieve. All in all our newer games they still did really well. They still are doing quite well, especially in the US, but are they at that same level that we see in specific regions that I mentioned earlier? Maybe not as high. And that's something we're going to try to face. And it all comes down to the monetization as well. And like we at HAB, we truly believe that monetization

is a big scary word, especially from a user perspective. but how we can tie that into not just live ops or not just the blah blah blah but into the core loop
you know uh if I when I look at the the comparison between you and supercell and the UA and creatives and all of it that's your biggest problem right there in terms of the US and the west
you do really well with all the creatives in Asia because you know how to do it properly but when you use the same creatives in west it's not going to work that's why the Survivor IO did really well because of the theme, because of the ads and basically everybody copied your ads just right now for one like for my games and when I when I work on on different Midcore titles or not even midcore but anything else I just have this concept which is called Survivor IO which works everywhere. It doesn't matter. It works really everywhere. That's why it worked so well and you could you could scale and then you you look at the capibara go

and all these different creatives which are not really tied to the gameplay. You have the capibara but it's just it's so eastern oriented.
If you don't change that you're not not going to win in the west unfortunately because it's just the CPI is so high exactly because of that. The monetization is great, but the cass is bigger. And then the lack of playables in all the different channels, that's where you need to push a little bit.
I definitely like, you know, internally we talked about this before too. And then in fact, during our conversation inside China Joy, that was one of the first things I made it a point to go back,
right? Like we're just going to continue. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
Yep. And then like we're at that point too which is like hey if we can if we can publish the next first archer or the next survivor that'd be great but right now the mindset's like hey that was the past we need to do our best to see what

we can do to change some things to achieve that same success whether that's in UA or whether that's in a game design even but yeah yeah yeah absolutely absolutely wholeheartedly agree with you Mic or you know you could go the dark way and join the forex group right over the block.
I mean, Yakub, I don't think this is going to work that well for for Archer because Arch or Archer or Hubby in general like you already have the kind of the the wider appeal a little bit and the the kind of smooth on boarding into the games. I don't think what would you do?
I'm not saying like do fake on boarding game on top of Survivor. I'm saying put forex behind Survivor.
Yeah. For for advice. Jesus. I think you guys know this story. At my first company, we primarily did slots games and then our boss is like, I'm gonna do a Forex now. And then I was like, holy [ __ ] [ __ ] And then like, so it's just insane cuz I've heard the stories about how, you know, for

example, Sentry, like how they built it up to this point and it was very methodical and it required a lot of moving pieces, including like, hey, I'm just going to have as he went like that's that doesn't work like that.
Exactly. Exactly. Yes. I'm glad you guys said that. Yeah. It actually does not work for all genres. You can't just do that. But then we tried it and it was a spectacular failure. And then like just rounding back that experience, you know, if a team I'm not even speaking for here, just like for video game company. Yeah. In general, if you want to do Forex, you're going to actually have to go and probably poach a producer and his entire team. And that is not cheap. Like that's like you're not even doing user acquisition yet. You're already spending a hefty amount. And then yeah, I mean, but you know, who knows? Who knows, right? Like you never say never say Forex.
You never say never. Hey, you know, my first Forex game, like not counting

like, you know, traditional PC Forex games, like my first mobile Forex game was actually a game by the name of Kingdom Guard, you know, the tower defense, and then turned into For
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That game just like completely blew my mind. I was like, "What the f?" And then like,
and then you get into it though, you know? You know, like I was talking to River Games too not so long ago. And then,
you know, it takes a special breed. It takes a special breed to do this. And then what's funny is now like we're talking about this with China. There's a few Western developers out there too now that are like we can do this. If Gameloft did it, we can do this. So yeah.
Yes. Exactly. The famous last words, how hard can it be? Yeah. Like I can just I can just get a little bit of market share and I will be fine.
Yeah, I heard that multiple times.
I do want to check myself really quickly. I did not mean to say that like, you know, disparagingly because at the end of the day, I do

think it is pretty important that non-Chinese publishers and developers, you know, try to throw their head in on this cuz right now, like, yeah, like it could be a cultural thing. It could be whatever. I just don't think they're fun. But I love, you know, Forex as a genre, especially like my PC, like Forex games, grand strategy, whatever you want to call it. So, I do think there's a lot of room to make it better. like kind of like even though it's not a non-Chinese company, but when they made like Rise of Kingdoms, right? Kind of like from Lilith, it changed everything about this genre.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. You know, back in the days, if you go even further, there was the time of Machine Zone where there was Mobile Strike and Game of War pretty much glued to the top one and top two in the charts and that's it. There was the charts all the time, every day.
So, that's there. Uh this goes directly into my second questions. Uh how do you see the biggest challenges of western developers compared to Chinese one in the western market?
If you talk to if it it it if you talk

