Chief Executive Officer (CEO), My.Games B.V.
MY.GAMES’ Elena Grigorian On Smart Strategies To Stay Afloat During This Industry Downturn
In a time when investors are calling for prudence and playing it safe, one company has managed to not only persevere but prevail.
About Elena Grigorian
Elena Grigorian, CEO of MY.GAMES, has spoken publicly about the company’s approach to branding and user acquisition. In a March 2024 presentation, she described the company’s shift toward branding campaigns for mobile games, noting that the gaming industry has historically been performance-oriented and that adapting to less predictable branding models required new metrics and expertise. She stated that the company saw a significant revenue impact from its first branding campaign, but cautioned that such campaigns require careful target audience selection and that drastic changes to existing user acquisition campaigns should be avoided. Grigorian has also commented on the broader industry downturn. In a November 2023 podcast, she attributed the industry’s struggles to the rise of cheaper entertainment options such as short video, and argued that companies should focus on attracting and monetizing a mass, non-targeted audience rather than relying solely on high-spending players. She cited MY.GAMES’ diversification strategy and focus on existing revenue-generating products as key to maintaining stable growth. Additionally, she noted that the company has a 45% share of women in leadership roles, and described finding work-life balance as a personal challenge.
Transcript (42 segments)
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Peggy Sals0:11
Hello world, it is the PG Biz podcast. I am your co-host Peggy Sals, and I am so happy to welcome Brian Bago back. Brian, you are back in the truest sense of the word. People are saying where were you all these weeks? I know, but why don't you tell us because it was epic.
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Brian Bago0:20
Yeah, so I'm finally back after the madness, chaos, and victory that was Scottish Games Week. For anyone out there who has not been bored to tears with me banging on about it over the last several months, we organized a weeklong series of events around the video games industry here in Scotland. Boy, let me tell you, Peggy, it was quite something. We had double the number of speakers, double the delegates, a whole lot more sponsors, but we made some pretty big breakthroughs. The support that we've had from the government here in Scotland has been phenomenal, and it really culminated with their agreement that they are going to help us work with us to produce a national video game strategy. That's going to be the first part of the UK to have such a thing, so it's going to be really quite exciting. Looking at this from the ecosystem perspective, I think we can do something really quite extraordinary. It's been fantastic, a whole lot of fun, and it promises to make 2020 a little bit more interesting. But oh my, I am so glad to be back with you guys and doing something simpler and a little more fulfilling with the PG Biz podcast. So it's lovely to be here.
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Peggy Sals1:44
It's great to have you back, Brian. I had no idea what you had accomplished, so that is fantastic. I'm already connecting a lot of the dots with some of the people we had some great speakers out there from all across North America and Europe, and connecting them up with the whole team. So I'll make sure we get the benefit of our keynotes and some of the really amazing thinkers that we had across the whole of the week.
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Brian Bago2:07
You're talking about amazing people. We're back and we have an encore with My.Games because, as you will remember, we had Anton a while back looking at growth tips and strategy, and now we are back again. I'm so excited because not only is she amazing, but it's actually one of her first podcasts. She's really popular. She was in charge of marketing and brand as a CMO at My.Games, and later as Chief Strategy Officer, and now she takes the helm as CEO. That is a huge leap, a huge accomplishment, and that's why this podcast is here to welcome you, Elena. Welcome, and congratulations as well.
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Elena Grigorian2:48
Thank you very much for having me. It would be a great pleasure for me to talk with you today.
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Brian Bago2:52
And back at you. I'm really looking forward to finding out more about your journey and more about My.Games. So obviously a huge move, but you've been there since the beginning. You've been in the company since the beginning, you've also been in the market since the beginning, and it's changing fast. A lot of things are going on. One thing you notice a lot more is product is key, product and marketing moving closer together, and that's what you've also started to do, or moved to another level at My.Games. Tell me about the efforts and how they're evolving to make this work.
