Inside Subway Surfers, Mobile Gaming’s Most Enduring Hit

Fourteen years after launch, Subway Surfers is still one of the biggest games in the world. In this episode, Kalie Moore sits down with Mathias Gredal Nørvig, CEO of SYBO, to unpack how a mobile game launched in 2012 continues to attract between 100 and 150 million monthly players while nearly every other hit from its era has faded away. They explore the philosophy behind Subway Surfers' iconic World Tour live operations, why empowering artists and designers has kept the game feeling fresh for more than a decade, how community ideas have directly shaped new characters and game modes, and why collaborations with games like Brawl Stars have become some of the studio's most successful partnerships. Mathias also shares how Subway Surfers Cities evolved from years of experimentation, why SYBO deliberately avoided cannibalizing its flagship title, and what they're still learning as they build the franchise's next chapter.

The conversation also dives into one of gaming's most remarkable organic marketing stories: how Subway Surfers became one of TikTok's biggest gaming phenomena without spending on user acquisition, why SYBO gives its social team extraordinary creative freedom, and how the studio thinks about virality, platform expansion, and community-first marketing. Mathias shares SYBO's measured approach to AI, lessons from becoming part of Miniclip and Tencent, why the company stepped back from large-scale licensing despite nearly five billion downloads, and how sustainability, accessibility, and healthy gameplay have become core parts of the studio's long-term vision. The episode offers a rare look inside one of mobile gaming's most enduring success stories and what it takes to build an evergreen franchise that continues to evolve without losing what made it special.

We’d also like to thank Heroic Labs for making this episode possible! Thousands of studios have trusted Heroic Labs to help them focus on their games and not worry about gametech or scaling for success. To learn more and reach out, visit https://heroiclabs.com/?utm_source=Naavik&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Podcast 

This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.

Kalie: Welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, Kalie Moore. Some studios build an empire on a single hit. SYBO built the biggest hit in the history of mobile and then spent more than a decade proving that it wasn't a fluke. Subway Surfers launched in 2012, and 14 years later, it's the most downloaded mobile game of all time at nearly five billion downloads, and it still pulls between 100 and 150 million players every single month, a lifespan almost no game of its generation has come close to matching.

The engine behind it is World Tour, which is a new city every three weeks, running for 13 straight years, making it one of the longest live op cadences. A lot of that staying power no longer comes from the game at all. Subway Surfers is the third most used gaming hashtag on TikTok, a spot that SYBO earned without spending a single dollar.

And when Conan O'Brien wanted to reach a younger audience this year at the Oscars, he did through... he did so through a Subway Surfers gameplay video. Now, after 14 years, SYBO finally has a second game, Subway Surfers Cities, which was built in-house and still inside the franchise, cracked the top five most downloaded games for six weeks on virality alone without cannibalizing the original.

Whether it's a true second pillar or a way to extend the first one's runway is one of the most interesting open questions in mobile right now. My guest today is Mathias Gredal Nørvig, CEO of SYBO, the animator-founded Danish studio behind all of it, which is now part of Miniclip, and through it, Tencent.

Today, we're gonna talk about how you keep one game alive for 14 years, what it actually takes to build a second act around a single IP, and whether being a one-game studio makes you focused or fragile. Mathias, welcome to the podcast.

Mathias: Thanks so much. Happy to be here.

Kalie: All right, let's get into the longevity of the game, which is so impressive.

So, as I mentioned almost earlier, that Subway Surfers is still pulling between 100 and 150 million players per month while almost every other mobile hit from 2012 is dead. When you strip away the nostalgia, what's the actual machine that keeps a 14-year-old game at the top? What does that look like?

Mathias: I think, I think what Sylvester and Bode came up with in 2012 is lightning in a bottle.

It was a unique game, recognizable over-the-shoulder, intuitive gameplay. It, it had the fun and the funk of painting street art, running from a guard, and it and it just plays really well. So, the, the smoothness of the graphics, the characters, the, the rebelliousness means that it, it, it helped make street culture and underground more mainstream and is still, to this day the most downloaded game.

Kalie: Well, well done. That's no small feat. You've also kept the game feeling really current with things like PVP activations, different brand collabs, and event cities with their own modes kinda layered on top of that main city. Of everything you've added over the years, w- what's done the most to make a 2012 game feel like something that could have shipped this year?

Mathias: After the, the launch of the game, I think what we've done successfully now for, for more than 14 years is to empower the team. So, we have an amazing design team, an amazing art team, and the engineers are continuously developing both new features but also optimizing, so it still runs on most devices.

It's a game that you can play also on a hand-me-down. And then I think what we've been able to do is to encourage the community to play with us, not just play the game, but also play with us as a studio in terms of making their own content, partner up with us, send fan art, or come with suggestions for new characters.

And, and our collaboration with the audience, I think, is a, is a key component to why we're still successful so many years after.

Kalie: Can we dive into that a little bit deeper? Can you give me an example of maybe a character or a different game mode that you heard from the community and then implemented that?

Mathias: So, we have two, two very good examples. Actually, one of our best-selling characters, one of the fan favorites, is Bob the Blob.

Mm-hmm.

We have the core crew Jake, Tricky, Yutani, and Fresh, and they are clearly coming f- different backgrounds but coming from a group where they know each other. It's set in a near futuristic world, so they are clearly human, and we wanted to expand on what's possible without making it fully sci-fi.

