Okay. Nice to have you here, Evtim. So happy and excited Based on the news that we gave out today regarding that Kiwi Games acquires a majority part of the chairs in Playwright And starts investment into the hyper casual games market. And, yeah, Evdem, you're one of the co founders of Playwright. And, yeah, please let us know a bit more about yourself.
Hi, everyone. I'm F team. Like Eric said, I'm one of the co founders of the company called Playwright, and I'm really excited to be joining Kiwi. A bit about me. I could be in the mobile games industry for around 8 years now.
I started to initiate as a game designer of Gameloft, Then worked as a product manager of Square Enix on some big name IPs like Lara Croft. I then moved on to be a product manager for Mac Interactive's live games portfolio, where I gained lots of insights about how the casual game market works. This is where I actually also saw and had a glimpse for the first time at Hyper Casual Games 2. This was just an emerging trend back then. And I have then moved on to work for natural motion, part of Zynga on CCR2.
At some point, I just started to start working for myself. So I left. I started doing freelance game design consulting jobs at Navec. And around this time also, I started noticing how aggressively hyper casual has been going. I am particularly caught by eye.
It also excited me by the opportunities that it provides for game design innovation And the speed with which such innovations can be tested. So this is why I really founded PlayRite to be a hyper casual game studio. And for me, I'm really passionate about game design. I enjoy talking about it. I love researching design and coming up with designs of my own.
I would regularly play cross platform titles. So, you know, I mostly focus on mobile and hyper casual games through my research. But I do like to play all kinds of games, including PC and console ones with, really complex titles. But I have noticed that even in these complex games, you can take a really fun iteration. Just trip it down to its most basic core, And you can turn it into a basic action loop that is enough to support a great hyper casual experience.
So this is why this might be so exciting to work on.
We're excited to hear you talking about yourself and your history and we have actually been working together Earlier on our game Backpacker where you helped us a lot with the economic System in that game and balancing and live operations and so on. And we have been in contact Throughout the last years back and forth, so we have been knowing each other for several years and I'm really excited to get Get you on to the Kiwi Games story now, which I really believe also will benefit the the Kiwi Games group and then also the the current games that we have in our portfolio because, yeah, your your Experience and and and and knowledge about game mechanics and and balancing and And core loops in games is really impressive to me. So so really happy to have you have you here. Can you please tell us a little bit about the other 2 co founders at Playwright?
Sure. Yeah. Like we've already said, there are 3 of us. And one of them is Christina, my wife. Together, current, I were the original cofounders of Playwright, and she's the creative force at the company.
My focus at Playwright is on level design and tour design, but she is also responsible for creating some of the original game ideas That we have worked on and we are still working on and will be working on in the future. Her creativity is driven by her passion for story writing and narrative design. And she, like me, has deep understanding of game design and of what makes a great player experience. Shik has been instrumental in crafting the flow of our existing games and, her design research involves her getting deep engaged with titles more platforms. So similarly to me, Fox and Co Hyper casual, but we are playing all kinds of stuff because it's really useful for us and to build our knowledge base.
And when she plays the game, she's trying to understand how our games look and we'll work together to create a consistent experience. She and I have collaborated together on a variety of projects. So apart from Playwright, we have worked, and we have consulted a a variety of different clients with sports titles, casual games and games as well. And our 3rd co founder, Daniel, He's our strategic advisor, and he joined us when we started our hyper casual journey. And he has been instrumental in helping us understand the market and learn how to better match the games that we're making with the demographics that they're intended for.
And He himself is a really experienced games entrepreneur and product manager, and he's got a successful track record of starting up and going game studios. And most recently, one of his companies made a game called Micro Fantasia, which is a Japanese card collection written game. And this is where Humanite met. We actually collaborated on this project that was, both, on board as a game design consultant there. And during our collaboration, we actually realized that our skills, complement one another really well.
So we decided to just Keep on working together on hyper casual titles. And, Daniel's exceptional business experience and games industry knowledge and context You've been quite crucial in us laying the foundations for Playwright.
Yeah. Really, really interesting, And happy to also have Christina and Daniel on board here and to work with them going forward. So let's talk a little bit about the hyper casual market and which has been, of course, growing rapidly the last years and They're still growing strong. It's also a market where publishers can be able to grow their player bases a bit cheaper than only target the Target and marketing pure casual games and mid core games. So can you tell us a bit about how you see the casual That the hyper casual market these days and what is the development going forward, do you believe?
Yeah. Right. Well, it's it's a never going market and never evolving. And like you said, you know, it has been going And it's getting more and more exciting for lots of players. And even last year, when you think about it, lots of the countries around the globe were in lockdown, but Still, we had the number of downloads of casual games grew, which means an indication that regards of how much time players have on their hands.
But they will still appreciate and to be looking for really, really easy to pick up experiences that they can enjoy everywhere at any point, and this experience don't have to necessarily be super deep. And we believe that this would always be the case. So this is why we decide to enter the market with Playwright. But, also we see something else is that, the players of Hyper Casual games, they're now starting to pick up. And Even in the top charts, we can see gains with a bit higher production quality than what they used to be back in the days.
