In the mobile gaming industry, hitting a ten-year anniversary isn\u2019t just a milestone \u2013 it\u2019s an anomaly. When Outfit7 first launched Talking Tom Gold Run, the endless runner landscape was already fiercely competitive, crowded with established giants. Yet, a decade and billions of downloads later, the game remains a global chart-topper and an evergreen pillar of the genre.<\/p>\n
To celebrate this massive anniversary, we sat down with Rok Kernc, Head of Product at Outfit7 (Ekipa2 d.o.o. subsidiary), who has been steering the project since day one.<\/p>\n
From the midnight oil burned by a small, ambitious team to the complex realities of managing a decade\u2019s worth of product debt, Rok talks us through how a whiteboard brainstorm turned a company decision into a multi-billion-download reality.<\/p>\n
**Q: You were part of Talking Tom Gold Run from the very beginning. What do you remember most about those early days, and did you actually expect it to last a full decade?**<\/p>\n
**Rok Kernc:** The energy from those early days is what sticks with me the most. It was pure passion and drive, an incredible team spirit, and definitely a few sleepless nights trying to figure out what actually makes a runner great.<\/p>\n
It was a massive bet for us at the time. We had a smaller team, and outside of managing updates for other projects, we were totally all-in on this. Honestly, nobody knew if it was going to work, and we certainly weren\u2019t planning ten years into the future! We just wanted to build a genuinely great runner using Outfit7 IP.<\/p>\n
**Q: Outfit7 started out as pioneers of virtual pet games. What was the biggest cultural or technical hurdle in shifting gears to create an endless runner?**<\/p>\n
**Rok Kernc:** Honestly, the biggest hurdle was stepping into a genre that was completely new for us. At the time, endless runners were becoming one of the strongest genres in the casual mobile space. It felt like a natural evolution for the brand. <\/p>\n
The mobile games market also looked very different back then. Developers didn\u2019t have access to the level of player data, benchmarking, and analytics they rely on today, so a lot of decisions came down to experimentation and understanding what simply felt fun. <\/p>\n
Technically and creatively, that meant learning an entirely different gameplay philosophy. Virtual pet games are more thoughtful and offer a lot of mini tasks, while runners are all about speed, reflexes, momentum, and instant gratification. We had to figure out how to merge those two worlds without losing the identity and charm that players already loved about Talking Tom & Friends.<\/p>\n
**Q: Was Talking Tom Gold Run an instant success right out of the gate, or did it require heavy post-launch intervention to become a multi-billion-download game?**<\/p>\n
**Rok Kernc:** We were incredibly fortunate, it really was an instant hit. We shot to the top of the charts and amassed millions of downloads very early on. But we also knew a strong launch wasn\u2019t enough to sustain a game for ten years. Through constant updates, we kept expanding the game and giving players new reasons to come back. That continuous evolution is what gave the game its longevity.<\/p>\n
**Q: The endless runner space is notoriously crowded and constantly changing. What is the \u201csecret sauce\u201d that kept Talking Tom Gold Run relevant while other runners faded away?**<\/p>\n
**Rok Kernc:** It was really a perfect combination of factors. The game had an instant hook, tight controls, and level design that immediately clicked with players.<\/p>\n
One of our secret sauces was also the progression system built around rebuilding and upgrading homes. That gave players a stronger sense of purpose beyond simply chasing a high score.<\/p>\n
There are a lot of factors, to be fair, and good timing was definitely one of them.<\/p>\n
**Q: Over a decade of continuous operations, you must have accumulated some technical and product debt. What\u2019s been the biggest headache to fix?**<\/p>\n
**Rok Kernc:** The biggest headache is usually untangling foundational systems we built years ago so they can support modern features. At the same time, you constantly want to add new worlds, customization options, events, and systems to keep things exciting, but you also can\u2019t overwhelm players and lose the simplicity that made the game work in the first place.<\/p>\n
On the business side, live operations aren\u2019t free, and every update has to justify itself by bringing real value to players. Finding that balance between short term creativity and business, is something we think about constantly.<\/p>\n
**Q: How do you decide when to chase industry trends versus when to double down on the direction?**<\/p>\n
**Rok Kernc:** It always comes down to balancing several things at once; the needs of the business, the strength of the brand, creative vision, and the market signals you\u2019re seeing. You can follow trends too closely and end up making something that feels late or generic, but ignoring player behaviour completely is just as risky. The important part is understanding why certain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
10 Years, and Billions of Downloads – how Talking Tom Gold Run Built an Endless Legacy<\/p>\n
The post Interview: Rok Kernc on Ten Years of Talking Tom Gold Run<\/a> appeared first on Gamezebo<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40272,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}