Why Fateless Games Didn’t Follow the Rules—And How It Paid Off

[Music] this is chill this is down in the cinema this is the screening this the inner sanctum of Pocket Gamer connect London and so we're gonna huddle in here because I got really lucky I met each of you during slush actually part of roia con as well hanging out in the Shark Tank and I find out you've got like then I find out you've got not only a kick-ass idea but you've got investors you've got interest so bringing it back um just awesome so tell me tell our listeners our audience a bit more about you because they're going to think okay those are the cool people had the panel about influencers but you're not the usual influencers I mean in a good in a good way guys in a good way you're absolutely real and you absolutely have a concept and you're going to have a game built on influence so that is

something who's going to kick it off I think Simon s you're do so I guess it it kind of started about five years ago when I was on holiday was on holiday with my family I was like I'm playing this mobile game and I think I could do some YouTube videos on it I was like but I don't know if I've really got the personality to pull it off anyway started to put some videos out honestly this is true three months later I was quitting my day job I had this kind of like surge on YouTube and basically became the biggest creator for Rell Legend which is a mobile game um and yeah was able to build a big YouTube following and then I teamed up with with Dan Dan actually pitched me an idea to say you should have a bigger social presence you should have a website you should have uh more tools for your community to engage with okay and we started to work together and build HH gaming and a website called hs.com um we've now got we get about 11 million page views a month we got about 400,000 members and that membership group said look you guys know so much about this

genre why don't you build your own game and stop busing around sne the game okay and at first we kind of laughed up and said well we're not game developers so we're not going to do that um but then actually I remember a meeting when we were like look why don't we build our own game and nobody laughed in the meeting yeah I was like hold on a minute why don't we do it like we've got the skill set we've got the knowledge um and I mean yeah maybe Dan sort of flesh out a bit more about hell.com and yeah what we do there so um some um my background is digital marketing so I've worked with Brands and mainly more in the corporate world for my entire career and during covid lockdown I met up with Simon I actually stumbled across his first ever twitch stream um and ended up moderating for him uh kind of uh through that and uh I I saw this Gap in the market that we were covering that nobody was really creating content in terms of a web presence in a way that other games were so you had League of Legends world Warcraft things like that

that had these resource websites that um people were doing but this game was very similar um in terms of the the required information to play the game at a high level but it wasn't being covered so um I reached out to Simon I was like look you're getting this this really cool traction he just literally made the step to go full-time on YouTube and I kind of filled in a bit of the Gap I guess uh with the knowledge base of building a brand rather than just him as a YouTuber so we worked together we we partnered up and we came up with the idea of uh launching a website and making it the best in uh class for for the space but modeling it on existing platforms but for other games and uh yeah we launched it in uh 2020 it was first is December 2020 um with uh Simon's uh idea of what we would call a soft launch uh he basically put to do soft launch I'm like no we're launching I'm like right everyone we've done this thing and yeah basically we had to like double the power of the server oh my God about five

times on the day it was just like Simon idea Simon's idea of a soft launch was to put a video out on his YouTube channel with the thumbnail free stuff yeah and uh yeah and that will do it yeah yeah what do you want we uh we we did over a million page views in three days um for a brand new website um going out there and uh yeah the the we just scaled the audience basically from there so we very much focused specifically on creating high value for the viewers on on the website that's always been our number one priority the financing and the money side of things has always been a byproduct of creating a great product for the community um and that's where we focused on on building the community which as as Simon said we've built to over 350,000 members now that's actually registered members who use our tools and we get 11 million page views per month we've got a team of 18 people working on that project and uh that company turning

over multiple Millions a year now which is great um but that Community reached out to us and said you know why aren't you guys making your own game and as Simon said it was a pipe dream it was something that oh we probably couldn't do but the more years and the more stability that we built with HH gaming the more we realized that it could actually be possible and we've met sham a year before through his project and that's kind of how he came into the mix right yeah I was I was running in studio had been for like 10 years and the big thing was you know for me working with these guys it was just felt so natural it was like I I actually reached out hilariously to Simon cold message on Discord okay it was just like hey man I've got this I've got this game you should you should check out because I because I I loved radio state of Legends I was playing it myself and and I was working on a game that had kind of like some similari so I'm like okay let me just reach out we'll see it yeah no no one's gonna answer yeah he immediately answers we hopped in a Discord call I think a video call that day I'm like showing them and and and so you know we really hit it off and I I loved working with these guys and from there it was

