June’s Journey and the UX secrets behind a $1bn hidden object hit

Because June has this long arc of a story. You could sit down now and you could start playing June's journey for four years in a row. That's how much content there is. [music] Hello everyone and welcome back to In the Hot Seat. My next guest is lead UX designer on a billion-dollar game, June's Journey. The 1920s hidden object mystery that's been live now for close to a decade. Holga Worst runs the game UX department at Wuga in Berlin. And today we're going to be talking about all things legacy UX, Wicked, Pyat, and whether or not AI is helping or hurting design. Of course, we couldn't have this conversation without talking about AI. Holga, welcome to the hot seat. It's so good to have you.
Thank you for having Mariam. I was really looking forward for this interview.
Yeah. And for those who don't know you, Hulga, I gave a little bit of an intro, but do you mind just giving us a little bit of rundown as to who you are and what you do and what your role looks like?
Okay. Well, as you correctly introduced me, I'm I'm Holar. I'm uh here in the

beautiful Berlin, Germany in the studio of Wuga, working on Jun's Journey, and I've been doing that for a couple of years already. Um, prior to that, I've been working on Pearl's Pearl, which is the predecessor to Jun's Journey. Before that, I've been uh I've been in different studios. I've been working on games that have been pressed on CD and have been sold on this uh in regular convenience stores and stuff like that. So, I've been doing games for basically all my life already. And what I'm doing here is well um lead UIUX designer by now which means I have a team of 10 to 11 UIUX designers, animators, um researchers and we're steering the new designs and the things that are coming to Jun's journey and to our players.
That's so exciting. So Hog will also be joining us at PGC Nordics next month. He'll be joining a panel. So we're so excited for that. So without further ado, let's dive into our conversation today. I have much to ask you. So Hogga,

first you joined Wuga as a UI designer back in 2015 and you've since grown into lead UX designer over more than a decade. How I wonder has your definition of a good UX in mobile games changed across all these years? So for for clarity 15 years ago UX like that like um human computer interaction design or anything in that direction was more of a UI does UX as well where interface design and user experience design sort of is the same thing and what the company back then when I hired uh or for clarity I wasn't a UI UX designer from the beginning in the very beginning I was in 3D and graphic design a little bit of engineering myself. So I would have considered myself to be more of an allrounder back then and the company was looking specifically for UIUX and I thought with the experience that I had in different games that you can make a fantastic game if people don't like it and if people don't understand it then you're going to waste a million dollars. So that was like my sort of 15 years ago

juvenile brain thinking that could be a cool opportunity. And what has happened then was it was a lot about visual communication. So, uh, does it look good? Um, does it look, uh, interesting when when particle effects spawn, when shaders run over your screen? Um, can people read the text and so on? And the whole can people read the text and it's on a phone and phones have different resolutions and maybe it's on a tablet and then we have a build for Windows. So, that that was the UX part back then. And over over time, you start seeing that in a in a similar fashion that you can make a fantastic game and you can try to have the text as readable as you want and still players might not understand the feature. Maybe we're completely missing the point of what we're doing here. You maybe realize that the screens that you've been working on in isolation of the context of play made a lot of sense to you. But now that you see players in play tests and whatn not stumbling over it and not understanding

it, you think, I should have I should have anticipated that somehow. There must have been a way to to know about the issues the players might have and the desires that they have, the obstacles that they try to overcome. I should have known this a little bit earlier somehow. And so I slowly but steady moved from this um sitting down opening up Unity, opening up Photoshop um um whatever engine to be worked on, right? To to I need to understand the design a little bit more and I need to be early in the process and I need to talk to players and I have to like sort of shift away from the execution part and move a little bit closer into the design aspect again. And so the the role that I ended um ended up now with is that we over time sort of redefined how we build games and it includes UX very very early. So I'm in the beneficial position now to say that whenever we're talking about a new feature or a change or as you already uh

