Mitch: 0:05

Welcome to Layer’s Licensing In Games podcast. My name is Mitch. There is no Rachit today. Rachit is in London at Vice which is a Gambling and Gaming Show. So, just me. I’m actually coming to you from Lisbon now. I moved over from Australia, the middle of summer to the dead of winter, which is actually a pretty decent winter here in Lisbon. So pleasure to be joined today by a fellow European, Simonas Sturys, who is the Head of Marketing at Nordcurrent. Nordcurrent is one of the biggest mobile games publishers, mobile casual games publishers in the world. And they’ve had over 560 million downloads of their games. So, today we’re going to be talking about Nordcurrent, how they approach brand partnerships, focusing on the recent collaboration with fashion brand David Koma in their game Pocket Styler. So thanks for joining us Simonas. 

Simonas: 1:12

Thank you Mitchell for the invite and welcome to Europe. I’m saying hello today from Vilnius, capital of Lithuania. 

Mitch: 1:22

Fantastic. I can’t wait to visit. 

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Simonas: 1:26

Yeah, you are always welcome. 

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Mitch: 1:29

Awesome. So, the collaboration with David Koma in Pocket Styler seems like a no brainer, right? You’ve got this mobile fashion game, you’ve got this fashion brand, but David Koma is not a name that everyone would necessarily know, it’s probably a bit more niche, not as mainstream. So, I’m curious how that partnership came to be and how you or Nordcurrent identified David Koma as a brand that you wanted to work with. And is that something that’s driven by Nordcurrent or were you approached by David Koma? How did that work?

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Simonas: 2:09

Okay. Well, first of all, I have to say that Pocket Styler is quite a new game in our portfolio. And in general, we have launched Pocket Styler globally in early summer 2021. So, it will be two years soon. And yeah, we can say, it’s not a big name yet, both of the gaming industry and especially the fashion industry. There is still a lot to do to gain that name, but of course, we are investing into user acquisition and we are gaining a lot of organic audience and we have connected Radio Group of power players of fans. So, it has been a success. But when we are talking about collaborations, we have started to approach brands and start to get into conversations late last summer. And David Koma was one of the possible hits. As a new game, we decided not to target the big brands like Gucci or Prada. In the beginning, naturally, it would take a lot of time. Big organizations is difficult to get them into a deal, especially with an unknown company. And very often, games is unknown area for many fashion brands yet. So, we selected a list of growing fresh designers, fashion brands that have established e commerce because e-commerce is one of the part of our collaboration. And so we selected the 100 brands, which we decided to approach little by little. And David Koma, it has many nice items. Items have special shapes. Colors are very creative. So we thought, “This would be great items for our players. That also influenced our wish to get David Koma on the game.” So, we contacted them and we had some meetings and David Koma liked the idea and that’s how it went. 

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Mitch: 4:40

Interesting. So a list of 100 is quite a significant list of fashion brands that you wanted to work with. Just quickly actually for people listening, what’s the audience of Pocket Styler? Is it mostly young women? What’s the audience look alike? 

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Simonas: 5:01

Yes, so absolutely, the audience is spread widely by the age, but more than 50% are women, which are above 35 years old. So, this is a mature audience. There is, of course, some younger players, but if we look into, in fans, into Facebook communication in the fans group, it’s obviously that mature women from all over the world are really engaged and really liked the game. So, they are the most active players. And also, I think it’s a good fit for the fashion brands, because, very often, the more mature women audience is more likely to pay for expensive designer clothes. 

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Mitch: 5:59

Sure. Yeah, makes a ton of sense. And for me, I’m not into fashion by any stretch of the imagination. So, I’m kind of fitting this all together and it makes sense, right? I think it seems as though there will be a natural alignment between that audience and David Koma and their brand. So, that’s kind of my next question is, like one of the challenges pondering with an IP, and something that we hear from both IP owners, brand owners, but also game developers is making sure that there’s a good fit between the brand and the game. What was the process for ensuring that David Koma was the right fit for your players and your audience? 