like when the time came and it was and the community was saying hey make us a game you know it made sense right we we just work was really interesting so I put out a video to say okay fateless games is born and you know we're now starting to do the the pre-work to to produce our first game and we've got such a trust from this community we had this Outreach of investors from the community yeah saying we would love to be involved in fateless is that even an opportunity um so our first kind of precede round the majority of that was actually through accredited investors but from the community people that you know our community is a slightly older demographic of gamer sort of 35 Plus generally and you know a lot of them that play this style of games they're in business you know they're they're you'll be surprised by some of the big hitters that play the style of game and yeah we ended up raising $6 million in like a 10-week period really in in 2023 we've been told so many times since that that's like how did you a to do

it's all about his Magnetic Personality I'm sorry I'm not sure I can be the personality get out of here yeah but it's been brilliant so since then you know we've built a fantastic team we've almost got this like fomo approach of people joining our team ex riers ex Microsoft developers ea uh it's just been fantastic so all through connections honestly we come to these events like Pocket Gamer or GDC connect with me right with you connect with but I would have hung out with you anyway cuz you're so cool but I just didn't see it when I thought I thought you were just talking about oh we're g to prototype we're gonna do a game I didn't see all of this in the background how you smartly built the Community First I mean everyone you talk to out there they're saying you have to have a community for your game what do we do we need a community manager we need everything and they have to backwards engineer it you did first and and actually what people tend to do

is just like okay we built this game we need to build a community let's go and find an influencer that can help us do it yeah whereas just need a bunch of numbers right work but whereas this is like the passion from within we're building a game that we love to to play and like the influencer I me is absolutely genuine in this project rather than it's like a Bolton which will'll get some traction but there not like a true love of their it's not something like a passion project so yeah for us it's it's I think it's that that kind of like real element to what we're doing and the community are absolutely behind us we do like a uh we do two YouTube videos on our fateless YouTube channel a week one is like a podcast where we invite people on from the industry uh and one is more like a Dev Diaries showing people what it actually takes to make a game and you know this is how we take a a 3D model from base right the way to finish okay this is what animating looks like this is what creating a cinematic looks like cuz when you get down and dirty until like the details of it it is it is a lot I mean

people love to love to hear like well how do you do that how does it get from concept to you know Inception want to live the dream I mean I spoke with so many Indies I spoke with one and he's like yeah you know we're we're we're four people and uh we they came across a concept because we all know that like IP that's old has a new life you don't even have to rethink it and you could imagine people like that saying yeah I can I can do this I'll watch Simon I'll figure it out but but also the community all my living through the build themselves so many times we get comments around it feels like I'm involved in your team because we see you know we do an art attack like once a week where right here's our new 2D concepts for Our Heroes our games a hero collector by the way so it's you kind of collecting heroes from mythology and it's it's all characters that people would would recognize you know like Anubis and Zeus and Thor Le 100% um so so they see interpretation of those Heroes and get really great

reactions but they feel like they're living in the game development themselves part of the process gets this real like long-term buying honestly from from our player base so so yeah I mean we're we're kind of moving towards a beta um which is really exciting we've already got you know tens of thousands of people signed up to that um and we're we're looking to launch this year so yeah heard that I'll be I'll be watching for the launch I'll be watching for that what's the impression that people have when you go to them with this concept because I have to admit that I was just thinking had a great time with you guys in Helsinki it was on my list to get back in touch with you but I didn't and then Adam's like yeah I'm talking these great influencers like oh yeah who are they and then it's like oh oh you and it was it wasn't meant in that way but but I'm sure that like in the industry because you know let's face it our industry is a little bit you know it can be off the wall and off the charts and you go up and you go there you know in your sweater and say hi

