Thor Fridriksson is, as Jordan calls him, the King of Mobile Gaming. With mega-viral games like Trivia Royale and QuizUp, he knows the secret sauce to make a popular game, but he hasn’t quite cracked how to make an equally lucrative one. Thor joined us on Found Live to talk about the pitfalls of ads on mobile games, why the experience of playing will always be his number one priority, and what he has cooking with his next company Rocky Road Inc.
Thor Fridriksson is, as Jordan calls him, the kind of mobile gaming. With mega-viral games like Trivia Royale and QuizUp, he knows the secret sauce to making a popular game, but the code he hasn’t cracked is how to make a super lucrative game. Thor joined us on Found Live to talk about the pitfalls of ads on mobile games, why the experience of playing will always be his number one priority, and what he has cooking with his next company Rocky Road Inc.
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Darrell Etherington 0:01
found live in 321. Hey, welcome to found live our very special live recording of the phone Podcast. I'm Darrell Etherington, your host and I'm joined by the trivial to my pursuit.
Unknown Speaker 0:15
That's me. trivial. I'm very trivial and you're more in pursuit of things.
Jordan Crook 0:20
Um, Jordan crook. Thank you so much to everyone for joining us on this live recording of the found podcast found is TechCrunch is podcast where Darrell and I talked to founders and get the stories behind the startups are going to be going live every other Thursday. And you definitely don't want to miss next Thursday, and the equity crew will be coming online. They're also an OK podcast. So if you'd like numbers and stuff for you go check that out and great. No, they're cool. I like them. I do. I like them. And the podcast is really good. Also, we're welcoming to more podcasts of the TC pod family. The first is called a chain reaction. And that will be led by Lucas Matney and Anita Ramaswamy. They're gonna break down what's happening in the wild world of crypto, and the second new one is the TechCrunch live podcast, which if you're hanging out with us, then chances are you've heard of TechCrunch live and that's just coming to an audio format. So same thing, just you know, different format. Okay, we did all of our promos, or plugs and stuff. And now we get into it. I'm excited. Our guest today is Thor Fredriksen. He's the CEO and co founder of rocky road. You may also know him from founding Quizup he was the founder of trivia Royale or tea time games, essentially, like King of mobile gaming as way I like to think of him Thor. How's it gone? Man?
Thor Fridriksson 1:34
Yes, king of mobile gaming. I'd love to start every interview like that. That's awesome. Yeah,
Jordan Crook 1:39
well, I mean, we're gonna get into that stuff, too. For okay, it's not all rosy. It's why it's why the company is called Rocky Road, right? It's been a rocky road for you. But that's true. If somebody knows how to make a viral mobile game, it's this dude. So we have tons to talk about. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks
Unknown Speaker 1:56
for having me, guys. Yes, Jordan,
Darrell Etherington 1:58
do you want to? I know, you can't go into too much you've previewed to us that you can't go into too much detail. But how much can you tell us about rocky road and your current venture because that's usually how we take these things out of like giving us a high level overview kind of way, what you're up to now?
Unknown Speaker 2:10
Well, it's it's brand new, you know, so there isn't that much I can disclose we just closed our seed round, like two months ago. So we are kind of at this amazing status, I actually like the best the ideation states, we're kind of still have a pretty blank canvas. I mean, of course, you know, we know what we're building, but there's can still be so many cool changes to where we're going. And there's a lot of wireframing. And just, I think that I've tried building companies that scale really quickly. And you know, at all different stages, they have these different cons, pros and cons. But this stage that I'm at right now, where you're kind of just, it just finished your seed funding. So you're not like worried about, you know, next month's balance, but everything is so open, everything is so free. It's, it's a magical time. And I think that any entrepreneur that just finished his seed funding on some great idea that he has, you know, those couple of months after that, they're just, they're just great. So I'm super excited about that.
Darrell Etherington 3:06
Yeah, that's a very exciting time.
Unknown Speaker 3:09
But you know, like, the company is called Rocky Road. I mean, that's not the product, that's just the company, but also, as Jordan mentioned, I mean, my journey, at least, and I think most entrepreneurial journeys are, you know, they have their victories in, they have their losses, they have like the darkest of times, and they have the best of times, you know, I think like no entrepreneur, or no one has done anything that's become big, hasn't experienced those dreadful moments where you think all is lost, and you just want to give everything up. And I think that's like one of the reasons why the new company is called Rocky road because the journey is a rocky road. And if you can kind of evade the the pitfalls you will, you know, hopefully reach the summit. That's kind of my, you know, ethos here.
Darrell Etherington 3:56
Yeah, I think I mean, that is probably something a lot of the people in our audience because a lot of though people in our audience are likely get barking out for the first time, right? So maybe they might be pre the point you're at now where you have that elation that like, well, we got some money in and now we have lots of ideation going on. And we're ready to run. Right? So maybe they're in the first like, pre a little bit desperation looking around. But I think it's worthwhile, especially from somebody with your background. It's like, you're now baking that in like, you're like this is the experience start to finish. And like when you've built your first company, did you expect that or what did you think about when you were going into it the first time around, if you can think back?