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Elena Grigorian3:31
Yeah, it's a great question, thank you for that. My first role was connected with marketing, and I hardly can say that our marketing team was once seriously separated from our development. The problem that time was in a different area. We, as a large company, had experienced a lot of stages of centralization of marketing function and its decentralization. I believe it's the same issue for many different companies, and there are pros and cons in both approaches. When I joined the company nine years ago, the marketing function was completely decentralized, given to the studios without any central expertise and unified knowledge. There were studios with a bunch of marketers at completely different levels of skills, and there were studios without any marketing at all. Usually, this decentralization leads to asymmetric development of expertise. What I managed to do almost nine years ago was to create a grid structure combining the central marketing structure and studio marketing teams. Some were responsible for the accumulation of the most skilled knowledge and exchange of expertise, while others were responsible for communication with the product and guaranteeing connection with the production team. I believe that the balance between these two blocks and sharing responsibilities and motivation between them was a kind of my know-how, and I'm really proud of the result we got at the end of the day. This team of almost 200 high professional marketers and specialists has proven instrumental in maximizing the potential of our more than 80 games, contributing to the remarkable almost 10 times growth of our business over the last eight years. I sense this effort has not only transformed our team but has also played a pivotal role in positioning My.Games as a leader in the gaming industry. Definitely, this journey continues with ongoing improvement of our strategies to navigate in the ever-evolving gaming landscape successfully.
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Brian Bago6:01
I think it's fair to say that not only that, but with the challenge of restructuring and centralizing, you also have faced the challenge of moving the company internationally from Russia to Amsterdam. So you guys must really love a challenge.
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Elena Grigorian6:08
I believe it's very important to emphasize that even before the main part of our business was concentrated in the US and Europe in terms of revenue and focus for our production. Our key territories in terms of revenue stream were and still are the US, UK, France, and Germany. Moreover, our headquarters in Amsterdam was established many years ago, not just now. The second biggest office in Cyprus was formed about 10 years ago if I remember correctly. So definitely now there are slight changes, but nevertheless, even in 2020 we started to think about a work from anywhere setup during the pandemic. At the moment, more than 90% of our company's employees have been working outside of the office in countries all around the world. We have offices in Amsterdam and Cyprus, which are some of the oldest for us. But this year, you're right, we opened additional hubs for our employees in Abu Dhabi, for example, in Serbia, in Georgia, and other countries.
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Brian Bago7:35
I've heard so much about Georgia recently. It just seems to be where the action is. It's really hopping. I mean you're there as well. What are your thoughts about where mobile games companies need to be?
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Elena Grigorian7:51
Definitely a lot of IT specialists and gaming specialists are moving to different countries. Georgia is one of them, and a huge community has formed there. My.Games, for example, same story. We use this country to form our community there, to communicate not only with our employees but the total gaming community in the territory, to arrange master classes, webinars for the community there, to help them grow, to find growth points for their products and for their personal talents, and so on. But nevertheless, I believe that the main point is that at the moment for gaming companies, remote work by default is really important. For us at My.Games, we transitioned to remote work during the pandemic and established this principle slightly after, and it works to this day. I really think it is efficient enough. Moreover, for example, we realized the efficiency of this work format when at the end of 2020 we successfully launched our hit game Rush Royale. Remarkably, Rush Royale was developed fully remotely for our employees, and this game is one of our biggest hits at the moment.
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Brian Bago9:11
That's amazing, Elena. And obviously, despite all of the disruption and the focus, you are still achieving some very big numbers. I believe you've chalked up a 14-fold increase in marketing investments at My.Games with a four-fold increase in the company's business. And you have some seriously impressive numbers for your top-rated titles: Rush Royale, War Robots, Hustle Castle, and others. I mean, Rush Royale itself has had over 63 million installs and generated 230 million in revenue. And War Robots, one of my favorites, just seems to go on forever with 250 million registered players and counting. But you've got a much larger portfolio with titles in various stages of development. So you guys are a powerhouse at a time when some studios are cutting back. So what is your goal? What is your drive? How come you guys are powering ahead when others are playing it very safe?
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Elena Grigorian10:15
I believe you know that the source of our courage usually lies in our team's expertise, adaptability, and passion for gaming. We are agile in responding to gaming market shifts, productive in identifying emerging trends, and driven by the shared belief in the transformative impact of games.