to like just a random what's called product manager, monetization manager in China, they'll always tell you the same thing. They'll tell you the western developers are so creative. They're great with how they want their games to be artistically blah blah blah, but they just don't know how to monetize. And then right
that's what I wanted to hear. Well, I've spoken with a few of my like very good friends who are developers in Canada, in the US, and then the conversation usually goes down to like maybe it's they don't want to admit it, but I like to think that they don't want to do it because there's some kind of line in the sand that they don't want to
moral high ground. That's
moral high ground. Yeah, moral high ground. And whether or not we want to believe that is the fact, I I will believe that like because I think monetization is a very it's a tricky thing to get. But if you really wanted to go out there and to learn and to unpack it, I think it's totally possible. I really do think that there's

a lot of developers in the west who just don't want their game to turn into that. But I think you guys know much more about this than I do because not only have you guys worked on that side before, like for example, the Yaku, but you guys have spoken with so many developers in the west.
Yeah, I've experienced literally like we won't put gacha in our game. That was the answer. Like really?
Yeah. We refuse to add more ads in this game because
we that is we feel that it's mean to the players or the players won't like it and you're like okay.
I think that's a great point from Felix too, right? It's like we're talking about the admon and then I mentioned earlier too, right? It's like we don't want to go too heavy on admon like because there's perception that's like if I make someone if I raise our impow to like more than 10 all of a sudden there might be a um there might be a
[ __ ] Jesus Christ I can't big words. It's like the retention might go down and then like the impow goes up but the retention goes down. An inverse relationship. Thank you. Sorry. Inverse relationship. Yeah. So why did I get a

master's degree if I can't even use those fancy words? But and then but then we mentioned things like oh but then what about you know a battle pass? Won't battle pass make retention go down? Well, you know it's really interesting stuff and I'm not on the data team. I'm sure if they delved into it they might be able to see a thing or two about that. But if we go back to the question, right, it's like what's what's the biggest challenge for like these western devs? I've spoken with quite a few and I've seen them come up with really great core loops. Yeah. But the monetization and then even not just that, it's like the core loop is really good, but it's like what is like what's the deeper kind of like
what's the progression meta? It's like they have something there, but it's like is that really going to facilitate somebody coming back to the game in two three months
spending? Yes, very much. See you later or never.
See you. Right.
Yeah. This is this is the point where I've been telling like for the last I don't know 10 years basically like the moment that I like understood what uh free-to-play game design is about. Like

monetization is the game design. If you don't have monetization in mind when designing the thing, you can't just duct tape it on later. It just doesn't work like that. I think that's the problem with like you know the romantic designer or developer part where I completely agree like some people aren't here for the money. They're they're for the art. it's completely okay. But you know, you can afford your more high ground when your game is profitable and it's like, you know, LTV or viral success or something and then you can have these things. If your game is barely managing it or like struggling to get out of soft launch, like goodbye like that's just just what's going to happen.
Talking about soft launch, you have an interesting approach to soft launching and we were kind of thinking like like why Asia first and then global then like you're opening up different geos markets. How is that
it's changed? It wasn't like that before with
what's the what's the kind of thinking behind if you can talk about a little bit.
I think you're referencing it's like that one country we like to it's like

that one country we like to go hard in and then we bring in like you know two three other countries in East Asia and then from there it's just okay we just go right.
Yeah. Because you mentioned if it if it doesn't work in Vietnam then you kill it.
I don't remember I don't recall I don't remember that.
No recall. I mean no no you didn't say like that but if it doesn't work then you need to refine
right so like like basically comes down to proxy countries and that's something that I really love about hab cookie cutter you know template which is super important if you're a smaller team and you don't have those same you know pillars to help you support advanced testing or advanced hypothesis making right but then for happy it's like they're quite clear like this is our target audience for this game we know what country is going to give us a good proxy and then blah blah blah you you do it there and then whatever happens in the rest of the world we're pretty sure it's going to be replicated from these countries we've chosen now will this change in the future I think it will

especially when we start doing games outside of this specific genre or subg genre so it's something we're aware of like what you guys mentioned what we're doing now is different from what we did uh a certain amount of years ago yeah it's just what we're it's just what we see is working for us Now
h cuz you have so many data points that you know like if these are the benchmarks the are the KPIs if they're better than what you saw before then you move forward if they're not then you need to refine
right definitely and that's something I will mention too I don't know why it is maybe I haven't talked to enough of them it seems like a lot of western developers they're not super strong on event mapping it's like they're aware of event mapping but they're not doing as much as they could and then I don't know why that is like maybe you guys have some insights there But yeah, event mapping is like super super key with all companies here in East Asia, right? Like like we got that stuff all up in the data so we can see exactly what's going on and make all types of hypothes
decisions and hypothesis

