David Yin has big plans for game developer Mighty Kingdom

Game developer Mighty Kingdom had a near-death experience last year, but new chief executive, industry veteran David Yin, has high hopes for the company.

New Mighty Kingdom chief executive David Yin. Picture: Supplied.

A youth spent playing Street Fighter in Sydney milk bars in the mid-80s, or trying to clock Nintendo classics such as Donkey Kong, lit a passion for gaming in Mighty Kingdom chief executive David Yin which has never waned.

The former Google Play executive and Storms boss doesn’t get as much time to play as he’d like these days, what with the demands of his new role and a young family, but he’s passionate about the turnaround story for listed game developer Mighty Kingdom, which had a near-death experience over the past year.

The company’s travails are well documented. Mighty Kingdom listed in April 2021, having raised $18m at 30c per share.

It burned through the cash rapidly however, and by August 2022 an emergency capital raise was in order.

This brought Adelaide businessman Shane Yeend onto the register, as the cornerstone investor in a $7m capital raise.

Mr Yeend never paid for about half of his $4m in shares however, despite being chief executive of the company himself for several months, and eventually tried to spill the board and management, succeeding in ousting then-chair Michelle Guthrie, while failing in his bid to have himself and his hand-picked team of directors, none of whom had any gaming experience, installed to the board.

Having failed in his quest to take control of the company, Mr Yeend has since sold out, with Mr Yin and a group of investors and existing shareholders subsequently tipping more than $8m into the company, with a vision to hit profitability in the 2025 financial year.

The new group’s gaming credentials are top shelf.

Mr Yin, now Sydney-based, spent about 15 years in Singapore working across companies including Nokia and Google, while also mentoring start-ups and angel investing.

Animoca Brands and iCandy Interactive director Chris Whiteman has joined the board, as has former Activision Blizzard executive Mark Aubrey.

Mighty Kingdom’s trimmed down workforce has gone fully remote, with Mr Yin, wearing a decidedly on-brand, old-school Atari T-shirt while speaking to The Australian at the Lot Fourteen start-up hub in Adelaide, laser focused on getting back to profitability.

While the company went through the wringer last year, Mr Yin, who joined as chief executive in March, says what has persisted through that time has been an excellent skill set, and an ability to do high-quality technical and creative work.

“I’ve always had this very strong passion for gaming and that’s followed through since I was 10 to where I am now,’’ Mr Yin said.

“I just loved it back then. After school I would visit this milk bar – back then they had milk bars in Sydney right – and I’d go in there and play Street Fighter.

“I’ve always loved gaming itself … I’ve been in mobile gaming for 15 years in a career capacity, and in 2015 I joined the Google Play business development team over in Singapore. “I was covering basically the Australian and New Zealand markets for some of the largest game studios and as a result of that, I started to get to know Mighty Kingdom really well.’’

Mr Yin said the quality of Mighty Kingdom’s games, and the creativity, really shone through.

“And that still remains … despite all the challenges that have been very public in the last three years, the quality and the creativity still remained at Mighty Kingdom.’’

Mr Yin said with all of the company’s difficulties at the shareholder level now resolved, the attraction to him was coming in with a clean slate, with the prospect of a strong turnaround story.

“If we could capitalise the company really well – raise enough funds to then focus on what we are really good at – creativity and quality – then there is a solid turnaround story.’’

Mighty Kingdom is currently focused on growing its work for hire business, and is also co-developing titles with Canada’s East Side Games, with the goal there to tap into global brands such as Star Trek which East Side has developed games for previously.

Mr Yin said the main focus for Mighty Kingdom in the short to medium term was getting to profitability, with projects such as an AI gaming lab to follow.

This would involve using artificial intelligence to take some of the grunt work out of the development process, whether that be in the pitch stage or in game creation, enabling designers and programmers to work on higher value tasks.

The company’s chief technology officer, Grant Osborne, is a former principal engineer with the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, and brings great credibility to the role, Mr Yin said.

There was also the potential, given the expected wide adoption of AI in the gaming sector, to develop a software as a service offering for other companies, or even in collaboration with them.

Mr Yin doesn’t have the time to hit the Street Fighter machine at the non-existent Sydney milk bar any more, but naturally spends some time each day gaming, with a predilection these days towards puzzle games on the mobile.

And while following his passion into gaming has been a great ride, there are downsides.

“Try explaining to your kids that they can’t spend all weekend gaming when dad’s at the office all day doing just that.”

Originally published as David Yin has big plans for game developer Mighty Kingdom