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Peggy Sals10:42
Brian loves the game. He just said one of his favorites. I've read about it so I'm a believer. But you know, you have to convince others: partners, investors, people outside when they are all feeling like this is not the time necessarily to power ahead. It is the time to be safe. But no, you have this courage. It has to come from within, but also convincing others. How are you doing that? How are you getting partners and others on board? Maybe you're just really convincing personally and you have a great personality, and you just tell them and they're like, 'Yeah, we're on board.' But no, what is the secret here?
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Elena Grigorian11:22
I think that number one is definitely the diversification strategy that we have. It persuades our partners greatly because this diversification helps us have a stable business, taking into account that the gaming business is a hit-driven business and it's up and down. But while you have a huge portfolio and set of studios, it's much easier to keep a stable rate of growth. That is our path. I think one of the primary efforts that fueled our growth is definitely our focus on diversification. We expanded our portfolio to cover multiple gaming platforms: we have PC, console, and mobile studios in our family. This approach allows us to tap into different audience segments, adapting to the various preferences of gamers across the globe. So we have diversification in terms of platforms, but also diversification in terms of genres because all of our studios have their own preferences in terms of the genres they develop, which helps us approach different audiences. Another way of diversification is in terms of business models. Number one, we have our own studios that develop products for us that we publish. But at the same time, we have a licensing business as well, so we license products from third-party developers to publish them around the world. This helps guarantee different and new revenue streams into our business. Third, in terms of diversification of business models, we have a pretty strong investment arm called Sim GBC, which is in charge of looking for talented teams and products globally. We acquire some studios based on their results. So we have three different sources of product in our portfolio: own development, licensing, and investment. This diversification helps us greatly guarantee stable growth of our business.
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Brian Bago13:52
I can see exactly why that would remove some of the risk and give you that resilience to ride out marketplace changes. But a big part of that diversification is also diversity and inclusion. And you are one of the, regretfully, small number of female CEOs in the market, so it's a path less traveled. Can you tell us a little bit more about your journey and the challenges you've faced? Because it's so rare to get a chance to speak to a woman who has come from the very beginning and is now leading such an impressive studio.
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Elena Grigorian14:33
Thank you for this question. I have been working in the gaming industry almost all my life, 23 years in my career connected with games. Even if I've been fortunate to have a supportive network throughout my career, I used to have almost all men among my colleagues. This has long been the norm of my life. The higher you go, the fewer women you meet on the way. In reality, I'm very proud that in our company, My.Games, the share of women in leadership is about 45%. I believe it's very impressive. Even though we do not have any strict rules regarding gender balance in teams, we do a lot to ensure that women in our company can realize their full potential. I believe it works great, and I myself am one more example of how it works. But if you talk about the challenges, what exactly challenges I have at the moment and during the previous year, the most challenging part for me was to find the work-life balance on this path. Definitely it is a case for women even much more complex compared to men. It's still one of the most difficult parts for me because I really love what I do, I give myself a lot to the process, so this balance is not always possible. I am the CEO of a growing gaming company, I'm the mother of two, I'm the wife of an amazing husband, I'm a daughter and sister, and I'm a person with my hobbies and interests. So it sounds challenging, and it is definitely challenging, but I still do my best to find this balance every day.
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Brian Bago16:30
One thing that comes up again and again is that it has to be diverse, which is very important because you get all views and types. But you also have to have that talent and bring that up. So for women in successful positions, it's about helping younger women up the ladder, or for you, since you're multicultural, it's about incorporating and bringing these other territories up the ladder, bringing them into your organization. That's not easy. You just don't say 'here I'm open' or 'yes I'm going to mentor you.' There's more to it than that. I'd be very interested in understanding how you do this. How do you cultivate these relationships that are so well aligned with your culture?
