Join us as we sit down with Russell Ovans, Board Member at East Side Games (ESG). Russell is a free-to-play games executive with a Ph.D. in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence). His diverse career includes founding Backstage Technologies, teaching college, holding executive roles in a tech incubator, and owning a brewery. In 2018, he returned to ESG, where he played a pivotal role in quadrupling the company's revenue and leading it through its IPO. Russell is also the author of "Game Analytics, Retention and Monetization in Free to Play Mobile Games.

Tune in to explore key topics such as the importance of having a growth mindset, understanding data literacy across gaming roles, and navigating career paths both within and outside the gaming industry.

🎧 Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• Russell's Journey from Accidental Game Developer to Industry Leader
• The Evolution of Social Gaming and Monetization
• Post-Exit Ventures: Brewing, Teaching, and Reflections
• Return to Games and the Impact of IP on Game Development
• Navigating Imposter Syndrome in a Changed Industry
• The Importance of a Growth Mindset and Navigating Career Changes
• Insights into Hiring in a Competitive Job Market
• Data Literacy and Analytics in the Gaming Industry

Resources Mentioned in this episode:

• Here’s Waldo Recruiting
• Lizzie Mintus on LinkedIn
• Russell Ovans on LinkedIn
• Book: Game Analytics, Retention and Monetization in Free to Play Mobile Games
• East Side Games Group
• Jason Bailey, Co-founder of East Side Games Group

Sponsor for this episode...

This episode is brought to you by Here’s Waldo Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in the video game industry that prioritizes quality over quantity and values transparency, communication, and diversity. We partner with companies, creatives, and programmers to understand the why behind their needs and provide a white-glove experience that ensures a win-win outcome. The industry evolves. The market changes. But at Here’s Waldo Recruiting, our commitment to happy candidates and clients does not. We understand that searching for the best and brightest talent can be overwhelming, so let our customer-first staff of professionals do the leg work for you by heading over to hereswaldorecruiting.com.

Welcome to the Here's Waldo Podcast, where we sit down with top visionaries and creatives in the video game industry. Together, we'll unravel their journeys and learn more about the path they're forging ahead. Now, let's get started with the show.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Here's Waldo Podcast, where we sit down with top visionaries and creatives in the video game industry. Together, we'll unravel their journeys and learn more about the path they're forging ahead. Now, let's get started with the show.

Lizzie Mintus: Hi, I'm Lizzie Mintus, founder and CEO of Here's Waldo Recruiting, a boutique video game recruitment firm. This is the Here's Waldo Podcast. In every episode, we dive deep into conversations with creatives, founders, and executives about what it takes to be successful. You can expect to hear valuable lessons from their journey and get a glimpse into the future of the industry.

This episode is brought to you by Here's Waldo Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm for the game industry. We value quality over quantity, transparency, communication, and diversity. We partner with companies, creatives, and investors and programmers to understand the why behind their needs. 

Today we have Russell Ovans with us. Russell is the author of Game Analytics, Retention and Monetization in Free to Play Mobile Games. He is a Director at East Side Games ESG, developers of hit mobile games such as The Office, Somehow We Managed, and Trailer Park Boy's Greasy Money. He is a computer scientist and has worked as both a software engineer, professor, and programmer for over 35 years.

In 2007, he founded Backstage Technologies, a social games studio that pioneered the monetization of free to play games on Facebook. Best known for the Family Feud app, Backstage was acquired by Real Networks in 2010, after which Russ returned to teaching college, working as an executive in a residence at a tech incubator, and opened a brewery.

He returned to the game industry in 2018 to lead analytics, growth, and ad monetization at ESG, a tenure which during the company quadrupled in revenue and went public. Let's get started. Thanks for being here. 

Russell Ovans: Oh, glad to be here, Lizzie. 

Lizzie Mintus: It's quite the intro. You got acquired by Real Networks, you were in a tech incubator, you had a brewery, taking ESG public, your book, where do you want to start?

Russell Ovans: I guess the interesting thing about my biography is that games found me by accident. I didn't seek out a career in games. And I like to say that I founded one of the first social game studios by accident. Cause it really was, it was not by intent. We had a, like you, we had a boutique software engineering firm.

It was about a dozen of us and we did contract software engineering services. And we really, as a group though, we're interested in having our own products and services and. We tried a bunch of things like within the web application space, cause that's where we all came from. It was just like, 2005, 2006, right?

So, we had the. com implosion and then web 2. 0 was starting. And so we were looking at building web applications and most of our work was, server side web application stuff, building scalable web applications and how you go about doing that. And in 2007 and around April was when Facebook opened up its platform to third party developers.

 We were actually asked by one of our contracting partners, they hired us to build a Facebook app for them. And we went about learning about it and we did a proposal and then they looked at it and they said no, we don't want it. That's not for us. But then I was like, yeah, but we should do that.

So we sat around as a group and tried to figure out what kind of Facebook app we should build, because this was when the only Facebook app that anybody really knew was that zombie one where you could poke or bite people, and it would just spread virally and stuff like very early days, right?

I came up with the idea of let's build scratch tickets that you can send to other people. You can buy a scratch and win ticket, like you'd get at the lottery store or your corner store. I just saw it as like a gifting app, but my employees very quickly bolted on a collecting mechanism.

And we'd always had it, like it was an economy where you had scarcity. So you only got a certain number of free tickets per day, and you would scratch them, and then there was a viral mechanic, oh, send them to your friends, and then they would install the app. And very early on, we had 10 users, and then we had 25, and then 50, 100, right? It actually exhibited exponential growth, as you would expect. But we didn't have any way of really monetizing it. So back then, everyone was building apps on Facebook to drive traffic off of Facebook to their own platforms because they saw it as like a lead generation tool or something along those lines.

