I met Anton Gauffin in Israel years ago when he was running Huuuge, a social casino game with Finnish roots and with a big presence in Poland. He had a great ride, starting up in 2014 with a seasoned team, taking the company public in 2021 and generating more than $2 billion in lifetime revenue.

Now he’s moving on to chapter two, which involves a new startup called Beyond, which is making a fashion game called Decor Society using generative AI. Right now, he’s just teasing the new business and not saying much about it, but you can guess where some of it is going.

Huuuge was a latecomer to the social casino games market, but it grabbed market share with innovations in gameplay and by targeting the unexpected market of young gamers. Huuuge refreshed the look of traditional casino games for a new generation.

“There were many who said that you are late. We were looking at the landscape at that time, and we saw a lot of room for product innovation,” Gauffin said. “We had the viewpoint that the games called themselves social casino, but they provided very limited social functionality. I think we proved them wrong.”

A decade on, the company is still worth nearly $1 billion, and it is still a contender in that market.

In September 2023, Gauffin appointed Wojciech Wronowski as CEO and became executive chairman, giving up day-to-day management of a company he ran for nearly a decade. Reflecting on the success in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat, he saw the secret sauce as “being humble and hungry and having curiosity and energy to learn new all the time.”

Gauffin moved on, studied the booming generative AI market, and started the new startup Beyond, named to note he is moving beyond gaming and his past self. Social casino had its boom, but it was a niche in the market. Now he sees himself as a builder again.

“This is about having a chance to create something new that hopefully goes beyond what you’ve built so far,” Gauffin said. “For me, Beyond is all about hitting those wildest part of your imagination.”

He added, “I’m turning 46. I love creating new things. I love innovation, and I love entertainment, and I love doing it together with amazingly talented, awesome people. This is a continuation of a longer journey where I’m evolving, and technology is evolving. It makes me say, ‘Wow!’”

His BeyondOS platform is powered by different AI diffusion models, and it is pointed at the market for designing home decor, much like the successful Electronic Arts game Design Home. Gauffin has assembled a team to make Decor Society as his next act.

Regarding leveraging AI, it’s going to be harder for existing companies. That’s why starting Beyond as a private company makes sense in a fast-moving market.

“I was mesmerized by the capabilities of Gen AI, and I’m surrounded with talented, amazing individuals,” Gauffin said. “I see things that used to take a massive amount of time and now they’re happening instantly.”

As for the decor space, it has been dominated by Design Home, but that product was created by Crowdstar, was acquired by Glu Mobile, which in turn was acquired by Electronic Arts. Gauffin doesn’t see much innovation in the space. And the company is addressing multiple interest verticals.

“The established apps are trying to monetize their existing audience rather than having the appetite to take bigger risks, innovate and invest,” he said. “There is a big opportunity for us to serve this audience better. We’re going to be providing hyper-personalized experiences.”

As an athlete entrepreneur (he played floorball), Gauffin believes in performance, and he felt he wanted to create better and more capable versions of himself. The call to create something new was too hard to resist. He felt that when he started GameLion in 2002, and again in 2014 and again during the past year.

“We are at the dawn of a new AI enhanced era and the opportunity to build a next-gen AI powered entertainment platform got my attention,” Gauffin said.

In his memories of a decade at Huuuge, he recalled there were tough decisions, and he had to lay off people. He became both an investor and entrepreneur. He has observed how people are spending more of their time engaging on digital platforms and how one operates in today’s reality has evolved a lot. Quality expectations continue to climb and being good is not enough.

“AI is here with us already today, this is one mega trend where the more time passes the more influential the AI impact on our society and market will be,” he said.

He said you have to embrace this change and be fast in using it to your advantage and deliver amazing results. He believes that in the era of AI, it makes sense to have a wild imagination and stretch your dreams. And he believes you have created the best team, not just the best individuals. He’s also excited about the capabilities of GenAI today and how it will grow in the next five to 10 years — and its coming impact on gaming and entertainment.