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Elena Grigorian17:18
Yes, definitely not just words. It's the total set of procedures that we have in the company: procedures of transparency and open dialogue between different managers because we have a rather horizontal structure. Everyone can ask any question to anyone, and I am open for any of our employees to talk and discuss their ideas. Talking about women, we have a lot of practices in the company, some mentor programs and so on, helping anyone to realize their full potential inside or outside the company. So we are trying to educate them, talk with them, help them grow, and find the growth point for everyone. This is kind of inside the DNA of the company.
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Brian Bago18:12
I just want to add that your report card of 45% women in leadership positions, that's well done. If it wasn't virtual, it would be a high five to you, Elena. So thank you.
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Elena Grigorian18:23
Yes, thank you very much. I'm really proud of this number.
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Brian Bago18:31
Well done. You're right, it is very, very impressive. I want to stay on your journey for a moment if we can, Elena. You've been, as you said, 23 years in this industry, and you must have seen a lot. You've had so many positions: ahead of games at Disney for eight years. So what have you seen in terms of the highs and the lows, and how have you stayed on track after all of this time? Do you have any observations or inspiration that you can share for people who are just starting out on their journey in games?
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Elena Grigorian18:59
Yeah, you're right. I have been working in games for ages already, and over the years the industry has completely changed several times. So of course the current situation in the gaming industry is not the easiest one, but I'm sure that we will be able to overcome and find new forms of interaction with our players in enhancing their gaming experience at the end. But what we all think is that in any difficult times, it's worth focusing your efforts on the main things. For us, the main things are our main products that already generate noticeable revenue, and it's worth looking for additional sources of revenue in them: enhancing operations, alternative platforms, new territories, and so on. Definitely, all of us believe that today it's time to be more prudent in terms of risky investments, but at the same time it's so important to focus on promising growth points. If we do everything right, we will be able to stay afloat in difficult times and grow with the new round of the industry cycle.
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Brian Bago20:16
So which do you find more exciting? You talked about alternative app stores, that's really the buzz right now. It's like, yes, it's going to happen in 2024, so I have more opportunities to get my game in front of more people. That's amazing. Other people, no, I'm really into AI. We just had a show recently talking about how AI will even create adaptive play, it will give you the game you want. I mean, these are out there. These are trends, not right now. Just to understand, what gets you really excited? Where do you see the opportunity for My.Games, but maybe also for our audience listening in, some blue ocean they're not thinking about?
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Elena Grigorian20:59
I don't think it's a kind of blue ocean for the industry in general, but I think it can be the blue ocean for us, for My.Games. What you're talking about, we're talking about new territories, working more closely with some territories. At the beginning and in reality now, the main part of our revenue comes from US and Europe. Definitely all of us know that half of the gaming market is concentrated in Asia countries. We see at the moment that our potential there is great enough, and we tried to grow our business there sometimes, but it wasn't so successful. But now we believe that we have one more point of growth there. For example, you may have heard that one of our key products, War Robots, succeeded in receiving the ISBN at the end of this year finally after five years of waiting. Finally we have the opportunity to publish our key products in China, and we are going to launch it in China at the beginning of next year. It's so impressive for me, and I really hope it will be successful there, that the audience in China will adore the game as players elsewhere do. I really believe in new territories for us, China for War Robots. We have a similar story with our second hit, Rush Royale, because Rush Royale has huge potential in South Korea, for example, and it's very interesting for us to try to do something special there: local marketing and local operations. At the moment this territory is number four in terms of revenue stream, but we believe it should be much more impressive. So we will do a lot of local efforts there for Rush Royale. So for us, 2024 will be more concentrated on local campaigns in Asian markets for some of our key products, and it really impresses me a lot.
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Peggy Sals23:18
You know, Brian, I'm thinking it's going to be super impressive to understand how to localize to these markets. So I've just stuck a pin in that one to have you back to talk about that as well, going to China and making that a success. That will be exciting.
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Elena Grigorian23:35
Definitely, I will be more than happy to share our success and our ideas with you later on as soon as we launch the product. Of course, we are trying to do our best to be successful there and do a lot of local stuff not only in terms of the product itself but in terms of communication with our community there, in terms of our marketing activities. So definitely I could share much more information with you as soon as the product is launched there.