But we partnered with the two of the very, very earliest microtransactions and offered wall companies. Spare change was the microtransaction company. Attach your PayPal wallet to your Facebook account. And Super Rewards, which were offered by the wall company. And we made it so that you'd get your free tickets every day.

You'd have to wait 24 hours to get more, or you could complete an offer to get more, or you could spend a dollar and get 10 more tickets, that kind of thing. And people thought we were nuts. People said, there's no way people are going to spend real money on virtual goods, but they sure did.

And so very quickly, we had a business that was growing crazy, and we pivoted and became a game studio. So it was not by intention, and it was just something that we were good at. We were able to build, because by the time we launched The Family Feud we quickly scaled because it had an amazing viral hook, which was to invite your friends to finish the back half of the fast money around.

And so everybody's newsfeed was getting spammed with requests to install family feud and help your friend win the fast money run. And so we had a million daily active users very quickly. And fortunately as a software first company, we knew how to build a web application that could scale to those heights.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Russell Ovans: This was before AWS or any of those services. We were leasing servers at a joint, which was one of the first co-location facilities that supported social game studios and really pushed the limits as to what we could do. And this was 2010, right? So you had a million daily active users who were making one or two cents arped out. That was the industry at that time. And that's only 13 years ago, right? It was dominated by Facebook. 

Lizzie Mintus: You 

Russell Ovans: could scale to enormous heights very quickly, but you didn't make a lot of money. So then I sold it, sold the company because, again, gaming was not my passion. I was more into academic computer science, professor, entrepreneurship was interesting to me, but not necessarily gaming as an industry or domain. 

Lizzie Mintus: Can I ask a question? 

Russell Ovans: Yeah. 

Lizzie Mintus: Okay. On the sale. And. Maybe it's an offensive question, but it's me. So what do you think made you the target to be acquired? Were you actively trying to sell it? Were you saying, Hey, I'm for sale and trying to facilitate that process or where you approach, how did that come about?

Russell Ovans: There was a gold rush in 2009, 2010. What was dominant in that kind of casual gaming space was websites like Gamehouse or King or anything like that. And the casual gaming community didn't really think social was viable. They used to say at conferences, there's no money in socal and we're sitting there going great. I'm glad you think so, because we had to go buy a bigger wheelbarrow to collect all of our cash from, spare change and super rewards last month. So you guys keep doing what you do and we'll just keep doing this.

But then they figured out, oh yeah, actually there is. And it was when Zynga's Farmville hit. And I blame Zynga for everything. But they basically ruined that space for innovation. And they became so dominant, they stole ideas from whoever they could. I shouldn't say stole. That's just unfair to Zynga. But the gaming sector is notorious for cloning good ideas from other studios and then throwing their marketing muscle behind it. 

So a bunch of these other casual game companies like Real Networks who owned Gamehouse were like, oh my god, what's our social strategy? We don't have a social gaming platform. How do we get in on this? And so everybody was sniffing around trying to figure out who the big players were. And Zynga was buying everybody for zero dollars, but a four year earn out with some stock. And they approached me and they offered us that. And we said, no, thanks. Cause I didn't want to stick around. I wanted out. I didn't want to be in the games industry. And Real Networks came along. They had actually tried to, I'm not even sure I'm allowed to say this, but they tried to buy Super Rewards, but they were late and Super Rewards said, no, you got, you should go buy that, this company over in Victoria. They really know what you're, they're doing. And that was us. So they called out of the blue and the company was for sale. Like I'd been talking to, like I said, Zynga and other companies at that time, but it wasn't like, We didn't have a Silicon Valley banker out shopping it for us or anything like that. It was just through the network. Yeah, so that's the and they acquired us largely on the strength I think of the Family Feud app, which we built in partnership with a company called I Win down in San Francisco. And yeah, so I got what I wanted, which was money and no earn out. And I got to leave 6 months later and my staff who were fantastic. I owed it all to them. Stuck around and ran the studio and got to do what they wanted to do, which was, build games. And then they expanded that operation to 60 people. Like the games industry, it goes up, it goes down, it goes down. Yeah. 

Lizzie Mintus: Always for anybody that might want to sell their company, if that's the end goal, which I imagine it is for so many listeners, cause they're taking lots of VC money.

What would you think about before you sell your company, having sold it?

Russell Ovans: What would I think? You're looking for advice? Oh my sage wisdom? 

Lizzie Mintus: Wisdom. Yeah. I wish I knew x. This would surprise me or I don't know. It's really an emotional thing and maybe yours was different because you just put it out, but it's still, in some ways, it's your baby, right?

It's what you've created and maybe you were in a different mindset, but I think it can be maybe an emotionally surprising process for people. I don't know if that was your experience. 

Russell Ovans: Okay, the thing that I did wrong was that I was 45 years old and suddenly I was working as an optional and I didn't go right back into a role in the tech sector. Maybe I was burned out. I'd worked really hard for the first 45 years of my life. And then I was like, okay, now I'm going to take it easy for the last 45 years, but I'm not wired that way. I got bored and we did some traveling and lived overseas for a year. All these great experiences, which I don't regret.

But what I do regret is that I left what I was really good at and explored other things which I'm not as good at. And so then I basically lost eight years of my career. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Russell Ovans: And an exit is great. No, I do not regret for one second the fact that I built and sold a game studio. That was amazing.

Like I said, though, it was completely accidental. It was like three years from the day we launched Scratch and Win to the day I sold it to Real Networks. That's crazy. That just doesn't happen. But it, I guess it did. There's a lot of games, no, and I wasn't the only game studio that was getting scooped up.

