"I admire anyone who manages to successfully release games with heart and personality"

Pocket Gamer Connects, the leading international conference series for the global games industry, returns to London on January 19th to 20th, 2026. 

The must-attend conference will bring together 3,000 delegates from 70+ countries, including decision makers from key international games hubs across the globe. Companies set to join the show include Supercell, Epic Games, Duolingo, CD Projekt Red, Tencent, PlayStation, EA, AppLovin, TikTok and many more.

PGC London will host 32 tracks across two days, including at the Apps Business Summit (January 19th) and the Beyond Games: Transmedia Summit (January 20th).

One of the speakers set to join the conference is Duolingo staff software engineer Nicoll Hunt.

Hunt has worked at pretty much every extreme a developer can. From indie startups to multinational corporations, and everything in between. From projects with no budget to titles that cost over $110,000,000.

After years in the triple-A industry working for companies like Codemasters and Realtime Worlds, Hunt founded indie studio I Fight Bears, where he released Fist of Awesome and a slew of other cult hits.

He later joined Space Ape Games, working on titles like Chrome Valley Customs and Beatstar. Hunt then joined music-focussed spin-out NextBeat in 2025, which was acquired by Duolingo.

At PGC London, Hunt will host a session entitled 'Quit Your Job… Then Join Duolingo? The Unexpected Journey of an Indie Icon' on the Incredible Indies track.

We caught up with Hunt ahead of the show to discusses passion projects, inspirations and team motivation.

PocketGamer.biz: What company do you most admire in the mobile games world?

Nicoll Hunt: I admire anyone who manages to successfully release games with heart and personality in this market.

I think it's fantastic that games like Balatro and Stardew Valley have found huge audiences on mobile, and companies like New Star continue to ship successful games which feel like passion projects.

What do you think the next big disruptor in mobile games will be?

I'm notoriously bad at predicting trends, but if my kids are anything to go by then the next big thing will be a title that manages to bring together the "gotta catch them all" gameplay of Pokémon with unhinged surreal meme culture. A title that feels authentic to the next generation of mobile gamers.

What is the single biggest challenge facing the mobile games industry today?

Getting people's attention. There are more people than every playing games, but it's harder than ever to get products in front of them and build a player base.

Legacy games continue to scoop up huge portions of the audience's time and attention, and breaking through that is incredibly challanging.

What leaders/pioneers in games do you find inspiring?

I'm inspired by anyone who can motivate and lead teams to make great work. I've been very lucky, especially in recent years, to work with incredible people who can unify teams around clear goals and direction while still allowing the individual automony and freedom to give everyone a sense of agency and purpose. It's a much rarer skill than you would expect, and one I really admire.

What developments do you think have been undervalued by the mobile games industry?

Its maybe not undervalued per se, but I maintain there's a lot of unrealised potential in the HTML5 space.

It's completely feasable to create fully fledged 2D and 3D experiences that run cross-platform on basically every device out there. How we've not worked out how to monetise that beyond playable ads blows me away.