Small Giant CEO回顾手游《帝国与谜题》的发展及公司并购过程

原作者：Dean Takahashi 译者：Vivian Xue

芬兰对全球手游生态的影响不仅只有《部落冲突》和《愤怒的小鸟》。去年，Zynga以不低于5.6亿美金（80%股份的标价）的价格收购了芬兰工作室Small Giant Games。

上周，Slush科技创新大会在赫尔辛基举行，大会吸引了至少25000名行业人士，我在会上见到了Small Giant Games的首席执行官Timo Soinien。Soinien于2013年创立了这家位于赫尔辛基的公司，他们开发初代《帝国与谜题》(Empires&Puzzles)时，员工数量仅为12人，游戏首发于2017年春天，发展十分迅速。当Small Giant Games处于上升期时，Zynga幸运地把它揽到了旗下。

在我们的访谈过程中，Soininen谈到公司目前规模达到了60人，正在研发下一款热门大作。《帝国与谜题》已经发行四年了，它是Small Giant的第三款产品。Soinien说团队在开发这款游戏时分析了市面上最热门的50款游戏。他们观察了所有使这些游戏成功的元素，像乐高积木一样把它们分离出来。他们想专注于做一款中度游戏，或者说一款更具深度和交互性且吸引力强的游戏。

他们想做一款“升级版的休闲游戏，不只是游戏，还将成为人们的爱好”，Soininen说。“如果让玩家使用三消机制来攻击敌方，从而将休闲与硬核游戏结合起来，会怎样呢？”

下面这些想必大家都知道了。Zynga收购Small Giants时，向每一位Small Giants成员支付了约1190万美元。在去年的财报会议上，Zynga表示奖励Small Giants Games是因为他们成功使玩家把游戏当成一种爱好。芬兰聚集了超过220家游戏公司，但Small Giant Games是少数令同行仰望的企业。

下面是编辑后的采访内容：

GameBeat：被收购前你们已经成立多久了？

Timo Soininen：让我算算。四年多一点，四年半吧。我们是2013年中旬成立的，随后发展得相当快。发行了前两款游戏后——《怪翅逃亡》（Oddwings Escape）是一款非常美丽的飞行游戏，但我们知道它不是我们想要的游戏。它存在一些瑕疵，一些设计方面的问题。我们很快终止了这个项目。回头来看这是一个正确的决定，不要执着于无法成功的事物。接着我们真正开始探索制作热门大作。

这要归功于团队——我们团队只有12个人，但我们对市面上最热门的50款游戏进行了深入彻底的分析，从而弄清什么机制有效，哪些游戏表现良好，哪些游戏不太理想，以及为什么。最终我们得到了一款优质游戏应具备的要素——它们就像一块块乐高积木。

我们一直持有这样一种观点：许多被我们称为“高级休闲玩家”的人，他们愿意深入探索“爱好式体验”（hobby-like experiences)。当时，midcore游戏对普通玩家来说十分困难。在我们看来，这些游戏的教程废话连篇。于是我们想到“等等，我们能否制作一个简单有趣，同时具备这些游戏的深度和复杂性的游戏？”

当时我们经常在团队内部举办限时游戏开发比赛（game jam），某次一名开发者产生了一个有趣的想法：如果我们使用三消机制，但消除物不是泡泡或糖果，而是能够用来攻击的盾牌呢？于是我们围绕这个概念做了一个游戏。这就是我们的出发点。它将成为一个连接两种世界的游戏。我们开始了制作，并且取得了惊人的发展。游戏的成功显然归功于对时机的把握，但也离不开团队辛勤的工作和深刻的见解。

GamesBeat：达到今日的成就想必是个有趣的过程，毕竟过去人人都想模仿Supercell，而如今你们成了众人的榜样。

Soininen：我们关注的另外一个方面——显然也是一切的核心，那就是游戏的留存率要高，最终游戏的盈利模式得到玩家的喜爱。许多游戏公司仍然会在这些方面栽跟头。他们认为只要做出一款好游戏就行了。这是基础，显然你的游戏必须好。但是我们都清楚用户获取有多难。我们知道我们需要找到一种获取用户的可靠方式。