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Simonas: 6:47

Yep, absolutely fit. The fit between the brand and the game is very important. Players notice it. And Pocket Styler is a bit different from other fashion and style games. There are quite many of them. Some of them are built for children with childish models. And some gamification meant more attractive to a younger audience. Our game is built for more mature audience and environment shapes how items are build. This 3D feel is the special for Pocket Styler. And then it’s important to understand the audience. Actually,  The Brand Partnership Manager, before she bought this role, she was the  Community Manager for Pocket Styler. So, she spent first year of Pocket Styler communicating with audience. So, she has very good feel, not only numbers and data, but she is the insider of the audience. So, she feels very well what players are like, what combinations of clothes is, and what questions do they ask, and so on. So, then it was easy to work with designer as David Koma and preparing for this collaboration campaign. Because we could predict what might work well and which items players would adore more and which items, maybe, we should keep aside over the collection. 

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Mitch: 8:30

And did you run, I guess, surveys or anything like in the game with players to kind of narrowed down that list of brands to things that they were interested in? Or how did you kind of quantify that interest or that fit?

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‍Simonas: 8:46

For this stage, we are not trying to quantify much. First of all, we avoid surveys because of the technical reasons. We tried to disturb players as little as possible, so they would join the game. If you are engaged in the game, you want less advertising, less interruptions that are not connected to your  game experience. So, if we get taken decisions without this than we feel fine. And I think at this stage, and anyway, we are in the experimenting the field. The game is new. It is our first collaboration. Actually, it’s our second collaboration. The first one was an experiment with Lithuanian designer in September, yes.  

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Mitch: 9:33

Okay, that’s interesting.  

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Simonas: 9:34

Yeah, before we can generalize and really be sure how the brand partnership model should really work in the best way, I think we have to make 8 or 10 partnerships and base our decision on the historical data. Very often asking... It’s easy to ask and then players very often answering [unclear 10:01]. And then also, we are using [unclear 10:09] Facebook and our community to ask opinions, but it’s more like engagement than finding out the trend. It’s not the data that we could trust completely to base our decisions upon. 

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Mitch: 10:25

Yeah, it’s interesting. I think it’s a smart approach to make a lot of small bets first about something, which is a very mobile game developer way of  approaching the problem as well. It’s kind of very small builds and testing things and seeing the kind of effect that they have. So, interesting approach. And I guess, over time that will mature as well. So, with the collaboration,  it’s interesting as well, because there’s a lot of moving parts like they launched their, I think, 2023 summer resort collection at the same time. So, you launched it in the game as well as in real life. How did the teams...?  How do you work together to make sure that’s a successful launch, both in the game and then in the real world as well? Like, what did that look like and who was involved? 

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Simonas: 11:30

Yes, so to be precise, David Koma has launched or presented its collection  in the fashion shows in summer 2023. And November 28 was the date when David Koma launched their collection in the e-shop. So, it became available for customers to buy items. Before that time, customers were waiting for items to arrive to e-shop. And we launched the David Koma in Pocket Styler on the same date — November 28. And that was done on purpose, because the collaboration principle is that David Koma’s items arrive as a new collection in Pocket Styler and players can try it out, they can have this game experience with David Koma items, and then when they click on the item, they can go to that David Koma e-shop and acquire the item, buy the item, if they wish to. It was e-commerce targeted collaboration. So, we started preparation in the summer registry after the collection was launched in the fashion shows and pictures of items became available. So, our artists had enough time. There were five months remaining in the launch, so they had enough time to do amazing job to remake the pictures. So, they fit very well in the game and still look very close to real with all the small details. And  also, they have to fit with other items in the game very well, like dresses with tops and shoes and so on. That takes really an effort. So, we had enough time to make t-shirts and approve with the pictures. And from our side everything worked well. David Koma liked how it looks in the digital space. And as I think much more challenge for fashion brand is to manage the physical part. We haven’t experienced that, but we had a feeling from our partners that it is really challenging thing. In the half a year, they had to get the garments to join the production, to produce the items, to check the quality, because the dresses of David Koma are very unique. It is not like general sweater that you get to order anywhere, anytime, and just put the sticker. These dresses have not been produced ever before. So, it is really a demanding work and demanding work for both for designers, for producers, and for quality people. And to make them come to London to the stores and stores all over the world, probably, and to [unclear 14:31] on time, that’s the biggest challenge. So, I wouldn’t say digital part is easy. Physical is much more difficult. 