Like I said, there was this kind of gold rush and everyone wanted to understand social games and that whole free to play space. And so if you had traction you were probably, somebody was probably knocking at your door from, slightly different game. And it's like Ubisoft talked to me, EA, you name it.

Yeah, it was the right place, right time with the right team. I should have immediately started another software company. A different industry if I don't, like I couldn't be in games for three years. I had one of those non compete things, which was fine. But I was just full of myself for a bit and kind of an asshole in a lot of ways in the sense that. I thought I could open a brewery and be successful at that. Something I knew nothing about, right?

I think it's really important that all of us understand what our core competencies and strengths are, as an employee, as a worker, what we're most productive at and what we can be the most successful at, and that's really our vocation. And I basically turned my back on my vocation for eight years. 

When I came back to the games industry in 2018 at East Side Games, I had a lot of catching up to do. And I went through an incredible wave of imposter syndrome and the workplace had changed quite considerably in those eight years. But it's an industry that I have had success in. I understand the psychology of the consumer and I understand the data. And so I was back to doing what I was good at. 

Lizzie Mintus: I want to hear about you in between. I'm very curious about the brewery. I'm from Bellingham and we're very into beer there.

I'm more into kombucha, but that fits the Bellingham bill. But tell me about starting a brewery. Were there any lessons that you learned from that, that you think translate back in or no, it was just a whole separate thing. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah, I learned that, and this is the case in any startup is that most of your problems are going to be HR related. Managing people, hiring them, finding the right people and keeping them engaged and motivated is the most difficult thing. And I failed with that with the brewery. Not that I didn't hire good people. It's just that I was also an absentee owner. Like I was living in Vancouver or Victoria and the brewery was up in Quesnel, which is near the center of the province, up near Prince George. 

 So, it was a long way away and I was I thought, oh I'm just going to go invest 1, 000, 000, buy the building, put all the equipment and processes in place, brand it, come up with concepts, work on the things I enjoyed, which was the artwork and the marketing and then hired a team of people and then left and said all right, we'll see you when it's time to cash all those dividend checks. And that never happened, right? 

Lizzie Mintus: Maybe the lesson is too, that you have to be there, if you're the founder. For the most part, if you want to start something out of your wheelhouse. 

Russell Ovans: Absolutely. And I think I felt because it wasn't something that I understood or knew that I would just hire the expertise. But what's become very apparent as there's been a contraction in the brewing industry. That business model only makes sense if the owner is also the operator or the brewer, ideally the brewer. And I was neither operating nor brewing. And so I was just writing checks and dug a big hole that we just never fully climbed out of.

And then I ultimately got, not tired of it, but I felt it wasn't, I wasn't getting the enjoyment out of it. So I managed to sell it during the pandemic, which was interesting because you'd think that would be a difficult time. And it took almost a year to go from offer sheet to completing the deal. But yeah, I managed. I sold that two years ago, three years ago. 

Lizzie Mintus: Oh congratulations. Yeah. Worked out in the end. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah. Yeah. The first exit was a lot better financially. The second one was.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. I was just talking about that last night. You always see an exit and wow, this person sold their business. That must be really great. But if you peel it back, a lot of times, perhaps most times, it's not as great as you might actually think. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah, it is funny what you're talking about emotional connection, because a lot of founders do have an emotional connection to their companies. I probably had a stronger emotional connection to my brewery than I did to my game studio. And I'm not exactly sure why that is, but it was a little bit difficult to let go of that. 

Because it is cool to own a brewery. Who am I kidding? Like you go into a liquor store and you go through the checkout and the person says something about, Oh, I haven't tried that one. And then you go, Oh, you aren't well here. And then you give it to them and say, I'm the owner. Again it's fun. It's the most fun I ever had losing money is what I like to tell people. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah I don't know. It's nice to scratch that itch. And then you did the brewery and then did you do the entrepreneur in residence after that?

Russell Ovans: No, I did that. Actually, I did that first. And it was while I was the entrepreneur in residence at Viatech in Victoria that I started working on the concept of the brewery. Because as a bit of an entrepreneur myself, being around a bunch of entrepreneurs just made me want to. Do it myself again, right?

Because you're like, why am I giving advice? I should just be doing this. And again, like I said, I should have started another tech company because that's what my strengths are. It's what I know. Bricks and mortar is really difficult. The profit margins are terrible. There are a lot of moving parts, supply chain distribution, all that stuff. Whereas, software is pretty easy, especially software as a service, right? 

Lizzie Mintus: I feel like you are always looking at other businesses though. And you're like, Oh, that must be so easy, right? Oh, it's just simple. You're just selling products or just doing this. But whenever you feel it back, 

Russell Ovans: yeah, no. They're all difficult. And they all require a significant amount of knowledge and commitment. I hadn't either. Yeah. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, no, it's good self reflection. Okay, and then what roped you back into games? 

Russell Ovans: It was actually we moved to Vancouver and I'd been teaching college over in Victoria. And then in Vancouver, I had to give that job up and we moved to Vancouver because of my wife's career, she got a great job here in Vancouver. So we relocated and I had to give up my teaching gig. And so I was unemployed. I just developed a course on data analytics and normally I taught software engineering and database systems and stuff, but this was when big data was becoming important and every college and university in North America was trying to offer courses or programs in analytics or data science.

I put together a course plan and curriculum for a course on data analytics, which I don't think was ever taught. But I thought, Oh, this looks interesting. I think I could do that because I basically did that for the brewery. And before that for my own company at Backstage, it was effectively what I did as CEO when I wasn't dealing with HR issues.

