The Martial Arts Mindset That Won 2 Million Players

Blackbelt in karate and a near miss with a lion.
walking in there as a beginner getting my butt kicked all the time.
[laughter]
That that sets you up for the real world then. You get your butt kicked all the time. Sounds like the games industry. So here we are pocketgamer.biz podcast at GDC talking to some of the cool indie devs and studios. Meeting you Justin, I have to say is a joy. I mean E place sounds like a game, right? I mean you're as I understand it you're working as an English teacher. Now I'm not going to work teaching English. I'm going to I'm going to work making games. So I've had a bit of a unconventional road into game development. Like when I talk to the other developers and stuff they always have like a a background in in programming or tech. I like I said I started off as an English teacher and I just had this like every once in a while you have these like these epiphanies if you can call it that. Yeah. Those moments.
having this idea of like

okay, competitive games for real rewards and cash. Hmm. Smart. That's amazing. And what year was that? That was This is back in like 2016 probably I'm going back here. Yeah.
But I mean I remember like clearly like how I felt like the hairs on my arms were raised. I'm like okay Cuz we love trivia. Yeah, exactly.
hard wired for it. Yeah, and I'm such a general knowledge buff so um especially in the animal category I was playing this trivia game and I was always at the top of the the leaderboard and no one could knock me off. I'd get daily challenges all the time and I was like and I really felt good about myself. I used to take the bus to to teach English. I was like that was my go to every day on the bus. Uh-huh. And I was like if this resonates so much with me there's probably a ton of other people that feel the same so I was like exactly I've got to make this happen. So you talked about that and you talked about the animals. I look into your backstory, right? So, uh black belt in karate and a near miss

with a lion on a safari. All right. Okay, so which of these prepared you the best for being an indie developer? Well, anyone that's in game development is going to tell you it is a challenge. Indeed. And so, I would probably go with the martial arts because I mean, I remember walking in there as a beginner, getting my butt kicked all the time.
[laughter]
That that sets you up for the real world. Getting your butt kicked all the time sounds like the games industry. Exactly. So, a lot of those lessons of like try again, get back up, like don't let the defeats take over or whatever and then I apply a lot of those lessons into game dev because at the same time, like I said, it's really challenging, but it's probably one of the most rewarding jobs or things you could you could ever do. You take the the good in with the bad. I wouldn't have it any other way. I'll go with that. You started Eplay Studios 2016, built your first skills game in 2017, right? Because I guess it

was what? It was like playing competitive trivia and you're like, "Yeah, I think I want to have something where I can challenge my players in real time." What brought you together? What made you see the opportunity there? Not just in the trivia, but also, you know, a year later after starting Yeah. you're working with skills.
Yeah, so I mean, I've always been a really competitive person. I mean, I've been playing I've probably played every sport there is from like tennis to martial arts to rugby, cricket. So, I've always been very competitive and when I saw opportunity to not only as like I also love playing games, I've been playing games since I was a little kid. So, when I saw opportunity to be to be able to build competitive games, I mean, it was like a no-brainer for me. I was like, "I'm going to make this happen even though that I don't have a background in programming or anything, I'll find a way." So, it was um So, what made it click? Just to really to to zero in on that. The competitive nature of the games, um that really resonated with me a lot.

Interesting, cuz you know, most games they're act they're still relying on ads, in-app purchase, hybrid monetization. You're like, "No, this is going to be that model." Yeah, the the real rewards. I mean, playing for cash also, it's like the best incentive to play a game. So, you've built 25 games already on Skills, 2 million installs across the portfolio. Congratulations, I mean, high-five to you. Thank you. First place there, Justin, for getting that far. Thank you. What really led me to like garnering those 2 million installs was actually finding out what the audience likes. So, in the beginning, I would I would have lots of hits and misses, mostly misses, because I wouldn't understand exactly what the audience uh would would take to. So, you kind of have to work backwards, like from the audience player perspective, and then build the game around that, something that they're going to enjoy. And so, that's what kind

of led to the the hits. Yeah. If you can say Yeah. What is that way? I mean, it's always about listening to your audience, and you've got games like real money word search, bubble shooter. I mean, what is it about the players that you've changed along the way when you think about engagement, retention, fairness? I mean, they behave differently in the game. How have you adapted the game to them? For sure. So, when there's real competition involved, what's really important to the players is fairness and balance. Yeah. So, I mean, if if the game feels that it's not fair, that they don't really have a chance at winning, then they kind of they kind of like exit of they don't come back. So, it has to feel like they have a chance to to build up the skill level and it's all about the trust. So, if they feel that it's fair and competitive, they'll be back and that really helps the engagement and retention. Mhm.