With Beyond and Decor Society, Gauffin believes that a more playable entertainment experience that looks and feels real is possible thanks to BeyondOS and how it will combine AI with the imagination of players who love interior design. It will turn their ideas, visions and passions into “hyperrealistic experiences that go way beyond static image tweaking and tuning.”

As for Decor Society, Gauffin poses the notion. “What if those images and experiences on Pinterest were composable and playable,” he said. “We are building a product that’s called Decor Society. And this will be the first release based on the BeyondOS.”

This experience will be social and bridge reality and fantasy, he said. It wouldn’t necessarily be categorized as a classic game. It’s not a foundational model, but an application layer on top.

“We have a big vision with Beyond. I do see us as an entertainment company. It’s AI meets entertainment,” he said.

Gauffin will seek out natural allies. The company is nurturing an engaged community. An open beta is not so far away.

“It’s a lot about building a team. At the end of the day, you are building team and capabilities. And the longer I’ve been in this space, the better my network has become. I have trusted and talented people to build something together,” Gauffin said. “I have had already operated as a founder for the last 10 years. So what I’ve learned is that it’s going to be a long journey to build and establish some something significant. And you have to manage your own expectations. You have to keep people excited but at the same time, if you oversell and don’t deliver, that’s not a good outcome.”

The company has 10 people now, mainly in Helsinki and Adelaide, with some in Berlin. Gauffin has invested money from his own family office, and he has investors including Play Ventures and Ilkka Teppo, the former CEO of Reworks.

As for the funk in the game industry as demand subsided after the pandemic, Gauffin saw compounding effects as people went outside and Apple focused on privacy over targeted advertising. He remains optimistic about the long-term outlook for games. But he added, “You will not be succeeding by what has already been done. You have to focus on a product and excel and innovate.”

That brings him back to thinking about “beyond games, beyond app stores.” There are new platforms arising like Telegram and the industry is evolving. Gaming takes mastery and understanding the audience, he said.

“Approaching AI as an opportunity from the entertainment point of view is the key to reach millions, if not billions of people,” he said.

With the unveiling of Beyond, Gauffin is looking for people that can help with the mission and help the company find its audience.

A couple of years ago, Israeli startup CogniFiber made headlines with Deeplight, a fiber-optic cable which could, “process complex algorithms within the fiber itself before the signal hits the terminal.” At the time, we warned this technology wouldn’t reach end users in the near future, and was unlikely to appear in laptops or smartphones anytime soon.

However, eeNews Embedded is now reporting on Oriole Networks, a UK-based startup using light for a different purpose – to create efficient networks of AI chips.

“It is very important to defend the Earth from asteroids and we need to prepare ourselves with a little bit of defence from the asteroids though they are  not going to come and attack us like missiles, guns or laser beams but will simply come and hit us and can be dangerous,” remarked ISRO Chairman S Somanath while speaking on a Workshop on Planetary Defence on the sidelines of the International of International Asteroid Day 2024. He said that no one nation can defend the earth against the Asteroids alone and a joint effort of different nations in the world is needed to serve the purpose. 

S Somanath added that India as a space-faring nation is very keen to work on this. Debate and discussions are required to save the Earth from any such kind of catastrophe. 

Speaking at length on asteroids, Somanath said that there were lakhs of asteroids mainly between Mars and Jupiter. “Asteroids are small in size compared to the celestial bodies such as the Sun, the Moon and the planets but have huge energy. Some of them are as big as 1000 kilometers. They move at tremendous speeds and it is very important to understand them. Many missions have gone to asteroids and collected samples. 

“It is more challenging to go to Asteroids when compared to other planetary objects such as the Moon as the Moon has a definite path around the Earth. Landing on an Asteroid is much more trickier because of their shape. However many many nations  have done this which is remarkable,” said Somanath. 

The ISRO chairman also recalled the Hollywood movie “Armageddon’ that focused on a large asteroid en route to Earth with the possibility to destroy life. He also recalled the June 30t incident in 1908 wherein a huge blast from an asteroid had flattened about 2200 square kilometre of forest destroying nearly 80 million trees in Tunguska a remote location in Siberia, Russia. 

