How to Build a Cross-Platform Franchise with Sola Saulenko, CMO of Pixonic

hey folks and welcome to the deconstructor of fun podcast I'm your host Mishi katkov and in this episode I'm joined by Solan soeno Sola is the CMO of pixonic Studio which is part of my games now in this episode Solan and myself will be talking about the intricacies of building a successful game franchise um topics like the balance between organic growth and strategic planning the evolution of games into franchises and challenges with transitioning from a hit game into a franchise the importance of passion and creativity in brand building as well as the potential for expanding the franchise into various media formats now we all know that after the uh the Privacy changes IPS have become monumentally more important there's many companies who are borrowing or paying to use an external IP in their games or building games around an external IP and in this episode we kind of delve deeper into

what if you have a successful game a game that has been played for almost a decade that has hundreds of millions in stalls just like big Sonic studio with their War robots and can you build a franchise a brand around that and build more games with the same IP rather than um acquiring or lending or renting an IP from from somewhere else uh big Sonic has been doing that they've launched several new titles uh with the war robots IP one on PC console one on mobile with a more accessible different type of gameplay so we'll be talking about those and and uh an overall the topic of Brands and franchises so hope you enjoyed this podcast and um please do uh leave a comment uh connect with myself or Sola and um subscribe to our newsletter our newsletter has all this and much more um much more fun so anyways without further

Ado ladies and gentlemen Sola [Music] soeno welcome welcome welcome to the deconstructor of fun podcast I'm your host Mishi katkov and today I have a super interesting guest Sol sa from my games and from Pig Sonic and we're going to talk about crossplatform franchises so welcome to the podcast thank you so much thank you for having me hello everyone so let's talk a let's let's start with talking about you uh you are the CMO of pixonic and pixonic is known for the war robots which is now a franchise so the first title super successful uh War robots on mobile and now it's on different platforms it's been launched in different countries I think it's close to 10 years uh crossed at least half a billion in Revenue seems to be growing seems to be still entering new new markets and then as of late

you've been launching uh little big robots which is a more casual game and uh War robots Frontiers which is a PC game but before we go into how you expand to different audiences and different platforms um so you've been um you've been a CMO of pixonic and before that you were at game insight and marketing and can you a little bit talk about your career uh as a marketer oh yeah I'm actually a gamer and uh I do I do like games since my childhood but when I was really like a small child uh I didn't think that actually this could be a job for someone and um but still like at the end of 2002 I joined a team um in my native City uh who developed PC games so and that was actually the point when I entered the game industry it was not the mobile

mobile game um that time but still it was gaming industry and I was like a PR manager so um and actually all of the things I learned was not because of some Institute university and so on just only it was the experience because we were like the Pioneers in each and every step and um I did have uh a short break TI but then when I returned I actually returned already into mobile game industry it was the sunrise of this era and it was first it was crazy panda games then it was uh game inside for three years and uh in February 2021 I joined my games I join our big Sonic team as I said firstly it was only PR strategies Communications with journalists when we were trying to present our games when you know was yeah

writing these emails to everyone like oh please see our our screenshots and our demov something like that and of course it was really very interesting when this mobile era begin again because actually it was a golden era and especially when you see all of these numbers right in time uh and especially I mean when you spend the money and right away you see the result of this spending and uh what I'm a big fan is that actually where mobile games are not we are more flexible I mean that for example when you're developing some AAA title you still have to see the result and in mobile games you can you know see it just right away for me just really really very important so yeah it's like a few words about my career so you've been career from Communications to management to uh to marketing and now uh

Chief marketing officer at pixonic and I'm curious to understand what does your team look like like what are you in your team because big Sonic is a crossplatform you have games on PC you have games on Console you have games going in on on mobile how does what does your team look like and and so actually everything we need we have inside and uh for us it's very very convenient so I uh but still we have our Central Services where we can go if we if we do not have an NE the needed experience the needed expertise yeah understood so um what what does your marketing team look like I'm very curious because again because you will have multiplatform approach what is it what does a marketing team for for that approach look like well it divided into of course user acquisition team and it's not very big I mean our house uh

structure it's um I suppose six people guys if you hear me and if I if I'm wrong please please forgive me you know that I forget a lot of things as so it's on the performance marketing team it is uh so and we we divided um the sources between people uh but actually um we are free if we want to try something you because I do understand when you when you are working with only one title for quite a long time on the same Source it became boring and you just say hello it was really very nice to meet you but I will go and join some other team so yeah we are trying you know to mix it uh somehow um then we have our creative production team it's quite big because we need a lot of creatives for our user acquisition campaigns and we also have actually