在游戏发行前，我们获得了一笔来自EQT Ventures的投资。我们寻求投资的做法大概有些不同寻常。通常在你寻找投资公司时，你会为他们描绘一张美好的蓝图。一切都是完美的。把钱投进来，一切都将顺利发展。而我们的描述是“嗨，我们有一款充满潜力的优质游戏，但目前我们有一些短板。我们需要学习绩效营销。我们需要您的帮助和资金。此外，我们对如何运营游戏有一些想法，但这不是我们的强项。我们会解决这个问题。”不知是一时脑热还是运气，他们选择相信我们。

拿到这笔投资两个月后，我们的实力大大增强了。我们在开发游戏的同时建立了自己的分析系统。同时团队也扩大到16人。我们中的许多人显然疯了。团队这么小，竟然还要建自己的分析堆栈。但事实证明这是一个明智的决定，因为它使我们进展神速。我们不再依赖他人为我们分析和拟定road map(产品规划)。我们可以每天更新自己的road map。获得初始投资两个月后，我们的资金库首次超过了一百万。我们建立了一个财务模型。

当然，为了接着建立起商业模式——使我们这个小团队能够运营游戏的模式，我们对游戏业务进行了全面思考，考虑了游戏业务的所有主要方面。

GamesBeat：这是否部分归功于团队里有经验的成员呢？

Soininen：当然。我们中的许多人都是老手了，或者所谓的“行业专家”。这也是我们习得的一条经验——你得想办法把运气替换成可控制的事物。幸运的是，我们拥有一个全能的团队——我们不仅有客户开发、游戏设计、视听设计等方面的人才，我们还有能够建立用户获取模型的数学家、半程序员半数据科学家。雄厚的人才实力不仅推动了游戏功能开发，也为业务发展提供了便利。

这证明了一个事实——优秀的团队不一定是超级老团队或个个经验丰富。例如，这个游戏机制的创意来自一个非常年轻的小伙子，当时在我们团队里实习，他很快成为了核心成员。优秀的团队是新老员工的结合。

GamesBeat：与Zynga结合的过程是什么样的？你们为什么愿意被收购？

Soinien：游戏发行后，一些大公司向我们抛出了橄榄枝。那是在2017年。我们考虑了一阵子。我们把一小部分股权卖给了投资公司，接着继续研发和运营游戏。到2018年中旬，几乎所有行业大头都开始联络我们。有时他们提出的交易条件很有意义，于是我们开始认真考虑起来。我们雇了一名投资行家帮我们分析。

但我们仍然不确定是否要卖。我们才刚起步。但我们逐渐认识到这笔交易能够创造的价值，以及一些更重要的东西——我们能否找到志同道合的合作者，允许我们保持自己独特的文化、效率和工作方式？我们也看清了游戏开发是一个无底洞，存在许多我们未知的领域。

在这个过程中，我们逐渐认识到Zynga是一家重视以数据为导向开展经营的公司。他们对游戏的数据和结构有着充分理解。但更重要的是Zynga的公司状况——他们正处于优化调整阶段，需要优秀的公司加入，帮助他们再次发展。他们想让我们成为其中的一员，一个主要贡献者。这与我们的想法产生了共鸣。

后来我们就选择了Zynga，事实证明这是明智的。

GamesBeat：我记得他们在财报会议上说，他们在这笔交易中让给了你们许多好处。这开始为他们带来回报。

Soininen; 没错。我们仍然是独立的企业。Zynga买下了我们80%的股份，并根据我们接下来三年的EBITDA(息税折旧前净利)购买剩下20%的股份。这完美符合我们的利益。

我们很欣赏Frank（Zynga现任CEO）的愿景——只要我们与优秀的公司联手，并且内部工作室继续做好工作，只要我们不断进步，Zynga将成为未来世界排名前三、前四的公司——这蛮有意思的。这也与我个人的理想一致。能够在有目标的公司工作是件很酷的事。他们的员工也十分友好，我们相当合拍。比起其它高度专业、规模庞大的亚洲、欧洲和美国公司，即便我们的做得再出色，在那样的公司里我们永远只是一小部分，产生不了太大的作用。能够成为推动母公司发展的主要贡献者，对我们来说是一个激励。

GamesBeat：Zynga允许你们独立经营，我想这对你们来说很重要。具体细节是什么样的？我想你们肯定愿意和他们交换意见，但不想被干涉吧。

Soininen：显然集团里有大把资源和人才。我们能够随时使用Zynga的数据分析资源，还有许多优秀的人才供我们调用。我们优化了其它领域，整合利用公司资源，进行某些类型的交易谈判。这些是经常性的工作。

