Why This CEO Moved His Gaming Studio from London to Abu Dhabi

[Music] Boris kov CEO and co-founder of hype Masters welcome to the podcast thank you so much for having me here I a big fan okay and uh I've learned so much by listening to you guys um and uh entertained every week well thank you uh now it's my time to learn from you so uh who are you and what are you doing here cuz we're in Abu Dhabi I am a Founder who has decided to relocate to Abu Dhabi and to have my offices based here but not just any offices the whole of the leadership team is here the whole executive team is here as well as a few developers so what we do here is we develop games and uh we do it out of Abu Dhabi which we are very proud of yeah I I mean here's the thing the reason why I'm here is actually because of you so like it's like almost like a not even a butterfly effect there's some some direct correlations because I met you uh

in istanb and think istanb event yeah and you were like hey man like yourself and this and that and you're like I'm I'm in Abu like in Abu Dhabi like what are you doing there and then you explained to me like all the things that's happening your life and then I started started following you on Instagram you know you have this Iron Man shirt and everything so you're clearly doing a lot of sports I'm like your life doesn't look that bad let me look into this Abu Dhabi thing um and um and you know got to know people here connection and we're recording this just after Google move event that happened here in Abu Dhabi so my voice is kind of gone after a couple of days uh but you know thanks to you I'm here and it this this office space where we're right now creative Hub in Abu Dhabi on AAS Island looks amazing yeah it's pretty incredible what they've built here for the community yeah so this is a a podcasting Studio here in Creative Hub we're walking through and like of course I'm getting impressed because all the chairs and all the screens and all the headphones that are placed are razor I'm like okay you guys so like it's a

serious place we we do serious business here yeah yeah no no it's a it's a it's it's a really cool City but let's talk a little bit more of your company sure um so hype Masters was established in 2019 um I've been living in London for 20 years before moving to Abu Dhabi so I established it there but also we had a development office in St Petersburg in Russia we bootstrap the company with my co-founder who is a very talented developer unlike me I'm a business guy I worked at Facebook and unity and Goldman Sachs before uh starting my own gaming studio uh but my co-founder is an actual developer he is from St Petersburg himself we've decided to do casual games very different from what he was doing he was doing uh back than midcore but after doing few um few attempts on hyper casual we've decided to that it's not a thing that I wanted to um it absolutely wasn't hitting home with me in terms of like

um what it requires it requires a lot of prototyping it requires a lot of testing and we were mildly successful with a couple of games but I just didn't like the burnout of the team that gets after trying this mechanic and this mechanic and so many of them don't work I thought that I wanted to create a business that's a lot more sustainable and can be there for years and fun for me to manage and to grow after a bit of thinking and after a bit of market research we've decided to settle on bringing realtime strategy to mobile um well actually bringing realtime strategy to freeo play Because as of this year we are also uh released on Steam on PC we've gone through like a major revamp of graphics and gameplay to to actually adapt to the steam platform it's been for years since we' started developing World War armies we released it two years after you know first lines of code it was really bare minimum it was just core gam playay a bit of monetization but as of today uh the game is quite Rich uh it has a lot of live Ops we're growing it in

marketing spans we're growing it in Revenue every month I'm pretty happy uh to be honest with you especially after moving to Abu Dhabi I found a new home and I found you know a new space and new challenge in Triathlon and um yeah that's uh me and my company in a nutshell so let's talk a little bit like you spent 20 years in London uh what motivated this decision to relocate from London to Abu Dhabi there were a few events motivating me to actually establish a studio in AB I so uh firstly a very well a tragic event of 2022 February uh as we all know the war started between Russia and Ukraine and having an office in St Petersburg was not feasible any longer for us we are an international company with International stuff so we had to shut down the office but what's more is that since Co I had all my employees uh remote pretty much um and honestly I hated it I'm an office person I like going and seeing people