I was playing with the data. I was like, yeah, I can do that. And then remember I mentioned Super Rewards, which was one of the first wall companies in a free to play. Their founder was a guy named Jason Bailey, who sold super rewards and then ended up buying or getting into gaming. He's one of the founders of East Side Games. I was like I wonder what Jason's company is up to. And so I just looked them up online and Oh, they have a job opening for a senior data analyst. So I messaged Jason on Facebook. We met for coffee. And the next thing he's talking me into coming to work for him.

It was perfect. Again, timing, right place, right time. A wonderful accident. I only wanted to work four days a week. He said, that's fine. 

Lizzie Mintus: Wow. 

Russell Ovans: Because I had my brewery ongoing and I was like, I need a day a week where I can really focus on, on, on that. And he said, that's fine.

 I like to say that if you're my age and you're still working 5 days a week, you're doing it wrong. A 4 day work week is ideal as you age. I find it really useful to have an extra day off to just recharge And you probably get just as much work done if you were working five days a week, to be honest, and I don't know if it's ever studied . 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, and you're in Canada too, so you have a different overview on school and time off than us here in America. I think in Europe a lot of companies are doing this and a lot of game companies are doing this. And I would say when there was a big quiet quitting era and people were doing anything, falling over backwards to keep all of their employees, a demand I often heard was, oh, I only want to work four days a week, but now the tables have turned and you're gonna, relocate to Menlo Park or whatever and you're not working four days a week.

Russell Ovans: Yeah, and you're in the office five days a week. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. 

Lizzie Mintus: Sometimes you are. Yeah. But there's still a lot of remote work. You can have the ability to quit. What was the state of East Side Games when you joined? 

Russell Ovans: They were basking in the success of Trailer Park Boys, Greasy Money, which was their first idol game. And in particular, the idol narrative. So they'd licensed the intellectual property from the TV show, which was really popular in Canada. I don't know what kind of global reach it had at that time. It's on Netflix now. So people know about it all over the world and stuff, but. 

Lizzie Mintus: Okay. I never get, I don't watch much TV and I never get these references. So I'm not a good balancing off point if this is. Yeah. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah. So you don't know what the Trailer Park Boys, but they're like one of the first mockumentary style TV shows, being on TV like since 2000 or something.

So anyway. We licensed it and we built an idle narrative game around it and it was doing really well. The company was transitioning more towards idle games and through licensing of big name IP. So when I joined, they had just inked the deal to bring It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia to mobile. I can't remember the name of the game we built because it was not, it did not work out for us. That title failed. 

Lizzie Mintus: Oh, I do know it's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Yes. 

Russell Ovans: Yes. 

Lizzie Mintus: It's really okay today if you watch the first episode, you're like, oh, you can't say that. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah, exactly. But East Side Games at that time, like scrappy, independent studios, what we used to call ourselves. The founders are from a working class background and, these are their heroes, basically, the characters of It's always Sunny Or Trailer park Boys and all that. So it was a natural fit for us to bring that in. When I joined, there were like 70 employees working together and fully onsite in Vancouver and we did Always Sunny. We acquired Archer. We did a danger phone game called Archer, the Archer game. And then of course the Big what we've done RuPaul within an external studio. 

What ESG is really good at is getting the rights to these intellectual properties we have. And that's, I think largely due to Jason Bailey and now Ely John head of business development. They're very good at working with the IP holders and bringing these titles to mobile and largely through the idle. I think that all of them were idle games. 

And then of course the big, the biggie, big one we did was The Office. And so if you want to get a sense of what kinds of games that you said games specialize in or build, you can play The Office somehow. 

We just launched a new one, AEW, the wrestling intellectual property. Again, I'm not a fan of wrestling, so I can't, I'm sorry, I can't talk to it very well. But we continue to build games based on well known intellectual properties like Doctor Who, Star Trek, that kind of thing. 

Lizzie Mintus: Cool. And so you were in charge of analytics growth and ad monetization, and you said the company quadrupled.

What do you think drove quadruplation? It's not a word. 

Russell Ovans: Quadruplation? 

Lizzie Mintus: What drove the quadruplation, if you will? What moved the needle the most? 

Russell Ovans: COVID. 

Lizzie Mintus: Okay. Yeah. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah. I think that we were doing great, but then the bump that we got in in revenue during the lockdown was significant as pretty much any game studio, I think would tell you, but no I shouldn't. That's a cynical answer.

We became very good at predicting return on ad spend. What drove that growth was we knew how to spend money on advertising and make sure it came back within a reasonable period of time, coupled with these games that had really strong arped out, like revenue cures all ills. It's hard to take credit for success when you build a game that has a dollar arped out, right? Because then you can just go out there and run advertising campaigns that as long as your signals are coming in and you're able to attribute all of your installs, you can figure out what's working and what's not, what creative is working for your ads that you're running and what networks you should focus on.

And so that's really what fueled the growth. We figured out how to measure and predict our return on ad spend. And so we were able to spend right up until, we could spend our last dollar on getting users knowing we were going to get the money back within a predefined time range.

We were able to continue to bring in high quality users that retained and monetized. And we were able to do that with an expanding portfolio of games. It then became, quite feasible to, to scale that revenue. 

Lizzie Mintus: So did you have multiple development projects in flight at the same time then?

Russell Ovans: Yes. And some of them were with external developers. So we would license our kind of technology and marketing support and analytics support to a third party game studio. So for example, a studio in Australia, mighty kingdom, they built Star Trek lowered X. RuPaul was built by Night Garden Studio in Vancouver, so just some examples of that kind of relationship.

They do all the development work and we provided them with game balances, some code we would provide, we, we had our own analytics. ingestion system that we had built. 