当然还有获取反馈——比如我们的设计师想征求其它人的意见。我们的同行总是能给出反馈，“你觉得这个怎么样？”特别是Gram Games，一个和我们差不多的工作室。我们有许多共同点。我们会定期会面，交换意见。这很有意义。

用Frank的话说，在Zynga没有人强迫你合作。合作是自然而然形成的。我们能随时获得公司提供的服务。如果我们真遇到困难，当然公司会介入，试图帮我们解决问题，但迄今为止一切进展顺利。我们能够在Zynga内部掌控自己的命运。

GamesBeat：这种情况还蛮罕见的。

Soininen：确实。很多许久没见的朋友会询问我公司管理方面的事。Frank，Bernard和Matt(均为Zynga领导）都在EA和其它公司工作过很长时间。他们明白强扭的瓜不甜，应该采用新模式，让这些工作室以半独立的形式合并进来，彼此交流。

小团体能迸发巨大的创造力，这是事实。只要你能创造这样的环境，关注结果而不是流程——当然我们隶属于一家上市公司，因此必然要遵守一定的规章制度。但这些制度是如此轻量化，这令我们颇为惊讶。或许我们无意间抱怨过一些事。但总体上我们没有感到有负担。

GamesBeat：我最近和Riot Games的人聊过，他们的情况挺有意思的，他们的《英雄联盟》是全球最火的游戏之一，然而十年间他们从未发售过其它游戏，接着突然公布了8款新游戏。他们一直在努力开发其它项目，但也面临着如何在新旧项目间分配资源的艰难抉择，是支持老游戏还是做点新的东西吸引玩家？你们是否有相似的感受呢？

Soininen：任何大型热门游戏的制作公司都要面对这个问题。接下来做什么？你看看那些运营多年的游戏的生命周期——《部落冲突》已经运营八年了，我猜想今年将是该游戏表现最佳的一年。我们才运营两年半，仍是个小宝宝，前路还很漫长。

我们的大部分精力都投在《帝国与谜题》上。我们明年将发布第三赛季，还会推出自己的“Battle Pass”模式。我们会保证游戏内容的质量和连续性，使玩家玩上数月甚至数年。这是我们的首要目标。建立一个庞大、活跃的社区。

我们的另一款游戏Puzzle Combat目前正在测试阶段。它是一款类似的变体。和《帝国与谜题》不一样。我们正在对它进行测试，使它符合玩家期待和数据指标。我们当然想做一系列游戏。但以什么样的顺序和速度，这很难说。这是一个艰难的过程，因为一旦你做出了一款成功游戏，理想情况下你应该抽出一些资源做点新东西。但是把一些顶尖人才——那些为这款游戏倾注心血的人从项目中抽走，有时很困难。

GamesBeat：这是否意味着你们会向Zynga寻求帮助？这让我想到了动视，他们动用了好几个工作室制作《使命召唤》，因为它是动视的主要品牌。

Soininen：这是一个长远的想法。但短期内，如果你有好几个工作室，每个工作室的文化和开发模式各不相同，有时很难将他们融合起来。这是你必须考虑的。事实上，让他们自然发展可能更容易些。以我们为例，我们现在规模还很小，大概60个人。我们通过雇佣员工把我们的文化传递给新人，而不是牺牲自我换取第三方合作。我想我们终将走到这一步，但保持和传承团队的DNA可能更有效率和成效。

GamesBeat：你必须弄清旧游戏和新游戏分别需要多少人手。

Soininen：正是。我们的与众不同之处在于，我们没有专门的运营团队。我们的开发团队不仅设计新功能和活动，也负责开展这些活动。很多事务是自动化完成的。过程非常紧凑。我们的规模之所以一直很小，是我们主动选择的结果。我们试图维持这种模式。

能够自己掌控全局是我们一直以来的主要动力。鉴于我们目前拥有的工具技术，我们可以自动化许多事务，很多都不需要人工操作。我们的开发者有非常强的自主意识，他们不仅开发游戏，还运营游戏。我们和其它成功做到这一点的公司交流，他们的团队规模是我们的10倍。两种团队都很好，但对我们来说——保持小规模使我们招到了非常优秀的人才。他们感觉这值得学习。

