Handy Games’ Chris Kassulke on staying focused on making games, not selling NFTs

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I enjoyed meeting with familiar gaming leaders at Gamescom and Devcom in Germany. One of them was Chris Kassulke, who started the mobile game pubisher HandyGames with his brother Markus and Udo Bausewein in 2000.

Kassulke has always been a fan of trying out new things, from the earliest smartphones in the days before the iPhone to virtual reality. He was an early believer in the Nintendo Switch and free-to-play games.

Some of those things worked out well, and some didn’t. But HandyGames found a way to last for decades and get downloads in the hundreds of millions. So it was interesting to hear Kassulke say that he wasn’t interested in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) after studying it closely.

Kassulke hasn’t seen a good reason for game developers to adopt NFTs, nor does he see how it’s good for consumers. Instead, he is focused on making indie games that deliver good gameplay, like the recently launched Endling: Extinction is forever, which is a moving game about the last of the foxes.

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Handy Games has more than 100 people and it’s hiring. It’s now part of Embracer Group, as THQ Nordic acquired Handy Games on 2018.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: Did you figure out pretty early on that you’re not an NFT guy?

Chris Kassulke: As I mentioned, it’s really about the value that we don’t see for the consumer. I see it when trying to finance something for the next product, stuff like that.