Jeppe Kønig recently joined Funday Factory as its head of advertising, bringing his vast experience to the casual gaming company.
But Koenig was also responsible for launching the advertising arm of Subway Surfer Kiloo developer, back in 2016. But perhaps the only constant in the mobile gaming industry is change, and the last six years have seen the rise of a new dominant genre
Kønig talks to PocketGamer.biz about tackling the latest challenges in the mobile gaming industry, and what changes they needed.
PocketGamer.biz: How have the major challenges of mobile gaming advertising changed since 2016?
Jaffa Koenig: The competition only increased with the traditional distribution of an app store, although the tools for advertising were never more accessible and the audience was never larger.
Key trends in industries like hyper-casual, the rise of instant gaming platforms and new ways to discover games through subscribers like Netflix and Apple Arcade did not exist in 2016, so conditions changed greatly from advertising only in a traditional mobile app store, and COVID 19 of course only Accelerated the industry’s growth trajectory.
Despite the incredible scope of the mobile gaming industry, most games are struggling to make a sustainable profit – and the means by which they can make a profit have only become more complex. How does Funday Factory approach this transition to more direct self-advertising?
Our biggest strength will be the diversity in our platforms, a strong technological stack and of course a lot of experience working with different genres. As a 10 year old studio with a lot of learning from work to rent, we have gone through the ups and downs of the industry and at this point we know how to diversify the games we create and the platforms we partner with.
Terms have changed greatly from advertising only in a traditional mobile app store
Jaffa Koenig
Our studio does not rely on a single game or store and we strive to be flexible even with our distribution approach and business models, so that we do not run into competition that is advertising in the F2P mobile app store at the moment.
What genres are you looking to explore – Funday Factory’s wheelhouse of casual experiences or expansion into other areas such as middle / core?
It will depend very much on any platform we support. When creating instant games for Snapchat, the audience and game patterns are of course completely different compared to the deeper and more complex genres of PC and console that we are also exploring with our first title. As mentioned, diversity is the key for us.
The main element that players will consistently experience from the Funday game will be a strong social game and innovative multiplayer mechanics. We firmly believe that playing as a media will only become more social and we want to support this by inventing new concepts centered around player communities.
What are the biggest market trends in the gaming industry that you are considering for your future games?
I see a clear shift towards cross-platform distribution, new business models like subscription and the creation of new places for game discovery, like social platforms, as the biggest replacements in the industry. This is where future growth will take place, as we are simultaneously monitoring new and interesting hardware for support.
In the end, the general perspective remains the same. You need to balance the games you create against the existing market and audience conditions on the platform you are pursuing. As a 40+ year old studio, we are well equipped to take calculated risks with every new game we create.
Similarly, a large portion of the mobile gaming industry is committed to Web3, blockchain and NFT games. Is this an area that Funday Factory will be looking to enter?
We certainly follow the moving trends in the gaming and technology industry more broadly, but this is not something we are actively examining. Our focus is on building great games first and foremost.
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