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Art of Puzzles
Jigsaws Meet Colouring Books - Interview about Art of Puzzles at DevGAMM 2025
We caught up with Anastasia Zaiceva, chief communications officer at ZiMAD, to discuss all things Art of Puzzles and the developer's other projects and ideas during our time at DevGAMM 2025.
Audio transcription
"Alright, we're in Gdansk for the DevGamm, and this is completely ad hoc, because I just met Anastasia, who's into communications, and that's always nice to talk about.
And, you know, we're having this coffee and we're discussing many things.
Food, tourism, pets, tennis, but other than that, how communications are changing as of late."
"You have a background, you were with Wargaming.
Yeah.
And now you're on a mobile company that does a lot of things, and you're into community building as well.
So, first and foremost, what can you tell me your company is about?
So, ZiMAD is an American game developer and publisher. We do everything on our own."
"We are on the market for 15 years, like more than 15 years, and our major game is Magic Jigsaw Puzzle.
It's 13 years in the market right now.
We have hundreds of millions of downloads across different platforms, because we work with different app stores.
And we have our games on Windows Store, for example, Amazon, also Huawei, and looking for different opportunities apart from the major ones."
"So, our portfolio consists mainly from jigsaw puzzle games and board card games.
Something which is loved by people over 30, I would say.
Of course. For a game that big and that has been running for so long, how do you deal with community building?
So, actually, that's my favorite question."
"This wasn't pre-prepared?
No? Okay.
No, because I'm a type of person who loves communities, like on my own, and I create communities everywhere.
I love creating reading blogs, I love creating blogs for girls who are working with tech, because I know that sharing the same interests empowers you in some ways, because you see other people doing the same things."
"You see other people doing something that you love, but in a different way, and that enriches your experience in so many ways.
And that's actually why we create communities, because sometimes it's hard, you know, we have a lot of men in jigsaw puzzle games, and it's hard for a man who loves collecting puzzles to find maybe a friend or a fellow who is sharing the same interests."
"But they easily do it inside the community.
And when you see that other people are sharing the same hobby, you are feeling more positive, more secure, you are safe inside this community, and you can express your own, like you would love to.
And the main part here is that inside our game we have the possibility to download your photos and create jigsaw puzzles out of them."
"And that's always cool, because, you know, you can share with your friends some jigsaw puzzles that you've created on your own, and that's kind of an engaging way to collaborate, not just inside the game, but apart from the game, you have possibilities to talk about things that you're interested in.
What is the key to reaching that community?
Because, of course, you have the concept, you know that you need to reach a specific target, or men or women, or a specific social status, whatever, but then how do you actually, what is the secret behind actually reaching them and becoming part of your community?
So, first of all, there are different ways to attract a user to a community."
"First of all, it's something inside the game that drives people to, just to follow the link and to see what's happening, like inside the community.
But our secret recipe is to talk on more things than, rather than just playing our game.
We add more information, like trends, like humor, jokes, about different situations, like family things that we are experiencing, like everyday, like family routine, maybe some relations between a wife and a husband, maybe some jokes which are understandable for everyone."
"And that's why we collect these people and they are trying to find maybe something that is pretty similar to their life.
Alright, but then what channels do you use to reach them?
So, that's the key, that's the secret, you have this sort of narrative that you want to use in order to reach them, but then do you use social only, or your own channels, or inside the game, or press, or how do you convey?
It's like omnichannel, and I think it's the only way right now to attract more people, because we all have social media on our phones, but we also reach maybe some medium, or people who have Telegram, they have Telegram news, maybe some community news, some ads you see everywhere, and I think that's, you know, like plastic, self-marketed say, they usually say that you need seven points of contact with your potential customer."
"That's why we do all, starting from in-game activities, we also have social media, we have Spotify music channel, which is dedicated to those who are collecting jigsaw puzzles.
And for sure media, because our audience is 30 plus, as I already said, told you, so I understand that people of this age, they want to have the possibility to read only information which is credible for them."
"And if you are in social media, you see tons of content, and sometimes you go to the comments, and people, they are just telling, oh no, that's not true, even like health advice, lots of health advice inside social media, that you're like, coffee is harmful to your health.
Coffee is blue."
"Yeah, and you're like, wow, really? You're going to comments?
People like nutritionists, they told that, no, it's fake, it's not, because people in social media, and the actual algorithm of social media is formed in that way, that you should just drive interest and hype, and lots of things that will be like, wow, thanks for people."
"That's why content creators, they are trying to, you know, there is an expression in Russian when you throw...
You can say it in Russian?
No, I will not.
Okay."
"I will just tell you off record.
