MY.GAMES’ Elena Grigorian On Smart Strategies To Stay Afloat During This Industry Downturn

[Music] hello world it is pg. Biz podcast I am your co-host Peggy and Sals and I am so happy to welcome Brian Bago back Brian you are back in the truest sense of the word people are saying where were you all these weeks I know but why don't you tell us because it was it was epic yeah uh so I'm I'm finally back after the madness chaos and um victory that was Scottish games week so uh for anyone out there who's not been bored to tears with me banging on about it over the last several months we organized a weeklong series of events around the video games industry here in Scotland and boy let me tell you Peggy it was it was quite something so we had double the number of speakers double the delegates um a whole lot more sponsors but we've made some pretty big breakthroughs so the the support that we've had from the

government here in Scotland has been um phenomenal and it really culminated with their um agreement that they're going to help us and work with us to produce a national video game strategy and that's going to be the first part of the UK to have such a thing so it's going to be really quite exciting and looking at this from the ecosystem perspective that we have I think we can do something really quite extraordinary so it's been fantastic it's been a whole lot of fun H it promises to make 2020 for that little bit more interesting but oh my I am so glad to be back with you guys and doing something simpler and um you know a little um more fulfilling with uh the pg. podcast so it's lovely to be here it's great to have you back Brian I had no idea what you had accomplished so that is fantastic and I'm already connecting a lot of the dots with some of the people we had some great speakers out there from all across North America and Europe and connecting them up with the whole team so I'll make sure we get

the benefit of um our Keynotes and some of the really sort of amazing thinkers that we had across the whole of the week you're talking about amazing people we're back and we have an encore with my games because as you will remember we had Anton a while back looking at growth tips and strategy and now we are back again but I'm so excited because not only is she amazing but it's actually one of her first podcasts she's really popular she was in charge of marketing and brand as a CMO at my games and later as Chief strategy officer and now she takes the helm as CEO that is a huge leap it's a huge accomplishment and that's why this podcast is here to welcome you Elena welcome you and uh congratulations as well thank you very much for having me it would be a great pleasure for me to talk with you today and back at you I really looking forward to finding out more about your journey and and more about my games so obviously

a huge move but you've been there since the beginning you've been in your company since the beginning you've also been in the market since it the beginning and it's changing fast uh a lot of things are going on one thing you notice a lot more is product is key product and marketing moving closer together and that's what you've also started to do or moved to another level at my games tell me about the efforts and how they're evolving to make this work work uh yeah it's a great question thank you for for that my first role was connected with the marketing and um I hardly can say that our marketing team was once seriously separated from our development that you mentioned our problem that time was in a different area we as a large company had experienced a lot of U stages of centralization of marketing function and its decentralization I believe that it's pretty the same issue for many different

companies and there are pros and cons on in both approaches and when I joined the company nine years ago the marketing function was completely decentralized given to the studios without any Central expertise and unified knowledge and there were students with a bunch of marketers in completely different levels of skills and there are some studies without any marketing at all and it's usually this decentralization leads to the uh asymmetric development of of expertise and what I managed to do almost nine years ago was to create the grid structure combining the central marketing structure and Studio marketing teams some were responsible for the accumulation of the most skilled knowledge and exchange of the expertise While others were responsible for communication with the product and and guarantee the connection with the

production team and I believe that the balance between these two blocks and sharing their responsibilities and motivation between them where a kind of my knowhow and I'm really proud of the result we have got at the end of the day uh this team it's almost 200 High professional marketers specialist was proven instrument in maximizing the potential of our more than 80 games contributing to the remarkable almost 10 times growth of our business over the last eight years is a sense this efforts has not only transformed our team but have also played as a pivot role in positioning my games as a leader in the gaming industry and definitely this journey continues with ongoing Improvement of our strategies to the Navigate to navigate in the era involving uh gaming landscape success

