Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Ohayoo, a casual game publishing platform that empowers developers to monetize their games and brings joy to players worldwide. Ohayoo specializes in helping casual and hypercasual game developers break into the Chinese market.

In this case, Ohayoo has analyzed and researched the business simulation games in China. Together with our practical experience in publishing games, we would like to introduce the future of business simulation games to you and share our views on the game development process.

Suitability of business simulation games for ad-based monetization

In our opinion, the business simulation category ranks among the best of all game categories that generate revenue through advertising.

And why would we say that? First of all, players have generous acceptance to this sort of gameplay. A business simulation game is not hard to play. With clear paths of development, simple controls, and a low threshold for novice players, it is favorable to non-gamers and casual players who only have a little experience with games. As a result, it is able to reach a large number of general users.

Secondly, its core gameplay suits the casual players’ needs, and the data looks good. Casual players are inclined to play the game during fragmented free time as their aim is to relieve stress. It is in sync with the core gameplay “waiting for revenue to generate + idle tapping” of many business simulation games. The data of some games reflects that business simulation games have achieved outstanding performance in terms of player’s active duration and long-term retention among all types of casual games. As for the games that completely rely on advertising to generate revenue, the more time players spend on the game, the more times the advertisements can be shown. It can enhance the LTV (user lifetime value) of the game.

Moreover, the monetization data is remarkable. When we launched business simulation games like Wang Fugui’s Refuse Station, we found that the characteristics of the business simulation game players were highly similar to those of the hardcore game players and their eCPM was even several times higher than that of some types of casual games. This was verified once again when we discussed with a development team that had extensive experience in business simulation games afterward. In other words, creating a business simulation game has a chance to bring substantial advertising revenue to the development team.

Certain shortcomings, of course, exist in this category of games.

Firstly, its capacity to attract players is restricted. The core gameplay of most business simulation games is based on waiting. With a static scene, it is difficult to arouse players’ interest in a short period of time. To put it simply, it cannot provide enough sensory stimulation for the players within a short space of time, causing the effectiveness of each ad impression for this type of gameplay to be far inferior to that of other categories with impressive graphics, such as racing and shooting games. Therefore, we suggest that developers focus on improving attractiveness in an early stage of development. A CTR test, after all, will decide whether a game can quickly attract players and gain a solid foothold in the market.

Secondly, when we were searching for this type of product, we found some issues that we should pay extra attention to during the development process. For example:

1. The game theme deviates from the market demand. It is usually because the development team did not notice the changes in market demand, or they missed the boat due to low development efficiency even though they attempted to make a game related to a current trending topic.
2. It is difficult to attract players when copying a popular game. Some developers want to “take a shortcut” by developing a game with a style and gameplay extremely similar to trending games. Eventually, they will find that those trending games have already “used up” most of the players, and their reputation will be affected by criticisms for cloning games from the players who value originality.

The above is our view on the pros and cons of the business simulation category.

Next, we will move on to the project planning and development process of business simulation games. We hope that they can help you to “win from the starting line” even when you are just starting out on project planning.

Where are the opportunities for future business simulation games?

Based on the gameplay, the current mainstream simulation games in the domestic market contain three subcategories:

1. Building games, a traditional subcategory of business simulation games

This subcategory has an absolute advantage in terms of the number of active players among all other subcategories. The current representative product in the Chinese market is Jiangnan Landscape Painting. However, due to large scale, high cost, consistent gameplay, and intense competition, some developers are not willing to touch this subcategory.

In the past two years, new building games relied on different gameplays to stand out from the rest, such as adding card collection to enrich the monetization mode (Jiangnan Landscape Painting), light PRG elements to increase the player retention rate (Shop Titans: Craft & Build), and other interesting gameplay to attract more players (Rodeo Stampede’s runner + business simulation gameplay).

As a building game requires high cost and a longer time to develop, in order to compete with the existing games on the market, game development companies need to have a sufficient understanding of its gameplay and be able to launch a new product with high quality.

2. Time management game

This type of game belongs to the classic Puzzle category. Representative products include Animal Restaurant and My Cooking Paradise, in which players have to tap the correct icons according to customers’ orders within a time limit in each stage.

Even though this subcategory shows a favorable trend, you have to add new elements to the gameplay and further localize your own products as there are too many similar products in the market. We believe time management games with vertical screen orientation have a certain potential for us to explore.

3. Idle simulation game

The idle simulation game is essentially a game that combines different gameplays. We separate it from the rest because it requires lower costs and a shorter time to develop. During the past two years, the market has become much bigger and, above all, different products have not formed an intense competition with each other (as we have always seen many idle simulation games rank at the top of the chart). Therefore, we suggest small and medium-sized development teams enter the business simulation game market through this subcategory.

From our perspective, idle games are relaxing and flexible, they can combine different themes and reduce the pressure on art resources by allowing users to focus on their stat growth, abundant characters for collection, and emotional resonance. These might be the reasons why many top-tier business simulation games have included idle gameplay in the past two years.

We also noted that in some markets, some idle simulation games that include a battle system attracted millions of players to pre-register before launch.

In regard to the project planning of idle simulation games, Coconut Island Games CEO Wesley once said in a media interview, “Innovative content outweighs innovative gameplay“. We agree with that. For most small and medium-sized teams, it is more suitable for them to create innovative content for business simulation games through mature gameplay + creative themes.

Developers are suggested to pay extra attention to the following three aspects while developing a project plan:

Firstly, finding an attractive theme is the core of advertising. Developers can find an interesting theme with eye-catching elements or reshape the style of traditional themes. Ohayoo, as a casual game publisher, is glad to share its findings and data on different themes with its development team partners, and test the project attractiveness at the project planning stage for the content provider to ensure the adopted theme will have relatively good acceptance.

Secondly, when you are designing idle simulation gameplay, apart from lowering the threshold to entry, you should also provide detailed graphics and reasonable stat growth to prevent players from quitting the game due to low stat growth.

Thirdly, you can consider adding mini-game modes to make the game more engaging and provide more materials for advertising.

It should be noted that we assess an idle simulation game in four aspects.

1. Emotional Sustenance
It is not limited to the emotional connection players have with the brand. Through its theme and content, a game can provide players with emotional sustenance. A good theme can resonate with the player’s emotions quickly. By doing so, it is possible to retain most of its players. In turn, achieving outstanding performance in terms of retention rate, advertising frequency and revenue eventually.

2. Stat Experience
Business simulation is only a cover, while stats are the core of the gameplay. If the stats in the game are balanced, players will have a great experience and tend to be more active in the game, which can further enhance the monetization data.

3. Innovative gameplay
Innovative gameplay includes the mini-game modes mentioned above and the re-innovation of idle gameplay. It would be great if developers can create a business simulation gameplay 2.0. Developers should note that it is better for innovative gameplay to show uniqueness and fun with obvious visual effects in order to improve user acquisition performance.

4. Budget
If the graphics of a new product can outperform its competitors, it will receive greater market feedback. However, under most circumstances, the graphics quality is “driven” by money, so we believe it would be more worthwhile for large game development companies to go in this direction.

Conclusion

In conclusion, for development teams that attempt to make a business simulation game, we suggest you start with an idle simulation game by virtue of its required cost. You also need to focus on the selection of theme and art style to ensure the game has attractiveness while developing a project plan. It would be great to create an emotional connection with the players through the theme and content, and then keep optimizing the performance and stat experience of the idle simulation gameplay. For the teams with resources to spare, you can add mini-game modes to the game, improving the game’s potential to attract players and enriching its gameplay.

We will continue to work on idle casual games and search for business simulation products with potential. For more information about Ohayoo, please follow our official Twitter and Medium accounts, and contact us via contact@ohayoogames.com if you have any inquiries.

The post Category Observation – What Should We Do During the Business Simulation Game Boom? appeared first on GameRefinery.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Oxana Fomina, owner of games analytics consultancy Gradient Universe.

1. Battle Pass duration and the number of milestones

You can experiment with the number of milestones until the end of the season, as well as the length of the season in days. If you look at match3 games, a season can last anywhere from 7 days to 30+ days. If this is the first Battle Pass for your game, then it makes sense to make it in the form of a seven-day event and check your players’ reactions.

When choosing the number of days and steps, you should consider the following points:

• Rate how quickly they progress through the Battle Pass milestones
• What percentage of users have finished it, what percentage only got to the middle
• The average time that it takes to complete stages, etc.

This information will help you tailor your Battle Pass to increase the percentage of users who buy it each season. It is very important that the players have the feeling that they can reach the final goal and receive a super prize.

2. Rewards in Battle Pass

In match3 games, you can see two options for implementing rewards. Choose the one that works best for the audience of your game.

1. When a player who paid the Premium gets a higher amount of rewards.

2. When a player who has not paid for the Premium Battle Pass receives prizes only once every 2-3 stages, not for each completed stage.

3. Choose which type of Battle Pass is optimal for your game

In games, there are several ways to implement the passage of stages in a Battle Pass. Choose the one that works best for your game.

1. The user goes through the main levels and gets stars for completing them. To complete a stage in the Battle Pass, the user must receive a certain number of stars.

2. The user performs special tasks in the game and receives a special reward for their completion.

3. The user goes through the levels and receives special medals or points for passing them.

4. Engagement and retention

It is important that the player gets the most out of their Battle Pass. In Homescapes, you can see a great example of introducing intermediate prizes that motivate the user to move forward with the Battle Pass. You can have 3-4 prizes that are interconnected and motivate players to continue completing tasks. These can be special decorations, pets, and items for them, etc. Moreover, you can offer a super prize that will be available if the user buys the paid version of the Battle Pass and completes all tasks.

5. Increase conversion for Premium Battle Pass purchases

The Premium Battle Pass allows you to increase your paying conversion and increase your game’s revenue. It is vital that the user initially understands the benefits of the Premium Battle Pass.

