Product & Game Economy Design — London

I design the loops that make people come back.

Fifteen years building retention, progression and monetization systems for large-scale consumer products — Pixel Gun 3D, Avakin Life, The Sandbox — now applied to fintech, fitness, social and other consumer products outside games.

Work with me Partner on a company

Anton Finiukov

Class: Systems Designer

London, UK

Retention Design92

Game Economy90

LiveOps85

Systems Thinking95

AI-Assisted Building80

Pixel Gun 3D Avakin Life The Sandbox Hero Wars

Skill Tree

Systems that turn motivation into product.

The same design questions show up everywhere — why return tomorrow, what feels like progress, what should be scarce. Games just answered them first.

Retention & Progression

Habit loops, goal structures and pacing that make coming back feel earned, not extracted.

→ Lifts D7 / D30 retention

Game Economy & Monetization

Balancing currencies, pricing and scarcity so spend feels fair and revenue scales without breaking trust.

→ Lifts ARPPU without churn spikes

LiveOps & Engagement

Event cadences, seasonal content and social mechanics run on a schedule, not improvised release by release.

→ Sustains engagement post-launch

Outside Games

Applying the same systems thinking to fintech saving habits, fitness streaks, dating scarcity and community status.

→ Translates directly to non-gaming KPIs

Quest Log — Track Record

Built and shipped at scale.

Products with real reach. The numbers below are publicly reported by the companies themselves.

Hero Wars↗

Nexters · Ongoing · Product & Game Design Consultant

Product discovery, feature design, audience & market analysis, and post-release analysis on Nexters' flagship RPG battler across mobile and web.

$1.7B

Lifetime revenue

185M+

Installs

The Sandbox↗

Animoca Brands · Product / Game Design

Creator ecosystems, UGC tooling, digital ownership and platform economics for a voxel-based virtual world where users build and monetize their own experiences.

5M+

Platform users

25,000+

Virtual LAND owners

Avakin Life↗

Lockwood Publishing · Product / Game Design

Social virtual worlds, avatar identity, digital goods and virtual economies for one of the longest-running social platforms on mobile.

500M+

Lifetime downloads

1.6M

Monthly active players

Pixel Gun 3D↗

Cubic Games · Product / Game Design

Retention, monetization, engagement and LiveOps design for a long-running mobile shooter operating at massive scale across iOS, Android and Steam.

220M+

Total downloads

$210M+

Lifetime revenue

Figures as publicly reported by GDEV / Nexters, Cubic Games, Lockwood Publishing and Animoca Brands. They describe product scale, not individual attribution. All game icons and trademarks belong to their respective owners.

Contracts

Bring in the expertise, keep the team small.

Fixed-scope engagements for teams that need senior retention and economy thinking without a full-time hire.

Retention & Economy Audit

A structured diagnostic of your product's progression, pricing and engagement systems, with a prioritized roadmap.

3–4 weeks

Gamification Sprint

For non-gaming products — redesigning onboarding, progression or streaks for fintech, fitness, social or education products.

4–6 weeks

Fractional Product / Economy Lead

Ongoing senior involvement in feature design, metrics and roadmap for teams that need it part-time, not full-time.

Monthly retainer

Indie Mode

Enterprise-grade economy thinking, indie-friendly terms.

Most indie teams get the mechanics right and the economy wrong — currencies, pricing and progression bolted on late. Pricing here flexes to match a small team's budget and stage.

Economy & Retention Teardown

A fast, focused pass on your game's economy, progression and first-session retention — what's working, what's leaking, and the top fixes to ship next.

1–2 weeks · fixed fee

Launch-Ready LiveOps Kit

A lightweight event cadence, offer structure and first content roadmap so launch week doesn't run on improvisation.

2 weeks · fixed fee

Revenue-Share Collaboration

For teams that are cash-tight but have a live or near-live game: a reduced upfront fee plus a share of the uplift, so incentives stay aligned.

Fee + rev-share

Co-op Mode

Advisory for early-stage consumer products.

Working with a small number of early-stage teams on the systems that determine whether a product retains and monetizes — usually the gap between a good idea and a durable business.

Structured as advisory equity with a cash retainer, not open-ended volunteer time.

What I bring

Systems-level review of retention, progression and monetization
Hands-on, AI-assisted prototyping — not just slide decks
Pattern-matching from large-scale live products to early-stage ones
A network across games, product and consumer tech in London

Building

Prototypes, not just proposals.

AI-assisted development means product ideas can reach a working prototype fast — useful for testing a mechanic before recommending it to a client.

Violent Grid

Browser · Multiplayer

A browser-based multiplayer shooter built to test real-time multiplayer, matchmaking and leaderboard mechanics end to end.

Ongoing experiments

AI-assisted prototyping

Small consumer-product experiments used to validate mechanics quickly before deciding what's worth building further.