The gaming industry is forever pushing the boundaries of technology and human creativity to come up with the ultimate entertainment experience.

One rising star on the horizon of the gaming world is the Turkish mobile game development company – VertigoGames. Since the release of its mid-core real-time social multiplayer game Critical Strike, the VR (virtual reality) game developer has been the talk of the town.

Behind the steering wheel of Vertigo Games are Murat Sayin and Ali Sayin, two brothers who share the same passion for entertainment and high-quality gaming experience. They first implemented their idea for the game in 2013, saw it through till today, and are making big plans for the future ahead.

Founders’ Early Life

Born and raised in Turkey, Murat and Ali Sayin’s life began in a small village in the far northeast of the country. They overcame great obstacles to attend school and get proper education, which paved the way for the mountains they had to climb in the future and shaped them into the people they are today.

Even early in life, they were both drawn to the gaming world. Murat and Ali loved to play games but soon discovered that the games they had at their disposal were not enough to satisfy their appetites. So they decided to make their own. Their boyish creativity pushed them forward and led them to come up with fantasies and ideas about the type of game they would like to play.

Tracing the Path

Murat Sayin started to feel his calling to become a game developer as young as 12 when he started adding things to the games he was playing. He began by writing his own codes and adding different images.

After he recognized the potential within himself, Murat tried to begin the process of accomplishing his dreams. He enrolled at Boğaziçi University, only to discover that that was not the path for him and to drop out a year later. Fortunately, this didn’t impede him from following his dreams.

Murat took matters into his own hands and started undertaking some game development projects and publishing them. At first, they weren’t a huge success, but through trial and error, they got better and better.

Ali followed his brother’s footsteps closely, showing the same enthusiasm for developing and playing games. His quick-thinking skills complemented his brother’s, together making an unstoppable team.

Professional Journey

Besides their obvious creative aptitude, both Ali and Murat pride themselves on being highly rational and calculated. In the beginning, they started by doing more profitable work with mobile app development and B2B businesses.

However, they quickly discovered that that was a competitive market, so they would need more than dedication and hard work to succeed. They soon realized that user behavior mattered greatly, but unfortunately, they were still at the start, meaning they couldn’t get the proper feedback to continue improving their products. The mobile apps they developed were mostly short-term and could not compete with the other famous and well-established apps out there, at least not without bigger investments and risk exposure.

So, they turned to producing low-cost games, which immediately attracted hundreds of thousands of users. That is when it clicked – they could make simple yet entertaining games and build upon them in the future.

Achieving Great Heights

Instead of building up their expectations and setting up some big long-term goals, they started taking things slowly and building their platform step by step. They set clear, achievable goals that users can immediately provide feedback on and can be performed quickly.

Murat and Ali began implementing the “scrum” methods and created short 2-week or 3-week “sprints” where they would try to answer questions such as what their players needed and what sort of reaction they got from every change in features.

The most challenging aspect for them was the deadlines, and again instead of setting up one huge deadline for the final project, they decided to divide and manage. They segmented each sprint into its most meaningful little tasks because predicting the outcome for the entire sprint was very difficult, but making a prediction for these small bits proved quite easy.

Launching Critical Strike and Vertigo Games

After the success of their first few games, Murat and Ali launched the prototype of their real-time multiplayer fast-paced game, Critical Strike. Soon after, they made their first serious investment when they bought Google Play rights for Ottomania and ran an advertising campaign with a well-known vine celebrity at the time.

The game became a huge success in Turkey, which also paved the way for expanding its boundaries globally. Naturally, the need for company expansion arose, and they started growing their team and looking for a property to establish their headquarters.

Eventually, Vertigo Games found its location in Istanbul and set up its work corner. But, when the pandemic hit in 2020, they had to transition back to remote working, which disrupted their dynamic and, as they say, proved to be quite difficult.

In time, they overcame this obstacle and managed to see the upside of the lockdown. Because more and more people were finding themselves confined in their homes with nothing to do but try to find some source of entertainment and a means to socialize online, their user base grew more than ever before.

And ever since, Vertigo Games has kept on growing. In 2021, partnering with Boğaziçi University, Murat and Ali started a Unity series aimed at helping young entrepreneurs and gaming enthusiasts who want to enter the industry and improve themselves. The series can be found on Vertigo Games’ YouTube channel and includes detailed training courses on how to develop a game in Unity.

Funding and Finances

Vertigo Games has been on the market for almost a decade now. Founded in 2013, the mobile game development company has continually been on a more or less upward trajectory, but the launch of Critical Strike skyrocketed Vertigo Games’ success and brought it the glory it has today.

By 2018 the game reached more than 5 million mobile FPS players, with 5 people on the company team. By 2019, it had more than 20 million FPS players with 10 people, and by 2020 more than 50 million players all over the world with 15 people.

Currently, Vertigo Games has an outreach of 80 million players worldwide. The company’s estimated annual revenue is $2.3 million per year or $121,200 per employee. And just recently, they announced Ulas Karademir, the vice president of Unity, as their newest Angel investor.

Plans & Ambitions

Presently, Vertigo Games is headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey, with 20 employees. The company marks some remarkable achievements in the tech and gaming field. It took its place in Gamescom 2022, and its name appeared as a sponsor at the Mobidictum Business Conference and the White Night Conference in Istanbul.

Furthermore, the founders’ names continually appear at various award ceremonies and events featuring inspirational success stories in the software industry. Their goal for the company now is to continue growing and improving their team and reach 100 million users in the next year.

Murat and Ali are already working on this aim by creating various new projects, like Project X. The high-quality VR game developers and the entire team put great efforts into allowing Critical Strike players an authentic 80s experience in this newest game update.

With their top priorities lying in building a collaborative, proactive, open, and nurturing climate for their employees, the story of Vertigo Games is just beginning!