Kixeye's War Commander

So it's all about scale. We found a very successful model. 2011 was kind of about scaling Backyard Monsters and releasing a couple of titles, and we've created a very successful business around those games and we're happy with the quality of it and keeping with the vision. So in hiring Neil and Brandon it's really about scaling the business to much bigger things. We want to do the same thing that we've done with Backyard Monsters, Battle Pirates and War Commander but do more of those on a bigger scale, higher level in quality and reach, and reach more users. So both Neil and Brandon are here to help us reach more users, but from different standpoints.

So Brandon has more experience around building brand and product marketing and things like that. Some of the less analytical approaches around PR, strategically positioning brand, connecting with users on an emotional level. Neil comes from a very analytical background, part on the performance media buying side, and then of course on the more just hardcore analytical side. So Neil has a team of analysts and media buyers, they go super deep into the data. I mean we collect volumes and volumes of data everyday and we really hadn't sifted through that before bringing Neil on board and hiring his team of analysts. They dig in and they find really non-obvious things, they try to identify non-obvious trends within our user-base.

Who likes this game? What kind of micro-cohorts and segments of the population are really resonating with the game? What's not resonating with these users? And, you know, we're finding some non-obvious things about our user-base that helps us inform different game design decisions and how to reach more types of those people. So both hires are simply just about getting bigger and better as a company and a game publisher.

Well, I see your point. We take a bit of a different approach. We're not like Zynga where we're A/B testing, multi-variant testing every little thing and allowing data to determine how we design our games. We use data to our best advantage to let it inform certain decisions, but first and foremost we use our own innovation and creativity as gamers and game designers to just... When we brainstorm we sit around the room and I say, "Okay, what kind of game do we want to play? What's missing? What should we be playing? What do we want to play?" And actually we do a lot less of... we don't do focus groups or research studies like, say EA and Activision. I mean, those guys are absolutely using data to determine what kind of game they should launch.

Playdom is essentially just a Zynga rip off. They've tried to do some other things and now Gardens Of Time is relatively successful and Zynga's copied that, but that isn't a super creative approach to gaming

So I would say the classic kind of game developer is using data and users more so in determining what kind of game they should be launching in the future. Data does not inform our road map. I mean, it's only us as gamers that informs our road-map. What we do with data is we try to enhance the gaming experience. So for example when you have a lot of people who, let's say, complain in user forums about a new feature that you've launched, well the data might be saying that these guys are spending hours on this feature and it's causing them to come back to the game at an increased rate. That's a helpful experience that allows you to separate the vocal minority from the overall user base. If you just listen to the basic user feedback you might be making a severe error in game design decision by modifying something just because a few people are being vocal about slaying your decision.

So we definitely do not design our games around data. We try to make improvements around data, and actually I had to give this speech to my team yesterday about being a little bit less reliant of A/B tests and data and trusting our intuition and instinct, since it seems to be more effective at moving the needle at a larger scale than doing a lot of micro data analysis. But it's very helpful when when you come to a decision where you have two or more options, it's good to allow data to influence some decisions. But you can't do game design through data exclusively. It can be an aid, it can be a tool, but if you're not creative, if you're not a thoughtful gamer or you're not super passionate about the space then you're not going to make a good game.

No, I think those guys rely too much on data and user studies. I think those companies have a great deal of... I think they're lacking in the game design and creativity department to be honest. I think they've... Playdom is essentially just a Zynga rip off. They've tried to do some other things and now Gardens Of Time is relatively successful and Zynga's copied that, but I wouldn't say that's a super creative approach to gaming. The hidden object thing has been around for a while. It's not that interesting to a core gamer. Bottom line, they haven't done anything that I think would appeal to a core gamer, they've obviously found a little bit of success in the social gaming quadrant, but I think they rely much more heavily on data, user studies, etc. I don't think they have a team like ours that really thinks about the users and wants to make a compelling user experience.

Most of it was simply being conservative. We were growing fast. This time last year we were 11 people, now we're about 120. We knew growing at that pace, you want to comfortable with hiring ahead of the curve, making a few investments here and there. We were profitable but at the time we weren't spinning off tens of millions of dollars a month or anything so, you know, we were comfortable from a cash position but it would have been helpful to have more cash in our pockets as a cushion, and also to have some in the bank in case we wanted to make a couple of small acquisitions here and there.

So the majority of the reason was simply as a safety measure. We still haven't touched that cash so all has gone mostly to plan, but it was mostly in case things didn't go according to plan. So simply being prudent as an executive and an operator to make sure that we have the right amount of cash in the bank to support our growth...in case things didn't go so well. Fortunately, everything has gone quite well and we're happy to have the cash in the bank in case we need it.

As a repeat entrepreneur this process has been pretty comfortable for me. It's a level of responsibility that I've accepted and I've done a few times before, so this is kind of the way. This is a standard page out of the scaling playbook and as long as you protect the company and act accordingly - out of the company's best interest, and the employee's best interest - you're fine as long as you have a great product that you believe in. And we certainly have products that we really believe in.

But yeah, it's been exciting. It is relatively rare to find the kind of success that we have, although it doesn't seem that rare because you only read about the kind of companies that do really well most of the time. Well either about the companies that do really well or really poorly, but you know there are tonnes of companies out there that have not succeeded and we're really proud that, so far, knock on wood, we're one of the ones that's succeeding.

But the process continues to be challenging... In the beginning we were two, three people, it took us a year to get to ten people. We had plenty of open positions, it's been a very competitive hiring marketing. It's started to get a lot easier as we've established ourselves and once we had, I'd say, 60 people we were a little more established this past early fall. And one of the reasons we raised more money is we wanted people to publicly know that we were relatively stable, that we had some cash in the bank, you weren't coming into a company that was about to go bankrupt...

Exactly. You couldn't just take my word for it. You could at least see that these investors had put their faith in [Kixeye.] So now we still have a lot of money in the bank, we're profitable, we're a hundred people, we're making some good games, we've got users who are not going away, so...a lot of it is proving to potential recruits and candidates that this is a great place to work and you should come and join our team. Our two best kind of recruiting tools are one our games and two our story and business success.

The single greatest challenge is continuing to hire great smart people who are really passionate and dedicated about making games.