face to face I believe in Creative collaboration in an office uh space and uh for me it has always been this thing like yes I had to grow the team remotely but I really wanted to have a home and until we moved to ABAB we didn't have that home so in 2022 I had to make few choices right so what I could have done is like relocate a few Executives to London and then have like create a studio somewhere else Armenia or Georgia or Georgia like a lot of the companies did uh but for me I thought it was a great opportunity to actually be with my people with developers as well not just hide away in some forest in the UK it was so amazing to see that Abu Dhabi was doing something in gaming back then it was still like very very early days I'd say like we were the only like we were the one of the first movers I would say audio mob was the first one the guys like I've met them they struggled a little bit because they were were the first one so they took all the punches

and I just came in on the fertile grounds you know and for me I was like okay so here's the thing this place is has high living standards amazing to live in um really good for families this place is trying to grow gaming and I actually can be part of a journey where something new is truly growing bigger yeah part of something bigger part of a community um and part of the early influence you know you you you don't have that chance anywhere in the world right now if you are in the UK you have all these developers who are 50 60 year old uh you know they've established rock stars Cod Masters it's an established Community for a me for a guy like me like in his early 30s to break through and you know to to Really push something oh come on it's impossible it's like trying to break into British aristocracy when you're a Russian guy so it's impossible here I okay so I am one of the early

Studios I can really shape this place to be in the way that I think is the best for this country for this community for its people learning from all around the world from practices in the UK in Canada Finland turkey all the programs so it can combine the best and truly be you know this rocket ship that takes off in the next decade and be part of that put in a new place so that's how I looked at it I looked at it as a place where I can settle for decades and be part of this founding community and you know have my business grow with it essentially so that was I think like you know as well as neutrality of the country which accepts Russian people accepts Ukrainian belarussian anyone it's a Switzerland of our modern day it doesn't take sides it is absolutely neutral and welcoming and that is the again that's the third part High living standards yes Gaming Community yes but also its neutrality its acceptance and its culture of um

welcoming people it's amazing on parallels I've been coming to UA since 2010 this is like Singapore yeah quite honestly like it's the it's a very rule based society like you break the rules that's you're out that's it that's it so uh and if you play by the rules it doesn't care where you come from who you are you play by the rules absolutely and that's the beauty of it you know like I can let my kid play outside without think having second thoughts game devs here at heroic laabs we know that great gameplay is what players love but integrating metagame features like challenges progression and rewards is crucial for retention and monetization but coding them is a tedious and timeconsuming process that's why top Studios have turned to hero from hero clabs hero provides a complete Suite of battl tested metagame features that are quick to implement letting you spend more time on the core gameplay experience ready to ship fully featured engaging games check out hero today at heroic labs.com

um I wanted to talk about two different things actually let's rewind back how did you hear about Abu Dhabi because when you told me about Abu Dhabi I'm like what are you talking about and by that time I've done I've been to Dubai you know multiple times and it never really even crossed my mind to go to Abu Dhabi you know funny enough until June 2022 I thought Abu Dhabi was just like you know a village I really had zero idea I had zero idea honestly and um thankfully uh we have a great investor g capital they have invited James Hart who was leading ad gaming back then to give a talk about what Abu Dhabi is and what Abu Dhabi games can offer and um you know we basically had maybe 10 to 12 companies on this call all um all companies of gy capital the ones that they've invested in and uh yeah I

thought okay so James is a British guy so something relatable there um you know sounded very interesting and basically the next week I flew in I was like dude I have to see it with my own eyes because you know like this sounds too good to be true um I flew in uh stayed in the hotel where we had the move Google uh yeah and I was impressed like I was like F1 track really a w yeah that's okay it was 100 bucks per night man like literally oh wow yeah so uh in Su that was summer remember summer in Abu Dhabi no one is here 57 plus 57 yeah plus not 57 plus 40 45 57 uh yeah go on uh so yeah I was I was like you know wow this looks really developed this actually looks much better than Dubai because I know I've been to Dubai many times and Dubai is absolutely crowded um you have so much traffic actually for me right now going to Dubai is always