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Mitch: 14:39

So, for Nordcurrent, it’s really easy, but for David Koma not so.

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Simonas: 14:46

Yeah, so our work was just run the game and not to disturb the deal. And we had a conversation two weeks after the collection was launched and all the deliveries were handled, and David Koma could briefed and we could speak about [unclear 15:07].  

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Mitch: 15:11

That’s only your second collaboration in the game. So, it sounds like it was probably more complex than the one you did with the Lithuanian design. Like, there’s more parts involved. How did you find that? How did the team find that experience? How did you manage it [being] only the second collaboration? 

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Simonas: 15:34

No, it was per plan. Actually, we were planning for some time. We had the clear model how it has to be implemented. And yes, as mentioned, the first collaboration we did with the Lithuanian designer, [unclear 15:50]. It’s a local designer. So, we agreed that it will be experiment. And you know, to start bigger, we need to experiment to really tailor the process. And she agreed to collaborate. And it was easy because she’s in Vilnius and we are in Vilnius. So, we could meet physically and solve all the questions in any way we wanted to. So, this really helped. And I think it’s a good model for adding new game. When starting working with collaboration, start it was very small with something local, which makes it easy to implement. Then, there is an extra risks, when we go to the bigger brands, where reputation is very important, and the risk of failure are the most painful. 

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Mitch: 16:47

Yeah, I think that’s really good advice — start small and break things and find out what the risks are, and which teams need to work together to do what. And that’s a smart way of approaching it. That model, I guess, we’ve seen more with fashion collaborations in games, particularly in like Web3 and Metaverse games, we see a lot of fashion brands launching a new collection or a new item or whatever it is, doing it in collaboration with a game. How much do you see that model being a part of the fashion industry and the gaming industry, moving forward? 

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Simonas: 17:36

Yes, as I said, we are still in the very beginning of a digital fashion era. When I meet fashion brands, I see that the fashion industry is still quite traditional industry. And it’s only a very few fashion brands who’ve gone to digital. Most of them, they are still in the very much in the traditional business way. And I completely understand that. Because it’s very challenging industry because of the delivery, production, garments. And then environment changes very fast, fashion changes fast, and producers they have to get on time with that. But they have to deliver a physical things. So, I think just many medium or smaller companies of fashion industry, they just don’t have time to look behind the hill. And they just need to push now to survive. Because competition is tremendous as well. So, but looking at it the digital fashion, I think there is unlimited possibilities, just because in the digital world, newton laws and table of chemical elements doesn’t matter. I mean, creativity is unlimited and designers think how they create and what’s important for the game design compared to the physical world. Also, designers can deliver their creations, their products much faster than in physical. No need to wait for half a year until the items or products are produced. So, on the other hand, the generation of digital natives, for them, digital identity becomes as important as physical identity. Some facts, I observed. My younger relatives those who play Roblox, how much digital identity matters to them. So, one day, quite soon, they will grow up and they will be ready to consume this digital fashion. And not only consumed, but also pay for really prominent products of a digital fashion. So, I think there is the future and it will come sooner than we think.

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Mitch: 20:26

Yeah, I think you’re right. It is already happening. And I think it will come a lot sooner than people think. There seems to be a few kind of experiments,  things that you might like classify as I guess, like fads, doing NFT drops and that type of thing. But I think, yeah, we’re starting to see like the bigger brands work it out and have teams actually dedicated to working in gaming. So, really interesting to see how that space develops. Just quickly on David Koma before we move on to, I guess, the space more broadly, and what you’re doing in Nordcurrent, what’s the result been for Pocket Styler as a result of that collaboration? Like what effect has it had on in game metrics,  UA retention, that type of thing? 

