Adrian Djura CTO of Eipix Entertainment

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:01) Oh, I'm so excited. Today we have on the podcast Adrian Jura. He is the CTO of Eipix Entertainment. Interesting guy. No venture money.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:12) Right? He co-founded Eipix Entertainment. They use the money from their first contract, first contract making a video game, to bootstrap their company and grow from two employees in 2011 to over 300 employees six years later. They're making about 20 games a year. When you look at them, they're the most modern, beautiful games that you have ever seen, and it's no wonder that they are the world leader in mobile gaming.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:39) Even created his own scripting language. Like, this guy is the guy who wrote the scripting language to efficiently develop the games because they were bootstrapped and they needed to be able to generate these things real quick and real smart. We talk about his thoughts on virtual reality and consumer behavior, and we also talk about this awesome thing that they're doing with Amazon Alexa. They made this game with your voice called Path of Discovery Europa. Alright.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:05) So we're gonna talk about all this stuff right now on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Adrian Jura at 00:01:11) Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:12) This is the Modern CTO podcast. I am a personal nerd when it comes to user interfaces and design, things like that. Like, I always look for the really high quality user experiences. And the moment your trailer started playing and it started cycling through two or three of the games, I knew instantly you can see quality and require that in your products, and that makes me happy. I really like that.

(Adrian Jura at 00:01:56) Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. We had a lot of problems because we wanted always to be, everything to be perfect. So it's very hard to achieve that quality because a lot of the times, you need to be on the budget. You cannot push the limits on there or everything. But because we are independent, we have that freedom to create the best quality that we can.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:24) Yeah. That's always a tough balance. Right? Balancing how much work you're putting into something and the quality of where you want it, but also meeting your deadlines and getting things out the door and product shipped.

(Adrian Jura at 00:02:35) Yeah. Yeah. Because that's the most important part of being independent that we didn't take any investments from outside. Because we lost a lot of money on some projects, but it made people happier. And it's, we have a lot of benefits, not from selling that product, but we can work on products that are just requiring more quality and that are bigger projects. We can show to someone that we can do that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:07) So I work with a lot of different people who have money, like a lot of investment groups. And the thing that they have trouble with is finding the people who can execute. Because they're money people. They have money all the time. But to find the quality company that can push the product forward and get it out, that's the tough thing for them to find.

(Adrian Jura at 00:03:25) Yeah. We also have a problem when we talk with the investors for some project, for some of our projects. Because they want to see something that you already did, and they want to invest in something that they can see that you did before, and they don't want to give you a chance. So a lot of times we make a product before that and show to them that we are capable of that. One of those things was narrative games. We made a Lifeline narrative game, and everybody said because we are from Serbia, we are not a native English speaker, that we cannot make a good story in English. It's not possible. You need to be an English writer for that. And we took our best people. They wrote a story, and the story was better than most of the writings from English native people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:19) Right. Because, you know, when it comes down to it, we're human, and we all communicate based on emotion. So the language is a variable. We all understand how we feel and how stories play out. That's a human thing, not a language thing.

(Adrian Jura at 00:04:34) Yeah. And I think that everybody who has a passion for that can learn a lot of things. So it's not only important what you did, but what's your potential? How quickly can you learn? I think that is the most important thing, not to judge someone by something that he knows, but something that he can learn and how fast he can learn.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:56) That is so interesting that you bring that up because I was having this conversation last week with another CTO, and we were talking about hiring people. Right? Because hiring people is always a challenge. You want great people. And we were talking about how we go through the hiring process and those things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:14) And I said something that he hadn't heard before, which was, when I hire someone, I look for their knowledge gaps. So I look for the things that they do not know. Right? Because there's always things that we don't know. And then I ask them if I like them and everything's going well, I ask them for a follow-up interview, like, two days later, and I say, go learn this thing that you don't know and come back and explain it to me in two days. Because technology moves so fast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:41) So your skill or your ability to go learn something new and then being able to come back and understand it and explain it simply, that's an entire skill that's very underrated. We don't talk about it a lot.

(Adrian Jura at 00:05:56) Yeah. That's the most important thing. Also, when we started our company, I made a test for new programmers that would come to the interview. And I made our game engine, proprietary game engine, and I also made a programming language, actual scripting language. It's our scripting language.