There are several benefits that you can utilize in match3 games to encourage players to invest in Premium Battle Pass:

• A reward that is several times more valuable than what the user would receive for completing the free Battle Pass
• Extra lives. Usually, the user has five lives, but this number increases to eight or more lives with the Premium Battle Pass
• A special frame for the avatar, which will help them differ from other users
• Decorations/pets/other things that they will receive for completing certain stages
• Super prize, which is available for paying players who have passed all stages of the Battle Pass

Make sure to create an offer that shows users the maximum benefit they will get from purchasing the paid version of the Battle Pass.

The player can buy the Premium Battle Pass with hard currency or real money. Psychologically, it may be easier for a player to decide to buy with hard currency than with real money. If you look at how the Battle Pass was implemented in most match3 games, you will notice that real currency is preferred.

6. Battle Pass optimization

Analyzing the behavior of users who use the Battle Pass will help optimize and increase the game’s revenue. Understand the primary motivation of users, how involved they are, what gets in the way, and what motivates them to go through more stages. To do this, analyze:

• Funnel of passage in the Battle Pass,
• Time to complete each stage of the Battle Pass,
• The average duration of all stages of the Battle Pass,
• What kind of reward motivates users to a greater extent,
• Optimize the reward and price for the Battle Pass,
• Comparative analysis of changes in metrics after updating the Battle Pass, etc.

This will give you more detailed information, which will help you improve the user experience, give you a better idea about the rewards that are most likely to lead users to purchase a Premium Battle Pass and help increase the percentage of users that will win the grand prize.

7. Events in Battle Pass

Motivate users to progress through the Battle Pass stages through various events. An example of such events would be doubling the points received for completing levels in the game within the next 12 hours.

This event can be activated if you see that most users get stuck at a certain stage or when the user does not have much time before the end of the Battle Pass. This will help increase their engagement and increase the number of sessions.

I have analyzed the options for implementing a Battle Pass in many games, as well as how various features of the Battle Pass have been changed in different versions of the games. Let’s take a look at each of the games in more detail. This research was conducted using data from the GameRefinery service.

• You may notice that most of the games have implemented a reward type, where a user who has not bought a Premium Battle Pass receives a prize for completing each stage, but in a smaller amount.
• Rewards for the first stage of the Battle Pass are free in all games.
• In many games, the developers experimented with the length of the Battle Pass. I suspect that this depends not only on optimizing the duration of the tasks but also on the team’s technical capabilities (for example, the release plan for the next update).
• The most common type of Battle Pass is the type where the user receives special points for completing a level. 2/3 of the games prefer to use this particular type of Battle Pass implementation.

Below is a summary table of Battle Pass implementations in match3 games.

The post 7 Tips to Create and Improve Battle Pass appeared first on GameRefinery.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published by Saravanan S. Saravanan spends most of his time with games and is a Game Designer at EA, before that driving the design for massive Facebook midcore title Kingdoms of Camelot at PopReach.

Players earn stars for completing levels and use them to progress in the game. This core gameplay is full of interesting new level mechanics revolving around sitcom-styled narrative gameplay that introduces a lot of characters and choices through sophisticated storytelling.

Love & Pies gameplay is refreshing and delivers a whole new experience for a match 3 game. The game art is polished, bold, redefining the art in this genre. Apart from refreshing gameplay and aesthetic visuals, the game is also packed with tons of innovations.

Why Innovation matters?

With so many similar games in the mobile market, it is quite hard to create a unique product. Casual players have evolved over the years and constantly seek engaging and refreshing content in a game. Without a new gameplay experience or interesting content, it is really hard to keep players engaged or even make them install the App in the first place.

Love & Pies fulfills these requirements by packing the game with lots of innovations with rich storytelling, early in-game events, and other refined features.

Check out my post on Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells to see how product differentiation was created by redefining match 3 level design.

Day-to-Day Track Approach on storytelling

Narrative gameplay in a f2p model is a successful and immersive framework to set aspiration for players in the game for a long-term commitment. When a player has emotionally invested, they are more likely to spend more money/time and come back to the game more often. Good storytelling leads to deep immersion and a great player experience.

Love & Pies’ Day-to-Day Track approach on the storytelling takes this experience to a whole new level. In Love & Pies, the story is segmented into days and each day acts as a short fun episode with multiple rewarding milestones. Each day is represented as a track with different milestones as the players progress. Players spend stars on each milestone to complete the quest eventually completing the day and progress in the game.

Day-to-Day track leads to:

• A better visual sense of progression in the story as players engage in the core loop
• Constant milestones keep players engaged in the narrative
• Immersive and meaningful sessions
• Great sense of accomplishment upon completing a day
• More sophisticated storytelling while including deep plots/ characters with minimal texts

With the exponential growth in the success of story-driven puzzle games and emerging casual players, this Day-to-Day track storytelling creates a product differentiation among the rest of the puzzle games in the market.

Tip Jar

Love & Pies’ Tip Jar is a great take on appointment mechanics. In f2p games, players set these appointments in order to get back to the game and perform a certain action. It can be to collect resources or initiate actions. Players can leave the tip jar on the counter when away from the game, and the tip gets collected during that time. Based on time, the Tip Jar comes in three variants, and the longer the waiting time, the more coins are collected. Players can select the jar that is convenient for them. Love & Pies brilliantly tied this feature around the game’s theme, which adds another layer of attachment.

Tips Jar feature leads to:

• Increased player sessions per day to collect rewards
• Improved early source and sink in the game
• Frequent visit to store and visible game offers
• Coins and boosters collected can help kick start a session

Personalization

The next step towards the live ops service for a f2p game is personalization. Catering personalized live content to players is the best way to commit to a long-term engagement. Personal choices like farm or restaurant name create immersive experiences and a sense of ownership from players.

In Love & Pies, it was a very immersive moment when I had to name the new pet dog. The experience was even better when the game continued using the name in the narrations. These subtle personal inputs in the game keep players more invested in the game.

Personalization leads to:

• Adds another layer of attachment to the narrative
• Creates immersive experiences and a sense of ownership
• Develops a personal connection to the game character

Early in-game events

In-game events are great for player engagement and having one early in the game is even better. Love & Pies introduces a simple early in-game event in which players collect special cookies in the level. Collected cookies will be added to the event meter, and players are rewarded as they progress/complete the event.

Early in-game events leads to:

• Better player engagement at an early stage of the game
• More than one objective for the levels during the event
• Likely to spend coins to clear the levels to collect the event cookies

Key takeaways

• Innovation is the key to provide a unique product that stands out of the crowd
• Emerging casual players constantly seek a better experience
• The new storytelling approach delivers more sophisticated and immersive experiences in story-driven games.
• Appointment mechanics is a great way to make players revisit the game.
• Personalizing content leads to a strong commitment and a great sense of ownership from players
• Early simple in-game events drive strong early player engagement and add more value to the gameplay.

For more posts from Saravanan head on to his medium page

The post Why Love & Pies is the Most Innovative Match 3 Game? appeared first on GameRefinery.

The game has also been analyzed to the GameRefinery service for our customers who want to analyze the data further.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Keith McCormac, Product Manager at WarDucks, and Altti Heinonen, Game Growth Dev at GameRefinery. After developing six best-selling VR titles, WarDucks is now working on an exciting genre-defining mobile title, a world-spanning location-based AR game like no other.

Immortal Battle system

To understand how Immortal Kingdom encourages early monetisation, an understanding of the battle system is needed.

Battles formation works in the following way; 2 front liners and 2 back liners.

There is also a special character which is a dragon and it triggers a special skill once or twice per battle depending on its tier and level.

Each Immortal has its own mana bar, which fills as they do attacks and triggers their special ability.

Immortals are also split by rarity (epic, rare, uncommon, common), troop type (shieldmen, spearmen, bowmen, cavalry), and element (earth, fire, water, wind, holy, and shadow)

Similar to Idle Heroes, using different combinations of immortal elements will give different buffs. Below is an example of a full water team. Note this gameplay element in particular as it affects 1st-week monetisation, which we’ll explain later.

They use 6 elements. See below.

What makes heroes valuable?

Player power

In most 4x strategy games, players have a power meter. Players gain power usually from the following:

• Construction
• Research
• Heroes
• Troops

In my own player experience in other 4x games, construction and research tend to make up 50-70% of player power, and the rest is troops and heroes. In the Infinity Kingdom, developers have given more weight to immortal and troop power. It’s more like 10-90 now. This increases the value of immortals in particular as it’s important for a player to increase their player power as it displays their status socially within the game. In most 4x strategy games, players have a power meter. Players gain power usually from the following:

Players that want to be in top guilds will need to meet higher power requirements as this is used to judge their worth to the guild at a glance.

PVP async arena

Another way for the player to improve their status within the game is to perform well in the PVP Arena. Here players prove the worth of their immortal strength and their battle strategy (The formation and immortals they have chosen).

They are also given very valuable rewards for competing and progressing up the ranks. The seasonal rewards, in particular, are very valuable as it provides Epic immortal shards. This again increases the value of having good immortals.

Top-notch art style and genre

Each Immortal has amazing animations, VFX, voice acting, and backstory, making them even more appealing. It is also good to note that there are many same characters in the game as is in Rise of Kingdoms. Still, where RoK is more about “historical warfare,” Infinity Kingdom also brings Dragons and Wizards like, for example, Merlin to spice up the theme. Nevertheless, the similarities are there. However, Infinity Kingdom brings more to the RPG layer by focusing more on the characters, as mentioned previously. Take a look at this example below, comparing the same character in Rise of Kingdoms and Infinity Kingdom.

Player Journey to building a strong Water team

The game is set up to encourage the player to build a strong water team based early in the game. Due to the buff of having 4 water immortals and 1 immortal dragon, most players set this as an early goal.

I’ll explain below how the developer encourages the player to build a water team to take advantage of the Aura Effect Bonus.

Helen of Troy

When the player begins the game Helen of Troy is the 1st immortal they will summon through the tutorial. She is a rare water, magic, bowmen, backliner.