stressful because Abu Dhabi is much more chilled uh you know it's uh look at you taking sides already I'm not taking sides it's the reality just kidding Dubai is like exciting for younger generation you know for a generation uh who wants to go out who wants to party this is really good for them for me I want to do business I want to do Sports and spend time with my children that's it and I don't want to do anything else so and make games oh well do business is yeah for me it's making games yeah um so okay so you find out that through about this location through your investor yeah and you fly in you go to the one of the best hotels in the city uh you stay here like oh this is not too shabby hot but not not that bad yeah um what are the sort of challenges that you faced afterwards as as yourself personally relocating because it doesn't matter where you relocate relocation especially with a family is always different and so what are the the challenges you

faced yourself and you faced with your team yeah memory eroles all the bad moments and you remember all the good ones much better so I'm a little bit biased I I must say I would say that for me personally we've just moved from London to New Forest so we were kind of like sitting on our suitcases anyway so it was a little easier to do that uh well of course I had to sell all my car Etc all the logistics thanks to my wife she took care of it so I could concentrate on the business side um I think for me it was a breeze because I've managed to establish my company get my golden Visa uh everything within a month oh wow and uh I think like hearing from others it was extremely fast and it was because I was super interested and I was actually the founder moving a lot of the companies who want to move here they don't send Founders or Founders don't move they just want to establish an office here and I think that's a like a critical

difference between myself and maybe some of the other Journeys is if you're not here it can be hard because the local culture is that you need to show up face to face and show The Human Side of you establish a relationship and then things move very fast uh of course email is good it allows you to follow up it allows you to you know but this is not how business is done here and uh it has to be respected and for me uh you know that was the critical difference in terms of emplo emplo I'd say that uh people who didn't have families or who were younger uh they struggled a little bit moving here for me like it's a it's a very convenient place my son goes to school which is like 5 minutes away from my home the bus takes him you know I have um a house helper come in and you know like really take care of all the domestic stuff so me and my wife don't argue over who is cleaning the dishes um for me it's really nice I can concentrate on making games on the

business side on Sports and that's what I want from life for younger people who are really looking what they want from life it can be challenging because you need to go out of your comfort zone to establish a Social Circle because Social Circles just don't appear out of nowhere yeah I got you yeah it's it's still it's a little bit different here it's like unless you go out of your comfort zone it's harder to kind of feel that the city is alive so for me I was very lucky to find a local Tron group with who I train and you know they have locals there they have people who are expad and we formed a nice community and that has been like that's when I started feeling happy people who don't have that who just sit at home and wait for something to happen it might not be a good place for them and I think that's I've lost some of my guys like they've moved here they relocated and then they relocated to Serbia or whatever because you know they can hike there there are bars they can go here other other people here who

have families they're extremely happy like they they're having time of their lives because the schools are great and you know the life is a lot more organized here and that's what's great to see so I would say that for today Abu Dhabi um you really need to understand who you are and what you want from your life and then it can be your happy place if you're in search of yourself and your soul then it might be difficult to settle here so basically if you have kids and you in that between 30 to 40 Zone when your happiness according to all the uh the studies is at its lowest cuz you're so busy with building a family and then you know building your career especially at the 30 to 40 you're moving to director and oper CEO and whatnot uh then this place is ideal cuz like everything is is fixed I'm in that zone I'm like oh that sounds amazing so exactly just focus on what I thought you were sarcastic when you were talking to me like when I was explaining you my lifestyle I thought you were a little sarcastic uh yeah I think people can

relate there are different phases that we we have in our life like I had my phase before the 30s moved in the city and so forth with my then girlfriend now wife and it's it's a different phase and then uh those who have young kids understand what the uh how different it is and how different you are as a person yeah when when you're raising uh small children and how important things like safety and and help yeah become uh because it's yeah it's hard to focus and or access to healthcare I take that for example schools healthare course I want to hear about the practicalities for sure but I wanted to talk a little bit more about the the ecosystem because it's very young here and it takes sometimes decades for ecosystem to really emerge uh it's clear that the government is investing into building the ecosystem like just being in this building alone and uh and you know for context like today when when we're walking around here like weren't the only company that is kind of checking out because Google move happened there's a lot of CEOs and suitors and they've been you know looking at like huh should