(Adrian Jura at 00:06:18) So we made a test where you need to make a mini game or something like that in our programming language. And because we needed to make it fast, we didn't have a good documentation for the test. So it's a bit hard to get to start working with our technology and everything, and that's because we didn't have time. But over time, it proved that that test was the greatest thing that we did. Because the people who know something and don't want to learn cannot solve that. Only people who are motivated to learn new things, to try, try, try and make mistakes can learn because there was no documentation. The documentation was bad and everything there. So when we had the time and we made the test, we also wanted to make a test with better documentation. Because in that way, we got the results from people who are really trying to solve that. So it's a very interesting thing about our tests on the first step that we did.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:30) Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. So you're saying because you were moving fast and you made this test on your own proprietary language and you didn't have documentation, what that ultimately did was it filtered out and found the brightest, most motivated people. Right? Is that what you're saying?

(Adrian Jura at 00:07:48) We found the best people, those who want to learn. It was not a requirement to solve everything, but to prove to ourselves that you tried to do everything to solve that. So it's not, okay, if you did not solve the test, you are not hired. It's not like that. We looked to how did you approach the problem and everything. So in that way, we found people who are willing to learn.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:20) Yeah. And it's no surprise that your company grew as big as it did because you're doing the right things.

(Adrian Jura at 00:08:26) Yeah. We, at first, we began to, because we didn't have a lot of money to hire experienced people. And in Serbia, there was no other game development company where from where you can find people. Game development is specific because not everybody wants to work on games. So we need to find inexperienced people because we'll pay them smaller salaries, and they will, but who want to learn fast so that they can help us later to scale the company and everything. So they are scaling with the company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:06) Exactly. And it's a good exchange too because they're making enough money to live. Right? But they're getting all of this experience of what it takes to set up a company and the different problems you run into. They get that experience which will help them farther on in their career. Right?

(Adrian Jura at 00:09:24) So they learn a lot of things. And they are very, very, very loyal to the company, and they're trying their best to keep the pace and everything. And I think from the first 30 or 50 employees are still in the company that came to the company and are still there. They didn't leave the company. That's a very, very good thing because you have loyal employees who think that the company is, that feel the company as their own company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:59) 100%. So I'm looking here, and I see that you started this with two friends back in 2011. So what's the origin story? How did it come about? Were you all hanging out and decided to do this, or how did it start?

(Adrian Jura at 00:10:15) I worked with my partners before, part time on games four or five years before that. And after that, I had a few startups that failed, mostly web startups and everything. And at one moment, Mirko, who is the CEO of the company, came to two of us. We all have different backgrounds. I'm the programmer. Mirko, who is the CEO, is the manager who is managing the company. And one more guy, Vladimir, who is the chief creative officer, who is responsible for art and everything else. So we have three guys who have different backgrounds, who formed a great team. Mirko saw the opportunity in hidden object puzzle adventure games, so that there is an opportunity to make those kind of games, that the market is not overcrowded and that there we have a chance to work on those games. And they are pretty stable. They have a stable market. So we can know how good those games will sell. It was a pretty stable market. So the idea was to try to make a demo and to see if we can strike a deal with a publisher to publish our game. So we made a demo without money, without everything. We worked on that very hard. We also wanted to be the best quality game. It was really polished and everything. And after that, Big Fish Games, who is our publisher, decided to sign a deal with us to publish that game. And then it all began. Then we started working on the game. We received some advanced money for the game, and we started hiring people. That's the first part when we started the company. After that, we saw that when we were still developing the first game, we saw the opportunity to make more games in parallel, to make multiple teams and work on multiple games. Because we are based in Serbia where the workforce is pretty cheap. It's a lot cheaper for us to make a game here than in the United States. We could make that work for us. And we started working a lot of games, but we still didn't publish our first game. So it was a bit of a risk, but it proved that it was a very good move. Because in our first year, we published in 2012 one game. In 2013, eight games. 2014, 15 games, and then 23 games. And at that time, we were, as still we are today, the most productive HOPA developer in the world. So we are publishing the biggest number of HOPA games in the world. For one game, you need around six months to nine months to develop. So it's a lot of teams who work on those games.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:38) That is fantastic. No. I love your story. I love that you guys were able to, you know, you put work in. You developed the prototype. You got it to where it was usable, and you got money. I love that. And I love that you didn't take a huge capital injection buyout. You used your contracts to development to grow your business, which is the best type of business in my opinion. Right? And then you and your partners figured out how to scale and how to deal with the growth, and that is just absolutely phenomenal. So I love that. Now, another thing I saw here that I am really excited to talk about, right, is I saw that you did some VR, some virtual reality. Yeah. Right? And I wanna know what you think about the market. Is it 10 years down the road, or is it here today?