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Simonas: 21:20

Yes. So, in Poker Styler, we have [unclear 21:26] from one to one and a half million monthly active users. So, for David Koma, it’s a really big audience for the niche designer, which have engaged with [unclear 21:40]. And they have experienced the fit of his new connection and they can share their outfits with other players. So, it’s both a big audience and it is a deep engagement with items, we can say. And very [unclear 22:00], the collection generated 100,000 traffic to their e-commerce, which is... I will not tell the exact numbers, but it is really a significant increase compared to their traditional campaigns. So, they were really happy about it. And since collection and the items remain in the game until we decide both to keep them, so the traffic continues. And it’s now around 4,000 per day, 4,000 players who will visit real items on David Koma website per day. So, that’s  the results, which both, David Koma and we are very happy [about]. And for us, for the game, the effect on target audience was very good. I cannot disclose numbers. But it was, in terms of better revenues and expenditures in [unclear 23:12] than usual collection. So, having brands, not just brands, but really expressive brands, high-quality brands, makes sense for Pocket Styler. That’s our experience. And also, a lot of feedback in Facebook, players engaged and posting pictures with comparing game styles with red carpet celebrities wearing David Koma in some [unclear 23:48] awards, wherever they wear it, so it was really a lot of posts and a lot of visits on our social media about user generated. 

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Mitch: 24:00

That’s great. Yeah, it sounds like it’s been a huge success for both sides.  And so that’s really cool to hear that early on, what’s kind of an experiment as well as proven to be successful, I guess. Just really quickly, what do you think your biggest takeaways would be from like, why it’s been a success? Do you think it was the alignment between the audiences? Do you think it was the way it was delivered? What do you think the 2-3 sort of key factors that that made it a success? 

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Simonas: 24:35

Yeah, as in this case, this exact case, of course, it will depend on the situation on the game and so on, in this case was a very good fit with David Koma exactly products, with style of the game, with the rest of our items. So, very good product fit, I think is important in any case, and I said, [Unclear] of both parties, it was very easy to make this collaboration. That’s why it happened, from the first call to implementation, it was five months. I would say, yeah. And I would five months, yes. July to [Unclear]. 

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Mitch: 25:23

Which is quite quick when for something of this scale like...?

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Simonas: 25:28

Yeah, usually very often negotiations about the contracts and that, for the [Unclear] management teams and salon, it takes time, around the year, it could take. But it’s when both sides are willing to experiment and are open for some controlled risk. We thought about risks, about reputational risk, and we have prepared for some actions, what would happen if the players don’t like it, and so on, and stuff like that? So, you need to think about risk and talk all the day about it. Yeah, I think good fit is the most important. 

Mitch: 26:16

I think, it’s a really good point about just IP brand collaborations in general.  And it’s hard to quantify, people look at like, the size of the audience of the brand, or the fit between how many people use that brand and play a game. But, one of the things we see and hear from developers and brands is just the strategic fit, or the kind of relationship between the two parties is like, sometimes is the most important thing, is the attitude, as you said, the willingness to collaborate and want to create something that’s different. So I think that’s a really good point. Something that a lot of developers should pay attention to. Okay, cool. So I wanted to talk about the space more broadly. Like you said before, we’re starting to see more of these collaborations with fashion brands in games. At the moment, though, it does seem a little bit more skewed towards like, you know, web three and blockchain games, LFTs, this type of thing. So what are some of the opportunities that they you seen, for both game developers studios, and also brands, that kind of just emerging or people haven’t realized the full potential of them yet? 

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Simonas: 27:41

I would say, for us, when we look for our perspective, we see that, again, if you find a good product fit and the game fit, it might work. And most of our games are simulation games, like Open Fever is the restaurant simulation and [Unclear] is clinic simulation and Pocket Styler is kind of fashion  [Unclear] simulation. Then it’s easy to implement brands and make them look like a real parts of the game. So it’s not like, I don’t know, like a screen  or part of the outdoor advertisement in the racing game where you put advertisement it’s, I don’t know, some brand, Genet for example. It’s also a way of collaboration, but it’s less engagement and less tightly professionally connected. So there’s always going to be those collaborations which fit the game area, the game industry, the industry that is simulated in the game, it makes more sense. And our here we have built restaurant, Hell’s Kitchen or FC Barcelona sports bar, and then it looks like a sport bar more or less, and it has some elements, elements of Real Sports Bar and elements of real football club and if it’s Coca Cola. So anyway, we had already Coco Cola, we have cola machines for our bars, and we just introduced the brand into that, we branded it and then it fits well and then players feel like it would be brand placement in to the movies sometimes, maybe [Unclear] movie don’t notice brand placement, and that works like really influential and had natural impact on the consumers in the [Unclear]. 

