Talking A Good Game

That was very challenging, actually, and it changes all the time. The more you move forward, the more new challenges will arise. For example, we did a perfect job until we were about 100 people; nobody [quit] their job on their own, and I think that's a really, really big achievement. Now, there have been a couple of people who decided to do a different job, and they were mostly people who started when the company was 10 or 15 people and didn't want to work in a big company.

You can't hold on to all of these people, but still our quota is very, very good. We get a lot of really good, skilled people from other companies who really want to work here, because we have a lot of incentives for them. The way we work with our people really motivates them.

I think that's true for every gaming company at the moment. I don't know how it is abroad, but it's probably the same as in Germany - you need a lot more skilled people than you find. I think what helps us a little bit is that Hamburg is quite a good place to recruit people, but you have to work to find them. We're doing a lot in the human resources field to attract that many people.

We also try to attract people that are not really aiming at the gaming industry. So people who studied maths, economics, communications, and just ask if they want to try doing something really challenging but really fun then why not try the games industry.

It's interesting that you mention that. Christian and I are not from the games industry. We have totally different backgrounds - I was a lawyer and he was a dentist. In the beginning a lot of people were saying, 'You'll never make it. We have 10 years of experience in the games industry, and you'll never make your way.' We always had passion for gaming - I think that's necessary - but we also had the ability to step back and see the whole picture, and that has really helped us a lot.

We are absolutely open to new aspects, and we are trying to get together all of these experienced gaming people, but to enrich that with our experience and our view of the economics. That's what is different about Goodgame Studios compared to other gaming companies, because most of them have a totally different management background.

We really noticed that you get distracted by questions, and problems you have to solve, when you spread out on so many different platforms. Diversification is probably not the best approach. Most of the companies who really became big focused on one thing. I mean even Zynga, they focused on just Facebook. They're doing a lot of different stuff now, but they really became big with a single focus.

If you're doing several things, the problem is that you have a limited workforce. Even Zynga, with 3000 people, they have a limited workforce as well. If you focus on too many areas you do everything a little bit worse, and become worse than the competition.

And it's not just a matter of quality. It's also a matter of speed, and if you do many things you slow the whole company.

Well, you always need goals in order to move forward. One of the first official statements we had out there in 2009 was that we wanted to become bigger than Bigpoint, and everyone was laughing at us in the beginning. I know some of our competitors quite well, and also the CEOs and management staff, and what I see from them is that they do a lot of things quite good - that's the reason why they are where they are - but, as Christian mentioned, speed is becoming more and more critical, and we can do a good job there and be faster than most of the other companies.

Bigpoint, for example, and Innogames are quite big companies, but Bigpoint is not moving so fast. They are spreading to so many different things and trying to do everything at the moment, and that's really a big opportunity for us. If you have to go from the follower one day to the market leader the next - that 's really hard. Bigpoint, in their market, have a leading position in Germany at least, and then you have to try some new steps. There are big opportunities in going new ways, but the risk of failure is very high.

But that point won't be reached for some time. I see so many next steps in front of us, and if we approach these things right we will move forward very quickly for quite a while.

I think what has changed in Germany is the mentality that a lot of passionate, ambitious people decided to become entrepreneurs in the internet, and that has changed a lot in the last few years. Hamburg and especially Berlin have so many start-ups in different fields, and that used to be totally different. Germans don't tend to believe so much in their ideas; innovation is not a problem, but believing in your product and believing in your success has not been a typical German habit.

These companies, they have lots of money, and they have the ability to really go into several fields. I don't think they will continue to focus on AAA titles and maybe mobile. If they see that the browser games market is becoming more and more relevant in terms of revenue then they will move into that market. At the moment they are acquiring companies - like Ubisoft with The Settlers Online and so on - but I think that will change, and I don't know when or where, but it will happen.

And that could be a game changer, even for companies like Bigpoint. I mean, compared to these companies Bigpoint is small - very small.