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Etermax - 15th Anniversary Interview
We deal with the time difference in this remote interview as our own David Caballero, from the Spanish Gamereactor office, talks with Etermax's CEO & founder Máximo Cavazzani, from their HQ in Argentina. In the video they discuss 15 years of Etermax, Trivia Crack and its new VR version, Word Crack, and using AI in different ways.
Audio transcription
"Hi friends, I'm here, sitting at the Gamereactor office in Spain and it's 15 past 5 p.m. and I'm talking with my good friends over at Etermax who are in Argentina. What time is it over there, Max? Thank you so much for joining us."
"It's 12.15 in the midnight. Midday, sorry.
Midday. Yeah, yeah, it gets confusing, isn't it?
That's good, good timing. First of all, it's good to catch up with you guys.
We met, I think it was 10 years ago in Barcelona, then again, and then I met some of you guys in Uruguay and now we have this crazy call over the sea, over the ocean, so thank you so much for your time."
"You guys are celebrating, right? So congratulations on your 15th year anniversary. How do you feel about that?
We feel great. We've been doing this for a long time and we feel we are getting better and better, so we are very good.
10 years ago, circa 2014, I was completely, I don't know if I can say this, I was completely addicted to Word Crack.
So looking back at that game and both Word Crack and Trivia Crack, what can you tell me about, you know, experience from the community and also business-wise, what it meant for you to you guys at Etermax?
Well, we didn't start doing games. We started with the first iPhone trading app in the world."
"So after two years of doing things, we created Word Crack, which was our first game, and it was very popular in Spain.
So it decided us to continue doing games and become a gaming company.
So it was a really huge success in Spain, and we tried to replicate that around the world.
We made two more games in the middle, and then we created Trivia Crack."
"We were number one in almost all the world. We have been six days number one in the US, which is a record.
And we've been having this experience all around America, Europe, Russia, and different countries.
Also countries that we didn't know we were going to be successful, like Turkey. So we're very, very glad of our journey.
How are they health-wise? Are people still playing a lot?
Like in the first few months and years, like me back in the day, are people still getting hooked to specifically Word Crack?
Yes. So Word Crack has had its audience for a long time, and right now it's stable."
"Of course, there's nothing like the peak moments of a game.
We've saturated the market at the time at 25 million elected users for Trivia Crack and around 3 million with Word Crack.
So yeah, there are still a lot of gamers, and the audience is stable, and they're more engaged gamers, right?
So yes, and we build a business around and a community. So we're very proud of that."
"And those are not only the games you guys have, as you've briefly mentioned, you have other games.
But I also learned very recently that you're releasing, I don't know if it's available already, you're releasing a VR version of specifically Trivia Crack, correct?
How does that work? When is it coming out, if not already? And what can you tell me about that one?
Well, Trivia Crack World, which is the name, is the latest game, which is a VR game."
"It's available through MetaQuest. Right now it's in beta and it's about to be released by the end of the year.
And what we try to do there is do everything that we couldn't do in the cell phone, right?
So we always imagined about knowing the characters, seeing them in real person, actually talking to them, but also the general experience. We always believed in a social experience."
"And I think VR brings that to a new level. So you're able to sit down in a table and play trivia, just like in a board game, but with all this magic that happens.
But with a guy that's sitting next to you, you can approach him asking questions, you can be there with your friends. But also, if your friends don't have a VR headset, they can enter through mobile, so you can be playing with them."
"You and VR, some in the Windows machine and the other one with their cell phone, and just play all together in a more engaging and social way.
They're all trivia, right? Because one of the magic things about trivia is that it's an evergreen game.
So we also have our question factory, our whole IP and the social experience, and everything with a new technology and with new possibilities."
"And I guess it's also good timing because VR is living kind of another comeback this year.
It was tough in 2023 and perhaps early 2024, but we've been doing several VR interviews as of late.
We've got the metros, the Arizona sunshines, and also social games like yours.
And I think it's interesting and it's good timing."
"Did you guys were part of the meta showcase the other day?
We weren't because we are not released yet, so we are about to enter the platform.
One of the things I didn't mention is that it's a free game.
So there are a few free games, especially these big games."
"And just to clarify, it's a park, right?
You have different experiences divided in seven worlds.
It's a very deep game and it's a free experience.
But yeah, I'm also excited about VR because I always talk about how it would become lighter and more powerful, you know, and better colors and also the price, right?
And I have always been talking about this for years, maybe 10 years, about these Ray-Bans, which will be the end game of VR."
"And they just released that.
So it's not, of course, available for the public, but you know what's coming in the next years, which are light, cheap, powerful devices that allow you to have these social experiences with friends, with people outside. And that's, I think, is the end game for VR."
"We have the MetaQuest 3S now.
And it's, as you say, we want the new Half-Alyx to occur like next year or something, but we also need more accessible and also free-to-play games, because that's always a hurdle for you to get into VR."
"So looking forward to answering some questions by you guys in that game.
And you mentioned something very interesting.
You said also, you briefly mentioned the voice.
So when you said the voice, I was thinking about AI, which is also a buzzword in 2024."
"So how are you guys dealing with AI?
I don't know if you guys are using that, for example, for voice and for us to be able to, in these word-based apps that you guys make, for us to be able to chat with a virtual character and to be part of these quiz shows, etc.?
Yeah, well, we have been using AI for years now."
"I've been an advocate for the technology.