I'm a real guy but I got I got a kick-ass Community do do they think that you've been uh nipping [Music] something well I I think there's probably an element of I can't really believe it until I see it but then actually when you see it it's like well this is real and you know the community that we've got they're an you know slightly older demographic like they just want to they they want to see someone enjoying what they enjoy and you know we spoke about it a little bit earlier but you know this this demographic they tend to stick with games for a long period of time and you know they'll stick with influencers that they like for a long period of time as well so I think it's a different T yeah it's almost a different take really um you know I'm not the like a Tik Tock you know that's absolutely not my style I am long form like we're not recording but yeah you know consistently I put out a video every single day for

for basically 3 years you know people know what they're going to get from my content uh it's informative it's educational but also we have fun you know we do live streams where where we just do fun experiences and that's generally what people want they want to sort of break away from their day-to-day work life they just want to enjoy the game they're playing and yeah I mean what's great as well about you know what we've done at HH gaming is we've actually started to build into more like a team and a brand so originally was me but now we've got a number of influencers within HH gaming and they support what we're doing at fatless as well and it's you know there's almost this kind of like overriding hype from that group of people that already play this style of game anyway that you know God Forge which is going to be our first title is going to be the next game that comes into this genre and takes over you know that the whole kind of dream of a game made by Gamers you know tested by Gamers and for the people with the people like that type of stuff yeah and but it's it's done in a Real Fashion you know

it's not kind of just like Words yeah it's that's absolutely what we're doing so what do we really love about these games what type of nostalgia can we bring back from from games that we've loved in the past and how do we make sure that we kind of bring that special Source into what we're building and you know so far all the play testing has just been fantastic you know we're getting really great Vibes so you know and that's rewarding for me like people say what do you want from this I just want to make a really great game that people absolutely love to play like you know we've already been successful in business this for me is about I'd love to just have hundreds of thousands millions of players that absolutely love the game and you know and given us great feedback so that we can you continue to create spirals it has its own Dynamic and you can almost let it go to the community in a way as well yeah well by the way this is like I think this is going to be required soon in a sense right I think I think that if 2024 was the year of the fan this is going to be the year of the true fan like there's so so much it's really hard Discovery is

going to be really really hard right the faster things can be made the easier it is to use AI to to commoditize a lot of these things it's like if you don't have someone that you're looking to as your as your for your taste right what am I what am I going to get into all right I really trust Simon I know that he's not going to lead me astray if he says that this is a cool game I'm going to try it when there's so many games coming out thousands of games tens of thousands of games coming out a year how do you pick this is how you're going to pick and like and I think but again going back to what you were saying earlier it's not like something that's it's not something like okay hey we've made a game we're a developer and we're going to reach out to this random influencer that you know they kind of like these games try find the fit with your game someone who's in it's in I I I just I legitimately think that this is that this is the next evolution of the way gaming is going to be yeah that's what he thinks Daniel now you're putting it together as a brand right you've got the team and you smartly did not go for celebity so congratulations for that I am so sick of that so sick of that um you know know and the the the sort of like the don't

call us we'll call you guys of gaming you kept it real what are you going to do to take it to that next level because you got a launch coming up so what does that look like absolutely so we know that we've got this incredible snowball at the top of the hill ready to go with our established audience I think the goal to start off with is to get the game to a point where we're proud of it um because I guess as a brand new studio we've also got an ex extremely high level of EXP expectation for what we're going to be delivering because we've got so many eyes on the project from day one so it's it's hard in a way to make sure that we meet the levels but we also know what the the um Community are going to look for and the where we need to make sure that we can't cut any corners and we can't kind of um uh I guess miss things out which are going to really be criticized and judged at the same time we know that we're not perfect and in fact by sharing this journey um with the guys uh on through the YouTube channels

and things like that we've had to make pivots in in the design and you know we've owned up to that we've shared it with the community and brought them along for it but obviously that will only get us so far the the the size of our community and things like that is great but it's not enough to really break into the market and create longevity for um us as a studio as a whole and that's why we're putting a massive amount of um uh time and effort into making sure that we've got the metrics right working with the right U UA partners and we've got incredible uh Team behind us who's uh you know literally industry leaders when it comes to user acquisition and stuff like that who have specifically worked in this genre and allowed us to utilize I guess the the amount of budget that we've got internally um but also I guess the influence um that we've got in terms of our reach uh but make sure that we're capitalizing on every possible opportunity to to kind of really stretch out that budget because we're going up

against the big boys at the end of the day these guys have got millions and millions and millions to spend every month in in in user acquisition um and we're not at that level but we have got the unfair advantage of this incredible Community behind us what's interesting is when a game launches in this genre they launch through our platform so in effect we well clearly we own that so you know so what we can do is literally just do a full takeover of our site um you know and and basically yeah at least put the our best foot forward and and we get a real kind of like I guess we attract a lot of influences in in the space because almost like the Hedge in the bets that this is going to be the next big game that they can explode with you know every every content creator on YouTube that's that follows games like this they're looking for okay what's going to be the next Trend exactly it's their livelihood you know we saw it I think really well in with hoyse when they've done kind of like ition impact into honai star and

