From e-commerce to social ecosystems: Hardy World Studios on building for the mobile-first frontier

• Obsess over the first five minutes.
• Remove friction, give a familiar quick win, and introduce social hooks.
• Monetisation waits until after the world feels like home.
• Ship, watch behaviour, iterate.

Khaleem Solomon did not follow the traditional path into the games industry. A former graphic designer and web builder who once specialised in Shopify storefronts, he taught himself the tools of Meta Horizon from scratch in late 2021. Since then, he has turned a personal curiosity into a sustainable business, with his flagship title, Spades, surpassing 500,000 lifetime visits.

Now operating under the banner of Hardy World Studios, Solomon is focused on bridging the gap between immersive headsets and the mobile market. In this interview, he explains how a background in tech design informs his approach to live ops, why traditional mobile studios must learn to prioritise presence over spectacle, and why representation is a vital accessibility feature for the future of social gaming.

PocketGamer.biz: Your background is in graphic design and building Shopify sites for startups. In the mobile games sector, we often talk about "funnels" and "conversions." How has your experience in e-commerce shaped your approach to player onboarding and retention in social gaming?

Khaleem Solomon: My Shopify and design work taught me to make the next step obvious and painless. I obsess over the first five minutes: remove friction, give a familiar quick win, then use that moment to introduce social hooks. That’s the logic behind a solitaire on-ramp — people get it immediately, feel successful, and are ready to accept the social layer and progression I add. 

I think of the product as an ecosystem, not a single conversion point: discovery, easy entry, a social tether, reasons to return, then optional purchases. Mobile-first and cross-platform access lowers the cost of entry, so five-minute sessions can become habits. Monetisation waits until after the World already feels like home. 

I ship, watch behaviour, listen closely, and iterate.

As a relatively recent newcomer to the games industry, what was your first impression of how the sector operates? Are there legacy industry ‘standards’ or accepted practices in game design that you think are actually holding developers back from reaching a wider, more diverse audience?

Coming from design and commerce, my first surprise was how much the industry prizes spectacle over repeatable social moments. Big teams, long pipelines, and an obsession with technical polish create products that look incredible, but often assume players have hours to spare, premium hardware, and the patience to learn complex systems. That makes sense for blockbuster titles, but it also narrows the users who feel welcome. 

As an outsider, I noticed the tools, release rhythms, and success metrics all reward scale and flash, not the everyday habits and cultural particulars that make people come back. Several accepted practices keep games from reaching broader, more diverse audiences. The default session-length assumption, headset-only design, and “universal” aesthetics erase niche cultural experiences.

Monetisation that prioritises immediate spend over relationship-building alienates casual players. The fix is straightforward in idea if hard in practice: lower the creation and access barriers, design for short, meaningful interactions, and bake cultural specificity into the core experience rather than treating it as an add-on. That means better creator tools, broader playtesting pools, mobile-first and one-handed interaction patterns, and business models that reward trust and return visits. Do that, and you open the market to people who were never meant to fit the old templates.

Mobile developers are experts at flat-screen UX, but XR requires a deeper understanding of ‘presence’ and ‘spatial socialising’. What is the one thing a traditional mobile studio could learn from an XR designer to make their social games feel more engaging and less like a menu-driven experience?

One lesson I took from XR is to design for shared attention instead of isolated actions. In VR, you learn fast that presence comes from small, physical moments where people orient to the same thing at the same time. For mobile social games, that means stop hiding interaction behind layers of menus and instead surface social behaviour as part of the playfield. Proximity, shared objects, and a single focal point create a sense of “we’re here together” even on a flat screen. 

In practice, I recommend adding lightweight social anchors you can reach with a single tap. Examples: a public card table where anyone can pull a seat and join a two-minute mini-game, a jukebox players vote on with a single touch, or a passable object you drag from your avatar to someone else to start a short co-op moment. Pair those anchors with presence signals, simple audio cues, and contextual prompts so the social action is the easiest, most natural thing to do. The result is less menu navigation and more real social play.

You taught yourself Horizon’s tools from scratch without a formal games development background. How important is it for platforms to lower the technical barrier for creators, and do you think low-code environments like Horizon are the key to bringing more diverse voices into game development?

It matters more than most platforms admit. Making the tools approachable turns curiosity into practice. I didn’t come from the gaming industry; I got in because the UI let me build with my hands and because someone handed me access. 

Low-code environments cut the technical friction that keeps cultural makers out, so creators who understand people, music, and place can shape worlds without a CS degree. That’s how you get honest, specific experiences that resonate with new audiences. 

Low-code is necessary but not enough. Platforms must pair simple tooling with discovery, clear monetisation, templates, a component marketplace, and real mentorship so creators can move from experiments to sustainable work. They should also support cross-platform outputs and mobile play, protect creator ownership, and resist a one-size aesthetic that erases cultural nuance. Don’t just lower the barrier; build an ecosystem where diverse voices keep coming back and expanding the platform.

You have mentioned designing for one-handed interactions and short, habitual sessions. For a publisher looking to bridge the gap between VR and mobile, what are the biggest UX hurdles in making a 3D social world feel ‘native’ on a smartphone?

The biggest UX hurdles are making three-dimensional social cues work for thumbs, keeping people oriented and able to join or leave instantly, and protecting cultural detail within mobile performance limits. 

