Sandsoft's Miikka Lindgren On Massive Opportunities In The MENA Game Market

[Music] hello world I'm your host Peggy and salts Bryant Bago is of course on the road doing something amazing finding some great guests but we are here and we have Mina top of mind and why wouldn't we have that exactly as our top topic because that's what's happening this week we have our Dubai event kicking off this week and we're looking at Mina and we're talking to mina experts and we do both today because we welcome mik Lindgren he is VP publishing of sand soft of course as you know it the global mobile first game developer publisher and investor headquartered in Saudi with satellite organizations in Helsinki Barcelona Shanghai that's why we're going to get a Mina View and a global view with an expert and I have to say ma

great to have you and you're coming to us I believe you are in Helsinki is that right thanks py nice to be here yes actually I'm in in Helsinki or actually literally ESO it's a city nearby to Helsinki yeah okay um well I said a global view so let's start with the news first right because when I told my colleagues over at pocketgamer.biz it's like yes we do have news the net ease deal give me some background on that if you can can you know how did it come about maybe you were instrumental in making it who knows um and what is that about these two companies partnering so so in brief uh what we have been seeing first of all is that uh if we kind of look at the the whole picture the Holding Group that we are part of has been working in China and with Chinese companies for years and obviously there's a connection between the Holding Group and China as in that way that we have been searching and connected with

the Chinese gaming companies since the start of the of the company uh the second thing is that that we have been seeing that lot of Chinese companies have more interest on the Mena region than maybe on Western companies so there's a lot of our Chinese companies having now entity set up for the Mina region and they are exploring that market and exploiting that market far earlier than other Western companies and for us obviously it was very important to find the right partner that we can work together to to EXP the market better and and and we are happy to to work with the net is to have this joint venture together so you said it yourself a very interesting focus on Mina from Chinese companies why do you think that is what do they see in Mina because you have to say you know everybody wants to see that Global success coming from the Middle East wants to see that region really take off it has a ton of potential but you know it seems to me as if they're seeing it more than maybe others are yeah I think the the the

mentality of the Chinese gaming companies is that they are more risk-taking and they are more like interested to explore new opportunities and and that's why they have been very early in the Mena market so I would say that already around maybe not 10 years ago but five years ago they started to have their localized and culturalized versions of their games in Mena market and they have been in the market for for many years already they have been capturing that market potential especially on the chres like Forex strategy and first person shooters those are the main drivers for the growth and revenue in the region and those are pretty much occupied by Chinese gaming companies nowadays when you say localization and and actually culturalization there um that's why I'm talking with a bunch of different people you know developers Studios even even Indie saying that you know it really does pay to have local language local culture games is that what you think is going on here that it's not just the

focus of being not eager but let's just say interested in the region um considering risk looking at it not being too risk adverse but also localizing the content yeah so so I said that the Chinese companies have been taking the first mover Advantage so so they realized already the potential of the market way earlier than other companies particularly in these two t and and what they are doing really great is that they are doing proper not only the localization of the game but culturalization of the game and by culturalization mean that they are running local live operation events that are meaningful for the market they also have local characters they have even local teams for the game so so they are really doing that that needed work for for making the games having a better Market fit for the region and and uh we see the results they are pretty much dominating the charts in in in Mena market and and uh

the investment what they have been doing is paying off for sure kind of interesting if you think about it Ma because I mean it isn't rocket science it isn't a blueprint that we haven't talked about many times when we look at the opportunities in Mina and pocketgamer.biz in particular you know a ton of articles about this series reports about the region that says you know you have to have local games culturally um relevant uh physical and virtual events it's it's just it's just interesting maybe astounding that it's a straightforward blueprint and China's the one following it I would say that it's a probably a question of resources so so we know that Chinese companies have much much more manpower than the Western companies so if if in Western companies we are talking about hundreds of people or maybe maximum thousands of people these Chinese companies they operate always with the thousands of people and and they have the resources is to actually operate a separate

versions of the games that are targeted for the for the region where Western companies don't have that luxury and they are then Focus focusing on the regions that they have best knowledge and where they have resources to support makes sense that is true they can throw a lot more at it and also looking at the middle east region it's overall Mina um you know you at sansoft your main focus remains sourcing games to be published in Mina or globally through your co-development partners you obviously want to be and are on your way to being a global publisher but we're not seeing a local success you know or a global success come out of mina what do you think it's going to take companies in the region to break out and onto the world stage because I have been talking to some studios there with some really smart games um very successful in local market but not yet on the global stage I would say that there's a

