How Babil Scaled Nida Harb 3 to the Top Slots of the Grossing Charts in MENA

you good okay the mic works that's super does your work as well hello yes very good excellent so very very quickly for those of you that I'm sure all of you most of you know MJ some of you might not know everyone me or so Fran so I'll do I'll start with the brief introduction of what self-run is so still friend is actually an alliance of semi-autonomous studios or independent studios were a company that's coated on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and we actually have 12 studios which are part of of Steel front so one of them that you might know is good game studios in Germany you also recently have Kixeye who joined the family we have a former x.i representative here and Babel is one

of the studios that's part of the family and we have a kind of a very special different DNA is that we basically we believe in leaving the power to the studios so with a very very small central team that takes care of all the you know stock market stuff all the boring stuff so that the studios can create and basically focus on you know on really scaling their businesses so that's what's the front is and I was one of the founders of one of the studios of Scylla front called the Republic labs and I recently agreed to become the group's chief operating officer of Steel France so as a result I am working more and more closely with MJ and his team thank you so I will introduce myself for the people who don't know me so I'm the CEO of Babel Games what we do is we publish localized games into the MENA region like we work really heavily on the game

to make sure that they are cultural relevant and that they are very much liked by you know gamers in the so before we go into you know how you got neither harp three to become one of the top grossing games in the region less maybe you know take things back a little bit because you know I know that this is an a summation industry here in Jordan so how did you start Babel why did you start it like take us through like maybe those first difficult years and how that was like for sure so you know when I when I wanted to start Babel I think it was back in 2012 where the market was still very early for the Middle East like it was booming of course in the West but here you know like you would really find any companies that would work in games actually so there were just a few and the whole Middle East you know and I thought and

they told myself like I got several you know jobs offered actually from gaming companies outside Mena and I told myself like if I don't start Babel right now like lots of people will in the upcoming years join the Middle East region and the gaming scene here and that it will be you know long gone for me and I I will not be able to do it anymore because you worked at peak before right yeah actually I worked a peak and before peak very few people know that but I really I had a gaming company yeah it was a total failure I made some money I spend that money in having so much fun traveling and sofa and then I closed that company after that I jumped peak and when I left peak I started Babel but it's really you know gave me that experience like how to think you know when you open a new company and what was you know give us an idea of you know how how Babel was like and how big was it

kind of before you joined still front yeah I when did you join the super own family as well so um we joined the rest'll front family in the end of 2016 so that means four years after we opened Babel which was very I think good time for us before joining still front actually I think we were about 12 maximum 15 people we were very you know small team with that enterpreneurship mentality you know trying to do our best you know to provide quality publishing so each one of us was actually to super multitasking working on different stuff at the same time so that it was before joining stood front a very entrepreneurial culture exactly you know finding lots of potential you know interesting games to publish in the region some successes

some failures as well I'm assuming of course so you know back then we had some very good traction we were also doing very good but we were missing you know like here and there like how to be able to actually you know scale up and prove some stuff here and prove south-south they're reaching the next level in the company and so we joined still front in 2016 and after three years right now we're about 40 people that should tell you something really good right so we scaled from 12 people to 40 people lots of the things we have and the company right now are organized much much better within the teams between you know the management everybody else the workflow the processes are so on that's probably stuff that you could have done

without still France so what was what was your decision of joining still France and and so why did you do it first of all and then why do you think that it accelerated some of the things that you could have done on your own or what's Europe you know that so I would say that of course I could have done that myself but I think if I did that by myself alone there would have been a lot a lot of mistakes a lot of you know things I would have do and then change until I figure out the right formula to do it but the what helped me actually is I was able to get the expertise the knowledge of very amazing talented people from the other Studios they provided me with feedback they provided me with support with knowledge so the collaboration also with the other Studios helped me out to scale much much

better one of the examples I would say that one of the talents and knowledge we lack in MENA region is actually being able to do super marketing for the mobile games KPI driven and so on and so on and facing those marketing on analytics I think this is not an issue for me only but a lot of you know studios in the MENA region lack at this point you know they have very nice game they have very nice projects but they like on you know the marketing and marketing intelligence are so on so what we did is we worked with ggs in Germany so that's good game studios exactly so we worked with good game studios and they provided us the knowledge and the know-how and the tools and the support to be able to scale on a much different level for our games right so that

something you cannot actually even by yourself go into the market and buy or get it doesn't happen like that but the good thing about you know joining still front is why we were able to get that knowledge that information those tools those people to help us in reaching the next level and marketing and I think I think the I already seen that also on the other side I think the advantage we have is these guys these are guys you know obviously that you know they didn't know how to spend tens of millions of euros to scale a game right and to get into that position is what you need to have a game on which you can spend tens of millions of euros that's the only way you get that experience so so obviously they also know what kind of kpi's you need to be able to scale a game to that level so the big advantage of being part of the same group the same family that I saw as well is you know it's extremely important in an ecosystem to share information to say these are good KPIs are not with kpi's to really help each