Insight uh uh team inh housee team and we also have for the central marketing creative production team and uh well without them it will be really very difficult to get the necessary qu uh quantity of the videos and um we also have our creative producers uh these guys they're like searching through the internet they're looking for the Trends they are watching all of the report from sensor Tower data AI at Magic and so on and so on just to see what uh what the trends are what our competitors do and they also watch a lot of videos I mean through Facebook Instagram and so on through Tik Tok because we have to find some new Concepts uh in order to run our campaigns more successfully we also have our our uh PR team um uh which is

responsible for all of the communications internally and uh they also work very closely with Central PR team of my games because we actually have to be on the same line uh and there is also in my marketing team um part which we call grow team actually these person are responsible for um all of the questions uh in terms of organic traffic so it's all about these Apple searchs campaigns about liveops cards in Google Play and so on and so on but also um guys from grow team they are also responsible for testing our new products because our R&D uh company uh company sorry R&D team which we also have uh in our studio um they presenting the new builds which they want to test and we run the campaigns so it is also in hands of uh

marketing team so it's all all my guys uh I hope I do not I didn't forget anyone I think that's all yes about about exactly marketing and still just because we have a big marketing campaigns uh on big sources we are searching for the new sources of traffic and sometimes it's for us it's more convenient to ask for help for Central marketing because uh they are already have some tests with that or that Network or DSP or something like that and we just can ask them like guys please help us to run this test exactly on war ofit and when we see the results and the results uh are okay we will run this with all of the money we have and uh when you say that we have this like cross platform uh that we have our steam pro version of War robots and our PC

version of course we also trying to buy traffic for these platforms but definitely it is really it is still challenging to do this on Steam uh but we we never give up and I hope that someday we'll do this as good as we always do with on another platform and uh we're thinking like we are still searching for the best way how to scale our marketing spent for our PC version of course there are some difficulties but like we are on our way to success with that yeah that's so it's really interesting when you're when you're explaining the uh the pro your marketing team because just to understand how it looks like for a product and a franchise that has been out there for a very long time so you must have insane amount of different types of creatives that you can use from the past like almost 8 years and now

you're because you're in so many different platforms because normally we think about like oh what kind of strategy we use on Tik Tok What kind of strategy we use on Instagram and Facebook and so forth but now you're going also in the PC World and it's very interesting that you mention that advertising so running campaigns like after all the experience on mobile PC is actually quite challenging and I think that's very important for people to hear in the mobile gaming industry because a lot of startups are thinking that they're going to go to uh to PC it's going to be a lot easier and it's not going to be as difficult because of all the Privacy changes that happened on on iOS and all the Google sandbox changes that are incoming it's like let's go on PC but you're saying that no PC is its own Beast it's very challenging and despite all this history of really like understanding your audience understanding your game having all these creative assets having a central marketing team having a robust

internal marketing team you're still like learning and and trying to conquer the uh the PC marketing aspect yeah yes exactly and I want to to say to all of the listeners that actually there won't be any any easy time for us anymore and uh I I think that it is uh on the same level I mean there difficulties with PC and also with Mobile Traffic because we all know about AA apocalypse is as we call it uh in uh in my games that you have to you know like find your your potential player and it costs a lot and when we are talking about PC version um it is still very important to um to show the user that you're actually it is not a fake some fake uh Landing for example that this user should

somehow trust your um the the advertisement uh that he saw and uh the tunel the funnel uh is is a bit different that in uh when you just seeing Facebook and you click and then you on the App Store and you already trust to all of these uh all of these platforms I mean you trusting Facebook or I don't know some Google YouTube comp uh Channel and so on and then you're getting into the store app store or Google Play Store and you also trust this platform but when you're trying to lead your potential player somewhere on the website it's really very tricky so you have to somehow tell him like don't worry please download and have some fun with the robots uh Last Thing Before we start talking more in details about robots is like interesting that your uh that my

game CEO said Ela said that um uh you know after I'm just paraphrasing but basically what was saying is that uh with the prior years of us being able to Target users effectively now we have to learn how to make games for Mass audiences again do you feel that's happening with you as well um well I'm not sure that it is just happening right now and exactly was with war robots because we already have our core audience and we know how to work with this audience and by the way it is we are still able to find the new audience which is satisfied with exactly this game but I totally agree with um Elena's thought about this games which should be more friendly for more W wider uh audience and I hope that will just