Unknown Speaker 4:34
I mean, before Quizup, which was kind of the first hit title that I got involved with, or I did, you know, I had my my series of failures, actually. And I mean, I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into when I founded my first company. I just recently graduated university. I wasn't even thinking about going into the startup scene. I mean, at that point or the tech scene, because I'm not I'm not an engineer. I don't have The background for that. But I had like a pivotal moment in my kind of career when I was studying. So I was doing like this business degree in England, or in Oxford, and they had this event at Oxford, it was called Silicon Valley comes to Oxford. So it was like this, this is like in 2008, I think, you know, just when the crash just happened. And like, during this week, I was kind of intrigued by it, like some of the real big shots of Silicon Valley came over to Oxford and spent like, a week with us, like the MBA students. And we had like, really big names there. You had Elon Musk, you know, you had Reed Hoffman, you had baystone, you know, all these, you know, veteran founders. And they actually, like, spent a lot of time with us, younglings, they're, you know, we dinners and workshops, and all of that. And I think that if there's one kind of a point in time, where because I'm obviously not from the US, I'm from Iceland, which is like not known for their vibrant at that time, at least the tech community or startup community, I just got completely entranced by this, this journey, this this tech company, Silicon Valley dream somehow. And I think that's when I decided that I wanted to start my own tech company. And there wasn't, you know, I didn't even know what I was going to do in the beginning. So you know, I just wanted to be a part of this fabulous story. And it was, like, I imagined that much more glamorous than it actually is. And that's like a very big mistake for every entrepreneur, that kind of, you know, thinks about the journey as being like a rodeo victories, that people are just laying out red carpets for you. It's not like that. You, you meet a lot of resistance. Yeah,
Darrell Etherington 6:35
it's I mean, it sounds like it was beneficial in one way that you had all those luminaries, but then it was also like, it's everybody for whom I mean, they also had their own, you know, reversals and whatever. But like, it's a lot of people who just did very, very well. So you have like, you've already narrowed your example case to like, this is the best possible
Jordan Crook 6:52
stars. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the rocky road though, Thor, because I think that like, I want to talk a lot about the actual the game you're building. And I know, you can't share everything about it. But there's some stuff we could talk about. But it's almost impossible to do it without the context of everything before. And like, I've been following Thor for a billion years, it feels like from the beginning, I was writing about Quizup. I wrote about tea time. And like, how I imagine you is like, you care so much about the experience of the game that like, anything that interferes with that is super problematic to you, right? Like, you're pretty stubborn about anything that interferes with that. And that's in a lot of ways what has led to so much success, right? Like Quizup had millions of players. Trivial royal blue. Yeah. And true, Your Royal Blue up in like 10 minutes, like it was out of nowhere. It was like this huge thing for a while. But it's caused issues with your monetization. I remember talking about quiz up, people were like, well, it's important for the audience to remember that quiz up was pre subscriptions. It was pre like, you know, in app purchases, and some of that stuff. So it was like, kind of inventing the economy of mobile gaming a lot of ways. So instead of having that regular playbook, we're like, oh, ads, just like ads, ads, ads, ads. And Thor was like, Absolutely not, will only do native ads that are like, beautiful and part of the game. So essentially, like a quiz about Coca Cola or something. Right? Which is impossible to scale. And so like, possible, yeah. Difficult.
Unknown Speaker 8:27
One of the lessons,
Darrell Etherington 8:29
there's a learning right there to
Unknown Speaker 8:31
learn. But they were nice, you know, we made the partnerships with every big brands in the world, almost, you know, and they paid a lot for like us. But you know, again, it's the scaling thing. That's, that's hard to deal with. And only I hate to say it, but when it comes to really scaling up these kinds of revenue streams, if you're not doing premium subscriptions, or in app purchases, is through ads, and the reality is that programmatic ads are horrible. And I'll just say it, I'm in the mobile gaming business, and I thought they were going to get better with like, some interactive ads, and all of that, but I don't know, I we can go into that later. But I truly believe that mobile entertainment, even though it's like bigger than ever before, I mean, it's the single biggest entertainment sector in the world, it's bigger than anything else. And right now, it's being driven by performance marketing, and ads, with the likes of hypercasual. Because they're, like, just dominating the charts everywhere. And, you know, I think it kind of sucks, I'll just be totally honest. Like, as a person, that kind of values, like the experience, I mean, they don't even try to make these games viral, or try to create like these wild moments or try to, you know, get you to play with your friends, like all of these things that are really like, important to me in my games, at least. And I'm not complaining. I'm just saying like what I'm doing now. It's actually like kind of the, the answer to this, and we'll go into that later. But right now hypercasual is for example, that I mean, they are basically just like a delivery mechanism for ads. Yes, the only purpose of these games aims is to get you in at the lowest possible CPI or the lowest possible cost. The only like, I'm sorry, I'm if I'm offending anyone, just go for the examples in between. But you know, the majority of these games are crap. And they are have like very sophisticated equations behind it like dudes Excel. And it's like analytics around it. Like how can we get the user, the average user to watch enough ads to justify the buying price, it's basically just the CPI LTV equation without getting too technical. And that's what you will feel you know, when you when you try these hypercasual You might be like intrigued by the gameplay, you see an ad on it, and they will start immediately with interstitials with rewarded that. And it's funny. I mean, can you imagine it like as it's getting harder and harder to shut down these ads? Have you noticed that you like, you know, right yet? Like, like, you have to wait, where's that? Where's the X? Oh, it's like a tiny X right in the corner. You try to take it and maybe you have like big fingers? Oh, no, you go to the App Store. Then there's another screw and
Jordan Crook 11:03
then it's like you love like, you really liked that one. You want to buy it, don't you?
Darrell Etherington 11:07
Yeah. Because so many times. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 11:09
And I understand that this is a great business, the hypercasual and the whole performance marketing. I mean, all these companies around it are up to doing the optimizations, all of it. It's a big business. But I mean, the quality of these games and the experience, I think it's gone down. I think like the kids the entertainment like the kids are playing right at this point in time. We thought we'd be at a very sophisticated place with the experiences but they're not they I feel they've kind of gone backwards in many cases.