And so we gave them the code for that. And then we would provide the analytics service and we would do the user acquisition on their behalf. Because we knew we were pretty good at that, we would take over the marketing for them. They would provide customer support. They would do community work. They would manage their social channels, that kind of thing typically. And then we would go out and spend money to buy users for them. And then we would co pay on the development. Like they were supported while developing these games and then they would get a piece of the profit after launch. So it was good deal for the developers, if their game hit, so 

Lizzie Mintus: a few different things. So you had a great business development, people, a couple of games in flight, you built in house systems, and then you diversified your revenue by making games and also providing services with good IPs.

Russell Ovans: Yes. The IP was a big part of our success. It's expensive though. You have minimum guarantees and then they get a share of the royalties and all that stuff. And we did it without, we were all bootstrapped. We did it without VC money. 

Lizzie Mintus: Was it how they even started? Was it like you, I feel like a lot of companies do co dev to start, get some revenue from that and then start making their own IP. Yeah. 

Russell Ovans: No, in the case of East Side Games, they had a successful game on Facebook called Pot Firm which was a part of the legacy games that the studio used and they were solid games that generated revenue. So they had that revenue stream coming in and then you would try other things and you try to diversify your portfolio.

So you would use a successful game's profits to fund development of additional games. They took the pot farm universe and brought it to mobile and you know a game called Bud Farm Grassroots and then that now today is still alive through games that we publish under Leaderly a separate publishing brand because they do our weed related games And bud farm idle tycoon, for example is one and we do a game for cheech and chong And we have a bud and then where we branched out as well as in genre.

So we had These characters and that we developed what we call the Bud Farm Universe and then we built a match three game around them. We've diversified not only in terms of intellectual property, some of which we own ourselves these Bud Farm characters and then the genre is another way to diversify as well. We've tried a merge game that didn't work very well for us. But the match three game went well. And then what we will probably do is take our other games and then try to match three versions of them with the IP that we have. So do RuPaul match three games, for example. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, you already have the IP or you have people interested. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah, you got to go back and negotiate. That is a thing that everybody's okay with doing and how's that going to work and who's going to pay for it. 

Lizzie Mintus: But you have your great business people. So you're set. 

You said earlier that you had a lot of imposter syndrome coming back and I'd like to cover that on the podcast. If you were open to it, share a couple examples and just how you personally navigated that, because I think it's important to highlight that people at all levels, even people that sold their company and go back in.

Russell Ovans: Yeah. And I have a PhD in computer science. If anybody should feel comfortable in the workplace, it was me. But I came back to work and there were two things that I really struggled with. One was not being the boss. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Russell Ovans: When you're used to being the boss, as I had been for years, that was slightly difficult. But I was, at the same time, I was like, yeah, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna keep my, stay in my lane and keep my head down.

And that didn't last. 

Lizzie Mintus: 'cause I, yeah, it's you, when you're an entrepreneur, that's like who you are in your heart. Yeah, 

Russell Ovans: I know. It's just not how I work. Yeah. And then so there was, that was a problem. The other thing was that it's hard to get up and go to work for eight hours and focus.

I was exhausted just by the process of doing that kind of mental arithmetic, because I hadn't done it. Like the last time I'd been like a full time software engineer was maybe 2004, 2005. And it's hard work like programming, or in this case that we were doing a lot of SQL, some difficult queries like I thought I knew.

I thought I knew SQL because I taught it. But the complexity of the queries that we were writing was suddenly like we were doing things I didn't know. For example, SQL had added all these analytics window functions and stuff. This didn't exist when I was a kid learning how to query relational databases. And it's not a relational database anymore. It's a data warehouse. There's no referential integrity. There's no constraints between tables. And so it's just a bunch of data. And so you have to do a lot of cleansing of that data in, in your queries. And there were a lot of things I had to learn about and teach myself again.

So it was tiring and there was a voice in my head that just kept saying, just quit. You don't need to do this. It's hard. But I stuck with it. And and then very quickly, I don't know when it happened, but there's that moment when suddenly that just goes away.

And then you realize that, I don't know how they could, like, how were they surviving without me? It goes from, it goes completely from, I don't know what I'm doing to thank God they have me. I hope that happens for a lot of employees. But yeah, no I really struggled at first with just this thought of wow, I can't do this anymore.

I'm out of shape, older, I was the oldest person working at the studio out of 70 employees. And those at that time, I guess I was, 50, 51, 2, something like that. And these young people, they were different, they were great. I loved working with them, but different kinds of approaches to life and work. Yeah.

 So once I was no longer staying in my lane and I became a manager and was in the head of the growth team and I had employees, the employees all wanted to give me feedback on one on ones. And I'm like, employees don't give their managers feedback. What the hell? You just do what I say. You don't tell me if I'm doing a good job managing you. I'll tell you if I'm doing a good job managing you. So that was something that was new. And then once I got my head around it, I'm like, yeah, this is great. Yeah let's figure out what can I be, what can I do better? What can we all be doing better, right? 

Lizzie Mintus: So weird when you're not maybe the ultimate boss. The final boss, if you will. People talk to you a little bit differently. It's hard to solicit real feedback though. Sometimes everyone's Oh, everything's great. And you're like, no, tell me what could be better.

Russell Ovans: Yeah. And other people I, yeah, I was gonna say that I definitely believe people filter what they say to, to their supervisors or their bosses or whatever. 

Lizzie Mintus: You just have to train them out of that, right? Like, how was this meeting? Why don't you rate it for me? Okay, you rated it a six. What would you like to see? It's okay, right? I'd like to make this better for you. And once you have that radical candor, I think it gets better. You just have to have them believe that it's a safe space. And there's no repercussions for telling you that. You talk for 20 minutes in a meeting or, so you did something that you shouldn't have, but it's really helpful to know that. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah, radical candor is tough for all of us. Really important. We all read the Netflix book a few years ago. And like, all of the managers were like, yeah, this is what we're going to do. But I think the 1 piece that everybody struggled with the most is radical candor. 