basically that's what that's what we want to do is attract that type of of creator that wants to grab like the next big thing and we want to you know we want to make sure that that's us well and we're building tools specific to content creators to make sure that that they are supported in that Journey right so I think that's one of the big things I mean uh I don't know when you say tools what do you mean like like so I can create as well and like give it to you and support your effort or or get or get a REV share or how what was it like exactly so so like if you look at U if you look at supercell right they I don't know if you know this but they have over 100,000 they have incred 100,000 yes off the charts but why is that it's because they do such a good job supporting the creators those creators and actually um you know we're very well connected to to AMG to uh you know one one of the co-founders is actually on our board and so okay get it he they get it they understand what we're supposed to do they've talked through we've talked through like okay what are the great features that are

really helping creators to energize creators to do content on on um on on us and to actually like be able to to sustain their livelihood Hood because that that's what they need right we need to say hey if you come in and you're you're going to be uh making content on our game you can keep doing this right and the more people that can do that the better we're building the game with with almost like creators in mind so some of our our kind of game modes become extremely streamable um there's like real fun moments within within some of our kind of like Road lights and that type of thing you know from experience that's really what draws an audience so if if you're creating a game which is which is really good for influencers and creators then that enables them to to kind of blow up to a higher level as well so there's really a lot of different elements that you're pulling together to give yourself the best possible chance to have this kind of like super hit a centralized place where people can come and and actually know how well they're doing what kind of share they're getting you know like uh

did you build that is that your IDE it's it's being built it's being built right now so so it is not it is not built yet but that but we we we have we have plans to do that and make sure that that people again are are inspired and supported because that's what I hear all the time it's like yeah we want to have creators but you know they want to see they want to have like a feedback loop if they know what they're doing then they can do more of it if they see what they're earning then they'll do more of it as well but you know it can't be that black box and it can't be you know agency Creator and it won't be that's not scalable that won't happen I was going to say to point out as well one thing that we've established within our community already is almost a base of new content creators who are trying to find their way into the space and we've actually got five or six channels already popped up there specifically just brand new content creators covering our games now to help them out and kind of help them grow and Foster as we start to drop more information to them we're actually spending time one-on-one with these creators and actually teaching

them how you know to create uh thumbnails how to engage with YouTube audiences how to improve the quality of videos that they do and we do probably every two weeks to three weeks or so we'll have a live call with all of the content creators that are in our space uh and it's just a private space where they can kind of ask us from a Content creation side of things how can they improve how can they reach a wider audience because we know how much value there is in that as we start to grow and get out to launch and we're already sharing their work so now we want to be known as a studio that's going to support them not just in terms of you know a financial payback as a REV share if they do well but also we want to share their videos to our to our audience we've been able to move a lot of the HH gaming kind of membership group across to the fateless audience already so you know on our on our socials we're sharing their videos so that at least they start to gain some traction early cuz really they're doing videos before we've got a product but but they're they're talking about a lot of the things that we talked about with the way developing Simon's leaks for

example yeah yeah I'm like we're like Simon yeah we do a podcast and people ask me questions and I'm excited to to share what we're doing with the game and these guys are like shouldn't really be talking about those features yet because we're not quite ready to to share that but you know for me I'm just excited about what we're doing and and I think that just comes across really with very genu yeah yeah it's it's it's fun building a game is fun yeah it's also super smart the whole time we're talking I'm thinking you have figured out how to cash in on the K factor and I was one of these people when people would talk about the K factor and it was like I was like the worm fuzzy yeah there's a k factor and it it belongs in the equation no no no that's not something we can measure guess what you just cashed in on it you prove you proved you proved that it matters that is so cool yeah I think I I just think being genuine and you know and enjoying what you do that

just comes across anyway right so and and people feed off that as well so in the same way in my general Walk of Life I want to be around people that I've got positive energy that I can feed from and and you know creative people that that inspire me um you know we've done the same thing at fateless and HH gaming we surround oursel with awesome people I don't know how to create a website I don't know how to to to write code for a game but ultimately as long as you can get amazing people around you you can you can create awesome Brands you can you can have great businesses um as long as they feel like those people are inspired and heading a direction which is is super cool so you know for me that's that's the main Vibe is and a platform play if you think about it cuz I'm thinking the whole time it's like yeah you're sort of like you're sort of like like the Tik Tok for the common man right the tools the tools are the smart and the platform players we've had a number of we've had a number of different people that have approached us and said well we actually yeah it's like well have you