two type of companies in the region there are companies that are only focusing for the Mina region because they see that that's a a better opportunity for them to tackle because they have a no out no how on no how on the on the market itself that they feel that they have a better chances of succeeding the second thing is like for the sansoft itself we are experts of of global public many of us have been working for for big franchises and and our Target is to make games for the global audiences of course we will be publishing games also in the Mena Market but if the platforms are giving us a possibility to publish games globally why wouldn't we use that why we would limit ourself to the Mena Market only so we see now that through this joint venture we can divide our Focus to two different areas like we have a joint venture that is helping uh not only netes but other third party companies to exploit the Mena Market better by providing all that support regarding localization calization marketing and

live operation of the games even running Esports events and then sansoft itself is a global developer publisher focusing on making and Publishing games for the global market of course the games are published in the Mina region but that's not the specific focus of ours because we want to make games for the global audience and speaking of sansoft maybe you just want to bring me up to date a little bit on that you have made Acquisitions you open your Barcelona Studio to that and what's going on over there what's new so in Barcelona Barcelona at the moment is our second biggest site so obviously we are headquartered in Riad in KSA where we have uh some of our Central functions uh and we have our game Studio there so we have at the moment around 20 people working in the game Studio developing games and then Barcelona was our second site where we are now building not only our some of our Central functions but also publishing function and then our

studio function and under the studio function we are doing internal game development and we have the first stripe already prototyping the first games that we will be Market testing during this year one of them is business dude right or is that coming out of business dud is actually a game that is developed by our partner it is a uh third party game that we are publishing but the same company is also a company that we are working on the core development with another project so so it is just extension of our Partnerships of publishing something that they have been developing they own and then we have another project that we are doing codevelopment with them and just overall of curiosity the staff what numbers do you have what do you employ now because of course we've gone through um a phase where either companies were growing or they were reducing which side did you land on we are growing really fast so so every time when someone is asking asking that how big are you I

need to check the latest numbers so at the moment we are 70 plus growing really fast I would say that on a monthly basis we are around three to five people having kind of a joining to the sof uh we are growing especially fast now on Barcelona because Barcelona will be one of our key destination for for game development and also for the publishing functions and reason that the Barcelona is interest interesting um site for us is that that first of all it is an attractive site to have talent coming in because of the weather obviously weather is really nice uh the other thing is that there's certain tax advantages for the people moving to to Spain to work there and and uh there's a lot of gaming companies already in Barcelona so the talent pool that is available in the regions is really good and and that are that are kind of the main reason for us to to actually have our setup there and

as we see at the moment that um Barcelona is probably the fastest growing site from our side at the moment for the reason that there's a lot of talent that is available for what we are needing for our growth speaking of growth when we were speaking in prep what I really admired is that you are focused on game publishing because that's what you do that's what you're responsible for but you're also looking very closely at marketability and what it means to think about cost per but also think about LTV about balancing those two sides of the equation you know your short-term metrics your longer term targets and wins that you need to have to have profitable growth um help me understand what Studios can learn or borrow here from your approach what is your approach to make that balance and what do you think is yeah some something that we can apply

elsewhere because of course this is within sansoft this is your approach but I think it's applicable everywhere I think that the recent changes in the market has been showing that the marketability of the game is becoming the the most important thing because of the difficulties on the user acquisition and and the only way that you can uh verify that you are on the right path is that you test a lot and and what does this mean for us when we are developing games internally or doing Cod development or working with third parties is that everything will be validated with the real audience with the real players we are not doing guest working everything every decision that what we are making is based on the market data so if the market data is saying us that the people are not liking the game we know that we have what we have to fix if we are seeing that the user acquisition cost are too high for this game we need to figure out that how we can lower that it's a number game

pretty much and we need to understand that how the market is working for this particular game what is the audience that is attracted on this game and then do our decisions based on the game design and marketing that how we can maximize the potential of the pro what did you bring with you from from from roio to your current position because it's a very datadriven approach and I welcome it because it is what is going to make it possible to continue and to grow in this market I mean growth in a growing Market is very competitive what did you bring in terms of skills maybe something that uh that we're not thinking about something that isn't immediately obvious or maybe you're just very very much into perseverance I think like that that lessons learned during my Robia carer was really really that think globally think big because uh nothing is stoping you thinking big uh good example was

that angry per space was launched together with NASA from the space station in the space so you can do all of this stuff if you dream big it's just you need to figure out how to execute it the kind of uh main main things that I brought to to sansoft was that we change our Focus instead of focusing only for Mena that we started to focus on Global Market because I said that it's a better to focus of focus on billions of people than hundreds of millions of people because it increases the the likelihood of success because you you can always find an audience for your game if it is globally published then the second thing is that U that obviously robio was very eager of testing various things so we were doing a lot of prototyping we were doing and investing a lot of things for different chres to figure out that how we can diversify our portfolio of games that were we were developing and