Lizzie Mintus: And I think it's. Maybe it's hard as a woman. I feel like you just came across oh, this person's boss, you're a bitch. You're too direct, or you're too that, right? It's hard. It's really hard to practice feedback and create that environment. 

I know you feel really strongly that a growth mindset is essential and obviously you have it. You have learned so much and taken on so many different things, but can you elaborate on that and maybe share some stories about how you've had a growth mindset or people in your world network.

Russell Ovans: I guess it's a buzzword now. And it's one that I saw people using it in like their LinkedIn profiles and I'm like what is that? And then, you can Google it. And I encourage all of you to listen to do that. What is a growth mindset versus a non growth mindset?

In a nutshell, it basically means that you're always open to challenges and feedback and you don't limit yourself and let in the sense that I can't do that. There may be things you're never going to master, but you can definitely improve what you do. And so I alluded to this before about software engineering or computer programming, whatever. I'm a good computer scientist. It's one thing I do better than most people, but it's not the only thing that I can do in the workplace. And I've done a lot of different things and I've reinvented myself. I wanted to be a professor that didn't work out. And then I was, software engineer, and I was an entrepreneur, and then a brewery owner and instructor. All these things. 

Just the curiosity about trying new things, failing, learning from your mistakes, because that's how we learn. We learn from our mistakes, right? So not limiting yourself in terms of what you think your capabilities are because of your perceived lack of talent. There's always things that we're not going to master. I'm always going to wish I was a better musician. Right? And there's things that we consider to be talent based. Oh, I wish I was a better artist. 

You can learn to be a better artist, but you may never have what it takes to be, the quote unquote, professional. So just being open to the idea that your career is likely going to change course in your lifetime and being open to that and to be always wanting to learn. Like I loved school and I still love learning about new things. And I wrote a book, a textbook effectively, because I love that whole process of cracking a book and learning about something that you didn't know about before and getting excited about it.

So to me, that's growth mindset. You hire people because they have a particular. Educational background or they have a desire to work with you, but then it's okay that's not the end of it. Now. It's not okay, you're done. You have to continually learn and improve.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Russell Ovans: Take feedback, and not take feedback personally, right? You're not your output, that the whole human doing versus human being kind of thing. And I certainly struggled with that most of my life. I just. It's like always putting stuff out there and creating and doing and then wanting praise.

For the, "look what I did". 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, it's in nature.. Even more, I think that today I look, at the kids now. Oh, you have this prize for trying. 

Russell Ovans: Or just social media. It's oh, yeah, why haven't more people like my Instagram post? Why haven't people shared this great thing I put on LinkedIn, right? We all want that affirmation.

And even with this book that I published, right? Here it is. How many times have I looked to see the reviews on Amazon? Because, what do people think about this? And that's a failure of mine, of me being an insecure person, right? I think or is it that I want feedback so I can learn and be better?

Lizzie Mintus: Maybe that, but I also think that really successful people always have a chip on their shoulder and are always trying to get better and prove at whatever they're doing, that they can be the best and that they can improve. So it's double sided, right? Like maybe you're never happy.

Someone told me that I was never happy and I always wanted more. It's not that I'm just trying to improve, right? That's what I think. Is it valuable? That's what I think is important, but for some people they don't like that. And yeah, I think you could look at it in that lens too. You're trying to get better.

Yeah. There's a good black mirror. Look at me and my tv episode, but everyone's walking around and they have a little rating over their head and everyone's rating them on everything. It's funny to think about because that's what life is. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah, no, but I guess I wish I didn't care what other people think quite as much.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Russell Ovans: But it has pushed me to do my best. And perhaps my, like I'm really hard on myself. So I really push myself to be a really good student, for example. To be a good parent, to be a good driver. It doesn't matter what it is. I just want to be, I'm super competitive to write like a lot of entrepreneurs.

You have to have that fire to win. 

Lizzie Mintus: I'm competitive, but in school, my parents, this might horrify you as a PhD and professor always told me that B students rule the world. And that is so interesting. But also I want to talk to you about this. You're in Canada. Education is free right? 

Russell Ovans: It's not free. It's affordable. No, No, we don't have free tuition at universities. No. 

Lizzie Mintus: But what would it cost you, Canadian? 

Russell Ovans: Oh God, I'm going to date myself here because I don't know what it costs currently because I got my kids all through university and I'm going to say it's, Maybe 10-15K a year,, just on tuition alone.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. In the U S you could spend 80. It's crazy. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah, a lot more. I know that a lot more. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. And that we'll see. I think certain roles, to me, school is great, but it's not necessarily always the answer. I know if I had gone to college right after high school, probably would have wasted a lot of money and had fun experiences, but I didn't have a strong yes, this is the thing I want to do, and this is the degree I want to get. And I really care, or I really don't care. And if I don't care, it's not going to work. 

Russell Ovans: If you don't care, you shouldn't be there. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. I don't know. I like to read books, I like to listen to podcasts, I'm in business groups. I do all this extracurricular stuff, but it's not per se school. And if I really want to go, I'm just challenging you, if I really wanted to change my career, let's say I'm not having this recruiting company. I leave games, I don't want to open a brewery, but I think I might want to be a lawyer, right? Everyone told me I should be as a kid. Then it makes sense to go to law school. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah, you have to. 

Lizzie Mintus: You have to. For computer science, it's advisable, right? There are a lot of things that make a lot of sense.