Darrell Etherington 11:35
I agree. And I think when we were covering the Activision Blizzard acquisition offer whatever King is their moneymaker, the part of them that people think about is Activision Blizzard is actually miniscule, in relative to the revenue that King Drive Candy Crush maker King. So it's, yeah, it's just and it's like you're talking about and this is I also don't want to get read or email. But whatever, the capitalists engine is so effective at just reducing the thing to it's a lab rat equation. Yeah, it
Unknown Speaker 12:06
works. I mean, like it like, because it's so easy to get, like, if you do any iterations, because like all the AP testing, it's so effective, you can see like, immediately if there is a difference that matters, like within a standard deviation or so that you can calculate so precisely on how these experiences are. Look, I've been in like, also worked as a consultant. So I've been like, had lots of touch points in like, bigger companies with this. And, and I know, I mean, it's just another business, you know, like the the companies they know, they're not making good games, but it doesn't really matter, because the economics are there. And that's, of course, what matters in a capitalistic society. And I'm not saying that's the wrong thing. I'm just saying, this is like an unfortunate side effect of how well these kinds of experiences can generate money through the user through ads, that that really dictates this experience, not necessarily in favor of, of the user. But like,
Jordan Crook 13:00
how do you find your personal equilibrium with that, right, because like, you clearly love games, like I've heard you talk about games, and what it feels like to play a game. And it's such, it's like an art to you. And you can clearly tell if anybody in the audience has played any hypercasual mobile game in the last 10 years ish, right? Or maybe five years. And you can tell that there's so much more time and energy spent on the marketing of it, and the ad system of it, and the economy of it than there is on the game itself. Like, I've clicked on ads for games that are completely different than the actual game. Like, it looks completely different in the app. Like, it's the most misleading thing in the world. It's like, oh, you're gonna do this, this and this. And it's like, actually, just like a video that was made up that has nothing to do with the actual game. I mean,
Unknown Speaker 13:48
I've been involved in these kinds of like, marketing, AP tests, and they're so stupid, you know, like, when we get through your oil, for example. I mean, we had to get in on it, you know, we just had to find the way because we had a certain LTV, and we wanted to get more users in. So we started doing that. And we did like, I was a part of this machine for a while with my last company. And we were like doing really nice polished ads of the gameplay, like, you know, making it exciting and unlike give a good representation of what the game was, and those ads did, okay. And then we were like, Let's try to like see what the others are doing and just do something stupid just to screw like, like a paper and a pen and just do some stickman that is walking around the forest. And we ran them ran these ads, and some of them were like performing better than the actual game and they'll go like, that's fine. And then No, it's just so it seems like such the wrong direction to go. I
Jordan Crook 14:37
mean, well, it's just like that's what I'm saying. It feels like you're like almost the lone man like there's this big industry built up around the math and the science of marketing and lab rat
Unknown Speaker 14:49
I wouldn't say I'm the lone man. I mean there are amazing studios out there. discredit them metal like that are really nice. And I have you know, a lot of great inspirations from from a lot of them. I personally feel like when you're trying to get traction you're trying to get in users, I have this for my next game, for example, you know, of course, we'll use some, some targeted marketing. And we'll try to find, you know, low CPI ads and and try to find the markets will do some of that. But I want to create a product where you don't need that kind of money. For example, with Quizup. This was a little bit before, I mean, we did have some sort of mobile marketing, but those algorithms and machines weren't there, you know, we launched the game, and we had zero marketing, we only had what's called the K factor, which is basically like, if someone tries to game, you know, how many people around you you drag into a game, it's like, you know, everyone knows this. Now, after the pandemic's, the K factor, the liberality Of course, sorry about that. But I feel that if you as a designer have experiences, which I think gaming is, if you're able to create, like a game that has this Wow, moment, this moment where you go, like, oh, man, this is awesome. And it makes you want to, like, tell your friends about it, or like, Hey, John, you know, try this game with me if you're able to create that kind of magic. That's what I want to build.
Jordan Crook 16:06
But like, you've created that magic before though Thor like you
Unknown Speaker 16:10
are. But like, the funny thing is, there are so few games that do this, you have some amazing examples, like in the mobile gaming industry, you have like, among us, remember that games went really viral? You know, amazing. It's no budget, you know, they weren't doing major ad campaigns on that you had Pokemon Go was an example. I mean, of course, they did marketing, but it was just like such a wow experience.
Darrell Etherington 16:32
And they proven through their subsequent things that it's not just the IP, like they had the Harry Potter IP very, very attractive IP, exactly. Not catch fire, right. So
Unknown Speaker 16:42
no, I mean, and it's just funny to think about, if you think about like the mobile gaming industry, like as compared to the movie industry, I mean, the movie industry, you have these hit movies, everyone wants to see them, because people talk about them, their space around them, you don't have a lot of those kinds of, you know, viral organic hit games on mobile. I mean, almost all of these games now it's the biggest gaming, it's the biggest entertainment industry in the world. But these really thought provoking great experiences they're really few and far between. It's a lot of the same formula again, and again, I don't know, I might be treading on dangerous waters here by like, you know, talking down to the whole mobile gaming industry, which I'm not, I mean, it's amazing. We have 3 billion people playing mobile games all over the world. But I feel that a little bit more focused on the user experience is something that this this industry really needs. And that is actually what I'm trying to, I'm going to try to bring in my next hopefully, phenomenal product,
Jordan Crook 17:39
but like So how much are you thinking about revenue? Because like, it does feel a little bit unstoppable force and movable object?
