Levelling up with Anna Stoilova

Anna Stoilova is the passionate co-founder of independent game studio, Rogues, as well as a Women in Games ambassador and startup coach. She has an extensive background in product marketing, design and UX, and is using these skills to build a community-based post-apocalyptic gaming universe incorporating the blockchain.

MOI: Tell us about your journey and how you got to become the founder and creator of Rogues??

Anna: Originally from a design and product background, I’ve always been attracted to the creative world of gaming.??

Back in 2017, while I was still a designer, me and my co-founder were discussing and testing ideas for games and similar experiences. We then created our first startup in VR gamified training. We sold our educational gamified VR software to US-based schools, hospitals and even the World Health Organisation. While we realised that we’d prefer to do full scale games instead of training products, this experience gave me the startup “bug” to want to keep on my entrepreneurial journey.?

The opportunity to set up a gaming studio came in 2022. With the rise of web3, a lot of people were looking for games to integrate with blockchain for ultimate transparency and decentralisation. We also loved the community aspect of web3, and we went to create Rogues - an independent game studio creating the next gen of multiplayer games in a post apocalyptic universe.?

?Since then, I’ve been on this journey and I’ve learned a lot, in product creation, business management and many more areas.?

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MOI: What's your secret to getting attention and turning heads with your work? And what do you think is the key to success??

Anna: For me, my secret has always been being true to myself and my own talents and abilities. In this day and age, it’s very easy to get FOMO-ed (that means, Fear of Missing Out) and think that everyone around you is doing better than you or be tempted to shift focus. But the reality is that everyone’s talents are different.?

By staying true to my talents as product manager, studio owner, speaker with interest in marketing, I’ve generally managed to move forward and improve. Working with super talented people (like our artist!) has also helped a lot. Having a team and co-founders that are great at what they do will get you so much further. When it comes to creativity and value creation, there’s no room for politics, ego or simply “showing up”. You have to be your best, and give your best.??

The key to success is to follow your own unique power. Find what you’re best at, not just average at. Focus on that strength. Obsess over it. Perfect it. And you’ll go very, very far.??

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MOI: What is one of the best examples of gamification you've seen??

Anna: We all already know that gamification, if done correctly, can be an extremely powerful tool for all spheres of marketing and product development.??

And therefore one of the best examples of gamification is outside of the gaming industry. This is the educational app Duolingo. When I first started using it, I was immediately hooked by the Daily Streak system they had developed to keep app users coming back every single day. If you skipped a day - you’d lose your streak. After reaching more than 100 consecutive days of learning, I was ready to do anything to save my streak from getting down to 0. I was hooked!?

What Duolingo does really well is to use a combination of classic gamification techniques - streaks, leaderboards, badges and points. These strategies help them keep retention rate high, retain users’ motivation and demonstrate a sense of journey progress to the users.??

I’m the living example of this - I gladly gave away ￡15.99 (twice), simply to keep my daily streak intact!?

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MOI: What is one thing creatives could learn from the world of gaming??

For me, a game is the ultimate art form.

Anna: Within a single game, you have multiple art worlds living together - from visual art, to sound, storytelling, programming and of course game design.??

The gaming industry itself blends the worlds of art and design. The final product has an artistic form, but ultimately it has to serve a purpose for the players. It has to deliver joy and provide the players with a place where they feel they belong.?

This is no easy task, and the creatives in the gaming industry often have to work very, very hard. The game creation process doesn’t need ego, but discipline. The creatives need to come up with many options for a single character that works for the final product, not just for their own ego. They also need to work as a team in a cross-department capacity to make sure that the game is consistent and is delivered as a cohesive product.??

Creating games is not an easy task, so whether you work in a big company or a tiny one, don’t embark on the journey without a hefty dose of discipline.?

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MOI: Where do you see the future of gaming???

Anna: There are three aspects that I think will fundamentally change the future of gaming as we know it. These are decentralisation, user generated content (UGC) & AI.??

The three are linked, as there is a paradigm shift for consumer products. People want more transparency, control and as much content as possible, at an affordable price. Decentralisation, with the help of blockchain, allows for players to feel part of the creator team and creates a sense of community. This allows for players to also become creators and contribute to the final product under the shape of UGC. And, of course, to create more content in a more cost-efficient way, AI will be a helpful tool for studios to utilise for game creation.??

With these trends, we will see more and more smaller gaming studios breaking through the barrier and reaching mass audiences on a small budget.

As long as they know how to engage the players and create a community around their game, the world is their oyster!?