Russell Ovans: I love school and I was a good student obviously. And got scholarships to go on and get a master's and then a PhD. Okay, so here's what I can tell you, my experience as a professor.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Russell Ovans: A students are just wired differently. They're smart, and you could say everybody in the class is smart enough to be there, so why do some of the students push themselves and get A's. Others just get B's, and are, think they're going to run the world, whether they do or not. I thought it was C students who run the world, and then the C students didn't learn a thing, basically.

I can tell you this, there's a massive difference, particularly in computer science. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yes. 

Russell Ovans: Between an A student and a B student and a C student. The C students don't know anything. They will get jobs and they will drag everybody else down around them. Because they're going to spend all their time trying to get other people to do their work for them. Because they're quite incapable of solving problems on their own. If they were, they would have done it in university. Is my take on it. Because what's going to change now, suddenly they have a job and they're going to take it seriously? Whereas they took, they didn't take university seriously.

Lizzie Mintus: Yes, I can see him taking it seriously and putting the effort, but there's such an interesting book called Grit by Angela Duckworth. And she studies, what is the really the top military university? You have to be the smartest of smart people. Like you have to work your whole life to go there, but a lot of people drop out.

And what is the differentiating factor between those that do and do not, and it is grit. So for me, I really feel strongly, yes, there's definitely some correlation, but I think there are a lot of smart people who take alternative 

Russell Ovans: paths. 

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My CEO, Jason Bailey is one of the smartest people I've ever met. And he's generally the smartest guy in the room. And he dropped out of university. He was taking drama. And dropped out after a year and a half, but super smart, super educated, growth mindset, all that kind of stuff, right? 

No, I get it. And the games industry is very unique in that way as well. We're not talking about finance or rocket science. 

Lizzie Mintus: For sure. In some industries you need to have a degree. And if you have a degree from the top place, it's always a great indicator, but it's not the indicator in games. There are a lot of great people who dropped out of whatever. 

Russell Ovans: For sure. Yeah. For sure. But, if I'm hiring, and I've hired and fired 100 plus people in my career, 

Lizzie Mintus: yeah. 

Russell Ovans: Interviewed thousands. If you've got a stack of resumes, which I love, the transcript to me is a really good first pass, right? Did they put in the work? Are they self motivated? Because that work ethic is going to translate into the workplace. They're not gonna half ass it.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, absolutely. I tell people that too. What did you do? But more importantly, what extra can you do, right? And this is, I got canceled on a LinkedIn post over this. People were furious. I shouldn't have to do anything else. I should do one interview and get the job. I'm like, that's fine for you to think that.

Good luck getting the job. 

Russell Ovans: It's competitive. Depends. Yeah. Look at 

Lizzie Mintus: this market. There's 500 applicants. Like you think you just downloaded, you're like, sorry, shitty LinkedIn profile. And you're just going to apply with that and get a job. You're not, someone else did their resume. They did all this extracurricular stuff. They took a course. They did volunteer work. They put up a portfolio. They got a bunch of reviews. Like they did all this stuff. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah. 

Lizzie Mintus: That's how life works. 

Russell Ovans: Especially in the games industry, which, again, is funny from somebody, like I said, I didn't pursue the games industry. It found me. So many people want to work in games and maybe you really don't. Like I think there's a lot of romance associated with it. And then because there's such a demand, like we, I remember we would put out entry level positions for data analysts at ESG back when we were growing and we would literally get 200 applicants. 

Lizzie Mintus: Oh, today, you might get that over the weekend. 

Russell Ovans: And I'm like, wow. And the games industry doesn't always have the best reputation for treating its employees well, because there's a million other who will take your job. So you can, some people will even go too far to say that they're exploited within the industry because of this.

If I'm a young computer science graduate or got a master's in data science or whatever, go to work somewhere else, and hone your craft, learn how data driven decisions are made in other industries that you may be interested in. Like for me, my dream job might be to work at a company like Spotify because I love music so much. Or early on in my career, I worked at a company called A Books, which is now the Amazon used books. In fact, Amazon bought it, right? Because I love books and if there's an industry or something that you enjoy, that's not gaming. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Russell Ovans: Maybe look there as a place, because yeah, it's tough right now in games. Games is cyclic, as we know, right? When it's going great, it's going great, and you're hiring everybody, and we went through that. We ended up at, I don't know, 240 employees at one point, right? And we're half that now. And which is terrible for the people affected by it. But yeah, widen your net.

Don't just be a games person. There's a whole world and wealth of employment opportunities. There's nonprofits, there's government. We need good people in all these sectors. So I can go there. Huh? 

Lizzie Mintus: Perhaps we need really good people more, especially in the government sector.

Russell Ovans: Yeah. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah. Games are great. And I know some people really love them. What an asinine thing to say, so I get it. But it's tough right now and look at all the opportunities to gain experience and hone your craft and then come to games later, which is effectively what I did, right? I got into the games industry when I was 40. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. Or, you could do a game jam. You can do so many things. You can find a mentor, I think, if you really have a growth mindset and that's really what you want. It's your job to find a way. And then you can work in an alternate industry. You have a long career, you can make many switches and have many identities. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah. You're the expert on that. Right? 

Lizzie Mintus: I think if you really want it, you can figure out how to get it, but that's my attitude in life. Yes, it's hard. I don't care. What can you do to get the job? Can you create a game on your own? Can you go to school? Can you read every book? Can you go to all the networking events? Like you can do something. I think. 

Russell Ovans: Can you play the games? 

Lizzie Mintus: Can you play the game? 

Russell Ovans: God, how many times have I interviewed people that haven't even played the games that we make? 

