Building Gaming's First AI-Powered Publisher

0:00This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Co, a marketing leader's best friend in these times of budget cuts and efficient growth. We help marketing leaders find, hire, vet, and manage amazing marketing talent for 50 to 70 % less than their U.S. and European counterparts. To book a free consultation, visit globaltalent.co. Hey, everybody. Thank you for listening. My name is Andres Figueira, and I'm going to be your host for the day. This show is brought to you by The Global Talent Company, a company that's connecting top remote professionals from Argentina, South Africa, and anywhere around the world with leading tech companies worldwide.

0:37So if your team is looking to hire world-class South American or South African talent, just head on over to theglobaltalent.co and see how we can help. And today with me here, I have Joshua Cabrera, the marketing lead at Hakura.io, a company that helps game publishers create games with real insight. So without further ado, Josh, it's a pleasure to have you here. It's great to have you on the podcast. How are you doing? Hi, Andres. I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. Very excited to talk more about marketing and games. Yeah, now I'm an avid gamer. Like, I love gaming. I must say I have my Switch 2 right here.

1:15I just love everything about what's coming out in the gaming world. But Josh, before we get into the whole marketing of gaming and all that, would you be able to provide the audience with a bit more context about what Hakuro exactly is and what you do at the company? Sure. So I am the marketing lead at Hakuro and Hakuro is essentially a new game publisher that is building its own proprietary publishing game engine. This allows us to get a lot of insights from places where gamers are, whether it's be Reddit, whether it be social media like TikTok, Instagram, X or Twitter, Twitch, YouTube. We take all of those insights and create one, an actionable marketing strategy based on that.

2:01And another, it also helps developers, game developers to design games that resonates with gamers. So this is one of our main value propositions for game developers per se, because not only we'll do all of the activations for them, but we give them feedback essentially straight from the horse's mouth, the gamers. Okay. Okay. Wow, that's so interesting. And how is it that Hakura is able to pull that insight that it provides to the developers? Like, where do you get your information from? You have like, I'm not even sure. I know you mentioned Reddit, Twitch and all that, but do you have a bot that scans what's trending or what's going on?

2:42Sure. So there are multiple ways on getting this information. For one, there's tons of APIs that companies can plug into so you can get a lot of information. On top of that, we are building our own AI machine learning to specifically come up with actionable suggestions based on our specific industry, which is games. So because our industry is more targeted towards a specific type of audience, they are able to not just share our own personal knowledge, but at the same time verify all of the assumptions that game developers have and marketers have whenever they want to go to market a game or they want to design a game based on the current trends that is happening.

3:32Another one, of course, is bots. Data scraping has always been a thing since in recent years. And lastly, I would say this is something that I know a lot of marketers know. Some of the social media tools that are out there have, I would say, sentiment metrics, right? And this is super important for gamers because gamers live on the internet. They live online. Right? So that makes it even more important for us to make sure that we're not just listening automatically, but we're also listening actively. We participate ourselves on those community. I live and breathe Discord, for example. I spend 18 hours a day on Discord.

4:22It's more of a way of life rather than work for me. that's what makes at least this work not work for me because it is part of my life now i understand what you mean when it's just something that you enjoy and i for at one moment i remember i was a big crypto enthusiast and i lived on discord as well just in different channels and i did feel like i was working but it didn't feel like actual work so i get what you mean and josh with hakura being a new software and product that you guys can offer game developers with the game insight how have you gone around marketing a product that is a bit more specific in what it can offer and i'm not sure if the audience is completely aware of what it actually does i'm not sure if it's the first of its kind sure so it's not the first of our kind but we are definitely introducing i would say killer features that game marketers such as myself would have to do manually.

5:20We just started. It's a very young company. Now we are slowly getting out of the stealth mode. So essentially we've been going through a lot of game industry conferences and events. That's where you start. Actually, it's the same with launching a game. You have to start from grassroots, which is basically face-to-face. And luckily, because gaming industry is one of the very big industries out there, there's a lot of options for you to meet game developers. So not only we are starting to put more online presence on places like LinkedIn, Discord, and Reddit, but people can actually see us as people, which is super important for game developers, right?