In accordance with the UN resolution in 2016, International Asteroid Day is celebrated to “observe each year at the international level the anniversary of the Tunguska impact over Siberia Russian Federation, on 30t June 1908 and to raise public awareness about the asteroid impact hazard”. 

The workshop on planetary defence was the first of its kind in the country and aimed to raise awareness on the impact threats of asteroids, the importance of asteroids research for a better understanding of our universe and also inspire participants to find innovative solutions for planetary defence. 

Planetary defence involves early detection of hazardous asteroids, their continual observation for better characterization and risk assessment and devising an appropriate risk mitigation strategy. Several scientific missions for asteroid exploration and sample return have improved the understanding of the asteroids and the recent successful demonstrations of kinetic impactor technology for asteroid deflection by DART mission has further spurred global interest in this field. Due to this, ISRO has also initiated focused activities towards planetary defence. 

Strands is a brand new daily puzzle from the New York Times. A trickier take on the classic word search, you’ll need a keen eye to solve this puzzle.

Like Wordle, Connections, and the Mini Crossword, Strands can be a bit difficult to solve some days. There’s no shame in needing a little help from time to time. If you’re stuck and need to know the answers to today’s Strands puzzle, check out the solved puzzle below.

How to play Strands

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strand answers

Today’s spanagram

We’ll start by giving you the spangram, which might help you figure out the theme and solve the rest of the puzzle on your own:

Today’s Strands answers

• CREAM
• CROP
• HEAD
• CLASS
• PICK
• LITTER
• LIFE
• PARTY

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is finally here and in addition to the launch on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, and Battle.net, the game is also live on Xbox Game Pass. This is a monumental shift in how one of Activision’s biggest game franchises is made available to players. The announcement about the game coming to Xbox Game Pass was made earlier this year, but the reality of this distribution of the game is likely just now setting in for some.

Call of Duty is almost always the best-selling game of the year. If it isn’t number one, it’s typically in the top five. That won’t necessarily change with Black Ops 6, but the Game Pass availability will no doubt have some players choosing to play it for free as opposed to paying for it. The reason this is such a big deal is because it’s just never been done before.

It’s not the first Call of Duty to make its way to Game Pass. Warzone, Modern Warfare II, and Modern Warfare III were all dropped into the Game Pass library back in July. With Black Ops 6 though, it’s the first Call of Duty title to go live on the service on launch day. That’s the factor that makes this such a big deal. Day one availability on Microsoft’s gaming subscription service for one of the biggest franchises in gaming.

With Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 live on Xbox Game Pass, the game should see a surge of players

From Microsoft and Activision’s financial standpoints, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not the Game Pass availability is going to hurt the bottom line.

From a player standpoint, this is perhaps the best thing to happen to Call of Duty in a while. It means the game will now be available to more players than ever. There will be some overlap of players who would buy the game and play it regardless of whether or not it was on Microsoft’s subscription service. However, there are also some players who would certainly avoid the game if it meant having to pay for it.

Now, those players will be able to give the game a shot and see if they like it. This should translate to the number of players in Black Ops 6 growing beyond what we saw in past Call of Duty games. However, that also depends on how fun the game is over an extended period of time. The first few weeks and likely the first season will probably maintain a large number of players either way.

The game is new and people will still be having that honeymoon stage with it. As time goes on, some players will undoubtedly drop off. Either out of boredom or because of other more important commitments. But it seems highly likely that because the game can be played for free via Xbox Game Pass, more people will jump in to check things out than with Modern Warfare III, simply because of the fact that it’s rolled into a service that many people subscribe to.

You don’t need Game Pass Ultimate

While I personally think this is still the best value, you don’t need to have the Ultimate membership to play Black Ops 6. It’s available via PC Game Pass as well, which is less expensive. You can also play it for free on the Xbox Series X|S consoles if you have the Ultimate plan. You cannot, however, access the game for free if you have the Core or Standard plans on console. At least, not right away.

Microsoft doesn’t confirm when or if Black Ops 6 will eventually be accessible via those two plans, but it is possible that it will land on them eventually. Players should also not forget that if they bought the game on Steam or Battle.net, or play via PC Game Pass, it can be streamed through GeForce NOW.