I think it's fair to say that not only that the with the challenge of restructuring and centralizing you also have um faced the challenge of of moving the company um internationally um from Russia to to Amsterdam so you guys must really love a challenge uh I believe it's very important to uh synphase that even before the main part of our business were concentrated in us and Europe in terms of the revenue in terms of the focus for our production and our key territories in terms of the revenue stream was and still there is US UK France in Germany and moreover our headquarter in Amsterdam it's it was you know established many years ago not just now and uh the second biggest office in Cyprus was formed about 10 years ago if I can remember so uh definitely now there is slight changes but nevertheless even in 2020 we started to think about

work from anywhere set up during the pandemic time and at the moment more than 90% of our companies employers has been working outside of the office in countries all around the world and as I mentioned we have offices in Amsterdam and in Cyprus and it's one of the oldest one for us but this year you're right we opened additional hubs uh for our employees in Abu Dhabi for example in Serbia in Georgia in some others countries I've heard so much about Georgia recently it just seems to be where the action is it's really hopping I mean you're there as well um what are your thoughts about where mobile games companies need to be definitely a lot of uh IT specialist and gaming specialist moving to different countries Georgia one of them and it's a huge community formed there and as my

games for example we the same story use this country to to form our community there to communicate not only with our employees but the total Gaming Community at the territory to arrange the master class the webinars for the uh Community there to help them to grow to find the growth point for their products for their personal as a talents and so on but nevertheless I believe that the main point is at the moment for gaming companies remote work by default is really important point and for us in my games we um transfer it to the remote it work during the pandemic and establish this principle slightly after that and it works till today and really think that it's efficient enough moreover for example we realized the efficiency of this work format then at the end of 2020 we successfully launched our Heat game rash raal and remarkably that rash raal

was developed fully on the remote remote regime for our employees and this game is one of our biggest hit at the moment that's amazing Alena and obviously despite all of the the disruption upal and um the focus you are still achieving some very very big numbers um I believe you've chocked up a 14-fold increase in marketing Investments at my games with a four-fold increase in the company's business um and you have some seriously impressive uh numbers for your top rated titles Rush Royale War robots of course hustle castle leest viive and and others um I mean Rush Royale itself has had over 63 million installs and generated 230 million in revenue and War robots one of my favorites just seems to go on forever with 250 million registered players and counting but you've got a much larger portfolio um with titles in various stages of development so you

guys are a Powerhouse uh at a time when some studios are cutting back so what you know what's your what's your goal what's your drive how come you guys are powering ahead when others are playing it very safe I believe you know that the source of our courage usually lies in our team's expertise adaptivity and the passion for gaming and we are Gile in responding of gaming Market sh gifts productivity in uh in in Def fighting emerging TR and driven by the sh belief in the transformative inact of games that definitely definitely have Brian loves the game he just said one of his favorites I've read about it so I'm a Believer but you know you have to convince others Partners investors people outside when they are all feeling like this is not the time necessarily to power ahead it is a the time to be safe

but no you have you have this courage it has to come from uh within but also convincing others how are you doing that how are you getting Partners others on board maybe you're just really convincing as a personally and you just have a great personality and you just tell them they're like yeah we're on board but no what what is the secret here I think that number one it's definitely the diversification strategy that we have it persuade our partners greatly because this diversification help us to have a stable business taking into account that the gaming business is heat driven business and usually it's up and down and so on but while you have huge portfolio and set of students it's much easier for you to keep the stable rate of your of your growth and it's our path and I think that one of the primary efforts that fueled our growth definitely is our focus on diversification we expanded our

portfolio to cover multiple gaming platforms we have PC console and Mobile studos in our in our family and this approach allows us to tap into different audience segments adapting to the various preferences of Gamers across the globe so we definitely have this diversification in terms of the platform but at the same time we have diversification in terms of the genres because all of our students have their own the kind of preferences in terms of the genres they would like to develop and that they experienced at it again it help us to approach different audience with help of different genres and one more way of diversification for us for example it's diversification in terms of the business models because number one definitely we have our own studs who develop the product for us that we are published but at the same time we have the licensing business as well so we license the

product from third party developers to publish them all around the world it can help us to you know to guarantee different and new Revenue stream into our into our business and number third in terms of the in terms of the diversification business models it's our investment arm we have pretty strong investment arm which called Sim GBC who's in charge of the looking for The Talented teams and product on the on the globe and we acquire some students based off of their results and it means that we have three different source of product in our portfolio our own development licensing and investment and this diversification helps us greatly to guarantee the you know the stable growth of our business I can see exactly why that would remove some of the the risk and give you that resilience to ride out Marketplace changes but a big part of that