mentioned adding um brand collaboration that I'm in the very very early meetings and that I can sort of steer the way the UIUX department works into this direction to give my team the information that they need and to really do some deep dive into into um player insights um having interviews and getting all this clarification that I needed so dearly when I was and try to bring that to try to bring that into the the meeting rooms. Does that answer your question?
It does. It does answer my question. That's super interesting. I like the point that you made about you wish you had that sort of prior knowledge to preempt what the issues of players would have. But I guess now that you've spent this much time in this role and you know across Wuga, you probably can do that now and you have that sort of knowledge and ability to share that with your team. So that's really interesting. Um
there's something important that maybe for if you want to want to condense all that down is um what changed is that you

look at the whole process from a more holistic point of view, right? Because we're not just making a little little feature. We're not just adding something to the game. We're looking at a at a at a sort of a service to the players, something that they can enjoy over a very long time. And you need to have that in in the back of your head. It's not just this feature that you're building. there's someone out there who on a on a on a a Saturday morning heats up a cup of coffee, sits down and plays your game for let's say let's say um seven rounds of hidden object gameplay and they have a certain rhythm of what they do and and how they structure their their their jour their own journey and you need to have context of that. So you need to really take a big step back and from through that lens look at it and that's that's sort of my my shift.
Love that. So Hoga, you've spent years, we talked a little bit about sort of your breath in this industry. You spent years as a technical UI UX designer working in Unity. So how much does that

understanding, we talked a little bit about holistic views as well, but how much does that understanding what's actually buildable shape the interfaces you design and where do you actually draw the line between what's an engineer and what's a designer?
So from my background, I've always been an allrounder, right? Um, and it was much to my benefit that I knew a little bit about sort of every aspect there. When we I'm going to give you a short answer here on that one just to to to open up the floor. If if the code that you write goes into the game and if you're able to do code review and make sure that that you build something stable, that's where you're an engineer. That's where I would draw the line. It is perfectly fine for for everyone else to you know write your own tools, write your own scripts. Every engineer is of course also to some degree a UX designer because you design a user experience by things load fast or in the background or you know the these the technical aspect

to that which maybe where the technical UIUX part of me of my of the technical UIUX heart still beats. Um, yeah. Does your code go into the game and do you do code review? That's where I would draw the line.
That's really interesting. So, you wugger recently ran its first sort of cross media collaboration which is so exciting. You brought Universal's Wicked which is huge into June's Journey and has done Agatha and you've also done Agatha Christie tie-ins too. So from a UX standpoint, Hoga, how do you fold a completely external IP into an established games flow without, you know, confusing your regulars who might, as we know, might be a little bit sensitive about games? They have a, you know, they have a personal preference for the way things are or even breaking the world you've built. How do you avoid those things? How do you work around them?
I was asking myself the same questions. Um, when the opportunity came up to to have this collaboration, which uh which was huge, um, my first guts instinct was we need to talk to our players, right? And you need to be smart about that. You

don't just like walk up and say like, "Hey everyone, how about we, you know, bring Wicked into the Jun's Journey Universe." You you you carefully um check what type of what type of um areas of pop culture are they interested in? What do they connect with with June's Journey itself? What types of values do they have when it comes to June's Journey? And um it would not be a surprise that that when we talk about Jun's journey in the adventures of June in in the cosmos of Jun's journey that players associate that with um with um liberation with friendship with with family values there's a lot of with travel with going to exciting places there are certain sets of values that they connect with it and then when you look at the IP connection you you start to draw the line be like this from a from a value point of view there's a connection here and then you start having these conversations with players And what what we saw is that they actually welcomed these ideas. So bringing up um Agatha Christie or talking about um the characters from Wicked um players expressed excitement

and wanted to see that and were curious what will happen when these meet but had one strict demand. They can never overshadow June. June needs to be the centerpiece and the star of the story when you sit there. Yeah. Yeah. when you sit there and it's not what I ask them like I I try to my questions that I ask in in focus groups and questions I really try to have them good peer reviewed so I'm not biasing players to answer the things that I want to hear but they came up with it themselves so we're like well okay as long as it's a like on on eye level and a good collaboration and they don't overshadow June and we're not trying to shift this into now it's completely and only about Agatha Christie characters um then they would be excited about that and what we then did is Because June has this long arc of a story. You could sit down now and you could start playing June's journey for 4 years in a row. That's how much content there is. And every week there's more content coming. There's a very very long, very interesting and diverse story. And you can't just suddenly be like, "And now it's Wicked and now it's it's Agatha Christie." So

