Elite Game Developers Podcast: Recent Episodes
Joakim Achren
Joakim Achren from Elite Game Developers talks to founders and investors on how to start, run and grow a games company. In a nutshell, this is a podcast about the founders and investors who are building the games companies of the future. What are their success stories, failures, what they’ve learned from them and how more people will be able to get into creating games through successful games companies.
In this podcast episode from June 2023, I talk with David Kaye, who did his first games company in the 1990s. Recently, he sold his company to Embracer and is now embarking on a journey to invest in gaming founders.
This time, Pavel Afanasiev from Northern Lights Entertainment pitches his games company to me, and I share feedback. Pavel decided not to do slides, so it's a different format with pros and cons.
This is a repost from a few years back and it's definitely one of my favorite episodes of all time. Kristian Segerstrale is the CEO Super Evil Megacorp, a games company based out of San Francisco. Kristian is a legend in gaming. He started his first games company Macrospace twenty years ago, which IPOed as Glu Mobile a few year later. Later he sold his second company Playfish to EA in 2009. We talk about being an entrepreneur in gaming, and how Kristian’s beliefs have evolved over the years, in what it takes to succeed in gaming.
This is a new episode series where a founder pitches their company to Joakim, and then Joakim shares feedback on the pitch.
The first one is with Melissa McBride from Sophia Technologies. They are using gaming and play to revolutionize education and build a digital campus where every child has access to game-based learning technology powered by VR and AI technologies.
Samer Abbas is a games professional focused on Arabic-speaking countries. His experience spans market research, game publishing, and game developer support. Samer helps global game companies grow their business in Arabic markets. He has been called "a vital figure in the Arabic games industry" and recognized in the 100 Game Changers list by GI.Biz for his work uplifting the regional game developer community. Samer is the GameFounders acceleration program director in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
In this episode, we talk about the games industry in the middle east, especially in Saudi Arabia, how things have been developing, and what the future looks like for the region.
This is a repost of an older episode I recorded some time ago on building a team in gaming. I started my first company alone as a solo founder, which was the biggest mistake I had ever made. In this episode, I talk about why you should always focus on team building when considering a startup.
Here is the original description of this episode: In April 2020, I did a webinar on the topic of Teams and team building in gaming. I went through how you'd start off building a founding team, and I cover the example of myself putting together my founding team back in 2012. Then I'll talk about the dream team in gaming, what that means, and how new founders should think about hiring to build the best team that builds the best games.
With 15 years in the games industry, Arseny Lebedev is the co-founder and CEO at Original Games (makers of Merge Inn) where he focuses on product and strategy. In this episode, we discuss building games, managing stress, and why some people are geared toward entrepreneurship.
My book, "Long Term Game: How to Build a Video Games Company," came out in March 2020. It was also released as an audiobook version, which you can find on Audible and other major online audiobook stores. I want to share with you the first chapter of the book. I hope you enjoy this read from Keith O’Brien. Get the book from here. Note that this episode is a repost from 2020.
Here are the Elite Game Developers podcast highlights from 2022. This year, 36 podcast episodes went live, and I spoke to founders and investors from all over the globe, who all are working to build great gaming companies. Now, I want to end this year with my favorite highlights.
The transcript is available here.
Cyril Barrow is the co-founder and COO of Village Studio, a new kind of games company that is building cross-game avatars that act as portable avatars dressed in NFT wearables with unique attributes that can be utilized across multiple games.
Cyril has been in the games industry for a long time. He has had leadership roles at companies like Digital Chocolate, Rovio, and EA, most recently leading the EA Helsinki studio. In this episode, we talk about Cyril's lessons learned from working in leadership, building studios, and what he sees as the true potential of interoperability of assets between games.
Kelly Wallick has worked in the tech and video game industry for over ten years. She’s the founder of the Indie MEGABOOTH and is now a Partner at 1Up Ventures. She has also been the longest-sitting Chair of the Independent Games Festival and the first woman to hold the title. In addition, Kelly is proud to serve on the GLAAD Media Award Advisory Board. Kelly is a passionate believer in the strength and impact of community and implementing long-term change to support creative, unique, and diverse voices.
in our discussion, we talk about investing in gaming, and then we talk about 1Up's founder community and how that community is adding value to the founders.
Today I'm talking with Maor Sadra, the co-founder and CEO of INCRMNTAL, which is a company that evolves digital marketing from measuring traffic to measuring value.
In this episode, we talk about how Maor's company changes the daily life of online marketers, including UA professionals in gaming. Then we cover Maor's background, how he approaches entrepreneurship and what lessons he's picked up along the way.
Tom Hammond is the co-founder and CEO of Userwise, a company that is shaping up live-ops in gaming, and they call themselves the world’s first player experience management platform trusted by teams to power their Liveops all-in-one place. Tom is an entrepreneur who shares a lot about his founder's journey on social media and also on his podcast, Mastering Retention.
In this episode with Tom, we talk about bootstrapping a company versus the venture-backed path. How small game studios, with not a lot of cash or experience, can still break out. And what Tom thinks is the reason that developers don't build games with live ops from day one
This week on the podcast, I'm talking with Jenny Xu, the co-founder and CEO of Talofa Games, a fitness games company based out of California.
Jenny is a first-time founder with an impressive background from working on games as a teenager, getting millions of downloads, then spending time at Google, EA, and N3TWORK, and then starting her own venture-backed gaming startup.
In this discussion, we talk about Jenny's journey, how she got into gaming, learning to work in teams and manage teams, and what she's learned from being a CEO.
This week on the podcast, I'm talking with Jenny Xu, the co-founder and CEO of Talofa Games, a fitness games company based out of California.
Jenny is a first-time founder with an impressive background from working on games as a teenager, getting millions of downloads, then spending time at Google, EA, and N3TWORK, and then starting her own venture-backed gaming startup.
In this discussion, we talk about Jenny's journey, how she got into gaming, learning to work in teams and manage teams, and what she's learned from being a CEO.
In today's episode, I'm interviewing a friend of mine, my ex-colleague Touko Tahkokallio, who was the designer on games like Hay Day, and Boom Beach and led the Brawl Stars team at Supercell. And he's now doing his own studio in Helsinki with a group of experienced game developers.
In this discussion with Touko, we talk about his learnings from creating both board games and video games and how he sees teams or pairs of excellent individuals working together to create these games.
David Amor is the co-founder and CEO of Playmint, a new kind of games company building games for web3. David has had a long career in gaming, from EA in the early nineties to having started several gaming startups, including Delinquent, which got sold to MAG Interactive some years ago.
In this discussion with David, we talk about the lessons he’s learned from his previous gaming startups, what are the commonalities of successful gaming founders and why David decided to start a new games company, doing Web3.
After visiting the Building Better Games podcast, I invited the podcast hosts, Aaron Smith, and Ben Carcich, to my podcast. The guys run a leadership consultancy called Valarin, and both Aaron and Ben have an extensive experience from management positions at companies like Riot Games. Besides leadership, we talk about a lot of topics that relate to company building, like product vision, holding off from starting game projects too quickly without proper planning, and what has been the thing that has enabled so many ex-Riot people to start great gaming companies.
In this podcast episode, I'm speaking with Jon Radoff, the founder and CEO of Beamable, a company that enables game developers to launch live service games. Jon has been in gaming for ages and has founded several startups in the gaming space.
In this discussion, we talk about what Jon learned about company building from his previous company Disruptor Beam, what he thinks is happening with all the buzzwords in gaming, like the metaverse, and where that is leading the industry.
To share one quote from Jon, it would be this one: "The thing the game industry will teach you is humility. And if you don't have humility, when you start building games, you will eventually have humility because it's only a matter of time. Before you find out that your, your brilliant idea, your beautiful idea, just doesn't resonate with a large enough audience to become commercially viable because you look at the intersection points of success in this industry."
And there's so much more. Here's my discussion with Jon Radoff.
I invited Sophie Vo to my podcast. Sophie has an extensive background in gaming, and she's most recently been managing the Voodoo Berlin studio. You might have also been listening to her podcast Rise & Play, where she talks with guests about leadership in gaming.
