Interview with Arseny Lebedev - CEO & Co-Founder, Original Games

Background and Founding Story

Back in 2019, former lead at Machine Zone, Arseny Lebedev, teamed up with gaming talent veterans from Playrix, EA, Wooga, Playgendary to form their formidable team.

Since then, the Original Games crew has been busy scaling their business, which has recently doubled in size. The growth is a testament to the transformative power of innovation and creativity in the gaming realm. 

Creativity & Optimization Remain Paramount

While discussing all of the recent changes in the gaming landscape, Arseny summarized a key shift in mobile gaming.

"After the privacy changes in the last year, the spotlight remains firmly on user acquisition and ad monetization. The dip in targeting efficiency has paved the way for heightened innovation and rigorous optimization. But what hasn't really changed is the incredible creativity of game developers who are coming up with new ideas, experiences, and games every day.”

When asked about innovation at Original Games, Arseny was thrilled about new things happening with Merge Inn among other things. 

“We just shipped a major update for Merge Inn that delivers an exciting new game experience for our players. On top of that, LiveOps is the next mountain that we are conquering and we’re already seeing strong monetization improvements from these efforts. "Innovation, creativity, and growth come down to the people. I'm proud and humbled to collaborate with incredible people everyday.”

Growth and Expansion at Original Games

The past year has been monumental for Original Games. Their success is attributed to their elite team and dedication to optimization and making the right investments.

"Our portfolio and team have both seen a twofold expansion with the acquisition of our second game, Mergedom: Home Design. Our growth has been heavily driven by optimizations, experimenting, and knowing where to lean in and invest.”

Original Games' collaboration with Sanlo was a strategic move, rooted in their ambition to scale seamlessly.

"Sanlo has proven to be an easy and reliable partner. Everything has been frictionless. It's so hard for tech companies to create a history of successfully leveraging credit and Sanlo helped with this, while being super flexible and adapting to our org structure and how we work."

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About Original Games

Original Games is a global team of developers, artists, marketers, thinkers & doers. Their main presence is in Lisbon, Portugal with remote teams all over Europe. They’re building the most relaxing and rewarding casual mobile games, with universal appeal and deep player engagement as our cornerstones.

Learn more at https://originalgames.io/