At Casual Connect Europe, Fiden announced that FunPlus is growing rapidly and has positions open in their offices in San Francisco, Vancouver and Beijing.
Dan Fiden, Chief Strategy Officer at FunPlus, believes the company will be most affected in the next few years by the growth toward being global. He points out that in the past, ‘global’ companies could only be considered ‘global’ if you exclude areas such as China. But as business models in the East and the West converge, both games and game developers/operators will become truly global. FunPlus intends to be one of the truly global companies, and it is well on the way, building global games and development teams. Fiden emphasizes, “Great teams build great games that work no matter where they are developed.”
The trend that he sees most impacting the game industry as a whole is the transition to free-to-play games. The west is still at the beginning of this transition, but game companies and developers are learning how to make games to accommodate this trend. The future of the industry will certainly be interesting with the innovation and new ideas that will result.
Feel Good Moments
Fiden met Andy Zhong, founder of FunPlus, as an investor with Signia Venture Partners. This was a company Fiden founded with Rick Thompson to fund early stage investment in free-to-play games. At that time, FunPlus had already achieved a high degree of success and profitability. Over the course of a year, as he got to know Zhong, Fiden watched it more than double its revenue and profit, while becoming a successful mobile business. When he was offered the opportunity to join the team and help the business grow, he was excited at the opportunity. He had worked with a Chinese game development team at Pogo’s Shanghai studio in the early 2000s; however, the Chinese game industry had changed considerably in ten years. He finds the team dynamics at FunPlus very exciting, and he feels great pride in seeing people he has hired at the start of their career go on to something interesting. Their goal is to become the first truly global game company, and Fiden believes they are well on the way to succeeding.
Fiden is also proud of the time he won money playing poker with David Perry. He admits, “Of course, he’s won more money from me, but it was a thrill to win money from the creator of Earthworm Jim.”
Time For Some Fun
In his free time, Fiden enjoys surfing and playing with his bulldogs, Merle and Tiny. He also enjoys playing video games across different platforms, but his favorite platform is his iPad Mini because it is a great size, and games look great on it. He enjoys longer sessions on it and is currently playing Republique. His smartphone works well for shorter session casual games such as Family Farm Seaside.
While playing casual games, Fiden usually limits his spending to $5, although he has spent $20 a few times on League of Legends. On the other hand, he has yet to spend anything on Candy Crush Saga.
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