With Sophie, we talk about the topics of giving feedback and receiving feedback. I’ve seen a lot of startups where the co-founders don’t really talk about issues, and then it comes to the point where someone needs to leave. I believe we can all better communicate our expectations and issues and share feedback with the people we work with.
This is the ninth Ask Me Anything episode, where I answer questions on how I look at investing. I had a session with a team from one VC firm and they were asking me questions. And then I also picked up another interesting question about angel investing.
If you have questions you'd like me to ask, you can go here to submit them.
As I mention in the episode, I'm gonna take a break for July and August on the podcast, and we'll be back in early September with new episodes.
In this week's podcast episode, I'm talking with Halli Thor Bjornsson, who is the CEO of Lockwood Publishing, a games company based out of England.
In this discussion with Halli, we talk about the industry life cycles in gaming, how console and PC transitioning to mobile is very similar to now as many folks are moving to web3, and we spend some time talking about our experiences as entrepreneurs.
This recording is from a panel I did last week with Jan Pollack from Wooga, Ross Brockman from Google, and Christian Facey from Audiomob, where we talked about ads in mobile games and how things have been changing in the recent years.
Topics that we cover include the privacy changes on mobile, what kind of future trends the panelists are seeing get materialized, and how game developers should optimally approach ad monetization.
In this week's podcast episode, I'm talking with Asbjoern Malte Soendergaard, the founder and CEO of Tactile Games, who are based out of Copenhagen, Denmark, and are the makers of the hit game Lily's Garden.
In this discussion, we talk about how company culture has developed at Tactile over the years, how new projects get started, and what kind of a role does celebrating success and failure play at Tactile.
In this podcast episode, I talk with Andres Constantinidis, the founder and CEO of TinyBytes, a remote-first mobile games studio. Andres has built his game studio as a remote company all the way from the founding days, which happened almost ten years ago.
In this discussion, we talk about creating quality games with a remote team, but still keeping up a high velocity, how to make product decisions on continuing a game that is still unsure of its success, and what Andres would do differently if he'd go back to the early days of his company.
In the latest podcast episode, I have Derek Lau (LinkedIn, Twitter) from Immutable, talking about his journey into web3 gaming and how they are building the blockchain game Guild of Guardians at his company Immutable.
Guild of Guardians is a mobile RPG where players can turn their gaming passion into assets. Once launched, the game is a multiplayer fantasy action RPG game, where players build their dream team of ‘Guardians’ and compete in a guild to earn rewards.
In this discussion, we talk about Derek’s beliefs in crypto, why blockchain makes sense for the future of gaming, and what game developers could do to attract the masses into web3 gaming.
In this podcast episode, I'm talking with Alexander Bergendahl, who is the co-founder and CEO of LootLocker, a games backend solutions company from Stockholm, Sweden.
Alexander is a repeat founder, who's been doing games companies for a while now. With Alexander, we talk about his founder journey, learnings from doing his companies, and how Alexander is still learning to be a better founder.
In today's episode, I'm talking with Neil McFarland and Matthew Ryan from First Light Games, a game studio based in London, UK. The founders started the company a few years ago, to work on free-to-play games for mobile, but last year, decided to pivot to web3 gaming.
In this episode, we talk about the funding models that the founders have used in web3, what the challenges our in getting the tokenomics right, and how to build a core team in web3 gaming.
In this podcast episode, I have Adam Jaffe on the show. Adam is the founder and CEO of Mega Studio, a gaming outfit based out of Barcelona, Spain.
Adam has a broad scope of knowledge from the gaming space, having worked at companies like Playtika, Moon Active, Jam City, and Social Point, before founding Mega Studio.
In this discussion, we talk about advising startups, how to build games that make money, and what unconventional solutions should game developers apply to create success in gaming.
In this podcast episode, I talk with Nick Kneuper and Nat Eliason who are building Crypto Raiders, which I believe is one of the best web3 games out there. Both Nick and Nat haven't been in crypto for that long, but as long-time entrepreneurs, they've channeled their skills in creating products to take on blockchain gaming.
In this episode, we talk about how Crypto Raiders got started, how they've grown the player base, how they manage their cryptocurrency treasury and how they see things developing for web3 gaming in the near future.
In this podcast episode, I'm talking with Are Mack Growen, a General Partner at London Venture Partners, a VC firm focused on investing in founders in the game sector at the seed stage.
In this discussion, we talk about Are's extensive background in gaming, his journey to VC, what kind of learnings he is sharing, and how Are approaches risks, luck, and other challenges in gaming.
In this week's episode, I'm talking with Mika Tammenkoski, who is the co-founder and CEO of Metacore Games, the company that is well known for their hit game Merge Mansion.
In this discussion with Mika, we talk about his long journey in gaming, what he has picked up on leadership and startups from all the projects he's been involved with, and what Mika thinks about building teams, pivoting, and increasing the likelihood of finding a hit game
In this episode, I'm talking with the co-founders of Trailblazer Games, Alex Arias, and Andreas Risberg. Trailblazer Games is a new web3 games company, founded in 2021 and recently they've announced a seed round of $8.2m raised from investors like Makers Fund and Play Ventures. In this discussion, we talk about the founder's background, how they both worked at King and brought learnings to their own startup, and what kind of games the founders are now building with blockchain technology.
In this podcast episode, I'm talking with Andrew Sheppard, who is the Managing Director at Transcend Fund, a venture capital firm investing in the future of games and digital entertainment.
In this discussion with Andrew, we talk about his move from being an operator in gaming to becoming an investor, what has been hard about being an investor, and what Andrew thinks will changes and stay the same as new platforms emerge.
In the latest podcast episode, I have Christian Facey and Wilfrid Obeng from Audiomob, talking about their journey of building their company, which enables audio ads for mobile games.
In this discussion, we talk about Wilfrid's and Christian's journey to team up and make audio ads happen, how they are learning to be company builders and what challenges they've faced in starting and fundraising for a company during the pandemic.
In this week's podcast episode, I'm talking with Hugo Obi, who is the founder and CEO of Maliyo Games, a mobile games studio based out of Lagos, Nigeria.
In this discussion, we talk about the gaming ecosystem in Africa, how are things developing on the consumer side and the development side. We also talk about Hugo's founder journey in gaming and what Hugo sees as the next steps in growing the games industry in Africa.
In this podcast episode, I'm talking with Alexander Krug and Andre Krug, the co-founders of SOFTGAMES, an instant games company from Berlin, Germany. In this episode, we talk about the founder's journey from a small startup to having 100 people in your company, what instant games look like in 2022 and where the founders see their company going next.
In this podcast episode, I'm chatting with Eitan Reisel, Managing Partner of VGames, an early-stage gaming VC from Israel. Eitan and his team have been operating for a few years now with two funds raised. They've already have been investing in dozens of gaming companies worldwide. In this discussion, we talk about Eitan's approach to helping founders, how he makes investment decisions, and what the future looks like for both mobile and crypto gaming.
In this podcast episode, I'm talking Piers Kicks, an Investor at Delphi Digital and at BITKRAFT Ventures, investing into crypto gaming. In this discussion, we talk about how the gaming community is embracing blockchain, what are the differences between gaming teams and crypto teams making these games, and how Piers evaluates investments in blockchain gaming.
In this podcast episode, I'm talking with Salone Sehgal, who is a General Partner at Lumikai Fund, which is a seed-stage gaming fund focusing on the Indian market. I had Salone on my show in 2020, but since so much has been happening in the games industry, I wanted to bring her back to the show.
We talk about what has been happening in India during the pandemic, what has been funneling the growth of startups in the region, and what Salone has learned from helping founders build companies.
In this podcast episode, I'm talking with Ismet Gökşen, who is a General Partner at Ludus Ventures, a venture firm that is investing in early-stage games companies, with many deals done in their home country of Turkey. In this discussion, we talk about the Turkish gaming ecosystem, why things are going so well for the companies there, what the future looks like and what Ismet has learned about investing in gaming.
In this podcast episode, I’m talking to Carolin Krenzer, who is the co-founder and CEO of TrailMix, a mobile games studio well known for their hit merge game Love & Pies. Caro has an extensive background in free-to-play and mobile, and she has been doing her startup now since 2017.