Darrell Etherington 17:46
Yeah. Especially since you're VC backed and like, what are your investors think about? Is there a red line?
Jordan Crook 17:52
You're good at making the magic, right? Like, that's not the issue. Like, we know, you can do that. But like, if you can't work with the system in place, and you have to come up with one to replace it, that's actually going to work. Otherwise, there's no reason I mean, at the end of the day, the VCs are like, well, where's the money, though? Where's my check it
Unknown Speaker 18:10
repetitively, right? And I'm sure that a lot of very high profile investors, if they're watching this show, some of my former investors will go like, Oh, God, like, so easy to talk like that? Oh, it has to be beautiful. And so millions of dollars, I understand that. And I'm for you. I mean, I have made some investors money and some I've lost money. That's kind of the journey. But that is the challenge for me. Absolutely. And I mean, and games have done. There are beautiful games that don't rely on programmatic ads that, you know, give great value to users through microtransactions, for example, and IPS and and I feel that when I was like starting with Quizup, IPS and microtransactions, were very much frowned upon as like some money scheme because people weren't used to them. But right now, for example, the market has changed. And if you are giving some real value in exchange for a micro transaction, I think that's okay. Look, I generally just don't like when companies are gaming companies, when you get the feeling the user get the feeling that the company is almost trying to trick you, you know, to give you a little bit of a carer than wait, no, here's a paywall in that's a bad experience. But if you create an experience where, for example, you haven't fortnight, like amazing experience for users, you know, buying, I don't know how many billions of dollars or whatever what it is in different like skins and dances and these things. I mean, I think that's great. That's just the voluntary exchange of money for something that they really cherish. Yeah. And I think that we need to and I mean, others have, of course, but I don't think the road ahead is dark. I think the whole programmatic ads part will change going
Darrell Etherington 19:49
forward. And I think there's some credit due to the bad actors. This is sounding weird already. But like the people who have gone to the extremes with the kind of stuff If you're talking about with IP, like, dark patterns, and just like as a person who has a highly addictive personality, like tricking me into going like dammit, I do need three more hours on this whatever casual little game like those have opened the door for good actors to show themselves in relief, right and do things like fortnight and whereas like, that's fine, right? Everybody's bought into this, everybody goes in eyes wide open, they know what they're getting, you're not being blackmailed into it. Right. So I think that's one positive outcome. And I do think you've read that it's possible. But as you keep talking about it, the more I think, because in my head, I'm like, what are the good examples? What are the good actors, nipples, and to me, they all come up is console. So I think that there are a few mobile ones. But it seems like mobile is really a tougher nut to crack in that regard. So the economics aren't yet figured out for that middle ground space. Well, you
Jordan Crook 20:47
also have to think about the fact that your console is not pulling you in 100 directions when you turn it on. So you can sit and immerse yourself into a story or a game or even like a quick hit game, right? That's happening rapid fire. But like there's no push notifications that are like, You should do this. Or like be on Twitter, or like be on Facebook or on Instagram, or like, here's an email, here's a calendar invite. Like, it's so hard to keep the attention. Yeah, users on mobile,
Unknown Speaker 21:12
I also think like that the ad networks, because it's been such a booming business over the past years, they've just made it relatively easy for game developers to create revenue with almost no effort. And I think that might be some like the big problem. I remember when when we were getting into monetization problems. And I wanted to figure out, do more of these amazing partnerships with Google Maps, or Coca Cola or whatever it is these branded, you know, ads that were actually a game. And we got an investor I'm sure I can't get the name was a big gaming company. I have all sorts of NDA said, I'm not aware of them. Sure. But
Darrell Etherington 21:46
you signed so many things. Who knows when they said, Yeah, because
Unknown Speaker 21:49
like, we had like a huge, we always without advertising. I mean, can you imagine it like Quizup, three years in, we were still getting around, you know, 50 60,000 new users a day. Without that. I mean, it was crazy. It was just like new pockets of reality, like spreading around the world. Anyway, they told me are like sad, like, it's so easy. Just put, like a banner, like a persistent banner, on top of everything all the time, we've calculated that the minutes spent in the game by hundreds of 1000s of day use here, you'll get this kind of revenue. And I mean, they weren't wrong. It's so easy. Just throw in an interstitial every three minutes. And the big thing, and this is where I contradict myself, is that these interstitials, and like throwing down these ads, it doesn't affect retention as much as you think. You think that my argument would be like, No, I want the beautiful experience. You know, I want the retention to be high, but they really don't. But it's still a bad experience. Yeah. So there is like I don't have a magic solution here. Usually, I might be talking to circles to some extent. But, but right now, it's just so easy for developers to create, like some sort of hyper kasriel, do some sort of a game mechanic, just throw the ball do this, and then just have the ad networks do all the optimizing the throwing some placements for ads and start to make some money. And it kind of makes game developers to some extent, Lacy, because there are may be more sustainable ways to build the revenue stream into the game with microtransactions with subscriptions with, you know, these kinds of passes, or whatever you call them. And I think it's a preferable way. But this like whole podcast is just talking about the performance marketing industry right now. So
Jordan Crook 23:27
Well, let's talk about what you're building next. Right? Because like, I mean, I'm trying to tread on because I think that we've had some more off the record conversations about like building and then we've talked about it for the site. So I'm trying to be super careful about that. But it sounds like you do Lean In toward microtransactions. Right? And I can't believe I'm about to ask this question. Darrell is going to be shocked. But like, considering everything that's going on with web three, like how much are you thinking about goods bought in your next game? Being something? I mean, if we're talking about like stickiness, and retention, and like a long lasting experience, being able to take some of those cool things with you out into other places? Is that something that's on your mind at all?