considered publishing games for other people we're like kind of similar to to the early thing well we're not really a game developer now we're like well we're not really a publisher it's like well but we do have a great platform you go which could publish games as long as we feel like it would fit our community so yeah maybe that's a play uh I don't know next year maybe that's next year yeah yeah I could see you doing it Simon both all of you guys I could totally see it and it's so it's so so intelligent that it's almost like why didn't we think of this one danger not just insightful dangerous because it you can do so many things with it you know you're gonna have you're gonna have people banging at your door yeah and one of the interesting things so the tools we create for our community right now you we get a lot of data so we we understand what events perform really well in games we understand players interactions with our tools and you know how much time they're spending in different areas of games

what they really enjoy so we're able to leverage that data and understand what we want to do when we build our our platform and our games you we know what what things to build into our game and what things actually just are not working and yeah so I think you know in this this world data is kind of King right so very valuable having having dat for like 400,000 members it's it's huge actually it's it's huge and what's really smart is you're getting the data people are volunteering it to you they're like yeah I'm using the tools I'm using the platform I'm enjoying the experience it's almost like they they're almost enjoying it more than when the game actually comes yeah yeah it's like it's like a game within a game almost like the tools help them optimize a lot of these people they're they're people that want to minmax their experience okay so it's kind of like I want to put some time in to do something which which enables me to perform better than I should be able to that's what our tools try and help people to do um so yeah it's an it's an Optimizer that's that's what we call it but you know the first

question we get is well are you going to build one of these for your game are you going to have your tools all available for for God Forge and you of course that's that's an extension of that brand because it makes a lot of sense you know people now really trust what we do on that side so yeah yeah it's uh I think that's it trust being genuine um having fun with it as well and you know and then having the right people to sort of bring things to life and all of this kind of comes through in the way that we run the studio as well I mean I think that it's it's really important culture culture is I think why we've been so successful Beyond obviously we built this great platform and and you know you you've got the trust of the community but the reason I think we're getting just talent that I'm I'm just humbled to be working with yeah is because you know again we we everything comes through and we we run the studio exactly the way that you're talking about it's like it's all about being trust trusting and positive and inspiring and trying to help help people um you know I think people just get that

this is something special and it's the next way that studios are going to be built and they want to be a part of it so it's like yeah sometimes when we're interviewing people that looking to join the studio and they start to talk about the games they've worked on in the past you know and it's like my favorite games from from my past it's like oh yeah Star Wars Galaxies turo EverQuest NBA Jam like super cool games and and we're like wow we definitely want this guy like and the cool guys as well and we like yeah we want this guy on the team like how do we fit this in is it going to make sense for us financially and all that type of stuff cuz obviously we are still running a business as well but yeah we've just been so so lucky and we've got um the CH yeah guys building our cinematic like the opening cinematic for the game uh ex riers you know built the cinematics for or the theem award win Emy award basically R yeah League of Legends kind of like season starter cinematics that was there work they've worked a lot on valerant and then we were like look this

is our vision and honestly we couldn't believe who we were talking to and and you know we worked with them to build a cinematic and we're like this is amazing they're like yeah it's amazing but we need to do about like the attention to detail is next level so yeah it's just it's and they're awesome people you know so originally we were kind of working with them in a sense of okay you going to do this piece of work for us as a cinematic and then we part ways but they love the environment so much in our our culture they're like look we just need to find a role how do we work how do how do we work together long term and so now uh you know Chief marketing officer Mike Barry is Mike yeah and and he's come on board full-time and you know part of his role is now the Cinematic but then he's also working with us on the the marketing front as well on the assets and stuff so um I mean yeah maybe talk to and then so like Jerry who is the Emmy award-winning uh director uh at Riot so the big thing that that he's amazing at is he is he's a great