There are 5 ways to upgrade an immortals power:

• 7 shard tiers (similar to our 4 star)
• 4 equipment slots (similar to ours except you can level up gear using a special currency)
• Immortal level (increased through experience in battle)
• Skill upgrade (at tier 3 the immortal unlocks their 2nd skill, at tier 7 they unlock skill 3. Skill 2 and 3 are upgradable in a different system. Skill 1 is increased 1 level per tier upgrade.
• Artefact booster (these are earned through the campaign)

During the player’s 1st week, a live event runs, which will give the player enough Helen shards to upgrade her to Tier 7. Which max levels her 1st skill and unlocks the 2nd and 3rd skill slot. This instantly makes Helen the best early F2P immortal to work on as a player.

Brynhild – Philosopher Stones

So now that the player has one strong water immortal hero guaranteed, they start looking to other water heroes they can use.

The player earns immortals through various ways, but one of the main F2P methods is called philosopher stones. These are an item earned in various ways in the game, but it’s basically a Gacha box.

One of the immortals that has a high drop rate at the start is Brunhild, a rare, water, cavalry, defensive frontliner. So now the player has two free water characters, a decent frontlines and a decent backliner.

Merlin

So allow me to introduce Merlin, extremely powerful water, magic, bowman, backliner. Very similar to the F2P Helen, except Merlin is an epic immortal.

1st Time Purchase

So this is where the game encourages the player to make their 1st purchase. If the player makes any purchase in the game for the 1st time, they will summon Merlin, along with some other tempting rewards. Most in-app purchases start around the 5euro mark, so you can assume the player has spent a minimum of 5 euro at this stage.

If you go into the rankings in the PVP arena, you will see a very high % of players with Merlin in their teams early in the game.

VIP Shop

So the player has now made their 1st purchase which earns them VIP points. These points are earned by making purchases or spending gems. When taking a look at GameRefinery, you can see that the Infinity Kingdom utilizes this feature as the very top 4x games have it and have found a way to make it work well.

Now, each VIP level offers new buffs for the player, a daily exclusive chest, and a once-off premium chest. As the player levels up, the contents of this premium chest change. Below you can see the 1st few VIP chests that offer large amounts of Merlin shards, among other rewards. After summoning Merlin and having limited ways to tier him up, these VIP chests become very tempting. Again if you look at most Merlins in the arena rankings, a lot of them are already tier 3 or 4, which indicates players have paid for these chests. (This particular design might be familiar to you from RoK)

The Merlin VIP chests combined are about 40 euros. This brings the player’s total spend to roughly 45 euro.

Ramesses

The player now has a water dragon, two water back liners, and one water frontliner. They are missing one more water frontliner to complete a full water team.

There are no more rare water immortals, but there are three more epic water immortals, Ramesses, Harold, and Atilla the Hun. Getting these through F2P means is difficult and will take a lot of time and patience as philosopher stones are not easy to come by. Although Harold is also available in the Arena shop, this will take time to acquire enough points to summon him.

Scaling IAP Bundles

Sitting in the shop are multiple scaling bundles. A scaling bundle is an in-app purchase that starts at 5euro. Once you purchase it, a new in-app purchase replaces it with double the content for double the price. Typically it scales like this 5.49, 10.99, 22.99, 55.49, 109.00. 109.99 is usually the upper limit.

Infinity Kingdom offers two bundles in their shop that include immortal shards. One with a lightning epic immortal and the other is Ramesses, the exact immortal the player is looking for on their water team. He is an epic water, spearman, attack, frontliner.

5.49 will give the player enough to summon him. The next purchase will get him to tier 1, and the next purchase will get him to tier 2. To buy all of the Crowned King packs, the player will need to spend €205

Whales will go straight for the seven tiers, minnows, and dolphins will go around tier 3.

As a dolphin style player myself, after seven days, I have already spent 100e getting these four heroes to a decent state.

Infinity Kingdom has taken a lot of inspiration from Rise of Kingdoms when it comes to certain features like Limited Time IAPs, Progression Plans, etc. This is pretty easy to see from the examples below, where you can see that they are pretty much the same design-wise.

Dragon

The final thing a player may be tempted to spend money on in the early game is their dragon. It’s easy to get a dragon to level 15 in 1 week of F2P but to get it to its max level of 25 and also upgrade its skills is a huge grind through PVE battles to earn a resource through dragon shards. Or the player has the option to buy these shards in a scaling bundle in the shop.

What happens next?

If you look in the PVP arena ranks, you’ll see a lot of players who have gone on through this player journey of building a strong water team. It almost feels like 90% of battles are a full water team.

But if you look at who is no.1 rank, that player has a perfect Earth team that is strong against water immortals. (It is also worth noting this server is only 14 days old, and this player has nearly fully levelled a full Earth Team. Big spender.)

If you go into the VIP shop, the next hero they are encouraging players to buy after Merlin is an Earth hero. The 2nd dragon the player unlocks through the quest system is also an Earth Dragon.

Philosopher stones also have a high drop rate for Boudicca, who is an earth frontliner. And there is a “premium” live event, which encourages the purchase of Leonidas, another earth frontliner, through a spinning wheel.

It feels like this is by design and of course, probably is.

Special notes from the writers

Altti: As mentioned quite a lot in the blog post, the game has taken a lot of inspiration from, for example, Rise of Kingdoms and Idle Heroes & focuses on a lot of the RPG layer of the game by investing a lot in the characters of the game. It does, however, miss something like Synchronous PVP/PVE, which does hurt the gameplay a little bit and would be a good addition for sure. Of course, the game is still relatively fresh and is for sure expecting some updates to enhance the strategic level and making the player feel that they are in control in real-time. You can also see this from the motivations of the game.

Keith: I agree. Synchronous PVP/PVE is probably the biggest thing missing. Chat features such as adding attachments are also missing, which gives RoK an edge there. At the moment, players are using discord for sharing screenshots of strategy and progress. Also, the ability to send resources to other players would be nice too to assist after large battles.

The post Infinity Kingdom – Monetisation Analysis appeared first on GameRefinery.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Oscar Clark, Chief Strategy Officer at Fundamentally Games. Oscar Clark is a pioneer in social games services since 1998. Fundamentally Games LTD specialise in helping game developers deliver and operate living games, through LiveOps-as-as-service. 

First, I should qualify that the approach I’ll be talking about in this article is what is often referred to as a revenue forecast, however we don’t use that term because you cannot really forecast how your game will perform without real player data from your game itself. However, you can use external data to see what success could look like and build a model on that basis, and over time, replace the external data with your own data, to deliver an actual revenue forecast.

Second, our intent in this article is to help you consider how to approach building such a model; we aren’t trying to create a tutorial here, but instead provide a framework which you can use to develop your own models in seven steps.

Step 1. Define Your Game’s Proposition

The first step is to really understand what your game is actually about, and by inference what market segment it seeks to satisfy. This is not just about genre. You need to consider what player ‘need’ your game is satisfying with an appropriate level of nuance. For example, Candy Crush, Puzzles and Dragons, and YMBAB all fit the match-3 genre, but their proposition is very different in terms of gameplay, branding, competitive position and player engagement, so just saying your game is match-3, is not sufficiently nuanced to position it effectively in the market.

It often helps to explore the key characteristics of the game from the core mechanic (how you play) to the context loop (sense of purpose and progression) as well as the metagame (the social and lifestyle fit). Add to that the art-style, narrative and commercial models and you will have a clearer idea of the proposition.

Step 2. Define Your Audience

Theoretically, you should define your audience first, but in practice it is more common that game developers will have a game proposition first and then match an audience to that game.

One approach to defining audiences is to use the idea of ‘Personas’, a common approach used by marketing teams in most industries. It means imagining your typical player, and defining what demographic data would apply to them. This includes age, gender, social classification (in the UK we use NRS Social Grade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade). Then add to that some behavioural characteristics that can be used in targeting for example: ‘Plays Candy Crush’, ‘watches Game of Thrones’ and even give them a name to help put yourself in their shoes. Initially, this process is often a thought experiment. The idea is to create a hypothesis, an idea of who you expect audience to be, and identify characteristics to use in marketing. This can then also be used when looking at competitive games, as you can focus on those that also appeal to the same audience (as well as that match the game proposition).

At Fundamentally Games, when we are analysing a game for commercial potential, retention design or monetisation we tend to define 3 separate personas so that we can think not only who the game is designed for (Primary: Focused on Game Mechanic); the people who we believe the retention strategy is intended to attract (Secondary: Focused on Context Loop) and finally, the audience the game needs to attract in order to scale fully (Tertiary: Focused on Metagame).

So in an example, we may decide that Ahmed, 24, IT support and ‘self-confessed’ Gamer who thinks they could be an eSports player (C1, C2, D) is our primary audience.

It can be helpful to map out these persona types into what they Thinks, Does, Feels, Says as below:

Step 3. Find Competitor Games

Now that you have your game’s proposition and audience, you need to identify your most relevant competitors. For mobile, identify at least 10 games across the top Grossing Charts using tools like AppAnnie, or GameRefinery or AppMagic. Use these to filter games by genre/audience to find a variety of games with a range of Revenue and Download rankings. For PC titles, it takes a bit more manual effort to explore, for example SteamSpy, to find a suitable range of games. Remember that at this step, you are looking for competitor titles that most closely match the target market and audience you have identified.

The image below shows the kind of comparison you can do in GameRefinery where we have defined a market segment in terms of genre and sub-genre as well as platform and territory. We then chart the top ‘500 Sustained Grossing’ ranks against highest the top 1000 ‘Sustained Downloaded’ Rank what meet that criteria. This immediately gives us a shortlist of possible competitor games for us to explore and assess.

Depending on your game, you may need to consider target games from more than just one genre. For example, in a recent model that we built for a location-based game, we ended up also looking at exercise apps due to the specific nature of the game.

It’s worth making sure that you look closely at the games you are choosing, games which appear to offer similar features or target the same audience can turn out to be quite different in practice. Assess how relevant the comparisons are; this generally means playing them not just checking out some gameplay video. One tool for mobile games that can greatly speed up the research into competitors in GameRefinery is their ‘Powerscore’ metric. This gives you the ability to, at a quick glance, gauge the functional capability of different games so you can eliminate those which are not relevant without having to play everything.

