Q: Tell us about yourself?
The founders of Colossi Games have worked as producers, lead game designers and development leads in the top Russian mobile gaming companies, each with top-grossing titles under their supervision. All of us felt the limitations of a massive corporate entity, so we took the next logical step.
Q: What is the inspiration behind your business?
There are three distinct factors that we adhere to:
- We will always build games with high organic traction, which implies a quality standard both visually and technically, due to the rising marketing costs and IDFA implications.
- We think hard, prototype much and then execute fast to get metrics quickly, and we don’t compromise on the idea that a founder like a manager is just a primus inter pares, the first among equals.
- We believe this combination solves employee retention, leads to more passion, and ultimately to better games.
Q: What is your magic sauce?
We hire strictly for mindset and with a clear career path for every employee years down the line, and give everyone a stake in the company while offering full flexibility on work location and being the owner of skill domain.
Q: Where do you see your company going in 5 years?
Colossi will have at least 3 titles out that each is considered among the best in subgenre while grossing 8 digits and enjoyed by millions. We want to be regarded as the go-to RPG developer and publisher by players and recognize as a role-model games company for employees and business stakeholders.
Q: What has been your biggest setback so far?
The pandemic has not only impacted our travels and ability to meet as much as we’d like to, and it impacted 5 of our remote staff’s health temporarily. A better public health management and vaccine rollout might have helped tremendously. Other than that, governmental regulations and administrative capture are, probably, the usual pain points for every startup.
Q: What is the next big challenge for your business?
We will release our first title, Gladiators: Survival in Rome, globally and publish ourselves. The soft launch retention numbers are sitting on the top of competition benchmarks and we have not even unloaded our full arsenal of game design decisions yet. The real challenge will be the transition from a single-game development studio into a liveops & development, multi-title company.
Q: How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
The people we best resonate with have this specific thought in their head: “I can do better, I’m confident to show it and roll up my sleeves to execute.” A sales pitch rarely makes the way past the spam folder; we only work with peer recommendations by fellow founders and former colleagues with whom we cherish the open and honest collaborative competitiveness.