we have the benefit of um subfeatures. There's um there's several things that you can do besides enjoying the main story. There's this whole decoration aspect where you decorate your island and that's where you can start to bring in like here's a specific set that is dedicated to Wicked. Here's a specific type of event that touches on stories where where you experience um a conversation between June and the wicked characters. You try to carefully position your your brand and the theming so that the game feels like this is wicked. This is Agatha Christie while at the same time keeping the main story arc untouched. And that is a that is a system that worked extremely well with our players. And um
we're excited to see what what happens next for for IP collaboration.
It must feel good though to know like your players are like yeah we like that stuff but we prefer or not even prefer but we want you guys to stay true to June's journey. Like that's got to feel good like you guys did that you know. I

it's it's what I had the I had the benefit of um like not just having players interviews but we had um we had some events where we invited players to to celebrate June's birthday for instance and we had conversations with them and they would show up um in a June costume. They would have like June hats. Um
so cute. Love that.
It's it's so cute. We have um we have Facebook groups where where players meet and where they discuss and and they wonder what happens next and they they they make cakes in the theme of of June and they write us like love letters about how how they found together as friends based on this game. So
yeah, it really, you know, like these are the moments where you where you realize I'm not just making a game. I'm building something for a human somewhere on the other side of of of the world. something that for for me is my is my passion to make this game and there is someone who really really loves the product. And when you get that feedback, right, when you see these people and and

when you when you listen to their to their requests and their stories, you you really you you have a different perspective on the software and and the game that you're making. And luckily I can then take all of this and bring this into the room and bring this to to the team so that you have the human in your in your in your your in the core of your decision-m as much as you can.
It's so interesting. You probably feel a real sense of sort of responsibility when it comes to that. Um so Holga, June's Journey is the world's leading hidden object game. What are the UX problems that are unique to the hidden object genre that players never notice when the design works, but you're kind of like, you know, you've been in this industry and this role for a while now and you can you can see what they are. What are they?
So this there's one specific thing and yes, it's a hidden object gameplay. So, similar like the like the scenery behind me, the game asks to find something there. And you don't don't just do this once. You do this like in multiple

sessions because the game gets a little bit harder. In the beginning, you only have a handful of items to find. And we're adding a few more and a few more. And something interesting happens because you remember the position um and connecting to the name. So, we ask for let's say for for the cushion over here and you were like, well, I I mapped to this. And the next round when the cussion is still there and the name is still a cussion then of course mapping. So the one design flaw that you could fall into the one UX thing that you should not break is this mapping. And how would that look like? I would call this a cushion now and next time the cushion is somewhere else. So you break that mapping connection. You would say like well I wait a second it's not there anymore. Or I change the name like I first I call something a teddy bear then I move it somewhere else and call it a plushy. So that's the moment when you have to go through something that you already learned. The position of something, the naming of something, it's broken. And you have to now guess, is this a bug? Um um am I not understanding how the game works? these things. If you

start playing around with these elements, I guess there are people who manage to pull this off, but in specifically our target audience where you have this mapping connection and where all the joy, all of the the skill, you know, the the difficulty increases because more items show up, your skill increases because you know certain items, when you when you break that, then you have like a new X floor that is that is umable, you're going to get some feedback very very fast from the players And as long as it works, right, you you enjoy the game and you look like, "Yeah, that's easy. I'm I'm searching for some items based on the name and on the position where they are." Mapping. Don't break mapping.
Or I love how you do
or if you do someone out there if you do break mapping. Um I want to talk to you how you made that work.
Oh, I love that. Yeah. Get some insider tips from Hulga. You heard it here first. So a huge share of your players to June's Journey return daily. game and you guys have really cracked the code

when it comes to mobile games. I mean, a lot of people are vying for that for years, too. We're not just talking about weeks or month months. How do you keep an interface fresh and rewarding for a veteran who's seen every screen a thousand times? Because you've talked about that sort of community who's so loyal to you guys. How do you keep it fresh for those guys?
The question is fresh, right? What once you have established some sort of of communication, once there is some sort of um let's say layout that you follow, there's some structures, there's some pacing, how your events present themselves, how your content presents themselves, how announcements are being made, that is something that you then try to follow. Um freshness in that sense is not necessarily something that you would strive for. Um
I would personally um if the if the game demands it, if you have to do some changes and sometimes