we relocate some of our folks here so there's uh a lot of uh International Talent around uh UK especially is big now yep uh but like what are the advantages of of being based out of Abu Dhabi as a gaming studio like what do you feel are your advantages yeah there are uh quite a few advantages I'd say um for me it's access to diverse pool of talent my game director is french guy X Ubisoft who actually led the local Ubisoft office uh in their products for 10 years um so would I be able to hire him anywhere else probably not but he's now an integral part of the team my main marketing guy is from Jordan uh he is absolutely insane in the fact that he can do both creatives and managing campaigns at the same time so one of a kind guy so I think this place has unlocked some of the talent to me uh that wasn't um possible before for whatever reason you can also bring Talent quite easily the Visa process is

very simple yeah I'm assuming like very simple you can bring a person from China you can bring person from India from Pakistan from Turkey from that that but also like if you think about um hiring local people like when you are in Europe you are prone to hire European people right and I feel like you know Mina uh has a huge um talent pool which is not usually and I feel that of course because the industry is Young here Etc but there are some exceptional people uh who easily are hungrier than Europeans who don't want you know four 4 day weeks who are ready to fight for results and for me that's also a big part yes I can attract people high living standards so that's really good but also I can hire local people and I think that's also a very important part uh another thing that's good about this place is again it's a thriving community so for me to have a

studio here there are events happening all the time you know uh this place is highly regarded amongst all business Community investors alike so we are in the season now in November slash I would say until April May where everyone is coming here so for me it's much makes things much easier in my life I have to only go to GDC and then the rest of the year I just stay here and everyone comes to me so it's very practical in that sense as well but there's not a ton of studios here there's like a Ubisoft with like something hundred of people in the studio there's and and other companies have small setups like Unity has a small setup some other ones have smaller ones right you don't actually see them uh but there are bigger studios here I know there's social Quantum with like maybe 30 people here I know uh my games uh with a small uh small office you know compared to their overall number of employees you have month fish uh which is the creators of atomic C I don't know they maybe have 40 50 people here oh Tri

a is it a tri Tri a tria a easily AAA um so I'd say they are studios here um I I honestly want to see more like I think this place has you know a lot to offer and I was really trying to speak to Founders yesterday at the moovie event to actually tell them this is this is the place to be because I feel like you know it's uh overlooked sometimes um because people just do not know there hasn't been a ton of PR but uh I think it's coming yeah I wouldn't say it's overlooked I just had no idea yes yes I literally had no idea yeah you have to search for it now kind of yeah this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your apps Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's essential enter apps flyer the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential IAL of your marketing efforts making every ad

dollar work smarter with apps flyer that's your new reality dive deep into datadriven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app apps sler where your app's potential meets performance government is clearly investing into into gaming and has a long-term view as a part of diversification of economy um what are sort of a support that you get from the local government here as a as a Founder let's say I'm coming in I'm bringing this massive Media company for gaming just CNN CNN of gaming CNN of CNN and fox combined of gaming wow uh so uh so no or the bar stool Sports of gaming anyway coming in like what what is what are the type of a things that you would

be expecting as a as somebody who's starting a studio for example I think it depends on a studio I I do believe that different Studios get different things we got a subsidy uh for our employees to be here uh so for every head count we have a subsidy a percentage that uh we get uh as cash back from the salaries so so you give us let's say a person salary is 10K and every quarter you get x amount of percentage back on your account yeah yeah uh yeah initially we got uh offices as well to kind of help uh sell things here in y yeah yeah in this building um we got support with software you know Unity licenses uh were a part of it and uh an important part because we are unity developer I know that uh for example on real developers they have local Representatives here as well uh I think Nvidia has Representatives so that's kind of the basics uh that you get but it's already quite lot if you think about it okay so