listener and he's a great connector and so like so like all the thing whenever whenever he's in the room you're just kind of like everyone's kind of looking and waiting for him to kind of like come in and say something right so he he comes in and and I think that we really vibed really well with him and so we were actually at at at Gamescom yeah and he just said hey hey sham um you need to meet this guy Dan I'm like if you tell me I need to meet this guy end the story right let's do it uh and so he connects me with Dan Borth and Dan Bor um he you know he s sold his his Studio to key keywords he you know he's been working in the industry for we've mentioned some of the games that he's worked on and he said hey I've got a team of five really senior guys and I'd love to I'd love to work with you and we were like so that was the thing we were literally talking about like the day before exactly this joking like you know just like haha wouldn't it be great if we had an amazing Senior Team and and they wanted to and you know I guess if you ask for it it comes so but but I think you send out that kind kind of vibe of look we want to kind of I think

our superpowers is networking really effectively when we're at this type of event okay and and really kind of spending time with people so you know yeah you should meet this person you should meet this person and you know sometimes it's literally just a connection on the day and sometimes it's okay well let's go to a party and then we meet five more people that um are really interest in and have been around the industry for a long time and you know when you're then looking for a role or looking for you know partner to do a certain thing so oh hold on a minute why don't I just reach back out to Peggy or or Adam or whoever it is and say look do you know anybody that would be really great for this and that's really I think pretty much all of our hires we haven't done any any recruiting at all it's all just been recommendations yeah and so they love the culture I'm just curious is it is it in a studio or is it remote or how do you bring that corporate culture you know the culture together because uh it sounds to me like when it's all sort of said and done and you've launched your your actual game

you can think about maybe a series on Netflix on just the corporate culture there you go there you go exactly yeah we are fully remote in the office yeah currently we're fully remote okay but we're actually we engage so much so you know we're we live on Discord as a group and you know we'll do a daily stand up always camera on um talk about activities we're doing for the day any challenges that people got we try and support there and then um but then there's just a lot of iners say in person on call meetings where you know where where we're kind of like working through different challenges or you know roundtables on certain subjects um but then when we do have an event like Pocket Gamer or when we're at GDC the local group to that area will always bring them together and we'll do a couple of days kind of like you know in person Deep dive um but yeah a lot of it is about the personal connection rather than MH you know obviously do some some business talk but generally it's it's

about let's just make sure that we're we're like continue to build our culture because we're we're you know digital native Community communities essentially so like building that private Discord that we have the big thing is that you know like you said we have daily standups but we have everybody we have like different channels for different things okay so you know we have an AFK Channel where people talk about their home lives yeah we have like an out of office Channel where people talk about you know why they're out of office everything is very like we we cultivate a cult Cult of of transparency of being communicating you know we have like we have voice channels and and video channels where people just hop in so our devs are always talking hopping in hey what do you think about this let me fix that our artists are are sitting together and doing concepting together and checking it's also people fun the artists are making like a 2d concept I don't know of Aphrodite or something and and we're like a this is really cool and then you get some of the devs coming in there and it's like I really love the way you've done this or have you considered they get like mood board together you consider doing this instead and it's really collaborative

even like across department so I think because everyone's just so they just want to create such a great product at the end of the day and it's you know we're all play testing the game uh whether it's uh you know whether it's from QA right the way through to Art through every department they want to create a great experience for the player and it it always comes back to that it's kind of like are we actually bringing the fun in this part of the game right yeah and you know it's easy just to think is this going to monetize well but actually if you just have a really genuinely fun game to play that people want to stay on then that will naturally happen platform people want to be a part of that's right platform that will do it too so you're thinking Daniel you know building a brand out of this normally Simon would not be scalable right but you normally but I think he's the type of guy who could maybe maybe pulled yeah yeah he's got it he's got me but you know you got to build a around you have to scale him what does that mean because you've got other

influencers you got a platform and you probably have some merch I don't know maybe we can have like Simon sweaters I don't know we have we have it's it's funny you say that I think because of the age bracket that we're in historically we've not had a lot of success with merch I I think I think we've probably given away more of it than we've ever sold but um I I I think the main things in in terms of not just scaling say Simon and and building brand around Simon is more scaling the team and upskilling the team and that's why especially at HH gaming one of the first things that we did um was take on content creators who were in our space but growing and showing real effort and and energy towards it um and and creating content which the the they obviously resonated very well with the community uh but they maybe weren't making enough money to do it full-time so what we did is we brought them into our kind of network we gave them a full-time salary and still encouraged