decisions. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, usually when I when I when I work with different companies in soft launch, they they ask me like, "Oh, what what are the events we should track?" It's like,
"Wasn't you supposed to have them already?" In my old days as a publishing manager, I literally had like the front end guy and the backend guy, the leads. Like they'd be so mad at me because each week I'm giving them like a long list of things like I want to see these events and then they're just like do you know how many [ __ ] [ __ ] that's going to [ __ ] clog up the [ __ ] thing? I'm just like
please try. Right. And then like yeah sometimes I did ask for too much and it did like screw up the servers to an extent and then but then
then you have more than
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It can kill you the game if you if you know doing the decisions wrong from that point on especially in soft launch.
Exactly. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.
Yeah. I think this kind of goes back to that thing which is like maybe maybe in the west there's this like people are so focused on like the game itself as opposed to everything else. Right. Maybe

it's not maybe that's just the reality.
That's the reality.
I mean yeah there's exceptions, right? But yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. Like there's definitely huge exceptions like, you know, like I wanted to give them a shout out like like Stillfronts, you know, BitLife, like that game's just amazing. And then I think they did it their own way and I don't know how their how they did it, what was their plan, their methodology, but like like you know from the rewarded ads all the way to your inapp purchase design, right? Like I was telling you guys I think I was telling you guys I at least left a comment on your YouTube video talking about it. Like I was just like it's like I'm playing a paradox game. It's crazy.
Yeah. That's the life simulator game we have review on.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love still friend. I love you. Johan
the Swedes.
Okay. Felix Mate, any other questions on your plate? I'm think I'm kind of running.
No, I I asked pretty much too

because we, you know, we don't wait until it's our turn. We just want this conversation going and flowing. That's that's that's the key part of the discussion. Jakob,
I think what's next for Hobby then? What we can we can
I was about to say like now sounds like it's a good time for like kind of like the shameless plugs and all that stuff.
Uh so um I have my own product line and then I'm going to send No, I'm just kidding. I don't. But in all seriousness, I think what's next for Happy, right? Is probably the same for a lot of publishers. Uh the next game and you know, like what's going to be the next game and then like like like the next game after that and that and that and that. At least that's my focus and the focus I want for my team. And then how to achieve that really is I just tell people if you are a studio big or small regardless of what genre if you guys have an idea please feel free to share it even for forex cuz I've spoken

with a team actually that is doing a forex actually two teams and then it's actually something that we'll always at least talk about internally and we'll weigh the pros and cons cuz the happy today is most likely a little different from the habby one month ago and etc etc. We will always take into account what resources we have on hand and what we can do to accommodate a certain type of game and if there if the risks outweigh the gains then yeah we'll say no for now but the door is never closed. So again we want to see if we can break out of being known as the rogike guys. Uh does that mean we'll be doing a match three game or something like that? Like I I don't know if it'll be that uh big of a pivot but we're open to a lot of things. Yeah, nice.
Those just just to confirm those two Forex games you mentioned are Western or Asian?
They're Western. I
I I don't think a Chinese team would

now I don't know. Like, you know, keep in mind I'm not like a real Chinese person, right? I'm like kind of like a fake Chinese person.
Come on.
No, no, no, no. It's true. Like sometimes I get into a cab and the people are like, "Are you Mongolian?" And I'm like, "What?" So, I have never heard of a case where a producer for a Forex game in China will actively go out there and be like, I'm looking for investments or this or that. Usually, what I hear of is a publisher will identify a special, you know, a special potential opportunity, sorry. And then they'll actively go out to try to poach a producer like like to work on the Forex game with their idea. But in the west right now, we're seeing a lot of guys are like, "Hey, I have an idea. I need investment and things like that." So that's different. That's different.
So how people can reach out to you?
Yes, I'm sure we can do our kind of like the magic video thing and then my happy

work email will pop up like just like that. And then you guys can do that.
Nice. And then you go, if you go on a LinkedIn, there might be a million David Pans, but try to look for the fat bald one and that may narrow it down a little bit. And
you know what I can do? Put your LinkedIn uh URL into the show notes and profile. Don't worry. Yeah, we can we can make it a little bit easier for people.
That sounds like witchcraft.
Witchcraft. But yeah, absolutely. And then I'm not as responsive as I was a few months ago because, you know, like we're in Q4 now. A lot of stuff going on. I wanted to also I I'm saving this for last. October 13th. I want you guys to save the date. I'm also going to reach out to you guys a little bit before that. Like we got some really big news. Really really big news. Super excited about it.
Yeah, it's next week.
That's good.
It's next week.
It's next week.
Very nice.
Really excited about it. We're gonna Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm sure the gaming