小公司也更容易做出新东西。员工之间有一种亲密感。你不会被调到别的地方，比如被调到隔壁办公室和新同事工作。在这种模式下发展也具有挑战性，并不总是很容易。但是我们在处理事情上一直保持开诚布公的方式。我们会和团队讨论。我们怎么处理这个问题？在这种模式下，团队没有一个主要操控者。永远是全体决策。当你找到对的人时，这将发挥很好的效果。我们招募的年轻人才很快就能为团队做出贡献，这令人惊讶。他们跳入深深的池子学游泳，而我们设置了导师和救生员，确保他们安全浮在水面上。

GamesBeat：对于那些想向你们学习的人，你有什么建议呢？

Soininen：开发游戏时要明确游戏的市场定位。我们在开发游戏时有一个相对清晰的蓝图、设想，全体团队朝着这个目标迈进。这是其一，你应该明确想要实现的目标。有时候可能没有目标。我们在开发前两款游戏时就没有明确的目标，因此经过了一番艰难的时光。第二，关注最本质的东西。学会放弃。你可能想尝试各种不同的方法，但要记住你的目的。什么是达成目标所必要的？

确保自己明白什么在市场上能成功，什么不能成功。重新发明轮子不是什么崇高的事情，只不过是重新应用成功公式，以新的方式混合现成的工具。但有时创新就是创造一种全新的混搭公式，使人产生一种不同的感觉。这很重要。如果你想到了一个很好的创意，我非常佩服，但你的创意可能无法落地。它对于消费者(玩家）来说太过了。我觉得，选择一条阻力更小的道路更明智。

把游戏当成一门生意去思考，思考方方面面，不仅仅是开发和技术方面。学会分析。你必须擅长分析。你需要懂得绩效营销，大多数情况下。你需要擅长运营。你需要做好社区管理和用户支持。你需要找人规划商业模式。完成了上述事项后，你的游戏才有可能真正起飞和有所发展。

GamesBeat：所有这些过程中似乎充满了矛盾冲突。我看到了暴雪公布手游《暗黑破坏神：不朽》时的遭遇。通常情况下，公布这样一款制作精良的游戏后玩家们应该很开心才是，但暴雪粉丝们都很失望，因为他们期待的是PC版。一些开发商选择迎合粉丝的心意，做他们想玩的游戏。但一些公司在这个方面引发了许多冲突。但我感觉你们没有这方面问题。

Soininen：只要你清楚自己做的产品是什么，你的目标玩家是谁，就不会引发二者的冲突。二者必须是统一的。我们清楚我们的目标玩家是成年人，喜欢体量小、易上手且有一定深度的RPG游戏。明白这一点，我们就不会遇到你所述的问题。这些玩家看重的是游戏节奏流畅、易于上手，但后期又有足够的复杂度，从而不断激发他们的好奇心。我们根据这个目标选择合适的机制。如果我们应用其它类型的机制，它将不会成功。

这是我的答案，尊重并了解你的玩家。他们是谁，他们的期望是什么？如果你完全背着他们干，想改变他们的态度将十分困难。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Finland has more to contribute to the world of mobile gaming than Clash Royale and Angry Birds. We saw that last year when Zynga acquired Small Giant Games for at least $560 million (price tag for 80%).

I met Timo Soininen, CEO of Helsinki-based Small Giant Games, last week at the Slush tech event, which drew at least 25,000 people to Helsinki. He started the company in 2013 and had barely a dozen people to work on the first version of Empires & Puzzles, which debuted in the spring of 2017. The game grew so quickly that Zynga was lucky to snag Small Giant Games on its way up.

In our interview, Soininen said the company has grown to 60 people and is working on new games beyond its huge hit. Empires & Puzzles came about four years into Small Giant’s history, and it was its third title. Soininen said the team stepped back and analyzed the top 50 mobile games. They looked at all of the elements that made them successful, and carved these out almost like Lego pieces. They wanted to focus on a “midcore” game, or one with deeper depth and interaction that was easy to get into.

They wanted to make an “advanced casual game that was more like a hobby than a game,” Soininen said. “What if you used match-3 mechanics to target army shields and use it to bridge casual and hardcore games?”

And the rest was history. When Zynga acquired the company, it paid about $11.9 million per employee. In its last earnings call, Zynga said it was paying out bonuses to Small Giant Games because the game has become like a hobby for its fans. Finland has more than 220 game companies, but Small Giant Games is a rarity that many of its peers admire.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: How long were you out there before you were bought?