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Mitch: 30:04

What role do you see for fashion brands in gaming moving forward? Like, we’ve seen a lot of fashion brands collaborating and Fortnight for example, even you can just buy an outfit for your player. It’s not necessarily like, Pocket Styler where you’re styling a character. Or it’s not necessarily like a digital fashion show or an NF T drop, how much do you see those worlds kind of merging? Moving forward?

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Simonas: 30:34

Yeah, like I mentioned before the fashion, we are still at the beginning of digital fashion trend. And imagine now, if it’s already a small part of designers, who are working on digital fashion, imagine if most of the figures, average or most of designers like 90% designers would focus on digital fashion, how much digital fashion would be created? What would be a choice, and how much new ways of expressing fashion would arise because of that wish to be in the digital world? So yes, we have few cases, which are, we talked about media like okay, Fortnight and Roblox, the big brands, entering big games, the platforms, one side, we have Pockets Styler and maybe some few other smaller fashion or casual fashion games, which experiment with smaller brands, but it’s only the beginning. In US, when we made the research that our 3000 [Unclear] fashion brands in the market, at least, that’s my knowledge. I’m familiar with that, [Unclear]. So this is the brands that we identified. So imagine if 3000 brands will start to look for possibilities, to enter digital fashion world. So I’m sure there will be more fashion trends of the game more designers and the games, enter the games. And there will be also more games filled by brands like Louis Vuitton had their game, Louis, the game, I think that’s the name of the game, which is just build for one brand as IP based game, so we will see a lot of different and really exciting examples and the cases. 

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Mitch: 32:37

Yeah, not just the kind of traditional what we’ve seen these kinds of these collaborations in games, like you said, an entire game that’s just based around Louis Vuitton, I think is interesting, is a lot of opportunities for smaller designers. I think. I think this is a great case study for more niche designers, the David Koma case study, I think it’s great. I mean, do you see an opportunity for maybe smaller gaming studios to work with more niche fashion brands or vice versa for small fashion brands to say, okay, like, “This is a good opportunity for us to be more competitive and, get into this emerging space.” 

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Simonas: 33:35

Yes, absolutely. I think there are all possibilities. But of course, for small developers, competition gaming world is not that easy as well. And then to propose something in a fashion brand, the game has to have some audience, why the fashion brand should invest or go into a game which doesn’t have that really significant player audience, or it doesn’t provide the possibility to reach some specific markets or specific ideas? It has to be a balance. Of course, there is a space for experiment, and probably we will see gaming developers collaborate with younger designers or even, [Unclear] built with game designers, artists and fashion designers together. We haven’t seen such cases in the game jams yet. I don’t know but it might appear. Maybe it makes sense to start a gaming business with a fashion designer in the team, if you need a... Most often the games have characters and characters have to be designed. 

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Mitch: 35:05

Right. Yeah. Interesting. That’s an interesting perspective. I hadn’t thought about it like that. But yeah, makes a ton of sense. Okay, so wanted to talk about Nordcurrent, more broadly. And what you guys are doing in the brand space? I think it’s interesting, when you look at the catalog of games that you have, you haven’t actually created any IP based titles, everything you’ve done has been a collaboration in an existing game. Was that a conscious decision?

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Simonas: 35:43

Yes, it was. Our first game, 100 [Unclear] was published in 2010, and in 2014. That was the times of easy user acquisition. So, with well-done game,  and then right targeted investment in the target audiences, it was economically more effective, more efficient to acquire quite large user base compared to use some famous IP and build browser based on that. But now times are changing and due to privacy policy from Apple and Google and other platforms, it becomes more expensive and less efficient for a new titles to get noticed, that can be promoted to get users. I have read that there are more and more new games who really succeed and get to the tops on revenues, they are based on IPs, more often than before. So, if there was a question of developing a new game, we should seriously consider using some IP to get this larger user base. But, since we started early 10, we succeeded to develop five games and now we are building, got the same model was Pocket Styler and [Unclear] then, our model is that we first build the audience that could be attractive for bigger brands, the bigger audience we built, the bigger brand we can approach with some interesting offers. Global brands, they are interested in audiences. Yes, they are interested also in the engagement, in showing the features of their product and that we can deliver in our games. So, that was our strategy and similar strategy had Fortnight and Roblox and other big games, when they have audience to offer, they can get the brands inside. And yes, then getting brands like Barcelona or Hell’s Kitchen or [Unclear] that helps to boost the growth further. No question. 