you just must because the game ages, right, as as well as as the players who are are part of that um it's a it's tricky. Um I guess players who are coming back to the game um over years um who have made um made this part of their of their uh you know routine maybe um maybe would describe playing journey as a hobby. Um, if you if you ask them what's important, I think it is the reliability that you that you can rely on, you you know how this works. Um, you find your you you find your way around and you're going to be good. I bet I bet or I bet you have experienced the same thing the last time you had a a Windows update or something where everything changes and and you're like, "Ah, no. Everything is it might look so fresh. It might be so smart. It might be full of AI now, but there's an initial moment where it's like, ah, now

I have to relearn it.
The first thing I'm googling is like, is there a way to go back to the previous [laughter] to the way it previously looked? Unless unless it's an update that actually helps and looks very good and is interface sort of UX friendly and that kind of thing. Um,
so yeah, I can imagine. Is that a struggle for you guys? Would you say that's a struggle for you guys to do that? Or do you find that your players are kind of they're loyal and they kind of give you guys that space to be creative where you want to be? Um what are your thoughts on that?
It I would be lying if it if I would say that it's not a struggle. Um it is um why is it a struggle? Is it because of my aesthetic um passion for something? No, it's not. It's
um I want to I want to keep friction and I want to keep confusion as low as possible. Um we're talking about a game here. I'm talking about something that should be a joyful moment. You open up the game, you sit down, you immerse with it, and and you, you know, you play, and whatever I can move out of out of your

way to get access to this type of of of join type of that game, I want to remove that. I would even go so far to say that I would be perfectly fine removing UI if we don't really need it. There are certain stars in the game like the hidden object gameplay, the
scene behind me, the the decoration elements um where where you decorate the island and express yourself, the story that you that you enjoy while June does her adventures. And then there's the whole UI. And the job of that UI is basically to allow you to engage easily. And if that is if that is checked, then then I'm fine with it. And when we have to change that, it should, as you said, right, once we change it, it should really bring a clear benefit. And we have to be extremely careful with that as well because how do you know that you're doing the right thing? Yes, on paper you can measure the the pixel occlusion. You could you could sit down and say, well, we have a flow optimized now. It's less clicks to reach this and this and this and that thing, but players have sometimes even internalized

how things work. There are widgets written by our by our fans to describe how to how to do something in a specific smart order. We have uh social groups and clubs where where people have uh built schedules around how they want to play in effective way. If you if you do these changes, you need to keep them in mind and you need to then monitor the effects. And just like a change to to a to your to your operative system, there is a good chance that in the beginning a lot of people will cry out to somehow roll back and then you need to make a choice. Do I now listen to that or do I believe that we're going to come out well on the other side. So it's not an easy thing to just say, hey, I have a cool new idea. Let's let's be creative on the
Yeah, I was going to say people love what they people love what they know as well. So that's obviously a struggle for you guys is like trying to show them like yes we know that you love that but this will be better. This update will be better for you. It's it must feel like

kind of a difficult thing to path to kind of go down.
I guess it's for everyone. Everyone who who works in in software and has UIUX department will struggle with redesigning what already works. And in the past on a different game, uh I think it was I think it was Pearl's Pearl, we needed to do this type of of redesign because uh it went from from Flash back in the days games were on Flash went from Flash into um into mobile. And for that redesign there were some changes made and we were really really worried um back then that this is going to trigger a new onboarding phase and then we have to have multiple tutorials pointing at like oh yeah the thing is now here and that thing is now here and and really carefully guide you through this new experience. And while we did parts of that and we had like this oh no we should roll this back it actually turned out well on the other side. So if you ever face