Timo Soininen: Let me count. It was just over four years. Four and a half years. In mid-2013 we started up. It was pretty quick, after all that. After our first two games — Oddwings Escape was a beautiful, beautiful flying game, but we knew at the time that it wasn’t the one. It had some flaws, some issues from a design perspective. We killed that very quickly. In hindsight that was the right thing to do, rather than get stuck on something that might not fly. We really started searching for the big one.

Kudos to the team — we took a deep dive with a small team, only 12 people, and really analyzed the top 50 games inside out. We formed a view of what mechanics work, what games perform well, what games don’t, and why. We had these virtual Lego bricks on the table at the end – these are the components of a good game.

We had this insight, that a lot of what we label as “advanced casual” players, they’d like to go a bit deeper into hobby-like experiences. The mid-core games at the time were almost all very difficult for normal people. The onboarding was crap, from our perspective. We said, “Hang on a minute, could we make something that was easy and welcoming, but still have depth and complexity like these deeper games?”

One of our insights — we had a lot of game jam sessions inside the team, and one developer came up with an interesting idea. What if you used a match-three mechanic where instead of bubbles or candy, you used these shields to target something as an attack mechanic? Then build a game around that. That’s how it got started. This could be the game that bridges these two worlds. We started work, and it’s quite amazing where we went. It was obviously the result of great timing, but also hard work and good insights.

GamesBeat: It must be interesting to get here from the days when everyone wanted to learn from Supercell. Now everyone wants to learn from you.

Soininen: The other thing that was crucial — obviously at the heart of everything is a game that works well, that has good retention, and then eventually monetization that players like. A lot of game companies still fail in a couple of other areas. They think that the business of games is just making a good game. That’s the foundation. Obviously you need that. But we were brutally aware of how difficult it is to get users. We knew we needed to find a way to master user acquisition as well.

When we got our first investment, just before we launched the game, from EQT Ventures, we were probably an unusual bunch of folks. Typically when you go to VCs you paint this pretty picture. Everything is perfect. Just put in the money and everything’s going to be fine. We said, “Look. We know we have a good game with great potential, but there are a couple of things we’re not very good at yet. We need to learn performance marketing. We need your help for that, and we need money. Also, we have an idea of how to build live operations, but that’s not our strong suit yet. We’ll fix it.” They were crazy or lucky enough to believe in us.

Two months after the investment, we were in a really good capacity. We built our own analytics systems at the same time we were building the game. At the time we were 16 people. A lot of us were clearly crazy. You have such a tiny team and you’re building your analytics stack. But it turned out that was a smart move, because it allowed us to go incredibly fast. We were not a victim of someone else’s road map on analytics. On a daily basis we had a new version. Two months after the initial investment we had our first million-dollar month. We had a financial model.

Of course, to be able to then have a business model — we were able to run the game as a business with a very small team. We were covering all the major aspects of a game business. We were thinking about it quite holistically.

GamesBeat: Does some of this come from having people who’ve done it so many times?

Soininen: Certainly. A lot of us are veterans, industry dinosaurs if you like. That was the learning. You have to replace luck with something you can control. We were lucky enough to have a versatile team – client development, game design, audiovisual design, all that stuff, but also mathematicians who were able to handle the models required for user acquisition. Half coders and half data scientists. And then this incredible capability to do build some of the tools for the business, not just the features of the game.

It’s a testament to the fact that — the team doesn’t have to be super old or experienced. For example, the guy who came up with this original mechanic, he joined as a trainee, a very young guy. He very quickly became one of the key members of the team. It’s a combination of old and new.

GamesBeat: The Zynga combination, what was that experience like? How did you decide you wanted to be acquired?

Soininen: Right after we launched the game, we had our first whispers from some of the big companies. That was back in 2017. We considered that for a while. We sold a small portion of the company to our VCs, and then we continued to work on the game super quickly. By the middle of 2018, almost all of the heavyweights of the industry started approaching us. At some point it was clear that the scope of the deals became so meaningful that we started to consider it. We hired a banker to help us figure things out.

We still weren’t sure we wanted to sell. We’d only just gotten started. But it became very clear that there’s a lot of value to be created, and more important — could we find a partner that shared the same vision we had, and who would allow us to maintain this unique culture and efficiency and way of working we have? Really see how deep the rabbit hole goes with this game and future games.