Kalie: Mm-hmm.

Mathias: One of our fans suggested what, what if there was a science experiment gone wrong for Yutani, the inventor of the hoverboard and send a, a concept art for a blob that could then run. And what we could see was that the audience actually liked that we took it one step further away. We're not going laser guns and dragons, but the fact that it could be a costume or it could be a science experiment, I think made it close enough.

Another example that actually went quite viral was that we had players on TikTok sharing videos of them trying not to pick up coins. So, it wasn't our... It didn't start as our feature. It started as a community-driven, "Hey, isn't it fun to see if you think it's about picking up coins? What if I put it on its head and say it, it's nothing about picking up coins. It's the opposite." So how do you avoid the, the coin lines? How do you keep making or how, how low can you be on coins when you complete the run? And I think that both of those are examples of, of where fans have also inspired us to, to keep alive and, and fresh.

Kalie: Love that. We're gonna do much more of a deep dive in TikTok 'cause I think this is something that you guys handle in such a very unique and interesting way.

I mentioned brand collabs. Do you have any brand favorites from the past 14 years you could share?

Mathias: We've tried a lot of different, we've had NFL players, football players running in the game. We've had brands that, that wanted to pay to, to play in our universe. We've had celebrities talking about us or pro- posting us because they wanted to either be a character or would like to see how, how we could work together.

By far the one that has worked the best is when we work with other games. With my favorite example, and I think that was also because it was the biggest mobile collab of last year, was of course Brawl Stars-

Of course ... where we had Subway Surfers live as a feature in their game, and we also had the Brawl Stars characters doing a showdown PVP mode in Subway Surfers.

And it, the fact that we could make it as a barter deal saying, "Look, we're not, none of us are making direct money. We can hype each other, and we can see what the game teams come up with, a relatively free playing field, what would Subway Surfers look like in, in in Brawl Stars, and what would Brawl Stars look like in Subway Surfers?"

One example is that or one of the, the ca- the caveats or curiosities about that collaboration is that of course we don't have shooting, we don't have weapons in Subway Surfers. It's a, as I said, near futuristic, but it's also a safe environment. It's, it's, it's a family, family-first and for all ages. And, and it wouldn't look right if we were pl- putting the direct sort of weapons from Brawl Stars into a near futuristic environment.

So, we chose that perhaps things that exploded or things that would shoot were paint guns or paint bombs.

Kalie: Nice.

Mathias: Because you would, you would also see that in the street art community that sometimes you, you splash a wall, or you do something to a, to a piece. So, so I think it worked really well.

And what I liked the most, but that actually also goes to Crossy Road and to Rovio and the others we've played with, is when the game teams inspire each other and the marketing teams go wild at, "Okay, this is funny. We can play with each other." The, the banter and the sort of, "Well, this is fun, we can do more," has worked really well for us.

Kalie: Can you share any details about the ROI? Did you get new, a new audience into Subway Surfers?

Mathias: The, the challenge with our virality is of course that we are getting a lot of players anyway.

So, we have a- around a million daily new installs, and this is, mind you, still 14 years after launch. And therefore some other companies that would spend or hope to get spikes, hope to get close to our download numbers.

We, we, our spikes are less than, than others because we have such a mature and such a, a strong pipeline of, of people in com- But what we could see, for example, with Brawl Stars is that September is usually our lowest month of the year. It's the back to school lull and, and the players are, are finding out their play patterns for, for the year.

You have parents being more busy. There's a lot of factors mean, that means that people in general play a little less and eCPMs are usually not the highest in September. What we saw with September with Brawl Stars is that was the best month of the year we had.

Kalie: Nice.

Mathias: So, it was on par with our December, which is usually where we pride ourself at Zybo for, for owning Christmas.

Every other game developer knows that once people get new phones whether it's because they're affluent enough to afford them, whether it's the first phone they have, or whether they, they upgrade their model, Subway Surfers is one of the titles that we can see spike in downloads during the Christmas days.

So, the fact that we could partner ourselves to a, a strong September was, was a proof of, of concept for us.

Kalie: That's a, that's a great ROI. Okay, I wanted to talk a little bit about World Tour. So actually maybe you can explain what World Tour is for our listeners who maybe haven't played Subway Surfers.

And then once we get into that, I have some specific questions about just your live op cadence, but why don't you start with what is World Tour?

Mathias: So, Subway Surfers is a game of running on trains, collecting coins and what the founders came up with quite early the year after launch was, "Wouldn't it be fun if the crew actually went to new cities?"

So that the gameplay is recognizable, the controls are the same, the characters can evolve, but it's a way, it's a constant furnace to make sure that the environment always looks fresh, and there is a reason why new skaters, new crew members are joining, because now we're going to Paris, now we're going to New York, now we're going to Beijing.

It it has become the blueprint for all other live ops that uses a World Tour. Subway Surfers was proudly introducing it, and it means that, that we have it as a way of making sure that the app stores know that we have a new city coming. We know that the players love that now there's a new city with some new characters.