Overall, you should be aiming to gather at least 10 games, with a relatively even mix of titles starting from the top 50 ranking down to around rank 500. It is important to identify a good range of games at different levels of performance, and to avoid overly stacking the model with high performing games. You also want to try to make sure that most of the games you pick have been on the market for a reasonable period of time as it’s hard to create a 3-5 year forecast if you only identify games which have only been on the market a few months.

Step 4. Extract Historic Data

Now you’ve chosen your competitor games, next up is to grab all the data you can for each of those games. You need a platform which will allow you to extract real data, ideally Revenue and Download numbers. For most platforms, this means you will need a premium account as the free options will not generally support this. On PC, use tools like SteamSpy, and we thoroughly recommend supporting that platform on Patreon in order to access a lot more detail than the general free version (it’s not expensive).

Pull all of the data into a spreadsheet, one tab per game, with a consistent layout that allows you to create a formula that compares revenue and download by platform from the first day of data of that game to the current date. The games you have selected will have been on the market for different lengths of time; but that’s ok because you should be looking at the average adoption rate across them all.

Step 5. Conditional IF(X,Y,Z) and AVERAGEA(A1:A9)

Without wanting to scare people off who are unfamiliar with the use of IF() in spreadsheets, believe me, these are your friend when creating a model. Set up a portfolio sheet using ‘AVERAGEA’ to take the data from each of the games you have imported, and build up a picture of the average of all the selected games from their first day. AVERAGEA ignores missing data which means that average doesn’t immediately break if one of your game happens to only have been live for a limited period.

But, to create different scenarios (e.g. low/moderate/optimistic) you can go one step further and in the Portfolio sheet, create some conditional boxes to show which game to include in each different scenario. Typically, Scenario 1 includes all games you imported, Scenario 2 includes all games except the top two; and Scenario 3 only includes the lowest 6 games. It does make the formula equation to consolidate your game data look a bit scary, but by putting this on a portfolio page you can adjust the game data independently (just do it carefully!).
I’ve included a screengrab of our Portfolio Tab to help you visualise what this looks like:

Step 6: Making Assumptions

Now we have data for the games, and a method to show the scenarios, you can turn this into a view of what revenue returns you could get for our game. You will need to decide what assumptions you need to include.
Unfortunately, data isn’t available about what advertising spend took place for these games, so you will have no idea about what level of Organic users vs Paid users there are. This varies per game, game but a recommended approach is to use some assumptions. We often start with the assumption of 40% Organic users. Similarly, you won’t know the cost of install (CPI) per game, so again making an assumption is your best bet. CPI varies greatly between game types and scale, from Hypercasual games looking for below $0.50, to games in highly competitive segments where the CPI may be multiple $. For PC games, CPI might be $20 or more in terms of direct paid user installs (SIDENOTE: PC game ads have a different objective in mind than direct installs and tend to be more about brand building which means that it doesn’t make sense to think of them just in terms of Cost Per Install).

Step 7: Add things up

The next step is to simply add up the daily revenue, downloads and whatever other data you have aggregated and apply your assumptions to get the results per month. You will want to consider if you are creating a 3 or 5-year model. 5 years may seem crazy in a practical sense but it may be necessary to satisfy certain investors. This does of course require that you have extracted sufficient historic game data that goes that far back or that you can confidently extrapolate.

Then create another tab (yes, yet another) to create a clean summary of the output. On this tab, make sure to have applied any currency conversion needed (e.g. if you are UK based you usually need to show your model in £GBP rather than $USD (most of the data comes in $USD). You then need to apply any sales taxes – which whilst this will vary per country, an assumption of 20% is usually a good start. Then you apply the platform fees to just the IAP proportion of your estimated revenues.

That gives you your revenue breakdown; to which you need to add your costs including staff,
expenses, etc. We tend not to include non-VAT taxes in our models because that gets into
complexity territory best left to your accountant.

Finally, we create a box which shows the following attributes by year with a cumulative 3 or 5 year
total:
• Total Downloads;
• TotalRevenue;
• Revenue Minus VAT;
• Revenue Minus Platform
• Total Costs (sometimes UA Spend as well)

In Summary

Building a model to show what success could look like for your game is about finding ways to validate your assumptions with as much real, relevant data as possible. Most of the time you will need to rely on external data from real world games. However, your model isn’t just something for investors. It is a useful tool for you to use as a baseline for your success. Take this model and replace your assumptions with real data from your actual game as soon as you can and see how you game performs compared to what you though it should be able to achieve – and compared to its competitors. That’s how you know what real success looks like.

About Fundamentally Games
Fundamentally Games Ltd was founded in 2019 by Ella Romanos and Oscar Clark. We help developers and organisations transform their games into living games and get more players, doing more things, more often, for longer. www.fundamentally.games

The post What Does Success Look Like? – Building Business Models for games appeared first on GameRefinery.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Om Tandon. Om is a UX Strategist, Leader & Mobile Games Consultant with 15+ years of holistic experience, building teams, processes, pipelines & creating massively entertaining & monetising experiences for worlds best known IP’s including Star Trek, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Hasbro, Marvel and many more.

Magic Tavern/AppLovin’s latest fashion meta based “Project Makeover” does exactly that and even more! It goes beyond the framework of Classic and Meta Match 3 sub divided by being the first in its class of Meta Heavy Match 3 aka a MHM3 Game. But more on this later.

There is a lot of bold experimentation going on in this game which we will dive in to but first let’s glimpse into what 2020 looked like for the entire Match 3 genre.

Match 3 Genre: State of Play 2020

Buoyed by the 2020 lockdown blues, casual games generated the most revenue on mobile – a mammoth $9.8B, of which a beastly $3.7B was generated by Match 3 games alone. Overall, the pie just kept on growing.

Image Source: Deconstructor of Fun

What are the numbers telling us?

Image Source: Deconstructor of Fun

While meta match 3 sub-genre made long strides with impressive double digit YoY growth, numbers are marginal for classic/saga style Match 3 games.

Despite a COVID uplift of upto 30% revenue in almost every genre, Classic Match 3 registered a very marginal +5% YoY growth (Compared to +57% for Meta games). Which implies they could have seen a negative growth had it not been for the COVID effect.

Overall trend still points towards declining revenue for classic Match 3. We have seen stop gap measures from classic Match 3 publishers more heavily utilising the ad monetisation model to monetise their massive veteran player base. But here is the deal, focussing solely on ad revenue over IAP’s leaves a lot of money on the table and may not hold water in the long run. This can be vouched for by Playrix, who become the biggest publisher by IAP revenue in Match 3 space in 2020.

Image Source: Deconstructor of Fun

This decline is further cemented by the fact that we have not seen any chart busting new entrant on the classic Match 3 side for quite some time now, yet the competition, experimentation and heat seems to be building up on MM3s year over year. We covered the Red vs Blue ocean analogy in the last article.

As the Red ocean of classic Match 3 comes to a boil, opportunities await in the uncharted Blue ocean on Meta Match 3 side.

Predicting the DNA of next “Top of the charts” Match 3 game – did we get it right?

This specific article series for last 4 years has been focussed on analysing Product, UX & Game Design based quantitative and qualitative data trends to accurately predict where this genre is heading and what the DNA of any new potential genre-shaking games would look like.

Appearing on the scene out of the blue in November 2020, “Project Makeover” seems to be one such early realisation of those forecasts.

Since its launch in November 2020, Project Makeover has been moving up the ladder and sitting proud in the top 6 grossing charts, brushing shoulders with the likes of CCS and Homescapes.

In early 2020, I started this series with the following quote:

Finding success in mobile games in 2020 is way more science than art. It is no longer about where the ball is right now, but rather where the ball is going… In 2021 we are already seeing this come to fruition!

In fact this 4 parts series focussed throughout 2020 on where the ball is going :). Let’s begin by recap of the some of the key data (UX, Product, GD) driven trends we forecasted in the previous articles of this series, and how they align with meteoric rise of Project Makeover (Click here for parts 1, 2 & 3).

Key Forecast #1: July, 2020

In Part 2 of this series written in July, 2020, I touched on current barriers to entry given the Red ocean marketplace that Match 3 genre has become and in order to break the gridlock, how developers will have to experiment. Summary from that article below:

* Above are the conclusions from the second article published in July, 2020

Project Makeover hits the bulls eye when it comes to realisation of this forecast. It’s deeply rooted in fashion led Meta theme which combines the elements of dress up, makeover and decoration all together. Bringing in flocks of new player audiences who love fashion, dress up and make over games thereby widening existing player funnel.

But let’s dwell a bit more on why finding these new audiences is important ‘specially’ for Match 3 games?

Any Match 3/Casual game in general needs relatively large number of downloads to reach substantial monetisation compared to more niche “Strategy” games as the LTV (Life time value) of casual players is relatively very low compared to LTV of strategy game players. Also implying the DAU of Casual games needs to be relatively very large compared to Strategy games.

A well executed strategy game can make decent revenue from a player pool of even just 3 to 5 million players and a relatively smaller DAU, while this number needs to be at least 10x for a casual game to generate the same amount of revenue. As seen in the example below, monthly revenue figure of a top 18th grossing casual game is way below the revenue of a top 18th grossing strategy game.

Property Brothers vs Age of Z revenue comparison, Top 18 grossing: Casual vs Strategy.

Casual game players are less loyal too, purely because they have the time to play more than one casual game unlike strategy gamers whose time commitments are fully occupied by the demands and depth of the game they are playing. This allows niche strategy games to thrive based on IP, genre, fantasy, sci-fi, military themes etc. as they are not cannibalising each other’s relatively small player base there by making room for more niche 4x games to appear and be successful.

But in case of Match 3, this is not true as a lot of existing player base is already locked into long reigning classics (sagas) and meta match 3 (scapes) titles. For a new contender to reach the top of the charts, it needs to widen the funnel by attracting a substantial number of players from other casual game genres, which is what Project Makeover seems to be doing.

