Global Trends: Pocket Gems CEO Ben Liu on the art of making great games and the need for “luck and magic”

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Keeping up with industry trends is key to staying ahead in the games industry and ensuring you don’t fall behind.

At Pocket Gamer Connects, we regularly run our ‘Global Trends’ track, providing an expansive view of the sector’s latest ttrends, facts, figures and insights from around the world. In fact, the track will return once again at PGC London 2025 on January 20th to 21st.

In this new regular series, we’ve reached out top industry leaders to share their insights and expectations on the state of play and how they see the next few years shaping up.

We spoke to Pocket Gems CEO Ben Liu, whose studio has worked on hit games like Episode and War Dragons, about the year’s top trends, challenges, and the art of making a great game.

PocketGamer.biz: Could you tell us a bit about your company and what you’re currently working on?

Ben Liu: Pocket Gems is one of the pioneers of mobile games. Our games have been downloaded over 500 million times and generated more than one billion of sales.

Our most successful product, Episode, has changed the lives of creators all over the world who craft stories that say something meaningful about themselves and connect with millions of community members. War Dragons has brought people from all walks of life together to do battle and conquer the world. 

Beyond our existing games, we have been working on creating new game experiences based on our strength in interactive storytelling.

How have the last 12 months been for your company?

The last 12 months have been challenging as the industry adapts to post-pandemic player behaviour and the changes to the advertising market.

A large part of our team is focused on improving our existing games and continuing to do everything we can to delight our players and support our creators.

It’s also been a time of creativity as we have gone back to our roots and come up with new ideas that push the frontiers of what is possible. 

What do you think the biggest trends in the industry have been over the last 12 months?

Beyond what I mentioned, it’s also been encouraging to see new signs of life in the market with new games and business deals.

Speaking personally, it’s been really fun as a gamer to see so many really good games come out based on years of dedication and craft. 

What do you think are the key trends, challenges and opportunities for the next year, and how will you be taking them on?

We are very narrowly focused on our mission to develop great games and see a lot of opportunity to bring a new game to market.

As a creative and technical team that has worked together for many years, we are especially inspired by recent advances in technology happening around the world and working on ways to enhance our ideas with them.

We’re actively experimenting with a lot of new things and hope to find the right player facing applications for them soon. 

What do you think is most important to a mobile game’s success in 2024?

Even though the bar has gone up, the same things still apply. It starts with a fun game that players love.

The game needs to be broadly appealing to a large enough community of players through a combination of fantasy, marketing appeal, and novelty. And then you need some luck and magic. 

Have you moved onto platforms outside of mobile? And if so, why? If not, is it something you’re considering?

Our focus continues to be mobile because it’s what we know best and where we see the biggest opportunities for our company.