MY.GAMES’ Anton Gorodetsky On Brokering Mutually Beneficial Business Relationships

[Music] thank you hello world welcome back to the pg.biz podcast with me Brian baglo and the ever awesome Piggy and salts piggy hello how are you I am fine now that you've called me awesome how can I be anything other than that I thought it would be great since everyone's talking about building an ecosystem in gaming why don't we actually talk to someone who does that who Architects that so we're checking in with a company that is crushing it on several levels because of its ecosystem the company is my games it's a leading European publisher and developer headquartered in Amsterdam with over 1 billion registered users worldwide so it's a giant but not only is it winning because of the games it's winning because of a team effort and we're going to take a look at how to make and broker

the relationships that matter the most and our guest will hit this is what he does this is his daily job because he's head of Industry relations his name Anton gordetsky he's a great connector working at the intersection of PR Biz Dev events Communications you name it sounds like a great job so we're already a little bit envious and welcoming you Anton too pg.biz thank you guys thank you so much uh hi Peggy hi Brian huge pleasure and honor to to be here with you today you know it's doing the day job can often be fun if you work in the games industry but getting out and talking about your day job um sometimes I think it can be even more fun because it can reinvigorate you and inspire you and go oh yeah my job is kind of cool welcome on board and you are in a great place because my games has been um really active recently uh you know I know the organization just recently joined the Dutch game developers Association and I know that you've been a long time first in the accelerator

program uh game drive with Google and and other organizations out there so you you really seem to be kind of reaching out you know beyond the confines of the company so so what's the drive what's the what's the goal here yeah my games is uh as you have said crushing it and we're really very active uh we've been very active recently and have a huge plans uh for the upcoming future uh like they say more to come and as for their associations and the game Drive program we very much appreciate the think Global act local approach so um we want to stay you know at the Forefront of of the global gaming industry we very much follow the Dynamics uh we very much follow the player Behavior around the whole world and um we for example are in the process or have already opened uh several hubs since my games is uh fully remote so we

can you can really work from anywhere you feel like doing that and we as you have said we had quoted in Amsterdam the Netherlands we also have a big office in Cyprus we have recently opened an office in Yerevan uh which is in Armenia and we are opening up offices in Abu Dhabi in the Emirates in belgrad Serbia uh and also opening an office in Georgia so the country so yeah we have a hub in Turkey so we have very much trying to be Global but we do care about um the particular regions like the Mina region Europe um and uh we have joined not only uh the Dutch gaming Association we have also just joined Yuki you definitely something about it so yeah we are also uh very fresh members of the tech Island

Association which is an I.T thing in nit Alliance in Cyprus and uh it's kind of a spoiler I'm not sure I can like talk about that but uh we're also opening an office in since we're opening an office in Belgrade uh we very much want to join the SGA which is Serbian gaming Association so yeah and um as for game Drive uh it used to be an accelerator and we did start it with Google uh back in 2020 and since then we have uh a little bit refocused at so it's not it's now more uh communications platform not exactly an accelerator and what we do is we try to help developers we're trying to help the ecosystem and we want to connect uh and share expertise from my games people and from other entities like Google Amazon data

AI um Unity for example with uh mobile developers in the sense of game drive because uh it's very hard to make a proper mobile game and you know the more we can help with that the better for the whole industry what's interesting about what you're saying is you're building an ecosystem but of course it works best when you totally understand what the game devs with the marketers what the people want and this brings me to some research I was reading you mentioned Mina and mean is an area I'm really focused on because it's such an exciting region as well and they did research because they wanted to understand are we building what is needed and so they ask the game developers and it turned out that the thing they wanted most were things like Communications marketing some development but not as much so that was an interesting outcome there what are you finding that your game devs that

the that the audience that the developers the people really need and how are you making that match I would say communication is the key I'm not saying that people lack communication skills what I'm saying is uh whatever uh you you make a game you build a gaming studio or a gaming company uh and it's uh applicable uh to big companies like my games and to small Studios of three to five people uh you have to have a proper communication you have to make sure that people understand each other on a very like on the most basic level because I deal with that a lot uh externally internally this happens all the time sometimes people just do not understand each other and they're saying the very same thing and uh it means completely different stuff for them so um if I would try to