Key Forecast #2: April, 2020

In Part 1 of this series, written in April, 2020, I also dived into player reviews and behaviour data where we observed that meta loops were becoming way more important than the Match 3 cores as key driver for playing Meta Match 3 games:

* Above are the conclusions from the 1st article published in April, 2020

This one hits the spot too. As Project Makeover not only demonstrates this shifton importance of meta loops dominating the core, but has in fact gone beyond (kudos to the developers) by completely lop siding the balance between Meta and Core loops!

Project makeover has not 1 but 3 Meta loops – Makeup, Dress up and Decoration applied to both the clients and their surroundings.

Key Forecast #3: November, 2020

In Part 3 of this series, written in November, 2020, talented Lisa Brunette and I shined light on ever increasing importance of “Story telling” the fourth “Must have” pillar of modern day Match 3’s.

* Above are the conclusions from the third article published in November, 2020

Project Makeover not only hits these notes right by having a ‘Conflict’ driven storyline which enmeshes story with core gameplay but also provides more episodic TV soap like video content which furthers the plot and gives players an idea of future plots, unlike any other Match 3 game yet.

Project Makeover: Deep Dive

Magic Tavern & AppLovin duo, the developers and publishers of Project Makeover are not unfamiliar with Meta Match 3 genre. Magic Tavern is one of the many Applovin partner studio in which Applovin has a strategic investment.

China based Magic Tavern has previously developed top grossing meta match 3 hits like Matchington Mansion which belongs to second generation of meta match 3 games.

However, with Project Makeover, Magic Tavern is experimenting & pushing the meta match 3 envelope even more and combined with Applovin’s UA machine, it seems to be reaping rich rewards so far

You can say that by now we know what the makeup of a conventional meta match 3 game looks like, but here is why Project Makeover is different:

Key distinctions from conventional Meta Match 3 games.

Key distinction # 1 – Rise of the Meta Heavy Match 3: The first difference is unlike conventional meta match 3 games, project makeover is first in its class of a Meta Heavy Match 3 or MHM3 game.

Project Makeover: Match 3 > Meta Match 3 > Meta Heavy Match 3

By lop siding the balance between Match 3 core and number of meta design loops a player has to engage with, player’s identify the game more intensely as dress up/decoration puzzle rather than Match 3 which partly accommodates historical player feedback of wanting more decoration & dress up in puzzle games (though the grind on the Match 3 is still there).

In the words of Magic Tavern’s CEO Charlie Gu, this was intentional by design:

*Source Article

It’s clear from the comment above that by design, the game has enough depth to be a standalone on Fashion Meta side and Match 3 is just a mechanics to generate soft currency.

Theme & gameplay

‘Project Makeover’ – the name itself cashes in on a very popular & familiar theme of fashion makeover. While it is not directly based on any real world IP, you can’t help but connect it to “Project Runway”, a popular American reality television series, that focuses on fashion design. Although the two differ in concept, the underlying theme is fashion makeover and contests.

The choice of not directly using an IP but being close enough in appeal and inspired from a well known American IP cleverly cashes in on familiar theme and popularity, helping widen the UA funnel.

Progression is not saga map (Candy Crush) or 3D map (Gardenscapes/Homescapes) based but chapters – more like ‘Property Brothers’ – where players needs to work with new clients and their properties, both of which need makeovers via grooming, dress up, cleaning out the place and adding new decoration/interior design etc. Even though all tasks are mixed up, it surprisingly feels seamless to move from giving a client a new haircut to installing a new bar in their living room, there is no linear order.

Key distinction # 2 – Unanticipated rewards: One of the other key points I have pointed out in my earlier articles was while many Classic and Meta Match 3 games alike are constantly trying to add new meta goals and tasks to aid there core gameplay in order to scale the Meta loops, there is an inherent problem on the rewards side:

Given the relatively simple game economy of puzzle games, they are not able to scale the reward system as effectively as meta goals, resulting in repetitive rewards that saturate the dopamine hit players get from receiving unanticipated rewards

* Predictability of rewards, leads to lower surge in Dopamine over time.

New generation meta match 3 games usually have 2 currencies (hard & soft currency), but even that can pose a problem if you want to eventually scale the meta systems. Unlike mid-core and hard-core games which on top of multiple currencies have resources, tokens, collectibles (I am not even going to get into rarity items :)) which keep users hooked and farming for these rare resources. Note that they have systems for sinking these resources too.

* Frequent dropping of unpredictable rewards in Project Makeover.

Project Makeover seems to be anticipating this problem and in addition to not only giving players regular SC rewards, unanticipated mystery boxes, personal dresses and grooming items are regularly dropped in resulting in a good mix of anticipated and unanticipated rewards.

Repetitive rewards is also probably one of the reasons Playrix is experimenting with ‘Season Pass’ to refresh the user experience and reward players with more exotic unanticipated rewards.

* Premium rewards, collectible pet boosts are attempts to scale the reward system

While perceived value and exact purpose of many items in Project Makeover is not yet quite clear, it seem to be part of users own avatar wardrobe (you can also notice hints of rarity system in the necklace reward item below):

Unanticipated rewards do make the reward loop more unpredictable (higher dopamine hit) and align with the strategy of scaling the reward system in line with Meta system scaling.

Key distinction # 3 – Enriched episodic storyline: While it’s not uncommon for the main protagonist in the game to be the player themselves with supporting actors, there is a element of strong conflict with an arch villain right from the get go. This is unlike some of the more conventional narrative driven MM3 games like Lily’s Garden or Garden scapes, where the main protagonist is a butler or a female lead.

There is way more emphasis then on other games in terms of ‘episodic‘ video soap like content (seen above) which is unlocked at specific milestones within the gameplay. It is again not very clear if the purpose is to gauge players interest in rich story lines or at later stage have some kind of branching or choice similar to interactive fiction games.

Conclusion

Success by Design or Experimentation?

I believe there is a reason why Project Makeover is more experimental than it’s peers and challenges the existing norms’s of Meta Match 3:

This is not a ‘make or break’ gig for Magic Tavern who are already quite successful with their other games (Matchington Mansion, Tasty Treats, Jolly Jam) and have the backing of a powerhouse like AppLovin.

My assumption is that the game started out as a pure experimental prototype, for genre blending and combining more than one Meta type to test the trending foresights, gauging player reaction and tweaking on the go – a sentiment that seems to be true from Mr. Charlie Gu’s (CEO Magic Tavern) interview excerpt:

*Source Article

• Given the early success of Project Makeover, expect more developers with similar pedigree and resources launching Match 3’s which will go beyond the conventional formula for hits in Q3 to Q4 2021.
• It’s highly unlikely we will see any more hit classic match 3 type games appearing in the near future, given the market is already saturated and all new Match 3 developers are putting their bets on exploring and expanding the Meta side.
• With ongoing player maturity trends, elder game features (also predicted by DoF) which reduce reliance on content treadmill and leverage repetition of existing content will need to be added to the mix for veteran players (hint: Social Casino & Coin Master style games have already solved this in the casual space).
• UA is the muscle when it comes to wooing the masses in Match 3 space. We can and should expect more UA Publishers with satellite studios set up to jump on the bandwagon. Be ready for more mergers & acquisitions!

Core vs Meta dilution will be a continuing trend with more ‘Meta Heavy Match 3’ (MHM3) games making an appearance and trying to carve out a niche, battling for supremacy in the Blue ocean of opportunities that are riding high on the Meta tide.

If you liked this post, please feel free to check out my other game deconstructs at https://www.uxreviewer.com/ or get in touch for consulting queries. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn for future articles.

The post How to Crack the Match 3 Code?- Part 4: Project Makeover appeared first on GameRefinery.

Editor’s Note: This guest post was originally published by Harshal Karvande at Game Design Post. Harshal is a Game Design Lead at Rovio (Small Town Murders), formerly Game Design Lead at Zynga (FarmVille 2).

As a successor to Lily’s Garden, Penny & Flo unravels a related story full of twists and turns with a cast of quirky characters, with similar game mechanics, theme, and visual aesthetics in an attempt to follow up with a strong subsequent game by making it more of the same but different.

More of the Same …

Tactile borrows from the Playrix playbook and moves its next game from renovating the garden (Lily’s Garden and Gardenscapes) to restoring a home (Penny & Flo: Finding Home and Homescapes), keeping intact the invest, express, and expand gameplay loop with a story that touches on mature themes like it’s predecessor.

Tactile also continues its successful UA strategy of making short, hard-hitting creatives that showcase a slice of life dramatisation of taboo topics — ranging from infidelity to the follow-up to the now-famous pregnancy AD. Penny & Flo creatives continue to capture overwhelming snippets of love, loss, and relationships in under 15 seconds for virality, suiting their audience who relate to this emphasis on adult themes.

… but Different

Right off the bat, the biggest difference Penny & Flo brings to the genre of tap and blast puzzle games, and sets itself instantly apart from its predecessor is choosing between the two protagonists, Penny & Flo, before starting a level! This affects the puzzle gameplay at its core — in addition to changing the pre-level power-ups that can be bought at the start of the level, choosing between Penny & Flo affects the power-ups that can be created on the game board.

Playing as Penny gives access to Line Rockets for matching 6–7 tiles (vertical or horizontal line rockets dictated by the shape of the match being made) and Bombs for matching 8–11 tiles. For Flo, matching 6–7 tiles results in Paper Planes (which smartly target level goals when activated) and Cross Rockets for matching 8–11 tiles. Matching 12+ tiles in both cases rewards Magic Flasks that clear all the tiles of a particular color off the board.

Flo’s smart Paper Planes are great for more puzzle-y levels when objects are at hard-to-reach edges on the board, whereas Penny’s Bombs are useful on levels where the goal is to bring objects to the bottom of the board. The choice between them before attempting a level also alleviates some of the frustration that comes from a loss as players can try again with another set of power-ups, sometimes with the game recommending who to pick for a certain level.

Contrasting this with Lily’s Garden, in which players have access to Line Rockets for matching 5–7 tiles, Bombs for matching 8–9 tiles, and the Magic Flask for 10+ tiles showcases a clear edit to the game’s level design possibility space and gameplay dynamics. This makes the moment-to-moment play feel familiar, fun but different between the two titles.

