Daniel Stammler, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Kolibri Games, explains what’s important enough for the company to be set in stone as a “core value”…
Most companies have values, written principles that are used as guidelines for organizing business and work and relations. Ikea, for example, is the embodiment of cheap furniture with a clear, sober design. Their market approach reflects their values of “cost-consciousness” and “simplicity”. Sports brand Nike, known for aggressive advertising, has formalized their brand policy with the bold claim “We are on the offense — always.” as part of their values.
Our values at Kolibri Games are not goals or reminders of how we want to be, they evolved from the way we as a team approach things. Let me walk you through them, okay?
Our first value:
We believe in people. We build highly effective teams of self-motivated people, empowered to take charge through a supportive atmosphere.
The games industry is not about tech or brands, it’s about people. We don’t hire for experience or reputation, we hire for smartness. We aim to build a true meritocracy, a work environment where the brightest heads have the most impact and the best ideas win. So this is a good place to work if you’re ambitious and are ready to take ownership of what you do.
Next up:
We believe in players. We listen closely to our community because having an open ear for our players is the best way to constantly improve our games.
It may sound slightly off to “believe” in your own customers, but we really pride ourselves on being player-centric. This view governs a big part of what we do in daily business, we even try to prioritize game features and development tasks based on what the community wants. We don’t ever do anything for our own sake, we always have the players in mind. We do not crave the praise of our industry peers, we want the perfect five stars on every player review.
And:
We believe in learning. We continuously strive for improvement to become the best possible version of ourselves.
We encourage our team to read, to research, to accumulate knowledge in every way possible. We believe that smart people willing to get better every day are able to overcome any problem our company will face.
And lastly:
We believe in creating value. We make fast, yet reasonable decisions to grow our company, allowing us to provide successful games for years to come.
We aim to get things done fast. We try not to over-engineer, we try to break problems down and solve them bit by bit — in development as well as in other parts of the company. A company is really only a company if it is sustainable. Only a strong cash flow gives us the ability to keep growing, keep getting better, keep making new games. This might seem a very obvious value, an overly simple truth, but we aim for a sustainable model. We are in this game for the long term and we seek to build a ship that weathers every storm.
That’s it.
We feel these values reflect us very well, our dynamic approach, our pragmatism, our dedication to hard work and to getting things done fast. And we hold ourselves to these standards every day.