Unknown Speaker 24:09
It's a very dangerous, you know, path.
Darrell Etherington 24:12
We're going on talking about this? It's a minefield, especially in gaming too. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 24:15
It's a minefield. Yeah. So maybe, to explain a little bit, my position, my company, now rocky roads, we've been developing a game. And we of course, aim for it to be the next phenomenon in gaming. That's kind of how we think about it. And we're fortunate enough that we have had a lot of luck delivering some titles that really become hits in the US and over the world. So you're right, I think we have some idea of how to do that. And our objective actually, and this is important, you know, when you're talking about crypto as well, is that we, you know, Quizup had over 100 million users, Pokemon Go had a couple of hundreds, millions of users and all of that in our design process. Right now. We are designing an experience that we want to be experienced and be the first mobile game basically that gets 1 billion users. Okay, I know that sounds like ridiculously, you know, ambitious. And we can have a lot of success without actually getting that milestone. However, when you think about it like this, you start to design the experience a little bit differently, because you have to start to think about like accessibility, how can we create like, experience that can be enjoyed by almost everyone. And that's like a big part of our design thesis, there will be all sorts of artifacts, items and other things in our game that would be very suitable for NF T's or for crypto. And I remember when I did my seed funding, can't say names, we had an offer from an investor, that's very much into crypto. And they just started playing out to me like for like this game, it's, it is the perfect crypto game, it's like, you know, it is the perfect game for NF T's you should just lean on it heart. And, and that was like kind of their condition to bring in quite a lot of capital into the company. So I decided at that point in time to wait. And the main reason is, as I said, again, accessibility, I think that the concept of the token economy and like having something that you own, and you can take with you or you can resell and whatever. I think the idea and the concept has a lot of merits. But right now, I think it's really a bandwagon that companies are going into to be able to secure more funding, because there is a lot of funding opportunities in this space. And I feel that at this point in time, it does not add to the accessibility of any title. I mean, of course, I've tried this, and I've been following this, you know, you will play x infinity and hopefully not get all your money stolen away from you. Sorry. That was uncalled for now, but like just that the process of like just starting the game of like, you have to get your own wallet, you have to do all of this, you have to be like a little bit of an engineer just to get through. And I know that our new solutions trying to solve that, but they're definitely not there yet. So my view on this is that I kind of understand both sides or both camps. In this. I see potential in crypto and NF T's in games, for sure. But it's just something that we will be watching carefully and wondering at some point whether we want to add to our game, but we're not building the game around the concept. Right. And I think that's so important. I think I have a slide in my seat deck that says like, sure we have NFT potential. Sure the game is kind of like a Metaverse, but we don't want to race based on these buzzwords, you know, we just don't want to jump on a bandwagon because it's there. We want to create a beautiful experience. And then if we can add these things, and if we feel it's adding to the experience of the users at some point? Sure. Of course we look at it. Because right now, I don't think that it just hinders a lot of people from actually joining. Does it make sense what I'm saying?
Darrell Etherington 27:48
It makes a lot of sense. And it's great. Like, I'm thrilled to hear you talk about it that way, because it is you know, we cover a lot of crypto stuff and I see endless debate about it, obviously on Twitter and TechCrunch. And everywhere else. But like the point of it right now, you expressed it very well. And it's something I've struggled to express but I think that it's something that a lot of people would agree is functionally true is that while it has at its heart an ethos of free and open accessibility to everyone it is functionally the opposite of that. It's functionally something that creates a lot of friction, private and exclusive clubs. Yeah, to which no one can gain admittance unless you have a certain amount of money or a certain amount of technical expertise. Right. And I agree. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 28:28
and I also don't want to like have any like big statements on crypto now because we are going to be doing our like, you know, next rounds of funding soon. And another
Unknown Speaker 28:37
thing on mobile gaming. Oh, it's stupid. Okay, me are always so much fun.
Unknown Speaker 28:54
To be honest with you, like I can tell you that we are doing a metaverse. We are we are doing one way to describe it is that we are kind of taking some of the good things from casuals and hyper casuals. And we're not doing that hyper casual game, as you can imagine, after my rant earlier in this podcast, but you know, they have some redeeming features. One of them is that hybrid classrooms are really easy to get into the really simple, you know, you don't need a tutorial, just games are too complicated. If I want to get to the billion player base, you can't have a steep learning curve. That's just like one of the prerequisites. And you could say that we are making a bit of a casual MMO would be one way of saying that. So it's very heavy on social meeting people playing with friends in a way that does not intimidate does not need a tutorial. You know something you can play with your spouse, with your kids with your mom in a completely new way. And I don't want to give too much but I have to say though I've been in a lot of projects over my years. Of course I'm always super excited about What I'm doing at the time, but I think this is definitely the the most ambitious and the project I'm most excited about that I've ever been involved in. I feel it kind of takes all the good parts from what I've done in my previous games and marries them with some other new stuff. As I said before I it's a new company, I have some great people with me, I have one little bit the bit bump in the road, we have a pretty big team of engineers that are located in Ukraine right now, as a lot of gaming companies, which has been, of course, a little bit a rock in the road, so to speak. Well, I'm not talking it down. It's more than that. But but that's just the journey we are. It's surreal. We I mean, they're and they're working. And we are I'm doing zoom calls to Ukraine, where we sometimes have to stop because there's an air alarm that goes off. And that's that's surreal. Yeah. But yeah, I there's a bit of a downer here. But other than that, we are the states in the company where we just got funding, we have this amazing idea, we have a real Northstar, which is one of the most important thing as a founder that you can have. That's like, I can have another podcast on that, unlike the mistakes you can do as founders, and one of them is not kind of having a Northstar on the product side before you start. And we have that. And we're just working towards that goal. And it's gonna be a couple of years, but I really can't wait to show it to the world.
