Next Games
A small team with big plans for the next generation of mobile games
Founded 2013 Location Helsinki Employees 15 Key staff Teemu Huuhtanen (co-founder), Joakim Achren (co-founder and CPO), Jay Ranki (head of studio) URL www.nextgames.com Current projects Two unannounced F2P iOS games
FWhat did you learn about metrics during your time at Supercell?
Joakim Achren I’m a game designer, but I wanted to do analytics to learn how freeto-play is done properly. Everything is connected – the game design, how updates are planned for, marketing, player support and community. Looking at it through analytics, you know what is working and what isn’t working. But still, inland is fertile ground for startups, thanks not only to the government’s Tekes technology funding scheme but also the sudden rush of VCs looking for the next Rovio or Supercell. Next Games’ founding group includes former Rovio exec Teemu Huuhtanen and Joakim Achren, ex-director of analytics at Clash Of Clans developer Supercell. Here, Achren and head of studio Jay Ranki explain how this young company plans to take on the Goliaths of the App Store.
People are still suspicious of free-toplay monetisation interfering with game design. How do you ensure that it doesn’t happen?
JA My focus is getting people back to the game once they’ve tried it, then getting them to come back for days, weeks, months. You don’t need to get them to pay really early on – you need to get them to engage. When that happens, if you have an engaged audience, you know that they will pay at some point. Once a player starts paying, their friends, who are also playing the game, will more likely pay. Getting that functionality into the game is tricky, but high engagement is the best way of doing it. Jay Ranki Business models have always affected game design. We used to have shareware games where you gave the beginning away for free. In the arcades, everything was designed around getting people to put in more coins. This is not a new phenomenon: game design needs to live and evolve with business models. at Supercell I learned that it’s all about the game, really. You can’t make a bad game into a good game with metrics.
What’s the work environment like here?
JR We have one room. It’s a startup kind of mentality. I started my career with [Supercell CEO] Ilkka Paananen at his first company, Sumea, and we were 20 then. It’s nice going back to your roots, working in a small, efficient team. With big teams, there’s so much overhead just in communication and organising everything.
How do you see the studio evolving over the next few years?
JA I want to create something that lasts. These games are meant to be services for players – they play them for months. What we’re making are the next generation of mobile games – they’ll feel even more gamey than they are at the moment. JR We want to build the best place for people to work – a place where they can be effective, efficient, have creative input on things. I’ve seen so many places where the success of the company is ripped from the back of the employees in one way or another. I want to retire from the game industry; I don’t want to work in the game industry when I’m young and then move on to something easier. We want to create a game industry where people can work their whole careers and enjoy their lives outside of work, and spend time with their families. To me, that’s the biggest mission we can have.