We talk about so many things, like what Caro learned from working at Playfish and building the London studio for King, then on hiring, team building, and how execution on your core gameplay matters so much when you are building games in established game genres.
This is the eighth Ask Me Anything episode, where I answer people’s questions related to game studios, fundraising, and all other entrepreneurship-related stuff. I will be recording another episode quite soon, so please submit your questions by filling out this form. Questions that I answer include: Can you have two lead investors if two VCs are interested in you? How much is too much for Seed round? And how a hyper-casual studio should approach blockchain gaming.
In this episode, I talk with Jere Partanen and Erik Gloersen from Sisu Game Ventures, an early-stage gaming venture fund. Both Jere and Erik are newcomers to venture capital investing, although both have a background from working with gaming startups. In this discussion, we talk about the competitiveness of early-stage games investing, how a fund like Sisu can win deals and how the partners at Sisu are helping the founders they've invested in.
In this episode, I'm talking with Corentin Selz, Publishing Manager at Voodoo. Corentin has overseen the publishing activities at Voodoo for the last few years and has worked with over a hundred external studios to develop hyper-casual games. In this discussion, we talk about the optimal way to test hyper-casual games, about the characteristics of teams that can repeat their success, and how the rapid development and testing procedures could be brought outside of hyper-casual games.
I'm talking with Alon Grinshpoon, who is the founder and CEO of Echo, a cloud platform for 3D, AR, and VR assets. After realizing that the metaverse and other platforms were going to become huge, Alon and his brother started the company a few years ago, and now they've just raised a VC round for the top gaming investors. In this discussion with Alon, we talk about his founder journey, how they validated the 3D platform as a business idea, how Alon approaches founder/investor fit and how first-time founders should approach problems with their companies.
2021 was a big year for the Elite Game Developers podcast, with 53 new episodes going live. I wanted to share my own highlights from the show from the past year and created this highlights episode. Enjoy!
In this week’s podcast, I’m doing my seventh Ask Me Anything episode, where I answer listener questions. If you have any questions you’d like me to answer, please submit them by filling out this form.
These are the questions that I cover in this episode:
- How can an inexperienced shooter team raise funding?
- I want to build a web3 game. What should I do first?
- Are there angel investors dedicated to gaming?
- How should I create late-game coin sinks?
- Have you thought about doing another games company ever again?
In this podcast episode, I talking with Oskar Burman, who is the co-founder and CEO of Fast Travel Games, a VR game studio based out of Stockholm, Sweden. Oskar has a long career in gaming, all the way from the 90s, and recently he as the managing director of Rovio’s Stockholm studio, makers of Angry Birds 2. In this discussion, we talk about Oskar’s learnings from building studios, what he would do differently, and how people in gaming can manage expectations to improve their work.
In this podcast episode, I'm talking with Tatiana Kondratyeva, the co-founder and CEO of Play Pack, a mobile game studio based out of Berlin. Tatiana has an interesting career in gaming, recently being Executive Producer at Etermax, and before that having product and producer roles at Wooga and Game Insight. In this discussion with Tatiana, we talk about how to get past the fears of starting a company, how to succeed in the competitive mobile games industry, and what have been takeaways from being a founder for almost a year now.
In this week's podcast episode, I'm talking with Ville Heijari, the founder of Original Games, a new mobile games studio with people in St. Petersburg, Helsinki, and San Francisco. Ville has been in mobile games ever since his early days at Rovio when Angry Birds had just been launched. During the last dozen years, he's accumulated learnings from all sorts of places and has now teamed up with a great team of game developers. In this discussion, we talk about all the learnings from the places Ville has been at and how Original Games is approaching the merge genre with their first game, Merge Inn. And we cover so much more.
In today's episode on doing yet another Ask Me Anything session, this is the sixth one I've done this year. And in this one, we're going to be talking about questions that the listeners have been sending to this questionnaire that I posted, if you want to send out your own questions by going to elitegamedevelopers.com/askmeanything that's all written together. And then once you submit the questions, I'm going to be going through them in a future episode, I promise.
In this week's podcast episode, I'm talking with Henri Lindgren, who is the CEO of Lightneer, a Helsinki based hyper casual developer. The company Lightneer has gone through lots of changes. The company was founded in 2015 to build and publish educational games, raised a bunch of VC money, but then had to pivot away from educational games. Now the company has done a turnaround and is a thriving hyper casual studio. In this discussion with Henri, we talk about pivots, how the company culture changed through the years of change, and what does hyper casual look like in 2021.
Today I'm talking with Matej Lancaric, who is a user acquisition specialist and he runs his own UA consultancy which you can find by going to lancaric.me. In this discussion, we talk about Matej's perspective on user acquisition for mobile games, how developers are becoming better at building games for UA in mind and what the future holds for game studios embracing user acquisition.
I'm talking with Arnd Benninghoff, who is the Executive Vice President of eSports and Games at MTG. MTG is a Swedish-founded strategic acquirer and operator, who've built a portfolio of games businesses which have been acquired through this Swedish family model-approach. In this episode, we talk with Arnd about the way that you can effectively bring world class game studios together and build something big as a group.
This is the second episode with Elad Levy, who is the founder and CEO of Dive, who are a new kind of game analytics provider. In the first episode that came out earlier this week, we talked with Elad about embracing data in gaming. Now we'll focus on being data informed and how game studios should get started with analytics.
In this episode, I'm talking with Joe Schaeppi and Bastian Bergmann, the founders of 12traits, a company that helps you discover and analyze your audience. I've been following the development of 12traits since my Next Games days, and the service is incredibly valuable for service-based games. In this discussion, we discuss identifying your actual audience, excluding groups that won't stick to your game, and how games can grow when you better understand your players.
Guillaume Verlinden is the Managing Director of Kolibri Games, a game studio well known for its tycoon games like Idle Miner Tycoon. Guillaume started his career in management consulting and moved to game some eight years ago when he joined Social Point. He quickly grasped what gaming was about and started improving older live games, growing many plateaued games like Monster Legends and Dragon City. In this episode, we talk about Guillaume's experiences of leading game teams, how a greenlight process should work, and why growing teams and games can be challenging.
This is my fifth Ask Me Anything podcast episode, where I answer people’s questions related to game studios, fundraising, and all other entrepreneurship-related stuff. I will be recording another episode quite soon, so please submit your questions by filling out this form.
Today I'm talking with Ilya Eremeev, who is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at The Games Fund. Ilya has a really interesting story about how he started as a 3D artist in gaming and has gone through a career path in gaming that has lead him to now run an early-stage VC fund. In this episode, we also talk about VC funding for the gaming ecosystem in Eastern Europe, how the region is developing, and what Ilya has seen as drivers for success.
In this episode, I'm talking with Alli Ottarsson, who is a Principal at gaming investments firm Makers Fund. Alli has had a long career in gaming, working at CCP on EVE Online, then at Riot Games on League of Legends. Recently he started doing angel investing and then eventually joined Makers Fund to become a VC. In the discussion, we talk about the game development lessons that Alli has learned and how he is now applying those lessons to investing.
In this episode I'm talking with Elad Levy, who is the founder and CEO of Dive, who are a new kind of game analytics provider. As many of you know, I've previously worked at Supercell as Director of Analytics in 2011 and 2012, before I went on to found Next Games in 2013. I've worked with data in gaming for over ten years, and I was thrilled to have this discussion with Elad. His company Dive is operating in free-to-play gaming, especially with mobile developers, and they are now also providing analytics for Roblox games. In this first episode with Elad, we talk about how game studios are embracing and how studios are building data into their decision-making.
In this episode, I have Logan Dwight on the podcast. Logan is the co-founder and CEO of Role, a tabletop role-playing company that is taking tabletop RPGs online. In this discussion with Logan, we talk about his founding journey to build Role, how tabletop RPGs are transitioning online, through the rise of online platforms, and his experiences from building Role as a startup, building the team, fundraising, and many other topics.
Welcome back everybody for another set of Ask Me Anything questions. This is the fourth AMA episode, where I answer people's questions related to game studios, fundraising, and all other entrepreneurship-related stuff.
