World Gaming Executives Interview Alexander Reitsma Managing Director at JAG about the future for Just a Game and recent acquisitions.

Tell us a little bit about Just A Game, their history within the video games industry, how they got started, what's their current position in the global market?

Just A Game started in 2010 and was founded and financed by BobMobile. BobMobile, a strong international player in the mobile content sector wanted get a foothold in the online (free2play) gaming sector and decided it was best to do so by setting up a dedicated unit in order to achieve this.

Starting with just a handful of employees back in 2010, Just A Game today employs about 35 employees that focus on online game publishing and distribution. Just A Game is a challenger in the online gaming sector that started with a focus on strategy war games but wants to expand into additional areas including new gaming verticals like social/casual and sport games.

Looking at the website, there is a lot of focus on browser games, is this a platform which Just A Game believes can harbour a profitable future?

Yes, definitely! Our existing games are already profitable and browser games are the future of Just A Game. In addition we will focus on mobile games as well, both cross-platform to WEB as well as standalone games.

What has been the success of some of the browser based games?

The success of our games has really been a team effort. On the one side we have our developers which have done a great job in bringing our games to life but they couldn’t accomplish it alone without Just A Game’s producing, product management, community management and marketing teams who have done a great job bringing the games to market. This goes all the way from customer acquisition to in-game management to retention management.

The recent acquisition of Cliq B.V. should strengthen your position in the mobile entertainment market. Why is this such an important strategic move?

From the mobile entertainment standpoint, Cliq BV is a perfect match to the BobMobile Group and brings a rapid geographical expenditure for both companies.

For Just A Game the acquisition brings additional distribution power for web products but especially for our planned mobile games.  The biggest benefit of the merger is that Just A Game and Cliq will be able to combine energies to work on mobile projects and their distribution.

Do you see a future where gaming platforms such as consoles and traditional PC gaming is overtaken by mobile entertainment and more casual browser-based gaming?

We believe that traditional console and PC gaming will not be overtaken by the mobile entertainment or browser based gaming market but that they will move closer together.

In the future we expect to see a smoother transition between platforms. In addition technical enhancements and quicker internet connections will allow browser-based and mobile based games to improve drastically in terms of quality and gaming experience.

Last but not least, we expect games to become more communicative, social and interactive.

How important is the freemium model going to be in the future? Do in-game purchases have a viable shelf-life or is it just a gimmick in the industry?

The freemium model is already a billion dollar industry and not just a gimmick. The freemium model offers players a way to play and test games for free and to decide at any moment in the future if they would like to spend money on a certain game or not.

The biggest thing freemium games have brought to the market is a lower entry barrier for the end user to start playing new games. Also we see a huge wave of a new type of development for games that today hundreds of millions of people are playing all over the world.

Thanks to: 

http://www.justagame.com
http://www.bobmobile.de
http://www.cliqdigital.com

http://www.clevercomm.com