The core gameplay extends to the story involving the two protagonists, Penny & Flo, and shows the studio’s commitment to a different type of female narrative — one which celebrates female friendships and stays away from the more general media portrayal of spiteful women bent on tearing each other down.

Penny is a bride-to-be in her 20s, Flo is her close friend stepping in as her wedding planner in her 40s, and together they get involved in Daphne’s life as a post-glamor B-move actress now in her 80s — covering the different times in a woman’s life in parallel, from Penny’s doubts blossoming from a new romance, dealing with expenses regarding Flo’s son and a passive husband to Daphne who’s seen it all, with the long life of Hollywood glamour behind her.

Making a follow-up to a successful game is precarious: how much should the sequel stray from the game that came before? Do players love the narrative, thematic content, or game mechanics — which ones to alter and which ones to keep the same? Penny and Flo expands on the same fictional universe as Lily’s Garden, in-game and in the marketing, while differentiating itself just enough in its core game mechanics to make it the perfect sequel.

The post Penny & Flo: Finding Home is the Perfect Sequel to Lily’s Garden appeared first on GameRefinery.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by David Molnar. David is a Live Ops Manager at Square Enix creating some Live Ops magic with their creative teams.

What is this game all about?

What I must highlight before everything is that it has a meta that is simple and easy to understand for casual players:

– The goal for players is to build a profitable restaurant and make tons of cash. How do you run a successful restaurant?

– Keep the clients happy, by continuously upgrading the equipment of your restaurant. The more you grow, the more difficult it becomes to manage the restaurant; therefore, you will need more staff members, whom you will need to keep satisfied by paying them competitive salary by the end of the in-game work day. You are building and running a restaurant, and as in real life, restaurants are open from the morning until late night. Just because you close the application does not mean the restaurant stops running; the business needs to keep going and generate revenue. Clients come in, and they might be unsatisfied with the quality of the food, or because they could not get seated, or for many other reasons.

In the game, you have a wide variety of actions to perform and choose from in case nothing is urgent. In IRTE (Idle Restaurant Tycoon: Empire) almost every feature is tied to ad monetization to maximize engagement. In game development, one often hears that ads are damaging to the gameplay experience and create frustration. It is true when the placement is wrong and ads interrupt entertainment. In IRTE, when the player is watching an ad, every single placement feels like the time was well spent, and the 30-second ads are totally worth it.

Before getting into each individual ad placement and deconstructing them, I would like to highlight that based on my 35-minute play session the number of ads I watched was 25! I am far from being a maximizer player type as I was just discovering the potentials of the game. A couple of minutes into the game, I realized that watching ads benefits my progression in every angle.

Ad placements

Influencers

Influencers show up in your restaurant and offer you a fixed revenue increase for watching an ad. The cash that comes in is displayed to players and is guaranteed upon agreeing to the exchange: no gamble here. Watch an ad for X amount of cash. Easy! — Influencers randomly appear at every 2–3 minutes. So by the time you finish an in-game task, you will have spent your soft currency on levelling up your equipment to provide higher quality service to your clients, thereby making them willing to spend more in your restaurant. By the time you’ve spent the cash that came from the ad video you just watched, a new influencer shows up to offer you more in-game currency. The cycle never stops, and I believe this is one of the strongest elements as to why this game is super sticky:

The most revenue to your restaurant comes from the Influencers. And the only way to get paid is to watch the ad. Your customers pay 5–30$ (in-game currency) for a meal, while an influencer pays between 400$-2000$ every 2–3 minutes. It is worth giving a shot at watching an ad for this much cash. This ad placement also gives players the sense that having the game open and waiting for an influencer to pop up is better than having the game idle because they would otherwise miss out on the opportunity of collecting this extra cash.

Send out a notification to convince a crowd of customers to come at once!

You can send notifications to customers, but you may not have enough available tables when they arrive. Customers will be unhappy! So, you’d better be prepared to have enough tables available, or if not, start to place more of them! Ideally your goal is to have your tables filled to generate more revenue. When you decide to take the offer, you have access to see the number of customer groups that you can expect. If you prefer groups that have 3 or 4+ customers, then you have the option of declining the offer that is displayed. In my opinion this is a great move by the designers, because the player has the freedom of choice to decline the offer and wait for a better one, which will occur in a short period of time after declining one offer.

Upon relaunching the game

Every time the app is relaunched, players are offered to double the profit that was generated while the app was closed. For an exchange of watching an ad, double the profit or there is an option to triple the profit for gem.

When the game is relaunched, for 2 seconds the Continue button is not available; only watching ads / doubling profit is available to the players.

Also, this is the perfect timing to offer players a special offer that frees players from watching ads ever again for 13.99 CAD. Players who purchase this offer won’t have to watch ads; instead, they will be able to claim the additional rewards instantly.

Watch ads up to 12 times in a row to maximize the profit of your restaurant

You can watch up to 12 ads consecutively. Each ad will grant you +12 minutes of doubled profit period, which comes in handy as you already know. The goal is to make more cash, buy more equipment. 12 ads are equivalent to 2 hours of doubled profit period, while you are in or away from the game.

Skip a day to sunlight

Your restaurant is closing at 11pm and opens the next morning. There are 2 options available to players. While the restaurant is closed, players can change and upgrade the equipment, or skip to the next morning instantly for an exchange of watching 1 ad video.

Live Ops

If you think you’ve heard everything and watched enough ads, guess what? A Live Ops event starts.

How does a Live Ops event look like in IRTE?

It basically means re-building a new restaurant in a short period of time. You can use the experience accumulated from the base restaurant that you originally built. What is the reward of a Live Ops event? You can guess: cash. As you progress in a Live Ops event, building it up step by step, more cash rewards come, which you will be able to use in your main restaurant. (the first one that you originally started with).

You started a Live Ops event, and suddenly you became the owner of 2 restaurants. What does that mean? Your goal now is to maximize profit of 2 places; therefore, you will be watching video ads for both the Live Ops event and your first restaurant.

The final reward of a Live Ops event is a legendary card that will grant you 2% more revenue permanently. You can keep it for all of your current and future restaurants. On your way to reach the final prize, you will be collecting valuable resources: Gems, Gatcha chests, and Legendary cards. To get the Legendary cards, players need to heavily invest time and real $ into IAP, since the target for players to reach in order to obtain the final reward is 5 million in revenue, which seems impossible to a new player.

Switch between your restaurants

In a game session, the time zones are different for each of your restaurant. So, while one is closed, you can quickly visit the other ones while they are making profit. When re-visiting your restaurant, it has the same status as when you relaunch your app. When coming back, an option is available to you to double the profit that was generated while you were away — No time is wasted.

In-app purchases are also available to players in a wide price range just like in any other Freemium Idle-Casual game.

No more ads: Claim rewards instantly for 13.99 CAD is available to players. I believe that in a game where ads are extremely prominent, a player can potentially generate a much higher revenue from ads than 13.99 CAD. However, there is one key factor that is unknown: the stickiness of the game in the long run. If too many ads lead players to churn, then keeping a 13.99 CAD offer to remove ads might generate longer retention, and players who have already invested 13.99 CAD will likely invest into other In-app purchases, and revenue from multiple in-app purchases might lead to higher LTV, than what it would be with ad revenue alone.

The placement of this offer is always visible in the main screen during gameplay or in a Special Offer section in the shop in the top position. I assume that for players who enjoy the game, this is their target first-time purchase. And as mentioned earlier, players that have invested in removing the ads will likely turn to other IAP for better satisfaction.

We know that players can easily watch 20–40 ads per session, depending on their desired session length. Why would players want to and what makes players watch so many ads in one session? The short answer is Impatience: Players want to maximize the profit instantly. Because the goals for players are to maximize profit, grow the restaurant and install better equipment NOW, IRTE presents a solution that is instantaneous. Watch an ad and you will be closer to the next stage that you want to reach. The trick is that there is no ending here; there is no final cap on levels. You can keep levelling up for as long as you want, the economy of the game scales and supports this meta (high five to the economy designers). Also, since you earn an early extra cash if ad providers can feed you with ads, the progress does not slow down.

Fear of loss is another factor that keeps players in the game, and I expect a long game session from players because of this. The Influencers and Notification offers show up and if you don’t take them, you’ve lost them. That equates to a slower growth for your restaurant.

Limited Time Offers

During my test, the limited time offers were static packs with added value, which is a common option to attract players to convert. Hard currency +X%.

Extra Offline Time

As this is an idle game that works for you while you’re away, you can’t fully leave the restaurant all alone. It stops generating profit after some time, which players can extend with in-app purchase deals.

Profit Boosts

If you have read the article to this point, you surely know that this game is all about generating revenue from your restaurant, reinvest the profit, make more cash, then generate more and then reinvest again. To speed up the process, Profit Boosters are available.

Some additional thoughts

My expectations towards the game regarding changes in the near future are relatively simple. Obviously, there are a few but here are my top ones: The ads are well positioned, perfectly integrated in the game design, the game for new players is scaling well, as I’m playing for a week and there’s always something to do and I can never have enough cash in the bank. I personally find the store a little crowded, which may hinder players’ decisions when it comes to purchasing. Also, difference between price points and that between the amounts given do not properly scale. I would suggest having a decoy offer in the middle range price points for an A/B test, to see which cohort generates higher revenue.

Also, for players that will likely convert into in-app purchases, the decoy offer would bring a little help during the decision-making process.

Kudos to Kolibri Games — you guys built a great game and great product!

Hope you enjoyed reading for the first ever article that I published. If you have any questions regarding this article or anything related to the gaming world, hit me up on LinkedIn.

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Niek Tuerlings. Senior Game Designer at Voodoo spearheading Game Design workflow for Berlin’s Casual games studio.

Since we are currently exploring this direction at Voodoo as well, and as a fervent rectifier of things ranging from grammar to whether Mountain Goats are actually goats (no they aren’t and yes, I’m fun at parties) I’ll try to shed some light on games that seem to fit the definition very well and why this is the case.