them to grow their platforms and obviously they still get their income we don't take any income from YouTube or anything like that as a part of it we encourage them to grow we pay them to grow and as um I I I guess a repercussion of that our audience grows as well so we it's it's a mutual benefic uh beneficial thing we get higher quality content like I guess within our platform um and uh they obviously get exposure to our Network to to to grow but they've got that kind of stability that they don't need to worry about the finances they can just focus on great creating great content and great quality true and and and that's that's that's basically our goal is you know I think it's easy with the speed that our world moves at and you know these past five years have gone by in a blink from us building HH gaming from day one to now you know scaling fatless um it's it would be very easy for us to forget where we've come from and I think you know the number one thing that we've done to keep ourselves grounded is just remember that the

community gave us this opportunity and we're incredibly lucky to have it and we can't ever forget that so that everything that we do is specifically to give back to those people who who who allowed us to be here today so basically we want to help create the next group that want to be an HH gaming in our in our space so we we want to make sure that they've got access to you know the right links for our data to be able to create their tools for for a community that they're going to build want to make sure that yeah just because ultimately like you say it can't it it just wouldn't work if it's if it's just my face trying to grow a brand that doesn't scale to the level that that a game would need to scale to I'm going to try I'm going to try like there's plenty of hours in a day yeah that's it yeah there be like thousand AI M around but no it's we want to absolutely help people do that we want people to have that success as well and you know be able to do this full time and and to really create a living from it so um yeah cuz for us what we

realize is building Community is is really how you kind of get sticky players right so people that want to stay around for a long time all of our best experiences playing games in the past it comes from playing with friends I've played I played Clash of Clans for probably two years longer than I should have done because I didn't want to let my my friends down my down yeah and and I think that whole kind of a lot of the systems we're building in our game for God Forge we're like how do we make sure that this wraps around playing together building Community uh you know even the Integrations to things like having a a direct Discord integration into the game so that people can talk properly together and you know decent chat systems like all of that's just really important to us it's it's it's kind of where Our Roots have come from but um we just think it's it's the most effective way for this demographic of players to really enjoy the experience um yeah you know if we was targeting Maybe the kind of the 18yearold sort of group

might be different because you know that's that's all about low attention spans and everything to be one second but actually that's not edit all they're going to handle actually I had a an editor once who came on board and I was like I want to kind of change my style a bit and he had edited for Tik Tok previously he did this edit and I was just like whoa that's not the style we wanted like you know and I was just kind of like bouncing I was just like these cuts are C like my audience cannot handle these cuts like we need to sty that back a ton like that's not what we're after soad glad to hear that and also glad to hear I mean no insulting to the industry I realize it's got its time and place but when I hear people say yeah we're going to scale our influencer program because we're going to have ai generated influencers they can talk in any language and they'll look at you and and they'll have eye contact I'm like yeah okay you're not you're not drinking that Kool-Aid right no no that's not the way we're going no no no real people you know real communities and again it comes back to our demographic a player you know that's that's not what

they need that's not what they want they they want to be able to relate to somebody that enjoys doing something that they enjoy to do yeah and again that might be that might be be for other Studios and I'm sure that's going to work great for them but that's that's not a direction yeah and that was not an insult to the AI companies because I I do I do I do see everything has a time and place yeah there's absolutely plenty of great Tools in fact you know a lot of our velocity in development comes from really great senior developers using tools to assist it's absolutely like the right direction for Studios but it it has to be done in a way that you've got the professional that understands their role really well then they're using the tools to support them to basically do some of the menial tasks really fast yeah and got it so we we're seeing a lot of I I guess acceleration from that really in ter develop yeah it's been it's not even work talking to you guys it's so much

fun and I'm thinking the whole time because we're down here in the cinema room which is like this chill room which could be like your boardroom or something just it's got that bondes feeling to it I'm just thinking you know maybe someday we'll be doing a screening of one of your of one of your movies because there it's in there right merch merch happens we we met at roio con you know what happens when you've got a brand and when you have a community things happen so I've loved connecting with you now I've got a whole different view of what you do I thought I thought you were just like got I'll get one I'll get one I I went the whole Simon fashion line Dress for Success there you go guys awesome I can see why you're doing what you're doing and obviously you love what you're doing and hey I loved interviewing you so I think I've had a great great day with you guys you are awesome may I say than put it in there pleas so much all the best thank you

cheers 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 saltz and that's a wrap until next week