(Adrian Jura at 00:14:30) It is almost here. It's not here. But I think it will be here next year. We will focus, we will make a separate team now that will focus on VR, and we will push more projects toward VR and more people, more resources. So I think we are a bit late, but not too late for VR. Because I think now the VR will start selling. You have a lot of mobile VR who will be released in a few months, and I think it will be a very big push for that. Our first VR project was just to see the market and everything, what we can do, and it didn't pay off. But we saw and we know what to expect from VR. There are a few people who made the profits there, and there are also people who made a profit from investments, not from selling the game. We want to be focused on selling the game and to have a high quality game that can sell. So I think that the next year will be a good year for us for VR because, as I said, we can make a product cheaper than the others and have a higher quality than them. That's where our strength is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:05) No. That's brilliant. You guys have mastered the production aspect of putting out high quality games. Now the platform or the medium will change in life. Right? Like, it'll grow and maybe become VR. But I'm always interested in the VR conversation because VR has been around since the eighties, but the consumer behavior isn't there. Like, I personally, I don't know anyone that spends an hour a day playing VR. I don't. And I know people that play console games, and I know I see my wife. She plays, I think some of your games. They look like your games, and they're absolutely beautiful, and she's playing them. And she plays them on the couch and watches the baby. And then my friends, they play things like the first person shooter type console games on the PlayStation, the Xbox. But I don't know anyone that's using VR, but I see a lot happening in the investment world. And I'm just wondering what, whether it's gonna be three, five, or 10. I think in 20 years, VR will be huge. Right? Like, I think that's a safe bet, but I just don't know what's gonna happen in between.

(Adrian Jura at 00:17:14) Yeah. Everybody is investing in hardware right now. There are not a lot of investments in content. So that's a problem. Because of that, you will see in five to 10 years the investment in content. But right now, the developers are on their own to try to make something that can be profitable in VR. You have a few games that are triple-A that are ported, let's say, to VR like Skyrim, Fallout, Doom. And those games, I think, can push a bit the consumers toward VR. They will want to try those games in VR. So those games were released a few weeks ago. So that's why I think now is a good moment to start developing some games because there will be attraction. It will not be huge. It will start slowly increasing. And also, a lot of this happening with mobile VR. We were talking about the VR for PC that's still expensive, and that's a high quality VR that's very good, interesting to play, like HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. And on the other side, we have Daydream devices and GearVR. And now you have Facebook Go and also HTC announced their Focus devices.

(Adrian Jura at 00:18:46) So the next year, I think there will be a very big push with mobile devices, and we will see what will happen there. That will be very interesting because I think a lot of content will be streamed. Maybe if you want to watch games—football games or basketball games—you can watch on the mobile device. So that will probably help VR go mainstream.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:16) Oh, that's actually really interesting. Yeah, the sports community is massive. So if VR made its way through the sports community, that would really open it up for a lot of other potential. Another thing that super stood out to me, right, is that you did some game—and I didn't look into it too deep, so I want to know about it. You did some game for an Amazon Alexa device.

(Adrian Jura at 00:19:41) Yeah. It was a game that is not commercial. We did this to be a free game to test the platform and everything. And we made a partnership with Amazon, so we worked directly with them on that game. We had access to the newest libraries and everything, so it was very interesting because of that.

(Adrian Jura at 00:20:06) It's really a great game. It's a narrative game that is published on Amazon Alexa, and we are also continuing to make those kind of games to be in that market. We cannot still monetize that game, but in the future, we will also want to be there because I think something will also happen there, like in VR. We don't know what to expect, but we want to try and to be in every market to feel that market, what is happening there. And when the market is ready, we will be prepared for that, and we probably can make some success there also.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:51) No, that's ultra smart. A recurring theme I've heard from you is you like to go into a market with freemium, see what the adoption rate is, see how many people are using it, see what's happening in the market, and then inject a monetization strategy, which is just absolutely brilliant. Right? Because your monetization is always going to be less than the total use. Right? You're always going to have a percentage of paid users that are less than your total users. So that's really smart, and I love that you guys do that. You know, I guess I'm just so excited because I like when I hear people doing things the right way and the smart way, and I just absolutely love that. And is this game that you're talking about with Amazon Alexa—now I thought, or I have the mindset that, like, I have an Alexa, right? She's sitting right next to me. Is it a voice game, or is it a—does it have a video? Because I know there's some new Amazon video devices out.

