EGD 6: Building a Successful Games Company with Kalle Makinen and Aarni Linnakangas
Today I talked with Kalle Mäkinen and Aarni Linnakangas, the co-founders of Superplus Games, the makers of Hills of Steel. Their journey into games entrepreneurship and experiences so far have been quite exciting. Today they will share how they approach game creation with a small team, and also continuing the success of their hit game.
Highlights of this episode:
- Kalle learned from working at Digital Chocolate that you need to be constantly doing games, because then you learn and see what works. And that you need to care about what you are doing.
- At the start moment: Wanted to have own company, but had a lot of discussion on what is the way for them to build the company.
- Idea creation isn’t the hard part, but testing and validation is where the work goes into and the iteration work and decision making can be hard
- Hills of Steel succeeded, because it went into the right market with the right approach. Quick and easy game play, and it’s more about shooting than driving.
- Games entrepreneurship about building the game, the team, the business.
- Biggest learning: you have cover all the aspects of building a company, incl. finances and marketing. And: work for two weeks on the game and start testing
- Picking the right investors isn’t an easy subject but it’s something that the team is trying to figure out.
Content mentioned:
Where can you find the episode:
- Listen on Apple iTunes
- Listen on Spotify
- Listen on Stitcher
- More links to your favorite Podcast apps, click here