because we are trying to find a new hit and uh we have for our little big robots just right now it is still in the process of finding the best way of how to operate this game and maybe it will be also our way of how to say to um launch this game into the Stars yeah yeah uh let's talk about Al so you mentioned audiences and this is an interesting topic because I think we had uh we had developers from war robots when the game crossed half a billion a couple of years ago they were on the podcast and the interesting story was about the early phases of War robots when when the game launched in soft launch it had appalling kpi so I I forget what the uh the retention numbers looked like but I think it was like lower than 20% D1 something like that which is like a a death blow for anything and then yet you are in a

situation currently where the game is I mean it's it's performed phenomenally it's still growing in certain markets uh and now it's uh being you know grown through new franchises on two new platforms so um I'm kind of curious in in like two things like how are you able to I know that this was a little bit before your time I think most likely learnings have being shared like how were you able to go past the first stage of of really identifying the audience and then starting to grow and how have you been able to sustain the growth throughout you know almost a decade I well this is very good question and uh what I want to say that um when War robots uh were launched uh I suppose it was 2014 something like that I don't remember the exact exact year and um I was working in another company definitely L but we are we in the

industry we were very like happy for this success and we were you know observe the progress of the games how they develop and we do remember all of these you know um Mark points like apple presentation and something like this so War Roberts always were some like Masterpiece um but also you mentioned that at the very beginning the main metrics were dramatically low and uh definitely if we see such metrics just for our new projects right now we will not launch it because the situation actually changed and um back then at the very beginning you can actually launch whatever you want because the market was pretty empty and I think that uh the most difficult that then it was not only to launch but

understand how you can develop this game which is launched already and I think that the team of War robots they did a great job and the reason for that I think that what I can see for my perspective is that product team work works really very closely with marketing team we have really very strong analyst team and I want to send them low just right now and uh we always do understand our business goals so we are trying to balancing between doing a great game and still understand what we need to actually have the resources to do this uh game even better and greater so I think this is really as symbios of very strong teams I believe that uh M uh that professionals they um very

important if you want to create something big and um when they even now for example when we launched in marketing we launched uh I think it was two years ago that our first campaigns on Tik Tok for example I was a bit worried because this platform is for younger audience blah blah blah and how they audience will feel um in our game which is more for you know male under 32 something like that but still you know uh the product team they um they learned how to on board this new Commerce uh because we do understand that uh not only we are developing but also the potential audience is developing that maybe they need I don't know

more uh different offers or maybe they want to have some you know bright colors brighter colors on some skins and so on so we are always thinking about what our audience uh may have need and we always uh watching for our watching for our competitors because actually a lot of games which are really very cool and we are like decomposing them and uh take the best from them so yeah something like this that helps us to operate this uh this title for quite a long time yeah so so combination of like like really working together with the product yeah marketing and analyst working closely together yes analyst product team and marketing and it's all connected by business goals perfect match yeah under business goals and how about um actually I'm ious about cuz you said you know the profiles

of of mail of of certain certain and how to cater to them both on terms of marketing and and product side um I'm curious if you use any kind of specific tools or is it that in-house user research that gives you the insight into those users well yes uh we always uh do some kind of surveys and uh this is um our community team is responsible for that and uh I hope that we will also do this with the bigger platforms like uh Google for example because they have the tool like the exact tool when you actually can ask the potential audience or the audience which has uh already played uh your game whatever you want but uh still uh for us it is very important to understand the needs of our existed existing audience so yeah quite often we run this service especially after the updates we work closely with the support

team because actually this is the front line and they have uh these guys there like also my hugs and kisses for them because they are the first one who gets uh these comments which are not always with love because Love Is Silence silent yeah and uh we are trying we we gather all of this information we do the analysis and we're trying to rework it and uh to implement really important things into I don't know next or build or build after the next one because of our big backlog but yeah we are we we're listening to our audience I think it's very important because our game is also our audience of course understand and it's you know being in development I understand it's easier and I don't know more fun to develop against certain profiles than against mass of of numbers

like like I don't know if you use those set of sort of a user research profiles where you have you know bucketed at certain types of users is that the type of approach you use user research or is it more like just overall data no not overall data because we we are really um is it still like allowed to say this like data driven company and uh we you know we always try to look from uh different angles to to the audience and because it's um it's more useful if you just took the white piece of data maybe you will not find the answers you want but when you divide it sometimes you can you can pick exactly what what you were looking for so yeah we're trying to do uh and use all the uh tools which we have and all of the internal tools and