Before we go to the first question, I'd like to share the URL where you can submit your questions. To do that, you can go to this URL and I'll get your question answered in one of my upcoming episodes.
I recently did a webinar with Anton Gorodetsky from InvestGame and Micha Katz from Aream & Co and we talked about the numbers from H1 of 2021 for the games industry. The industry saw explosive growth in terms of volume and size of M&As, private investments, and IPOs.
Martin Macmillan is the founder and CEO of Pollen VC, a financing company that provides flexible credit facilities for mobile game developers who are doing user acquisition. With Martin, we talk about the evolution of UA funding in mobile games, how debt financing is becoming the norm for marketing and we hear Martin's views on the boom of the games industry and how that is affecting everything.
I'm talking with Klaas Kersting, who is the Founder and CEO of Phoenix Games, a new kind of European gaming conglomerate, with six games studios under its belt. In this discussion with Klaas, we talk about luck and taking advantage of lucky moments, how the mobile games industry has evolved, what characterizes teams that can go from broke to hugely profitable, and what well-done mergers and acquisitions look like in gaming.
I've known KooPee Hiltunen for close to twenty years now, ever since I started building games companies. KooPee is The Guy in the Finnish games industry, he knows everybody and has knowledge of everything when it comes to the Finnish games industry. He represents Neogames, which is a non-profit association, whose mission is to coordinate and support the growth and development of the Finnish game industry and its ecosystem. In this discussion with KooPee, we talk about a recent 2020 report on the Finnish games industry, how we got to this impressive size, and what things look like for the Finnish games industry?
This week I published my third Ask Me Anything podcast episode, where I answer people's questions related to game studios, fundraising, and all other entrepreneurship-related stuff. I will be recording another episode quite soon, so please submit your questions by filling out this form.
Cordel Robbin-Coker is the co-founder and CEO of Carry1st, a mobile games publisher that is focusing on the content of Africa. Africa is the last frontier for basically anything. Mobile gaming is no exception. For a continent that is home to more than 1 billion millennials and Gen Zers, mobile gaming has never really picked up, despite the continent witnessing rapid economic growth and smartphone adoption. Carry1st is changing that with it's new approach for distribution and payments, custom made for Africa. In this episode, we talk about mobile gaming in Africa and about Cordel's entrepreneur journey.
Today I'm talking with Jon Hook, who is an angel investor and VP of Publishing at Boombit. With Jon, we talk about the current state of mobile gaming, what is happening to hyper-casual and how Jon looks at angel investing in gaming.
Tomi Kaukinen is a fellow Finnish entrepreneur, public speaker, and founder of Licence to Fail. After countless years of start-up life, founding several companies, Tomi hit the wall hard and burnt out. Now, through Licence to Fail, he speaks and writes publicly about entrepreneur life, motivation, and coping with the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur. In this podcast episode, we talk about Tomi's experiences with startups and burnout, and how entrepreneurs can avoid burnout and leave a healthy life. Burnout should be on every entrepreneur's mind. What should you do about it, how to make big changes. It's a complicated topic, but I hope you'll get a lot out of this discussion.
In this episode, I'm talking with Ben Cousens who is an investor at Lakestar Ventures. He follows the worlds of gaming and crypto very closely and has backed a number of very exciting companies working at the intersection of gaming and crypto. In this episode, we talk about how Ben got excited about crypto, why gaming is a natural place for Bitcoin, how Ben got involved with ZEBEDEE, and what the future looks like.
This week I published my second Ask Me Anything podcast episode, where I answer people's questions related to game studios, fundraising, and all other entrepreneurs related stuff. I will be recording another episode quite soon, so please submit your questions by filling out this form.
Jernej Cesen is GM and SVP of Distribution & BI at Outfit7, the makers of Talking Tom. With Jernej, we talk about being knowledgeable about your market, how you understand the players and the opportunities, and what it's like to operate with a big gaming IP like Talking Tom.
Today I'm talking with Andrew Green, who is the SVP of Operations and Growth at Stillfront Group. Andrew has been in gaming for twenty years, has founded two companies, and has worked for other gaming companies including Take-Two, EA, and TinyCo. He then did a two-year stint at Andreessen Horowitz, before then joining Stillfront. We'll now talk with Andrew about his journey in gaming and startups and what lessons he's learned.
Today I'm talking with Eric Goldberg, who is an investor and an entrepreneur in gaming, and he has been in the industry for close to 35 years now. Eric runs an investment company called Crossover Technologies. And he's now a co-founder with Raph Koster in Playable Worlds. In this episode, we're going to be talking about Eric's background, his knowledge of gaming funding, but also about some of these billion dollar game companies, how they've been growing in the recent years, and what has been changing there to allow these companies to come up.
Today I'm talking with Karoliina Korppoo, the founder and CEO of 10th Muse, a Helsinki-based startup working on an interactive romance reading and self-publishing platform. Karoliina started the company as a solo founder, building the vision, team, and the company. Her background is in PC gaming, where she worked as a lead designer on games like Cities: Skylines and Cities in Motion. In this podcast episode, we talk about Karoliina's journey into startups, where the idea for 10th Muse came from, and how the creator economy is shaping gaming.
I've got Ethan Levy back on the podcast and he wanted to ask me about startup valuations, what's all the terminology around the topic, how to prepare for a fundraise with a valuation in mind, and how investors and founders can think about the right valuation for a startup.
Today I’m talking with Salla Niemelä, who is responsible for Employee Experience at FuturePlay, a mobile game studio in Helsinki. With Salla, we talk about how game studios approach the employee and employer relationship, throughout the full lifecycle of the employment, from hiring, to working and developing the relationship and finally to an exit.
In today's episode, I'm going to be addressing some Ask Me Anything questions that I've been asking for on the Elite Game Developers newsletter. I sent out a survey form, where I asked subscribers of the newsletter to send out questions related to gaming studios, how to build successful businesses, and all things related. So let's get going with this first episode.
Today I'm talking with Anat Shperling, the co-founder and CEO of Toya, a Roblox game studio based out of Israel. Anat and her team started building games for UGC platforms in 2016, first on Minecraft, before moving fully over to Roblox. Anat's company Toya is a female-led studio developing digital games and media to empower a growing female user base.
I recently did a webinar with Collin Foss, the Co-Founder and CPO of Skunkworks, a Helsinki-based mobile games startup and makers of the wildly popular MergeFriends. With Collin, we talked about how the casual merge category has recently been blowing up with more and more developers moving over, and what makes these games differentiate from each other.
In this episode, I talk with Celia Hodent, game user experience expert and former Director of UX at Epic Games. We talk about adapting the game UX mindset, breaking down how players learn and retain information, and how players are motivated to return to the games that they are playing. Celia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/celiahodent/
I recently invited Ethan Levy from N3twork back on the show, to talk about an interesting concept called the "Tower of Want". The concept of "Tower of Want" is something that Ethan created some six years ago, to help free-to-play game designers to create long-term goals, through understanding the short-term and long-term loops and player motivations that would drive a successful free-to-play game.
In this episode, Sebastiaan Heijne and Elmer Bulthuis, from game scaling solution company Gameye. Both Seb and Elmer are long time entrepreneurs and in this episode, we chat about their experiences on learning so many things the hard way, building Gameye now together and what the future could look like for their game server startup.
In this episode, Sebastiaan Heijne and Elmer Bulthuis, from game scaling solution company Gameye. Both Seb and Elmer are long time entrepreneurs and in this episode, we chat about their experiences on learning so many things the hard way, building Gameye now together and what the future could look like for their game server startup.
I recently a webinar with Erik Bryant from Opera Event and Steven Chard from Luna Labs on mobile game ad creatives. Both companies are at the forefront of innovative mobile game ads, and I wanted to explore several topics on how game developers can utilize game creatives to win players over.
In this episode, I have a chat with Susana Meza Graham, Co-Founder of ALDEON, an investment company from Stockholm, Sweden, focusing on games and tech start-ups in their early stages.
Susana started he career in gaming when she joined Paradox Interactive and later taking on the roles of Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Operating Officer.