industry is going to really love that news.
Yeah. AB is getting bowled by Saudi Trian.
Let's not Let's not jump.
Let's not speculate.
Yeah. Yeah. Let's not speculate. Let's speculate. We'll see. But which means this going to go live before.
Yeah. Going to be fun.
And I do want to say like I'm already picturing this like kind of like from the viewers perspective. I feel kind of bad cuz I feel like there wasn't that much insight that maybe someone wanted to learn Abby.
There was a lot. Yeah. Yeah. We can we can judge. You know, sometimes sometimes it's just better to hear it from the the culprit itself and confirm the stuff that we're saying because you never know and once at least you confirm it, it's like much better than nothing. So, don't worry, it's still okay.
Well, cool.
Well, I feel really good about that. But there is one thing I do want to like if there's something that like what games are on your guys' radar right now at this moment? I know you guys do the oh games radar video each month but what's something that's on your

launch sonar
soft launch sonar excuse me
sonar radar whatever
that what games are on our mind currently or you mean like what's what's like um yeah so there's lots of movement in social casino we are very keen on looking at for instance there was this new roio game that's pretty much iterating social casino and the whole social casino is going to be 4xed in the next few months it seems meaning that they're taking on uh like additional on boarding game into the creative streak. So that's there. Then there's a lots of movement in the let's say non-conventional puzzle genre which means
is lucky adventure as well on the on the menu for us.
Lucky adventure like lots of these like I would say trends that are popping up. There's lots of Steam stuff also that like we just covered the Mega Bone game which seems to is by the way it's already past 100K CCU in the meantime it's still growing up like crazy and uh yeah that game is going to be that game is going to be copied to hell on both both VChat both mobile everywhere like that system is done very very

like that actually was that was one of the games I wanted to talk with you guys about too I don't know if we have enough time today but yeah for Mega Bonk I'm really excited Like it's so crazy how we find out about this, right? Because all my friends were playing it in in my friends list and then I see it and then I buy it and then now in the last week I see all these uh websites are talking about it and whatnot.
Yeah. But it just I don't Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It looks I don't know. Yeah.
It's it's very clever iteration that that's like the thing like those two games that he put together meaning the Risk of Rain 2 and uh Survivors kind of loop Survivor.
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's done very clever and you know the numbers speaks themselves. Fold on Twitch, Fold on Steam and everywhere. So, we'll see.
All right. All right.
Perfect.
Like that's also something we're pretty big on like like Yes. Steam games.
You can just kind of take them, you know, do it yourself.
Put it as an onboarding has been done before.
That's true. Absolutely true. But like

again like not to sound too much of kind of like a shill or anything but like like we do believe in trying to be ethical in how we do things too at Happy Like I think that's what makes us again pretty special even though like uh like we want people to know we're still kind of like a boutique publisher and then like because Stefan comes from a producer background he knows the pain of having his game you know copied and I don't know if we talked about that specific speific game like it really hurt him really bad like when that happened to him. And then the game that copied his game now is like it's on its eighth or 10th, you know, version in the app store. And then for his game, it's still kind of like a Hallmark game that like a lot of people have played and still play. But yeah, so like that's something he always talks about too. He's just like we're never going to do something like that where we just blatantly copied. Now how people feel about Vampire Survivors and Arch Hero Survivor IO? I mean like there's a lot

of things we can go back and forth about that but
yeah it's like a coming off from different games to like Korean magic lantern game like we we covered it so yeah it's not not really that easy as it seems on the surface.
Yep.
If you know how it works then you know it's not easy.
Yeah. Absolutely. A completely.
Thank you very much David for coming. This is amazing and I hope to see you soon. I mean guys Jakob is going to see you install. I'm going to see you hopefully sometimes next year before China Joy. If not, then try and enjoy this.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
But again, thanks. Really appreciate say good words to to your team and we say hi.
Looking forward to the announcement.
Yeah,
looking forward.
Absolutely, guys. I still remember it was just like two years ago when I was just your fanboy on YouTube and now like being able to come here to represent our company and just to like, you know, just to share words with friends. It's really it it truly is an honor. And then we're really looking forward to We're we're really looking forward to have 2.5 gamers play our new games as

soon as it's ready. I'll see what I can do to get that into your hands officially earlier than
Nice. Let's do that.
Woo.
Let's go.
Amazing.
That's what we like to hear.
Exactly.
Absolutely.
All right then,
listeners, this is it. Thank you very much for listening. Join the Slack channel. Uh if you have any questions, reach out to David or just comment under the video. And uh see you next time. Byebye. Watch out. [Music] [Applause] [Music]