We make sure to visit, I would say all over the world, but of course we have an over-representation in, in in our main markets. And then we make sure to both show a culturally relevant sort of historic version of what that country looks like, but also a modern version. So, when we went to Shanghai, we both had someone dressed a character dressed very Shanghai historic, like 100 years ago, but we also had what you, what a no- a modern Shanghai Chinese would, would look like today.

And I think what that does is it allows players to sort of explore the world with us. The, the fun fact is that when you see other cities, you can definitely feel like those cities because the artists we have are amazing and makes, make art based on either having been there or Googled or watched shows and found both the trains, the style of a guard, the style of, of bridges and, and elements in the environment.

But at the same time if you, if once we visit your own city, we've actually seen sometimes that those are the harshest critics because an endless runner is, of course, endless by design. Mm. So it keeps running. That means that you are not, once you cross the Tower Bridge of London, you're not getting to Piccadilly necessarily every time.

So, so if you're having parts of the world where you're running and it's recognizable, it feels like your city, but it isn't your city. And I think that's sometimes we have people saying, "Oh, but I would like if it could be the route I normally go to work or the, the way I did when I was younger."

That's, that we cannot give, but we, we can see that the players love that we come to cities, and we have a lot of incoming requests for, "Could it be my city next?" Or, "You haven't been to this," or, "It's been a while since you were in my city. When do you come back?"

Kalie: So, you've been doing a new city every three weeks for 13 years straight. Is that correct?

Mathias: No, because people hope and expect that we visit the main ones more often.

Kalie: Okay.

Mathias: So, we've been to New York several times. We've been to Paris several times. The cities where people have the clearest anticipation of what the hallmarks are. So, if I say Paris, then people say Eiffel Tower.

Kalie: Mm-hmm.

Mathias: It's a little bit harder once you get a bit out of the top 20 cities in the world because then you might not, as un- sort of a completely normal person, not know hallmarks of what would the hallmark be of Houston? What would the hallmark be of Iceland? So, we, what we've tried is to find out how do we make them distinctive artistically and color scheme-wise, but also for Houston, we w- went with NASA.

For Iceland, we went with some of the fjords. So, so we tried to find things that also make the local players proud that this is our city on display.

Kalie: Do you have a favorite city?

Mathias: Do I have a favorite child? Oh, so thankfully I only have one son. I have a bonus daughter, and I love her too, but it's, it's hard to say.

I think the one that I love that we keep coming back to is Copenhagen. Mm-hmm. Because Copenhagen is a relatively small city, and the fact that we have it as a, as a, a recurring, sort of this is our anniversary, one of the event cities of our anniversary is always Copenhagen in a new w- way, means that we also bring global fans to see the city I was born in.

Kalie: And how big is the LiveOps team... First, first question is how big is the LiveOps team? And then because you've been doing this for so long, I'm sure you guys have a formula, but it also probably takes a lot of time and effort to create a new city. Can you just walk me through what that process looks like?

Mathias: So, it depends on how you count because, of course, we also have some central functions that I would be remiss if I don't give them credit for also supporting the team that does it. But in principle we have 130 people. A third is artists and designers and animators, a third is programmers and business intelligence data, and then the third is support, HR, finance- Mm-hmm ... legal QA, and so forth, servers. I think with Subway Surfers in our cadence, we, we have a lot of people who focus on making the new city or features that goes into that. We're part, part driven. So, there's a part that makes sure that the cadence of the flywheel goes.

That's, that's almost a third of the team, and there's a part making new features, and then there's a part trying to optimize what we already have.

Kalie: Let's talk about the second game. So, Subway Surfers Cities, you soft launched this as Hoverboard Heroes, which was built in-house. Why soft launch it under a different brand name, and when did you decide that it was ready to carry the Subway Surfers brand?

Mathias: So, it's been on our wish list for many years. I have a workshop note from 2013 where we dreamt that this g- that the game would be ready for 2016 contractually we couldn't, so we had to wait until 2020. But along the way we've had a few restarts where we said, "Look, th- this is not... Subway Surfers is such a phenomenon, it's part of the cultural zeitgeist.

We know that we have entertained billions of people around the world, and how do we make sure that it stands the test of time and that we make something that is truly a next chapter?" In the beginning, we want- we thought it should be a sequel. It was it was clear that, that, that doesn't really exist in mobile.

Kalie: Yeah.

Mathias: So, people think that if they, if they see a two after something, that number one has been shut down. And of course, we wanted it to coexist, we didn't wanna cannibalize. The biggest risk of cannibalization we had was actually not a traditional cannibalization of one download going to a new game, but from the algorithmic boost that Subway Surfers has.

If a few downloads disappeared from that and all of a sudden we saw that the algorithmic boost, the featuring and the, the virality we have was disappearing, that would be a, a shame. So we had the team has worked on it four to five years in the, in the version that then went live on the 26th of February.

In the beginning we thought we would make it ready mostly for high-end. We realized that we were reaching too few devices and that probably it would require the next generation of phones to really be the smooth experience we know Subway Surfers is on all devices. Mm. So the team has spent a lot of time the last year trying to make it, or not trying to, but succeeding in making it playable by almost all the devices that can play Subway.

Of course, if you get to the lowest of specs, then a lot of games are a bit more wonky, a bit more glitchy. But I think you still have a good experience compared to what other games you have on your phone We have always soft-launched titles, but of course we know that Subway Surfers is such a phenomenon that if we went out with that name, we could puncture the balloon that we were ready to pop at launch if people started seeing that this is Subway Surfers.