Publishing so all of those things I've have been trying to bring back to the to the sansoft that we need to also think about that yes you need to do a lot of testing and experimenting to find that success and then when you find that success you can double down on that but it takes some time to find that success so you have to have a lot of experimentation and exploitation and in a way a category Creator is what I would say have that mindset think big and one thing we're seeing is we're seeing different categories because we're seeing a mixing and mashing of models and we've talked about it before but I'd like to dig a little deeper into the in particular how the Chinese are mixing and mashing the models to create habits really create habits in gameplay and generate cash and here we're talking about hybridizing game design you know Forex and Casual glame playay they're gluing it together somehow they're making that work um are other regions

and Studios going to have to play catchup here or are we G to maybe use that as a blueprint and find a better way I think like unfortunately I have to admit that that Chinese companies are doing much better work than than Western companies on finding the the recipe of success in the current market uh when I started to work with the China market and with Chinese companies they were known for copycats that they were copycatting things and and and they kind of there was no innovation but now if you look at the Chinese companies what they doing on the game development it's amazing so we have to all almost like a look at that what they are doing like they are innovating more than what they are doing and that is something that is very admirable that they they are they are taking more risks in a way that they are trying to build new GES mixing different things together to find that marketability angle that how you can make games that are attracted by WI audiences than one

single game design what you have and there's a lot of like recent examples in the market where Chinese companies have been able to glue almost two different game designs together so that you're attracting two times bigger audience than what the one game design only and and that is the recipe of success that you you have very attractive game that can be played no matter what your demographics are and by that you are lowering the cpri you're increasing your your your also your organic soap so they are really smart on on thinking that how you make even more complex games more marketable and easier to enter because you are making a more let's say more casual approach for the game design I'm listening to explain that me I'm thinking back to a number of webinars and other projects I was working on in moderating and I would speak with the games marketers the UA managers and they had initially like a fear of mini games it was like well if we put out this game

then we're bringing an audience in and then we show them a different game and that might be a disconnect and and now we're talking about basically Chinese mixing these models and sort of bringing you in on a maybe a casual lure as it were and then unpacking a Forex game in the middle of that so one of two things and and I'm asking you because you're the expert so either the marketers I was speaking with a year a year and a half ago were too cautious or the Chinese have a different approach and they were right and the Chinese are um just doing something very different very Innovative but it feels as if we could have grasped this earlier we're maybe you know Western Studios maybe the cautious ones here yeah I like a if if you look at now that I I also have a fear of of kind of fake advertisement that you are driving people to the game that are then disappointed that they are not actually seeing the game play that what they saw

in the advertisement I think that is decreasing you see more and more these games actually embedded part of the game play so the playable ad what you have been first exposed to you see that similar game play in the actual game that you start playing and there are even some examples that are showing data that people like more that kind of a game that was advertise the simple game than the core game that is embedded in the game so people are having kind of about let's say they play that simple mini game more than the core game that is actually behind that mini game and and uh I don't know if it is good or bad at least you are increasing your diu and and uh if you have advertisement running there for sure you can make it money there and and possibly some of the players that are more interested on that more complex gameplay would be then moving to that complex gameplay and monetizing even further there so it's almost like the game is there and you can make it what it what you need it to be all the elements are there and you

want to stay in the sort of less complex game gaml there it is dive in if you want to go deeper it's there too and it doesn't seem to be a contradiction that it was a while back which is interesting that may open up some opportunities and may open up how Studios need to think about mechanics yeah exactly I think that U I said earlier that marketability is the king here and and if you are finding mechanics that are attracted by the users that will be the way of of getting players to to to play your game and getting engage and then you just need to figure out that what type of onboarding you are building for them do you want them to only play that mini game or do you want them to start playing the core game that is behind that so so I think that if we look at like a the most recent example of the uh Chinese game uh called Legend of mushroom uh it is a game that looks very casual on the top but when you when you

