“The initial exploration for deals like that usually start a year before, at least. It starts with high-level concepting. I carry a lot of the outward BD — I attend conferences, I speak from stage. The mobile space is a relatively small industry so we also know each other.”

Gaming cross-brand collabs start a year before launch — concepting is CEO-to-CEO, not agency-to-agency

The Brawl Stars x Subway Surfers collaboration was the result of a year of exploration, starting with Nørvig personally pitching high-level concepts at industry conferences. The gaming industry runs on CEO-to-CEO relationships at conferences — creative agencies and middlemen are not in the loop at the concepting stage. This also suggests that for app developers, conference attendance is not networking overhead — it is product development.