diversification is also diversity and inclusion um and you are one of the regretfully small number of female CEOs in in a market so it's a path Less Traveled so can you tell us a little bit more about your journey and and sort of the challenges you've faced because uh it's it it's so rare to get a chance to to speak to a woman who has come through from the very beginning and and is now leading such a you know an impressive Studio yeah yeah thank you thank you for uh for for this question and symping that because I have been working in gaming industry almost all my life you know 23 years in my career connected with games and even if I've been fortunate to have this supportive Network throughout my career I used to have almost all men among my holics and this is uh has long been the norm of my life and the higher you go the fewer

women you meet on the way and in reality I'm very proud that in our company in my games the share of women in the leadership is about 45% I believe it's very impressive and even even fourth we do not have any strict rules regarding the gender balance in teams we do a lot of to ensure that women in our company in our team can realize their full full potential and I believe that it works great and myself is the one more example how it works but if you talk about the challenging what exactly challenges I have at the moment and during the previous year the most challenging part for me was to find the work life balance of on this path because definitely it's a case for for woman even much more you know comprehensive compareed with the man and it's still one of the most difficult part for me and because I

really love what I do I really give myself a lot to the process and so this balance is not always possible but I the CEO of the growing gaming company I'm the mother of two and I'm the wife of the amazing husband I'm daughter and sister and I'm a person with my hobbies and interests and so on so sounds challenging and it is definitely challenging but I still do my best to find is balanced every day one thing that comes up again and again is it has to be diverse which is very important because you get all views all types but you also have to have that talent and bring that up so you know for women in successful positions it's about helping younger women up the ladder or for you since you're Multicultural it's about you know incorporating and bringing these other territories you know up the ladder in the sense that bringing them into your organization that's not easy

you just don't say here I'm open or yes I'm going to Mentor you uh there's more to it than that I'd be very interested in understanding how you do this how do you cultivate these relationships that are so well aligned with your culture yes definitely not just words it's the total set of procedures that we have in the company the procedures of the transparency and open dialogue between between different managers because we have rather horizontal structure and everyone can ask any question to anyone and definitely I'm open for any of our employees to talk and discuss their ideas and talking about the women we have a lot of practices in the company uh some you know Mentor programs and so on helping anyone to realize the full potential inside the company or outside so we are trying to uh know to educate them to talk with them

and to help them to grow and to find the growth point for everyone and this is a kind of inside the inside the D DNA of the company I just want to add that your report card of 45% women in leadership positions that's well done if it was if it wasn't virtual it' be a a high five to you Elena so thank you yes yeah thank you very much I'm really proud of this number well done you're right that's it it is very very impressive um I want to kind of stay on on your journey for a moment if if we can Elena cuz you know you've been as you said 23 years in this industry and you must have seen a lot you know you've had so many positions ahead of games at Disney for eight years um so what have you seen in terms of the highs and the lows and how have you stayed on track after all of this time and do you have any observations or or kind of inspiration that you can share for people who are just starting out on their journey in games yeah you're right I have been working in games for ages

already and over the years the industry has completely changed several times so of course the current situation in the gaming industry is not the easiest one but I'm sure that we will be able to overcome and find new forms of interaction with our players in reaching their gaming experience at theend but what we all uh think that in any difficult times I'm sorry it's worth focusing your efforts on the main things for us definitely the main things it's our main products that already generate the notice noticeable revenue for us and it's worse looking for additional source of Revenue in them enhancing operations alternative platforms new territories and so on and definitely all of us believe that today it's time to be more prudent in terms of the you risky Investments but at the same time it's so

important to focus your promising growth points and if we do everything right we definitely will be able to stay uh afloat in difficult times and grow with the new round of the industry Circle so which do you find more exciting you talked about alternative app stores that's really the buzz right now it's like yes it's going to happen in 2024 so I have more opportunities to get my game in front of more people that's amazing other people no I'm really into Ai and we just had a show recently talking about how AI will even create adaptive play it will like give you the game you want I mean these are out there so these are Trends this is not right now just like to understand what gets you really excited where you see the opportunity for my games but maybe also for our audience listening in some blue ocean they're not thinking about I don't think It's a Kind of Blue Ocean for the industry in general but I think it can

be the blue ocean for us it's my games uh what you're talking about at the moment we're talking about the new territories more working more closely with some territories because at the beginning and in reality now the main part of our Revenue comes from us and Europe and definitely all of us knows that half of our gaming Market are concentrated in Asia countries and we see at the moment that our potential there is great great enough and definitely we tried to grow our business there sometimes that it wasn't so successful but now we we believe that we have one more point of growth there because for example U maybe heard about that that uh one of our key product by robots succeeded to receive the ISBN at the end of this year finally after five years of waiting finally we have the