So, we did have some people saying have you noticed that there is a copy of your, of your game?" And then of course some of the industry veterans said, "It's funny that this game company that has launched Hoverboard Heroes has you as the CEO and is sitting on the same address as you are." So, so we were, we were carefully playing it like most bigger studios are, that there are lots of soft launch territories or titles that where, where we just...

What we could see is that the players that play Subway Surfer City, as you said, we were the fifth most downloaded game for six weeks after launch. That's a massive achievement. Those number of downloads is what other companies are spending a fortune getting. The players love it. We have good reviews.

We have a lot of positive feedback on that this is the game experience I was missing. I would like to go deeper. I would like to explore the characters more or upgrade my way to, to deeper game experiences. At the same time, we can also see that, that it's additive and, and nice in our balance sheet, but that we would like to keep investing in finding the final formula of the next chapter because our bread and butter is still Subway One. We still will keep investing in that. That's the biggest team. For Subway Surfer City, we have a lot of ideas for how we can make the experience that the players seemingly love most about it more of the core going forward. So, the team is, is working hard to, to iterate and say, "Look, this is still a great core.

The concepts are fine, but how do we balance in a way that meets the player expectations a bit clearer?"

Kalie: Can you share any more details about that? Like, what does that balance look like? What are you rolling out in the next couple months?

Mathias: It's still too soon to say, but I think one of the things that, that it's clear if you look on comments and, and reviews, people love the finite runs.

So, Subway Surfers one is inherently more infinite in its style. You run forever and you make high scores on that. The fact that we did some trial runs or trials in, in Subway Surfer City is something that the players love, and we're trying to figure out how we, how we serve that up in a, in a clearer way

Kalie: One other major change is that City swaps the World Tour's rotating real world cities that we just talked about for a more permanent metropolis I would love to hear your thinking behind that.

Like, what did the 13 years of the World Tour teach you that made you wanna move to a persistent world with the second game?

Mathias: We're back to cannibalization. We, we have proven with the World Tour that that works. It's we couldn't trademark. Oh, I wish we could have patented both the three-lane mechanic and the World Tour and these things.

But, but we also love that we can inspire others to make three-lane runners in our World Tour scene. We didn't wanna touch what was working so well. We wanted to see if we, again, rethought this is the crew. Of course, they can go to other cities and explore new cities every three weeks, but what if it was actually, like, our Gotham or our sort of, Hogwarts that this city is what you explore, and these are the parts of the map that you wanna unlock.

So, so we haven't-- We have, we still have a lot more parts of the city that hasn't been released with a sort of fog of war that, look, you can see s- the city. You can have an idea of what's, what is there, but there's also new things coming where the game team is playing with new game modes or new control schemes.

And therefore making it more of a here we are exploring- Mm-hmm ... a fixed city. It makes a little bit more sense that they are living in this metropolis than them going on a plane every three weeks traveling to a new city. But, but allowing those two ways of, of meeting the fans to coexist rather than having the two similar crews traveling the same world tour or not the similar world tour and then having people debate over why is our city in one, why is it not in the other?

So, this was a way of, of making sure that we have a, a cadence of releasing new content with, with looks and feels that are differing, at the same time not necessarily just carbon copying what we have proven to write in in Subway One.

Kalie: Makes sense. I wanna shift gears a little bit to a topic I'm very excited about, which is TikTok and the culture engine that has been built around Subway Surfers.

So, Subway Surfers gameplay became the background layer of sludge content on TikTok, and this is something that happened to you before you even leaned into it. But you leaned in really fast with a kind of meet the fans where they are stance. When did you realize that TikTok was gonna be the distribution channel that it is today and not just a meme?

And, like, how did you decide how hard to lean in without killing what made it organic and special?

Mathias: As soon as, as we saw the hashtag grow it was clear that, okay, this is This is fans enjoying the brand and wanting to play with it. So, so we saw the original sort of the first part of Sludge content we noticed was people telling quite heartfelt and severe or s- serious stories about their lives where they used the split screen as a, "Look, there's something recognizable that plays underneath.

It's, it's not just me telling a story or I... You hear my voice, but you're seeing something you relate with, with Sen or sort of a, a gameplay you recognize." Mm-hmm. Our marketing team has been state-of-the-art forever. We, we leaned in quite hard in the sense of how do we authentically add to what is happening If there is a, a trend, then our team will also make a Subway version of that.

If there's a movie launching, another game, a, a social media team that makes something funny, how do we make sure that we also sort of, helping bring wood to the fire? It... We, we love the fact that fans can have ideas. We love the f- the way that fans use our brand. It also requires us to be a bit bolder than m- many other brands are because, of course, if you had a really strong brand pipeline or sort of brand guideline, you would probably insist that this has to be taken down or no one can use our imagery without paying us royalties, and then we wouldn't have gotten to nearly five billion downloads.

So, so it's, it's about playing with the fans, but also playing with the other brands that also have social media team. One of the good examples is Duolingo. There was a lot of banter going back and forth between our team and their team, and some people were questioning, "Well, do you have some sort of agreement or do you have a contract with them?

