Interview with David Fernandez, the CEO of Sandsoft

Sandsoft is a game company based in Riyadh but active worldwide. With a diverse workplace culture and ambitious plans for the future, the company’s influence exceeds national borders. We interviewed the CEO of Sandsoft about their current status and future plans.
sandsoft logo over game screenshots

Sandsoft is a game company founded in 2020. The company has its headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia but extends over the far ends of the world with offices in Spain, Finland, and China. Along with its advantages, maintaining a diverse culture and managing teams in different time zones have their challenges. We interviewed the CEO of Sandsoft, David Fernandez, about these advantages, challenges, and their plans for the future.

Mobidictum: Game companies resort to exciting and creative ways to keep their employees motivated. Do you have such projects or applications?

Our team’s extensive collective experience in the games industry at companies such as Electronic Arts, King, Take-Two, Zynga, Rovio, and Gameloft, has taught us valuable lessons in creating and maintaining a positive and healthy work culture. 

Everyone at Sandsoft is encouraged and trusted to be independent, entrepreneurial, and to take risks. Beyond things like flexible and remote working, which can be hugely important for our team members’ well-being, the fundamental value of a human approach in everyday working life is most critical in keeping motivation and engagement high. We have our own model of small teams we call ‘Tribes’, which are empowered to do what’s best for Sandsoft and our players. We are also nurturing a new generation of talent in MENA through our ‘Press Start’ program. 

As we continue to grow, we will apply these learnings to ensure that our team remains fulfilled and inspired to create the best games possible. Our first release, Rambo Strike Force, is a testament to the team’s creative approach to game development, where our employees are empowered to bring their best ideas to the table whilst aligning with our company strategy.

Mobidictum: Your existing games appear to be in a limited number of genres. Do you plan to enrich your genre diversity in the near future?

Our product strategy is laser-focused on mobile-first, free-to-play games that provide engaging experiences for our players. Based on our strengths, passions, and in-depth analysis of the market, we currently prioritize four core genres: strategy, RPG, sports, and racing, and we are actively exploring market opportunities within these areas. By leveraging our extensive game development, publishing, and investment resources, we are confident in our ability to succeed in these highly competitive genres.

At present, our games portfolio boasts a diverse selection of titles, including Rambo Strike Force (a strategy build-and-battle game), Pacific Rim Breach Wars (an RPG puzzler), Fantasy Pick (a sports fantasy game), and Drive Ahead! (a racing car-battler). Our development and publishing teams are working tirelessly to create even more exciting games that we cannot yet share but will be announced in due course.

We are committed to providing top-notch mobile game experiences that are both accessible and enjoyable for players of all skill levels. Our dedication to innovation and player satisfaction is at the core of our mission, and we are excited to continue exploring new opportunities and pushing boundaries in the mobile games industry.

Mobidictum: Your company website states that you focus on publishing, investing, and developing high-quality games. What are your company’s standards in this context? 

At Sandsoft, we are driven to become the premier mobile-first game developer and publisher in the Middle East and North Africa region. Our goal is to be the destination company for both players and top talent, and we are working tirelessly to build a world-class studio development footprint across the MENA region and beyond. We recently announced the opening of our first internal game development studio in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which is aligned with our vision of fostering innovation and creating leading game experiences.

Our focus is not just on building our own games but also on bringing high-quality titles from third-party developers to market. We provide world-leading expertise in product development, marketing, and live operations, and our culturally relevant content for the MENA region has worldwide appeal. For example, we are proud to support DoDreams with the publishing activities of Drive Ahead! in the MENA region.

In addition to our game development and publishing efforts, we are investing in entrepreneurial ventures and strategic partnerships to enable us to scale Sandsoft more quickly while also fostering local programs to grow the gaming ecosystem in the MENA region. We recently announced our investment of $3.25 million in The Tiny Digital Factory to support their growth.

We believe that the MENA region has tremendous potential to become a hub for the global games industry, and we are excited to play a leading role in making that vision a reality.

Mobidictum: You have offices in very far and culturally different countries. Can you tell us a little bit about how to ensure harmony between teams during work processes?