opportunity to publish our key products in China and we are going to launch it in China the beginning of next year and it's so impressive for me and I really hope that it will be successful there that the audience in China will adore the game as it adore it by by other but by other players I really believe in new territories for us China for example for for w robot and we have kind of similar story with our second hit rash Royale because rash roal um have a huge potential is South Korea for example and it's very interesting for for us to try to do something special there a kind of local marketing and local operations uh at the moment this territory is number before in terms of the revenue stream but we believe it should be much more impressive our number so we will do a

lot of local efforts there for for Ral so for us 2024 we'll be more concentrated with the local campaigns in Asian market for some of our key products and it's really impressed me a lot you know Brian I'm thinking it's going to be super impressive to understand how to localize to these markets so that's that's already I've just stuck a pin in that one to have you back to uh to talk about that as well going to China and making that a success that will be exciting yes definitely I will be more than happy to share our success and our ideas with you later on as soon as we launch the product of course we are trying to do our best to be successful there and do a lot of local stuff not only in terms of the product itself but in terms of the um communication with our community there in terms of our marketing activities so definitely I could share

much more information with you as soon as the product will be launched there one additional question if ifan is is looking looking beyond that you know that that's what's next for my games what is coming out you know we've got so many emerging Technologies so many new sort of changes coming in the games Market what are you looking at maybe for 25 26 and Beyond you know where where is my games seeing the future taking us talking about the next thing you know I think that the most amazing thing that we can uh it can be next for any gaming companies definitely it's the launch of our new games and uh for next year and for 2025 we have a lot of plans for logic of new products and our pipeline is so well done at the moment so we are planning to release uh new games in 2024 and the pipeline is filled this with very array of mobile and PC console

product just for example this year we've announced incredibly well-received title such as V robot Frontiers it's PC console um product it's the same V robots franchise and it's so impressive for us as well try to grow the franchise in general with help of new product on PC console and involve new audience into the franchise and number is the second product I would like to underline definitely is HED it's gain PC console release that had been developed for us three plus years it's very impressive plan and this product is going to be released the very beginning of next year and of as well definitely we have many other captivating mobile games in our portfolio so what we think about our future definitely we think about new products because we are the products gaming company and we should think about the product and to find the um you know

the great game for us for our employees and for our players but before we let you go we have two questions that we ask all of our guests um really again to bring it back to the games and so the first one is what are you playing right now what's what's on your mobile what's on your your your laptop and the second question is what's your favorite game of all time wow uh in reality at the moment I'm playing some of our new announced games because I would like to you know to to have my own opinion and to understand and I'm in in full discussions with our development team in terms of the experience I have so some of them are on mobile devices and other one um on Console so it's it's very impressive for me to be a part of the development team even if at the moment I'm not there 100% % of my time but definitely it's my passion that's why

I'm here that's why I like to work in close collaboration with our development team that's why our new product is what one more point of my interest definitely that's a great answer so the answer is top secret that's okay that's okay this is why we have to invite you back yes I will be more than happy to join you later your favorite game of all time do you do you have a preference I think that I spent a lot of years playing the heres of mind magic it was so many years ago but it was the start and I believe it's very important what is the first game for you that you know help you to understand what is your what was going to be your professional in the future that's why it's so important game for me that's why I I would like to symh asize this game in this in this rating that's a great answer and nobody can argue with M and Magic it's it's it's a classic for a reason you're right you're

right it was so interesting speaking with you Elena finding out diversification where that fits in in your strategy hearing about where you're going next learning maybe about how to crack the Chinese market just great thank you thank you very much I will be more than ha to share this ideas with you as well it's been a real pleasure um we're going to let you go as you have an entire company to run across multiple territories and Nations around the world so I'm sure you're very busy but we would love to have you back on at some point soon just to find out more about my games ongoing journey and indeed your own so thanks again and we look forward speaking to you in the near future yeah thank you very much good luck to you guys 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 SLP podcast and we would love to hear your thoughts on future shoes 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 the pocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the pocketgamer.biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future until then I'm Brian Bago I'm Peggy and salts and that's a wrap until next week

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