6:05Because, you know, they live in front of the PC all the time. So trust me, face-to-face is even more important for people that are always in front of the PC. It's so true. Yeah. So we've been going to a lot of game conferences this year. Actually, next month, I'm going to a game conference myself to represent the team. Now, because we are finishing up our platform, We are right now focused on creating the MVP version of our features. But at the same time, it doesn't stop us from already looking for game developers to publish their games. So we're actively looking for game developers who has a very cool game that they want to get out there and they need a helping hand.

6:55So we are here. And Josh, I think this is the million dollar question. Has any game been published or developed on Hakuro or not yet? Not yet. We're looking for our very first game to publish. We have a lot of negotiations happening, actually, because actually it's a particular period in the gaming industry because a lot of layoffs have happened in the last three years. The bubble that the COVID lockdown did already bursted. So right now, at least in my humble opinion, the industry is on the recovery mode. Now is the time to be scrappy with regards to getting funding or getting the attention of gamers.

7:37You know, people have to be extra smart because now there's less investment happening in games. And we are actually one of the few companies that are looking to invest in game developers right now. Well, they say that in times of crisis, it's best to invest because when things get better, you will have already like laid down the lines to be doing well in that phase. Exactly. Because of the advent of a lot of layoffs from AAA companies, AAA game developers and studios, there's a lot of indies that are coming out. And in the last two years, at least, there are better indie games than AAA games as of late.

8:17Well, yeah, not to mention any weird games, but if I'm not mistaken, Silksong is an indie game and it's been a crazy experience. I'm about to finish the game and I don't want it to end. And that hasn't been in years. Yes, yeah. Silksong is the most recent example. You don't have to have hundred millions of dollars or even tens of millions of dollars of budget to create a great game. All you need is the proper technical skill, obviously, but at the same time, the right vision and a good story. You're a very big storyteller. And most of all, I believe as well is time because I did get impatient and seven years waiting for a sequel is a lot, but oh my goodness, they made it worthwhile.

9:04Yeah. I'm glad it did, right? Because it was a very long drought. No, no. The expectation, the hype was so intense that I was scared it wasn't going to be able to live up to it. But now that I'm here living the story, I'm like, oh my goodness, these people really knew what they were doing. So it's very cool. I can't wait until Hakuro is able to publish their first game and like develop it, have it developed on the platform. But quick question, Josh, are the games that can be developed with Hakuro, are they of a specific type? Is it just like RPGs? Can it be 3D games or is it just 2D platformers?

9:36Is there any type of specifications in that regard? So we don't have a very specific requirement on genre, but we are particular on the platform. So we're mainly publishing games on PC and console. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. And okay. Now that you've mentioned and you've put us a bit more in contact into how the gaming industry is as of this moment that they're not hiring right now, they're in a bit of a recession. How are you able to create an effective framework to measure your marketing return on investment that actually helps you drive business decisions for Hakuro? Is there any type of procedure you have to make sure that what you're marketing is giving back what you guys need?

10:20Yeah, actually, we just built it since I joined the team. So it's very tactical. It's very, I like to use the word scrappy in the sense. And it's one of our ethos as well, that our ROAS is well within the 600 % mark, well above the 600 % mark, right? So whatever we do, we make sure that first of all, we know in our hearts it's going to work. We don't have this approach that we do this because it's what other people are doing. We don't operate like that. We don't lie to ourselves. Let's put it that way. So oftentimes when we have our internal discussions, for example, on how do we filter games that we want to work with, right?

11:05We have a very open discussions about that. How do we do our marketing mix in this period that we're just coming out of the shadows? We don't want to put in a lot of marketing budget just yet. And at the same time, we want to make sure that we are known to people out there. So then you go to the, I would say, simplest of forms. It's like, you know, in medieval times, you go to the tavern, right? That's basically what we're doing. We're going to the taverns, those taverns taking the shape of game conferences, Discord, Reddit, even places like crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. We have a very personal approach because we are the new kid on the block, right?