external because for example um it is this instrument insights finder uh by Google and you actually Can See For example which are the interests on YouTube for your audience for example in United States or any other uh country and just because you are searching for that you start to understand and maybe you will also implement this information somehow into your creative strategy or into the strategy of your community so yeah we're always trying to GA to gather as more information as possible legally I want to underline this under privacy under under the Privacy restriction uh IA it uh cut our wings uh a bit but I can say that for example we were brave enough not to cut

off our marketing spent our marketing budget after April 2021 when idfa was turned up and I think it was really very good decision I mean overall my games not only P Sonic because um a lot of advertisers they just leave the auction and it was free for us and uh we created some workarounds insight to to learn more about the users how to optimize our campaigns so yeah we are we are good but of course uh it was a bit uh easier before yeah yeah for sure and can you talk about some of the sort of a pivotal not not maybe I don't know if pivotal is the right word but kind of like interesting moments during the time from marketing perspective especially since you are spending so much time understanding in the users better uh using the uh the Google insights tools

it's like what what kind of results have you been getting from there and implementing oh Knowledge from from those tools and then implementing that knowledge into your marketing campaigns finding like successful ways to uh to Market to the audience well first which came into my mind is actually not about the exact campaigns but about the creatives um because um as I said uh were creative producer producers um they are searching for the trends and um we found several concepts for we call it like meta mislead it's not a mislead exactly but still there are some details which are not exactly in the game uh but we even think about uh this mechanic could be included into the game because it's very very looking very organically yes if I

may say so um and regarding the trends for example in Google in insights finder unfortunately just right way I I'm not able to remember the example the good example so maybe if if it turn turn into my mind later I will get back to this sorry there's so many campaigns that you guys run so no no wonder um so a lot of questions but um kind of going back or going back or going to the original question of uh of this franchise so having multiple games under the second one can you talk a little bit about little big robots like how did this project came to be yes well first of all I want to say that uh me personally I do like this game a lot and I play a lot and uh this

is actually an answer uh for your question like how this uh game appeared in inside our team because uh this big love for robots is actually the main reason why we were deciding to do something like little big robots and um of course I mean that uh we do want to try ourselves on the field of toown Shooters and we're still have experience in shooter definitely and just because all of the team I mean all of the team not only marketing not only the product team but even the financial team we we just adore our robots so for us it was very natural that we decided that the character of this game would be small robots which are more um how to say this

correctly which are more for exactly for white audience and it's cartoonish and very funny and we decided that it would be it would be really very nice if we can actually take some abilities or behavior or um weapons from the big robots and just make them a little more funnier and uh uh Implement into the new genre but with the same characters which we really love so I do understand that uh I sound a bit like uh you know this very happy esoteric person oh my God love is everything but this is true because all of our team we are very fond of our main main robots and we want to put them wherever we can so this was actually the first reason but um still I want to say that

um business is business yes but our games should be really great so we have to how to say this um if someone inside uh the team has uh the concept of the game which is uh could be uh not only you know the game of of his dream but also can definitely earn some money we will always try to um I don't know make the first build and to test it and so on and when we see the good metrics we are ready to continue development so this was uh how the little big robots appear so it was not like you know we were sitting in the meeting room and decided like okay so what will be our next big thing oh that's great something like this no it was very very very natural inside the

team because we have a lot of like game jams uh and a lot of brainstorms and then you know it was only two people then three people then they cot something that they show something and then we understand that actually this could be our potential uh Heat game so we decided to continue development and after that when we've gathered the first metric we understand that okay let's focus on that do you use any kind of do you look at any kind of audience affinity and and of course I I understand games come up organically they have business potential they have excitement around them uh and and they get there but but how about the audience because knowing War robots audience so well it was the goal with little bit robots which is um you know it's a top- down version and the first one is a f third person shooter version so is the goal to kind of expand to a more casual ual not even casual but younger audience

seems like it's a yeah not casual but but yes not casual but younger I mean that for us it was also the way uh and it is also the way of diversification uh because uh we it it would be it will be impossible to gather all all of the audience inside only one day and uh we have these young people who actually can be also our core audience but not in the war robots mobile so we have to suggest them something and uh for us it's yeah it's the way of getting the new audience into into the game and to make our portfolio not focused only on the one piece of audience I mean this mayale under 32 and further understood and