Lizzie Mintus: Oh, but that's cross. Like I used to recruit for general tech. People wouldn't download the app of the company that they're interviewing for. They have no background, right? And all of this just like, how can you go above and beyond? Why don't you read their financials? If they're a public company, why don't you go check out that? Why don't you watch YouTube videos, listen to podcasts, play the game, say what you might want to do in the game.

Hey, I had this idea and this company, I did this. What about this? 

Russell Ovans: No, that's really good advice. At a bare minimum, if you're interviewing with a games company, play all their games. 

Lizzie Mintus: If you're interviewing with a company, review their product, period. It doesn't have to be a game, right? Check it out. Yeah.

That's like the number one interview ender that I've seen. Oh, what do you think of our game? Oh, I haven't played it. I have no idea about it. Why are you interviewing here? 

Russell Ovans: It's like in our case, we're a mobile game studio and they're all free to play and then people will interview with us who only play console games, first person shooter, triple A titles. And I'm like you're gonna have to broaden that. The industry is massive and there's lots of different types of games and you gotta learn how they work, how they make money. You got to find the joy in those too. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yes, please. I have one last question. And before I ask it, I want to point people to East Sidegamesgroup. com. 

The last question is, I want to know more about data literacy in the game industry. Maybe across all roles. What do you need to understand and how can you go about learning it? 

Russell Ovans: Yes. You can read my book. Yes, that's how you can learn about 

Lizzie Mintus: Your book too. 

Russell Ovans: Yeah. But the The most free to play games are very heavily dependent on the data.

They're data driven, right? In terms of the, not just the marketing, but, the game design itself. Within a game studio, there's really two kinds of analysts. There's a game data analyst who looks at it as a product, works with product managers and producers and game designers on designing A B tests and then measuring the results of them. We changed the color of this icon. We changed the price of this in-app purchase bundle which made us more money, which improved retention, which improved ARPA, all that kind of stuff. So that's what game data analysts do.

But the people that they work with also have to understand, what are the KPIs that are the key performance indicators that are most important to the success of this product, our job and this company. So when you look at something like a free to play mobile game, things like lifetime value within a certain period of days from install, average revenue per daily active user, the D1, D7, D30 retention. These are all basic building blocks of understanding your product. And your product is, your game and your customers are the end users of it. So um, so that's one role within game studios. And so it's not just the analysts, but the game designers, the producers, the product managers, they all have to understand what are the KPIs that are going to be the most important to measure and improve? If you can measure it, you can improve it, to paraphrase Peter Drucker.

The other kind of analysts that work in game studios are the marketing data analysts, and their job is to predict revenue and then you can use that to predict return on your ad spend. So if you're going to go out and spend 10, 000 today on acquiring 1, 000 users how long is it going to take to get that 10, 000 back? Is it going to take 90 days, 180 days, or are we still going to be waiting five years from now, in which case we're bankrupt? And that's the area of data analytics within the gaming space that I enjoy the most, is that challenge of trying to figure out, How much money can we spend profitably to grow this game, so we're not going to be awake at night worrying that we're going to lose all this money. And we're going to maximize our profit or revenue or whatever the goal might be. And again, then you're working with the growth team. So user acquisition managers. And they tend to be people with a marketing background, performance marketing and all that.

But again, they need to understand, again, all these same attributes or KPIs that I was just talking about on the data side game data analytics side, all feed into exactly the same thing, because we're talking about what's the lifetime value of a user that we acquire? What's our expected lifetime value? And the distribution of potential lifetime values is very skewed, right? Our industry is very whale driven, right? We all know that. If only 5 percent of your players are ever going to make a purchase, that's where all your purchase revenue has to come from. And and out of that, 80 percent is going to come from maybe 10 percent 5 percent of your players.

So identifying them and being able to, with confidence extrapolate where you think that a cohort of users you just acquired is going to be, 90, 180 days from now. And that's the core focus of the book that I wrote because it's the fundamental pieces that you need to understand. Everybody who works in the game studio on the product production side, user acquisition side need to understand that the data analyst just isn't working in a vacuum and not being heard. They're all working together and then it makes the data analyst job much better in terms of communication, right? 

We can say they've had this impact on day seven retention and then people go, what does that mean? Yeah, we all should all know what that means. Right? 

Lizzie Mintus: And maybe if you have a growth mindset and you're not even in one of those roles, you will read it to understand more about how the industry as a whole works. 

Russell Ovans: Exactly. There's one part of the book that's something that product managers should read. And then there's another part of the book that UA managers should read and data analysts should read all of it. 

Lizzie Mintus: But maybe if you're working in a game studio too, it's helpful to understand, or if you want to work in a game studio or get a job in this space, you could read the book. And then you could say in your interview that you read the book and they will be impressed.

Russell Ovans: Yeah, I mean it started out as onboarding material for data analysts at our studio, right? So this is what you need to know to hit the ground running. 

Lizzie Mintus: Super helpful. Thank you for creating it. We'll link it in the podcast. We've been talking to Russell Ovans who is now a board member of East Side Games Group. Russell, where can people go to contact you or read your book or work at East Side Games?

Russell Ovans: You can find me on LinkedIn, that's the easiest way. The book is available on Amazon in most countries of the world, either as a print on demand or as an ebook. And yeah, my DMs are open on LinkedIn. And I hang out in, where you and I met, various Slack channels that are devoted to the games industry.

Lizzie Mintus: Perfect. And the book again is called, Game Analytics, Retention and Monetization in Free to Play Mobile Games. Thank you. 

Russell Ovans: Perfect. Thank you so much.

Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. To catch all the latest from Here's Waldo, you can follow us on LinkedIn. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. We'll see you next time.