Silvia Turri of Ankor Game Tells Us How the Gaming Industry Has Helped People Survive the Lockdown

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID19 times? 

Silvia Turri: Everything went well (at least for now). We are originally from Italy, so we managed to come back home, we followed the rules: “wear a mask, wash your hands, keep the social distance”, these are the best ways to keep ourselves and others safe.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Ankor Game

Silvia Turri: I’ve been working with my husband as entrepreneurs for the past 20 years with solid success in Italy and Europe, we sold our old company and decided to move to the US and open a new company focused on Mobile Games Market.

How does Ankor Game innovate? 

Silvia Turri: We are currently developing different mobile games using a new sole proprietor technology to boost games results and revenue, I can’t go too deep into the explanation since we are currently looking for funding while working on some patents, so it’s all under NDA.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Silvia Turri: Actually, it was a good wake up call for us ( a positive one ), we always had a few people inside the team that were working remotely, with this pandemic we had to boost our remote system but it went super smooth, we were ready for splitting our production remotely so after the first week of adjustments we were able to follow a system.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Silvia Turri: No difficult choices were needed. We learned that we need to trust our team a lot more. We’re a solid team, so we trust every one of the Ankor’s team members. However, we saw other companies struggling with the remote working: some don’t trust artists that are actually working 8 hours with the TV on for they think they are not working properly etc.

But as I said, this wasn’t a problem for us; however, I can see difficulties in the long run for new-comers into the different companies.

How do you deal with stress and anxiety, how do you project yourself and Ankor Game in the future?

Silvia Turri: Stress and anxiety are one of the biggest issues nowadays due to the pandemic lockdown. People that have to stay inside a 500 sq. FT apartment for months will start to go a little bit crazy after a while. To avoid this situation, we had regular calls with the whole team during the week plus 2 “game night” calls where we played games, talked about ideas, watched a TV Show all together etc. 

These solutions helped us a lot, and we will keep some of these bonding experiences for the future ( remotely or in-person ).

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Silvia Turri: The mobile game market is highly competitive, and like I said before, we have a new technology that will help us with this.

Might seem a bit harsh to say but actually, gaming companies have seen steady growth during the pandemic due to the fact that people were staying home all day playing games on their phones or their Consoles/PCs, so the market didn’t take a huge hit.

Your final thoughts

Silvia Turri: I believe that everything will go slightly back to normal. Some companies might shift more towards remote working, and there will be more possibilities for people around the world to join companies that they couldn’t join before. Another thing that might happen will be the split of manufacturer production into multiple detached offices instead of a big single one.

I’ve seen on twitter a lot of people going crazy for the remote/smart working solution, of course, some people will always exaggerate, we need a hybrid solution where you have a core team in an office, and then you can manage other elements remotely, mostly when building a new company you need constant feedback from your team and that is faster and more efficient in person.

Your website?

https://www.ankorgame.com/