um so the game hasn't yet I mean found the the growth that you're probably expecting um it took War robots a lot of time as well like how do you approach launching like soft launching and launching and grow in a game post 21 post iOS 15 basically uh well I personally do not do not believe uh in this uh soft launch strategy like it was before when you just choose the country and most of the time it was Canada and uh you were gathering all of the metrics and show how it's going on and then you decided to go worldwide what I believe is that um we all understand that for example our main Market is United States so we have to test our game on the audience which will be really very useful for us in the future um so we I think that we were open for the for

the whole world I don't remember the exact day but at the at the at the beginning of 2023 yes and uh we decid because the game was um on that stage uh when you are not embarrassed of it and uh when actually there was enough content to play for sever weeks I suppose and uh we have to have for we have to run this test uh with marketing campaigns with like what we call sustain marketing campaigns which were going every day with some kind of optimization without optimization uh just to check our progress between uh build overbuilt and uh so this was our strategy because we decided to spend money on traff just for this whole for this whole year

because without this data you will be not able to tune um the game inside of it so we are still like gathering this um data and uh yeah you say that we're like not yet found our growth but I hope that uh this year of testing will be enough for us to understand everything which we actually wanted and to make this uh construction better yeah so you mentioned that that you launched directly right right into the the US you didn't believe in the previous you know kind of like a almost like a supercell Playbook of the past of watching first can yeah no supercell doesn't use it either now they also go directly on Android and the US and so forth so so um what do you tell to companies that are

still baffled by by starting a soft launch in the core Market I know Rio has done it for I don't know past 5 years they always started in the uh in the US and people were like what are you doing you're destroying your golden cohort you're doing this you're doing that and so like what would you say to people who don't believe in this strategy of of going to the primary market right away well I want to say suggest them to be more flexible and uh to be more in line with our new reality actually that uh you actually can just um waste your time uh buying users for example in those countries which will not be your focus for the next I don't know three years uh so for me it's uh like it's a common sense we we have to understand how exactly these people uh will behave

in our game which uh which is uh good for them which is not when they are satisfied and when they are not we want to get the reviews from them we want our support to communicate with them and uh we want to um how to say this the direct response from the people which are at that very at that very moment is a very useful for us because if we succeed exactly on this market then it will be okay for any other of course we will I don't know uh modify something for example for Asian countries and so on but still for that we have to have the resources to have the resources you have to earn money to earn money you have to create a good game a great game for the main Market in mobile industry and this is USA so for me it's a common s just launched the game in us and trying to

get metric there but I do understand that for example small inde depending Studios or Indie Studios maybe for them um not maybe but for them it will be really very expensive and of course in that case you can try to launch a game on another but maybe Mexico is also quite good because I think that we we saw the same behavior uh between um players in us and in Mexico so I mean that you can find the the way but if you have resources if you have enough marketing budget I suggest to launch on us and do not worry about Golden cover because wellow yeah exactly I I I I agree and I think what's best about it is that when you start a soft launch and the game should be in a in a position where as you said it's not it's not making you look bad but let's put it

this way the game should be in a position where you truly believe in it it's very deliberate you've gotten into a position where it is ready to go to a market maybe it doesn't have quite as much content to start scaling but it is ready and when you put that game out on like you know the typical um let's say Zinga had the strategy I don't know if they still have but the Philippines for a tech launch and then the tier 2 markets of of maybe English speaking or non like usually non-english speaking like the the Netherlands the the the the Scandinavia and some kind of like a countries that could spend but don't speak English let's see how it works and then you're starting to creep on tier ones the new zealands the australias the Canadas and then finally you you already and you put it out in the in the US that's a lot of benchmarking and it's very weird for the team to you know sort of start the soft launch and end up in a in a in a country that tends to have very poor kpis and so like what are you getting out of that it's like it's like

you're extrapolating is this really a good game or not like it's hard to say are we bad because we're in a market that is not good or are we bad because our game is bad like we don't know I don't know I want to mention that even if you feel that you've done everything correctly and that you press all of the necessary buttons and so on and so on sometimes magic just doesn't happen because I still believe that games is games are entertainment and there should be some kind of soul and heart in it it's not only business projects so if there is no this um I know this catchers uh for the your audience it will be not okay for them so they they will not play your game even if you do everything everything like um for using all of the successful schemes from another games so it's still like you