enter the game you can see that there's multiple different game modes there's almost like a something for everybody so so you can find your way or you can find your game that you're interested you don't have to play every game mode that they have and and that's the luxury that you are almost feeling that you are entering the supermarket and there's a lot of things that you want to buy so so so there's lot of things that you are interested on so so I think they are doing really great job on on on making that uh let's say games fitting for each and every player and you can find something that is you that you are attracted if you don't want to play against other players in a PVP mode you can play PVE mode so so there's kind of a feature for everyone I like the analogy of Supermarket absolutely you go in there and you pick what you want keeping with that analogy I'm also just curious because I'm talking to a number of Publishers who are very bullish about that precise idea that there are more

Alternatives where their game can be right you can look at steam you can look at alternative app stores you can go on device I mean it's it's up to you sky is the limit or is it are you excited about alternative channels we are mobile first gaming company so so I would say that we are interested on developing and Publishing games that are original developed for mobile if that game is a crossplatform meaning that it has a be PC SC or console SC or you can be playing it on a web browser that's okay but it needs to be mobile first that's the that's the kind of what the strategy for us and and all these alternative distribution channels then for the mobile skus outside of like a let's say Google Play ecosystem that they are Huawei and and Samsung Etc all of those are additional distribution platforms for your games when you have let's say already a game that is showing success it is just exploiting that success further that you can have alternative

distribution platforms for your game but I wouldn't consider that they are maybe the entry platforms for you that you only specifically develop games for those and then later on for Google Play and Apple App Store it's more or less that those are additional distribution platforms you when you have already unlocked success on those main two platforms on a mobile well we started off with Mina so I'd like to go full circle and close on that current opportunities and challenges in The Wider Mina region what is your pick give me maybe one two one opportunity One Challenge you see facing the games industry in The Wider meter region I think that the opportunity is obviously the the um good audience meaning that audience that is willing to convert and spend money on games uh we see good numbers particularly in KSA that there's a lot of interest for towards gaming and you

can see that the people have a spending power that they will kind of consume money on games then if you look at the uh maybe the challenges the challenges is still the size of the market meaning that it is still we are talking about around 600 million players so those 600 mil million players are um exposed to multiple different games from multiple different games company so there's a fierce competition out of that audience and and especially we know that there are certain genres that are highly popular in the region that are Forex strategy first person shooters and TBL to games if you do anything outside of those it will be smaller as a business opportunity but then if you do anything for these three you would be fear kind of a facing Fierce competition coming from these big Chinese companies that already have their products in the market what about sand soft as well you know we

talked there I hinted at the uh this game you have in soft launch business toes what can you sh about what's coming up your plans for 2024 initiatives projects games we need to be watching on the horizon what what should we be looking for when we look at sansoft so uh we are very aggressive on our growth so so we are at the moment running multiple Market test on the products some of the products are developed by Third parties which we don't own but we would like to gain publishing rights if they pass our Market test then we have also our own Cod development projects on games that are that we are owning but are developed by third party companies so we are also doing a market testing for those our plan for this year is that we would be releasing more games during the second half of the year so hopefully all of the market testing what we are doing now during the second quarter of this year will be resulting soft

launches and Commercial Launches on the second half of the year and that's when we also see business dudes right that's on the horizon as well yes and what kind of game is that so bus dud is a arcade uh simulation game where you are running different businesses it's a kind of what your entrepreneurial dream you start by running an hot dog Kus and then you grow your business to to run in a cafeteria and then you have uh uh uh car service place and you have a uh Zoo Etc so there's multiple different businesses that you would be then running later on when you go further in the game and I think this kind of demonstrating the entrepreneurial experience that you run business you unlock new opportunities to to open new businesses and everybody are dreaming kind of a building businesses and becoming someday and a tycoon of multiple businesses and that that game is simulating that really well that how

do you run business how you uh allocate resources in your business and eventually there will be some meta game elements where you can then use all that wealth that you have been generating through your businesses to buy some assets for you that you would be Desiring is it then a mansion or is it the airplane or is it is it then a y or whatever that you could be dreaming of if you would be a billionaire and working to earn it that's something that's something fascinating as a concept a little bit like you actually ma because I was uh looking at at what you've been doing and and of course um your your posts and your presence on LinkedIn and of course everyone's more than a title and I noted that your colleagues call you out for your superpower which is which is focus um which is exciting that's what you need but the flip side of focus and I was just bringing this in because literally I'm doing I'm doing some research I'm reading a book about Steve Jobs at the same time and um he's