you b so you decrease the the biggest cost that is in development by having uh cash back people shouldn't be very opportunistic about it because the living standard here is high so you do need to adjust your salary like the salary of your employees to be here uh for sure uh but overall I think it makes business sense to to be here for me again like I'm able to hire people who I wouldn't necessarily be able to hire in some European country because the taxes are phenomenally High you know like if I look into the UK you know if you're hiring like a senior leader you you'd be paying 40 50% on top well let's talk about like again from the business perspective so uh there's a lot that goes into a salary because on multiple sides like what an employer pays is very different than than the employee sees and then there's how much employee takes home of the gross salary there's like three different numbers but we only talk about the middle number nobody actually so let's talk about as

an employee like what are the side cost like is there side cost no that's the thing there's there's no income tax there's I mean there are like like as an employer so not employe employ so I would say the the biggest one is Insurance uh because every every person in the uee has to have private insurance um and that is probably a bigger cost but it's comparable to a European private insurance how much is it I have no idea what the European private insurance cost is I don't know maybe like 3K per year something like 3K per year yeah yeah I have people in the US who are like God damn it yeah exactly pay that in a month yeah yeah well it depends on what insurance you take but you know like I'm just averaging it priv okay 3K okay got it yeah yeah and that and that's basically your side costs that's basically plus you give like allowances to this allowances to that yeah like it depends on the company then you know like sometimes uh some companies can give allowances to for rication for sports the usual stuff you

know for my company at least we just pay salary uh we have this private insurance and that's pretty much that's pretty much it obviously you get well we pay for the office but that's you know in comparison to everything else it's minor yeah okay then just for the context if if a person listening to this hasn't been on the p&l side U sometimes like the higher the salary in many European countries the higher the site cost and we're talking about plus 50% sometimes even over on top of it that that you pay and that is of course seen in your burn if if your game is making you know hundreds of millions doesn't matter but if it's anywhere or less like you end up paying quite a lot for talent but that money doesn't go to the talent it it evaporat somewhere in the middle in all the other the costs I mean it does actually matter you know like I've been talking to bigger Studios who had to relocate and they chose other locations like Lithuania for example the tax like the margins just went down for companies that have done that we actually before

opening the UAE office I was considering Portugal okay as a as a place I've opened uh an entity there and I was shocked how bad it is like I was literally shocked in the sense that it takes ages to do anything it's extremely bureaucratic and slow so I guess I had to be there as well and I did I I went there a few times just to help move things but it wasn't really helping um and the taxes that you pay are again like it's double basically a person sees let's say €1,000 and actually pay €2,000 does he see any benefits of that I don't know like I really don't know yeah it's well it's the taxation so hopefully the country sees the benefits of that but not the employ well let's talk about from the uh the employee side like of course number one point is like what's the tax here yeah 0% 0% yeah there is 5% vat uh which is like when you go and buy a a bicycle whatever yeah V we all know so V is put on everything

so that's how they go so as an individual your tax percentage is zero y so if you pay me salary say your salary is 10,000 it's 10,000 it's going to be 10,000 it's like net and gross is the same thing absolutely yeah that's a very easy calculation very easy I do I think any any person can easy calculation um interesting uh what's the cost uh of living here yeah I think I'd say that cost of living is on par to European capital city um similar or just maybe a little higher but again for me you get more out of your money here because again there is more space you know like the apartments are bigger um you you get more infrastructure uh for what you pay for so I'd say it's on par with London with Paris but you just get more out of your money I'll give a story so we were at the um I forgot the name of the mall uh the Y Mall no no uh Gallery oh G yeah Galleria yeah uh so me and my wife this

was uh we were in Abu Dhabi for Christmas vacations anyways so we're here and we were at at a store and we're talking in Finnish which is a secret language nobody speaks Finnish and then the lady who worked at the store she was like oh my God you speak Finnish like came to us speaking Finnish I'm like what like cuz we normally can say whatever like nobody would understand oh my God and uh and she's like yeah I actually just moved here from London I've been living in London for 10 years now I moved here and we're like okay so and I'm I'm like I'm curious I asked like so tell me like how is it she's like okay I've been here for two months and um uh she moved with her family so she has one kid husband and I was like how does it compare to London she's like okay so like you know the salary wise is pretty much the same but I don't pay taxes so I get home more uh the best thing that she mentioned was exactly the schools that that's with with everybody so she pays less for a school here than she would have paid that she paid in London uh and the school especially