know this mix of magic and uh business and it's really very hard yeah yeah tell me about it uh so so um talking about like like switching te and talking about like War robots Frontier so very very very different like in in all ways different game than than little big robots it's a yeah PC console super realist IC very hardcore looking game I mean you need you need a gaming machine to to play this um how did how did this game came to be and and looking at the timelines they were developed at the same time so part of your team is developing this cute little robot shooting multiplayer game and the other part is like yeah yeah that's all cool but we're going to make this triple want another one yeah AAA quality crazy you know explosions you havex absolutely different type of a skill set and look in audience playing the other one it's like how how was that game you know like

how did this happen yeah how did this happen this happen guys yeah it's like two different companies are making like I would I would not say that these are even coming from the same company they're so different of a product partially you are right because we we are developing world over 2 years together with another in-house uh development team of my games and this team actually develops a lot of PC and console games so they are great professionals so so they have their experience and their expertise and we have our war robot Universe let's say it let's call it this way and um we have a lot of data uh from warit mobile about audience about uh which what this audience likes and so on and so on so we decided to United our resources so if I may say so like co- team co-production something like

that so co- development yes it's not only our game um and you're absolutely right that yeah uh maybe I can say so that a younger uh part of our team were like oh yes we want to do little big robots because it's fun and so on and maybe uh people who are a bit older they're like oh no we want to be these guys who playing on PC with super realistic robots which are fighting with each other and this is really very cool that we have this Freedom uh trying to do what we really want in what we believe so yeah we uh work closely together so it's like two teams uh which are developing this game yeah and and it's and it's also about like widening our audience because what in my like in my my dream I see all of these things like I don't know for small children

where uh have Happy Meals in McDonald's with the small Robert and the children playing top down and then their fathers and mothers yeah yeah big children yes young adult and they are playing this uh PC version of robot Frontiers and something like that and then we still have our C audience which say like oh we were there first and they continue playing on their phones so kind of going back to the original question of building a franchise so it sounds it was very organic it's like people are developing War robots and and they're they're putting their way forward I think War Roberts is kind of like our generation's Mech Warrior so going like another you know classic franchise in terms of fighting War robots but starting a franchise like like like do you like how do you start it is there like a decision to be made like no now we're going to

focus on robots and going to bring them on all the platforms I'm going to think of the audience and we have to build a cohesive narrative around which you know the the war robot Universe like the Marvel Universe like everything is happening here this is the timeline for this this is the timeline for that uh is is that the type of a thing how you start a a a franchise or is it more like organic like your game development where people just have ideas yeah uh I'm an honest person so yeah I would say that actually it was organic and I think that is because when you're talking about like Marvel uh Universe uh it's been on Market I don't know exactly how many decades and I'm pretty sure that at the very beginning they were not thinking about how big they would be in the future and uh so I think that they start I hope that it is true uh some

kind of like organically so and when we are talking about actually mobile games like an industry and when it starts it was we were not thinking at that time that actually in 10 years it will be billions of dollars so it was like it was also fun okay let's do something and uh launch into into the store so for us it it was the same first of all it was war robots and it was a huge success then we we're like okay maybe it was even you know someone was already tired of War robots mobile and maybe this person just decided guys I'm I'm full of this mobile versions and builds I want to create a big game let's try and think about it so yeah for us it's more like organic way of building this uh franchise and we're still at the very beginning because a lot of things we have to think of and uh but still at

the same time we have our um our trailers which are telling our audience the story of War robots uh Universe what was happen what will happen next how all of these uh things uh happen in the past and what was the reason for that um and uh I want to make a spoiler for our listeners that next year uh it will be 10 years anniversary for or with mobile and actually we already planning a lot of activities which are connected exactly with uh the story with the history and actually this is our way of building the franchise that when you know we are getting not older I do not want to use we're getting mature yeah mature and and uh because of that we understand that okay so on that uh day

of our un anniversary we'll do something really big and really great and not only from the community side but also from the product and we as I said we work really very closely and we just uh and this is uh this way when we are on the meeting call and like okay let's brainstorm how we can uh entertain our audience what we want to tell them how we will uh represent this in the game how will will represent it in our social media what will marketing team do what about re engagement campaigns and so on and so on and um sorry I already talking about marketing that's myself but I mean that uh but then I I was not joking when I was telling you about this McDonald's Happy Meal because I think this is a franchise then you have to reach to your audience through every channel you have not only from Performance Marketing but also from some offline activities but for that we have to have a good games