For the last two years, Susana has been focusing on investing, and in this episode, we talk about culture, bravery, trust and how the Nordics have built an amazing gaming ecosystem.
In this special episode I’m joined by Ethan Levy, Executive Producer at N3twork, a San Francisco-based games company, behind the hit game Legendary: Game of Heroes. We talk about the topic of Founder/Idea Fit and how founders should think about themselves being a good fit for the idea or concept that they are pursuing.
In this episode, I have a chat with Hakan Ulvan, the co-founder and CEO of Bigger Games from Istanbul, Turkey. Hakan and his co-founders left Peak Games a few years ago to start working on their own game studio.
In this episode, we talk about their approach to making games, how the Turkish gaming ecosystem has evolved over the years, and what will happen next.
This is part 2 of my discussion with Javier Barnes, Product Manager at Tilting Point. Javier has an extensive career in gaming, having worked at Gameloft, Social Point, and others. With Javier, we decided to make this episode a discussion around the topic of game design in 2021, as it's of big interest for both of us. We talk about playtesting, player motivations, user-oriented design, the model of small teams, and more.
Today I'm talking with Javier Barnes, Product Manager at Tilting Point. Javier has an extensive career in gaming, having worked at Gameloft, Social Point, and others. With Javier, we decided to make this episode a more of a discussion, around the topic of game design in 2021, as it's of big interest for both of us. We talk about playtesting, player motivations, user-oriented design, the model of small teams, and more.
In this episode, I talking with Phil Sanderson, the Managing Partner at Griffin Gaming Partners, a venture capital firm that focuses on investing across the broad gaming ecosystem. They announced a fund of $235 million that they will invest in game companies and related technologies around the world. I've known Phil for years, since he invested in my previous company Next Games.
We talk about venture, how gaming has evolved and how Phil sees the recent boom and M&A activities affecting things going forward.
On January 28th, I did a webinar on the topic of how to create a game studio pitch deck. In this webinar, I shared all that I know about what pitch decks should communicate. Watch the recording and grab the presentation.
This is a recording from a webinar that I did with Anton Gorodetsky and Sergei Evdokimov from InvestGame.net and we reviewed gaming’s investment, M&A, and IPO landscape from 2020 and shared our predictions on what will happen in gaming during 2021.
In this episode, I have a chat with Anton Gauffin, the founder and CEO of Huuuge Games. Anton has been an entrepreneur in gaming for two decades now and has seen pretty much everything, all the ups, and downs. In recent news, Huuuge Games announced that they will soon go public in an initial public offering on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. In this episode, we talk about leadership, company mission, and vision and Anton has grown to lead a 600 employee company.
In this episode, I'm talking with Herdjie Zhou, the Co-Founder and CEO of Lucky Kat Games, a hyper-casual gaming studio from the Netherlands. Herdjie started Lucky Kat with his brother in 2015 and they've gone through an amazing journey at building a gaming studio, totally bootstrapped. In this episode, we talk about company building, rapid game development, and how to make tough decision.
In this episode, I'm talking about the company cap table. What it means to manage a cap table when you're starting off with just the founders. And when you start growing and building a company, bringing on more employees, bringing on investors, who are incentivized with equity in the company. So we're going to cover a lot of topics regarding how you can manage and model your cap table.
In this episode, I'm talking with Shanti Bergel, Managing Director at Transcend Fund. Transcend is an early stage venture capital firm focused on games and digital entertainment. Shanti has a long career in gaming and has been working in free-to-play for almost twenty years. We talk about Shanti's approach to investing and how he evaluates companies for an investment.
In this episode, I'm looking back to all the episodes from 2020 and the highlights from all of my favorite episodes. If you don't listen to any other episodes from 2020, I definitely suggest you choose from these! They cover everything from company building, fundraising, product and so much more.
Today I'm talking with Uri Marchand, the Co-Founder and CEO of Overwolf, from Tel Aviv, Israel. Uri and his team started building tools for creators to build apps around games like League of Legends back in the early 2010s. Through the years, Uri and his team have built a company that truly enables gaming creators to create, grow and monetize their content.
Loads of new gaming studios first spend time courting with VCs, when they should actually start from the ground floor. In this podcast episode, I talk about raising funding from angel investors and how you can build your own list of angel investor leads.
Today I'm talking with Lars Jörnow, partner at EQT Ventures. Half VC, half start-up. EQT Ventures is a multi-stage VC with €1.2bn across two funds to help fuel European tech start-ups to become global winners. Lars started his career in gaming at King over ten years and eventually transitioned into VC in 2015. Since then, he's invested in companies like Small Giant Games, Popcore, Traplight and Reworks. We'll now hear more Lars himself.
In November of 2020, I did a webinar called “Early-Stage Success in Mobile Gaming,” where I talked to Skunkworks Games Co-Founder and CEO James Cramer. This webinar is a real case study in how Skunkworks raised its angel rounds and how they built the pathway to success in mobile games while raising very little.
Today I'm talking with Vladimir Funtikov, the Co-Founder and CEO of Creative Mobile, from Tallinn, Estonia. Vlad and his team were one of the earliest mobile teams to strike it big on Android back in the day. The team started scaling things up quickly and through their rollercoaster ride, Vlad has learned a lot about company building. We'll now hear more from Vlad himself.
In October of 2020, I did a webinar on playtesting mobile games with Elie Mouraud from PlaytestCloud. We talked about how you can learn more about your game by focusing on the player's experience, from early on in the development, all the way to soft launching, and going live.
Today I'm talking with Sean Kauppinen from Hiber World. We talk about Sean's experience in gaming from three decades, how he's seen startups grow and what mistakes have come along the way. We also talk about Hiber and what the company is doing in the gaming user generated content space.
On September of 2020, I did the keynote at the IGDA Leadership Day. This was an online event, organized by the International Game Developers Association. In this keynote, I talked about my view on leadership: what is leadership, and how game entrepreneurs and founders could take notice from examples, from history, on what it takes to be a leader.
Today I'm talking with Jason Chapman, General Partner at Konvoy Ventures. They are a seed stage fund, investing in the infrastructure technology, tools, and platforms of tomorrow's video gaming industry. With Jason, we decided to make this episode a more of a discussion, around the topic of user generated content platforms, as it's of big interest for both of us, as we've seen UGC become one of the dominating topics of 2020.
In October of 2020, I hosted a panel on Gaming Investments and M&A. The panel consists of Anton Gorodetsky and Sergei Evdokimov from InvestGame.net, Micha Katz from Aream & Co, and Miska Katkoff from Deconstructor of Fun. The participants talked about the topics of the current state of M&A in games, these M&A strategies, fundraising in gaming and shed some light on future predictions.
Today I'm talking with Salone Sehgal, General Partner at Lumikai Fund, which is the first seed stage gaming fund focusing on the Indian market. Salone has a career in banking and finance, which she left to found a gaming startup. Later on, she joined London Venture Partners, where she was until recently. In this episode, we talk about Salone's experiences in gaming, how the Indian market is evolving and how she's developing her invessting skills.
In August of 2020, I did a webinar with Julia Palatovska, the Co-founder and CEO of Dorian on the topic of how to raise a seed round from VCs in gaming. Previously, Julia was an investor at London Venture Partners, and before LVP, Julia was Head of Biz Dev at G5 Games. In August, Julia announced Dorian's seed round of $3.35m.
Today I'm talking with Jörgen Larsson, the Founder and CEO of Stillfront Group. Jörgen has been an entrepreneur in gaming for a few decades. He has seen all the angles and aspects to creating value in gaming, and how to build long lasting value in the ever-changing market of video games. We'll now hear more from Jörgen himself.
In August of 2020, I did a webinar with the UK’s Department for International Trade as part of a virtual Northern Powerhouse trade mission to gamescom and devcom, on the topic of Best practices for video pitching. In this lecture, I talk to Northern Powerhouse delegates about how you can get the most out of the pitching video call, what kind of setup you should have and most importantly, how to have an organic discussion with your call participants. For new video ad creatives, check out https://getigc.com
Today I'm talking with Thor Gunnarsson, the Co-Founder and CEO of Mainframe Industries. Thor and his team started Mainframe in 2019, to build a cloud-based MMO game that you could play on any device. They've attracted lots of interest from investors and are now in full development mode. With Thor, we talk about his founder journey, how technology is playing a role in game development and what the future of cloud gaming could look like.