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Mitch: 38:49

So yeah, so it sounds like UA is a big reason for wanting to work with brands in games. I guess we hear that a lot since IDFA, all the changes to Apple’s privacy, all that sort of stuff. It’s interesting to hear it from a biggest studio someone who has experienced working with brands now has that had a material effect on UA for Nordcurrent. [Unclear]? I know you can’t talk about specific numbers or anything but. 

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Simonas: 39:28

Yes, of course. It had an effect on user acquisition, for example, that is simply where if we can promote our game together with a brand and with a famous brand, the name that users connect themselves with or had some relations or they preferred that brand. So it’s easier to motivate them to download the game and tried to see and then again, that [Unclear] the game, which makes them quite a good fun and interesting [Unclear]. Another thing  is user retention or revenues from user, the brand that they recognize that  they prefer, they experience it in a good way and they receive good emotions. They spent more time in the game, and of course that affects all the in-game performance numbers. 

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Mitch: 40:34

And then like what do you think some of the benefits are of wanting to just collaborate with brands in games as opposed to creating an entirely new title around an IP? 

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Simonas: 40:50

Sorry, can you repeat? 

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Mitch: 40:52

What are some of the benefits of your model of, we create a game, we build an audience and then we work with the brand versus someone who creates an entirely new title based out of out of IP, what are some of the benefits?

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‍Simonas: 41:09

So, as mentioned, first of all is that, we built a value which we can double or add value with another brand, and then our needed contribution is less, some of the brand is willing to partner instead of willing to get a fee for IP. So we can leverage our proposals and similar level in negotiations about whose contribution should be monetizable or we should be like, equal partnership, non-monetized partnership. Another benefit is, yeah, I mentioned that players are more engaged and we get this, again, figures, numbers so yeah, I can see... 

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Mitch: 42:20

What about the speed of the integration, is that was that a reason that you wanted to focus on just partnering with brands versus building an entirely new game like we often hear that as a reason for people wanting to do more in game integrations is, it takes less time, it takes less resources but you still get the benefit so, was that a reason for wanting to...? 

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Simonas: 42:45

Yeah, speed as well, of course. Our integration that we made that deal now David Koma or the bands in the Cooking Fever, they require type because they are deep integrations, it’s a full experience integrations, where the brand is a part of the game, it’s not like just a [logo] in the screener or in the restaurant, it’s really a look and feel of experience with all the dishes and then even the customers similar to adopted to [Unclear] for example. But one reason that know I remember to mention is, that we are more free, more flexible, when we have all [Unclear] and then we are flexible doing wide brands from different areas [Unclear]. If it was one IP based game then we should always agree with that IP which other the brands can be invited and of course, no way we would have made any competitor of this IP or probably, it could be so limited that we couldn’t expand this brand partnership to any other brands. So in our case, we are very free and in the Cooking Fever, we had several restaurants, they are not competed, they have directly but still they are restaurant brands. But since they were in a different time, campaigns were run in a different time. So low brand had any problem with that and so we can easily invite any food brands or kitchen equipment brands or on drinks or restaurant shakes. And if we agree about the campaign plan and it can work well forever without any limitations. 

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‍Mitch: 44:48

Yes, like with Cooking Fever, you know if you made Coke Cooking Fever, you couldn’t work with Pepsi, right? But if you make other...

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‍Simonas: 44:58

[Unclear]. Contract is our now. We can easily do. 

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Mitch: 45:03

Exactly. Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. So with Nordcurrent games,  you don’t work with brands in every game. It’s been kind of a select number of your games that you do work with brands. So how do you determine which of those games are the best fit for a brand collaboration? What are the processes behind the scenes that drive those decisions? 

