Chun-Kai (CK) Wang is co-founder & CEO at a mobile gaming studio called Kooapps. Kooapps has made over 20 titles including Pictoword, a fun educational word guessing game with over 20 million downloads. Prior to Kooapps, CK was a software developer at Microsoft Research where he built large-scale web services to analyze Twitter streams for named entities. CK has a BS in Electrical Engineering, a MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, and teaches server-side web development at the University of Washington.

We caught up with CK about his role at Kooapps, upcoming session at Gamesforum and we ask what he's most excited for in 2019!

Gamesforum: Hi CK, thanks very much for taking the time to talk,can you tell us about your background and day to day role at Kooapps?

CK: Sure, my background is in software engineering, worked at Microsoft for five years, initially in Microsoft Games Studio but realized Microsoft was a publisher not a game studio so I moved to Microsoft Research and worked on machine learning before it became a trend. At Kooapps my role is a bit of everything but mainly game design, server-side engineering and user acquisition.

Gamesforum: What’s been your most satisfying moment in your time at Kooapps?

CK: When we read reviews that we are changing people’s lives, it’s amazing and it’s what keeps us going burning the midnight oil. Everyone in our entire company works really hard and when we read how our games have changed people’s lives, we are very humbled and proud.

Gamesforum: It’s fair to say that it’s a tough environment for smaller games companies today, yet you’ve grown Pictoword from 0 to 20 million users and counting. What’s the number 1 tip you’d like to share for creating sustainable success today?

CK: Yup, it’s tough, high level it’s hard work, persistence and keep learning. For example, Google Play recently released an update to have android app vital stats play a bigger factor in app rankings and promotion. Our engineering team had worked really hard to keep low crash rates across all our games prior to this and when this change happened we were rewarded.

Gamesforum: What are you most excited about in 2019?

CK: Lots, make great games, hire amazing people and change more people’s lives. 2019 will also be the first year we are considering outside investors so this will be interesting.

Gamesforum: What’s the biggest challenge you see affecting your business in 2019?

CK: Fraud. Mobile advertising fraud is very serious. Often times it takes weeks or months to identify and every situation is different. Even with a data science team this can be challenging.

Gamesforum: And we’ve got to ask… what game are you playing at the moment?

CK: Starcraft 2 and Clash Royale!

If you want to hear more from CK, don’t miss his presentation, “New high score? Defining success in the games business” at Gamesforum Seattle on the 23^rd/24^th October.

Purchase your passes for the event here.