I did a webinar in August of 2020 titled “Audience-first game development”, where my guest was Mitchell Smallman, Co-founder and Chief Product from Netspeak Games, based out of London UK. We talked about game development where you’ve first made a decision on an audience that you’re game will target, and not the other way around.
Today I'm talking with Jens Hilgers, who is an investor and serial entrepreneur, and well known for his work in the esports industry. As a day job, Jens is the Founder Partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, a VC firm focusing on early-stage investments for gaming, esports, and interactive media. With Jens, we talk about entrepreneurship, fundraising and how gaming and esports will evolve in the coming years.
In April of 2020, I did a webinar on the topic of Teams and team building in gaming. I went through how you'd start off building a founding team and I cover the example of myself putting together my founding team back in 2012. Then I'll talk about the dream team in gaming, what that means and how new founders should think about the hiring, to build the best team that builds the best games.
Today I'm talking with Gigi Levy-Weiss, the managing partner of NFX, a seed-stage and Series A venture firm. Before starting NFX, Gigi was a founder and one of the companies he founded was Playtika. Since early in his career, Gigi has worked in gaming and with gaming companies, and he has a lot of interesting insights into funding and company building.
In May of 2020, I did a webinar on the topic of Company Culture In Gaming. I went through the top ten tools for building a strong company culture. Things like trust, values, rituals and the pact between the employer and employee. Then I cover the behaviors, surfacing problems and hiring for a culture. I talk about a bottoms-up culture, how to react to hard times and how to keep a curiosity to improve the culture.
This episode is sponsored by IronSource.
Today I'm talking with Shaun Rutland, the Co-Founder and CEO of Hutch, a racing games company from London, UK. Their titles include games like Rebel Racing, F1 Manager and Top Drives. When founding Hutch, Shaun and his co-founders wanted to create a special company that would give the power and creativity to their staff. Will now hear more from Shaun himself.
In June 2020, I did a webinar with Jussi Autio, the Co-Founder and Creative Director of Resistance Games. Jussi approached us with the idea of providing his knowledge on projecting sales in PC games so that the fans of Elite Game Developers could benefit from Jussi’s extensive understanding. Jussi's template can be found at https://elitegamedevelopers.com/pcgame
Today I'm talking with Matt Frenchman, the Co-Founder and CEO of Sugar, a game financing company from London, UK. Matt was previously an investment banker, and in the recent years, he's been building Sugar, a user acquisition financing company for games. In this episode, we talk with Matt about how he's been learning how gaming works, and how he can change dept financing for games. I can tell you that the ROAS of this episode is off the charts! Check out Sugar at https://www.add-sugar.io/
In May 2020, I did a webinar with free-to-play consultant Nick Murray, where we talked about the ways that developers can create long-term engagement for their players, and to keep them playing the games from months and years to come. We specifically talk about what is long-term engagement, why it matters and how developers in hybrid casual can take learnings from midcore.
Today I'm talking with Celine Pasula, the CEO of Fingersoft, a gaming company best known for their Hill Climb Racing mobile games. Celine starts in gaming during the Java mobile game days. Then she went on to become a co-founder of Grand Cru, the mobile games company behind Supernauts. Now Celine has taken on a new role as a CEO and in this episode, we talk about her ways of learning to become a leader and waht has been challening in her work.
In May 2020, I did a webinar with the Aalto University on the topic of How To Minimize Risks In Games Business, especially when you are trying to get a startup off the ground. We have the accompanying slides on our website, which you can find by going to https://elitegamedevelopers.com/risks.
Today I'm talking with Richard Kim and Sam Englebardt, who are partners at Galaxy Interactive, a $325m fund shaping the future of interactive entertainment. Richard and Sam have been investing into gaming for a while now and in this episode, we discuss how they see financing in gaming evolving, what it takes to get into competitive rounds and how they see as key in the gaming space in the next 2-5 years.
My book, titled Long Term Game - How to Build a Video Games Company, came out in March 2020. We’ve just released the audiobook version and you can find that on Audible and other major online audiobook stores. I want to share with you the first chapter of the book. Hope you enjoy this read from Keith O’Brien. Get the book from here https://elitegamedevelopers.com/book-launch-why-i-wrote-the-long-term-game/
Kristian Segerstrale is the CEO Super Evil Megacorp, a games company based out of San Francisco. Kristian is a legend in gaming. He started his first games company Macrospace twenty years ago, which IPOed as Glu Mobile a few year later. Later he sold his second company Playfish to EA in 2009. We talk about being an entrepreneur in gaming, and how Kristian's beliefs have evolved over the years, in what it takes to succeed in gaming. Watch Kristian's talk from 2011 by going here https://elitegamedevelopers.com/egd-news-26/
In this episode, we’re going to listen to the recording from a webinar that we here at Elite Game Developers organized in May of 2020. The topics was "Work From Home For Game Teams”. We had Sophie Vo, the Game Lead from Voodoo, on the webinar and both me and Sophie did a presentation on the learnings of working from home, how remote first companies will be operating in the future and what working from home has been like for gaming startups.
Daniel McLaren is the Senior Manager of Live Operations at ArenaNet. I've known Daniel for a while now, ever since he was working in a games company here in Helsinki. He then moved back to the States to work on Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. Daniel is one of those people who really love the industry and the people who make games. We talk about culture, hiring and dealing with hard times.
Have you every wanted to know what gaming VCs think? In this webinar from March 2020, I went through the most important things that gaming investors will think about when they meet a game founders and when they need to make a decision — to invest or not to invest.
Michael Cheung is a General Partner at Makers Fund, a venture fund specialized in gaming. Makers Fund has a mission of enabling smaller teams to do big things, by providing capital, access to our global network, and strategic guidance. Michael sits on the board of several games companies, including Dream Games, BetaDwarf, RedHill games, and Klang Games.
In this episode, we’re going to listen to the recording from a webinar that we here at Elite Game Developers organized in February of 2020. The topic was "How To Get Investor Money For Gaming Startup”. We had a presentation in the beginning and then some time for Q&A from the participants to ask questions. Why did we want to talk about raising money? Loads of people have been interested in getting my feedback on their game company pitch deck. I’ve identified many commonalities in the early stage decks that I want to cover with you. I’ll also talk about what investors are looking for. What are the signals for them to invest, and how they make those decisions?
Today I’m talking with Emily Greer, the co-founder, and CEO of Double Loop, a mobile games company based out of San Francisco, California. Emily got into gaming when she co-founded Kongregate in 2006. Emily has seen all the sides of online gaming, all the way from the early days of Flash gaming portals. In this episode, we talk about female founders, data-driven game development, culture, and team, and what it’s like to raise money from investors.
Today I’m talking with Bertrand Vernizeau, the investment partner and CEO of Game Seer, a project financing fund from Germany. Game Seer focuses on the PC and console market and they are in a very unique position to help developers in the more traditional space of gaming. We’ll now hear more from Bertrand himself.
Today I’m talking with Ken Go, the Co-Founder and CEO of DECA Games, based out of Berlin, Germany. DECA is a games company that hosts live games that they've acquired from other developers, who first developed and launched the games. These games include Knights and Dragons, Crime City, Modern War, and Kingdom Age. Will now hear more about DECA Games from Ken himself.
Today I’m talking with Eric Lagier, the managing partner of byFounders, a venture capital firm based out of Copenhagen, Denmark. byFounders is a “for founders by founders” venture fund built on the foundation and backing of a strong Founders Collective, comprising a significant group of some of the most successful Danish & Nordic entrepreneurs investing in and supporting a new generation of globally ambitious Nordic and Baltic entrepreneurs. byFounders have recently done several gaming investments, and we’ll now hear more from Eric himself.
Today I’m talking with Dan Greenberg, Chief Design Officer at ironSource, an app distribution and advertising company based out of Tel Aviv, Israel. Dan shares insights into ad monetization, ad creatives, the future of hyper-casual and why ironSource is getting into mobile games publishing.