What's the setup?" And I-- we could honestly say, "Look, the setup is that it seems they have a, a management on their side that empowers their team equally much." And then it's fun to see what two creative teams are coming up with. It, it, it can only exist if you empower the team to really go with the flow of the day or the, the flavor of the week.

Kalie: One of the things that you mentioned in our prep call that I found so interesting was, as you mentioned, you have a team of, I think, 10 on community and social, and they have real free rein. On the call you mentioned in 13 years, you've only vetoed content twice. I'd love to hear about like what the actual line is, and like what made you say no to those two content ideas?

Mathias: Yeah, w- w- in our prep call, I, I think it was interesting that, that, yes, there is very few examples of where I have said, "Look, this, I don't, I don't think this would fly." And it's not that I didn't think it would fly, but the fact that I thought this might be too close to something. We have had something where people afterwards said maybe that was a bit too progressive or maybe this was a bit something.

There was one which was religious where I said, "Look, it's, it's funny because we can also play with our own backgrounds but, but I don't want it to jeopardize that someone would feel that this was against them, not self sort of sarcastic on our own behalf." And the other one was I don't think it went that viral from us, but there was a blob, like a, a toad-type animal or maybe a deep seawater creature that someone had animated to threaten to come and beat you up.

And, and when you put that same soundtrack on our characters, it became a bit more humanistic.

Kalie: Mm-hmm.

Mathias: A bit more humanic in nature. So, so, so I think I said, "Look, I don't want anyone to see this and think that our character would ever come to someone's home or exist in real life. This is clearly a fantasy game."

F- 4.8 or 9 billion downloads in, people know that Subway Surfers is this safe environment to, to collect coins and, and explore the world. So, so those are the only two examples of me saying, "Maybe not that," but I'm, I'm really proud of the team and what they keep coming up with. Yeah ... it's also, it takes a lot of,

Kalie: Examples in 13 years, it's really, really impressive.

Mathias: And what we can see is that some of the celebrities the singers and the actors also reach out because their, their community managers are saying, "What can we, what can we do? It would be fun to play with you. We have a, an artist that either have loved Subway Surfers or wants to do more in this space, and, and you seem like the perfect candidate."

A few times it has worked. Most of the times it, it stops when, when we get to the legal track- Mm ... because of course it requires the, whoever wants to play with us to also let it loose a bit. And therefore, if it gets down to music rights and, and everything else, then it's, it's not a business case for us.

It's because we wanna stay viral, it's not because we're monetizing all the collaborations.

Kalie: Okay, so that's actually, I think, a kinda interesting question. Like, obviously you're, you're the third most used gaming hashtag on TikTok, zero dollars spent, obviously keeps you guys top mind. As I mentioned at the top, Conan O'Brien mentioned you at the Oscars.

Is there a user acquisition component to this as well? Are you getting players that are discovering you on TikTok, or is that completely separate from your, your TikTok strategy?

Mathias: We can see that we go viral every now and then in bigger or smaller waves. So, we have made a lot of videos that gets... Our definition of vi-viral vide-video is when they get more than a million views.

And I think we've made 100 of those in the last six to 10 months, with the record being maybe 37, 40 million views. We can, of course, see sometimes that it spikes with downloads c-following a tr- a video. But the main thing for us is actually just that we prove that we are part of the cultural zeitgeist, that we are in that space because we believe that the algorithms from Apple and Google are picking up that this is also trending on other platforms.

And what's interesting was then that when, when the Oscar show was on, sometimes I watch the Oscars. This year I didn't, but I was woken up by a lot of texts coming in saying, "Oh well done with the, with the collaboration." And we said, "Look, this wasn't planned. This is just a writer team that knows what's trending, and if they are to make a joke about something being hip and young or viral, then Subway Surfers is the underlying."

We've seen it in The Tonight Show. We've seen it in, in Last Week Tonight. We've seen it in other shows where they know that, well, Subway Surfers is this game, and this is part of the TikTok wave.

Kalie: Mm-hmm. Amazing. Okay, I wanna also talk a little bit about distribution because obviously you've been in the games industry for a while.

Mobile games have gone through huge changes, especially with discoverability. So, in addition to your mobile game, you launched on Poki, which is a web browser-based platform, and Subway Surfers has logged 1.7 billion sessions and something like 21,000 total years of gameplay on the platform. I would love to hear how you think about mobile and cross-platform today and how that's changed over the last couple of years.

Mathias: We've stayed relatively lean in our organization because we know that if we just have the main platforms, then we can focus on making the best experiences for mobile. It would... We've, we are frequently offered a lot of money to be on even more platforms with mobile, but what we would risk would be that we take away our own virality because the engines are pushing us so strong and suggesting us to players worldwide.

I think what we can see with HTML5 or Instant Play is that that's another way to meet the players. We put Subway Surfers on Apple Arcade because we knew that there were players or parents that said, "We would like a more premium sort of experience," and we have not seen any deterioration of our own download numbers on the free-to-play version.

Likewise, I think those that sit in front of a computer or are in a place where they would like to play games like Subway Surfers, we think that, that a company like Poki is perfectly suited to, to be a partner for us in that space. And, the numbers, as you mentioned, are also of course insane on, even on web, that you can amass so many play sessions speaks to both to the gameplay quality, but also the optimization to get it to a smaller build and then of course the fact that we can monetize it through ads.