During that process it became clear that Zynga was one of the most, if not the most, data-oriented companies. They understood the mathematics and the structure of the game very well. But more important, Zynga was in a situation — they were in this fix-it mode, and they needed good companies to join them and start helping them grow again. They wanted us to join that journey and be part of it, a big contributor. That resonated with us.

Subsequently we took a lot of the consideration in Zynga stock, which turned out to be a good decision.

GamesBeat: I remember from their earnings call, they said they structured the deal with a lot of bonuses for you. That’s starting to pay off.

Soininen: Exactly. We continue to be entrepreneurs. Zynga’s bought 80 percent of the company, and they’ll buy the remaining 20 percent over the next three years based on EBITDA multiples. It aligns our interests perfectly.

We like Frank’s vision, that Zynga could be one of the top three, top four companies in the world eventually. If we get good new companies involved and the internal studios continue to do good work, if we continuously improve — that was interesting. For me personally that resonated well. It’s cool to be part of a company with a mission. They’re also super nice people. We get along quite well, as opposed to some of the other Asian, European, and U.S.-based companies, really professional companies that are already very large. Even if we perform super well, we’ll still be a small part of the business at a company like that. We’re not going to make a big difference. The chance to be a big contributor to the success of the new mothership was motivating for us.

GamesBeat: Letting you run your own operation, I’m sure that’s important. What are some of those details like? I would think that you’d welcome recommendations going in both directions. But you don’t necessarily want interference.

Soininen: Obviously there are a lot of resources and lot of brainpower available in the group. We’ve tapped into the data analytics resources at the mothership, whenever we need them. There are really smart people available for us. We’ve done some work on optimizing other areas, pooling the resources of the company and negotiating certain types of deals. That happens quite frequently.

And of course getting feedback on — let’s say a game designer wants to have a second opinion. There’s always someone to call now, their counterparts. “What do you think about this?” Especially with Gram Games, a similar studio to us. We have a lot in common. We exchange notes and meet pretty regularly. That makes a lot of sense.

Using Frank’s words, nobody coerces or forces cooperation. It comes naturally. We have this smorgasbord of services available to tap into. If we had some really troublesome times, of course people would step in and try to solve our problems, but so far things have gone very well. We’ve been able to control our own destiny within Zynga.

GamesBeat: It’s pretty rare for that to happen.

Soininen: It is. A lot of people ask me about that, people who haven’t seen me in a while. Frank, Bernard, Matt, they obviously all have had long careers with Electronic Arts and other companies. They’ve seen what happens when you try to force something. The new model is that you have these semi-independent studios that are consolidated and they exchange.

Creativity flourishes in smaller units. That’s a fact of life. If you’re able to create this ecosystem that allows that to happen, and you focus on results rather than how things are done — of course we’re part of a publicly listed company, so there are certain things we need to comply with. But it’s been a very positive surprise to us, how lightweight it’s been. Maybe it’s that we were already automatically compliant in many ways. But it’s been no burden for us.

GamesBeat: I talked to the folks at Riot Games recently, where they had this interesting situation of running one of the hottest games in the world for 10 years, and then all of a sudden they announced eight more. They were always working very hard on other projects, but there were these difficult tradeoffs as far as how much to feed into the existing game to keep it going versus pulling people off to do other things. For you, do you have any similar feelings about what you need to do going forward?

Soininen: That’s a debate for any company that has a big, successful game. What next? If you look at the lifespan of these kinds of live-ops games — Clash of Clans has been going seven or eight years now, and my guess is that this will be the best year ever for that game. We’re only two and a half years old, still a baby in the market. We think we have a very long life ahead of us.

The vast majority of our efforts go into building Empires and Puzzles. We have season three coming up next year. We’re launching our version of Battle Pass, the Path of Valor. We’re making sure this game has content and continuity, so players can play it for months and years. That’s the number one priority. It’s a very large, active community.

We have another game currently in soft launch called Puzzle Combat. It’s a variation, a similar-ish game. It’s not the same. We’re testing that and trying to get it to feel right for the players and from a numbers perspective. We definitely want to create a series of games over the years. As far as the sequence and how rapidly we’ll go, that’s difficult to say. It’s painful, because if you have a successful game, you should always take some of that and put that into something new, in an ideal case. But taking some of the best people, who’ve poured their souls into the game, away from the project, sometimes that’s difficult.

GamesBeat: Does that sometimes become a reason to seek help from your parent company? The thing I think of is Activision, with multiple studios working on Call of Duty, because it’s the brand that drives them forward.

