Efe Küçük and the forty games that didn’t work

Efe Küçük has a number that deserves a place near the top of his biography: forty. More than forty, to be precise. That is how many unsuccessful games he says he built before his first hit. It is an unusually useful detail in an industry whose public memory tends to consist of the games that survived.

Looking back in May 2024, he put it plainly: “I’ve built 40+ games that utterly failed before my first hit.” There is no tidy conversion rate hiding inside that admission. We do not get a formula for turning a pile of disappointments into a success. We get a developer who has had considerable practice at being wrong.

That experience gives a particular texture to his career. Küçük co-founded Game Factory, an incubator for game developers, and later moved into gaming at Trilitech in the Tezos ecosystem. Along the way he has worked on mobile games, helped other studios, and made small experiments involving artificial intelligence. One of those experiments gives you a nightclub bouncer to argue with. Even his software occasionally makes you work for admission.

A factory for the people making the games

Game Factory appeared publicly in October 2019 as an online game-development network. Küçük founded it with Murat Kahraman. Its proposition was practical: help Turkish developers make games and give them a route towards a publisher. Voodoo would test games developed through the network, offering teams professional feedback and, for successful projects, a publishing opportunity.

The invitation covered a broad range of experience. A student making a first game could apply. So could a professional who had spent years in the industry and wanted to develop something independently. Development and online education would take place through Discord. The machinery of the factory was, in part, a chat channel.

There is something appealingly economical about that arrangement. Someone with a working prototype needs people who can challenge it, explain its performance and help decide what to do next. A publishing connection puts an actual decision within reach. The developer still has to make a game worth playing; the network makes the next step easier to see.

By November 2020, Küçük was speaking as Game Factory’s co-founder and CEO, and the incubator was supporting 42 studios. His explanation of the mission centred on the difficult period before a studio can fund itself and survive. He wanted more teams to emerge from Turkey, and he wanted the process of getting started to become easier.

That is a specific ambition. A new team needs more than encouragement. It needs to work out who does what, where useful advice lives, and how its game might reach a publisher. Game Factory offered a setting in which those questions could be asked while the people asking them were still learning the business.

The useful part of a famous logo

In the first half of 2021, Küçük reported that nine studios inside Game Factory had received investment, with seven more in investment processes. Those figures described activity around the incubator at that moment. They also gave his original survival question a concrete business setting: teams needed a way to keep going while turning development work into companies.

Money introduces its own deadlines and expectations. The incubator’s job sat among several interests: developers trying to finish games, publishers looking for projects, and investors considering teams. Küçük’s public role put him in the middle of those conversations. It required explaining both what developers could make and what they needed in order to make it.

In February 2022, Game Factory announced a partnership with Google for Startups, described at the time as that programme’s first gaming partnership. Game Factory was then supporting more than 70 studios. The announcement covered training, mentoring, finding teammates, access to investors and publishing support.

Küçük’s explanation focused on combining Game Factory’s incubation experience with Google’s network. There is an obvious photograph to take when a startup programme meets a famous technology company. The more useful question comes after the photograph: who can the developers now speak to, and what help can they actually get?

The Booster programme supplied one answer. In May 2022, ten graduating ventures were scheduled to pitch at GameX after four months of support covering development, marketing, publishing and team management. Küçük and Google developer-relations leader Barış Yesugey were named for the opening remarks. Teams in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara could also use Game Factory’s open offices. The offer extended from advice to somewhere to sit down and work.

A watch seller, a bouncer, and a new set of tools

Küçük’s career then took him through a Web3 game studio in Denmark, where he worked in business development, before joining the Tezos ecosystem in March 2023. At Trilitech, his work included helping game partners with design, product management and getting their games to market. He also oversaw product management for the Tezos Unity SDK, a set of tools connecting game development with the blockchain.

The move gave him a different technical setting for familiar work. Developers still needed a coherent game, an audience and a reason for players to stay. His interest in virtual economies helped draw him towards decentralised games. The attraction included the possibility of games that were open source and permissionless.

His own smaller projects made those interests rather less abstract. In 2023, Bargainer presented players with an AI watch salesman called Thadeus Ticktock. The task was to negotiate down a $10,000 asking price. Conversation became the control scheme. Your next move was whatever argument you could come up with.

Convince the Bouncer offered a different social obstacle. Grim Steele stood between the player and the fictional Elysium nightclub. You were absent from the guest list. Getting inside required persuasion. Both experiments let players claim a Tezos collectible after succeeding. A technical interaction arrived wrapped in a situation people could immediately understand.

The watch game also fits a personal interest: Küçük lists horology among his enthusiasms. The joke is in the specificity. Artificial intelligence could have been introduced through a solemn demonstration of capabilities. Instead, here is a salesman with a suspiciously appropriate name, inviting you to haggle. A little theatre gives the player something to do.

“Virtual economies have always fascinated me!”

Efe Küçük, 2024

How long should an idea stay awkward?

Küçük’s hands-on work includes Ground Digger. He describes leading its initial design across the core idea, progression, levels, monetisation and learning curve. Those responsibilities cover the quiet decisions that shape an experience: what happens first, what makes the next action appealing, and how the game teaches someone to continue.

He studied at Istanbul University from 2018 to 2023 and helped found its esports association. University overlapped with building companies. His public interests include League of Legends, music production and AI, alongside watches. Games appear in his life as work, a subject to analyse, and something he plays himself.

By 2025, he was identified as Global Head of Gaming at Trilitech. The title widened the scope of his work, but his writing kept returning to decisions inside a developing game. In January 2026, he described the awkward period when a team senses promise before it can offer a convincing explanation of why the project will work.

His argument allows room for uncertainty. Teams can demand a polished pitch so early that they discard ideas before finding their real appeal. A rough prototype may need time for its systems to connect. He recommends experiments that investigate a feeling, with more detailed optimisation coming once the team understands what players are returning for.

There is a tension here that makes his advice interesting. Rapid testing is useful; so is patience. A team has to decide what it is learning from a disappointing result. Sometimes the sensible decision is to stop. Sometimes it means the prototype has yet to express the idea properly. Experience does not make that choice automatic.

In October 2026, he returned to the problem from another direction. As AI makes production faster and cheaper, he argued, design judgment and the relationship with players become more valuable. His attention went to decisions about an opening sequence, an in-game economy and what to cut. Faster tools leave those choices on the developer’s desk.

The argument is personal without being nostalgic. He welcomes the prospect of more people making games and sending unusual ideas directly to players. He also asks developers to think about what they make and whom they make it for. The ability to produce another build is useful. A player still has to choose it.

Finding the room again

In London, another familiar interest has resurfaced. Küçük has publicly discussed building SHIPYARD, bringing founders together through hackathons, dinners and demo nights. Its community is free for builders, and its programmes combine a London base with online participation. The invitation includes designers and operators as well as engineers.

The resemblance to his incubator years is easy to see. People making things need opportunities to meet, show unfinished work and find help. SHIPYARD gives that activity a place and a schedule. An introduction cannot guarantee a successful company. It can give an isolated builder someone useful to talk to on the next attempt.

Read across Küçük’s work and the cast grows: students, studio founders, publishers, investors, game partners, an obstinate bouncer. He keeps finding ways to put people and ideas into contact. After more than forty unsuccessful games, it seems fitting that so much of his career concerns helping the next attempt happen.