Crafting games since 1999.
#domore
From the day I've deployed my first gaming solution for an iCafe, I have taken tremendous pride in crafting games.
I strive for every product not only to exceed players' expectations but to surprise myself.
Once you get a chance to define the trends,
never look back.
I've been lucky to transcend a dozen platforms and countries throughout my carrier journey, defining the blue oceans - and getting stuck in the red ones. Yet there's a moment when your sixth sense tingles, and no one gets you. That's the time to act, that's the time to double down on something that's gonna be so far ahead of everything out there that you won't regret it.
And once you build it, the handicap will be measured in light-years.
I build looking far ahead, build thinking forward many years in advance. Then you have to persevere, just as these ever calm waters of Loch Lomond. I look at my new journeys by questioning that moment: is it time to fuse what I've built in a novel way? Is it time to interleave business models and mix game genres? Is it time to innovate in marketing once the red oceans heat up? It does feel like fishing, "but the rewards are heavenly."
From web to consoles, from casual to hardcore, from single-player to MMO, from paid to free-to-play, from mobile to cross-platform, from solo to eSports arenas, from live streams to interactive experiences, from gambling to core gaming, from building in-house to licensing in, from Flash to C++, from UA to creators – this is my story.
The range of business & distribution models, technologies, platforms, and game genres keeps growing. Yet the patterns that we discover throughout this journey are what matters in letting us define what will come next.
Random things
I’ve built that rock.
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Previous Projects
Game Insight, 2009
Game Insight is a team effort fulfilled by the vision of bringing together top-notch studios under a single umbrella that powers marketing and analytics for the whole company. There are no boundaries in creativity that we leave to the studios. We’ve been the early explorers of game genres, inventing free-to-play sim/tycoons, defining live-ops in hidden object games, and going well beyond that. There are few stories where evergreen brands repeatedly transcend platform generations for over a decade - yet we did it.
I can’t recall how many times we’ve successfully embarked on exploring blue oceans at Game Insight. Yet the reports cover dozens of platforms and marketing techniques, new device form factors, new countries, and game genres. We’ve supported local game developers through the Baltics and contributed to long-lasting gaming events worldwide. Many services we’ve built to work with the ever-evolving gaming landscape are mind-boggling and go well beyond marketing-centric BI/DWH systems.
SuperCity, 2009
Facebook
Is there something that ever made you drop your fancy EVP title at a large corporation, come back to your hometown, re-assemble your squad and launch your own thing? SuperCity was exactly that bet for me.
I’ve been a massive fan of Chris Sawyer’s Transport Tycoon. I have envisioned an online world where players will be able to interact between their virtual cities for years. Laying the foundation for the entire free-to-play social simulation tycoon game genre, this title has become the reason I came back from Hamburg to Riga. That’s the premise on which innoWate was founded.
What came next was My Country, the first-ever mobile free-to-play title to spend a whole year as the #1 worldwide top-grossing title across Android & iOS. These two titles have defined the foundation and vector of Game Insight.
Heavy Weapon, 2007
Xbox 360
A timeless hit that genuinely deserves a dedicated arcade machine.
Perhaps one of my proudest products. An insane single-player SHMUP originally built by PopCap Games' Josh Langley became a multiplayer phenomenon after years of meticulous work with Jason Kapalka. We've spent over a year crafting a brand new four-player same-console and online drop-in/drop-out experience. The overheating sessions lasted up to 25 minutes, demanding every bit of players' attention. Heavy Weapon is a rare game that feels fresh and pixel-perfect after decades. Click here to enjoy the evergreen bullet hell mayhem. 10/10 will play again.
GamingOS, 2007
Flash/Web, CTXM
Inspired by the early Java web game platforms like Miniclip, the web platform became the foundation for the first-ever free-to-play slots game.
In 2006 I set to build an impossible next-gen Xbox Live-like web gaming platform powered by the real-time voice & video backend (Red5). I've created the first-party content in-house and licensed games from Eastern European developers like Nevosoft, Alawar, and ENKORD.
As it happens with many products, the platform turned out to be a perfect fit for multiplayer social blackjack and baccarat. With the addition of the AS2/JS bridge, I've brought a whole gambling portfolio ranging from slots to cards games into the ecosystem.
On top of that, I have added several business models available in Europe, e.g., SMS monetization through Fortumo. This led to the creation of the first-ever free-to-play slots casino suite. GamingOS ended up as Le Web 3 finalist in 2007.
The company got acquired by Playtech for €95M, with GamingOS noted as the platform powering its licensed Marvel free-to-play slots collection, and eventually renamed into "GamesOS."
Xbox Live Arcade, 2004
Consoles, CTXM
Downloadable games on consoles, who could’ve thought?
Five out of six games on this screenshot have been brought to Xbox Live Arcade by my team at CTXM in partnership with Oberon Media. I’ve coded an original Bejeweled Xbox prototype using a home-crafted puzzle game engine. That has led to 20 more Xbox games being developed, re-created, or ported in the coming years. One cannot forget those 300 hours/month crunches with nightly triages. All of that to ship launch titles for both Original Xbox Live Arcade and Xbox 360. Wonder how the Satellaview team felt in the 90s…
This endeavor has been our first homecoming to consoles since our gig at a rather unsuccessful David Siller's studio producing Guido in 2001.
Wheel of Fortune, 2003
Gambling/Web, CTXM
There's always the first time you get a chance to produce an end-to-end product from scratch. CTXM was born to build this sole product: I was one of the founding employees and have hired client development teams from scratch. What led to that moment were years of building experience in sportsbook's betting slips, lottery, and scratch cards mini-games. And boring nights of Informix-4GL.
For Wheel of Fortune, I've built the whole client gaming experience (and initially server stub). This has included "drag'n'drop chips onto the wheel" UX innovations and sensational "chips are spinning along with the wheel" experience. An exhausting 300 hour-a-month marathon led to securing the largest UK clients such as SportingBet, Victor Chandler, PaddyPower, and many more. What followed after that was dozens and dozens of fixed odds games. Nothing was able to kill this product (it's still available) in decades. Well, except for Adobe Flash deprecation in 2020.