Soininen: That’s the idea going forward. In the short term, if you have studio X and studio Y and they have very different operating cultures and development models, sometimes it’s very difficult to teach the old dog the ways of the new dog, if you like. That’s something to consider. Sometimes it’s actually easier to grow organically. For example, in our case, we’re still very small. We have about 60 people at the moment. Hiring people to work with the original team, you transfer that culture to the new people, rather than giving something away for a third party. I think that will eventually happen at some point as well, but it’s probably more efficient and more fruitful to try to keep the DNA and pass on that information.

GamesBeat: You have to figure out how many people the old game needs and how many the new game needs.

Soininen: Exactly. What’s been quite unusual in our approach, we don’t have a live ops team per se. Our development team is developing new features and live events, but also running a lot of those events. There’s a lot of automation. It’s very compact. The fact that we’ve always had a very small number of people, that’s been by choice. We’re trying to duplicate that approach.

The primary motivation for us has always been — it’s really motivating for the team itself to be running the whole show. Given the tools that we have available now from a technology perspective, you can automate so much. You don’t have to necessarily do that much manual work. Talking to our developers, they have a very strong sense of ownership. They’re running the game, not just developing it. We talk to some other companies who are very successful doing this with teams that are 10 times bigger. Both can be happy, but for us, for our purposes — we’ve been able to recruit really good people because of that. They feel that this is something interesting to take on.

It’s easier to do something new at a smaller company, though. You have this close proximity. You’re not being transferred somewhere. Maybe you’re changing to the desk next door and working with some new people. Scaling with that model has its challenges as well. It’s not always that easy. But we have an honest approach to these things. We discuss with the teams. How should we go about this? It’s not a model where we have one mastermind thinking about all of this. It’s always a joint effort. It works when you have the right kind of people who are ready for that. The young talent we’ve acquired, it’s incredible how quickly they’ve been able to contribute. They’re jumping in the deep end of the pool and learning to swim. We have our mentors as the lifeguards, making sure they stay afloat.

GamesBeat: Do you have some advice for people who would want to learn from you?

Soininen: The one thing when you’re developing a new game — with this game we were very clear about the niche, the positioning of the game. We had a relatively clear picture, a hypothesis. What if we create this? We’re targeting as a team to get there. That’s one thing. You should try to be very clear about what you want to achieve. Sometimes that’s not there. That was not the case with our first two games. We learned about that the hard way. The second thing is to focus on essentials. Learn to say no to a thousand things. It’s tempting to go all different ways. You have to keep that purpose in mind. What is it that we absolutely need to have to get there?

Make sure you understand what works and doesn’t work in the market. Reinventing the wheel is not a noble cause, in my opinion. It’s just reapplying what works and making a new mashup of existing, working tools. Sometimes your creative input is that you just make a new mashup. You make the flow a little bit different. That’s important. If you have a very good idea, I have a lot of respect for that, but chances are that you’re not going to make it. It’s too much for consumers to go for. A path of less resistance, I feel like, is a good choice.

Think about the game as a business. Think about every area, not just the development and server-side technology. Think about analytics. You have to be good at analytics. You have to understand performance marketing, most likely. You need to be good at live ops. You need to be able to do community operations and customer support. You need someone to model the business. Once you tick all of those boxes, then you have a good chance of getting your game off the ground and staying there.

GamesBeat: It some ways it sounds like there should be a lot of conflict in all of that. I look at Blizzard and what happened to them when they announced Diablo Immortal. Normally you announce a game that looks like that and people are happy, but Blizzard’s fans were all upset, because they wanted a PC game. Certain developers might agree to just do that, to make the game the fans want to play. Some companies might have a lot of conflict over this. But I sense that you don’t.

Soininen: If you understand what you do and who your players are, there can’t be a conflict between these two objectives. They need to be one and the same. In our case, we were designing for adult players who’d like to have a small RPG game that would be easy to access and have some depth to go for. With that insight, we didn’t have the kind of problems you describe. “For these people, it’s important that the game flows nicely, that it’s welcoming, but it eventually gets complicated it enough keep their curiosity going. For this particular goal, these are the mechanics we should use.” If we’d applied other types of things, it wouldn’t have worked.

That’s the answer, to be respectful and mindful of your audience. Who are they, and what are their expectations? If you completely against them, you’ll have a hard time breaking through. (source：Venturebeat)