Severin Vervald

Falling Pickaxe borrows ideas from streamers and idle games, and you're even running a live countdown stream before launch. Do game studios need to become media companies and entertain players outside the casino itself, or is gameplay still enough?

Yes, you hit the nail on the head. Falling Pickaxe is a compilation of current trends, recognizable aesthetics, and highly accessible gameplay: all factors designed to drive its popularity. The idea of doing a live countdown stream as an announcement was a direct nod to the game's core mechanic, which was originally popularized by streaming culture itself.

Right now, simply making a good game is no longer enough, especially if you aren't a giant like Pragmatic Play. For studios that want to see real results, strong performance, and beautiful GGR metrics, evolving into a media company isn't just an option — it's a necessity. And this applies to both the B2B and B2C fronts. You need to create marketing touchpoints with both the decision-makers who get your games into casino lobbies and the actual end-users who will play them.

The game provider market has become incredibly dynamic. Thanks to the power of AI, the barrier to entry has dropped significantly. Because of this, a studio has to fight for the attention of everyone involved in the ecosystem to ensure a new title doesn't just launch into the void. Every provider approaches this differently — whether through streamers, video formats, working with SEO affiliates, or media buying. There's no single "correct" answer; all available communication channels are valuable.

We are entering an era where a studio must constantly stay in motion, invent fresh concepts, and rethink how it interacts with players, operators, and the broader B2B community. That is, of course, if the studio actually wants to be successful.

Chicken Revenge and Rise of the Chickus prove you're not afraid of weird concepts. Where do these ideas actually come from? Is there a process, or do you just follow internet culture and see what makes you laugh?

Ideas are always all around us — whether it's viral Reels, top-charting games on the App Store or Steam Early Access, or even just general content trends. There isn't just a strict process behind it, there is our entire team. Everyone at the studio genuinely gets a kick out of what they do, and every single employee from a junior to a top manager can pitch an idea and see it realized.

It could be a unique visual style, an unusual mechanic, a specific feature in the math model, or something else entirely. That is exactly how our games are born: through pure creativity, fresh concepts, and something that hooks one of us and resonates with the rest.

Naturally, we keep a close watch on internet culture. For some of us, it's a core part of our jobs, while others just stumble upon inspiration while scrolling through memes at night. You could say our idea generation process is non-stop and continuous: it is literally in the studio's DNA. The only downside is that not every idea makes it to production, simply because our development and art teams have capacity limits.

Chicken Revenge came to life as a classic "What if?" moment. We saw yet another clone of a standard Chicken game and decided to look at the whole situation literally from the other side.

Be honest: how do you know whether a crazy idea is worth building? At what point do you say "This is genius," and at what point do you say "Okay, this is too weird even for us"?

The main dividing line between "This is genius" and "We're not building this" comes down to the team's consensus: open discussions with our mathematicians, artists, game designers, and the rest of the crew. We've brainstormed a lot of insane ideas for new mechanics, but many of them simply didn't pass basic reality checks like, "How do we even balance the math for this?" or "Will this actually hook the player?"

Any crazy idea is a good idea, but it has to be grounded in reality and practical experience. That's exactly where we often run into the "This is genius, BUT..." moment.

Honestly, nothing is "too weird" for us. If you look at the studio's portfolio, you'll notice not just different types of games, but a massive variety in settings and visual styles. Our artists have a real knack for taking an unusual vision and transforming it into a cohesive aesthetic that flows beautifully through the entire game.