Since Archero’s industry-breaking launch in May last year, a lot has changed (although the image below might make you believe otherwise). Next to tens if not hundreds of Archero-likes flooded the market, trying to improve on- or in some cases simply replicate at least part of its success. But there has definitely been a visible shift in mentality for an increasing number of mobile game developers. It has likely seemed like a boat they shouldn’t miss.

fLtR, TtB: Dashero: Sword & Magic, Butchero, Lunch Hero, Hunter: Master of Arrows, Tales Rush, Hit And Run – Archer’s Adventure Tales

But what if you want to make a HybridCasual game but don’t want to make another Archero? Which considerations are important and what would making a game that fits in that segment really involve?

Simply put, the idea is to make a game using one core interaction that is simple enough to be able to apply to the HyperCasual market when advertised, while providing an as deep as possible metagame to engage players for that sweet sweet long-term retention. Take into account that “deep” doesn’t exclude “meaningful” and “comprehensible” to the target audience.

A year after he coined the term, consulting Naavik’s and Master the Meta’s Abhimanyu Kumar on his findings, Arcade turns out to be one of the most obvious generalisations of core games that make sense for HybridCasual titles. While this article looks at HybridCasual mostly from a design perspective, definitely stay on the lookout for Manyu’s upcoming piece that breaks down HybridCasual as a more structural and holistic definition.

A parallel universe where arcades are still a thing.

It makes a lot of sense; Games with an Arcade core game fit the HybridCasual mould so well because they share a lot of the same characteristics with their coin-operated counterparts. They:

• Are instantly understandable, keeping their CPI low
• Have transparent controls, to stay accessible for the masses
• Require no deep strategic knowledge (even far into the end-game), for the same reason
• Are reflex-driven, for that feeling of motorical mastery
• Feature round-based gameplay, for that feeling of “just one more time” and “this time will be different”

Given the nature of Arcade games, their biggest driver of engagement is motorical challenge. To keep this challenge interesting in the long run, the easiest way is increasing the numbers involved.

Balancing power progression

Because motoric skill is at play, players are going to attribute a big part of their progress to their personal performance and will think less about their steadily increasing strength. By alternating the power to progress alongside the player’s strength, their perceived skill can be influenced. Safe to say, in games with enough agency, a player’s actual skill and ability to focus help surmount the posed challenges quicker. In this case, truly great games feed this feat of extraordinary performance back to the player.

On top of this, modern-day mobile games obviously are able to do something their bulky predecessors couldn’t: make use of continuous progression. Where arcade machines were shared amongst thousands of players and therefore had to have their progress reset after each round, mobile games have a single owner and will simply put their players back where they left off along the above graph’s X-axis. Additionally, the option to implement data-driven, personalised difficulty by modifying the power amplitude on the fly gives current games the potential to be even more engaging.

The motoric challenge requirement disqualifies story-driven games, RNG-dependent games and yes, even puzzle games from being easily adaptable into HybridCasual. 

It would be a major surprise and design achievement to somehow make simulation, sandbox or even social casino fit the HybridCasual formula. Some other genres like action puzzle or tower defense might have the potential to feature HybridCasual games, although this would most likely require a change to their core’s DNA to make it fit the above characteristics. Some genres would have to be almost entirely stripped from their tactical thinking and add more reflex-based mechanics instead, while others would simply need their core game’s skill ceiling to be heightened. It could be argued that a successful HybridCasual game doesn’t exclusively need an arcade core, but so far there have been no examples to prove the opposite.

Which games apply?

Restrictions to HybridCasual core games have been covered above, but what shapes their illustrious meta games? You guessed it; simplicity. Qualified games only have a handful of progression layers. The ways to increase the strengths of characters in Mr. Autofire are upgrading their level, their gear, their talents and arguably the ability to fuse equipment together. It’s deep enough to feature a seemingly infinite amount of combinations to play, while staying very easily digestible. There are “wrong” strategic choices to make during gameplay, but these mistakes will never heavily block progress.

Mr. Autofire 

Another great example is Mow Zombies, where the player can upgrade their weapons to be able to keep mowing down increasingly large waves of zombies. The game keeps track which level the player is playing, it has a simplified talent system (as is the case with Mr. Autofire, talents are randomly selected to be upgraded) and eventually a super casual base-building mechanic is introduced.

Mow Zombies’ trifecta of progression.

Other refreshing examples of HybridCasual executions include Sky Bandit, Bullet League: Battle Royale, Combat of Hero and Bullet Echo.

It should be mentioned that every title in the above list features core game variations strong enough that each round of gameplay feels entirely different. Without a meaningful implementation of this variation, your title will immediately feel repetitive and stale.

GameRefinery’s “Archero Competitor” listing can be a huge help finding those Hybrids.

Games that don’t adhere

As a developer, you can choose to monetise and advertise your game any way you want. You don’t have to take this very specific HybridCasual path that’s being laid out by this surge of similar products. Most games definitely still don’t, and clearly not all Arcade titles can be called HybridCasual. Take Supercell’s ‘Brawl Stars’, which would be a great Arcade machine in your local Barcade. This game has so much depth because of its roster of unique characters and their own specific learning curves that it can hardly be called Arcade anymore. The ambition & depth of the game doesn’t line up with the HybridCasual market, which results in its User Acquisition strategy being highly different from HybridCasual games.

Clearly there’s a tiny marketing mismatch between this and your average HybridCasual game

But what about sports games? Technically, most sports are very Arcade-friendly. What we shouldn’t forget though is that great HybridCasual games need a clear and vertical power progression with diverse itemisation in the metagame and a core game that features enough variation to make every round feel entirely different. Unless you’re adding high amounts of fantasy (think Mario Tennis) to your game, sports games usually can’t carry that responsibility either.

Its ‘Clash Royale’ metagame and the realistic core game don’t work well enough to qualify

And then there are studios that even take this whole thing a step further. Where all aforementioned games try to snuggle in between HyperCasual and Casual games, Protostar’s It’s literally just Mowing takes an UltraCasual approach for its core game while adding a HyperCasual metagame featuring collectible skins. Are you still with me? As its fantastic title illustrates, the game’s core solely caters to the player’s “need to feel good” while providing that extra nudge to come back and ‘complete the game’ by accumulating all skins for the avatar and its trusty lawnmower. Not HybridCasual, but a super cool and different kind of Hybrid that finds its own (even more extreme) spot on the casual scale.

Turns out that UltraHybridCasual is Literally Just Mowing

Right in the Feels

Arcade game controls need to be highly optimised and are responsible for the majority of the experience. Developing innovative gameplay with seamless controls can take loads of time and iterations. Production pipelines facilitating this exploration are essential. Just like HyperCasual game iterations are being done on a weekly basis, the feeling of HybridCasual core gameplay needs the same or an even higher level of attention. A story from the trenches is Archero’s control scheme, where the player needs to lift their finger from the screen to make the avatar start shooting was an accidental but pivotal discovery during its development.

Metagame wise, an increasing amount of mobile games featuring similar levels of depth is a clear and recent trend. Mr. Autofire, arguably the most successful game (after Archero) that is truly following this HybridCasual playbook, has earned approximately 5% of Archero’s revenue over the past 6 months. The important thing to mention here is that Lightheart Entertainment calls their flagship title HyperCore, not HybridCasual. This proves what the -let’s face it- in retrospect hyper-misleading HybridCasual term actually has turned out to mean; hyper-accessible games that cater to the relatively ‘hardcore’ Arcade audience. Do not forget that, as demonstrated by Protostar and an increasing amount of casual studios, other hybrids catering to less hardcore audiences are most certainly on the rise as well.

It’s an ambitious endeavor marrying a fresh & sexy Arcade core game to a metagame that’s exactly deep enough, as both are highly interdependent. If you get it right, however, the final product’s elegance can take you a long way. If your marketing strategy makes sense, that is.

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Editor´s note: This article is written in collaboration by Om Tandon of UXreviewer, UX Strategist and HCD practitioner in the games industry for over 15+ years, and Lisa Brunette, founder & owner of Brunette Games, a narrative design and storytelling powerhouse working with development teams at publishers and studios such as Jam City, Redemption Games, Uken Games, etc., on blockbuster top-100 grossing casual games: Sweet Escapes, Lily’s Garden, Matchington Mansion, & many others.

Size of the Pie: Casual Puzzle Games

Casual games are the second-largest genre on mobile after strategy games. They generated revenue of a whopping $8.1Bn in 2019, the lion’s share of which was raked in by the Match 3 sub-genre alone.

Needless to say, this figure for 2020 could be substantially higher(!) given the record-breaking performance across the industry as a byproduct of the Covid lockdowns causing a massive surge in session times and the acquisition of millions of new mobile players.

So, What’s the Story?

In the past few articles, we looked at how seemingly simple casual puzzle games, which relied heavily on just a simple core loop, have now matured due to deepening game design and maturing causal player preferences.

Genre analysis shows the following pillars appearing to be crucial for the success of any newly launched casual puzzle game today

1. Core loop with variable & extensive content treadmill
2. Meta loops that complement the core, decoration, base-building
3. Dramatic character-driven narrative and storytelling
4. Social, Guilds and Live-Ops

While a lot has been written about the pillars 1, 2, and 4 by the industry pundits, pillar no: 3 has not received as much scrutiny. In this article, we do exactly that by taking a deep dive with industry expert Lisa Brunette. Her studio is behind the narrative of some of the most popular meta match 3 games in the market today! But before we do that, let’s look at…

WHAT the data is telling us about the popularity of storytelling trends

Looking at historical games-industry data from GameRefinery, we can clearly see there has been an exponential rise in the success of story/narrative-driven casual puzzle games, hitting top 100 grossing, especially in the match 3 genre.

The trend data above shows that the number of new match 3 games reaching the top 100 grossing charts between 2015 and 2020 have seen an exponential rise in the incorporation of storytelling and character-driven narrative.

Which implies any new casual puzzle game breaking into top 100 grossing has a greater chance of succeeding with storytelling narrative than those that don’t.

But just knowing WHAT the trend is not good enough; let’s look at WHY storytelling trends in casual puzzle games might be on the rise?

