Q&A: Anton Gauffin, Huuuge Games CEO

Huuuge Games lived up to its name in the fourth quarter of 2016, almost doubling its revenues sequentially and catapult-ing itself into the top 15 of social casino developers as ranked by Eilers & Krejcik Gaming.

In Q4, Huuuge had an estimated $18.9m in revenues, up almost 900% year-on-year, and making it the fastest growing firm in the sector, despite only launching in late 2015. The growth stemmed largely from marquee title, Huuuge Casino, which was thought to be taking market share from established rivals like Big Fish Casino and DoubleDown Casino.

The rising star earned plaudits for its “unique social elements, combined with a very aggressive marketing campaign, and solid execution”.

The key differentiating point for the title is the social aspect of its gameplay, with players earning rewards for competition with friends and joining clans.

Anton Gauffin, CEO, and Wojtek Wronowski, vice president of product

It means that Huuuge enjoys a highly engaged user base of around 500,000 – a relatively small number compared to big-time rivals – but those players reportedly return a very high average revenue per daily active user.

With a successful 2016 under its belt, the Palo Alto-based firm is looking to reinvest its profits into further growth and is planning to build its employee base from 155 at present to “well beyond 200” by the end of the year.

Below, Huuuge CEO Anton Gauffin explains why Huuuge disputes the traditional definition of content in the social casino sector and explains why the firm is set for success in Asia.

EGR North America (EGR NA): You’ve been identified as one of the fastest growing social casino firms in the market in recent months. What’s behind your recent success?
Anton Gauffin (AG): There’s no one thing that’s behind our success – it’s a lot of hard work paying off. The recent growth we have comes from having differentiated products. We saw that the space for innovation in the social casino sector would come from building a truly social experience. We have our own view on what social casino is. We don’t accept the traditional definition of the market; slot slot, spin spin. We never agreed with that from the start and we’ve created a product experience based around co-operation, teamwork and competition.

The social dynamic comes first rather than the slot and that idea seems to be attracting a broader audience than most of our competitors. The biggest demographic for us is younger males, which is unusual with 60% of the social casino market being female. We’ve been winning players from our competitors but it’s actually been more about our ability to attract completely new players.

EGR NA: Do you not agree that content is still king in social casino then?
AG: We have great content, it’s just that our view of content is different to our rivals. It’s important to have good slots but it’s not the key layer for us.

We think the industry is a bit too conservative even though it’s relatively new. We like to be radical and take bold risks and try to innovate in this space rather than rinsing and repeating with slot machines. Now we are growing, we have had a fantastic 2016 and that gives us the chance to try more things and innovate even more. 2017 should be a good year for us.

EGR NA: Aside from the social focus, what else differentiates you from competitors?
AG: One of our aims is to grow and scale the business in markets that other competitors have not yet found success in. Because we are so different from our rivals we are able to tap into new markets and new demographics with good conversion rates, so we’ve been putting huge investment in global brand development and that has started to show results.

EGR NA: Can you share any of the innovations you have planned for 2017?
AG: We don’t want to point out any specific features but I can say that our strategy has an emphasis on going global and adjusting the product for specific markets. We’ve managed to make Huuuge the largest social casino publisher in Japan, for example, and if you play our game there, the casino is not the same as in the US.

Anton Gauffin

We have built tech capabilities that allow us to adjust the product on a country by country basis, whether that’s customised audio, customised UI or different games.

That’s part of the reason we are hiring so many people – this is a very work-intensive process. The amount of details we need to manage is growing all the time. You need to understand each market and that’s easier said than done. But we think it’s essential for the company’s success that we keep experimenting fast. It’s the start-up approach to business we have, which you can’t say for our competitors. Some of them are actually getting slower. With all the M&A there’s very few independent companies leſt in this space and we think the companies that move fast will be successful in the next chapter.

EGR NA: So is Japan your next major target market?
AG: It’s still early for us there but we are making good inroads and that’s exciting for us. Playtika has an office in Japan but we’re still the biggest foreign operator there. And Japan is a big market but social casino hasn’t traditionally done well there. As we are building a differentiated product, we are going to do our best to build scale in places like Japan, South East Asia and keep a close eye on China.

In 2017 we will be doing a lot more in different places in Asia and I would say our plan is working so far in Japan.

EGR NA: Is it fair to say then you are relatively stronger in the smaller markets than in the US?
AG: Maybe relatively stronger. That’s not to undermine our success in the US but we think there is more competition in the US. In some of these more exotic markets there are all sorts of hurdles that disrupt the competition, whether that’s the content preference of the market, the effectiveness of distribution methods or different levels of government certification.

We think what we are doing specifically has a massive opportunity in Asia. If you look at those markets and which ones are meaningful, Japan is a huge mobile gaming market, as is China. Korea is not small and Thailand and Hong Kong are interesting as well. We’ve learned these markets are all unique and need unique investments. So now country by country we are scaling our approach and relatively we are now growing faster in Asia than the US, even though the US is also growing nicely.

EGR NA: Huuuge is considered to be just outside the top 10 of social casino developers. Would you consider M&A to break into the top 10?
AG: We think it’s still early for Huuuge. There’s been a lot of M&A in the space, and there’s very few independents leſt. It’s interesting but right now we are focused on maximizing organic growth opportunities and to keep scaling and building the Huuuge brand. It takes a lot of time and focus to look at M&A opportunities and we prefer to keep our eye on the market. Huuuge is on a mission to become the category leader. We have those giant companies ahead of us so it’s a two to three year mission for us. I tell our guys all the time: ‘This isn’t going to happen overnight but if we play our cards right we can get there’.

Huuuge Games team

EGR NA: You’ve been spending aggressively on marketing campaigns recently. Where has that investment been directed?
AG: The US is one of the most sophisticated marketing landscapes and we are spending a lot there relatively because we get most of our customers from networks like Facebook and Google. We’ve been able to increase scale there without massively increasing CPA. That’s possible because our conversion rates are, if not the highest in the industry, definitely outperforming many of our competitors. We are also actively adding new channels but unfortunately it’s tough to find any as effective as those two.

That said we are trying to tap into platforms where our competitors have failed. Instagram is a good example where our competitors have not had much luck but it’s been working for us because we have our differentiated experience.

All our digital marketing is based on ROI. Ad networks optimize the spending, so we’ve seen good conversion and good KPIs, from the younger demographic particularly. We’re still trying to understand why that is to be honest. As far as we know, they seem to like the clan system. But it’s a surprise to see the younger demographic so strongly presented.

EGR NA: Some of the bigger companies in the space have built steadier businesses by launching lots of games, to diversify their risk. Are you concerned you are overly reliant on one title in Huuuge Casino?
AG: We are building free-to-play product platforms and there will be more games in the network. At the moment a lot of growth is coming from one game but we have already launched a new game called Billionaire Casino and it’s now growing nicely. There’s some exciting new things we are working on. Even though we are growing really nicely we are not a one game company and there will be more games coming this year.

EGR NA: Can we expect any other big announcements in the near future?
AG: In March we will be launching the facebook.com browser version of Huuuge Casino. There are expansions of the business going on all the time and we are very excited about the future.