Game Wise: The IGEA Educates Podcast
Game Wise: IGEA Educates is the podcast that brings together the best minds in and around the Australian games industry. Hosted by IGEA, this series is about unlocking industry knowledge to help you navigate the business of making games and building sustainable businesses.
Covering all aspects of game development, emerging challenges and industry trends, we tap into IGEA’s extensive network while also bringing in experts from outside the gaming space to give you fresh perspectives and practical advice.
Whether you’re an indie startup, a growing studio, or an industry veteran, Game Wise is your resource for navigating the business of games in Australia and beyond. Let’s get wise about games!
Game Wise: The IGEA Educates Podcast
Niches Win: How Foxie Games Turned Horse Games into 100M+ Downloads
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We’ve released another episode in our series highlighting Australian success stories, aimed at inspiring the next generation of game makers. There’s no such thing as overnight success, so how did they do it, and what are their superpowers?
In this episode, Jens sits down with Dineth Abeynayake, Founder and Product Lead at Foxie Games, to unpack the journey behind building one of Australia’s most successful niche game studios.
From an unconventional start as an aerospace engineer, Dineth shares how a self-taught, highly iterative approach – shipping games rapidly and testing them in-market – led to a breakthrough hit and ultimately to more than 100 million downloads across Foxie’s titles.
The conversation dives into the studio’s core “superpowers”: identifying underserved niche audiences, taking those communities seriously, and building games through continuous feedback loops to achieve product–market fit. Dineth also highlights the importance of de-risking projects for investors, balancing creativity with structure as teams scale, and building a strong internal culture that empowers teams while maintaining focus.