Today I’m talking with Simon Hill, the General Manager of Voodoo's UK studios. Just a few months ago, Simon's company Gumbug merged with Voodoo and his company became their UK studios. In this episode, Simon shares his learnings from game development. What short game development cycles and getting out of the door quickly has meant for his efforts, and what he's learned from hyper casual.
Today I’m talking with Paul Murphy, who is a General Partner at Northzone VC, a venture capital firm from London UK. Paul was previously the Co-founder & CEO of Dots, the company behind the casual hit Two Dots. Paul left the company to join Northzone in 2018 and has invested into companies like Bunch and Klang Games. Will now discuss about investing into gaming with Paul himself.
Today I’m talking with Miska Katkoff who is the founder of Deconstructor of Fun, a game development blog and a podcast. We’ve known each other for a while, and I’m super thilled to share this light hearted conversation with you.
Today I’m talking with Seth Sivak, the Co-Founder and CEO of Proletariat, a games company based out of Boston, Massachusetts. Seth started the company with his co-founders in 2012. They started with free-to-play mobile, with games like World Zombienation, but pivoted to PC and console, and are getting closer to launching their Battle Royale game Spellbreak.
Today I’m talking with Callum Brighting, the Co-Founder and CEO of Netspeak Games, a MMO games company based out of London, UK. Callum is a phenominal first-time founder, who's been taking measures of learning how a games company should be built, what the culture should be like and how you can bring on investors to help grow the company.
Today I’m talking with Daniel Hasselberg, the Co-Founder and CEO of MAG Interactive, a mobile games company based in Stockholm, Sweden. I met Daniel several years ago when they had just launched their hit word game Ruzzle. Since then, the company has IPOed and has been growing with more office locations and several launched games. We'll now discuss the learnings from that journey with Daniel.
Today I’m talking with Reko Ukko, the Co-Founder and SVP of Game Design at Seriously Entertainment, based in Helsinki, Finland. Reko has been in so many gaming companies during his career, so we spent most of the epsiode to cover the different game development processes that he's seen. how do you come up with game ideas, how do you approach game mechanics and how decisions get made, to finally get a game out. From racing games to Best Fiends.
Today I’m talking with Jani Penttinen, the Co-Founder & CEO of Utopos Games, based out of Las Vegas, Nevada. Jani started his career in gaming over twenty years ago, first in Finland, before moving to work at Westwood Studios in the States. Later he founded a few companies outside of gaming, before returning to work on a new gaming startup with his ex-colleagues from Westwood.
Today I’m talking with Minwoo Lee, who is the Head of Product at Dodreams, a Helsinki based mobile games company. Minu's career in gaming started Korea about twenty years ago, when he was designing micro transactions into online games. He's career took him to Europe, and eventually to work in the Finnish games industry. I was just talking to Minu that we both have a passion about game design, through the understand of player motivations, aspirations and career goals. We'll now share more about these topics.
Today I’m talking with Natasha Skult, who is a game developer, an entrepreneur and the Co-Founder and CEO of MiTale. Natasha has found purpose to her game making, by changing how educational games could be made. She is an avid spokesperson for diversity in the industry. Let’s hear more from Natasha herself.
Today I’m talking with Harri Manninen, the founding partner at Play Ventures, a seed-stages venture capital firm, with offices in Helsinki and Singapore.
I’ve known Harri for about ten years now, ever since he was building Rocket Pack, the company that he and his co-founders sold to Disney, in less than a year of founding the company. We’ll now hear how Harri made his way into venture, and how he sees the seed stage developing for gaming startups.
Also, check out Play Ventures' guide on pitching perfectly at https://playventures.vc/pitchperfect
Today I’m talking with Teemu Mäki-Patola, who is the COO and CMO of Frogmind, a Helsinki based mobile games company.
Teemu’s entrepreneurial career in gaming started at the same time as mine when he founded the Virtual Air Guitar Company in 2006. We talk about his experiences, a journey which took him to join Frogmind in the early days and to eventually getting a majority stake acquired by Supercell.
I have much admiration for Teemu. In all the dire moments in his career, he never gave up.
Today I’m talking with Anders Leicht Rohde, the co-founder and chief creative officer of Funday Factory, a mobile games company from Aarhus Denmark. Anders and I have been chatting about work-life balance, mental health, stress and burnout for a while now. We decided that it’s time to bring these discussions to the forefront, in the form of a podcast episode.
Today I chatting with Florian Steinhoff, a games entrepreneur and game maker from Berlin Germany. I remember seeing Florian on stage at GDC 2015 when he was presenting their learnings from developing Jelly Splash at Wooga. Already then, I noticed that he’s a really interesting game dev. Will now hear more about Florian and how he approaches making games.
Today I’m talking to David Gardner, general partner at London Venture Partners. On their website, they say that "We've done our 2-guys-in-a-garage start-up. We've helped companies transition from back-of-an-envelope vision to multi-billion-dollar powerhouse. It isn't a mystery to us, and our passion is to help you strategically and operationally.” We’ll now hear the lay of the land from David himself.
This is an episode that highlights all the best of the Elite Game Developers podcast, with clips from the top ten episodes of 2019. If you don't listen to any other episodes from 2019, I definitely suggest you choose from these! They cover everything from physical products, to mindset, to developing powerful habits that set you up for success.
I have a lot of big goals in the works for 2020, and if you're listening to this podcast I know you do too, so hit play, put that phone in your pocket, and let's get ready to crush it next year!
Today I’m talking Christian Ress, who is the co-founder and CEO of Playtestcloud, a playtesting service startup from Berlin, Germany. I’m fascinated about why playtests, surveys and focus group, have always been in the shadow of metrics, as a decision making tool. You can learn so much from reading player sentiment and observing their behavior. Will now cover this and more with Christian.
Teppo Soininen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ministry of Games, a mobile gaming startup from Helsinki Finland. I’ve known Teppo for a long time, and he has been building building his games company for some time now. He has gone from longer development to rapid development, and has worked with publishers to launch their games. We now discuss the lessons he’s learned from working with publishers.
Erik Pöntiskoski is the CEO of Dodreams, a mobile games studio based in Helsinki Finland. Erik joined Dodreams to head their way into success in mobile games, and through a long period of porotyping and testing, he was able to harness the team to find greatness in their game Drive Ahead.
Joe Schaeppi and Bastian Bergmann are co-founders of 12traits, a player motivations company based out of Berlin, Germany. I’m a big fan of profiling the players that I’m approaching with a game, and guiding the discussion in the team around actual data on the target audience. It eliminates questions like should we launch before we have PVP or not, because guys like 12traits are providing you the data. Check out 12traits https://twitter.com/12traits
Today I’m talking with Adam Schaub, who is the co-founder and CEO of Strange Quest, a mobile gaming startup from Stockholm, Sweden. Adam has been in the games industry for over 20 years and has seen a lot of different kinds of companies, gaming platform and ways of making games. We’ll be talking about all of those and more.
Today I'm getting interviewed by Erkki Lassila, who is a Doctoral student in the University of Oulu. It's an interesting talk about the different topics around analytics in gaming, and how it's seen as a driving force for free to play game development.
Steffen Kabbelgaard is the co-founder and CEO of BetaDwarf, an online game studio based out of Copenhagen Denmark. Steffen and his team have been slowly cooking their games company and they just recently announced their Series A round of funding. BetaDrawf is a unique games company and we’ll now hear the company story from Steffen himself.
Ilkka Perheentupa is the founding partner of Avance Attorneys, a Helsinki, Finland based law firm, who has represented several Nordic gaming companies, including Next Games, Seriously, Small Giant Games, Traplight and Snowprint Studios. Ilkka has worked with gaming entrepreneurs for several years, and we will now discuss the different aspects that can come up in the early and later stages of gaming startups.
Riley Andersen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Umami Games, a hyper casual games startup from Copenhagen Denmark. Riley has been in the games industry for a few years now, but she has already started two games companies, and is working quickly towards the right game with the right KPIs.
Will Luton runs a management consultant company called Department of Play, which focuses on the games industry. Will has been in the industry for over a decade and is an active spokesperson on making things better in gaming.