Kalie: And then we didn't talk about this on the prep call, so if you don't want to, I can cut this out too, but I would love to hear how you guys are approaching going, you know, D2C and really owning the relationship with your players and how that has changed over the last couple years.

Mathias: We're seeing a lot of studios exploring D2C.

Kalie: Mm-hmm.

Mathias: It hasn't been high on our agenda because, again, our main driver is our flywheel of content and the fact that the app stores Google Play and Apple App Store love our product and our quality. And therefore it wouldn't make sense for us, at least short term, midterm, to take away anything from that great partnership.

Mm-hmm. It makes sense that some studios that have higher LTVs are exploring new ways of owning those relationships, but for us, the main focus has been to keep the focus on community, keep the focus on virality, and keep the focus on the core gameplay being what drives the fact that we still have a lot of players tomorrow as well.

Kalie: Yeah.

Mathias: So, we, we would-

Kalie: Nice to just be in.

Mathias: Yeah. So we would... my, my strategic assessment is that I think we would lose both a part of our virality and we would lose actually also a, a part of the authenticity in our player relationships if we went too hard after the few ones that spend a lot in Subway Surfers.

They, they are currently just a part of a community group that we, that we care for in the broadest pot- possible sense.

Kalie: So Miniclip acquired Zybo in 2022, which was one of the largest deals in Danish gaming history. Congratulations. Miniclip is majority owned by Tencent. At the time, you framed it as wrapping up the first season of Zybo's journey.

Four plus years in now, what has changed about how you operate, and also what's the most surprising thing that hasn't changed?

Mathias: I think when we started dipping our toes in 2021 to see, we, we had a lot of incoming requests for acquisitions all through the years because Subway Surfers has been viral f- since launch.

In 2021, I went to the founders and said, "Look, now the time is is right if you wanna consider it. We can dip the toes, and if there's no interesting bids, then of course we, we just dip the toes. We didn't go skinny dipping in the ocean." So, the, the bids came in. We had an amazing traction.

There was definitely scarcity value in having Subway Surfers still being so viral. So, we were not only the biggest transaction in Danish history I, I think we will see in the coming years some- someone bigger selling, but until now, we are the biggest. We were also the biggest, I think, mobile transaction, one of them, if not the one, the biggest in 2022, because the market stopped, but our transaction was still going.

With Miniclip, we've, we've gotten a partner that has been very patient with us but also brought a lot more process and a, a better understanding of product. We have been very gut-driven and was very used to having certain ways of, of doing our workflow that, that worked very well in terms of product and output creative quality, but sometimes came at a, at a, a loss in time because we took too long to make some things.

Some of the things we've c- we've been able to inspire Miniclip with is of course our work with, with virality and our ways of doing IP work because we are a bit of an outlier in their portfolio when it comes to having a, a full IP bible and ambitions to make TV shows and, and we had lines of merchandise we tried.

So, I would say that the, the things we've gotten with some of the talent from Miniclip and also some of the things we've learned is definitely that we've become a bit more predictable. We've had really good things coming in. And then of course, we have the, the, the ongoing balancing act of what is then quality and creativity versus predictability and, and profitability.

So we, we continue having those talks, saying, "This is what makes us truly unique, what makes us Sybo, but of course, this is also what makes us a high-performing asset in a wider portfolio for a corporate."

Kalie: And that's actually a perfect se- segue 'cause I really wanna talk about IP expansion and transmedia.

So, you have an animated series that's crossed 100 million views. Sybo TV has 3.3 million subscribers. Fans clearly want more. You've also been really candid that you haven't found the story or format worthy of a game that's been downloaded nearly five billion times. What would a Subway Surfers film or series actually have to do to clear that bar?

Mathias: I feel a bit like so, back in the days, I would say sometimes our founders were windows- window shoppers because they knew when it was there. When they spotted the right thing in the window, we could go in and buy it.

Kalie: Yeah.

Mathias: We haven't seen that item in the window yet. Mm. So in this regard, we are all a bit window shoppers.

We've tried brainstorming we've story boarded, we've, we've made concepts, we've worked with different partners, or we've taken in bits from different partners that have said, "We think we can bring that to the big screen." With the 11 episodes, we did a first take. I think it's a solid piece of content.

We had more than two millennia of watch time, and we have a lot of fans saying, "We would love to see a 12th episode or a 13th episode," or, "When do, when do we see more about this or that?" We also set Between Two Chairs. It became a bit too young in storyline and a bit too sort of oriented towards licensing.

Kalie: Mm-hmm.

Mathias: At the same time, the founders would have liked it also to be more edgy and, and sort of a bit swear-wordy or a bit more mature storylines. And therefore, I think we've, we, we s- we took a step back and said, "What would we then want if it was a live action movie or an animated movie, full feature for the cinemas?"

And the t- the work we've had with different studios or different story writers about that looks really interesting. I'm not gonna lie. I think some of it is very close, but then it's the step from going from the short version to the full script where we see that we are still not fully aligned on this is the movie.

Because we've seen successful launches of the Mario, of Barbie, of of Last of Us, other things that live in IP world- Mm ... from games that now go into the big screen. We would love to, to do that eventually, but it's because we have so many fans and so many people who have played it, we also care deeply about not coming out with something where people are like, "This was, this was a cash grab," or, "This was just to make a, a movie."

