In this interview with Johan Cruyff Institute, Javier Domingo, co-founder of Laurel Gaming—a startup focused on casual mobile games—shares his insights on the industry and the future of the gaming sector
In recent years, the mobile gaming industry has shown impressive growth. According to the State of Mobile Gaming 2024, over 70% of people who play video games do so on their mobile phones. Founded in 2022, Laurel Gaming specializes in casual games with a social and competitive focus. Javier Domingo, co-founder of Laurel, emphasizes the importance of bringing back the essence of classic games and creating accessible experiences for all audiences: “Our goal is for users to experience something similar to playing in the schoolyard with friends or board games with family.”
In this interview with Johan Cruyff Institute, Javier Domingo addresses the challenges facing the gaming industry, including artificial intelligence, and highlights the importance of building a sense of belonging: “Younger generations are increasingly playing to socialize, to be part of a community.”
What is Laurel Gaming’s value proposition?
What we’ve observed is that many current mobile casual games often rely on aggressive monetization models, or they’re quite solitary and not very engaging. That’s why our goal at Laurel Gaming is to develop fun games that evoke the feeling of playing in the yard with friends or board games with family. We want to create fun, shared experiences.
That’s why we make simple, casual, timeless games like Trivia, Parcheesi or Snake—games everyone knows and can play, from an 18-year-old to someone in their 70s or 80s. Then there’s the more competitive side, for those who want to participate and try to win prizes, always in a healthy and friendly way, without interfering with the user experience.
What are the main challenges casual gaming platforms face today, and how is Laurel Gaming addressing them?
There’s a lot of competition and a huge number of games launched every day. Still, I believe the biggest challenge is artificial intelligence. Since it’s available to every company, platforms must figure out how to integrate it: whether they can use it to their advantage or risk falling behind if competitors use it better.
“At Laurel Gaming, we’re using AI, for example, to generate more trivia questions. Across the industry, we’re seeing that thanks to AI, games are being developed faster.”
So, despite some potential drawbacks, I think it’s the future and will become integrated into nearly every sector.
What do you consider to be the key elements in building and maintaining a strong community around a gaming platform?
I believe it’s very important to communicate honestly with users. Even if you’re a large company, it’s essential to find channels where you can engage in dialogue with them, ask for their feedback, find out what you can improve, what they enjoy most, and really listen. Today, Discord is an excellent platform for this, as it allows users to feel that the company hears them and involves them in what’s being built. In the end, with so many apps and games out there, if users find one where they feel heard and valued, they’re more likely to view it positively.
Gaming has evolved into an increasingly social experience. How do you see the future of social gaming, and what role will Laurel play in that evolution?
Younger generations are increasingly playing to socialize, to be part of a community. That’s why this dimension is fundamental to us, and in nearly every game we develop, we try to include user interaction—whether it’s with friends or with people they can meet through the game. In fact, some people lose interest or don’t enjoy a game as much if it doesn’t offer that kind of interaction.
That’s why in Laurel Gaming we believe shared experiences are the key to gaming. This also aligns with what I mentioned earlier about maintaining dialogue with users.
Currently, rewards are focused on the city of Barcelona. What are your plans for expanding to other cities or markets, and how do you plan to scale the model globally?
We work with several partners for our rewards through gift cards. These partners provide cards from any major brand, which allows us to send rewards anywhere in the world. In terms of expansion, we’d like to start with the United States. Laurel Gaming already has a strong presence in Latin America and Spain, but the U.S. is a huge market.
We also want to grow our presence in Northern Europe, Brazil, and India, where there’s a very strong gaming culture. But our main focus is the United States.