Jordan Crook 31:19
So like, how do you think about because when you are trying to get a billion people on a game, right, you were talking about accessibility? Like it's so broad, right? It has to appeal to so many people. And yet, like most games, whether they're like console or PC games that are super in depth and immersive, or they're even casual games that are like the ones we've been talking about have like some theme to them, right? Like maybe it's not even like a theme and like a content based theme, but like a visual theme or like something that ultimately ends up slicing the audience, right?
Unknown Speaker 31:53
You're completely right. I mean, we thought about this, like, as I said, we're creating a game that is an open world game to some extent. But as soon as you add a theme to it, you're gonna slice away a big part of the audience. I mean, I do do a sci fi game, you know, that happens. Another space. No, right? You lose like 70% of the audience. Like right there. You know, not everyone. I mean, I like space things. But not everyone does.
Jordan Crook 32:16
We love dance,
Unknown Speaker 32:17
we'll play. What about like, I know, I already did a space game actually. It wasn't popular. There. But I learned that that was like one of the my rocks hyperspeed It was cold. I remember anyway, it's tea time. It was the time but anyway, and then we could do like fantasy. I mean, everyone likes fantasy, right? No pricing, Lee, I would have thought so. I mean, Game of Thrones was pretty mainstream, and a Lord of the Rings and all this stuff. But no, that's not gonna be the billion player game. And I just think it's like, you know, again, so people don't think I'm crazy. You know, going on a podcast saying I'm gonna do the billion player game, we can have a very successful game without reaching that milestone, right. Just want to say, it's just more how you think about it. When you think about making a game. I love
Darrell Etherington 33:00
that you've used it as an eliminator. Yeah, described already. Like it's a focus, right? Because you're like, okay, the people come here. And I'm like, Yeah, and it's the same.
Jordan Crook 33:07
And it sounds like it would be the opposite. But it actually is like a box of constriction. That's good, right? It's
Unknown Speaker 33:14
really big. But I mean, it's a pretty narrow box, actually. Because you can, like eliminate so many design choices. You know, we we're not going to have complicated you know, RPT stats, you know, your strength, your dexterity, or whatever it is, or like, even though I love role playing, you know, I love it. But that's going to scare away my mom, for sure. Yeah, you know what I mean? So our challenge has been like, how can we make an experience that is so super simple, you don't need any tutorial, you just kind of start, but it's still, you know, engaging enough and deep enough to keep you hooked, and more importantly, to want to play it with your friends. And that's why we have like a mantra here in Rocky Road. And I think a lot of game companies should use this mantra is that the game it has to be great alone. I mean, there has to be an element of single player experience, because sometimes you just want to like play something in the bathroom and just, you know, be alone with him. It has to become better with people, you know, like multiplayer, like getting to meet people, the communication, the social part, and do it well. But most importantly, it has to become best with friends. And this is where almost all mobile companies fail. I mean, we have some good examples of this. But where if you create a product, if you again, create this vowel moment that you want to bring your friends to play it, and it's easy to connect. You don't have to create a room Join Room searching like these kinds of, you know, processes. How can you just make it super simple for friends, whether they're sitting in the same room together, or for a party just to start playing create enjoyable experience, and I feel that that is one of our objectives with our new title. Yeah, that's being very cryptic.
Darrell Etherington 34:57
You are but I mean, even as you're describing It's clear, like we've already talked a lot about the sort of like world building constraints. But you've also just described a whole bunch of technical constraints, right? Like, you're really setting a lot of significant challenges. When you're talking about adjoining rooms or whatever being on the same network, Android, iOS, like all these things come into play when you're talking about easy, you know, jumping in with, with multiplayer environments, or with friends, and which is to say, Great, wonderful, more. The old time you've been talking everything, and this is great, it's so exciting to hear about somebody who's taking real risk, because you talked about all those formulas, those are kind of like the way a lot of VC works. Now, unfortunately, it's like, oh, you pattern match this thing? Where it's like, why in the original days of VC, that was absolutely not the case. It was, Oh, do you completely bucked the trend of the thing that we're seeing? Therefore, I'm gonna bet on you, because it's an immense risk. But if you change it, it all changes. And then I went big, and what you're describing sounds like that. Not the other thing, which is exciting. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 36:03
I mean, I guess it is, I mean, that is the risk. So I'm not saying I would be successful at it. But I think that the other way with just to create fun gaming experiences, which I have quite a lot of experience in, and like, I dress them as hyper casual, and just throw a lot of ads. And again, I always feel like I'm done talking, some of my colleagues here who are doing this, we're hyper casual. But, you know, in Quizup, it was a, it was a very casual experience, you know, I was very adamant on it being simple with no tutorial. So I had some of the same principles there. And we were like piecing people together, like from all over the world based on their interests. So you would play you could like, go into the Game of Thrones topic, for example, and you would play someone random person from somewhere far away, and you will do some games. And we made it really easy for people to connect to chat to each other, to add us friends, and so forth. And the results were that like, we had, I think, like dozens of weddings or marriages that happened just from people connecting on a social game like Quizup. And I know, it sounds like I want to make a dating app right now, which I don't. But I think that for me as a as a game designer, or in this industry, to create like a product that is elegant and really helps you connect with new people or your current, you know, friends in a meaningful way, that is like the greatest source of contentment that I ever felt from some of my previous games, or ministers. So I hope that I'll be able to replicate some of that in our next product
Jordan Crook 37:35
I have. So what's the timeline? Or like, when are we going to get to play this game was 999 million,
Darrell Etherington 37:42
I know, you're gonna get a tessellate invite.