Why storytelling might be important: Product & UX Reasons

• The puzzle game genre is fast turning into a boiling red ocean market reaching maturity, with plenty of clones and intense competition, which requires new avenues for product differentiation. Adding a layer of dramatic, character-driven storytelling might be one such avenue for creating that differentiation or finding newer audiences.

• New Emerging Player Needs: A recently published “Genre & Great Games” player insights report from Facebook Gaming and GameRefinery points out the player motivation & needs that fuel the appetite for casual games:

“Up to 32% of puzzle players want to learn something new that can benefit them outside games.”

Genre & Great Games Report

Above is an interesting insight into newly emerging player needs and wants! And something I actually called out in my last article, “How to Crack the Match 3 code – Part 2” (So, thanks for confirming, FB!)

Many narrative meta-driven puzzle games not only entertain players but also educate them further into gardening, interior decorating, landscaping, etc., via character-driven narrative fulfilling a newly emerging need of learning something beneficial outside the game, too.

Notice the other closely popular need as well, that complements the need for dramatic narration and storytelling:

“Up to 31% of puzzle players want to immerse themselves in another character/world.”

Genre & Great Games Report

• Puzzle Player Diversification: Genre & Great Games, the Facebook report, also points out puzzle players are diversifying into other genres, including action & RPG.

Genre diversification for casual players is something I forecasted in my previous articles 4 years ago based on the concept of player maturity. An important thing to notice is mid-core and action RPG games normally have strong character-driven narrative and storylines, which might also be exposing & gravitating casual players towards welcoming and seeking richer storytelling expectations from casual games.

Now that we have looked at the trends and insights for the popularity of storytelling, it’s time to talk to our storytelling expert to know more about the craft of storytelling in blockbuster casual games!

Q&A with Lisa Brunette:

Om: Why is storytelling important? What draws people to stories, the narration or the characters?

Lisa: Ha, ha, I’ve actually seen game conferences that bar this question as a presentation topic because it’s considered too basic! It’s a given in most, if not all, cultures that human beings love story; our survival might actually depend on our ability to imagine characters, worlds, and plots.

I think the idea to question storytelling in games comes from the habit of conflating “story” with “text.” But adding more words to a game doesn’t automatically give it a story. We’ve played text-heavy games that are nonetheless lacking that one thing that gives the story its storyness: conflict. We’ve also played games that used only a few words to brilliantly convey conflict. For example, take a look at these two mainstream game titles and the conflict embedded in them:

Some context: I’ve been a full-time storyteller in the game industry for about 13 years, and for all of that time, I’ve focused solely on mainstream (what we label “casual”) game development, starting out first on console games (Nintendo) and PC/Mac download (Big Fish Games) and then migrating to mobile when the industry took that turn around 2012. I’ve managed two full teams of storytellers, first at Big Fish and now as head of my own company, Brunette Games. So why or whether storytelling is important seems like a foregone conclusion to me.

We’re living in an age in which “binge-watching” is part of our lexicon. It’s not the set design that keeps people up late at night, unable to quit Netflix. It’s the story.

Lisa talking about why storytelling is important.

Om: Is modern day storytelling in mobile games different? (From console games or television)

Lisa: Storytelling for film/TV, books, or any other non-interactive medium is very different from all game storytelling because they don’t have at their core a game to consider. For example, in Disney Frozen Adventures, the player’s primary interaction is to redecorate rooms in the castle or shops in Frozen’s fictitious town of Arendelle. So the story must revolve around, support, and provide motivation for that activity.

We’re often writing in tandem not just with a redecorating interaction but with the match-3 puzzle that also drives the game. That’s where we work with art teams to create tie-ins that reference the narrative, whether that’s in the design of the match-3 tiles or the surrounding art, the presence and actions of a helper character, or the power-ups, etc.

These elements might seem obvious now, but back in 2017, when I proposed reworking the tiles in the first level of Matchington Mansion to resemble pillows to link narratively with the throw pillows Tiffany adds to the living room, it was seen as a radical idea!

Lisa on working with art teams to create tie-ins that reference the narrative.

You asked about the differences between console and mobile games in your question above, but I’m not the person to compare those two platforms. My best comparison is actually between PC/Mac download and mobile. And there’s something worth noting in the differences between the two.

Personally, I have yet to see the dark, edgy content in casual mobile games that was a regular feature of the hundreds of hidden-object puzzle adventure (HOPA) games I worked on at Big Fish back in 2011-2016. Those games had me on the edge of my seat, and the jump scares, at least in one case, actually made me jump––in the middle of a cubicle pod at work. While the HOPAs I worked on 4-5 years ago were at times dark enough to require a warning label even though they were still casual fare, most narrative on mobile today falls squarely in the cheery camp.

We think there’s a missed opportunity for much edgier content.

Lisa on using dark, edgy content in casual mobile games.

Darker-themed games are still being released, warning labels and all, but sadly, the mystery/thriller genre––which is incredibly popular in all other mainstream media––hasn’t really been embraced by casual mobile developers. Here’s a scene from Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst Unlocked.

Does it matter that we’re playing on the phone now instead of PC? I don’t think so. While designers often come to us because they want to compete with top-performing puzzle games, we think the real competition lies elsewhere––on Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO… Our whole Brunette Games team is glued to The Haunting of Bly Manor right now, for example. Just as your interview with Playrix in part 2 in this series revealed that those designers went back to previous-era casual games for inspiration that paid off, I believe we’ll do the same when it comes to narrative.

Om: What in your opinion makes story-led, top-grossing games so popular?

Lisa: It’s like the old saying goes: Trying to design a major hit game is like trying to capture lightning in a bottle. If there were one sure formula, everyone would have a hit, right? While many ingredients make a game popular with players––from a well-designed match-3 puzzle to the right blend of customization and progression pacing in the decorating element––it’s our opinion at Brunette Games that a quality story is key.

With so many match-3 games on the market, and so many decorating games as well, story could be one of the key distinguishing factors you have at your disposal.

Lisa on how to differentiate in the Match 3 genre.

When Tiffany burst onto the scene in 2017 to fight Rex Houston and save your mansion, all we had leading the category was Candy Crush. When Tactile gave players a love triangle in Lily’s Garden, especially amping the meter with provocative viral ads, it showed the romance genre could be pushed much further. And players have responded.

Om: What are the trends you foresee in most successful projects you have taken up to date?

Lisa: The trend is very much toward more sophisticated storytelling, which means a deeper complexity in characters and plots, but that doesn’t mean more text in games or less gameplay. On the contrary, new gameplay mechanics like merge puzzles and new narrative hybrids with other types of gameplay, such as solitaire, are showing that narrative blends with core gameplay in multiple ways in this space. We’ll look for mobile game storytelling to move out of adolescence and into adulthood, in a lot of ways.

One offering we’ve added to our suite of services at Brunette Games is voice-over. It fits well with our mission because as writers of the dialogue scripts to be voiced, we’re the best people on the team to give direction to the voice actors.

Lisa talking about future trends in casual mobile games.

More of our clients are using voice-overs, and not just in the intro cutscene but throughout the game. We’ll likely see more of this in the future.

We’re also excited to work with clients who want to crack the interactive novel format, which has had so far a limited success, and with relatively narrow audience segments. Branching dialogue is another tough nut to crack.

Om: What advice will you give to game developers looking to create story-driven gameplay?

Lisa: In a genre that has maintained its light-and-bright feel for so long, in the absence of dark and edgy, one area where we’ve made great strides is in the humor genre. It’s paid off in spades on Sweet Escapes, a title we write for Redemption Games.

We took a cue from the irreverent humor they built into the game’s character design and animations, and our team has matched it with hilarious dialogue, to the point where players have actually written fan fiction based on the characters.

Lisa talking about using humor in storytelling in Sweet Escapes.

Humor is hard to write, so you really want to invest in top-notch wordsmiths if you go this route.

Beyond that, I would say this: Bring narrative in at the very beginning, at the concept stage. Too many times, we’ve been invited to join a project too late, so that our work becomes largely triage. The other thing we’ve seen a lot is studios skimping on the writing budget at first, hiring an inexperienced person who can actually do a lot of damage in a short amount of time. Then they end up spending again to have us come in and fix it.

Om: Any other wrap-up comments?

Lisa: I’ll just add that as a studio devoted 100 percent to storytelling, we’ve had a rather unique, bird’s-eye view on how narrative is progressing in this space. It’s been a privilege to work with a broad cross-section of talented teams on so many different projects. It’s gratifying to see how much everyone cares about narrative––from C-level leadership to game designers to artists, animators, and voice-over artists. It truly takes a team to create a great game story!

Conclusion: Modern-day storytelling trends and insights

1. There is an exponentially upwards trend in the success of story/narrative-driven casual puzzle games, hitting top 100 grossing, especially in the match 3 genre over the last 4 years. This implies that new casual puzzle games trying to break into the top 100 grossing have a greater chance of succeeding with strong storytelling.
2. The casual puzzle games genre is fast maturing into a crowded red ocean market place. Product differentiation via immersive storytelling and bonding with players via niche themes is one way to stand out from the crowd and even attract new audiences.
3. New player needs and wants are emerging in this space, with around 32% of all casual puzzle players saying they “Want to learn something new that can benefit them outside gaming,” and close to 31% play to “Immerse themselves in another character/world.” Both of these needs can be met via educational narrative and rich storytelling.
4. Most narrative on mobile today falls squarely in the cheery camp, and there might be a missed opportunity for edgier fare. Either way, some degree of conflict needs to be at the heart of the narrative for it to constitute a “story.”
5. The story cannot stand alone from the game. The narrative and the character need to blend in with the core gameplay loop, for example, tying the characters and plot to the decorating activity and the match-3 or collapse mechanic.
6. The use of character voice-overs is gaining more traction amongst games; this trend might see more adoption in the future.
7. Differentiation can come within the narrative-driven competition through quality comedic dialogue, or exploration of themes at the edge of casual gaming, such as the mystery/thriller genre, or even horror.

If you liked this post, please feel free to check out Om Tandon’s other game deconstructs at https://www.uxreviewer.com/. Feel free to connect with Om here for future articles.

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