11:48That doesn't have a deep war chest compared to other companies. I'm loving all the imagery of War Chess, the tavern. I'm just feeling in Skyrim right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's basically what we're doing. We are approaching highly, I would say, targeted games that we like. We playtest them. We have established our qualifiers for you to start the conversation. We openly invite people on social media to show us their game. It always starts with showing us your game, letting us play your game. Right. And then we have our own KPIs internally that I would say is the minimum numbers that a game should hit depending on where they are in development.

12:35And then we start the conversation from there if they hit those qualifiers. Wow. OK, I understand that. And Josh, in terms of the games you guys talk to and that you're looking at that you might be played. I imagine that this does not have any country, any borders that limit it. You're willing to work with games from anywhere, right? Or do you have a specific segmentation for the region you want it to be in? It's anywhere. It's global. One of the things that we pride ourselves is we can make a game global. There are developers that sometimes struggle in creating a global strategy for their game.

13:12It can be a daunting task, especially for a developer, because they are so specialized at a specific thing that very few can actually kind of like have the time. It's really the time, especially if you're a solo developer, which we've spoken to a lot of them. You know, they know what it would take. It's just then they have to decide, do I make the game first or do I start talking about the game? Well, the game is not built, right? This is one of the values that people like us bring in. So you focus on your game and will take care of making sure that people know your game. Okay, okay. I understand that.

13:51Okay, cool. And these developers, from the way you're pointing it out to me, I feel Hakuro for the time being is more of a B2C product than a B2B? Or have you talked with other game development brands to see if they integrate Hakuro? Or I'm not sure if that's how it would work. Well, the equivalent of what you're saying is we can work with other publishers. We are not exclusive to just game developers or game studios. We can enter a collaboration with another publisher who wants some reinforcement on their agreement, right? Particularly on the marketing budget end. And this is where Hakoro specializes on when we do the activations.

14:32And on top of that, we have our own engine for data analysis, right? So we're kind of servicing the two entities of the gaming industry, the game developer and the game publisher. And then once the game is onboarded, once we have our first published game, then yes, it's a B2C where we directly communicate with gamers everywhere. Awesome. Awesome. OK, in what has been the marketing journey and strategies you've been able to create for Hakuro, has there been any that did not work as well as you expected or that you thought, yeah, it's better that we pivot from this and go and try this other mode?

15:15Let's go to the tavern now instead of I'm not sure if there were trial and errors before. Sure. So one of the things that at least I'm personally surprised is struggling is actually our CRM approach, the automation of the CRM. It's surprising for me because I've had experiences where it really worked, you know, but in Hakuru's case, it's struggling. And I'm trying to come up with, I would say, takeaways why it's not working as it should be. One of the assumptions that I have is that going back to what I said earlier, specifically indie developers, they like the personal touch. Right. They really like to feel that it's coming from a genuine person rather than an automated email.

16:04So there is a bit of a balancing act that we got to do. On one end, you want to outreach at scale, right? But on the other end, you want it to be as personalized as possible. And even if, for example, you have the most personalized automated email for outreach with all of the segments or tags, depending on which CRM you're using, it will never compete with a real personalized message with your personalized experience, right? On that specific game or on that specific concept, right? So what we're doing is we are doing all of it. We're doing all of the approaches to make sure that we hit a game that we really like and we increase our chances of success.

16:50So that has been a struggle. On top of that, it's your typical struggle when you are starting off with zero followers. What I will say that at least it's somehow working is just sticking to best practices. At least, for example, on X, you don't flood your post with a lot of hashtags for some reason. You can't do that. On LinkedIn, we are getting more results, at least on the lead generation end of it, mainly because LinkedIn is a very targeted place anyway for a business, right? So yeah, those are the things that we are struggling with right now. But since we are doing all approaches with the team, we have active negotiations happening.

