My company bootstrapped to >€5M in net profit within two years, then nearly folded, and reinvented itself. We made extraordinarily successful games and failed miserably with others. I will explore our single costliest mistake of the past and our most valuable asset today.

1. THIS TALK ABOUT CULTURE IS FOR:
(Assuming it goes according to my plan)
vlad@cm.games @vladtastic
★Founders aspiring to get it right this time
★Managers struggling to scale up or right the ship
★Employees trying to avoid another disappointment
★Investors aiming to understand their targets better
★Visitors who just want to deal with their email/IG (I won’t bother you)

2. Hi,
★ Helped build 30+ games
★ Mentor and investor in game incubators
★ Co-created a game with >350 mln installs
★ Love road trips, yachting, coding, art, design,
fitness, cooking, modern philosophy, aviation
I’m a co-founder and CEO of CM Games
Vladimir “Vlad” Funtikov
Founder, CEO at CM Games

3. CM GAMES
EST. 2010
Making games since 2010
★ ~500 mln mobile downloads
★ PGBiz Top 50 mobile developer (x3)
★ Steam VR Platinum (2021)
★ Top 25 Valuable in Tech (EE, 2021)
★ “Web3” game in 2023
★ Team of 150, remote/hybrid
Images: Nitro Nation, Into The Radius VR

4. WHAT MAKES A STUDIO GREAT
…TO START OR INVEST INTO
🚀 💪
🎯 💣
Shared understanding of
methods and ideas
Epic culture
Have done exactly that
Can hire their own team
Elite leadership
…followed by a cannonball
Many bullets…
Crystal clear why the product
fits the market in its phase
USP/PMF

5. Image: u/TheResearchPilot, MSFS2020
STUDIO CULTURE
★ ALWAYS exists
★ Serves business goals
★ Changes and requires maintenance
★ Never good or bad, always weak or strong
★ Rigidness/centralization depends on org goals
A TOTALITY OF BEHAVIORAL PATTERNS

6. BINARY DEFINITION OF CULTURES
(AS NEVER SEEN IN REAL LIFE)
- Motivation is layered
- Held together by larger-than-life figures
- What isn’t forbidden is permitted
- Climbing the ladder drops restrictions
- Holding on to key staff
- Responsibility = punishment
- CEO friends are impressed by your
authority
WEAK
- Shared reason to be here
- Everything seems to “just work”
- Freedom through responsibility
- Climbing the ladder raises the bar
- Struggle to hire, release easily
- Responsibility = ownership
- CEO friends are wondering how you’re still
in business
STRONG

7. THREATS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Awesome
culture
Values VS Process
A kind word and a gun
Theory of constraints
Strata, EQ, freedom via responsibility
Chicken and egg problem
Hiring to match VS matching to hires
Founder values
Graves/Wilbur spirals VS Adizes cycles
A
B
C
D

8. FOUNDER VALUES
★ Appropriate for studio lifecycle stage?
○ Warlords in infancy, achievers in the Go-Go phase,
integrators in prime
★ Fully synchronized?
○ Do people talk and hear each other?
○ Leadership check-ins, development council, …
★ Projected ⬇️➡️ via a robust process?
○ Integrated into hiring, onboarding, reporting?
+ TOP MGMT

9. VALUES <-> PROCESSES
★ Who are why? Why are we?
○ Values as a double-edged sword
○ Serving business goals!
○ Mission VS Evolutionary Goal
★ How are values delivered to the “customer”?
○ Documents, hiring, meetings, feedback
★ How do we measure our values?
★ How is power assigned/divided?
○ “CAPI”
feat. Adizes Institute

10. THEORY OF CONSTRAINTS
★ What’s getting in the way of €1b+ market cap?
★ Middle managers as bottlenecks?
○ Managerial role conflicts (PAEI)
○ Depth and horizon of thinking/planning
○ “Comfort+” as growth pathway
★ Does cyclic improvement work?
○ Through what process (CAPI)?
Eliyahu Goldratt et al
Identify
Exploit
Subordinate
Improve TOC Cycle

11. “Strong culture reduces leadership
workload, enabling a quicker, safer
journey”
(Mandatory motivational quote) Optimization
Image: MSFS2020

12. FURTHER READING
Smarter people and their works
vlad@cm.games @vladtastic
★ The Goal
★ Creativity Inc.
★ The Hard Thing About Hard Things
★ Leadership and Self-deception
★ Only the Paranoid Survive
★ The Everything Store / Working Backwards
★ Zero to One
★ Nonviolent Communication
★ Elite Game Developers (blog), Long Term Game*