an issue for for yourself and for the players that gets so big that you have to go through a redesign, that's a big big plan. You just don't pull this off like easily and
you need to keep so many different people and so many different ways of playing the game in mind that uh makes it very interesting challenge.
Mhm. Definitely. Now Hog Wugger's audience, let's talk a little bit about your audience. So, you guys skew towards players who aren't stereotypical gamers, including a big female and older demographic. Now, how does that shape your sort of accessibility and clarity decisions? And what does the wider industry still get wrong about designing for these players? I mean, we still kind of I don't know if we're moving past this notion now that gamers are just young boys living in their parents' basement, but what what are your views? What are your views on that? Yeah, like just a few years ago, that was the sort of mainstream view. I think that's changing now. we can say with how sort of mainstream games have become but you guys particularly have a very specific type of audience. So what are your

thoughts on that?
Uh yeah so the gamer right? Um
I I think we have of course we have this picture in mind of what a gamer needs to do and needs to be and you need to stream and then you have to have like the glowing keyboard and everything. That's I think that's that's fairly outdated. We have and it's true. We have we have a target audience that easily um can be located in their in their in their 60s7s right so we're talking about senior players that um that enjoy our game and I happen to have several um focus groups with with some of them we had some of them here and we we talked to them and we you know like we want to be in contact with them because it's it's very very it's very it's very very difficult to design something for someone if you don't if if you don't know them, if you don't know the background, if you don't know what who this person is. So, we spent a lot of time to figure that out. And um oh boy, I was so surprised. Um one of um one of

the one of our players showed up bringing a tablet and a phone and uh and a list of things that that they spotted in game, things that they had questions about, and they were
Yes. well prepared.
You probably love that. You probably love that because it helps. I mean, what better not only
this this this player knew the game and the economy better than I do.
She would she would basically walk me through like, okay, so look, here's certain things that when I do them, I'm being rewarded with this and then I do that and then I do that and why don't I get this one? And I was like, wow, wow, what a deep dive. And then I play on my phone when I'm when I'm waiting for the bus, but when I want to have a chill coffee with my friends, of course, I do this on the tablet. and I had my my my husband set up the cell because of my glasses and and and you and then suddenly you get into this accessibility moment, right? And that's the the second part of the question. Um the game itself maybe because it has no

it has no time pressure. You just see a beautiful scene and you complete and and find the elements. If you do this fast, you're being rewarded with extra points, but you can take your time in theory. So, it has a very soothing and relaxing moment. Um, there's no there's no enemies you have to shoot or anything like that. And and I think what you then have to have to consider is having text readable, having the contrast right, having the screen not overloaded with elements and and just try to be as as reduced as possible would be the first step. And if that would be your idea, I would I would say yes. Sounds sounds so reasonable. Oh, how surprised you would be because sometimes there are situations where you can't just make a very very easy screen. Some things need certain information exposed. Some things need certain interaction elements like a friends chat

or a sharing uh sharing some rewards with each other or doing something together as a group. And then you sit there and you design a screen and and you ship it. you say, "Well, I I might not feel as accessible and it works still." Um, and so what I think what the industry gets wrong, and with working still, I don't mean like it works still and like, "Oo, thank God." Like, it works. They can engage with it. They can interact with it. And it's not necessarily about the text size anymore. Um, it's because we we as an industry, and this is now just me guessing, so so don't don't hold my my feet to the fire. When we're talking about making games for for senior players, we tend to think that they don't they don't have the speed or the capacity to follow complex structures or that they need information fed step by step. and you have to really

be slow. And I'm not questioning that this is this exists and that this accessibility feature is is is a good idea to offer. But the majority of our players that would I that I would identify as senior players, they outsmart me on on several occasions. And maybe by by just assuming because you're a senior, you can't, you know, you can't follow complex tasks. They not only follow complex tasks, they sometimes have these these tasks mapped out for me, present them, and then ask me questions about that. So, we're doing them. We're underestimating um what what type of of of players we're we're catering to. And that all leads back to you need to talk to to your target audience, right? just assuming because they're 60 70 or something. That's why I should fall back on huge text and everything slow and bulgy and cartoony. You don't have to, but you go and talk to them and you see what works for them.