17:36Awesome. Now, that's great. And I was curious to see like what has been happening with Hakuro and how you've managed those little missteps. But I don't feel it's been super big mistakes. It's just been like learning experience and a quick pivot without having too much to lose for the time being. Actually, it does the approach that we're doing. It goes back to my days as an intern when I first started in the gaming industry 11 years ago. My manager told me, when you're at this early period, better make these mistakes now, because if you make those mistakes later, it's costly. It is costly. And it's better to just like experiment and trial and error at the beginning where you don't have that much to lose.

18:18So it's a more, it's a space that provides more confidence to experiment. Exactly. And Josh, could you tell me a little bit more about how the team building within Kudo has developed? At the beginning, how many were you? I see from the LinkedIn that it's, I think it's up to 10 people that you guys are. Yeah. So right now we are seven people. I joined as the, I think, fifth person in the team. So of course, there was a Vedic process on your skills and experience. Through the recruitment process, there was tests involved on how to make strategies and whatnot, how I approach. Wow. marketing strategies and documentation.

19:01But I think what made the team decide to work with me, as founder said, it's things that are not that. It's, for example, I'm a very positive person. I'm the type of person that even online, I would say good morning to let everybody know that I'm in. I'm online. At the same time, I like analogies when I'm discussing topics or trying to get across an idea. Because analogies are always easier to digest rather than sometimes being very technical on explaining stuff. So yeah, I think it's just being positive. I think it's just having, I would say, also a very straightforward mentality. So they know that I'm not really hiding things from them because I'm very straight.

19:48So that's always a plus, especially in a young startup where honesty is greatly, greatly needed because you're trying to break that invisible wall, right? All startups encounter that. How to break through that first invisible wall because once you break through that, then it gets a bit easier. Yeah. Then it starts to scale up. Aha, then wheels start turning and everything starts to increase and get bigger. Oh my God. But is the modality for working at Hakuro, is it a remote type of employment or do you guys, are all of you guys in Poland? So it's remote. Half of the team is in Paris. I am in Poland, for example.

20:28The director of Hakuro, for example, is based in Dubai. We got developers also based in Paris and then based in Pakistan, actually. That's interesting. Okay. We are able to hire people pretty much everywhere, but preferably within the time zone of a European, Central European time, where we are all awake and active. Of course. Even though it may be async, you would like to everybody be on schedule and be at the same time connected. I get that. I get that. And now straying away from team building, which is crystal clear now, have you guys in Hackfoodle, and I imagine you are, I would just love to know how you implement and are leveraging AI to make your lives easier?

21:15Is that something you guys are doing? Sure, we are using AI. AI for us is a very good, I would say, idea generator, especially on those, I would say, small tasks from making sure that you have the right grammar, right, to giving you some tips on, for example, how to say a particular thing, right? I would say that me per se, I look at AI to just get the gears of my creative brain working. But then at the end, I write approximately 90 % of the work, right? Of course. But because sometimes, you know, there's this phenomena, I think for everybody, where you're just blank and you just need something to inspire you or something to just make that light bulb open in your brain.

22:06Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's then AI can help you with because then it's very good at data scraping all over the Internet on a specific topic. Right. So that is a very good way for us to get it done. Another use of AI I particularly use is, for example, I don't have deep knowledge on formulas on Excel. Okay. Meaning, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I know the methodologies. I know the formula. in my head, but I don't know how to put them on an Excel formula or a Google Sheet formula. So this is when AI can do that for you. And you can check the work, right? You can be kind of like the student teacher, or the teacher, right?

22:54And you make sure that all of the numbers comes out as it should be. So those are the current uses of AI, at least on my work. From Hakuro's case, We are actually using AI's capability on creating correlation. So we do build the correlation. And on top of that, it's AI-assisted building of correlation that we can then translate into actionable insights, right? So some of the developers that we already had our case studies with, we told them what, let's say, specific tags they have to improve on on their Steam page. So the data scraping was primarily done from the AI perspective. But in terms of what actually comes out as suggestions, it's, I would say, majority human, but at the same time, assisted by AI based on what AI can see.