today now they Church V home private school and the school is taught by English teachers so it's kind of like the same like it's an English school but with London with anyways then she was saying that uh her commute in London was quite long yeah um with a tube and whatnot and now she says like I live actually in the skyscraper Right Next by to this small so for me it's like it it cut quite significantly and she was like yeah I mean like I can take home more so it's a it's a good phase for her life at this moment and she was like I'm going to be here for a couple years and I mentioned it to a couple locals and they're like everybody says they're going to be a couple years and they end up staying for like 15 yeah attention app and game developers are you ready to unlock the secrets behind the world's top performing apps and games with sensor Tower you get the ultimate Competitive Edge whether it's breaking into new markets fine-tuning your UA strategies or boosting monetization dive into Data like never before track Global Trends across app stores analyze Market leading inap

purchase and inap AD strategies and Benchmark your performance with real time Insight the best part sensor Tower doesn't just deliver data it helps you turn it into action with intuitive tools an expert analysis it's everything you need to make smarter faster decisions thousands of app and game Studios from Indie creators to Global Giants trust sensor Tower to help them win so why not you start your free trial today at sensor to.com that is sensor.com that's what happens like I live in a community like in this apartment block and whoever you talk to a lot of them are pilot uh FY because we live close to the airport and uh they've been thinking of moving but 15 20 years on they have

like three properties already in Abu Dhabi no one is moving no one is moving um who is this not for uh I honestly don't know like I I don't I don't have an answer to that you you just said it like it's not for people who are perhaps young who don't have families well I don't want to discourage them from exploring this place because they can maybe find something for themselves like for me it's a place where I discovered triathon I don't know whether I would have discovered it elsewhere because in London try to cycle in London you're a dead man yeah I think your word for it you're a dead man like literally it's so dangerous people in UK like this guy hates UK no I love the UK it's given me so much UK passport right yes yes I am a citizen but uh there are certain things that are really good and certain things that are a challenge like again like for me here they have a closed loop for cycling where there are no Cars and it's the loop is like one of them is 10 km

the other one is 30 km so I can just go and train outside for like as long as I can yeah so let's say you're one of the normal people and you're not doing triathlons okay what is I don't know any of them I got it so so you got your Social Circle through triathon and through that you met a lot of people who are not particularly in gaming you met like local police officers you met Engineers like just people from all cross path but what combines you is the tri and that created your Social Circle it's like people who like to torture themselves for tens of hours a week with endless cardio is that like is that the best way to to get connected like like sport is a big way I would say that in UAE in general is all about sports like there's a lot going on in terms of promoting the sport and being healthy our um operations lead she's a British lady and she's found her Social Circle through the sport as well she does more like hru stuff and a cross but here you go H home with michig uh

well okay let's say I'm not into sports let's say you know I'm like uh Sports is like mandatory evil three times a week what else like what am I doing here okay uh man you're like I don't know what people do you do like 20 hours a week so you can't even fathom the idea like it let's let's have empathy like okay okay so you can play like okay so if I think of Finland right think of Finland I think it's pretty much the same as here I'm good yeah you know in what way rough weather half of the year it's rough yeah yeah half of the year you can around that it's it's rough rough yeah half of the year it's rough weather so what do you do you stay home and you play games uhhuh you know like for me like coming from Russia where you know I've spent my first 10 years um of life living in Russia those winter nights they're endless and uh this time of the year it

lasts forever so you end up playing a lot of games and I think you know people in here they're huge Gamers as well there's a big Gaming Community there's a lot happening in that space as well so you can do that plus um you know there's a lot to do in a sense that the local government really tries to build places where people go can go and meet and have fun like on this yes Island in particular like where we sit they have um four theme parks World W WB Ferrari yeah and the uh water world which is like Aqua Park so uh basically there are places like that uh there are tons of businesses uh popping up in like Escape rooms um you know laser tag they have huge malls where pretty much everything is there yeah uh you know like from amazing cafes and restaurants food here is Amazing by the way uh all the Cuisines from all over the world is here from China Jaan whatever whatever you want so I think there's a ton of stuff