and uh I mean that we're still at the very beginning and when we see I do not want to use if but when we see the good results I think we will be ready to our next stage like okay let's buy I don't know uh some video on Super Bowl between matches so something like that well that's usually a sound that's a that's a sign of decline whenever some some game company buys an app on Super Bowl that's historically been not the okay let let's imagine something something something I get it I get it like something something big something really cool uh if so so now I assume you have some kind of a brand management function that focuses on on building the St and franchise yes yes we have this franchise team uh and uh it's actually mostly like a central Service uh in my games and just because we're working closely yeah and uh because they always can ask us about for example oh do you

have some insights about your audience uh regarding this or that and we say okay we can actually launch the survey in our inbox and we can ask our players so yeah we're working really very closely yes yeah and and especially working with different types of Partners whether they're the McDonald or the has Bros of the world uh what they are looking for is longevity and the future plan and you have now the longevity and you have you're working actively on making the future plans happen so so that that of course opens up to the franchise teams I've you know visited big studios and they have their small franchise teams with the toys and the t-shirts and all kinds of cool stuff and actually we were like trying this thing because um I I I think maybe it was two years ago when we launched our like branded uh t-shirts on I think it was Amazon with our robots for our actually players they can buy them it was not

very successful but still for us it was just you know first step like what can we do uh what will be the reaction where we fail and uh what we learn from this and how we can develop it into our future activities so yeah we're we're trying yeah makes makes makes all the sense um I have last question so if you would do this all over again would you still approach it in a very organic way where you see how things are developing and kind of you know the games are coming organically for organic ways of audience like yeah that makes sense and this makes sense and now we should kind of start bringing it together through franchise teams and so forth or would you you know seeing the success and the levity of the first product be like okay let's be strategic let's build around a strategy uh sorry uh bu let's build a franchise M and focus on you know

strategically thinking about different audiences and how you're going to go and have that mindset of it will be a toy line it will be an animation it could be a feature film at one point um it could be a Netflix show and and this type of stuff and this is how we're going to expand the audience or or would you still kind of you know go organically through it kind of like almost like a live game development well that's a tricky question Mishka and uh still you know we are thinking that war Roberts is really are really very good for Netflix uh Cartoon or something like this and you know a lot of our team members they're just like asking us when we will do something like uh this um yes um well of course I think it would be more logically if you have all of the plans and strategic Vision but still uh I I will sound okay A bit tricky but I I mean that for me the best way will be if

it was if it is a mix when we have where we see that something uh is appearing uh it is really very good to start this strategic Vision at the very beginning but uh as I say for example for robots War robots mobile when it's only started back to 2014 I'm not sure that uh anyone there was thinking about Netflix show so yeah I I'm not I I don't think that it could be only strategic Vision because still as I said games are entertainment games are art and there should be not only business goals there should be some kind of your inside feelings your love your passion and uh it's very difficult to something with speci some uh something

using only your strategic V Vision if you do not feel the passion so yeah I I think it should be mix yeah I I agree with the mix I'm just saying I'm kind of like looking at the history of games and I don't think has anybody done it better than roio in the sense that they had you know the first game and games and they really focused on building an IP and achieved that you know Motion Picture level with the toy lines with the animation and and so forth uh compared to you know bigger games let's say Subway Surfers um Clash of Clans uh Candy Crush like they never they haven't like even though Clash of Clans has had two games and and the animation kind of like rolls towards it it it I don't feel like it's the same type of a phenomena maybe and Candy Crush definitely couldn't expand out side the one of the best mobile games ever so that's not a bad thing there but

it's not like a trans well I have an explanation for myself about that because well actually when we are talking about for example PC or video console games and this industry is a much older than mobile industry and actually what they have uh and had uh in the past they were developing they were and and they had to create this brand from the very beginning because this brand should be at the very end when the game is launched and when you have to sell it so for them building the brand for example thinking about the franchise was also very organic it was their way of operating and when we're talking about mobile GES games we were um infected by this Performance Marketing thing because you actually just run the campaign especially at the very beginning in 2014 15 and and so on and you just see the result right away you

were not we were not thinking about creating um the brand we were we were maybe that time we were thinking that this uh Performance Marketing Golden Era will continue um endlessly but it's not and maybe now for for us like a mobile games developers is the time to start thinking about brand actually and just because for example I was working also with PC games back then I do understand this kind of thing and I'm pretty happy that now in mobile games we're also thinking about it but still even even I who had this experience for me it's sometimes really very difficult to start thinking about I don't know some branding campaign because it's not like Performance Marketing so I think that this is the distinction between big games and I mean uh PC console games and mobile games because they they will see the result only after they um launch of the product when they went