We’ll now discuss with Will and go into detail on his article on Games Industry biz, titled ”What we can learn from successful game teams”. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-10-14-what-we-can-learn-from-successful-game-teams
Tim Reiter is one of the co-founders of Kolibri Games, an idle games developer from Berlin Germany. Tim and his co-founders were very focused on figuring out what they wanted to do and found success in a year of founding their company when they still were students in the university. Will now here to story from Tim himself.
Laurent Notin in entrepreneur and business coach, who just recently moved to Finland. I was introduced to him during the summer of 2019 and we have been chatting pretty much every week after that. We discuss tactical topics, philosophical topics, everything that goes into leadership, company culture, values and taking care of yourself.
Today I’m talking with Jeferson Valadares, the Co-Founder and CEO of Doppio Games, a voice games statup from Lisbon, Portugal. I’ve known Jeff for years, since he was working in Helsinki for Digital Chocolate. After the years in Finland, Jeff worked at EA, Bioware, Bandai Namco, and finally it has come the time for him to found a new games studio.
Check out more at https://doppio.games/
Matteo Vallone is a Principal at venture capital firm Initial Capital, who invests in seed and early-stage companies with a focus on games, consumer services and technology enablers. Matteo worked for several years at Google Play, where he got to work with game developers and eventually transitioned into working with them as an investor.
Today I’m having a chat with Kristian Metzger, the Co-Founder and CEO of Stratosphere Games, who are based out of Berlin, Germany. Kristian and his team are building midcore games with a team of 22 people, and they have always bootstrapped the company. There story is an interesting and inspiring one
Today we are kicking off the Friday episode on Elite Game Developers. I'm sharing what is to come and what other things are cookin on the Elite Game Developers site. https://elitegamedevelopers.com
Josh Buckley started his first games company as a teenager and sold it before he graduated high school. His entrepreneur journey took him to US, where he got accepted to the Y Combinator accelerator with his new company. Years later, we discuss what has happened to Josh and his business and what he has learned from running a venture backed games company.
Today I’m talking with Matias Myllyrinne, the co-founder and CEO of Redhill Games. Matias has been running game studios for nearly two decades and he is now embarking on his first founder journey with Redhill Games.
Simon Davis is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mighty Bear Games out of Singapore. We talk about Simon's career and the road to staring his games company, and his experiences of running the company as a first-time founder.
Mika Kuusisto is the Co-Founder and CEO of Kopla Games, a mobile games company from Tampere, Finland. Mika and his co-founders quickly built and launched their first game, Non-Stop Knight, and got acquired in a short period of time by Flaregames. Mika shares his thoughts on the entrepreneur journey so far.
Martial Valery is the Co-Founder and COO of Oh Bibi, a mobile games company based out of Paris, France. Martial and his co-founders have been experimenting with a flat organization model since the founding of the company. Through trial and error, they have identified the right model that works.
Today I talking with Tuomas Erikoinen. Tuomas is a very special game developer and solo entrepreneur, who has built several games and launched them on the App Store with amazing success.
Before his company Part Time Monkey, Tuomas was a co-founder in a venture backed games company, and even earlier than that, he was part of the crue who build the first Angry Birds games.
Riku Rakkola is the co-founder and CEO of Traplight, a mobile gaming studio from Tampere, Finland. Riku and his team where trying to find success for several years, until they finally got the right approach to game development, and through months of prototyping different ideas, they came up with the right idea and started their validation process.
Today I had a chat with Aron Beierschmitt, the CEO of Beyond Games, a games company based out of San Francisco, CA.
The company is a distributed games company, with teams operating from several locations. Aron started his games career in 2010, when he founded his first games company Foundation Games, out of his college dorm room.
Today I’m talking with Antti Hattara, the Co-Founder and CEO of Starberry Games, a mobile games company from Berlin, Germany. Antti has an extensive background in free-to-play games and he’s recently been seeing success with his own startup. We discover Antti’s learning journey and how he approaches setting expectations that are healthy for a first-time founder.
Today I’m talking with Elina Arponen, the co-founder and CEO of Quicksave, an instant messenger games company. Elina is a serial entrepreneur, and Quicksave is her second venture-backed games company.
I wanted to talk to Elina about diversity in the games industry and how has it been to run and raise funding for her company in a predominantly male industry.
With my first company, when we were doing Facebook canvas games, we built our own game server backend on AWS. We thought that we knew what we were doing, but we had painful nights when servers were down and the bills from Amazon that were really hurting our bottom line as we scaled our game. Back then, there was no SaaS option for a game server, especially made for a free-to-play game.
I’m so happy to talk to day with James Gwertzman, the co-founder of PlayFab.
Today I talk with Mariina Hallikainen, the CEO of Colossal Order, a Tampere, Finland based company that developed the hugely successful game Cities: Skylines in 2015.
Mariina was a first-time CEO when she took on the role of running the young games startup, and she has been learning everything on the job.
This is a really interesting discussion, and could not be more pleased with all the insights that Mariina shares with us.
Today I had a chat with Carl Fritjofsson, partner at venture capital firm Creandum. Creandum has invested in several games companies in the past years, including the very successful Small Giant Games.
We talk with Carl about: How should a founder approach a financing round? How does your decision making change from Pre-Seed, to Seed, to Series A? Why isn't the tech VC looking at games, when they are looking at mix of other tech related startups?
Today I talk with Nikolina Zidar, the co-founder and CEO of Unicorn Pirates, a mobile games studio that values a diverse culture for making great games for the underserved markets. Nikolina shares her journey into the games industry, how she found her company and what are the ways that all of us can support and improve diversity in the games industry.
Topics that we discuss: How do you approach the nurturing of the company culture and the values? How do you find great people who are a good fit, and are great addition to the company culture? Have you had any scary situations as an entrepreneur?
Today I am chatting with Lasse Seppanen, who was previously co-founder and CEO of PlayRaven, the developer of the Spymaster games. Lasse and his co-founders had a unique idea for a company that they wanted to build, but had to abruptly part ways with the company at the end of 2018.
Topics that we discuss: How did you find co-founders?
How do approach hiring? What advise would you give to people who are just starting out with the founding team?
Would you have done things differently if you'd known the outcome?
Olesja Marjalaakso is the Co-Founder & CEO of Polka Dot Studio, a Helsinki based games company, focusing on creating gaming experienced around fashion, with games like Trendy Stylist. We discuss with Olesja on how she approached building a games company.
Josh Nilson is the co-founder and CEO of East Side Games, out of Vancouver. East Side Games is an independent game studio, and they are a unique games company in everything they do. On their website, they say that "We take pride in doing things differently and embrace having a unique player base. This attitude allows us to be so much more than just a game studio. We are a place where people come not just to work, but to live, laugh, play and grow. We create products that encourage laughter and community.”
Today I talked with Kalle Mäkinen and Aarni Linnakangas, the co-founders of Superplus Games, the makers of Hills of Steel. Their journey into games entrepreneurship and experiences so far have been quite exciting. Today they will share how they approach game creation with a small team, and also continuing the success of their hit game.
Jami is a long-time games industry veteran, who’s career spans from working at Digital Chocolate, EA, Rovio and now at his own company. Jami and his team have been exploring better ways of working on games, and today now he will share these learnings with us. Jami has always had the entrepreneurial spirit and has had several opportunities to start a games company, but situation and circumstances didn’t get aligned until 2014 when the guys started working on Futureplay Games.
Today we have a true first-time founder story. I’m talking with Robin Squire and Paul Kurowski. Robin is the CEO and Paul the Creative Director of Black Block, a new games company working on an open-world game, in Helsinki, Finland. Highlights from the discussion: Paul believes that the stars aligned and that’s how the eventually got the chance to work on their own company. Robin says that working in a small games company is like baptism by fire, learning as much as possible.
Today I met with Samuli Syvähuoko and Kalle Kaivola from Sisu Game Ventures, on topic around investing into games companies, founder dynamics, investor selection and how founders should operate with their investors.
How to develop your team when the company is still small, how the games market is still a blue ocean, working with games focused VC, building a culture with Stella Wang, Co-Founder and CEO @ Dazzle Rocks