We only want it out if we would also proudly watch it many times.

Kalie: I love that, and I hope that you find exactly what you're looking for one day, 'cause I would love to see it in the theaters. You also, during our prep call, talked about some licensing attempts and some learnings from that. I'd love to have you speak a little bit more about what those licensing attempts were and, and how you approach licensing moving forward.

Mathias: So, we've learned that we're not a licensing company. I think that's the, that's the final conclusion. We, when the game came out, we had a, a, a local partner that was more of a sort of logo slap on quick to market attempt, which I think didn't help the brand and it wasn't to the quality that the founders were seeking.

So, so when we stopped that, it was clear that we still had the ambition. The founders wanted to have a line out there. We brought in specialists. We did the full program. Nas Cuevas helped us sort of strategize it and build it. We used Power Station for style guides. We had things going with Walmart and a lot of the big partners.

I think that attempt, had it been in 2012, 2013, would've worked really well. I think we came a bit after Rovio having flooded the market and therefore not necessarily retailers seeing that an evergreen should have merchandise.

Kalie: Mm-hmm.

Mathias: And then I think we learned the hard way that we are people's snack.

I, and I love us being that because I think it keeps us viral, but it also means that we're not s- we're not people's primary game necessarily. Of course, for some, and because we have 150, 200, 100, 250 million people playing every month, that group of people is still big. But for a lot of players of Subway, we are the game that they play in between other games, in between work meetings, in between school sessions, on the way to or from work, in the metro when they don't have connectivity.

But it's not necessarily the game that they spend money in, or it's not necessarily the game that they want on their T-shirt.

Kalie: Yeah.

Mathias: Because that year it was Fortnite, or that year it was Among Us. Subway Surfers was just number two. And the fact that we have then been consistent in top five under the hyped big games of every year means that we are probably one of the only mobile evergreens, if not the only.

At the same time, it also means that we, that the share of wallet is probably lower because people are like, "Oh yeah, I play that, but that's not the... If you ask me what I play, I wouldn't say that. That's just another game I play and therefore we, we, we learned, I think the hard way that, okay, we actually have all the partners lined up.

We have the things. We can see that it sells. We outsold some of the other big IPs in the Walmart activation. But of course, it would still have been on the shelves if we saw that this was a massive business opportunity. So, we also sort of, calmed the expectations and said, "Look, this, we are first and foremost a gaming studio, and we wanna be part of a gaming group.

We're not going for the entertainment-first strategy."

Kalie: I think that's incredibly self-aware of you guys. Now I have to ask you the topic that every podcast asks about these days, which is AI in gaming. So, you're an animator-founded studio that prides itself on handmade characters, and you've drawn a pretty sharp line that AI can build a foundation, lift productivity, like when it comes to finance, QA, and prototyping, but it's backward-looking and it can't leapfrog.

That has to come from your people. I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you deal with AI internally, if there's any sort of a mandate, and then also if there's been any, I don't wanna say backlash from players, but just any feedback at all about AI when it comes to Subway Surfers.

Mathias: No backlash because Subway Surfers is basically n-non-AI for n- for now.

It's, it's a game that where we can see every asset going in has been handcrafted or hand-held. I think what we, what we started with was actually the support functions. We are I would say almost best in class. Andreas, our CFO, has driven a, a finance transformation where we can optimize a lot of things and not necessarily be fewer, but inspire the, the whole group and, and drive a lot of things out of that.

We've done it with with things where we can see that in business analytics and in some of the other aspects supporting games, the, it's a, we can drive a lot of findings through AI or LLMs. I think the area where it's touchier is, of course, when it comes to character creation, when it comes to environment creation, we have amazing artists.

We, we want them to explore. The mandate is clearly to explore ideation, just like they would Google things, which is also backward-looking. They would Google how does Iceland look like? If you haven't been, can you share me some examples of what are the animals, what are the scenery, what is the how, how does a town look?

What does a train look like? So, so the things that we have been Googling before, we are encouraging, "Look, also have some takes," because we have made more than 300 characters over the years. And of course, it's interesting for us to see what does that, what foundation does that let us stand on? But also, how do we then let the artists make a r-race to the top, make it look nicer, make it do better, rather than race to the bottom?

And I think what we're seeing there is that they, that it becomes more of internal discussion of, "This task is repetitive. I feel too senior for this." Well, then let's explore what does AI, can AI help us do less of the task we don't like? Because our artists are so talented that we would like them to spend time on what excites them and what drives the, what moves the needle upwards So, so I think as a studio, we are not as AI-driven as a lot of other studios, but of course we can see that the industry is moving, and what my quality stamp would be is that the, everything that goes into a live game should be handheld.

It should have a sender with a instructor sort of saying, "This is what I want." If aspects of that are Googled or generated, as long as it clearly has a sort of hand touch before it hits the, the, the shelf, then I, then I'm happy. If the artists are happy, I'm happy.

Kalie: I love that. That's a good framework.

If the artists are happy, I'm happy. I think every game studio should adopt that. All right, before we end, you come at sustainability from a real personal conviction as well as through SYBO as the company. I'd love to hear a little bit about how you approach sustainability and also how you think game studios in general should be approaching sustainability.