talking about how focus is really not focus it's being able to ignore the H hundred or so other great ideas and stay focused on this so you have to understand not just to be able to focus and concentrate but to resist the temptation and remain focused how do you do that how do you not give into the Temptation um of maybe a hundred other amazing game ideas or or or Market ideas and remain focused on your game your game plan what you're doing at sansoft so first of all uh I have a great team to work with that helps me to make the right decision as a team lead and and and the second thing is that as I said that we are relying data so data will be telling us that what are the right decisions what are the focuses that what we what we need to have so it's not me kind of doing guess working that let's go to that direction let's go to that direction it's more L that hey let's validate with the real users that what

is the right direction that what we need to take and then we take that direction so we are very datadriven we do a lot of testing and and we believe that that is the only way to find that growth for the company in the future and that's our Focus so we focus on the growth and the growth will be exceed when you find the right products right companies to work with I like that very much I mean we know Steve Jobs it was more more gut feeling but there is something be said for the humility of sort of understanding that that data tells an honest Story I mean it's not one source of Truth for nothing it's really understanding that yeah prove it with data and then it is proven I'm a strong believer on on on a kind of a datadriven approach that it's not like you should be blindly looking that but you should be let's say data informed meaning that data will tell you something that will be helping you to make it right decision you shouldn't be like blindly looking

that okay well the retention is bad uh but the reviews are good that you make the decision because of the poor retention that okay I'm not going to publish the game because of full retention you have to believe then that the company is able to fix the retention issues and monetization issues because you already have good sentiment of the users that they like the game so those are things that you have to always balance that what how do you look at that data what type of decisions you are making and having that having that that that longer term view not long but longer and that that balance which I think uh there's a lot to learn from you Ma we also want to learn from our guests when we close we ask every guest two questions your favorite game you're currently playing and your favorite game of all time so my favorite game that I'm currently playing to actually I stop playing just a while ago was Alan we 2 Alan we 2 is a a console PC game made by a Finnish uh gaming company called remed

entertainment I'm very much driven by these uh story driven horror games for some reason and and uh that game was something that I have been waiting since the release of the first Alan Wake and and only for the reason that it was so let's say hard for the hardware requirements I needed to update my computer only for the reason that I can run the game so it was an investment from from me to actually see that what is the level of uh immersion that you can see on the console uh quality games as of today on a mobile space I I play a lot of hybrid casual games because those are the games that we are focusing as a company as well and and probably the latest game that I have been playing a lot is is still Survivor iio because I think like it is really explaining really well that how you can still have a game that looks very

casual is still making like hundreds of millions of Revenue so so so so you shouldn't judge the game based on the look you should be looking the numbers because if you only look at the the the how it is visually built you would say oh it's it's a small game no one is playing this but then you look at the sensor Tower or data AI data and you see oh well it's making 300 400 million so so uh it is amazing to see that uh sometimes the look and feel of the game doesn't kind of a restrict or say that how big the game can be yeah it's the mechanic and a lot to learn there what about your favorite game of all time Mika well on the console side I was really addicted to the max ban serus and Halo uh those were the games that uh I was really interested both of those games are story driven once again and and uh especially the max play series was developed by remedy the the Finish

console gaming company that is also behind the Delan W 2 um on the mobile side obviously I had to say that angry B because I was one of the very first people that saw the first prototype of angry purse and I was at the time working for Nokia and and uh and the the story of the angry Pur is so fascinating that it was just a technology demo initially and I was actually managing a project where where this technology demo was part of so I had a chance to see and experiment that as a first time and and and I think the game got so popular for the reason that it was hitting the right way so it was hitting the right way of showing that what would be definition of a mobile gaming for touchcreen because it was only playable on touch screen it was never ever doing well on a keypad or or Xbox or or console or PC because the gameplay was originally designed only

for swiping and that swiping is only possible with the touch screen I was betting that we were gonna have a roio answer for the game of all time and I have to agree and I have I have a personal story of uh when Peter vaka came to a dinner and had the idea and he was flying it you know just like hey I've got this great you know this is what what's going on and we're like yeah he was ahead of his time it was ahead of its time and we were all wrong at the dinner I have to say uh so um some stories to share love to do that again and and maybe have you again on as well on pocketgamer.biz Mika it's been a delight and you have so much to share I think we'd benefit from having you back so thank you for taking the time today thanks pegy it was a great time 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

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