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Simonas: 45:33

As I mentioned that most of our games are based on simulation of some environment, which is kind of similar to the real world, either is restaurant,  the clinic or airline. And then, almost, in each game, we have ideas that some brands can fit well, for example, the aeroplane chips, it’s good for airlines, we could make an airport, which is based on a specific airline or flight, which looks like some specific airlines flight. And with the clinic, we can  find a place for health products, [Unclear], or even massage chairs and many different stuff. And even [Unclear] since it happens in Switzerland develops, we could maybe connect to some, I don’t know, Swiss watches or Swiss chocolate. So there is no limit for ideas and fantasy. But we look into areas which are most easily fit the best. And so we discussed with clinics. And when we raise some idea, we just discussed how we could do and let’s get, what can be potential brands, so we make a short list for each possibility of real brands. Then we analyze what those brands have done maybe, are they already the digital world and did collaborations with other games before? And then some brands we contact, I wouldn’t say, it’s just that easy. Because very often we meet industries that are traditional, like food industry or even the restaurant industry, additional industries, they look into the games with a bit uncertainty. They know very little how will games work? They know little how well we can control the environment and make the best success for the brands. So it takes time to discuss and re-define the value for both sides. 

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Mitch: 47:57

Yeah. How do you do that when they don’t understand the gaming industry?  You can’t just use raw or you can’t use metrics from the game and say, “We have 1 million monthly active users,” they go, “Is that good? Is that bad?” How have you dealt with that? 

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Simonas: 48:18

Numbers and data are one part of this, of course, when we talk to marketing people of the brand, the producers, the data is important. Otherwise, there is even more uncertainty for that. So one way to present the game is to present as a new medium channel, just like television, and games, kind of, it is entertainment media, just that it is interactive. And it’s a fact that people around the world, they spent the less time with television and more time with games, but it’s anyway a screen, it’s visual. It’s entertainment, is free time from work or from other activities. So it’s just a different medium. And then we can talk about numbers and reach and engagement traffic to some E-commerce channels. Another thing is to, develop [Unclear] to build trust. And when brands and traditional industries, they don’t know much about the gaming industries and they don’t know any names in the gaming industry that they trust. So it looks like a dark cloud full of some producers, players, something unknown. It takes time to build relations and to build the dialogue and to build trust. So that’s another thing, which is vital.

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‍Mitch: 50:04

That’s good advice. Yeah, I guess just quickly to wrap that up, so it sounds  like the, you know, the process for you, when you’re thinking about games that you want to bring brands into, is actually quite a creative process. It’s more of a, you’re not like looking at [Unclear], and it’s very much a, “Hey, we think that this game is a good fit for brands, what are some brands we could work with?” And it’s very much like a team creative process.

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‍Simonas: 50:35

Absolutely. For now it is like this and I think is the right way to go on. We really have enough samples of cases that we can do some analysis and meta analysisfor that. [Unclear] case, and we make cases after each collaboration,  what was done right? What was successes and what was done wrong, or what can be improved next time? And we improve next time.

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‍Mitch: 51:12

Okay, so I know we’re kind of coming up to time. So just want to wrap up by sort of talking about your approach to the space moving forward. It sounds like you’re actually investing a lot in the team there and how you approach brand partnerships in games. So, I guess, the fit between casual games, hypercasual games brands, makes a ton of sense. Is this a space that you’re going to invest in more and focus on more at Nordcurrent moving forward bringing brands into games? Is that something that you want to do more of? 

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Simonas: 51:51

Yeah, absolutely. This is part of our strategy. We see that makes affected all the reasons we thought it before changing Internet environment and access to new users and invitations and user acquisition. That type of pushes us and proofs that this direction is necessary. But also we do that, not just because it’s necessary. But because also it’s fun, fun for players. It makes our games which are simulation games, closer to reality. So, it is a possibility for players to experience the brand, find new features. And also for the brands to show the features that may the players don’t know yet about the product. And it’s very easy way to show it. So I think there is benefit and there is a lot of satisfaction for players for us as developers to build more interested the games and also for the brands to experience new channels, a new way to communicate with audiences. 

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Mitch: 53:17

Awesome, great answer. I love to hear it. Okay, cool. Super interesting discussion and great, great to get your perspective on fashion in games and what you’re doing at Nordcurrent. So, really appreciate the time today. Thanks for coming on. 

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Simonas: 53:38

Yeah, thanks, Mitch for inviting me. I’m very glad.

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‍Mitch: 53:43

Absolutely. Okay. Thanks, Simonas.