other right I think it's one of the keys of why the Finnish games industry works so well is they're their share a lot of stuff but you know when you're not part of the same family you know can you trust a hundred percent that the person's giving is worldwide KPIs or is us you know Best of Breed KPIs you don't really we can't really that when as when you're part of the same families it's an open book you know you really show the information and that makes all the difference in terms of collaboration and and learnings right it is so one of the examples I would tell it like we always you know try to work with external you know marketing agencies that provide you with good targeted marketing campaigns right and always it was like okay we have traffic we can work with you we can make your games rich and the top downloads and we were like okay but here's only 5k or 10k to test if the KPIs is good that you know we will see how it goes but what happens here is

that you know like guys like here's the money for marketing here's $1,000,000 let's push it as hard as we can let's get the best you know traffic we could so it's a totally different totally open you trust the people who you work with which is very important when spending very much big amount like that so so basically if we if we if we think about the concrete example of Neda harp 3 this is like you know you almost all of the ingredients for the of the recipe to have a major hit game in the MENA region because you had the game with the kpi's you had you know the developer relationship you had the experience of how to localize it in the proper way you had the experience for the previous games of what works what doesn't work on that you were only missing one small ingredient with a fundamental ingredient which is okay how do i scale this not just from a game that is a nice success perform a game

that is a major head and the top crossing game and that's what the collaboration with good game studios brought to you correct exactly it's 100 percent it's like that and also what it showed us that you know we have a very big potential and what we're doing and when they supported us in marketing that the results that showed showed our potential and our hard work and amazingly what happened is that when ggs those so their marketing we do the what kind of advertisement what kind of marketing videos we do they were amazed and right now we're doing you know marketing videos for them we're providing them with new creative ideas for their own games because my team is really doing something really good here so and I thought that was also the the nice position is that it's not just once you're an artist you do that as does something that's exceptional that can help the other Studios is every single

studio when you think about it when you when what you're focusing on is get is gathering is basically you know building a platform for your long entrepreneurs to express themselves you know each entrepreneur each team is unique each team as special capacities that other teams don't have so we knew that you guys had the special capacity to really make a game a hit in the MENA region but with no idea that you were so creative in terms of you know marketing creators videos that you're the capacity to execute very high qualities extremely fast and all that so exactly what you're saying so as a result so good games to just became what we call that center of excellence for you for you know user acquisition across the group but you guys actually became a center of excellence for all the group and not just good game studios but us so my previous studio Republic and other studios are using your services to create great 3d video ads for their own games right exactly so what's happening here is actually we're joining hands we're covering each other and everyone

that has specific talents is for specific needs and we're providing that for each other to scale up and maximize our revenues you know as individual stages and a whole group and so so basically now you value incredible right for the past year and a half right I mean I think you gave the number in terms of how big you know that the team has grown you know from 12 to 40 people we can't go into too much details in terms of revenues obviously because we're a public company but you know we can say that the increase in revenues from Babel has been let's say larger and faster that the increase in that in the team in the team size so that's been an impressive increase there what's next so what's next of course we cannot share lots of information but what I could say is that we're building amazing teams here in Jordan we always will come you know

oh you're hiring yes we are so we are welcoming all the talents that could apply to our company because we're growing first I would say that the amount of work and the projects that upcoming in the next years is enormous and we need a lot of people to do that so what kind of profiles are the are you looking for right now to join the team I would say from A to Z so whatever talented people we can get you know it will be great actually and in terms of studio collaborations you're looking for me to work a lot with Chinese developers are you looking also at other types of developers with whom with whom you could collaborate or of course so you know it doesn't get exclusive for Chinese Asians or Europeans Americans but you know we're always interested here and looking teams the Middle East and in Jordan to collaborate with help and give them our

experience and support and be able to have success together so it's something we're always looking for I can actually see that especially here in Jordan that the quality of the games and of the teams are is getting better and better each day and I think in the upcoming future we will see something really nice coming out of you so so ideally you'd love to see some games that are developed in the region that can also make it to to top-grossing do you think how far you think are we from that is this something that that can happen you know in the next year or two or three years out five years out realistically honestly yeah far you think we are I mean I've seen there's a few hyper casual studios are starting you know in places like Lebanon and our places like that yeah but I are there Studios doing mid core games or their studios I mean where do you think this is going I think that we will be able to see that and about four or five years yeah so in four or five years if everything goes well

maybe you know maybe Babel will be publishing a game made in the region that is top grossing in the region but not only because to conclude another thing that I know that you've been able to do by being part of still front because you've been able to leverage the success that you have here in the region and then take that worldwide so you have a game that went worldwide as well so yes so we glued on that yeah so what we did is we spend off neeterb three and we you know provided all the other languages and with still phone support we actually getting very good attraction and success in newest Europe and so on where it was you know if I was by myself it would have been on a very very longer plan to expand into other regions so so an interesting thought is actually Mena being a platform for worldwide success yeah it's a it's very rare that when you

see Mena beneath a table to deliver super results in North America or Europe it's because the market is very hard there actually listen MJ I think that's all the time we have I'm super happy to have you in the family and and oh there's two more continued success thank you so much and you know what I would say is that please any you know company or a studio in Jordan or in the Middle East even if you don't want to collaborate with us just come we will provide you with help and support as much as we could thank you everyone [Applause] you