pinpoint one thing that everybody not everybody but you know sometimes game devs lack is communication be it uh communication between the startup and the Venture fund or you know a publisher and a developer or the player and the gaming studio we just have we have to constantly work on better communication you have found your tribe Anton you have found your tribes right and we we run into this issue time and time again yeah you can have made the best game in the world but if people don't know it's there then it doesn't matter because nobody's going to come and play it the ecosystem is vast and we know that Communications is a core skill but what about what the developer needs to do in order to sort of unleash that they're not going to do it always on their own some of them might have great personalities and and soft skills is exactly where they Excel but if they

don't they need to know how to bridge the gap that they can't themselves so they're working with different people working with different people in the ecosystem maybe even yourself the most important thing to do for a game developer is to know Their audience right we have already established that and uh for example with my games and I'm pretty sure in every other you know big gaming company and not even a big gaming company uh they have special people for that and um sometimes they're called Publishers sometimes they're called brand managers you may call uh these profession whatever you like but these are a particular kind of uh uh colleagues at least at my games who know exactly the right um influencer the right media Outlet the right Communicator to help game developers level designers game designers producers address that

audience so you cannot underestimate the importance of of a brand manager of a publisher of a person who is specializing in being a communicator you know a middle uh manager a middle uh middleman in the situation between the audience and the influencer and you know the media outlets and uh the developer hey so Anton your point about influencers I think is very well made and and it kind of brings us back to the success that you're experiencing at my games you know Rush Royale is the number one game in third defense you know which is one of my own particular favorites out there um and according to data AI you've now surpassed over 63 million in stalls with uh just north of 230 million dollars in Revenue um and this is where your recent collaboration with Jake Paul the boxer and an influencer comes in so was this was this all planned or was this kind of

like you thinking on your feet can you can you tell us a little bit more sure sure absolutely and I mean thank you so much for being a loyal player because uh I love it myself we have several people um uh from the UA and from the from the marketing team uh playing these on Amazing level like uh I'm a casual mobile player uh I'm more of a you know console uh guy myself uh but these guys they're playing Rush Royal like crazy uh and yeah uh there was a there was this idea that we should do something with a huge influencer or an actor or an actress and we had a full roaster of those guys and uh we even were thinking about um Henry Cavill or Ryan Reynolds those guys were in The Roaster as well yeah I mean uh again I'm

not sure whether this is in the air or not but you know we're gonna learn about this later anyway uh and the funny thing is for example like cavil doesn't do anything with mobile at all and you know he's going to be in the Warhammer thing sometime in the future so he's a very he's a very PC focused guy we had different pros and cons and uh we reached out to Google um to help us you know learn the audience of Rush Royale and help us out with those influencers with those opinion leaders that can provide the biggest result and so Jake Paul was one of them and after you know some careful consideration we had some shot lists of people and eventually it came down to Jake Paul and uh as we are now seeing by the results of the campaign the decision was right we gave the numbers up front

but can you tell us a little bit more about the campaign itself and in terms of How It's been implemented and what you're doing and and you know potentially how your uh reacting to to the to the audience you've got this one event actually that's that's still going on as we speak it's actually finished now uh it it finished at the end of June oh okay yeah yeah but you know that's okay and so Jake Paul is of course more popular uh in the US than in any other region and uh we saw in the beginning of the event uh we saw a more than uh 20 increase in Dau of the game in the U.S region and uh back in June uh Rush Royal achieved uh new records and we had 1.14 million uh daus and more than 6 million Maus in the game so this is the direct influence of the

collaboration so obviously you know you've got The influencer Campaign running have you had any plans about perhaps integrating and using them you know more um more interactively within the game itself you know some sort of brand takeover or is it still just you know you're focusing on the marketing approach um if I got it right uh we actually did some integration I mean Jake Paul had uh his own hero he voiced over that hero so it wasn't just you know um like saying play Rush Royal and that's it right so uh we had some gaming interactions we had a special tournament dedicated to that so we try to uh and several video uh ads of course dedicated to that you can find them on on YouTube on Tick Tock so yeah we try to integrate him as much as possible into the game without breaking the ux the player ux that's understood and it comes back to

that focus on the player and you know treating them with respect that we talked to talks about yeah yeah absolutely you gotta you gotta listen to you gotta listen to the play I mean it's all um cool and fancy and hypey you know I mean my games and Rush Royal and Jake Paul are doing something together but again if the players don't like it and this somehow breaks the experience for them there's no worth in that right it's always tough you have to find the right balance between what the players want and you know what you want as a business I'm curious on the back of that when I think about what my games brings to the table you know we're talking about communication and your skills and and building that ecosystem which you are doing through all of these different projects but can you unpack a little bit more of what you actually do and what you maybe gauge or consider when you're when you're trying to make

