Tips from King studio Nonstop Games on growing your own game startup

It’s easy to register a business and call it a game startup, but how do you take it beyond a two or three-man outfit into a powerhouse studio more akin to Rovio or Supercell?

Juha Paananen from Nonstop Games was at the Games in Asia Singapore Meetup yesterday to share more.

Nonstop Games started in 2011 with co-founders based in Singapore and Finland. At that time, it was called GamesMadeMe, and was developing free-to-play HTML5 games. It received a pre-seed financing round in May 2011 from Lifeline Ventures, after which it launched two HTML5 games in early 2012 – Dollar Isle and Paint Stars.

See: Nonstop Games: social HTML5 games with a twist

Almost a year after Nonstop Games rebranded itself from GamesMadeMe, it raised a US$2.9M seed round from Creandum and Lifeline Ventures, which allowed it to continue working on the free-to-play iOS strategy game, Heroes of Honor. Nonstop Games also moved all its operations to Singapore. The game launched in January 2014 and was featured globally, as well as given editor’s choice on the App Store.

In August 2014, Nonstop Games was acquired by King of Candy Crush Saga fame. Paananen says that King proved to be a very good fit for Nonstop Games with its similar culture. The studio is currently working on a new game which will launch in the second quarter of 2015. But you’re probably wondering how it got to where is is today, so without further ado:

Juha Paananen at the Games in Asia Meetup.

Decide what kind of company you are

There are many types of successful game companies. There are the indie studios who go for free-to-play, venture capital backed growth-focused game companies, indie studios that focus on premium games, and studios working on crowdfunded games, among others. However, it’s important to know what kind of company you are. Studios who try to get funding may not always be the kind of startup VCs look to invest in.

Investors, according to Paananen, back only certain types of companies: those that seek growth; those on growing platforms like mobile and tablet; and those with potentially lucrative monetization models like free-to-play. It’s tough for premium games to get external funding.

Build a really great founding team

Founding teams are important because they are usually the basis of a studio’s success. Some characteristics of a good founding team are:

• Someone with product knowledge and vision, in this case, game mechanics and monetization know-how


• Art


• Practical technical skills like programming


• Marketing basics, and/or a willingness to learn these

And of course, the team needs to be scrappy, hungry, and passionate. Nonstop Games started without any artists in its founding team, but Paananen advises having a lead artist if possible.

Fail fast, or at least, as fast as possible.

Many people may not know this, but Heroes of Honor isn’t Nonstop Games’ first game. “A lot of the games we made were failures,” Paananen says. “Either they failed at launch, before launch, or after launch.” Nonstop Games had explored several other strategy game ideas that it ended up scrapping. However, this is the nature of this fast-moving games industry. “Your first game will most likely fail,” he added. “But you will learn a lot from it.”

See: From solo devs to fledgling studios, here are 6 tips from Malaysia’s games industry

A team that has shipped a game works better together, and has a great chance of making a successful title. This is because they’re gone through the full development pipeline and know what works – or doesn’t. So fail fast, or at least, as fast as possible.

Play games across different genres

It’s important to play games across many different genres because there’s a lot you can learn from them, even from a game like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. It made US$43M since launching in June this year, and it teaches lessons on how to grab user attention or to monetize from it, among other things.

Really good product designers play all kinds of games, Paananen says. They play everything.

The platform is your best friend

Platforms like the App Store, Google Play, Steam, Kongregate, and Line, among others, should be your best friends. Having a good relationship with them is very important, as they have the marketing power a small game company doesn’t.

But how should you start befriending them? Paananen says one needs to understand what’s important for these platforms. He cited the new Metal update in iOS 8 as an example. Having something graphics-intensive that shows off what Metal can do could get you featured.

Platforms also like innovation: they want to show something that’s new and different. An innovative game is a big entry ticket for a new company. Paananen also recommends having regular updates – not just for your consumers, but to the people who man these platforms too. “They like talking to people who create games. A lot of them are gamers themselves.”

See: Touchten Games has 7 easy tips for surviving the App Store

Be stubborn but listen to feedback

You need to be stubborn while creating your game because there are a lot of obstacles before you. However, Paananen cautions that it’s also important to listen to feedback at the same time. Different people have different ways of creating things, and it’s important to get feedback from all sorts of folks, even if it’s just people off the street.

Obsess about your game and your customers, but not your competitors

According to Paananen, startups die if they pay too much attention to other companies that are “attacking” them. “Focus on your games, customers, and products,” he says.

Nonstop Games is currently about 25 people large, and is hiring.

This post Tips from King studio Nonstop Games on growing your own game startup appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Tips from King studio Nonstop Games on growing your own game startup