you can do uh out outside it's just yeah I don't do uh much uh well how about culture is there on like like cultural things like theaters you know we we said yeah we said opposite atad Arena which is like a Landmark Place uh in Abu Dhabi where a lot of uh theater and music bands come to and comedians um you know I've been to countless uh count countless concerts from Imagine Dragons to uh seeing uh some of the you know Western comedians come here I even saw like cir D like a few months back so a lot of people do come here from the international stage I do believe that they're building like a dome like in Las Vegas oh W here yeah highly unprofitable but I I think it will be profitable here I don't know in Vegas it's like 1 billion in in losses already really yes okay that's a different story um the the good like you mentioned that there's a lot of expats and that allows

you to create your Social Circle probably easier right yeah absolutely I think having like a Social Circle that only exper wouldn't be nice because I like to go into the local culture as well I like to explore it and be part of it as well to understand what this country is truly about and that's why for me like having friends who emirati is really important and um you know to just know the country better I feel like if you just friends with expats you're living in this bubble in Disneyland for adults as I I like to sometimes call Abu Dhabi because it's amazing it's comfortable but I also think it's important to speak to the local community understand what they like what they don't like uh where they want to see their country going to be in line and to be uh you know understanding of of of the local culture and in fact they are so uh generous humble welcoming uh it's a It's actually an amazing experience to be friends with them you know like uh uh one of the best peoples

in the world in terms of like acceptance and yeah and then you be learning local language I mean Arabic i' I've started learning it uh I must say I'm I've been a bad student okay uh so Triathlon takes most of your time yeah when you know as an adult you have your thing you know outside of work like 20 hours of of sports I've seen your Instagram you do Insane amount of time that was a few weeks before my first full Iron Man I usually do maybe 14 13 hours yeah I 14 15 hours anyways yeah so I I don't have much time apart from Sports and and the and Rec yeah and yeah you know actually I like I wear this a ring and my office time it always shows that I'm recovering and resting yeah at work yeah my most stressful time is when I'm with my family it's just statistics guys nothing personal step into the future of game monetization with exola exola empowers

developers and Publishers to market sell connect and optimize their games globally from payment solution to a full suit of tools designed to grow your games Revenue while fostering a lawyer player base exola is your game's gateway to worldwide success with exola the world is your playground visit exa.com today and find all the solutions that will help you to power your games into success everywhere um okay so let's just take it home with what it is like here if you can talk about like how do you envision this future because part of the reasons why you chose Abu Dhabi over Lisbon or and other different locations like Belgrade and other ones is that that you want to be part of of building an ecosystem so how do you envision like the next 5 years like we're here the studio is new like this must be like 2 three year old year old it is literally 2y old old yeah yes yeah it's it's it's really beautiful there's a lot of space here so it's

clearly um hungry to bring in more companies but how do you see this this growing like how do how are you and how are you steering this we all know what the game industry has been going through after Co I think like Studios have struggled and in my opinion like um I've seen a lot of Studios go in this time uh thankfully we're not one of them and not planning to be uh one of the reasons because we are here we are being supported in what we're doing and I feel like um in the next 5 years to 10 years I would even look Beyond even 10 years uh this place will have some major players from the West come in and establish their presence from the East uh from the East as well I know some big Partnerships happening uh uh I cannot name them obviously but they are big players coming in uh seeing this region as of strategic importance um for whatever reason maybe they want to access the India market maybe they want

to access the Mina Market maybe it's both uh maybe they want another Distribution Hub or a PR Hub marketing hub for whatever reason uh I think you know the ad gaming in particular and what they're trying to do I think they will be successful in bringing this bigger players as a side effect you will have younger Studios pop up because people you know like my product um director he actually spent out of Ubisoft to found his own Studio unfortunately he did that right at the time when no one was investing in new gaming Studios kind of hard to run a company without money yeah how to run a company without money and again like back in the day like this was two and a half three years ago there weren't that many local VCS who were investing in gaming for people here gaming was anigma something totally new and I feel like right now a lot more VCS are looking local VCS are looking into gaming M uh there hasn't been any major announcement

