“Treating what we are building not just as a game but as a social platform is very rare”

• Social First recently secured a $4.2 million investment with the funds fueling the development of its debut MMO project
• There are plans for further investment with an A-round intended before the game’s release

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Raising $4.2 million last month to “redefine social gaming”, Finland-based Social First is currently working on a new, unnamed sandbox MMO game. 

Over the years, mobile games have increasing integrated social elements to keep players engaged. But Social First says it plans run even deeper.

To find out more about the development of the studio’s debut game and how the new funds will help fuel its growth, we caught up with CEO Kim Soares, who shares all of the latest details about its big ambitions.

PocketGamer.biz: Can you first tell us a little about how 2024 has been going for Social First? 

Kim Soares: It has been going great! We did a 30+ day closed alpha earlier this year with exceptional results, and now, securing a seed investment in this climate, we are very proud of what we have achieved as a team.

Will the funds mostly go toward your new MMO project?

Yes, we have hired five new team members since the seed round and are now 20 people, enabling us to do more and faster. We are gearing up for an early access release before the end of the year.

Our plan is to do an A-round before the game’s release to further grow the team and scale the game in a serious fashion, but we now have an ample runway to get the game where we want it to be before actual launch.

Can you tell us about the project? It’s intended to be a game that also emphasises the social element; what was the original idea behind this?

Our founding team used to work together for many years on Pixel Worlds, developing that game from the ground up and then running live ops for many years and building a great community. We now also have new team members who have worked on highly social games like RuneScape and Movie Star Planet. We have taken the lessons from those projects for this new game we have been developing since 2022.

The new game is a collection of different features, everything from farming and co-op dungeons to PvP and crafting. One of the core elements is the in-game editor that players use to create their own worlds, as well as the levels for the official content, from parkour to dungeons and PvP.

We are very proud of the editor we have created. Even if I say so myself, it is on par with the likes of Super Mario Maker, even better in some respects, and it is cross-platform and MMO.

We understand the social elements very well and treat our new game as much as a social platform as a game. Games are fast becoming, and for Generations Z and Alpha, they are indeed already the most important social platform. We have seen this firsthand in the core team’s previous game and view it as the next big shift in games.

And how do you intend for the game to stand out among other titles that have become popular particularly those that have a social element? And what can you tell us about your cross-platform efforts?

I think our approach, treating what we are building not just as a game or even a social game, but as a social platform, is very rare, if not unique.

Sure, countless games have social elements, but they are always games first with added social elements like chat, clans, etc. In our core team’s previous game, Pixel Worlds, 94% of the players surveyed reported having made new friends by playing the game. That kind of social connectivity is what we mean when we say we are building a social platform.

When it comes to industry behemoths like Roblox and Minecraft, we know from surveys of Pixel Worlds players and our new community that up to 80% of them play those games, too.

So, for us, it is not a zero-sum game. We are not even planning to try and get users from those other games to exclusively switch to our game because we know we don’t have to: our players play other games, too, and that is just fine.

Since the first demo in 2022, the game has been working cross-platform on mobile, PC, and Mac. We are also planning to release it on at least one of the consoles.

What phase in development is the game currently at?

We had closed alpha some six months ago. There were some 2,400 players, and the closed alpha was online for around a month.

The results were extremely good and proved that our thesis regarding several social and game economy factors are indeed correct. The early access later this year will already be an online version of the game, albeit with just a fraction of the content.

Our aim is to develop the game with the help of our community, adding new features and optimising existing ones based on their feedback, so we want to get it out for our players as early as possible.

Can you tell us about the current state of the Finnish games industry? Are things looking up in terms of investment overall, or has it been tough the past few years as the industry has faced challenges?

It has for sure been a tough past few years for the games industry in general, and Finland is no exception.

The massive layoffs have not affected the Finnish games industry as much as some other countries, but there have still been layoffs and studio closures.

It is also a question of unfortunate timing; many Finnish game startups needed their next funding round to happen, and then suddenly, in 2022, the investments dried up. It has been like that for two years now, with no change in sight.

There have also been talks about how there are not nearly as many game startups in Finland as there used to be. I would chalk that to the investment drought and expect new ones to start popping up as the money starts to flow again, as there are a lot of talented and inspiring examples in Finland.

And finally, is there anything else we should be on the lookout for from Social First and your new project? Any release date in mind?

As far as we know, we are the only game company building real-money item trading into our game from the start. We are not talking about crypto or NTFs, I want to be very clear on that, but having some of the items in our new game tradeable outside the game with real money.

Practically no game allows that, but everyone in the industry knows that millions of people trade in-game items and currencies in the grey markets. For example, RuneScape has had a bustling grey market ever since it launched over 20 years ago.

As a developer you don’t want your players to be “illegally” trading items as that has an adverse effect on your in-game economy, player progression and other things and it also exposes your players to various scams. As we know that gamers want to and will trade items regardless of whether it is allowed, we decided to make it a sanctioned and safe activity.

When surveyed, 60% of our community reported that they are interested in trading game items for money. We are partnering with an established service that facilitates online game item trading with hard IDs, Know Your Customer practices, and the following of all the rules and regulations to make it secure.

For us, allowing item trading outside the game is first and foremost a retention driver: we know from experience that when players can create wealth in the game, they are much more likely to stay in the game for years and years.

The actual release happens when we feel that there is enough content in the game. That will likely be late 2025 or early 2026. Then again, game releases these days are much less binary than back in the day: games can stay in early access for many years and have a lot of content and players and, as mentioned, we are launching an early access version in just a few months from now.