In the latest installment of our “2021 in Video Games” series, we are joined by Elina Arponen, CEO and co-founder of Helsinki-based HTML5 startup Quicksave Interactive, to discuss what the year meant for the studio and the HTML5 market.
Elina Arponen
CEO & co-founder of Quicksave
How did 2021 treat Quicksave Interactive?
2021 was a strong year for us. In the spring, we raised our EUR 1,3M seed round with Konvoy Ventures as the lead investor. Then we went on to launch two new games. In July, we launched Werewolf Friends in partnership with Zoom as one of the launch titles for their Zoom Apps platform. At the beginning of September, we launched Beatstar Music on Facebook instant games. This is the HTML5 counterpart for the music game that our partner Space Ape developed for the mobile app stores.
What development or trend that you saw in 2021 do you consider critical for your niche?
We have seen a lot of growing interest in the HTML5 games market. Many companies are waking up to the possibilities a growing number of HTML5 game marketplaces are offering. Also, the growth of web3 games is an adjacent and interesting market for people like us who are working with web2 technologies. HTML5 games have evolved to bigger games with higher production quality, which has put a lot of emphasis on inhouse game development tools like Quicksave’s tech.
As a company, what are you going to strategically focus on in 2022?
We will grow the current partnerships with various HTML5 platforms while also addressing new ones. We are now building a game in partnership with the Tezotopia blockchain game to bring their characters alive in a strategy battle game. We are excited for this new game coming out in early 2022.
What third-party titles were you personally excited about as a gamer?
Due to working on HTML5 instant games, I have naturally played many instant games on countless platforms. Also, I’ve been playing some of the recent merge games and a few NFT-based games to generally experience what is new and exciting in the market. One new area that excites me is the creator tools that are coming out for the Zoomer generation. Our daughter is filming and editing a lot of videos on her phone as a native creator in mobile devices. The sophistication of tools available is super interesting.