that match yeah you gotta take into accounts uh I would say three factors which are most important the first one is of course the you know the regions that your game um makes more money in right so for example I know I have lots of special decks unless I have all these uh presentations which are updated monthly on a monthly basis with a PC and console pipeline games of my of of my games PCM console portfolio uh mobile portfolio mobile pipeline uh the Venture uh we have an investment Division and they uh they have their own like Studios who they work with and those Studios have uh mobile games in their pipeline so we have to keep track of keep track of that as well and so I have these uh whole bunch of presentations we have like top three top five regions with we constantly check that with the

analytics team and I always know uh in what particular region this particular game makes uh the most money right and then you got to know the audience you gotta know uh I mean that's obvious truth right uh but still you gotta know exactly who plays your game what is the um what is the portrait of a person who plays your game right and uh I'm not gonna say like not average Studio knows that they do but that's because we have a very strong analytics team and you gotta know which influencer or which YouTuber or which uh you know streamer or media Outlet or whatever channel of communication you have you know like Tick Tock for example um how much it is associated with the with a particular region and with a particular person and when you hit the right spot you have

the results when you don't hit the right spot yeah well this happens I mean we've had some um I would not call those flops but we have some miscalculations we have some missteps uh in the long history of the company and that's okay because once again there's no Silver Bullet for that you've kind of hit the nail in the head there Anton it's there's no one-size-fits-all anymore you know you don't just have a marketing plan that you can apply to multiple games not even multiple games within the same genre within the same region everyone has to be sort of very carefully tailored and kind of directed so you know it's it's a tough it's a tough tough job absolutely absolutely I mean we have um I've mentioned that um we try to provide uh as much of support to the studios to the game developers as we can and we have the whole ecosystem the whole internal ecosystem of services we have things like uh we have a proprietary marketing

analytics and uh you know return on investment prediction platform uh and we have a whole team dedicated to just that to making sure that other teams are the studios who are actually making games they have all the right tools uh they need to understand the audience I'm not just you know talking about uh game engines right or data AI or Sansa Tower analytics I'm talking about for example uh we have gamestat which is a product out of uh platform it visualizes data it has very structured very clear representation for you know decision making and we also have uh so every Studio has its own marketing team right and also my games as a central marketing team and these people are always communicating with each other and uh the central team the central PR team

the central marketing team are in the constant process of communication with the pr and marketing teams of each Studio which means that using these tools and these systems and these platforms we can uh constantly monitor we have this um comprehensive marketing approach uh we try to attract attention we try to get players engaged uh and build loyalty and you might you know this better than I do that this day and age brand marketing and brand performance is uh of Paramount importance and brand marketing and brand performance is what uh is now uh getting into like on the Forefront of uh making games of the gaming industry because the UA costs are crazy right and uh the marketing is getting more costly more expensive and you got to make sure that not only you can

go out and buy a new player right through advertising through marketing through user acquisition you also can uh retain those players you can make sure that they're loyal to the brand and this is uh why we're doing all these collaborations this is why uh I keep talking about communication and making sure you know your player you know the niche you know the subgenre you know the audience on mobile everything used to be around about user acquisition uh how good how excellent you are in uh well buying players and acquiring players and now it's a little bit different you got to think about loyalty you got to think about branding you got to think about uh retaining players on a more I'd say subconscious level you know so yeah we have like the whole system

dedicated to that several platforms again uh and yeah constantly checking what's happening on the market and with your particular products and what um what subgenres are on the rise now you work across so many different genres and so deeply in each of them what are maybe some consistencies that you're seeing around Community Building fan building fan oriented content that you can share you know some of the consistencies around building a great game brand the funny thing is um um you know uh this famous uh phrase about football is that uh uh playing football is easy uh but playing easy is very tough right something like that and uh I would say the same applies to making games everybody knows on paper how to make a good game really

it's not rocket science uh your game has to be engaging uh uh have some cool mechanics um have some great narrative right even I mean have some great NATA have some great core Steel in 2023 some people think about narrative designers and narrative as a whole being not particularly uh required for games especially mobile yeah I mean I still have I still see opinions like that and then sound design and art right sometimes sometimes people some people say you don't really have to have music in mobile games because people play with their sound off and this is obviously this is crazy because uh we have whole people whole teams of people dedicated to making awesome sounds awesome music and it becomes the part of the brand and one