And, this is what our focus is as well. We want to build quality games. We can build quality games, and this is our focus. So that's where we come in. We want to ride this wave of, hyper casual gains with higher quality hitting the market.
But we also see something else emerging. It's the hybrid casual game strength. And essentially a hybrid casual game is It features the same, really simple to understand, but really fun, Hyper Casual game call. But to add to this, We have the layer of meta game, which is essentially more depth of the gameplay. So why is this exciting?
Because Up to now, hybrid casual gains usually would have, average player lifetime of 1 to 4 weeks. But in hybrid casual, The lifetime of players can be much, much longer, even longer than 6 months. And this is driven by these deeper experiences and much more content that players get to engage with. So this is very long to be as well and be one of the successors of Casual Games.
Yes. Thanks for that, Everything. And, yeah, it's it's definitely very interesting. The the the expected movement of hyper casual games to hybrid games. There is also something that we believe will be a very Important and good success factor for our partnership because Kiwi Games have been focusing on creating Casual games with meta elements for several years, and we have been able to and reach our gameplay experience and and engagement levels a lot with those types of meta elements in the gameplay.
So that is definitely an area where where both companies will be able to To exchange knowledge and and workflows to be able to to create really innovative, hyper casual games that can be emerging into the hyper hybrid market also of hyper casual games. Another synergy that we really believe in can grow the Kiwi Games' daily active users and monthly active users and the player base as a whole is that All the games that Playwright create that reaches specific benchmarks that that we believe We'll be able to work good in a global launch state. They will be published under the Kiwi publishing account, which means that we will be responsible for publishing the games and in creation of marketing material and do user acquisition campaigns and so on. And what is interesting with hyper casual games is that you normally Again, a lower CPI than marketing casual or mid core games, which means that We can scale the hyper casual games hopefully big and get a lot of players when these games get viral and we get a lot of organic installs from them and then we can cross promote players from the hyper casual games to our casual games, which in general have a much higher LTV than pure hyper casual games, And and we can also, vis a versa, cross promote players from the casual games to the hyper casual games based on Data and churn prediction models to be able to obtain and keep the players as long as possible within our network.
So I think that is a really exciting part and a New way of working for Kiwi Games regarding marketing and to scaling our business as a whole. And, yeah, do you have anything else there that you think about regarding the synergies between the two companies?
Oh, yeah. Everything that we have said so far is completely true. But, you know, I really want to underscore that, you know, Kivi in our side, he has an exceptional experience so far with, casual market and, really great experience with casual games featuring these deeper layers of Again, which we have been talking about. So given that one of our goals to be a success story for hybrid casual games, we believe that we can really benefit from your deep understanding how to take this really simple, although casual call and apply to it deeper gameplay that keeps players engaged in the long term. But what you also see in Kiwi, and this is why we got excited about the whole deal.
One of the reasons is that, you know, you have data, you have really developed BI Tech teams and also marketing. And these are things that we could struggle with before Playwright. And now we believe that with your help, we would really supercharge business to be a success.
Yes, I definitely agree. There is a lot of synergies and strings that we will benefit from from the both parts of the 2 companies here. So Can you tell us something about what we can expect in the near future from Playwright?
Of course, yeah. To summarize it, I would say just expect quality. So one of the focuses of Playwright, and I think I've mentioned it, is that we really want to make Really, really high quality, hyper casual experiences because we believe that this is where the market is going. So It's our process as well that's towards this call. Because when we have a game idea, you will take it, build a game around it, test it once, See where players drop off.
What do they like or don't like doing? How to orient the data with difficulty? All these different bits and bobs that Help us understand how we can build smooth player experience. Then we iterate on the prototype, try again. And then if it doesn't Obviously, we move on to the next game.
So we might be taking our time, but we take all of our learnings, we take all of our innovations, adapt them, put them into a new game and we constantly generate this massive, massive, library of knowledge, if you will, that lets us make better games better player experiences that would really make a hit game. And we're also busy building a platform of different mechanics that we can pick and mix together, So that we actually have a variety of different gameplay experiences that we can offer to players. So think, for example, a runner With life mechanics, an arena is basically a character running on a plane, and they have to dodge different obstacles. But if they trip and fall, they wouldn't die Right away, like it's typical, for example, you use up a life and then you keep on learning, you know, a puzzle game Where you don the screen and drawing is really currently quite popular in game mechanic in Hyper Casual, but it's also a puzzle game. It has puzzle elements, so you're drawing your own tools.
Can actually complete the puzzle that way as a player. And here, just to recap again, we learn a lot. We are still learning, but we're always aiming for quality. And we already have a couple of games in the pipeline. We experimented with both arcade and puzzle, and we're really looking forward to showing them off to the world.
Yeah. Really exciting times ahead then. And, yeah, just to summarize, really Good to have you, Kristina and Daniel on board here from Playwright and, yeah, really excited to start Widening Kiwi Games focus also into the hyper casual market where we see a lot of growth potential going forward. But thanks, Aftin, for the call and the presentation of yourself to the investors and shareholders at Qiwi. And Yeah.
Thanks for the call, and we will definitely get back to you in the near future, I believe.
Great. Thanks, Eric. Thanks for having me, and we are looking forward to working together.
Yes. Thank you. Have a nice day.
Have a nice day.