Mobile removes body language and depth, so locomotion, camera, and presence signals need to be rethought to make short sessions feel natural rather than awkward. Solve it by reducing interaction to social primitives: one-tap seats and invites, shared focal objects like a card table or jukebox, and concise presence signals such as animated silhouettes, short voice bites, and status badges. Design for adaptive fidelity and fast entry so sessions load in seconds, and keep the same social rules across platforms so mobile players feel like full participants.

Your breakout hit, Spades, succeeded because it felt immediately familiar to its community. In a mobile market often obsessed with high-end graphics and technical wow factor, do you believe cultural familiarity is a more powerful retention mechanic?

Short answer: yes. Technical polish helps you get noticed, but culture is what keeps people coming back. If a world reproduces the rhythms, jokes, music, and small rituals people already understand, it becomes a place to return to, not just a thing to try once. 

That is the difference between a headline-grabbing demo and a living social space. Design-wise, treat cultural signals as core product decisions. Make rituals, voice, and music first class. Surface predictable social roles and quick rituals that people can join in one tap. Use visuals to support authenticity, not to replace it, and use tech to remove friction and expand reach so cultural detail survives on phones as well as headsets.

Coming from a tech design background, how do you approach Live ops differently? Do you see your game worlds as software-as-a-service (SaaS) or as living social venues that require a different kind of "disciplined execution"?

Live ops is part engineering and part hospitality. The engineering side is boring but essential: telemetry that tracks social signals like recurring groups, session overlap, and who shows up to the same moments, feature flags and fast rollbacks, and small, measurable experiments so we can try an idea and learn in days not months. 

The hospitality side is about programming predictable rituals, staging shared anchors, and training moderators and creators to run the room. I care more about whether people find the same table tomorrow than whether a single event goes viral. 

I treat the product as both SaaS and a venue. The backend needs SLAs, observability, and reliable deployments. The front end needs an editorial calendar, clear runbooks, creator enablement, and monetisation that rewards trust rather than urgency. I am running both playbooks at once: engineering rigour for stability, and a hospitality routine for culture.

You are a vocal advocate for making development accessible to diverse communities. How does having a more diverse pool of creators directly impact the accessibility of the final game for players who might traditionally feel excluded from gaming spaces?

Representation is an accessibility feature because it changes what we treat as default. When creators from different communities build, they don’t just add skins or characters. They bake in the rituals, music, language, pacing, and social cues that make a space instantly legible to people who already live that culture. That lowers social friction, shortens onboarding, and makes mechanics feel intuitive. It also drives practical design choices (such as session length, input patterns, and presence signals) that matter to people who play in short bursts on phones or rely on clear, predictable social cues. 

Diverse creators shift the whole product stack. Their templates, asset libraries, and runbooks make it easier for future creators to ship culturally specific worlds. They change moderation practices, mentorship, discovery, and monetisation so that those systems work for more kinds of players. 

For a mobile publisher used to the App Store or Google Play, what is the business case for building inside the Meta Horizon ecosystem? What does this platform offer that traditional mobile storefronts do not?

What Horizon gives you that app stores do not is maker infrastructure and a built-in social graph. Low-code creation, cross-platform mobile access, native discovery, live ops primitives, and creator programs let publishers launch and scale ritualised social experiences fast. The tradeoff is platform dependence, so the smart play is to invest in creators, editorial programming, and repeatable moments that turn a world into a community.

Mobile games often live or die by their D1 and D7 retention. How do you design more habitual spaces where players aren't just playing a game, but are forming long-term relationships and daily social routines?

Habit comes from repeatable rituals and shared memory. I design the first session to deliver a quick win and a social hook: a shared table, a one-tap seat, or a two-minute mini-game that creates a visible moment people remember. 

Treat the World like hospitality. Run predictable programming, enable creators and moderators to host, and measure social signals like recurring cohorts and session overlap. Keep re-entry instant with one-tap invites and adaptive fidelity, and reward small commitments so daily routines form naturally rather than being bought.

If a web builder or graphic designer is reading this and wants to follow your path into the games sector, what is the first mental shift they need to make to succeed in the current mobile-social climate?

Ship tiny things, watch how people behave, and iterate fast. Learn a low-code toolchain, learn to read simple social telemetry, and lean into community before monetisation. Partner with other creators and moderators, show up consistently, and let trust and routine, not a perfect launch, turn a project into a career.

As you scale your business, what is your ultimate goal? Are you aiming to show the Big Studios how to build for diverse communities, or are you focused on creating a decentralised network of accessible social game spaces?

My goal is to build a creator-owned, decentralised network of social Worlds that actually pay creators and feel like home to the people they serve. I want to use digital spaces to preserve and celebrate Black culture, not as an archive that sits behind glass, but as living, breathing spaces people can walk through, experience, and add to. 

Hardy World Studios should be infrastructure and a playbook: repeatable templates, mentorship, monetisation primitives, and mobile-first patterns that let nontraditional creators ship cultural places quickly and sustainably. If big studios learn from us, great, but I’d rather lead by example and partner on terms that protect creator ownership. The measure of success is creators earning real income, communities with lasting routines, and virtual spaces that extend and sustain real-world culture.