So, let's talk about the live experiences, right? Cuz a lot of smaller studios, they want to have deep engagement. They want to have competitive or live experiences because that feeds the engagement. That makes sense. But, they've always been blocked, you know, it's either infrastructure, live ops teams, back end, you know, doing this internally is difficult. But, it wasn't a hindrance for you. It wasn't It did not deter you. What made it possible for you to do this and focus on the real game? As game developers, what we love to focus our attention on is like core mechanics of the game, making it fun and engaging for players. Um a lot of the smaller studios, myself included, we don't uh we don't have like necessarily the manpower or the resources to build the back end infrastructure. Um so, what allowed me to make it possible was actually when I was doing my research and how I could possibly make these games, I I came across Skills

and I mean, they handle everything from the matchmaking to the fairness, the payments, all that other stuff that as game developers, we don't necessarily find that sexy to like to work on, if I can say that. You want to do the game, right? Yeah, we just want to focus on the game. Platforms like that, it it really makes the playing field a lot more even for the smaller studios. What is it now that you can think about realistically or that a small studio can think about realistically about achieving that that that they simply couldn't do before? Yeah, I mean, the the biggest thing to build on from my previous answers that uh it's really level leveled up the the field because like I said, we don't have necessarily the resources and and and the manpower to do all of that stuff and and it's it's really good.
I mean it's it's the total but it really is the analytics. It's the live ops. It's the back end. It's the infrastructure. It's the payment structure. All of that together, you know, cuz before it was skills, now it's skills

and Beamable.
exactly.
What does that bundling change?
Yeah, now we have like the complete package. I mean all the tools and skills have done a really great job before giving developers the tools they they need to launch competitive games. With the relationship with Beamable now, when the two come together, I mean we just have way more tools in the belt that we don't have to like put our resource resources into. And again, we can spend all of our time creating content, making good games, features, new levels, and stuff like that. So, it's just like less things we have to worry about because like the game development can be extremely challenging. And the less things we have to worry about, the better for us. Yeah. And in your case, I mean with your portfolio, I'm also hearing from other developers, it's one thing to say yes, now I've got less to worry about, but I can also iterate faster. You know, I can like throw stuff out there say, do they like it? Do they not like it? You know, because I've got everything in the bundle. So,

faster at producing games, but also faster at sort of like checking out what flies, what fails. Exactly. No, you hit that on the head. I mean it's all about like testing what works. And and the faster you can do that iteration process, the more chance of success that you're going to have.
So, you'd have like 25 more games in your portfolio in no time, right? 25 more? 25 more. I can see it. So, you build it This is pretty cool. YouTube channel. I have to check this out actually. Documenting your journey, what you've learned about building skill-based games. I've seen some other examples of this really do extremely well come to think of it. I'm thinking about the guys at Fat Loot. But that was just building the game. You're building a skill-based game. So, when did you start to decide and say, "Hey, you know what? I've got to share this publicly. I'm going to do this on YouTube." And how's it going over there? So, so the whole YouTube channel actually came about one day, I mean, I was having some good success with skills and it was a time where now this became my full-time job. I was over the moon because I could wake up every morning, do what I I love to do, make

games and I kind of wanted to share that my friends and family were sick of hearing it. So, I was like, "Okay, let me go to social Take it to the social media. And I literally just went to my kitchen, opened up a opened up my phone and started recording a a video about my journey, how I got into it. And it it resonated with a lot of people and they were like, "Woah, this is something like you showed us that it is possible. It's not this like I mean, sometimes you hear statistics like one out of a few thousand games actually make it like, you know, so we we get bombarded with like negative statistics and I want to show them, "Hey, listen, if I can do it, then you guys can also do it." So, and then I saw you started building audience because I think they really enjoyed the message and it motivated them. Well, that's that is motivating cuz 65% of the revenues belong to games that are at least 10 years old, you know? And there are no new games, there are no new launches. If you If you read that, you're like, "Well, what are we all doing here?" Yeah, well, let's move on

to the next thing. GDC [laughter] should be a ghost town out there, but no, it is buzzing which I think is inspiring. And you're showing that. Let's say we look ahead, you know, 3 years ahead. I won't do the math on that, but the calculus would say you'd have a ton of games by then. Um, what do you think the evolution of competitive gaming is going to look like because let's face it, now with the bundle, it's going to be easier. So, there's going to be more competition, but that might also mean um, something new and different. What do What do in 3 years' time? In the near future I'm very excited with the partnership with Beamable. I mean that opens up a lot of opportunities for us developers. Technology is growing so fast that I envision in the future, especially like how VR is progressing, uh you are in a similar relation with someone else with a ball in your hand like a basketball and you could like see the other person shooting hoops. So, I think that the possibilities, if you think where we are now it's still kind of in its infancy. So, I think as the technology grows it's going to become more and more immersive and exciting.

So, that's what really keeps me awake at night. Well, it's like what I hear about all the time when I'm talking with studios it's like, well, you know, we're going to have the individualization of games. It's going to be very personal. It's going to be very engaging. And if you're thinking about that, you know, churning that out is very different. So, you're going to need help to do it, but the player base will be there for it. So, there's a good match. Exactly. So, it's it's kind of all coming full circle and and working out and and the partnerships also going to make that happen. So, you've you give your advice freely on YouTube. You're doing it here in the podcast with me. So, end it Justin. It's your stage. Advice to someone building their first competitive game. That's all yours. So, remember that it's not the failures that define you. Uh you kind of have to build upon those. It's only a failure if you stop. Uh like in my case, I've built up multiple games in the beginning before they even started generating my first dollar. So,

don't give up too soon. If you really have a passion for it, you'll stick with it and when you stick with it long enough, uh that's where the magic happens. So, just uh don't give up too early. That's perfect.
[laughter]
It was a pleasure, Justin. Absolutely. On to the next 25.