but I feel like with this like combination of factors when bigger businesses come in you know uh people mingle they think of an idea of a you know a cool new game there'll be a VC waiting for them essentially and uh the other phase is a growth phase um I don't know how it will be addressed yet in a sense like where we are for example you know like we have a product it's Revenue generating uh we are hungry for growth I think there's still a gap in the market for that in particular uh but I do believe that ad gaming has some ideas of what to do and uh I I can just you know from Global practices I can think of turkey is a really great H for the growth stage because they literally get uh UA credits kind of thing you know uh among other things among other things yeah so I feel like uee and ad gaming is taking the best practices and I do

believe that there will be multiple programs uh run between different entities but overall it will be creating this ecosystem and what's most important is I feel like the people who are running it are interested in its success there's M Sal there's odium Mo there's yellow play there are multiple Founders who are here who have placed a bet on the uee uh and we want success to happen I want to be surrounded by extremely cool intellig motivated people because I know like we'll be doing business together one day you know and uh that's that's super important for me yeah I want to finish up on this what's your advice for somebody who's listening and be like okay I'm interested I could check it out um we could see ourselves opening up um a location or moving HQ especially with the UK there's a lot of tax changes that have been happening that are not favorable so a lot of UK companies even now like as were going through or checking out the spaces uh what's your

advice for for them you've done this y well uh there there's ad gaming and uh in particular Sultan who is responsible for bringing new Studios so definitely reach out to him he's on LinkedIn uh you can reach out to me I can share more experiences especially with fellow Founders I've done that many times actually uh I've spoken to uh I remember I was chatting to ad gaming and they've asked me so how many studios have I introduced them to I think the number was 20 oh something like that look at you are you getting like a kickback of that I'm again oh wait I need to man remember what I said I'm interested in the success of this place I want to build UAE to be number one I because this is the like this is a unique country where the leadership of the country has a vision for 100 years to come ask ask any other country do they have a vision no well it's also a little bit different in the sense when you are

a monarchy you can actually plan for a long term because you don't have to do through election the next two years so yeah there was a Ministry of economy was at the uh at the event and he was talking about the targets and you don't have to worry it's like is this guy going to be here like the next year he's yeah he's been asking me for GDP growth man I feel responsible man yeah but but yes um yeah the it's a it's a long-term planning uh so best way is to ask you I I would say that re me I'm super open uh to chat okay and you'll tell everything that you've told me it's uh pretty much I'll help to get to the right context and uh I do believe that ad gaming uh will become a lot more transparent in its process quite soon they're just going through some um I would say strategic initiatives of how they approach their growth uh which is very important you don't want to be ad hoc about a growth that will last for 20 years you want to invest in the right way so um but if you want uh a door in yeah chat to me well thank you Boris

you're a true Ambassador for the region I'm I'm literally here because of you talk to me in Istanbul about this place and it's been uh it's been great I visited first as a as a holiday yeah and then uh met people here and then came back again and coming back again next month so it's uh you know it's a very impressive place and um yeah yeah thank you for for for the introductions I have uh well it's again I'm just a talker they are the doers right so uh it's the you're the example you're not just speaking for it like it's not your job you're setting up an example doing things yourself going through the hoops and then telling others so you're kind of um how would I say it like a Pathfinder Pathfinder yeah we can finish on that all right well let's finish on that if you're interested in learning more about what it's like to set up your studio your entity here in

Abu Dhabi uh reach out to Boris his Link in uh link is in the description below uh and Boris a pleasure thank you Mishka it's been a pleasure and a dream of mine to be on this podcast well you need to set your dreams higher so on that not thank you so much for having me thank you everybody for listening yeah you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if you'd subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice those stars and likes while a small action on your part mean a lot to us and help to grow the show more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor of fun slack group if you have five years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fun.com slack and apply to join Jo the games industry best professional Community fi with peers always willing to lend a hand or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fun

content creators thanks for listening [Music]