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Brian Bago24:07
One additional question: if you are looking beyond that, you know, that's what's next for My.Games. What is coming out? We've got so many emerging technologies, so many new changes coming in the games market. What are you looking at maybe for 2025, 2026 and beyond? Where is My.Games seeing the future taking us?
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Elena Grigorian24:25
Talking about the next thing, I think that the most amazing thing that can be next for any gaming company is definitely the launch of new games. For next year and for 2025, we have a lot of plans for the launch of new products, and our pipeline is so well done at the moment. We are planning to release new games in 2024, and the pipeline is filled with a very array of mobile and PC/console products. For example, this year we announced incredibly well-received titles such as War Robots: Frontiers, a PC/console product from the same War Robots franchise. It's so impressive for us as well to try to grow the franchise in general with help of new products on PC/console and involve new audiences into the franchise. Another product I would like to underline is Hade, a PC/console release that had been developed for us for three plus years. It's a very impressive plan, and this product is going to be released at the very beginning of next year. And of course, we have many other captivating mobile games in our portfolio. So what we think about our future, definitely we think about new products because we are a product gaming company, and we should think about the product and find the great game for us, for our employees, and for our players.
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Brian Bago26:08
But before we let you go, we have two questions that we ask all of our guests, to really bring it back to the games. The first one is: what are you playing right now? What's on your mobile, what's on your laptop? And the second question is: what's your favorite game of all time?
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Elena Grigorian26:27
Wow, at the moment I'm playing some of our new announced games because I would like to have my own opinion and understand, and I'm in full discussions with our development team in terms of the experience I have. So some of them are on mobile devices and others on console. It's very impressive for me to be a part of the development team even if at the moment I'm not there 100% of my time, but definitely it's my passion. That's why I'm here, that's why I like to work in close collaboration with our development team. So our new products are one more point of my interest.
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Brian Bago27:12
That's a great answer. So the answer is top secret? That's okay, that's okay. This is why we have to invite you back.
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Elena Grigorian27:19
Yes, I will be more than happy to join you later.
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Brian Bago27:23
Your favorite game of all time, do you have a preference?
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Elena Grigorian27:27
I think that I spent a lot of years playing Heroes of Might and Magic. It was so many years ago, but it was the start. I believe it's very important what is the first game for you, that helps you to understand what was going to be your professional future. That's why it's so important for me. I would like to emphasize this game.
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Brian Bago28:00
That's a great answer, and nobody can argue with Might and Magic. It's a classic for a reason. You're right. It was so interesting speaking with you, Elena, finding out about diversification, where that fits in your strategy, hearing about where you're going next, learning about how to crack the Chinese market. Just great, thank you.
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Elena Grigorian28:15
Thank you very much. I will be more than happy to share these ideas with you as well.
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Brian Bago28:19
It's been a real pleasure. We're going to let you go as you have an entire company to run across multiple territories and nations around the world, so I'm sure you're very busy. But we would love to have you back at some point soon just to find out more about My.Games' ongoing journey and indeed your own. So thanks again, and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future.
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Elena Grigorian28:37
Yeah, thank you very much. Good luck to you guys.
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Peggy Sals28:41
This show is all about how to do your job better, how to make an amazing game, how to market it. And you have a say. So if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on, then we would love to hear from you. We want to hear from you. We want to reflect the reality of the mobile games market and all its wonderful complexity and strangeness. So if you have any suggestions for us, if you have any feedback for us, you can always get in touch. You can email us at [email protected]. You can find us on Twitter at @PG_Biz, and you can reach out to us through the pocketgamer.biz website. If you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts, you can find them at pocketgamer.biz/slp-podcast. We would love to hear your thoughts on future shows, and we've got you covered on all the major platforms. So subscribe to the audio podcast, as Brian said, look for us on YouTube. If you want to read it, hey, you can do that too, because we have a companion post for you as well on the pocketgamer.biz website. Tune in again for the next edition of the pocketgamer.biz podcast, and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future.
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Brian Bago29:54
I'm Brian Bago.
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Peggy Sals29:56
I'm Peggy and salts, and that's a wrap until next week.