I started studying software engineering because of that, because of what I imagined it would be.
But of course, JetTBD and the new LLMs changed the landscape totally.
And we started just from day one, just finding things where these new AIs could help us."
"And they help us a lot with repeated questions, with translations, with new content, with derived content, with extended content, which is, for example, when you have a question, you want some context on the question, something else that you would see in a TV show."
"And we added all that.
But we also developed technology to just get a series or a movie and cut it out into these video questions.
So we use that, and we also help other companies implement AI with our own company.
So with all that said, one of the main things we did with AI was this ability to just talk to characters."
"We think of NPCs as something very important in the new VR game, because they will be like the workers in the park.
So you can go and ask them anything.
You can ask them, where's the next attraction?
You can ask them to ask you a question or just whatever you want."
"And this interaction feels very natural.
And we were one of the first games to do this.
And I project this is going to happen on every game eventually.
But you can experience that right now with Trivia Crack."
"And it's great because one of the things that Trivia Crack has is that it's a very easy to understand trivia game.
And some of the trivia games that you play with your friends or with your family are just people building the game.
So what we envision is different characters around a park that create a game that's changing every time.
And you have to ask them what the game is, what to find, and where the other agents are around the park."
"So, yeah, it's our first take on this new technology.
And we are very glad with the results.
Is this going to be part of Trivia Crack world as well?
It is right now."
"So if you don't know right now, either the mobile or the VR version, the beta version is right now.
You can talk to them.
When we release, it's going to be a much more deep experience where not only you'll be able to talk to them and do simple games, but also complex things around the park."
"And I know we've talked about, you know, like trying to localize.
You've mentioned translation briefly.
We've talked about in the past about, you know, localizing culturally your games, you know, both trivia and word.
Do you think AI can play part into that as well as in, for example, making the questions more culturally relevant for specific regions as a Turkey or Spain?
Yes, of course."
"And it's a perfect example because we have so many questions that you could do everything by hand, right?
If you had like a million years, but you don't.
You need something that has some criteria.
And right now, LLMs are very good at this."
"So we've done translations, cultural adaptations, finding repeated questions, for example, when they're not written the same way, or likely similar questions where you don't want to answer the same question over and over, even if it's different.
It's a very difficult task.
It requires a lot of brain power."
"And right now, LLMs are very good at that.
And they're also very bad at some things.
So you have to correct them and find this fine tuning.
And of course, they're going to become more and more powerful."
"We started this on 2023.
So it became more powerful in these years.
And I envision, of course, that it's going to be better and better.
But finding the right examples for AI, it's difficult."
"And I think we find a lot of them.
And once you've fit them, once you've trained them, you can get feedback from local people and get the thing perfectly fine.
All right.
We've talked about these 15 years a little bit."
"But what's coming next?
Can you tell me about Etermax going forward and into 2025 already?
Well, our whole vision is 3D everywhere.
So we've been doing that."
"And we've been in the Apple Watch.
We've been in Google Home, in Alexa.
We've been number one.
Right now, it's VR.
And what we envision is try to get this 3D experience in a deeper way everywhere."
"So cars, in-flight, and everything that's going to appear right now around the world that's going to have a processor.
And so 3D is going to be the best example to start with that.
Right?
We envision a world where everything is interactive, everything is social."
"But also, we know that a lot of the information that's going to your brain is just, you know, doing some dumb scrolling.
Or you just feel that you're just watching information and your brain just disconnects.
Right?
What trivia brings, and especially trivia because it's social trivia, is the ability to somehow defy your brain."
"Right?
So somehow find a way of having a challenge where you have to think about the answer.
And sometimes you answer incorrectly, and that's where you learn.
Right?
So we try to get you to just test your brain continuously with different parts of the knowledge."
"And at some point, you don't know something, and you learn it, and you go and try to learn more.
So it's just about being fun and being social, but at the same time being good for your brain and for your memory and for your general health.
It's very interesting for attention, for sure.
Like, we're not doing dumb scrolling, as you said."
"It's also paying attention to what you're doing and also learning at the same time.
Would you say there is a third way for you guys that is not trivia or word?
Something that you think that you might bring to the table in terms of challenging?
Actually, our company is just not the gaming company."
"We also have the AI company.
And so we implement AI on supermarkets, on banks, or big organizations where it's more difficult to implement AI.
We also have this brand gamification part of the company, which allows other brands to do collaborations.
So part of the collaborations with brands is bringing their content and having this content to be able to interact with."
"Also, we are working with creators.
So a lot of the creators generate content on social networks, and it's very difficult for them to interact with their audience or for the audience to just interact with the content.
And we feel trivia is a great example.
So we have these challenges, which we call these multi-week tournaments around the content that we allow content creators to create with their own subjects or with their own questions, with video or without video, with more involvement of them or with less involvement with them."
"We also are releasing our game in web.
It seems like something old news, but right now, web is the only technology that allows you to be fluent between your desktop, your cell phone, and be able to send a challenge or a game of trivia crack through a link.
So we are developing all that technology and then adding that to the different actors that want to use it."
"So we are pretty busy around what we do, and we like to experiment with a lot of things, but we're definitely going to have a lot of things for the future.
That's interesting. Congratulations again on your 15th anniversary.
We met in Spain, we met in Uruguay, so I'm looking forward already to meeting you guys in Argentina.
So thank you so much for your time, Max."
"Take care and congratulations.
Thank you very much.
Gracias."
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