Not because I want it to be this way.
Yeah. I was going to say I love how much in this conversation you've mentioned twice about control groups. I don't know if that's the norm with this industry, but you guys really really know your audience and your players because, you know, talking to you, Hog, I don't know anyone off the top of my head that has these sort of like control groups talking to their players. I mean, that is something really really if anyone's to extract anything from this conversation, it's talk to your players. I mean, you guys have it sounds like
it's you have to I mean, you can you can try to build a game in isolation, right? Absolutely possible. Um, you you can you can ask AI what's the hottest trend right now and you can do all of these things and you can you can exclude this part of of um talking to a human and you can you can sort of maybe find good arguments why your why your target audience is not right. You might read through Reddit posts and then just completely dismiss all of that and say

ah it's just a minority. You can run surveys and then try to interpret them the way that you want. You can always do something to get your own own um perspective through. But what I learned over time, not only do we have the benefit of having a very specific target audience and as a market lead, of course, there's a lot of lot of players that I can reach out towards, but there's a reason why this game is so successful. And not just because it's a great game and and it's and it does a very good job, but from the very very beginning and even before June's Journey was was launched, being very very close to the player, listening to them, running prototypes with them, having focus groups, having surveys, and just trying to get them as close as possible into the room where the decisions are made. Um, that's crucial. And if you're a UX designer out there and you're listening, you absolutely understand and know this that yes, you can make a lot of assumptions, but it has something very very pleasing

when you think you got everything figured out and you and you build a cool prototype and you think, "Yep, I got the pacing, I got the text, I got everything." You hand it out to some testers. Maybe you have the benefit of having some sort of um um eye capturing software. So afterwards you see where they looked at where they tapped at how long it took them to fail at a specific task or something and they completely don't get it and they and they don't read the text and they don't see the thing that that that blinks and that they should be interacting with. And you're looking at what you built and you think I would have not expected that what I built in my isolation box in my in my echo chamber actually fails the moment it meets it meets real people. And that's where you need a UX designer
and a team that is dedicated to set some time aside to actually go through this loop.
And and I know
it's it's it's so much of my of my bread and butter and I'm I'm burning for this topic. It's uh
such a good piece of advice.
Yeah. Talk to your players.
Build a better product. Absolutely. Please. Yes. Do that.
So Hog, we couldn't have this

conversation without talking about AI. Now
AI tooling. Yeah. Let's get into the juicy stuff. AI tooling is reshaping design workflows fast. We know that. As someone leading a UX team, where are you genuinely finding it useful and where do you think it's overhyped or even, you know, this is a conversation that's been sort of rumbling. We've heard rumblings of even a threat to craft.
Yeah. Um, okay. Let's try to divide this into into two segments where where large language models AI agents and so on where they can or where for my day-to-day business where they where they really work as an as an advantage and where where I would be careful using them. And the whole advantage aspect for me um plays a little bit into be fast showing things to players. as soon as you have something, show it. Because with the with the AI tooling that we have um at our disposal, you can for instance um

have a much smaller team building prototypes, building variations of this prototype, coming up with different different um configurations that you want to test and hand that out faster so you get results faster. We can have um people in our UIUX department who need a specific tool to let's say batch rename um elements in within within the engine or um change animation keys without breaking the references and whatnot. Once once these these designers are capable of writing their own tools, of understanding how to prompt this properly and and and use AI as as a tool to overcome. Now I have to go to the dev or I have to sit there all day long and rewire everything carefully. Fantastic. I want to have a prototype real quick. I can get a prototype out probably 70% faster now because it doesn't have to

look good. It just has to, you know, click through. Maybe I don't even have to show it to a player. Maybe I just have to show it to my colleague who's like, "Look, this is what I have in mind." And and if you if it's interactable, it's always better than when it's just on a on a whiteboard or when it's just printed out and you look at it like that, right? So for these things, it's incredibly powerful. And as long as the code does not go into the game, of course, right? You do this in your own in your own in your own little little box. It serves the purpose of I got I got feedback faster. I got feedback from the players faster, from my team faster, and I could express what I have in mind because games are complex. I could write like down a a page of game design document trying to describe what I mean, and I'm not native English, so we are like language barrier issues here, right? Or I just build it real quick and for this building real quick, I would have taken so much more time in the past. But that's where that's where I becomes very very powerful. Um, now of course it brings the downside of AI