(Adrian Jura at 00:21:44) Yeah. It is a voice game where you are talking with someone who guides you to a voyage to a planet or something like that. It's a game where you have choices, and based on your choices, the story develops. So you play the game based on your choices. That's why I say it's a narrative-based game. Like in the old days, there were text adventures. It's still text adventures, those old text adventures, but now you play with voice. You hear the story, the ambiance, everything, and you play in that way. We also have support for those new devices that have video. So while you are playing the game, you can see some pictures on that device. But the most important part is that you make choices with your voice. You are talking to another person that's guiding you through the game.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:46) That is unbelievable. That has got to be one of the coolest things I have heard. What is the name of the game, and how can people that are listening download it?

(Adrian Jura at 00:22:54) Yeah. The name of the game is Path of Europa. Actually, Path of Discovery: Europa. So you can try it and see how you like it. You should really try it because it's a very interesting game. The writing—it's a sci-fi game, so someone who likes to read sci-fi books will be very interested in that game.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:26) Absolutely. Yeah. You had me at the name, right? Because isn't Europa one of Jupiter's moons that's filled with, like, frozen seawater?

(Adrian Jura at 00:23:33) Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:34) So, like, I'm a big fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson and all the different universe stuff that him and Bill Nye, they talk about on StarTalk, and I just love that. And so when you said it was Europa, I was sold just off the name.

(Adrian Jura at 00:23:52) Yeah. You will like the game. So I think that you will like the whole story and everything.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:59) Very cool. All right. So I always like to ask the different guests—so you've been doing this for a long time, right? So you have a lot of experience. If you could go back to 2012 when you guys launched your first game—I know you were developing in 2011—but if you go back to 2012 and you're launching your first game, what would you tell yourself? What sort of advice would you give your younger self?

(Adrian Jura at 00:24:31) I think to work more with people. It's very important. I was working a lot of time with people, but I think that's never enough. And to try to find more people who can help you with developing the company. Not to find only the best programmers, but also you need someone who can be a middleman management, like, to have leader skills. Because when you grow the company, you are missing those people. I think that I was more focused on programming and delivering the results, not about the organizational thing. So I think that one of the mistakes that we made was to have more people who are leaders in—to promote and to educate them to be leaders.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:34) Absolutely. I found that in my experience too. At first, I started with just finding the best programmers and the best designers. But once you hit scale, right, once you start getting out of that five to ten people range, all of a sudden you need to inject these—you know, split it up into teams, right, compartmentalize it—and then you need to inject these leaders into the situation. And those people, I believe that they're underrated in the eyes of a developer going to a role of CTO, and I have found them to be unbelievably valuable and important to the growth of the company.

(Adrian Jura at 00:26:09) Yeah. Because when you grow quickly, you cannot do the task management for 40 people or like that. You need a lot of people who can think about that and to promote that way of thinking that you don't need to wait for the task. A lot of people are waiting to receive the task, but we need to turn that around and to make them seek for tasks. Let's say, to find something and what to do and then just tell you, "Okay, I will do this and that. I want to do that, that, and this." Not to just wait for the task. I think that's one of the important things that we need to know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:59) Fantastic. Now this has been, like, the most amazing conversation. I absolutely was blown away when I saw your graphics of your game, and I was super excited that I'd get to talk to you. And expectation has definitely been exceeded. So I—yeah. Thank you so much for talking with us today on the podcast. We talked about a lot: the VR consumer behavior, your origin story. And, you know, the Amazon Alexa is definitely the thing that stood out the most to me. I'm going to get off this call, and I'm going to go play with it. I'm going to go download the application to my Amazon Alexa and walk through the Europa one because that just sounds really cool.

(Adrian Jura at 00:27:45) Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me also.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:53) Thank you so much for listening to the Modern CTO podcast. Share this. Get the word out. Thank you guys so much. I couldn't do it without you. I appreciate it. You guys are the absolute best.