Mobile game makes man millionaire

Photo: Mihkel Maripuu

Vladimir Funtikov, CEO and majority owner of mobile game high flyer Creative Mobile, intents to still be in games biz a decade from now.

Just some few years ago, Vladimir Funtikov used to work in Tallinn for a US company, testing and developing games. Alas, as economic crisis hit, the company shut down local shop and Mr Funtikov, 27 by now and, according to Äripäev, worth €30.7m last year, for a time became unemployed.

«The job gave me insight into the insides of games, how the game engines work; the entire technical experience was very useful,» he is thankful, in hindsight.

Mr Funtikov was not inclined to work for wages again, a promising idea germinating in his head. Namely, Android – by now the most popular mobile platform – had just come on the market, and its choice of games was poor as compared to iPhone’s.

«The first mobile phone with Android came out, and I realised this was my chance. We missed iPhone; it came on the market in 2007 while I was still a student in technology university. Me and former colleagues had a little money set aside as we thoughts let’s try – if Android won’t grow, maybe we’ll lose a year, or 1.5, of our lives. But at least we tried.»

Thus, at the end of 2009, Creative Mobile was established. Success came not overnight; first, lots of setbacks had to be overcome, and various business models tried out. 

«It took us a month and a half to make the first game, and it made about €50. We figured the game was not good enough; let’s make another one, a better one. That took a month to make and earned €100. On the third game we worked even harder, it took six months to complete and it made us €300 or so. It was then that we realised: something must change. We took a former game, changed the name, the icon, and the business model – we used to earn money when users bought it at the web store; now, we made the game free of charge, and we asked money from those who wanted to display ads.»

The new strategy worked – over the very first month, the game earned about €5,000 and by now it has already been downloaded more than 10 million times.

«It was such a simple change, but to reach it took us – people with higher education and from gaming background – eight long months,» smiles Mr Funtikov.

A couple of games making profit, they could rent an office and hire a couple of people. For starters, ambitions weren’t overly high.

«According to our understanding, we were indeed to stick with making small games – if one earns €3,000–€5,000 a month, then two will earn up to €10,000 etc.» The plan was turned upside down, nearly three years ago, by Creative Mobile’s car acceleration game Drag Racing – up to now, the most successful smart application Made in Estonia.

Even before it got ready, the developers deemed it of better quality than the earlier games; but that it would be competing in downloads with the very Angry Birds – the global top popular mobile game – no one could foresee.

«We believed its turnover might come to €10,000 – €15,000 a month. Turns out that was very conservative...» noted Mr Funtikov. Drag Racing, completed three years ago, has been downloaded over 150 million times; and, with its various extras, it has made the company millions of euros.

Just some years ago, it was the US market that yielded the best proceeds for Creative Mobile; them Europe rose to its side. By now, the best growth comes from Asia’s emerging markets.

«Over there, the salaries are indeed lower, but at the same time they sell even €50 Android phones and numbers of users are rapidly growing. For them, Drag Racing is ideal as it needs no powerful hardware and is easy to learn,» explained the Creative Mobile head.

In mobile games industry, success may quickly evaporate, especially so with a small selection of products. Therefore, lately, Creative Mobile has invested a lot into people and development of new games. This year, they are expecting excellent results with a new generation car game called Nitro Nation.

«Three years back, we had a large turnover and large profits, just one game and a very small team. We were making more money than we should have, that was not normal. That was a dangerous situation. Our new games are of higher quality, more beautiful, and naturally requiring larger investments,» explained Mr Funtikov.

Even while investors are eager to put money in the company, up to now Creative Mobile has managed with means of its own. Also, they have no plans to sell the company.

«We might accept money at a certain point, but only in case we could use it to do something we could not do alone. We aren’t thinking about money; we are thinking about how to get to where Supercell got (A super successful Finnish games producer – edit). It is very nice of course if you have €7m–€8m  of turnover... But if 80 kilometres from you there’s a company active on the same market, with a turnover a hundred times larger, it makes one think...» said Mr Funtikov.

He believes he’ll still be in developing games ten years from now. «It’s a wonderful field with so many options. New platforms, hardware, and business models keep popping up all the time – it’s very interesting.»

What would he advise to those who would like to create the next popular games? «It’s like any other business. If you want to make money on games, you first need to be a businessman, an entrepreneur – you need knowledge about target group, marketing, budget, costs, business model. Too many games developers think that if they have an idea that they personally like, that’s 50 per cent of success,» he says.

«In reality, that’s about 0.5 percent. Everything must be done fast – not building a game for two years, but for two weeks and then try again. Every day, thousands of games come out, very many of these of better quality than the $50,000 a day Flappy Bird (a latest mega mobile game hit – edit), but 99.9 percent of these never earn anything.»

Creative Mobile

The company employs 85 people

Financial results for 2013:

•     Turnover – €7.05m

•     Net profit – €357,279