Josh Ayala Of Perfect Day Games On The Future of Gaming
An Interview With David Leichner
Understanding the network effect, and designing for this, is important for success. In our opinion, we want the widest possible audience of all ages, design for this and make something so memorable that a player will gladly share the experience with their friends and family.
As a part of our series about what’s around the corner for the gaming industry, we had the pleasure of interviewing Josh Ayala.
Josh Ayala is the CEO and Executive Producer of Perfect Day Games. Josh is a skilled Executive Producer currently leading the development of the mobile squad-based role-playing game EIGHTH ERA, with over 20 years in software development and more than 10 in the gaming industry, leading new IP, live franchises, and large-scale projects. He currently leads Perfect Day Games as CEO, bringing expertise in business leadership, software development, and production with a career that spans music, automotive, and gaming, with leadership roles at Z2 / King and NCsoft, where he managed development teams and oversaw web, mobile, and game-related initiatives.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share the “backstory” behind what brought you to this particular career path?
I love creative pursuits, especially visual arts and music. I love solving technology problems and I love business and product management. Somehow along the way through my professional journey, I realized that the video games industry encompasses all three of these passion points. While I’m currently the CEO and Executive Producer of Perfect Day Games, my career path to get to this point was, naturally, a pretty winding and twisting path. I started with learning oil painting from a master in London, and simultaneously studying computer programming and then working in the music industry. I finally started my work in video games at NCSoft, where I found the work covered the three aspects of my professional world that were my favorite things, making me very very happy.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The most interesting thing I’ve experienced throughout my career was starting Perfect Day Games. Going through the startup fundraising journey, and pivoting to development partnerships during COVID, was all very interesting stuff! I’m coming up on having worked with some of these team members for 15 years, through multiple game launches, cancellations, business acquisitions, and many triumphs as a team along the way. Nothing is better than building a team that has so much integrity.
I’ve learned about the entrepreneurial journey, leading through uncertainty, and building a business. One key learning has been how valuable mentors can be, and how many great people are willing to help you. I’ve made it a continual practice to support startups with knowledge sharing, coaching, and connections to pay it forward.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
This one is easy. James Nicholas, an EP from King that joined us at the King Seattle office and is currently the COO of Trailmix Games fits the bill. I am a deep product thinker, and he and I think very similarly about using product management principles and executive strategy planning to generate great results. Watching him work made me more comfortable leaning into that way of working, in an industry where sometimes project work is driven by big egos, loud voices, and brute force.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I say yes to every opportunity to share knowledge; speaking to colleges, high school classes, business conferences, etc. I co-host a bi-monthly game developer meet up called ConSpire (Connect and Inspire!) where we get about 120 attendees per event now, and it’s been running for more than two years in Seattle. Perfect Day Games supports many events and organizations per year that promote creative careers, and diversity and access in the technology industry. Part of having a ‘perfect day’ is being of service to others. It’s in our DNA.
Ok fantastic. Let’s now move to the main focus of our discussion. Can you tell us about the technological innovations in gaming that you are working on?
The most recent fascinating innovation has been building a pipeline to deliver real world prizes, physical collectible coins, to players that we’ve partnered with the Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) and the United States Federal Mint to create. These coins are delivered to tournament winners in EIGHTH ERA, a mobile squad-based RPG hero collection game that we’ve partnered with Nice Gang to build and launch.
A lot of developers I’ve spoken with are afraid of having to securely manage player information and the logistics of fulfillment, which opened the door for our teams to be the first to offer something like this to our players across the gaming industry. There are challenges but our team has demonstrated we’re capable of carefully handling sensitive data and building in systems to deliver the goods. We love working on the hardest problems.
How do you think this might disrupt the status quo?
No one is doing this! These collectible coins have become beloved trophies for the top players, and some are being resold on Ebay for thousands of dollars. This is absolutely ground breaking. We all love gaming, but creating something tangible and of real value for players to win and collect is adding a new dimension to the joy of play.
You, of course, know that games and toys are not simply entertainment, but they can be used for important purposes. What is the “purpose” or mission behind your company? How do you think you are helping people or society?
Very simply, a ‘perfect day’ for us is working together making great games. My goal as a business leader is to share that experience with as many people as possible. That can be in the form of creating a product that can bring joy to players, their family and their friends, or hiring someone to build great games with us, or even build tools that let other developers get to the joy of development faster. This is our very simple mission.
I’m very interested in the interface between games and education. How do you think more people (parents, teachers etc.) or institutions (work, school etc.) can leverage games and gamification to enhance education?
In one game our team built called Battle Nations, a mother of elementary-school-aged twins had her boys playing a resource management game we built so they could learn to manage inventory, time, and their in-game finances. I loved it! Perfect Day Games is part of a five organization consortium that makes up Washington Interactive Learning Association (WILA). We produce an annual game developer/education collider held at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, as well as ongoing networking and education events. Games can be used to teach, gamification can be used to drive richer experiences and motivate learning, and at the root of it, infusing play and curiosity into teaching with games will certainly make it a more fun and memorable experience for all.
How would you define a “successful” game? Can you share an example of a game or toy that you hold up as an aspiration?
In my opinion, the most successful games bring people closer together. That’s where true joy lies. We are huge fans of Nintendo for being able to bring generations together to game together, something you’ll find me doing on Sunday afternoon with my 10-year old. We also aspire to be a brand like Pokémon, that keeps fans for life. We want our quality, worlds, stories, and characters to be so engaging that players fall in love and want to follow them for the rest of their lives.
What are the “5 Things You Need to Know To Create a Highly Successful Game” and why.
1. To value Players above all else. There is no game if you have no players, and in today’s connected world you can engage the players like never before.
2. Quality is a predictor of success. Art, stability, storyline, user interface; all of these must be of the highest quality to build trust and respect from your fans.
3. A great team is what builds a great game. Ensuring a team member is rested, supported, and has a voice in the process will get the best results for the team and business. Take care of each other!
4. Understanding the network effect, and designing for this, is important for success. In our opinion, we want the widest possible audience of all ages, design for this and make something so memorable that a player will gladly share the experience with their friends and family.
5. Ask for help from your peers if you need it. We all have skill, capacity, and knowledge gaps. The game development community is friendly and helpful in my experience. Ask and give help freely and your goals will be more easily achieved.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
At the risk of being corny, being kind. The games industry is known for ‘crunch’ and layoffs, which I see as inhumane behavior. Overworking our colleagues has been proven to generate diminishing returns, and in fact create more problems and bugs, and therefore longer dev cycles and higher product and business risk due to the resulting critical failures. The best leaders know the capacity, how to scope to that capacity, and how to successfully deliver a product to market without major issues and killing their team.
The best leaders also know how to manage a product portfolio, so they can move their team members to new projects and products to take to market once an existing product completes its full production cycle. Great teams are formed over extensive time working together. Cycles of layoffs of teams that have launched successful products just seems like a huge lost opportunity to me.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Keep watering where things are going and growing. This is the ‘appreciative inquiry’ modality; where you search for things that are going well and ask yourself what you can do to amplify that into greatness. When leaving King, the new CEO at King suggested I spin out my team and we continue partnering together in business. At the same time, my team asked what I planned to do after, because they wanted to come with me. This was clearly a case of listening to the universe and continuing to work with the phenomenal team that I had the honor to work alongside, and find ways to make even more impact on the industry and our communities. Five years later we’ve launched multiple games, had endless fun, and grown as individuals and as a business, together.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
You can find me on LinkedIn [ ] or Bluesky [ .
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