At Sandsoft, we value diversity and inclusiveness, and we are proud to have a team that is made up of 13 different nationalities. Our team is currently spread across four locations – Riyadh, Barcelona, Helsinki, and Shanghai – and we have around 40 people on the team.

In 2022, we made a concerted effort to build a people-centric culture that celebrates differences and creates an environment where creativity can thrive. Our culture is built on three core values – growth, togetherness, and boldness – that enable us to achieve our mission of becoming the leading mobile-first game developer and publisher in the MENA region. We believe that our passion, trust, and commitment are what enable us to build a culture of inclusiveness and creativity, and we are proud of the team we have built.

Working across multiple cultures and locations, of course, comes with a few challenges for us to consider. First, the working schedule in Riyadh is Sunday to Thursday, while the rest of our locations are from Monday to Friday. We are trying to mitigate that by proposing Sunday as a day without meetings in Riyadh as well as Friday as a day without meetings in Barcelona, Helsinki, and Shanghai.

Second, we have a time difference of 6 hours between Barcelona and Shanghai. For that purpose, we book our company-wide meetings no later than 12pm CET to accommodate our teams in China.

Third, having such a diverse global team can create certain complexities as not everyone in the organization has previously experienced similar workplace cultures and environments, so they often take different approaches to problem-solving. In this case, we embrace trust, transparency, and honesty when conflict happens. As a result, we assume the best intentions and explore potential solutions with an open mindset.

Mobidictum: Sandsoft has recently invested $3.25 million in The Tiny Digital Factory. What are your medium and long-term expectations from this investment?

We began our conversations with The Tiny Digital Factory to support GT Manager as a publisher in the MENA region. We recognized the strong interest in motorsports in MENA, with events such as Formula 1, MotoGP, Dakar having a significant regional presence. We saw great potential to expand GT Manager in this market.

During these discussions, we learned more about The Tiny Digital Factory and its expertise in racing and motorsports games. They also shared details about their upcoming title, Infinite Drive, which impressed us with its vision. We were thrilled to become more involved in the future of the company.

As a result, we are proud to announce that we will be publishing games from The Tiny Digital Factory in MENA, starting with GT Manager. We will offer strategic guidance, market insights, and product feedback to support the team and ensure they have the necessary resources to achieve their goals.

This partnership represents a great opportunity to bring exciting and innovative games to the MENA region, and we are excited to embark on this journey together.

Mobidictum: Which one of the games in your portfolio was the most challenging in regard to the development process?

Rambo Strike Force was the title that launched our company into the world of game development and publishing. It allowed us to build the right team, culture, and processes necessary for success.

However, this company’s progress came with multiple challenges and learnings as an early organization: (1) our team was really stretched and spread quite thin across multiple areas; (2) we didn’t manage to establish a clear alignment of goals between Sandsoft and the developer; (3) the genre that we were exploring (strategy, build and battle) was possibly one of the hardest to penetrate considering user acquisition challenges; and (4) game performance wasn’t at the expected level to be competitive in the marketplace.

Mobidictum: How do you decide a project is worth investing in?

As previously stated, our focus is on mobile-first, free-to-play core, and mid-core games. We are also interested in games that make good use of emerging technology, such as web3. When exploring an investment opportunity in this space, we gather information to answer the following three questions:

  1. Do we believe in the market opportunity that the target company is exploring?
  2. Do we believe that the target game they’re working on and proposing to us could leverage that market opportunity?
  3. Do we believe that the target team can execute the game they have presented to us to realize the market opportunity described?

If our assessment of the above questions is positive, then the next step is to align our expectations with the target company and negotiate the investment deal.

About David Fernandez

David Fernandez is Chief Executive Officer at Sandsoft. With 15+ years of experience as a game industry leader, David has worked at leading brands like THQ, Digital Chocolate, Nokia and King. At King, he spearheaded expansion of legendary Candy Crush and Bubble Witch IPs, growing both multi-billion-dollar game franchises for Activision-Blizzard. He’s a mobile gaming industry expert, with immense knowledge across advertising, marketing, and developing and operating systems.

Next: Mobidictum interview with Yassine Tahi, Co-Founder and CEO of Kinetix

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