Miniclip makes games by creating a space where people from around the world are entertained and can play together. 20 years of entertaining more than 60 million people each day is an outstanding milestone. We don’t have to explain complicated rule sets for people to play our games. The core of Miniclip is to develop, publish and distribute, super intuitive, easy, pick up and play games so that anyone can play – anytime, anywhere. All part of our quest to become the ‘World’s most popular Gaming Company’ by ‘Unleashing the Gamer in Everyone’.
Miniclip has been a pioneer in free-to-play gaming since the web, where we pretty much popularised the concept in the West by offering our games free on miniclip.com. Rob Small, now President of Miniclip, founded the company in 2001. He pivoted the business in 2010 when the App Store started by building games for smartphones. Since then, Miniclip has gone into different business models, from a premium model to a full free-to-play model, which is the dominant business model for the games industry. We like to spot trends and look to the future, and we spend and invest a lot of time in having that foresight and then delivering on it.
In February 2015, Miniclip received a large majority investment from Tencent, one of the world’s largest technology companies and the world’s largest games publisher.
We have come a long way since flash games in the noughties, and our growth is only going one way. In the past two years, we welcomed the teams from Playsport (famous for Motorsport Manager), Yakuto (creators of Darts of Fury), Masomo (home of Head Ball 2), Ilyon (designers of Bubble Shooter), Eight Pixels Square (Sniper Strike) now operating as Miniclip Derby, Gamebasics (creators of OSM Online Soccer Manager), and most recently Green Horse Games (home of Football Rivals) to the Miniclip Group.
We caught up with Rob to hear his thoughts about Miniclip and the future.
“Being successful in business for two decades is a massive achievement, but being successful in the gaming business for so long means performing at a different level. Statistics show that about 50% of all new businesses survive five years or more, and about 30% survive 10 years or more. So, celebrating 20 years is already truly something, but why is Miniclip so well prepared for another significant chapter?
The industry has evolved so much in the last 20 years. From technology, platforms, data to business models, and Miniclip has continuously evolved to adapt to these changes. We don’t always choose the path our competition takes. We moved to mobile while the rest of the world focused on consoles, and we embraced free-to-play before many others did too.
Launching new products is an exciting time for us. Our teams’ excitement to the thrill of how the market responds and how that influences what we do next is fascinating. The fact that we are doing that on a very regular basis keeps it exciting and fresh.
The most crucial ingredient in Miniclip’s success so far, and why I believe Miniclip will continue to be successful for the next 20 years, is its people. Every day I work with passionate and talented people. As a business, we see it as an infinite game, through which we are building a company our children and grandchildren can be proud to work for and build their careers at — a company that cares for and respects its people.
Some people do not realise that they are gamers… from playing noughts and crosses, to doing the crossword, or playing Call of Duty, those are all games. Distilling the very thing that people want into the most accessible variation means we create games that people want to play. That is innovation in the broader economic environment but also an enabler within our industry”.
“The entertainment business is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting industries to work in!”