more thing that we really care about uh in our games at my games is that we would rather um find out and make sure and you get you may count this into the consistencies of the game of of you know the game portfolio that we have is that we want to make sure that we find try and find new audiences for the games we already have rather than trying to make sure that you come up with a completely different game with a completely new game right and trying to soft launch it properly and look for new audiences I'm not saying we're not doing that but one of the things that I love about the company and the games that we do is that we are very much focused on making sure that we find new audiences for the great

games we already have and uh one of the things that you know Advocates this is uh the recent news that war robots and other huge game from my games the game has recently celebrated nine years which is incredibly good uh time period for a mobile game and uh the guys have done more than 750 million dollars in the lifetime Revenue and like 250 of those uh have been grossed in the last two years so the game which is nine years old keeps getting money keeps getting players uh and we are we have recently and not long ago we have announced an extension of this IP onto PC and console which is war robots Frontiers and we're gonna have uh like an open beta test in September or October or something like that do not quote me on that but uh what we want to do is that we have

great IP we have great game and we want to make sure that as much people as possible play that on every platform available um and with you know as much content as possible I would count that as a consistency of you know my game's portfolio one of the consistencies of my game's portfolio I could keep going on about the the sort of the core and the mechanics and that cross-platform approach you're not just uh concerning yourself with with the blueprint for growth at at my games because I believe you're also the co-founder of something called invest game which looks at a gaming Market intelligence so can you tell us a little bit more about that because that sounds incredibly useful yeah I'm co-founder of the best game and uh Sergey uh is another co-founder and heena works for arim which is a an investment bank and the sell side advisor

and the two gaming companies and what we do is we like basically we keep track of all the global gaming deals on the market there are other platforms which track VC and you know Venture deals on the market of course like Capital IQ and Page book and they have reports and everything but I would say to my best knowledge invest game is uh the only platform which is 100 dedicated to gaming what we do is we do weekly digests uh keeping track of all the deals and basically keeping uh track of notable transactions and doing some featuring like uh talking a little bit more diving a little bit deeper into uh particular deals and then quarterly reports and the half of the Year report is on its way uh it's hopefully going to be out in the beginning of August so we once again gonna talk about what happened uh in the first half of 2023 in terms of VC and M A and

public offerings and pretty much nothing happened in the public offering section in 2023. you just called it dead I mean that didn't yeah yeah kind of definite and dismal actually I have uh I have the q1 reports in front of my eyes and uh there was like um there were like nine deals in the whole first quarter with a total value with the total disclose value of half a billion dollars which is nothing compared to for example the first quarter of 2021 we tracked 37 public deals public offerings of the total value of 8.7 billion dollars so you may you you can see the difference before we let you go we have a couple of questions that we ask all of our guests um nothing scary but it does speak to every single one of our listeners so the first thing is what game are you playing right now what's kind of obsessing you what you're really spending some time on and then secondly what is your favorite

game of all time yeah I'm right now playing Star Wars uh Jedi Fallen order which is the first uh game in the series not the second one the the most favorite game of all is um it's FIFA actually because I have so many hours uh uh packed with every iteration of the of this franchise that it's scary we brought you on and when we set it to start you know Great Communicator great connector all true for me Anton it was great to connect with you and great to have you on the show today thanks so much thank you guys so much again uh huge pleasure huge honor maybe five percent helpful and useful uh for this oh I think we can bump that up to sit between seven and nine awesome this show is all about how to do your

job better how to make an amazing game how to Market it and you have a say so if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on then we would love to hear from you we want to hear from you we want to reflect the reality of the mobile games market and all its wonderful complexity and strangeness so if you have any suggestions for us if you have any feedback for us you can always get in touch you can email us at podcast pocketgamer.biz you can find us on Twitter at PG Biz and you can reach out to us through the pocketgamer.biz website if you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts you can find them at pocketgamer.biz forward slash podcast and we would love to hear your thoughts on future shows and we've got you covered on all the major platforms so subscribe to the audio podcast as Brian said look for us on YouTube if you want to read it hey you can do that too because we have a companion post for you as well on thepocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the perfectgame

adult Fizz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future until then I'm Brian baglo I'm Peggy Ann saltz and that's a wrap until next week shoes