The author of the Deconstructor of Fun blog has left the post of product manager at Supercell. His new place of work is the American Scopely.
At a Finnish startup, Katkoff was responsible for promoting Clash of Clans and working with partners. At Scopely, Mikhail will become the product director.
He explained his departure from one of the most successful mobile companies in the world by his desire to be at the forefront of a new trend.
“It is incredibly difficult to create exciting free-to-play games, it is extremely difficult and effective to promote them, distribute them globally, track their performance and monetize non-paying players. For game studios, it is especially difficult to implement all this at once. … And I believe that as the market matures, there will be an increasingly narrow specialization between these functions.”
Katkoff expects the emergence of new innovative teams that will primarily focus on creating games. In turn, Scopely (among many other marketing companies) will assist such studios in marketing, advertising and analytics.
Before Supercell, Mikhail worked at Rovio and Digital Chocolate.
Scopely is currently positioning itself as a next-generation mobile entertainment platform. Earlier this year, she announced the creation of an entire network that will help developers monetize and promote gaming products.
A year ago, $8.5 million was invested in Scopely.
Sources: gamesindustry.biz , deconstructoroffun.com and venturebeat.com