Unknown Speaker 37:44
So we are, as you just mentioned, Darrell, there's a lot of not only like design challenges, but also a lot of technical challenges that we're faced because we want to make this different than anything else. So right now, we are in the face of kind of proving out some of the technical hurdles that became very apparent, as soon as you started to develop the first time VPS. So I feel that this is a bigger project than any I've done before. So I'm expecting it. I think during that I'll ping you in about a year when we have something to show maybe something before the end of the year. But that's not going to be full of public yet. I think like a public lands will be in two, three years. Now put
Jordan Crook 38:25
it on account sounds
Darrell Etherington 38:26
reasonable, given everything you're trying to do. But is that something like you've talked to that doesn't
Unknown Speaker 38:31
sound reasonable for mobile games? Right? No, hypercasual they talked like two weeks to a lot of them.
Darrell Etherington 38:36
But when you're having conversations with VCs and you say that number, do you see kind of their they just get up and walk out of the room? Or how does that part of the conversation?
Unknown Speaker 38:44
I mean, they last a couple of months to it. You know, that's inevitably what happens in every single software planning, you know, situation I've ever been to. So, you know, don't tell the VCs but it's probably like more like four years.
Darrell Etherington 39:00
All right, we'll keep it between us. No, no,
Unknown Speaker 39:03
but that's I mean, I mean, of course, you have to do it in slices. And you have to do some focus testing, and some, you know, MVPs on different features that you'll try out, you'll do soft launches. I mean, there are like, tons of ways to do that now, and lots of easy ones, actually. Because we're still in the ideation stage. I mean, the whole roadmap hasn't been set already. We're just working on that, you know, again, I really look forward to creating a great experience for people that will make them want to share it with their friends. That's like the main party we get there in the then we're already ahead of 99% of all mobile games, right? If you just create a game that you feel so good about, you have some experience that makes you go to your friend and say like, you have to try this. Yeah, yeah, because we're totally immune to that right now. We just play the next hybrid Cassiel and we just like do it for a couple of seconds. And then we go to the
Darrell Etherington 39:52
next one. Yeah. And even if you get really into it yourself, no one has ever come up to me and said like, oh, have you ever played whatever clicker
Unknown Speaker 39:59
and I know you Like, I mean, this was like maybe happens in the beginning of mobile, but it doesn't happen anymore. It's so noisy. And this is the reason why performance marketing is so important to these companies because people don't do this anymore. Okay, factor. I think that it's because the product don't provide that opportunity.
Darrell Etherington 40:15
Yeah, it's sort of a chicken and egg problem, right. Like the performance of someone killed that. But yeah, I'm thinking like back to I probably Monument Valley. This was like the last one that I was actively. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I really hope personally, the YouTube everything you said to do, because it sounds fantastic. Selfishly, it just personally aligns with a lot of my thoughts around the gaming industry and where it's gone. I do ping back and forth, like, is this just nostalgia? But no, it's not. There are games that are quality experiences. And it's a shame if, you know, generations who are coming up now and using the mobile device as their primary computing device, like don't get to have those kinds of experiences, they get a very sort of like, lessened version of that, right. But I think
Unknown Speaker 40:53
like a good company that I always admire a lot, that has never really, I feel fallen into this trap is Nintendo. I think Nintendo are like, you know, they're super, I mean, I talked down other companies, but they have this kind of ethos of doing things in the right experience. So definitely, that's, as I said, it's a huge market. So there are really good players there. Nintendo is one of them. Although there are other things about that. We're not going to go into that. But yeah, I mean, there are amazing games there. But it doesn't change the fact that these hit games on mobile, they're really few and far between. It's not like the movies, when you have like, oh, you know, people aren't waiting for this amazing new movie, and everyone's gonna see it. It's like 99% of mobile games, it's so spread out like the longtail is so incredibly long, although like, it's mostly the same game. So they're making the revenue and it's still the same games, it's still Candy Crush, still, you know, you have these games that are just like hanging in there. And they've been doing it for several years.
Darrell Etherington 41:51
And now they're getting movies made out of them to actually I don't know if Candy Crush has been optioned, but I'm sure I'm sure it's in line.
Jordan Crook 41:57
I don't even know how you make that a movie. But I'm sure that will. I mean, there was a whole movie about emojis. So
Unknown Speaker 42:03
it look one of the reason why complexes have failed was a Hollywood deal that went down the drain. That's one of my pain, most painful handoff lessons.
