Istanbul Is the University of Puzzles: Dream, Grand, Loom & the Founder Factory
two & a half gamersShow Notes
Mobidictum Conference in Istanbul, October 7–8: fifth year, 80% of the top Turkish studios in the room, 20 Vietnamese and 30 Chinese companies, 60% international attendance for the first time, and all three of us on stage. Batuhan has free tickets for the 2.5 Gamers audience, so reach out.Turkey went from zero gaming news for five years to producing the most consistent hit-making machine in mobile, and in this episode we sit down with Batuhan Avucan, founder of Mobidictum, to find out how that actually happened and what's coming next. The short version: investors gave Turkish founders one mandate, puzzle, and Turkish founders executed. The Sort category alone went from basically nothing in 2023 to roughly $80M a month in IAP, and once you add ad revenue on top it's easily $120M a month, spearheaded by Pixel Flow, Magic Sort, Hexa Sort and friends. Block is dominated by Color Block Jam and Block Out from Grand Games, Match Blast and Match Factory are Peak's home turf, and match-3 is still a heavyweight fight between Dream and Playrix. But the interesting part is the machine underneath it: studios that grew up working with publishers like Rollic and Lion, learned the craft, then went solo and shipped Loom and RotateLab-sized results. Batuhan puts it better than we can: "We don't train talent anymore, we train founders." 🙏 THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY POTENSUS Potensus is a premium ad network built by people who've been on both sides of the industry. Direct deals with Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola and Vodafone, no programmatic, no middleman tags, premium CPMs landing in your game. Plus, with PlayableMaker they turn brand videos and statics into playable ads and rewarded video. Head to potensus.com and check their creative portfolio in the show notes.
⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 – Cold open: "We make unicorns" 02:26 – Who is Batuhan Avucan and what is Mobidictum 03:45 – Turkey's investment story: from Peak's exit to Series A rounds going underground 08:31 – Jakub's data: Sort at $120M/month, Block, Match-3, Blast and the physics puzzle tip for 2027 12:30 – "We don't train talent, we train founders": the publisher-to-founder pipeline and the puzzle dependency 18:10 – Subsidies, investor mandates and why nobody funds a Turkish RPG 20:27 – China ate every genre except puzzle, so the real threat is Vietnam 24:15 – Mobidictum Conference, Oct 7–8 Istanbul: who's coming and free tickets for our audience --------------------------------------- This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously. Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Matej Lancaric Guest: Batuhan Avucan
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--------------------------------------- Matej Lancaric User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant https://lancaric.me Felix Braberg Ad monetization consultant https://www.felixbraberg.com Jakub Remiar Game design consultant https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar --------------------------------------- Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it! Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple! Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]
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