For the latest instalment of our TIGA Awards 2022 winners interview series, we spoke to Space Ape Games Founder & COO Simon Hade (pictured, right) about what it meant to pick up the Best Arcade Game 2022 award, the need to recognise excellence across the games industry, inspiring peers, advice for folks seeking a career in games and what we’ll all be talking about in 2026…
What did it mean to you/your company to win a TIGA Award?
We’ve won a handful over the years from Best Arcade Game (Beatstar), Game of The Year (Transformers Earth Wars) as well as studio wide and individual recognitions. Making games is hugely competitive and success is subjective so I never take such awards for granted. Ultimately we are doing it to entertain people – so having our work recognized by anyone, players, friends, family and industry bodies like TIGA is a huge honor and ultimately why we do what we do. Even being nominated is a great boost to team morale.
Why is it important that excellence in game development/services/education is recognised via awards like this?
There are so many games being released every day it’s easy to get lost. As the market matures the moat formed around brands and publishers gets wider and it’s harder than ever for even great games to find an audience. The signaling that comes from winning an award like TIGA is a stamp of quality that is still recognized by platforms and tastemakers who can help you find an audience. It’s also very useful for smaller studios who are doing amazing work but are under the radar for recruiting, fund raising or working with partners.
Who are the people and companies in games and beyond who inspire you?
We’ve just launched a new game in the Match3 Puzzle category called Chrome Valley Customs so I spend a lot of time looking at people who have been successful in that space over the past decade.
Match3 is probably the most competitive genre and conventional wisdom is that the last thing the world needs is another match3 game. But that was also the conventional wisdom in 2015 when Candy Crush dominated and before Playrix created the puzzle and decorate format. It was conventional wisdom again in 2019 before Dream Games came out with Royal Match. In between there were many medium size successes that brought something fresh and they provided plenty of inspiration. I particularly admire the focus and tenacity needed to compete in such a red ocean category.
We’re hoping to turn the genre on its head again by re-introducing this evergreen play pattern to a massive overlooked audience with our car restoration theme.
What piece of advice would you give to graduates and under-graduates seeking a career in games?
Make games. No, really! I regularly meet people looking for work in game who haven’t built a portfolio of art or demos. It’s so important because making games is a craft. It requires a high level of passion and it’s those who are regularly participating in game jams, shipping their own indie titles, making fan art, moderating a discord channel – those are the kinds of people who ooze passion and are most likely to connect with the kinds of studios who can best help them develop in their career.
The other piece of advice is don’t optimize for title or role. If you get an opportunity to work with an exciting game or studio who you think is going places, then it’s better to be in the mix there than have the perfectly defined job somewhere else less exciting. So many of our game leads, designers, producers, and company leadership came up from community, customer service, QA. We have a producer who took an office admin job as her entry level position when we had no need for that. Too many people early in their career waste energy obsessing over whether they are in the right role, and not enough time obsessing over whether they are in the right company. Get in the door, nail whatever task needs to get done, and get involved in whatever needs to be done.
Outside of winning a TIGA Award, what have been your greatest career achievements to date?
I’m most proud of our recent game: Chrome Valley Customs. For a few reasons.
First, it is the distillation of a seven year journey to reinvent ourselves as a company. We got our start making build and battle games that were super high quality but ultimately derivative of other game designs. We then sold to Supercell, makers of Clash of Clans – an event which for most would be the greatest achievement – but that was just the beginning of a journey for us as a studio to go back to basics and learn how to make games in new categories. We killed over 23 games in that journey and came out with Beatstar which is an amazing game and put us on the map, but we made a lot of mistakes that meant we spent a lot of time pivoting and restarting around different designs. The team on Chrome Valley basically distilled the learnings from those experiences and applied them in a very methodical professional way and did exactly what they set out to do and this was because they really did the work up front to test and validate their designs.
Second, it is in a hugely competitive genre, and a brand new one for us. It is extremely daunting to be entering a space where there are decade old, multi-billion dollar incumbents with teams of thousands. We’re well funded and successful but this team started out as 12 people less than 2 years ago.
Finally, because it’s a game that has been genuinely driven by the team. We aspire as management of Space Ape to truly delegate to the teams and trust them to develop games that they feel are going to achieve the company goals. This is incredibly hard to do in practice, but I’m very proud of the fact that all the credit on this game goes to the team and we were able to create a culture and environment that allowed them to do their best work.
What do you value most about the work of industry associations like TIGA?
Shining a light on up and coming studios is so important. TIGA recognition was extremely valuable in the early days of Space Ape and I’m pleased to support the work of TIGA to help elevate the next generation of studios.
In 2026 we’ll all be talking about…?
A whole bunch of games companies that no one is talking about today. It’s never been harder to start a game company, or launch a new IP, but there is still so much opportunity for new games to break out.
Space Ape Games makes mobile games that delight the world.
Don’t forget that nominations are now open for the TIGA Awards 2023 – Click here to enter! (Deadline July 31st).
In addition, tickets and tables are now on sale for the Awards. Click here to book yours now as they are limited!