When you are throwing shit on a ventilator.
Yeah, shit hit the fan, in English.
Shit hit the fan."
"Or they want to flame people.
Actually, the creators, they just want to throw the shit on the fans.
Because it gets more interactions.
Yeah, and they understand that if the people are interacting with their content, then content became viral, and they got more and more views."
"The message is passed away.
And that drives a lot of really fake news, a lot of strange content, which was created just to fit the algorithm of social media.
And that's why for me, as a millennial, media is something on another level, because here you see the editors, the journalists who are crafting the news, who are trying to pick the most interesting facts, or they are making an analysis prior to posting information."
"And they know that there is a reputation in media, and if they post something which is harmful or strange or bad, people could come to the editor and tell that that's not true, you are doing the wrong thing.
And for social media, there is no legal instrument that will work with fake news."
"That's why it's hard, and every year it's even harder to understand which content is worth seeing.
They are removing fact-checkers, and they are removing that more and more so that it's not fact-checked.
But you know that, I know that.
We know that legacy media are important to keep the proper thing going."
"But perhaps you also felt in your environment that publishers, studios, know less and less about this and count less and less on legacy media.
Do you feel like that?
You go back a long way, you've been with Wargaming back in the day."
"My actual background is PR manager.
So you know about this.
I know a lot about this, and I think that it's not about people not believing in media, and that's why publishers are not making news for media."
"But sometimes it is about PR agencies, for example, or internal PR managers who are doing their job wrong because they are trying to provide a coverage.
Let's say it's a KPI for them, a coverage, like 50 articles.
A clipping."
"Yeah, let's just send the mail out and get my press release published somewhere.
By many different sites.
Or even projects, not just media, but some sites where you just post your link or your press release.
But their founders, they understood, they got nothing out of this kind of PR."
"And that's why they are not pretty satisfied with the results.
For me, I would say I would better have two articles from a company, but the sources will be credible.
Yeah, and it's more and more difficult for us to filter through all the many PR requests and the many press releases a day."
"Yeah, I generated shit.
Yeah, it's very difficult.
AI generated shit and many, as you said, many PR agencies trying to send the same message to different outlets.
Sometimes a more personal conversation is needed."
"How would you say we could fix this?
I think it's more about creating relations between media and publishers.
Because if we work together towards the same goal, it will be...
They are hard as well."
"Hard?
In communicating.
Hard, because they've been removing, for example, local offices as of late.
So you have the activations, the EAs, the Wargamings, they all remove local presence."
"Before, back in the day, you would have your local PR man or woman and you would have a contact.
And that contact would know you as a magazine, as a media outlet, and would know the product at the same time.
At the moment they removed these local branches, they put agencies on that.
I respect the work by my colleagues in agencies, but at the same time, many times we have seen that they don't know the media and they don't know the product."
"So all is...
But you know, there are lots of ambassadors or game influencers and they can, I think, probably stay in between the publisher and the media.
For example, I will explain a bit more, if the company has no actual speaker, which is like..."
"I know what you mean.
Sometimes people just do business and they do not pay attention to media relations.
But there is an influencer or gaming ambassador or some blogger who creates lots of content on this game.
And he knows all the updates, all the features, content which has been added to the game."
"Maybe he knows a lot inside of the game because he was invited to some events, like beta version events.
And they can act as a liaison.
I think, yeah, because they have this information.
They are friendly enough because they have their YouTube channels, like TikTok channels, and they know how to speak, they know how to communicate."
"And sometimes maybe there is a way to collaborate with them because you are, like, as a media and your audience is more about millennials, yeah?
Yeah, yeah, that's another thing.
It's more about teenagers."
"And maybe why not to combine these, you know, propositions and not to create articles together with influencers attracting more people to your media and sharing your audience with them.
That's interesting.
Hopefully there is a way because, of course, there is the fact that teenagers now read less and less and are less interested in reading beyond the headline, going to the, for example, gaming sites to check what's hot, what's new."
"They don't do that anymore.
So perhaps there is a way to fix this.
So any message that you would like to share about your current company and the games you mentioned that they should try out before we continue with our coffee?
Okay, I would say about the games in general that people should not be afraid of playing games because games for now are not only about spending time in some inappropriate way."
"Games are about strategy, about logical thinking, about how to do functions, about collaborating.
Like if the game has a really wide community or like my son, he plays a lot of online games.
He speaks different languages and that's also a good point to start."
"And if we are working remote and going digitally, why not to try game as a first activity of people on this planet?
Like we played games lots of millions of years here.
Why not to try to incorporate games in our life and not to be afraid of them?
Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time Anastasia and looking forward to staying in touch."
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