AI does not it's not magic yet. So maybe when you get into the feeling like everything is faster now I can get results faster. You might stumble over the moment and that's where I would absolutely draw the line and where it's actually dangerous to the craft of a UX and UI designer that you hand off these things. For instance, I could say, "Why would I want to interview a player? Why would I want to get a player here and then, you know, it takes an hour to talk and then another hour to to go through what what they were telling me and then make tickets out of that or lead another discussion. if I could just um create myself an artificial player based on the information that I have about a target audience and about the play style and I can use all of the data that that I could could scratch together and just mimic a player for that and then ask this AI like what do you think about this and that idea and I think that's where it's becoming dangerous for for

UIUX where you where you somehow stop thinking about the player again and you need to you need to be like whoa what am I what you're still building this thing for a person maybe one day when you build a game just for an AI agent to then work with it then you want to talk to an AI agent how to build something for an AI agent but until then when you when you risk to bypass the player the customer the the one person that you try to make happy with the thing that you do that's where that's where it's really risky
and then we open up to all the other horrors of of AI with like well then at that case why do I even care anymore so that's that's where another line is being drawn.
Yeah I was going to say especially for you guys where you're doing all these fantastic focus groups to use it as sort of like a a pseudo player or whatever it might be. It doesn't it doesn't sound like the right path for for you guys right now. It sounds like you're kind of on the right one and that would be that wouldn't be great.
It's probably not a good path for

anyone. Um
at least at this moment of course you know it's developing so fast and at this very moment and and and looking at what is available to us.
We're still you can quote me on that. We're still building something for people
and you can't [clears throat] build something for people without people in the room. Like I
I built something for you. So, I want you to to to try what I built, to fail with the thing, me learning from it, and then improve it. And then we go through this wonderful loop where I where I build something for you, where I try to observe your obstacles. I try to figure out where you had fun. I try to figure out what it is that that you want to experience and then I build it for you. This is it's a service that I'm doing. And and we can't and you shouldn't. I believe you shouldn't bypass that.
You just gave me the title for our interview here, Hogga. So, thank you. There's a title in there somewhere.
You should never bypass this. [laughter]

Um, okay. So, last question for you here, Hogga. If you could, and this is a bit of a pastel one, but you've obviously been here for a while. You've been doing this for a little bit. If you could hand your 2015 self one piece of advice about building a career and a design practice in mobile games, what would it be? What advice would you give to yourself? I think I'm trying to to think back and what type of what type of mindset I was back then because the world is open to you do whatever you want. Um, always always stay a game developer by heart, right? You can,
especially in times now where AI is there, you can you can do much more on your own, you know, still participate in game jams. Um, try to go to conference and talk to others, stay stay informed what's happening in the in the industry. It's I think the advice would be and I stick to it. So, it's sort of an an advice that I gave myself and I stuck to

it and now here I am. Um, stay a stay a game developer, stay a stay a player, um, stay a gamer, stay stick around, right? This is being being in this being in the gaming industry is such a wonderful privilege. um we're building good stuff, right? We're especially in in times like these where the world is again in turmoil. It's uh it's a good thing to to think about entertainment and it's a good thing to think about um talking to people, right? Bringing people together. to to a degree. Um, hold on to that and then and never let that go. Even if your games fail and even if people write mean and nasty comments because you just, you know, your your latest thing is just not a great success. Or if your if your dad doesn't understand what the hell you're actually doing there, and you say, "Oh, damn it. I'm trying to make a puzzle game for you." Um, yeah. And maybe maybe buy and keep 10 bitcoins. um holographs the past and making

honestly. Don't we wish we could all go back in time just for Bitcoin? That's Yeah. [laughter]
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah, exactly. Thank you. So,
thank you so much. It's been uh it's been such a pleasure and I mentioned in this conversation before, but we're so looking forward to welcoming you to PGC Nordics. You have so much to share and you've just dropped some real gems to the industry within this talk. So yeah, keep tuned for that everyone. That's next month.
Thank you very much. I'm looking forward. I'm going to be on on on the stage and give basically the same advice again to you. Please, please.
It's still people that we're working for and and um never ever forget that and keep that that close, right? So important.
Love that. Thank you so much, Hogga. Thank you for your time. Looking forward to see you in Helsinki.