23:51because a human can't see what AI can see. Of course. No, but I love that because it seems that then the AI does the analysis, but there's a human on the other side trying to understand that what it's actually saying is appropriate. And then it's summarized for the customer or the developer, whoever is using Hakura. Exactly. Exactly. So those are the strengths of AI for us. In terms of creativity per se, I would say that it's still a work in progress. Sometimes it really works. sometimes it's just so obvious. Like for me, I can easily see when a social media post is an AI or not. It's happening to me too.

24:29Even in food delivery apps, I'm seeing the images of the food BAI made and I'm like, please do not generate the food I'm going to order with AI. I don't trust you. Exactly. Exactly. And you know, eternally, I pride myself when I say that it's AI or not. Because there has been some situations where the things that I've done looked AI, even though it was me who wrote it. I was like, no, I don't know if I should make that as a good thing or a bad thing, but I wrote that. I love that everybody's stealing credit from AI, but you're not letting AI steal the credit from you. So that's amazing. Yeah. Okay.

25:07And Josh, I know we're almost at time here, but I did want to ask you one final question. And this one is more for the audience. And it would be, if you were to give advice to game developer or somebody that's creating their first game and they have to market it, what would be some advice that you would love to give them or that you would have liked to know when you started out? Sure. Actually, this is what I also tell to even developers of today, that their authentic voice is always going to be better than the best marketing strategy. It's a very specific thing with games because majority of gamers, they love the people behind the games.

25:47They champion the creative capability of a person to make a engaging game that steers your emotion, gives you dopamine. So I always tell developers, once we start the activation together, I will defer on how you usually talk to your gamers, to your audience. How do you usually set your tone with these people? Now, a couple of years back, actually even in the 2010s, that would have been different. In 2010s, there's a professional way of actually doing marketing on messaging, right? Nowadays, it's a bit inverted. So the more imperfect it is, the more natural it is. And that's what gamers love, right?

26:32They don't mind wrong grammar. They don't mind wrong punctuation marks. or misspelling, as long as you're a real person. But at the same time, they're going to point it out. They are going to point it out. You know, gamers are savage. It's true. And especially in an industry that they are aware of every minute detail. And it's gamers who actually, if they're really fans of what's going to come, they're waiting for it. Just like Silksong, as we mentioned. I was looking at images of still frames of what the game was like and just seeing everything and trying to just understand. So I think gamers have a very keen eye that you don't want to try to deceive.

27:14You just got to make use of that keen eye so that they can see the transparent version of yourself and what you're doing. And I'm sure the acceptance will come if it's good. It needs to be good. Exactly. And on top of that, another thing that gamers really respond to is honesty. Because usually you're a gamer yourself, Andres. When you see a game delayed, right? You're searching for answers why it's delayed. Aha! Like, no! Right? And you get disappointed when it's not addressed. They just do it through, I would say, an official statement rather than a personal message that could appear as a personal statement, but a personal message.

27:56I've seen time and time again where gamers really respond to that positively despite the studio messing up, right? That's basically a mess up on their estimations. Of course. But gamers can be very forgiving, especially if they love your vision, as long as you're honest to them. So the more you're honest, the better you are appreciated. Okay. Now, I love that. I love that. And for anybody who might be a gamer thinking of creating a game, then just know your authentic self is the most valuable one. And although the gaming market and gamers can be as savages, as we have just mentioned with Josh, we can also give them the trust that if what you're providing is good, they'll be able to embrace it and champion you to take it to the next level.

28:42And without further ado, Josh, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It really has been super interesting hearing everything you've been able to give us, what Hakuro is doing, and we can only hope but for the best that you guys just keep scaling up and that you get your first game. You gotta let me know which one it is so I can try it out. Yeah, definitely. I'll let you know. If you want, I can give you some early access to those games before it goes public so you can tell us what you think oh hell yeah i would love that that was amazing yeah i'll help you up you'll have me like a game tester i'll let you know how it goes yeah that's amazing man thank you so much josh and thank you audience everybody for listening i hope you like the show and that you keep on tuning in so that you keep on hearing different insights from all the guests that we're gonna have awesome them.