to the stores and when people will start buying it and before that they have to create this strong desire to have this game and and I I I fully understand like it when it comes to it that you don't want to focus too much on the brand when you don't have a successful product like you have to have a successful product first but I'm just wondering that when you have a successful product and we mean a product that can easily sustain 10 years like this is we can see it this is sustainable at what point do you really should start thinking about hey this can be a franchise because I felt I kind of feel like with the many games that we have many successful mobile games they kind of go to like you know three years it's going great four five six it's like hey we should do something seven they start doing something and then it's kind of like hits that uh decline phase it's like nine and now we have the uh you know now we can do something it's like too late or not or not not too late but you kind

of missed the peak when it was I understand yeah well we never we never know what was the best timing or maybe the best timing is still in the future but I think that for us it was this well I think that maybe three four years ago we were start thinking about okay this is quite serious let's try to do something and uh and still we have you know when you are working only on one one project you're really getting bored and that's why you're trying to find the way of entertaining yourself and you know there are these people who just I don't know meet on Friday after the work uh and like okay I have this concept we can Cote it like easy peasy in one minute okay here is the bill let's do something so I mean it's still of course the the main thing I think that when you have this uh like good game and mature game and do not

be um how to say this correctly do not be sure that it will continue for the next decades because actually as you can see things uh change change very quickly so you have to always think about business and about your point of growth and how you can develop what you already have and what is already very strong and very good and I think this is the moment when you are like okay I I I heard that you have some concept maybe we can combine it I I I understand it is like I understand the realities of a game team that is focusing on shipping the next update and make and the marketing team that is focusing on the next optimized creative the next hero creative that they have to find the next growth Channel they have to tap into and if somebody would come in like guys what are we doing these are gigantic robots that are walking and shooting like like let's not talk about

like sure let's do this but maybe instead of talking about like how do we make the next game and so forth in addition like we can talk about that but how about we take this as a brand and really create a platform from which we can spawn several brands on different platforms as a different interactive media see this is just me like crazy talking this is our would approach like like let's think gigantic uh well I well I I I uh I I think that you're also right and I'm pretty sure that maybe there was uh there was some conversations like you just said because maybe I was not just in presence of this one but we are still we are thinking inside uh in my games we are thinking about brand and actually it's a you know it's a topic for another discussion about brand forance and how we want to create this brand and how we want to gain and um to gain the audience so yeah we it's it's not you know I want to underline that when we are talking when when I say organically it's not

just uh you know some chaotic uh uh Behavior like oh let's do something we we always there are people who are like visioners and we have people in our team who have this uh strong strategic vision and who is who are very good in numbers and when we are working together then we we we we get what we get already like this war robots mobile and I hope that this will help us to continue building our franchise but still as I said we're at the very beginning but Marvel let's see what we'll do next the case but um yeah I I totally understand I was just trying to uh to gouch like what what is the balance when you do have a hit do you just at the very beginning it's always is you know this question what was the first egg or chicken so yeah well no not even that

it's like when do you start when when when you do already have a hit like I 100% agree that focus on a game 100% but when you do have a hit at what point do you go into hey this could be a franchise instead of um not instead in addition to being a hit game just one hit game yeah exctly and then the franchise doesn't mean that you have the sequel coming in but it could be Sequel andna and the McDonald's and the toy line and like everything like like we we can now go to multiple different direction because we have such a engaged sticky audience that we understand that we can Market to and and and so forth so you know just dreaming big but well yeah and I hope that we will dream big yeah this is what happens when you live in California for a couple of years nothing is enough oh yeah never been there fortunately yeah all right so thank you so much for for sharing I I look with excitement of

course been playing a little I've been playing all these games except I haven't played Frontiers now I'm I'm I'm too young for that game well it is now a free weekend on Steam guys I saw it it's a free weekend all the package are being sold so very interesting to see how you uh how you cover all these platforms and and most importantly how you build a brand around such a such an I would say a natural concept me Warriors it's uh it's very very simple very cool very fun and you've been able to uh to catch different type of audiences with a PC with a classic mobile version and now the uh the uh yeah the uh the funny mobile version The Casual one or casual younger one thank you so much for the uh for sharing all the knowledge and the history thank you and thank you thanks everybody for listening catch you later