Mathias: I, I keep mentioning Pippi Longstocking. So, her quote was that if you are incredibly strong, you have to be incredibly kind. I think it even predates Spider-Man, who had a similar, similar sentencing or a sentence. For me, the fact that we can entertain between 100 and 150 million people is insane.

It's such a privilege. It's such... It comes with such an accountability that we show the best possible game, that we let people have fun with Subway Surfers. But if we're then also able to have some windmills or solar panels in the background, if we can inspire what would a plant-based day look like if you, if you ever tried one?

What would, how do we include more people in our society so people can be who they are and love who they do? If you can, if you can keep, keep inspiring people for what a better world looks like, then I, then I think games as a medium is not just entertainment, but sort of nutritional in its, in its core.

And we're working actually very closely with our, our mothering group Tencent, on raising healthy gamers and healthy gameplay, because we think that this will also be an agenda that keeps giving because parents are interested in getting to know. They wanna understand what gaming means and what everyone says is that they would love to play more.

Even when you ask young people, they say, "I wish my parents would, would play with me. They-- We wish this could be a shared experience." Jude was one of the wave makers for why we have Playing for the Planet, which was the UNEP-backed organization where we bring, brought the biggest gaming companies together to try and see how can we put green fe- features into games.

Then she was doing a book, was interviewing me for that, and then I ended up co-authoring it with her called Gaming for Good, which came out a couple of years ago. And then we turned that into a podcast which launched, launched in Davos in this January. And what we can see is everyone we talk to in the industry or adjacent to the industry sees the potential of the power of the platform We have such an amazing opportunity to bring people together, to inspire action, and to make people aware of their surroundings.

And that, in that sense, we're sort of the architecture of culture because now it's games are still relatively low on the, on the perceived fanciness of culture.

Kalie: Yeah.

Mathias: Opera and ballet are quite high, and once you get near the bottom, then games come. So, you will still meet adults that say, "I don't game. I don't have time for that."

And then when you ask them what else they do, I could think of three or four things where I was like, "You would have a better time if you just had a great game session than, than doing these things." And not taking anything from any of the other on the, on the spectrum, just acknowledging that games are still sort of trying to show that it exists and it has a, a raison d'être in, in that If we can inspire more studios to do right, I also think that we can inspire more players to do right.

And therefore, the, the whole sort of when given a choice, choose right. Sometimes you have two similar features, two similar characters, two similar storylines, and if you choose the one that is a bit more just, a bit more social, a bit more green, a bit, bit more inclusive, then I think in the end we can be prouder of having entertained so many people.

Kalie: Could you give me an example, it could be a person in the games industry or a studio who's building games e- either from the book or from your podcast that has done some initiative, it could even be a small one, that you just thought was like, "Wow," like that is so creative but could have so much impact.

Mathias: I think one of the guests that that we had on the podcast Nick from from Special Effect, was probably the most heart- heartfelt one because what they do is that they help players that have disabilities, that are impaired in w- in some way, to play the games anyway.

That means that if you have a, a limp arm, then maybe you can play with the other hand. If you can only move your eyes, there are ways of controlling a game anyway. And the, and the stories he told, which I think had both me and Jude and himself in tears, was basically kids, siblings that in the past would have been disconnected now could play a game together and therefore could have some shared memories of this is something that we do together.

And having both a son and a bonus kid, that's super meaningful for me. If we, if games can be the enabler for people to sometimes healthily escape from their reality, that's super meaningful. I think the, the healthy escapism, which I call it, is what I think games can do the best. You can still be brave and the hero of a story even if you're shy in, at work or in school.

You can still be running if you're, even if you're not running in real life. You can still be completely charming and fluent even if you're stuttering or, or lisping. So, there's so many things where games allow you to play with who you are and experience a different side of yourself maybe, or revealing, "I am actually this person."

And some of that might not be acceptable or in I don't believe that we're progressive, I just think that we're humanistic. Yeah. And I understand that that word can be misinterpreted, but allowing people who they are to be who they are, I think is, is a super meaningful contact. And if we can include healthy gameplay in as many games as possible, I think we will actually have, see a sense of belonging going up.

I think we will see mental health go up, and I think we will also see loneliness decline.

Kalie: It's a really beautiful example. I'll make sure to link the episode in our show notes so everyone can listen to that as well. Okay, I have one final question for you. Subway Surfers is 14 years old, the most downloaded game in history.

When you imagine it in another 20 to 25 years, does it stay the same beloved endless runner, or does Subway Surfers have to become something structurally different to survive another 20 years?

Mathias: That's a really good question. I think, I think the beauty of an evergreen is that there is still some nostalgic qualities that should never change.

I would love Subway Surfers to stay a three-lane handheld runner even when we have more holograms and more wearables and all these other things that technology will provide in the next 20 to 30 years. So, I think that will remain a factor, but of course I also can see that since inception we've been able to keep our game alive and fresh and relevant.

So, the fact that we can stay culturally re- relevant will of course also mean that we will have to explore if new platforms emerge or new, new ways of gaming emerge, then how do we also meet the fans where they are?

Kalie: Well, Mathias, thank you so much for joining me on The Naavik Gaming Podcast and I look forward to revisiting this with you 20 years from now to talk about the new platforms and how the gameplay has changed. Thank you again.

Mathias: Thank you so much for having me.

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