Darrell Etherington 42:12
So that one for for the entrepreneurs listening when Hollywood comes calling deals
Jordan Crook 42:17
with other. But like, it's not just Hollywood, right? Like, I just feel like Thor, like if you get approached in the future, you are super successful at this. And anyone comes around, right? Like an acquisition offer and big Hollywood deal book deal. Whatever, right? Like, I feel like you're going to be a bit a bit wary about that. Have you like made any hard rules? Like I'm never selling, I'm taking it public, or like, you know,
Unknown Speaker 42:42
I mean, I've had a couple of these instances with my companies, you had quizzle, for example, we signed this huge deal with NBC to make like it was called quiz about marriage show. It was a game show like interactive game show, and was a pretty big deal. Actually, we spent millions and millions of dollars in making a pilot I went with and I have to admit, like at that point in time, I kind of got swept away like with the glamour of Hollywood, you know, they invited me to Cannes where they were like promoting the show to other networks all around the world. And like, there was so much glamour and money in this and I got like super excited about it sent like half of my team to LA where we set up bass. And we started working with with MPC, and we spent, I don't know how many millions of dollars on that project, all of our fundraising was kind of aligned to that there was massive revenue potential there, you know, basically, imagine like a live game show where you could have the app pay like $1 to participate, and you could win a million dollar every day. I mean, you know, everyone thinks they're so smart. Everyone like watches game shows and think they can do it better is the match. And it hasn't really been done properly. yet. I know that Netflix is doing something now and but not like this. And we've got super excited about it. And we kind of put all our eggs into that basket. And then I still remember that day. I mean, I just got an email from the executive of MPC. Like, hey, really sorry about it, it's canceled. And this is, but the problem there. And the the the lesson I learned there, and this goes to all entrepreneurs, is not to put your x all your eggs into the same basket. Because we surely did that, you know, we were just betting on that. It was a long process. And when it like, got swept under us, we were in a super difficult situation, because we were in the middle of a fundraising. And this was kind of like the main, you know, pitch of a revenue model going forward. And it just put us into a very bad spot. So yeah, movies. Yeah, I mean,
Darrell Etherington 44:37
yeah, that is a good lesson. It's always a good lesson to be careful who you partner with, and then be careful to how much of your business becomes dependent upon that partnership.
Jordan Crook 44:46
Yeah, that's the real key piece. I mean, obviously, you want to be careful who you partner with, but like how much energy you put into it. Like you said, it's the same thing with the Northstar product as it is on like how your company operates and sustains itself to write like, there has to be something within. That is the key.
Unknown Speaker 45:04
I agree. I mean, this is this, for example, I can blame myself that I kind of lost sight of my Northstar, because my Northstar for Quizup was a mobile, you know, gaming social network with it became. But you're right, Jordan, I build the resistance to this, I think at this point in time in my career, so I'll be hugely skeptical about any sort of offers that seem too good to be true.
Jordan Crook 45:27
Well, I'm excited to see what you do next. Because I do feel like you've had this long career and gaming that has been super successful. And also, you know, not at the same time, right, with some big dips in there. And you've learned so many lessons. So I mean, I think that if I were a VC, I would bet on you just because like, how could you not?
Unknown Speaker 45:47
You've gone through it all. You got to get it right this time, right as
Unknown Speaker 45:53
the some of the same.
Unknown Speaker 45:56
Yeah, exactly. As long as you're making new mistakes, your Gucci. I think,
Unknown Speaker 46:01
in my entire time, I thought that I learned so much from Quizup. But then I like made a whole new session of mistakes that I've categorized now in my book of mistakes. No, I mean, this is looks. I mean, my first game I ever made before quiz, it was a children's game. And I was like, super passionate about it, it was called the movies, and no one heard about it, but it's one of the most proud experiences they've ever like, the game is one of the best experiences I've created. You can find it anywhere now, maybe a trailer or somewhere. And it felt like I overestimated the appeal of the game so greatly that after that game was launched, and I was practically bankrupt. I was like, in a totally dark place. You know, I just came from university and spent my whole savings on this game, I really believed in it. And I think like my main lesson in this roller coaster of a career I've had is still the same. It's just perseverance, don't quit, it would have been so easy to quit after the first kind of failure and the stigma that surrounds it. But I'm not like a month after that total failure, which was actually kind of like humiliating to me because it was kind of public in my small town of Reykjavik, Iceland, because you know, if you do things like this, everyone notices so I was like, kind of humiliated after that, and just Quizup came along, or that idea or that North Star that was and just got back on the horse just like now. So I think that's that's like the biggest lesson and I think it's a cliche of course, but this is definitely the biggest lesson of any entrepreneur can give to another just don't don't quit, unless you're really really bad at it. But otherwise
Unknown Speaker 47:36
there's always exceptions to every rule. I've
Unknown Speaker 47:39
never seen a glimmer of success in your career maybe you should think about it but
Darrell Etherington 47:44
but that is a great place to end is to never quit unless you have but thanks so much Thor this has been great. I love this conversation. I love chatting with you the light I'm energized about everything my life the future of gaming, it was wonderful your
Jordan Crook 47:59
life Wow. There was a pretty negative Nancy so
Unknown Speaker 48:04
I tried to leave you know all of the people I speak with like more happy with their life. That's kind of my goal. You do I'm joking.
Jordan Crook 48:14
All right, well, we appreciate you or thank you for hanging out with us today was super fun. Do we have any like closing words we're supposed to tell people? No, no, just
Darrell Etherington 48:24
join us next week for equity live same time right here and thanks again for listening to found everybody.
Unknown Speaker 48:30
And now a word from our sponsor. Oh, no.
Darrell Etherington 48:36
Sorry, I had to do that. Okay. Boundaries those two by myself. TechCrunch news editor Darrell Etherington and TechCrunch Managing Editor Jordan crook. You shot it to Kearney is our executive producer. We are produced by Maggie Stamets and edited by Cal Keller TechCrunch is audio products are managed by Henry pick of it. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and on twitter@twitter.com slash fan. You can also email us at found@techcrunch.com and you can call us and leave a voicemail at 510-936-1618. Also, we'd love if you could spare a few minutes to fill out our listener survey at bit.li/bound listener survey. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai