Introduction

[00:00:00] Jon Jordan: Hello, and welcome to the Mobile GameDev Playbook. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. This is a podcast all about what makes a great mobile game, what is, and isn’t working for mobile game designers, and all of the latest trends.

I’m Jon Jordan, and joining me today, we have two familiar faces. We have Erno Kiiski and Wilhelm Voutilainen, both Chief Game Analysts at GameRefinery by Liftoff. How’s it going, guys? How are you doing?

[00:00:25] Erno Kiiski: Hi, Jon. It’s good. We’re good. How are you?

[00:00:29] Jon: Yes, good. I see the sun in Helsinki.

[00:00:30] Erno: Yes, finally. That’s only one day of winter, almost.

[00:00:37] Jon: Sun in Manchester as well.

Anyway, we’re going to talk today about– I don’t think as we’ve not discussed it recently, I think. I think we’ve got plenty of stuff to discuss. We can talk about what’s going on with mobile shooters. I guess it’s one of those genres that took a bit of a while to get to grips with touch screens. Then, there was a big explosion, obviously, PUBG, and then later, Call of Duty.

A whole bunch of other stuff going on and some interesting trends, so we can dig down into that. I think, Erno, you’re going to kick us off with what are the headline trends that have been going on in the market.

Shooter market overview and trends

[00:01:09] Erno: Of course, what we want to discuss, or maybe the most recent topic or big, big topic, is definitely what EA did with their mobile shooters. The Apex Legends game, which was less than a year old, they decided to cancel it and close it down. Then, they had the Battlefield Mobile under works and totally cancelled the whole project. We’re going to discuss maybe a little bit more on the future, or the upcoming topics.

That’s definitely, if you look at the big news, big trends in terms of the shooter market, what is been around, and probably, actually, one of the reasons why we wanted to have this discussion because, overall, the market is tough, but in the shooter genre, it’s no different, as we can see for these games, big massive IPs, big projects, but still they decided to can them overall.

I think maybe a good starting point just to get us started would be to talk a little bit about what the market actually looks like at the moment. Of course, we have discussed this many times, and the big changes, there haven’t been that many big changes.

Let’s kick it off with the market-level overview. If you’re looking at, especially, the Western shooter market at the moment on mobile, it’s pretty much three games dominating the market. About 80% of the market share in the West is now going to Call of Duty, PUBG, and Free Fire. The top three dogs own a big, big majority of the market. Then, the rest, behind that, about 20% of the market is much more evenly divided. There are few percentage market shares for some games and so on, and down from there. There is a clear categorization of the big three and the rest.

One actually very interesting factor is when we look at the current market, and especially now when Apex is now out of the picture, is the type of games, and especially, the business model of these games. These top three, of course, are these competitive PvP shooters with cosmetic monetization, cosmetic economy, selling skin, and selling all that stuff.

Then, if we look at the rest, the top 20 shooters. Basically, the rest of the 17 shooters that are in the top 20 performing in terms of the IAP revenue, in terms of the shooters, actually, all of them have some kind of a power progression. There are different ways that it has been implemented. There are some things that you either collect characters, or you upgrade them, some lightweight, Brawl Stars and all that stuff type of, like a lighter power progression meta.

Then, there are games like War Robots, which is actually currently the biggest shooter after this top three in the US iOS market, at least. The game has about 3% market share. If you look at that game, how that game works, it’s all about collecting the robots, collecting the equipment items for them, and upgrading them. Pretty much an RPG type of meta with the upgrade layers, and selling the power, so to speak.

That is, of course, how the market is. In order to make that cosmetic economy work– Well, we’re going to talk about LiveOps in the second part, but there is a crazy amount of LiveOps. Then, overall, crazy, crazy big audience, because if you don’t have any power progression, if you compare revenue per download numbers, even for these top shooters, they’re actually– Like Call of Duty, it’s much lower than, let’s say, War Robots, for example, because of the nature of the business model.

It’s interesting that we have the top three that are dominating the market. Then, similar cosmetic monetized games really haven’t found their footing, or haven’t been able to operate the game as efficiently to make that business model work in that market.

Free Fire’s hybrid approach

[00:05:36] Wilhelm Voutilainen: Yes, I agree. I think the big learnings here are that, if you are a shooter, if you want to make a shooter with just cosmetic economy, it’s going to be really hard to compete against these three giants called PUBG and Free Fire. Then, maybe it will be better to try to find learnings from the shooters in the 100, 200, and 200 to 500 grossing range. The games Erno mentioned, like War Robots, are a really good example.

Many of these old masters have been there in the quite high grossing ranks for a long time, Games like Mech Arena, War Machine, World of Tanks, Sniper 3D, the top sniper game right now, and also one of the top pure FPS games, Pixel Gun 3D is also a really old game, but still doing pretty well, and almost in the top 200 grossing ranks as well. Zooba is another example.

I think out of those top three games, the top three giants, Free Fire is a really interesting case because it’s like this hybrid between cosmetic monetization, and this power progression that the rest of the games have because it has a similar monetization, really super heavy LiveOps cadence, cosmetic monetization similar to the COD and PUBG. On top of that, it has this character collection layer, and this power progression too.

You can upgrade those characters as well. That’s a really interesting hybrid. I think when you look at the revenue per download numbers, Free Fire is not getting nearly as enough or nearly many downloads as COD and PUBG, but it’s still in the making the same amount of, or still in the same grossing ranks as PUBG, for example. The revenue per download is so much higher in Free Fire. Maybe one reason could be that they are utilizing a bit of this power progression as well.

[00:07:44] Erno: It’s interesting.

[00:07:45] Jon: Yes, it is interesting.

[00:07:46] Erno: I just wanted to mention, on the Free Fire, like Wilhelm mentioned, it’s this at face value. It doesn’t even unless maybe for the super casual player, it feels like any other PUBG or whatever type, where it is totally cosmetic. Then, for the hardcore players, it actually starts to matter. Then, there is more a reason for conversion for the skins.On the other hand, like I said, that might push a lot of players away as well. This is why games including Call of Duty most likely have, especially in the West, a much, much bigger audience, and they’re doing okay with the smaller revenue per download. It’s interesting. Totally, at the face value they’re similar, but then if you go a bit deeper, they’re a little bit different in the way of operating the game.

EA’s decision to kill Apex Legends Mobile

[00:08:38] Jon: I guess one of the issues here is, you have to be very careful how you position yourself in these games when it comes to play to win. Obviously, in battle royale, the whole point of it is the purity of the skill. If you’re taking that battle royale element, which obviously, PUBG does, then it’s much harder for you to build those power progressions into what’s going on. Obviously, you can do it, but that’s something the audience is going to probably a bit more sensitive to than some of these other games.

There’s one thing I was going to say coming back to EA’s decision, how much do you think the trends you set out will play into their decision? Obviously, I get a little bit is, what’s happening within EA, and how they want to allocate their resources to the various different games they’ve had.

I wonder how much of it is to do with Apex and Battlefield, and how they fit into this power monetization versus cosmetic monetization. Do they feel like they can’t compete against the big three, but they can’t get the monetization that they want to as well? It’s not really about those products, it’s just about the market, rather.

[00:09:17] Erno: Yes, it’s tough, and it’s hard to say what are the very, very underlying reasons that when to introduce them, why Apex never really was able to be the same type of success. If you think about Apex, for example, at first, the idea was exactly the same monetization model as Call of Duty, the same type of things. If we think about Apex, first of all, a hero-based shooter, you’re selling skins for specific heroes, which already restricts your possible monetization of the cosmetics already quite a bit.

Then, naturally, the second point that we are going to talk about, it’s LiveOps. Of course, I don’t have specific numbers of LiveOps for Apex actually, but in terms of the crazy amount of cadence that these top three are pushing, and then when these are already established games that people have bought the skins, and they are connected to the games.

A good example could be, PUBG, Krafton who tried to make the PUBG: New State, which didn’t work out at all, almost. I think it’s still live, the game, but it’s nowhere near PUBG Mobile. Krafton tried to make their own thing. In my opinion, the core gameplay is a polished version of that, but it’s not enough in these types of games. How do you get those players out from the PUBG Mobile that have been playing for years and years, and have already got a lot of skins?

If you look at their live operations, how they’re pushing content and collaborations, and all that stuff in PUBG Mobile. In comparison, the New State, that it’s a much, much more stale type of experience. It’s tough. It’s a good question, in terms of what’s the reason. I’m sure Apex and Battlefield are both big IPs. Apex also, they went for full cosmetic monetization.

If you look at the revenue numbers, especially, if I look at now US iOS, Apex Legends never made it over $1m, for example, which is very, very, very, very tough. They were never ever able to crack the monetization, even though they had a similar idea, similar mechanics, similar gacha mechanics, and all that stuff. Whether it’s then the number of contents, the content cadence that they were pushing, didn’t they have enough engagement content, limited-time game modes, types of things to play around, and show off your cosmetics? That’s a good question.

It is super tough, especially for it to compete against these top three that are already established, and have an audience. Actually, Apex is also a little bit different with the hero approach, but it is still a battle royale shooter, like all of these top three. Call of Duty has a little bit more emphasis on the other type of shooters as well, but still very, very similar. If you look at it on a high level, what kind of a shooter experience it is.

[00:13:21] Wilhelm: Wasn’t it that Free Fire‘s revenue per download was $30 right now?

[00:13:27] Erno: Yes. Of course, it’s been around for so much longer than Apex, but it’s interesting when you look at a side-by-side grab, how Free Fire is so distinct even from PUBG and Call of Duty Mobile. Is it the business model that definitely has something to do with it selling the small power, in terms of being able to monetize more strongly? Then, like I already said, it doesn’t work out with some specific audience, and I think the Call of Duty brand wouldn’t have worked out, so.

[00:14:07] Jon: No, and I guess from that point of view with Apex and Battlefield, both being quite Western-focused brands, you can’t leverage that power mechanic in there. Obviously, Free Fire is much more Asian Pacific emerging territories, where they’re much more open to that thing. That’s a good analogy. Probably, a sensible move by EA to not be wasting money, because it can never get the audience of the other three. Obviously, EAs broken, so even if they had tons of money to spend, they can’t grow the audience, so let’s just wash their hands of that, and move on, I suppose.

[00:14:36] Erno: Exactly. Most likely, definitely those points. As I said, the amount of money that is required to operate, we’re going to discuss next the LiveOps. The amount of money required to push the amount of cadence of content to be able to compete is super high, and then if you are not able to get that money back, it’s quite clear, only one decision can be made.

[00:15:04] Jon: It’s just somewhat ironic that EA has been trying to make Battlefield mobile games for around 10 years until every time they get cancelled. Anyway maybe in the future. Let’s move on to LiveOps then. LiveOps is the bit where mobile games really work. What do studios have to do? What’s the same, and what’s different to other genres?

What does the LiveOps of top shooters look like?

[00:15:26] Erno: Well, if we start with those, which are basically the market at the moment, over 80%, those top three. We are actually– Our recent product, it’s going to come really soon. Been under work for a long time. It’s actually about on GameRefinery, it’s about LiveOps, and actually LiveOps tracking, and doing competitive research on, especially, LiveOps. We’ve been now following these top three shooter games for a couple of months, and I can give you some numbers, in terms of how insane the amount of content is.

[00:16:05] Jon: The inside scoop.

[00:16:06] Erno: Yes, exactly.

[00:16:08] Jon: Cool.

[00:16:09] Erno: If you take Call of Duty as an example, what do we have in terms of the operations in that game? Of course, we have the ranked seasons, which all games have, which brings the competitive ladders, where you compete and there are unique rewards for rising high in the rank seasons, and so on, and they are all three months long.

Then, there are of course one-month-long battle passes, and tons of content from there. Every month, you can progress. Every weekend, they have a specific tournament. They implemented it about maybe a year ago. This a tournament mode, which has also its own seasons every week, and you can play specific modes, and earn specific rewards.

Then, if you look at just limited-time game mode, so different items, lots of twists and stuff like that to the different gameplay modes, and then you can enter from a different playlist to play those. There are usually three to five active at once, and usually, they are only a few weeks long or something like that usually. Then, that’s supported with tons of tasks and events, and you can earn cosmetics from there.

Then, that’s just the engagement side. Then, if we look at the monetization, in Call of Duty Mobile, there are usually around 10 limited-time gachas at once active. They are usually about three to five weeks in length, and then in one gacha, there can be from 10 to 30 different unique cosmetic items. If we start to count the amount of cosmetics, first of all, that they are pushing on a weekly basis, and of course, the gameplay engagement content. All those looping things like the ranked stuff and so on, but also the limited-time gameplay mode should bring some variety. The amount of work to operate this game is insane.

[00:18:10] Jon: I guess it’s worth pointing out that. Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but most of that LiveOps, if not all of that live, is happening out of the Chinese developer, is it not?

[00:18:19] Erno: Yes.

[00:18:20] Jon: That’s, I’d imagine, well into three figures in terms of the amount of staff running that. Probably, maybe more than a few hundred maybe, but certainly that scale, it would be almost impossible for Activision to run that in North America.

[00:18:36] Erno: Exactly.

[00:18:36] Jon: It’s pretty scary.

[00:18:38] Erno: Then, if you compare, I have had one data point from Apex Legends, we did this, it was maybe three, four months ago, so it’s not super fresh, but as an example, in terms of the monetization content. Apex Legends also had three limited-time gachas, usually at once, with about the same amount of content per gacha available. Still, in terms of the pure amount, it’s much, much less than in Call of Duty Mobile.

Of course, it’s just the volume, but still, it already gives a little bit of data point, in terms of, was there enough, they couldn’t operate. It was interesting because EA was working with Lightspeed & Quantum, and Tencent Studio which made PUBG Mobile in terms of their live operations. You could see a lot of correlations in their live operations as well, but still, was it too expensive? What kind of a deal they had?

We don’t know what’s behind the scenes, so to speak, but it never really flew out, or then overall, just the amount of content for that type of basic core loop that they had for a hero-based shooter didn’t just work out. They are interesting things, because, yes, these games, they’re all about LiveOps as you can see from the amount of content.

[00:20:02] Jon: I think they did point out when they cancelled it, there was mention of a few things, but one of the things was the whole future content pipeline. They just felt they couldn’t get it to the quality they needed, which maybe talks a little bit about that. There is a quantity thing that, if you do these things properly, you just have to put out a ton of stuff.

Then, obviously, if you have that at a very high level of quality, and if you’re doing a hero shooter, that’s slightly different, because heroes are the focus, rather than the skins, as it’s a slightly different thing going on. You can’t just be creating and releasing new characters all the time, because that messes up everything. You end up in a difficult structural position.

Understand the game you’re making and how that feeds into LiveOps

[00:20:35] Erno: Yes, exactly. Especially, for this type to try to compete against this top three, and if that’s the LiveOps machine you are trying to beat, it’s a tough, tough, tough job. Then, what is the way to do this? Is it maybe try to bring something totally unique in terms of the core gameplay maybe, or then a different approach, like what Brawl Stars did, like make a little bit of casual shooter, and this kind of game, It has a power progression, but it’s not that heavy that it would feel super unfair, for example.

[00:21:05] Wilhelm: I also think the Zooba that we mentioned earlier. Of course, it’s not in the top 50 or top 10 grossing ranks, but it’s still doing quite well in the on and off 200 range. We are also tracking LiveOps of Zooba, and it’s nearly not that heavy in terms of that. Zooba is similar to Brawl Stars, in that it’s more of this casual kind of battle royale game. They have found success that way. Making a bit more of a casual type of shooter. They don’t need absolute massive LiveOps cadence to be successful in that sense.

[00:21:46] Jon: I guess, obviously, the more people you’re putting into LiveOps, the more you’re dragging down your profit. The PUBG, Call of Duty and Free Fire people, they’re always, “Oh, how can we get more LiveOps up in this?” They’re always adding more people, so there’s, I guess, there’s always an equilibrium of profitability where people think, “Oh, we can invest some more and make some more money,” but then everyone’s doing the same thing.

They end up in the same situation, but definitely as you’re saying, Wilhelm, picking and choosing, and understanding what you’re trying to make and understanding the game you’re going to make, and then how the monetization, and how that feeds into LiveOps.

Are your LiveOps teams going to be 10 people or 100 people? There’s quite obviously a massive difference there in the scale of operation you want to do. If you only got 10 people to run your LiveOps, and then there are some sorts of games you just can’t make, then you just have to admit that and choose your battles. We’ve set it up as there’s these massive two or three giants fighting out, and everyone else is scrabbling right in the bottom. There are always new games coming up, there’s always people with clever ideas of how to solve this.

How do we see the next year panning out? There are obviously some fairly big IPs that are coming. Maybe not this year for some of them, but where do you see the opportunities in this?

What does the future of the shooter market look like?

[00:23:01] Wilhelm: Definitely. We’ve been talking about these three top shooters, and they were all battle royale games. There could definitely be space for other kinds of shooters and finding success that way. When we look at, for example, in the West in the PC, we have hero shooters, we have extraction shooters like Escape from Tarkov, a really successful game, more of these tactical FPS games like Counter-Strike or Valorant, and then we have these RPG like looter shooters.

Possibly, especially, when we look at the upcoming shooters, we could definitely see some interesting new mobile shooter sub-genres merge on the mobile as well, and find success that way.

[00:23:49] Jon: Do we want to throw out some titles? To entice people with games you want to be looking out for?

[00:23:55] Erno: Yes. Well, for example, talking about extraction shooters, I think Arena Breakout is a really interesting case. That’s a game right now in the China market. It’s actually in the top 50 grossing. It’s been doing quite well. It was recently released there. That’s like this extraction shooter game. It’s basically how those work exactly like in Escape from Tarkov on PC.

You already know it’s not about royale, it’s not like this FPS shooter when you die, and then you respawn instantly, but basically, you go into this area for, let’s say 30 minutes. You shoot other people, you shoot other players, you shoot PvE mobs, you loot stuff, and then you need to extract with the loot that you gained there, and then you keep the loot. The Arena Breakout, and also it’s coming– I think it’s right now on the closed beta in the US as well. Apparently, it’s coming to the US soon.

What I think is really interesting with this game, as we’ve talked about these monetization models, is that we have the cosmetic monetization, we have the power progression. Arena Breakout actually has totally unique monetization model. You basically purchase stuff, you can purchase equipment items, and you can purchase upgrade items to that equipment, but the thing here is that you basically have to take that equipment with you to the matches, and if you die, you will lose them.

Basically, you can actually lose the stuff that you purchase. Now, that’s also used to monetize these inventory boxes. You can rent this inventory box, you can take it with you to the match, and you can put stuff inside there. If you die, then you will not lose them, and there’s also this subscription plan tied to it as well. It’s been working quite well for the game.

[00:25:45] Jon: I think also they have a marketplace, don’t they? There appeared to be a marketplace where people are trading stuff, including items as well. They’ve thought quite a lot about the economics of what’s going on. Sorry, I know I interrupted.

[00:25:58] Erno: No problem. That’s actually interesting. I haven’t got really deep into it yet, but that’s interesting that they have peer-to-peer as well. Because, in a way, that’s one of the strategies. It’s like selling insurance, so to speak. Insurance monetization for a game. It’s an interesting way.

It’s working quite well, at least, so far in China, but then of course, again, talk stuff to pay to win and all that stuff in the West and how well it’s received when it comes, will remain to be seen. Especially, now with the constant talk also about gacha monetization, which these top shooters are relying on cosmetic monetization, that game doesn’t have any gachas, for example, in their monetization model, which is an interesting thing to study, in terms of that as well.

Overall, I think those extraction shooters are interesting. To be honest, they have been talked about for a while already now; when they’re coming to the mobile? Are they coming? Do they find success, and so on? The most interesting thing for me about them is that, if you think about these competitive PvP shooters, it’s match-to-match. Of course, you have maybe had a Battle Pass or ranked season that gives you this little bit of a long-term progression.

Then, in these extraction shooters, you actually have, not necessarily power progression in the same manner as RPGs or some of these shooters, but it has some kind of a long-term progression vector that ties the match together and brings that connection for the players that might also work as extra retention push for the players, which has been lacking a little bit in these top shooters.

It’s very, very interesting to see when finally these games start to come out. Like Arena Breakout, it’s a very, very high production-value game from Tencent. How is it received in the West, or is it still? Escape from Tarkov is a relatively big game on PC, but it’s still a niche compared to Call of Duty, for example, so it remains to be seen how that genre pans out.

[00:28:00] Jon: I guess going back to one of our original statements was, it is going to be relatively niche, although you can’t judge exactly how. It could be a big niche or a small niche, but obviously, the monetization for the people who like those hypercompetitive risk-reward games is going to be, probably, off the scale. It’s whether they can balance monetization with making the audience as big as possible for them.

It’s very interesting. I was looking at it. It’s a very complicated setup, where you can customize the entire UI of all these different moves and weapons and things. You can really see that some people are going to absolutely love the level you can get into to customize your loadout and your UI and stuff.

[00:28:39] Erno: Definitely.

Upcoming releases to keep an eye on

[00:28:42] Jon: We’ve got, obviously, Valorant, probably not coming out this year, or it seems definitely not coming out this year, so that’s maybe one to park, but I guess everyone is going to be excited even if it’s \coming out till 2024.

[00:28:53] Erno: Yes, it’s an interesting game. Yes, I could go. Well, as Wilhelm mentioned earlier in this podcast, the top three competitive shooter games, they are really from the same formula, so to speak, even with the nuances and differences, but then there is a little bit of room, at least in terms of success.

I don’t know. It might be. There had been some games that had tried a little bit this type of shooter, but then maybe this was a little bit slow-paced tactical five-versus-five, more like Counter-Strike, Valorant, this type of an approach. How well it works on mobile? We’ll see. Is it a little focused mobile audience, which is maybe a little bit more casual in terms of their gameplay maybe, than most of the PC audience, for example, so will it find its audience? At least, that is the thing that I don’t see Valorant being as a direct competitor to let’s say PUBG Mobile, than for example, Apex was.

[00:29:03] Wilhelm: I think as Erno mentioned, the sort of those Valorant Mobile, and these sort of more tactical shooters being more slow-paced. I personally see that as a possible strength when these sorts of tactical slow-paced shooters come on mobile, and I think Arena Breakout also. It’s more slow-paced. It’s not like it’s a super hectic battle royale, so that could actually work pretty well on mobile. If you make it even more like it, a little bit may be a more casual way.

I think that it’s good that there could definitely be a success for Valorant. For example, I’ve analyzed Critical Ops on mobile, and I personally think that it plays really well because of that more smooth and slow-paced tactical combat.

[00:29:44] Erno: Yes, it’s interesting because it’s an old game, but of course, coming from a very small Finnish studio, which doesn’t, of course, have the LiveOps capabilities of, let’s say, Riot maybe. With what they’re able to do, for example. Of course, on mobile, it’s a different world than on PC in terms of operating the game, but it’s a very, very interesting game.

I think in the little bit same box goes Ubisoft and them launching Rainbow Six on mobile. It’s a bit similar type of an area of a shooter, a bit more tactical, maybe a little bit more slow-paced, five-versus-five type of a shooter. Then, maybe some other games that I personally find very, very interesting, and I find it to be a big, big open area, still that something no one has yet cracked on mobile properly, is the looter shooter genre.

We have Destiny Mobile announced, I think. I don’t remember if it was obviously announced, but still, that’s very, very early, but it should be coming. Then, from Ubisoft Division Mobile, it should even be coming this year, maybe, so basically, this type of shooter, where it’s more of a like MMO aspects intertwined with the shooter mechanics, than actually a competitive PvP shooter only.

Then, of course, a good question is like, that type of a game, what’s the monetization model going to be like? Because in, of course, mobile, it’s free to play. If you look at the PC side, pretty much all of these games have been– Some of them, like Destiny nowadays, it’s free-to-play, but the monetization is based on the expansions, selling expansions, and then a little bit of cosmetics.

The main thing is selling, is it once half a year, or something like that, I don’t remember the cadence, but they’re selling the expansion, that’s the main of the business model for them. On mobile, well, as we all know, it probably won’t work like that. Then again, a game like Warframe, which is quite a popular PC/console game, it’s this kind of looter shooter type of RPG, and it’s also free-to-play, which has been doing quite well.

Very, very interesting space, because I think on mobile, we haven’t seen much over here. I remember there was a game called Shadowgun Legends, I think, some four years ago, something like that, never really took off, but especially when these big AAA companies are trying their hands on it, are they able to crack it? There’s at least a space for this type of experience open still to be taken, compared to the competitive PvP, which is super competitive now with those top three mega factory games.

[00:33:53] Jon: I guess what’s interesting about all those titles you mentioned there is, they are mobile versions, or mobile incarnations of existing big franchises, so that it will be that sort of solves some of your UA problems, at least, in the early stage, or at least it gives you a chance to go, “We’ve got these many people who’ve played our franchise on PC and console, and so there’s something to work with already without us having to worry too much about UA in the initial stages,” which is clearly for the whole mobile industry a bit of a problem at the moment.

[00:34:22] Erno: Yes, definitely, and that’s the whole thing. It’s a trend, looking at the games that have been scaling. Many, many big amounts of them have an IP, so it naturally helps on that organic boost to the UA side as well, but yes, it will be interesting to see how they adjust these in this space. There are a lot of IP-based AAA console games coming, but will there be surprises that are new mobile-first experiences that come out of nowhere and surprise everyone?

Most likely, they will need to have quite a big new core idea twist, something like Marvel Snap style. Of course, they had an IP as well, but in terms of a genre kind, they’re being a little bit of revolutionizing how it works and how the whole model works and bringing this massive audience behind them.

[00:35:20] Wilhelm: Maybe there could be, in a way, we have the Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile coming soon, of course. It’s super similar to the three big giants on mobile right now, but I think one really unique element that it has is it has this cross-progression between PC and both mobile, so that’s a really unique kind of case, and of course, a bit similar with what Fortnite did with crossplay, so you could play on PC, and on mobile as well, so.

[00:35:53] Erno: It’s interesting because, yes, of course, crossplay is one of these hot terms that a lot of the industry is talking about, and then Warzone is the first game that introduces this. They have different skills for console and PC, and then for mobile, you’re not cross-playing against them because especially, for a competitive shooter, it would be quite an unfair setting, but when you’re playing the mobile version, you are progressing in the Battle Pass.

Then, you go to your home and play on a PC. It’s the same Battle Pass you’re progressing through, so kind of like creating this ecosystem around the game. First of this type of cross kind of like a platform, crossplay approach that we have seen, so that is also interesting to see.

[00:36:44] Jon: I guess, also, in that stage is, you’re not worrying maybe so much about the pure mobile monetization because you’re using it as a retention mechanic to hold people in the ecosystem, where you know you can monetize them on the PC, so there’s a slightly different view of success when you’ve got that model, compared to just putting out a mobile game.

[00:37:03] Erno: Yes, definitely, because, yes, like we’ve been talking in the whole podcast, if they would come just for mobile, and just mobile, are they able, look, first of all, same like what happened with PUBG: New State. How much does Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile comes in? How much they’re actually getting away from Call of Duty Mobile, which is operated by Tencent, even though it’s published by Activision, so will be very, very interesting to see.

[00:37:30] Jon: Yes. Lovely. Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground. That’s some really good stuff. We’ve got some games to look out for over the coming months as well, so thank you very much to Willhelm and Erno for their expertise.

[00:37:40] Erno: Thank you.

[00:37:41] Wilhelm: Thank you.

[00:37:42] Jon: Thanks, guys. Thanks to you for watching or listening, however, you’re consuming the podcast. In every episode, we are looking at the mobile game sector and seeing what’s going on. We’ve been around for, well, getting on for 10 years now, the biggest part of the gaming sector, of course. There’s still plenty of innovation, and plenty of new things coming, so I hope you come along to see what’s going on next time. See you then. Goodbye.

Introduction

[00:00:00] Jon Jordan: Hello, and welcome to the Mobile GameDev Playbook. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. This is a podcast all about what makes a great mobile game, what is and isn’t working for mobile game designers and all of the latest trends. I’m your host, Jon Jordan. Joining me today we have Chief Game Analyst Erno Kiiski from GameRefinery by Liftoff. How’s it going, Erno?

[00:00:23] Erno Kiiski: Doing great, Jon. Thank you.

[00:00:25] Jon: Good. Ably assisted we have Joel Julkunen, the head of analytics at GameRefinery by Liftoff. How’s it going, Joel?

[00:00:33] Joel Julkunen: Great as well. Nice to be here.

Why should you play Marvel Snap if you haven’t already

[00:00:34] Jon: Good. We’ve got a good topic to discuss this year, one of many people’s games of the year for 2022, which is Marvel Snap. This plays into a lot of the things we’ve been talking about over the last 12 months about the use of IP, how game developers balance accessibility with the depth of play and monetization, and how all those things come together in a particular product. Should we explain to people who still need to play Marvel Snap? Obviously, everyone should have done it. If you haven’t, stop the podcast, download it, and play it. What’s Marvel Snap about besides being a game based around Marvel characters?

[00:01:21] Joel: As we all know, it’s a collective card game, and just like in any other CGG, you’re playing real-time matches against one opponent. That’s basically where all the superficial similarities end because what makes Snap different from Magic The Gathering or Hearthstone is that you have a much smaller deck. You have only 12 cards instead of, for example, 30 or 60 cards. Then the only card type you’re using in the card game is, at the moment, at least, characters. There are no instant spells, sorceries, magic, or secrets like in Hearthstone. Then instead of killing or attacking your opponent, the matches are all about trying to control three different areas in every match. When a match starts, there are three areas, and you’re deploying your characters to these areas in your turn. These three areas have different major effects that affect how the cards work in that match. As I mentioned in the beginning, these areas inject a lot of randomness and tactical dimension to the game, which is needed, as you have a much smaller deck. There is less randomness, like in Hearthstone, relating to the cards you draw in the game.

As you have these areas that are revealed and cause these major random effects, you have to focus on a tactical level to react to how the game changes every turn. If you have to wrap the core gameplay experience up, that’s how it is. I’ve been playing Hearthstone since it was beta launched. My first game of Magic was probably in 1994. This is different and fast-paced and doesn’t feel repetitive at all.

Marvel Snap is a mobile-first card game

[00:03:23] Erno: Another aspect is that it’s a mobile-first game, whereas the other card games originated elsewhere. Hearthstone was mainly a PC game and then came to mobile. Then Magic, of course, the origins are in the actual physical card game. In contrast, Snap is a mobile first-in-mind developed game. Another factor in the core gameplay that pushes the game towards that is, for example, the set number of rounds. Because in Magic or Hearthstone, the matches can go quite long and take quite a bit of time, depending on each game.

The length of the match always varies. In Snap, you always have six turns; somebody wins or loses. It forces players, and it’s always short and easy to go. You always know that you can play one game and how long it will take. It forces the matches to be quick. Then another aspect which is innovative and exciting is that the core gameplay brings the snap mechanics, which is in the name already. How the snap mechanic works in Marvel Snap is like a betting system. Every match you win, you get these progression points for your rank or these rank points.

You can bet on any point of the game on any of those six turns. You can say that “I’m going to bet more. I’m going to win this.” It’s the psychological difference: “If I put more of my ranking points into the table and if I win, then, of course, I get more,” so I have that thing. There’s always the risk. Then that also brings a little bit of the bluffing side that you’ll see, “I’m probably not going to win this, but I’m going to bet still.” It’s almost like a poker element that comes into play: “I’m not so sure, but maybe I’ll try the bluff.” Because if you don’t accept the Snap, you can retreat. Then you’re going to lose the game. Then you’re not going to lose as many points as you would have if you had accepted the bet, like poker betting. That’s also short-paced, and that snapping betting type of system brings an exciting and unique twist to card gameplay.

[00:06:02] Jon: Absolutely. It’s a good overview that you guys have pulled out some key parts. Not being an expert in this genre, it is clear that the problem with most of these trading card games on mobile is they have very much seen, “This is how Hearthstone does it, and we are going to tinker around the edges, but we’re going to make a pretty hardcore card game where we have loads of cards.” For mobile and me as a player, when you start one of those games, you are immediately overwhelmed by what’s going on, what these cards are, and what they all do.

In most games, you have a good few hours of work to get a basic idea of what’s happening. Marvel Snap tears that up and streamlines accessibility into a few little pockets. They all work together well in terms of layering how the locations work. You only have to win two of the three locations. You can choose where to place your cards so that you can go, “I’ll lose that one, but I’ll win these two.” There’s quite a lot of exciting decision-making that players have to do, but it’s not based on a very complex understanding of the cards themselves per se, which is the real innovative thing.

[00:07:15] Joel: Definitely. I added one thing you mentioned: the game is like you said, straightforward to get into. As you said, there are only so many cards in the game. They are, of course, introducing more and more cards. For example, the pool is much more limited than with Hearthstone and Magic. Erno also mentioned that this is made for mobile because the games are rapid. You can quickly start a new one. You can retreat if you want and then play another one. If you compare that to Magic, which was originally a tabletop card game with physical cards, Marvel Snap wouldn’t be successful if it were in a physical form because the games would be so quick.

On mobile, it works wonderfully. Then as it’s easy to get to, and we’re going to touch it later, but there are no packs to purchase. You get cards in tiny increments. You get new cards. Eventually, you’ll get all the cards if you play enough. You slowly learn all the cards. It’s not like you’re opening ten packs, getting 50 cards, and trying to learn all of the cards and mechanics, but you’re getting them one at a time, and that’s plenty of time for you to digest everything.

The importance of well-known IP in the success of Marvel Snap

[00:08:37] Jon: You spoke about it being developed mobile-first, and it’s all interesting because the team is a US team, come out of Blizzard, it was. They were PC developers, but they’ve come at it as mobile first. The first surprising thing for me when downloading it is, “Oh, it’s a portrait.” You supposedly play it on your phone. Every other card game, I’m sure some others haven’t, but when you think about Hearthstone, you think about landscape. You have the cards laid out at the bottom of the screen.

This takes it on its head. Cool. We get many other things to pick apart as we go through it. Traditionally, these card-based games have typically been quite a niche. We’ve mentioned some very successful individual products, like Hearthstone and Magic. There’s a surprising amount of games developed for this genre, considering there are few successful games. Those successful games differ from the number of people playing something like Call of Duty. This has always been seen as a profitable niche.

It’s a market that has a capped amount of players. Do you think that everything we’ve spoken about regarding the accessibility that Marvel Snap has broken that argument? Also, partly because of the IP, who doesn’t like playing with Spider-Man and Hulk? Have we seen that this has addressed a different audience that just brought people who wouldn’t play Hearthstone into what would’ve been seen as this collectable card niche, which may not be niche anymore?

[00:10:18] Erno: Yes. As you already mentioned in the beginning, the way they made the CCGs genre, which has always been this niche, hardcore, small audience genre, into a mass audience. All those factors, the quickness of the gameplay, the IP, the appeal of the IP, and also something that we still need to discuss is the meta layer of the game and the progression systems of the game. That is also unique in how they have done it. I’ll explain it quickly.

Progression system

Erno: In the game, you earn cards by increasing your collection level. It’s a linear level that you grow all the time. Then how do you increase the collection levels? You earn character shards or boosters every match you play, and then you upgrade those cards visually. Let’s say you have a Spider-Man; then you play a game with the Spider-Man in your deck. Then you earn, let’s say, six shards of Spider-Man. Then you can upgrade it to a higher level, and the card’s borders change to green, for example.

Every time you do an upgrade, you earn collection level XP. Then you go further and further in the collection level, like a linear line, and then you get to the different reward thresholds. Then you unlock currencies of currencies, which are used for the upgrades, for example, and the new card. All the new cards are basically distributed through the collection. This is a unique loop for the CCG in that you play the game. You are only able to purchase a few of the cards. Once you play the game, you instantly get those shards, upgrade the characters, and unlock new cards.

The cards are pooled into these different tiers. The first group is from collection levels from 1 to like 200. Also, you are not getting matched against players who have played so much more, especially when you don’t have access to those cards. It brings this exciting loop in the meta. All the time, you get the small incremental progression, which is common for mobile games. If you think about Hearthstone, it’s a ranked season, but you don’t get the progression in every game, which is also quite appealing. Also, that comes to monetization. Because all the CCGs have gachas loot boxes and card packs, and Snap doesn’t have that. That also, for a certain audience, definitely makes it much more appealing.

[00:13:47] Joel: Yes. I agree with Erno. This could take CCGs to a wider audience. Erno mentions the frequent progression in thresholds you are crossing in Snap. Like Erno mentioned, you have the collection level almost, let’s say, after two or three games, especially in the beginning, you are unlocking a new card or getting new boosters in the reward track. Then you also have many daily quests, a weekly quest, a battle pass season, and seasonal quests.

Every quick match you play, you can see that you are progressing in either these quests or the collection level. Matches are speedy to play. You get hooked on it. You want to play another one and another one, another one. Compared to Hearthstone, which only has one daily request, you can have three at a time. You get one every day. Then you have these three weekly quests. It’s so much more. They will find this more appealing if you’re thinking about more casual gamers or more mainstream, not CCG lovers. As Erno mentioned, this is much more familiar to other mobile games; these mechanics give you a reason to play another round. The reason is not only the fact that you get, let’s say, four more ranking points. That’s one thing.

[00:15:23] Jon: I think, indeed, at the early stages of free-to-play mobile games, that idea of being quite generous with rewards and getting people into the loops of understanding how these deeper meta-progression systems work and everything you do, you feel like you’re getting over rewarded: “It’s great. I’m going to keep going, keep going.” That’s very important, the first 7, 30 days of retention. We’ve painted the scene of this being a very innovative game, well thought through in terms of the game design and how it fits into mobile.

A phrase we always use for games as seen as being good game design for any game is easy to play, hard to master. Still, maybe you say fairly early, but the easy-to-play bit, indeed, they’ve succeeded on the hard-to-master thing and the complexity, which is really as the games as a service work because some of these games have been around for almost a decade now as free-to-play mobile games. Early stages, where is it for that? They over-indexed on they get people in, and it’s cool; there’s always stuff going on.

You have these exciting poker mechanics. From my point of view, who has yet to play as much as you guys, it’s going to have to be slightly under-indexed on the deep complexity because not one product can’t do everything. Is that a fair argument, or are there things they can do as time goes on to increase the things that hardcore players playing every day do? We always know in free-to-play mobile that there are people who max out content. Because of the way that it’s played, they play games faster than developers can create new content, which is one of the big problems. Where does Snap fit in terms of that?

Marvel Snap has to start bringing more horizontal content at some point

[00:17:14] Joel: I can go first. It’s true that in the future, Marvel Snap, like all the other mentioned mobile games, Snap has to invent more, bring more content, and keep end game players engaged. They are very well built to last in terms of core gameplay and the game’s mechanics. Because you have these areas, they introduce new areas that spice up every match, which helps keep the game interesting even though they don’t have 10,000 cards like Hearthstone or Magic. Even with the smaller pool of cards, they can keep the game fresh because they get these areas.

You can bring fewer new cards to keep the deck meta interesting. That is helping them a lot. As I see it, Marvel Snap has to start getting more horizontal content at some point, whether or not it’s additional play modes. For example, it doesn’t have any social element at the moment. You cannot even play against your friend. There are no teams or guilds or co-op games or bigger tournaments. There definitely will be, though, but that’s one area. Maybe I’m just talking about my experience playing Hearthstone and Magic for a while; I’m also looking forward to Snap bringing new types of cards. Of course, they have to bring new characters and heroes, but they should bring specific spell mechanics or enchantments to increase the tactical depth or the game’s strategic depth. Even though you have only 12 cards in your deck, it might get stale if you don’t bring new keywords, for example, as the other games have done. Those two areas are the ones I’m looking forward to new things in Snap.

[00:19:29] Erno: Yes. You mentioned the strategic depth compared to the more traditional CCGs. It also adapts to what we discussed; this game is made for wider orients and more appealing casual mechanics. That’s why also I don’t see more Snap becoming an eSport, because there’s so much more randomness with the locations and so on, and like you said, the deeper depth is necessarily not there. This super hardcore eSports type of aspects that Magic and Hearthstone have are not there.

Then again, it’s a game for different purposes, and the location system is the key, as we discussed. Every match is different, bringing these new weird moments when a new location is introduced. Then something happens, and it changes each match even though you play with a small deck of cards, it changes the way you have to think every time. That’s a more hardcore, competitive eSports landscape, which could be much tougher to pull off. That’s why the game is a more fun, appealing card game. It could also have a few problems on the super highly competitive side.

[00:21:16] Jon: Given how embedded stuff like Hearthstone and Magic are, if you’re making a game, it’s almost impossible to build a product that will compete with those because they just have been around for so long, but you wouldn’t bother doing that. Interestingly, the developer’s seconding a US developer, but the publisher is part of a Chinese company, ByteDance, which has TikTok. I would only read a little into those two things. Obviously, TikTok says a little bit about being very accessible and just having fun with it rather than being a deep social network; you can also argue, as deep as Facebook.

[00:21:59] Erno: Definitely. As you mentioned, it taps into all of these things discussed in this podcast, especially the post-IDFA era, the more casual going from hardcore to taking more casual elements to widen the audience. You have the IP, which helps you with marketing and monetization. It’s not so whale-driven like those because you cannot target them anymore so strongly. It’s a perfect example of these trends that the industry has been talking about recently, and it taps into those boxes.

Monetization

[00:22:39] Jon: We’ve been very good; we’ve not mentioned monetization until you just did there. We’ve been very, very constrained. We have it as a question clearly, and this plays into this mass market, not so deep, lots of stuff getting for free. Indeed, when it came out, one of the criticisms was, how will this monetize? There’s been some numbers put out. I want to know how official they are, and we start seeing some updates. What are your views on how it’s monetizing and how that will play out in the future?

Is it going to be the basic way of monetizing, like “Let’s find the biggest addressable audience and make it easy for people to spend small amounts of money”? Or can they play into more of what free-to-play mobile people do, which is finding people who want to spend a lot of money and be completist? How do you think it’s playing on that score?

[00:23:38] Erno: I can start on that. When I spoke how the game works, there are no card packs and no gachas, which is the key for many mobile games and CCGs. That’s the feature that brings the spend depth. That’s the feature that brings monetization for the most hardcore users. In Marvel Snap, you cannot do that. There’s little value to spending a lot, which is the key question about that game.

How they monetize is that they’re selling the currency you need to upgrade because you’re going to run out of it at some point. You can buy more of that currency, so you’re indirectly speeding up your progression in the collection level, even though you still need to play to get those boosters. You’re indirectly helping you to acquire cards more quickly, but it’s different. It’s not the same as buying randomized rewards, for example. Then we have yet to discuss the variants, basically the skins for the cards.

The interesting thing about how they work in Marvel Snap is that they are individual cards. You’re not putting variant skin on top of the basic version, but it’s its own card, and it has its own progression and level-up system, so you are also leveling that up, and it also helps you acquire those variant skins. At some point, especially during the higher levels, you need to obtain them because you need to get more of a progression in the collection level; more than just acquiring the basic cards is required. It’s another way to help you go more linearly through the linear collection level.

They just recently added limited-time bundles. They didn’t have much of that yet, but now they have started making bundles like “Buy this variant, this skin of this card, and then the currency, and you can upgrade them.” Then the key thing where I assume 80% of the revenue or something like that comes from the Battle Pass. It’s Battle Pass-heavy. It’s a basic type of battle pass each season, I think about one-month-long seasons; each Battle Pass brings one new card, so there’s an incentive to get a new card that you’re not able to get without the purchase, and you progress through there. That’s easily the key monetization mechanic in the game at the moment. Then if you look at the game’s performance, of course, there was the mega-mega splash in the launch with the mega-mega amount of downloads, which also increased the revenues. The monetization model shows there’s less spending depth than the other CCGs.

When we looked at the revenue per download, it was lower. It’s been a couple of months, a couple of seasons in, and we have seen the spikes of new Battle Pass releases. They always bring a new spike. The downloads are still high, but they have gone down quite a lot. The actual amount of revenue, and the baseline of the revenue, at least yet, haven’t declined that much. If we look at the graph for revenue per download, it’s not as high, at least yet, so the individual spend or the LTV paid user has yet to be high, but it’s steadily still growing. That indicates that even though the downloads are slowing down, the game has retained shares quite well, and the existing users have bought the new seasons. So far, it looks pretty healthy.

So far, it’s been growing all the time. The players have been staying in the game, but then that’s the question, how long will that last? This game can convert more users more widely compared to some of the other more hardcore whale-driven monetization models, and the revenue per download is growing. That remains to be seen. Will it plateau at some point, and when will it?

[00:28:36] Joel: Good points, Erno. Looking at the game and how much they’ve been active in bringing new content, Battle Pass seasons regularly get introduced along with new exciting cards, avatars, and profile pictures. Also, they have brought a token shop, a new way of purchasing specific cards, not just variants, in the shop, which is one way to monetize. Then they had this collaboration event in December. They are bringing content to the game because they know that now they have hit core gameplay, and the players love it, and they’re bringing in new cards to retain these players and trying to increase their LTVs.

Now, the next three to six months are crucial. I look forward to new play modes, not just new cards but new playing modes more on the competitive and social side, some tournaments, some challenging aspects, and playing against your friends. Erno, you know something about this, there’s been rumors on what’s coming. Like so many other games, they need to keep the product new and refreshing and keep innovating; otherwise, they will lose momentum. It can drift down to being considered a mediocre success after two or three years.

Friendly matches in a tournament format

[00:30:23] Erno: Yes, Joel mentioned the new content. That’s the way. As I said, its core gameplay is so great at the moment. It’s so fun to play. It still retains as well. At some point, of course, to some players, it starts to get stale even though new cards, meta changes, etc. What are they bringing to bring a fresh twist to the game? Just two days ago, they released the latest Battle Pass season. They also announced their first new gameplay mode, a friendly match mode. It still needs to be made live, but it should be coming this month.

You can now play with your friends, connect with them, and play matches against them. What’s quite interesting in that one is that it’s not just an individual game, but they created that friendly match in this tournament format. You play three matches against your friends. You start with ten health each. You’re not playing for the rank points but for the health for that individual set of three matches. Let’s say you win the first match, snapped, and your opponent accepts, then let’s say five health points go away from that player who lost.

Then you go to the second game. Then another player starts again with ten health, but another already has five health. It brings this tournament game mode, which is then now, of course, for the community. They can start to build this type of our own tournaments and this type of a thing. Interesting to see how is it received, and then are they going to scale it like a proper mode? Because now, you need to have a code to connect to one player, and it is like a friendly mode. This attractive new way of playing and this new mode is already coming this month, which is great to hear.

[00:32:39] Joel: Yes, it’s fascinating for a game like Snap, that quick tournament mode, at least in my opinion, hits the nail on the head. It would be perfect because I’ve been playing Hearthstone for years, and it still misses that quick tournament mode and more competitive aspects. Yes, you have different modes like battlegrounds, mercenaries mode, ranked and casual and whatever, but there is nothing more significant like weekend tournaments. Yes, you have the Fireside live tournament stuff; at least you used to have that.

If Marvel Snap can pull this off well and then, as Erno said, expand this beyond just friends, using some brackets, some tournaments, some co-op matching of eight players versus eight players, and you have some admission fee. There, you would also have this additional monetization option. Put some gold or hard currency admission fee to one of these tournaments. Then you have great prizes combined with Snap‘s thrill-infused gameplay mechanic. At least I would play this.

[00:33:57] Erno: Yes. That’s interesting because like some other very widely appealing even more casual games like Stumble Guys. It was a hit Fall Guys type of battle royale platformer; feature-wise, it’s straightforward: you play, always go to the match, progress in the Battle Pass, and so on. They have this type of tournament system. Like Joel mentioned, you have to pay a little bit of premium currency to get into a tournament, and then it’s this thrill of multiple games. Even in battle royale, the basic idea is to be the last man to survive. Then combined with the multiple phases, it gives even more of this thrill in the tournament format. I also see this more casual tournament type of feature as something fitting for Snap.

[00:34:50] Jon: Good. They’re still in the early stages of focusing on all that retention bits or getting people in and then retaining them. I think regarding monetization, there are always things you can do. Still, your biggest audience makes it much easier to tweak monetization than if you have a tiny audience. You have to go in this whale-type monetization, which they don’t have at the moment. It’s positive that it’s still focusing on retention. As you’ve pointed out, there are some self-evident things they can do that will grow the retention of other players. Then monetization can change over the months and years. There’s a focus on engaging players and retaining them in the short and long term.

Cool. We’ll see how it goes. Lovely. Thank you very much for your expertise there—lots of enthusiasm about trading card games and CCGs. Thanks to Erno and thanks to Joel.

[00:35:46] Erno: Thank you. Thank you.

[00:35:47] Joel: Thank you. Thank you.

[00:35:47] Jon: Thanks for watching or listening to the podcast, however you consumed it. Every episode, we talk about the mobile games industry and these great new products coming out even a decade into the sector, now by far the largest single part of the games industry and still come up with very innovative ways of engaging audiences and monetizing them and retaining them. I hope you subscribe to the channel. Come back next time. See you. Bye.

[00:36:10] Erno: Bye.

[00:36:11] Joel: Bye-bye.

Introduction

[00:00:00] Jon Jordan: Hello and welcome to the Mobile GameDev Playbook. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. This is a podcast all about what makes a great mobile game, what is and isn’t working for mobile game designers and all of the latest trends. I’m your host Jon Jordan and joining me today; we have two experts, of course. The first expert up is Sergey Neskin. How’s it going, Sergey?

[00:00:23] Sergey Neskin: Good. Glad to be here today.

[00:00:25] Jon: You are the CEO and co-founder of Neskin Games. Also, another guest, no introduction required, is Kalle Heikkinen, senior market analyst at GameRefinery by Liftoff. How’s it going, Kalle?

[00:00:41] Kalle Heikkinen: Very good. Very good. We had the first snow here in Helsinki yesterday, so it’s wintery and setting up the scene for Christmas.

[00:00:50] Jon: I was going to say I was in Helsinki last week, and it was just getting a bit of snow, but not quite settling. I’m glad winter has finally come. In this episode, we will be talking about Sergey’s game EverMerge. It’s interesting because we’ve spoken with Kalle and other experts over the last few months about the merge mechanic and its importance in the casual mobile game market.

This is an opportunity to look at some of those trends again, but Sergey will also give us in-depth information about how he’s designed his game, so we go into more detail. That’s the plan today. Before we start, Sergey, do you want to introduce yourself and the company and fill out some background for us?

[00:01:39] Sergey: Yes, sure. I started my career as a software developer, creating websites, web services, and business applications. I worked for an outsourcing company during the last few years of my development career. There is nothing wrong with being just a developer in an outsourcing company, but I’ve been dreaming about making my own products and doing something for self-realization. The game dev industry was desirable in terms of creativity and self-realization.
I decided to attend the first Game Dev Conference in my life in Minsk and felt all the swipes, that was amazing to see people like me, people who wanted to entertain other people, and that’s where I met my partners, Val and Alexei. In 2011, we founded a company called Neskinsoft, and later we reincorporated this company as Neskin Games. I’ve worked in the merge genre for over a decade, and EverMerge is the latest game we released.

EverMerge

[00:02:49] Jon: Let’s talk a bit about EverMerge. The official title is EverMerge: Merge-3 Puzzle. You made a whole bunch of games. What was the idea to do a merge game? Did you have an idea you wanted to do merge games, or did you have a specific vision for what you wanted to do in a merge game?
[00:03:09] Sergey: We’ve been in merge games since 2011. We’ve got lots of insights. We did many experiments and learned what works, what doesn’t, and what the audience wants to see in the game. We released about 14 products, almost half of which were merge games. The idea is that game design is the set of solutions you want to try. We didn’t have a particular idea like “we want to create a merge game with fairytale creatures”. It was different. As a game designer, you feel like there is potential, the scope of thoughts and things you want to implement. That’s how we created EverMerge.

Three things to know about Merge genre

[00:03:59] Jon: Cool. Good. We’re going to get into more detail. Before we do, Kalle, can you give us a high-level view of what’s been going on in the decade in which merge as a subgenre has been emerging, to not overuse the term?

[00:04:14] Kalle: Yes, for sure. There are three things that I’d like to highlight here. First is the trend for, let’s say, more than narrative-focused merge games. Two good examples are Gossip Harbor and Love & Pies, which have especially recently risen in the ranks. We’ve seen some merge games experiment with narrative in the past, but not like these games have been doing. I’m not only talking about their quality but also the amount of quality. In these games, the narrative beats are a novice retention mechanic as well, as players want to know how the story and the characters develop in these games.

Then the second one is that compared to many other genres in the market currently, the merge genre is a relatively active space. There are lots of new games coming in, and overall, it has been difficult to scale new games in the market. Merge is an exception to this. For example, if we look at the top 10 merge games, all the top 10, except Merge Dragons and EverMerge, have been released in the last two years. 6 out of the top 10 merge games have been released in the last 18 months. There are quite a lot of new entrants to the scene.

Third, we see merge as a mechanic used more and more outside merge games. It’s used on the product side and in user acquisition activities. Some examples include a very successful slots game, Cash Tornado Slots, that has some merge elements in one of its recurring events, obviously Top War for a strategy game that utilizes merge. Gardenscapes just recently had a merge event. We see merge in Tower Defense, in idlers; Golden Goblins, for example, is a successful idle merger game. That’s been interesting to follow as well. It’s not just in merge games; other games also utilize this mechanic in events and other features.

[00:06:40] Jon: It followed the trajectory of match as a gameplay or a mechanic that people easily understand and seem to like doing repetitively.

[00:06:54] Kalle: It’s very accessible. You pick up a merge game or play the merge feature in a game. It takes you five seconds to figure out how this mechanic works. Yes, for sure.

[00:07:11] Jon: Universal thing. Okay, cool. It’s a good overview there. Sergey, you have this company where you’re experts in merge by now. You made some mistakes and saw successes, but with EverMerge, how did you filter those previous experiences to develop your best idea of what would work? Please tell us about that process and how you have all these possibilities. How do you end up with the first stab at the product with which you go into soft launch?

Filtering previous experiences to create the best new idea

[00:07:48] Sergey: Yes, for us, it was the next step in our long journey in the merge genre, and we moved forward to EverMerge. We wanted to reinforce the exploration aspect of the game from the beginning. We experimented with it in our previous games called Robin Hood Legends. We split the gameplay into levels and tried to monetize this game with auto moves like in classic match three games. This didn’t work well, but players love opening, moving forward, and opening new levels. Then we thought, what if you’ll provide the player with the ability to unlock fog, and there is some mystery going on under this fog?

It was the concept of a single game board where a player has some freedom to move forward. Of course, the game is linear, but we wanted to experiment in this direction and know if it would work. We saw Merge Dragons on the market, and it was a good example that it works, but we had to convince our partners as well, like do we want to put time into this or not. I’m glad that we did this.

Narrative in mobile games

[00:09:13] Jon: You’re saying you decided to focus on exploration as one of the main themes there. Kalle was talking about narrative being a theme. Did you have a lot of narrative in there? Or should we think of exploration as something different to narrative? Because they could be the same thing, or they may not be.

[00:09:33] Sergey: Well, it was not our primary focus, so we tried to keep the narrative as simple as possible, but I saw many examples. Some other games do this well, which is why they resonate with the audience.

[00:09:47] Jon: I guess the problem with narrative is it’s pretty expensive on the content creation side because you have to create a lot of specific content, whereas exploration, depending on how you structure it, can be a bit more open in that you don’t end up having to have a lot of artists just churning out this long narrative.

[00:10:08] Sergey: Yes. It adds additional complexity to the game that you must never forget. It includes the cost of content production and so on. In our game, it’s simplified, but you can find well-known fairytale characters. This works exactly as a good IP, but we use folklore. We use things that everybody knows well from childhood. This was a good thing as well. We combined this with exploration with non-characters and only needed to put a little work into the narrative aspect.

[00:10:52] Jon: The nice thing about that using fairytales is it is established IP, but you don’t have to pay a license because you say it’s almost like open-source IP that just historically has been there.

[00:11:08] Sergey: You need to be very careful, though, because some Disney movies have their own interpretation of IP. If you want to draw Sleeping Beauty or other characters, be cautious with this because, yes, it’s IP that we know that comes from fairytales, but be careful. We did special legal checks with our partners. I appreciate they helped to manage this.

[00:11:35] Kalle: To add to the narrative stuff. Having a heavy narrative focus might work better in these Merge-2 games. Merge Mansion specifically doesn’t have a heavy emphasis on the narrative.
Gossip Harbor, for example, a Merge-2 game, does it, and it is natural that after you complete a specific task, you have that narrative bit. Whereas in Merge-3 games like EverMerge, as they are slightly more open-ended and more about the exploration, the narrative isn’t the thing that you can fit into the pacing and the core loop, as well as in Merge-2 games. I might be wrong in this, but it’s something that comes to mind.

How to ensure player progression?

[00:12:35] Jon: Yes, that’s a good point. We’ve gone through a bit of the genesis of the project and you guys as a company, and how you chose your thematic fairytale exploration, that’s a good overview. But then, when you start to drill in a bit more, the gameplay is about merging, but then when you’re thinking about progression and those more mechanical gameplay elements. Then obviously, that feeds into the more meta structure. How did you come up with the product from that point of view? Because obviously, you have gameplay where people are merging stuff, and they’re getting new elements, and that’s cool, but then how are you keeping people in there for a week or a month?

[00:13:25] Sergey: First part here is that the merge gameplay is good at entertaining players and retaining them. The gameplay itself is addictive. It provides you with enough goals. You don’t need, if you know how to make your first merge game, you know what’s next. First are games we released in 2011 and 2012; they were really simple, just game board, merge gameplay, and all you have to do is to merge, and it worked. Just pure concept of merge game works well. On top of this, you add exploration, daily objectives, quests, and additional goals. Then you get the game where you have a variety of things to do and a variety of things to play.

Then on top of this, you add events and all those activities that you can find in EverMerge. In this case, you get EverMerge. This game gives you lots of goals and directions to progress in. You have enough freedom, but it’s linear enough not to get lost in this. If we look at the first experiments with EverMerge, no one will enjoy playing with our early prototypes. It was a game board separated into two areas. The left area was supposed to provide the player with farm merge gameplay where you merge carrots, crops and so on. The second part was about the building aspect.

Players were so addicted to the merge gameplay they ignored anything else. We had to find ways to force players to leave the merge gameplay and go to the city builder aspect. It was a nightmare because if you, as a game designer, are doing something like this, stop and then maybe you’re doing something wrong. That was when we decided, no, we needed to have everything in one place and provide players with the city-building aspect and merging pieces in one game board.

How Neskin Games worked out who EverMerge’s audience is?

[00:15:46] Jon: Can you talk a bit about your audience? Because for people developing and running games, there are lots of things you can do and do some of those things well in terms of game design, but often once your game launches and you have an audience, it takes time to shift that audience around. Because some people have chosen you and like what you’re doing, you have to give them more of what they want rather than some clever idea that your game designer wants to provide them. Please talk briefly about your audience and how you worked out who they are.

[00:16:17] Sergey: Yes. The appearance of the game is essential. It works as a funnel for the audience, of course. We saw many male players who were playing our game. They complain, “I love it, but I’m not sure I like it because it’s a game designed for little princesses?”. We have some limitations. I refer to them as the DNA of the product. Some game design decisions and visuals restrict what we can do in the future. We have freedom with newer products. We will be able to cover more people, more male players and so on in the future. The focus is clearly on the female audience, and we work with them.

[00:17:15] Jon: Because you’ve made a lot of merge games before, that wasn’t a surprise to you that that casual audience is likely to be predominantly female.

[00:17:26] Sergey: That’s what we saw in our previous game. In Robin Hood Legends, we also came up with Robin Hood as a woman going on adventures against the Sheriff. We noticed that in Robin Hood Legends and the games we released previously. That’s because there is something from Merge-3 games and hidden object games. After all, in merge games, you have to find two similar objects, and then you have to collapse them. It’s part of Merge-3. These games were, again, targeted at a female audience.

Are Merge games mainly targeted at female players?

[00:18:14] Jon: Kalle, have we got any examples of merge being used in a more predominantly male audience? Does anything come to mind?

[00:18:23] Kalle: Yes. The first thing that comes to mind is the example I already mentioned, the Top War example. Top War is a 4X strategy game for those who don’t know, but it also has incorporated some merge elements where you merge, for example, certain troops. Then you create something new. Top War also uses that as a mechanic in their user acquisition activities. If you’ve seen some Top War ads, you have also seen some merge elements.

Post-IDFA, all the titles, especially in 4X strategy base, consider how to enlarge their audiences. Using various kinds of UA assets to introduce new types of players to the gamer base is something that these games do. At least we’ve seen Top War doing that, so that’s been interesting.

[00:19:27] Jon: That would be an outlier because we do not see widespread adoption of merge at the moment.

[00:19:35] Kalle: That’s true. Another genre that isn’t quite dominant, but we’re seeing a sort of sub-genre in Tower Defense, where games like Rush Royale are using it. The entire gameplay is based around merging things and then using that in the PVP core gameplay. That’s another example.

[00:20:03] Jon: This all makes sense because in Tower Defense, generally, you’re levelling up as you go along. You can imagine instead of levelling up; you merge up. It fits into the flow that’s already existing there, but yes.

[00:20:18] Kalle: That’s true.

“Successful mobile games now are as much about liveops as the foundation they launch with”

[00:20:19] Jon: Perhaps we’ll see an opportunity in a future episode where we’ll talk about the explosion of merge in hardcore or mid-core. Sergey, let’s focus a bit now. We’ve gone through the process, and you’ve taken us through some design considerations. Something like soft launch is something that’s key to mobile games. One of the reasons mobile games are so big is they now have this period where they can put out a product in certain territories and gain this audience feedback, then use that to iterate and hone the product or come up with something different. Was soft launch a big thing for you guys? Or because you’re experienced, you knew what to expect? Or did it throw up any surprises?

[00:21:03] Sergey: When we released the game in soft launch, we saw great metrics, and it proved that our hypothesis worked, but along with this success came responsibility because we knew that players, especially those who are paying aggressively in the game, will be progressing through the content rapidly. We had limited time to develop suitable event types for the game. Then we had limited time to test different AB tests, a sample game economy, and some features because we came up with numbers, but we needed to figure out if these numbers were correct.

Some tests took about two or three months to see results and then be able to fix this. We worked in a constant rush to release the game in November. This didn’t happen. I appreciate Chris Mahnken; he was a producer of this game and helped me navigate several challenges. His advice was to wait to release the game in May because we’ll have more events, features, and content. We experimented, developed new features, and experimented with existing tests like any other company. But we felt like there was something big, and we didn’t want to fail.

[00:22:30] Jon: The extra six months of development was a fairly significant extension of budget and everything. It’s one of those clichés that a bad game’s always a bad game, but a late game’s only late for a short period. That’s the freedom: if you think you’ve got something that’s doing well, then you need to spend the time to invest in the processes that you need to fulfil that potential.

[00:22:57] Sergey: Yes. You have no right to fail. You need to support the game and get out as much content as possible. The biggest nightmare was after release because we were naive and thought it would be easier because we had so many events and things planned. It wasn’t. Later, we had to come up with short-term, midterm, and long-term events and other types of events. Now, we created an R&D department in our company, and we’ll be working on new kinds of features and events where we connect different genres. We should have thought about this more. Small studios need to scale up and manage their success.

[00:23:44] Jon: Kalle, we’ve mentioned many times that successful mobile games now are as much about live ops as the foundation they launch with. Unless you have an extensive department doing live ops, live ops is a real challenge for people who make games because it’s the beating heart of a successful game now.

[00:24:09] Kalle: Exactly. They’re just getting increasingly essential tools to create excitement, engagement, and, thus, monetization. That applies to merge games as well. For example, I recently looked at merge’s performance at the Halloween event. They just had helped the game reach record-high revenues and end up in the top-grossing position. That’s interesting.

Monetization in Merge games

[00:24:33] Jon: Actually, you raise a good point. We’ve yet to go into monetization. We skated around it a little bit, but sometimes in the casual space, that’s the challenge. Because billions of people play casual games, you can always get games downloaded and played. The monetization bit is tricky because these people like to play. There are many of them, and you need monetization because of your business, but how you balance that is tricky. How has that changed over time? Has it not changed over time? Were you always sure how you wanted to monetize?

[00:25:12] Sergey: Yes, our approach for monetization in merge games is slightly different from other genres. We can be softer than other games because gameplay in merge gives you better retention, and we rely on this audience who is in love with the game and who plays with us for a longer time. That’s why we focus on this type of player. We don’t force you for short-term monetization, and then later, if you feel like it’s the right thing to do if you want to boost your progress or if you want to get more items, you are free to do this.

Of course, events work well in terms of monetization, which makes a big difference in any game. The longer the player stays in your game, the better service you have to provide. You need to come up with a variety of events, and you need to entertain this audience to monetize. This is how it works. You put in events and long-term monetization features; that’s it.

[00:26:29] Jon: Am I correct in that you also have a battle pass system?

[00:26:32] Sergey: Yes, like in any other games, you can find a battle pass in our game. We have two options. This is one of the biggest differences between us and Merge Dragons because we have timers; you have to skip timers if you want to get gems. That boosts gem sales as well.

[00:26:56] Jon: Interestingly, you’re saying “of course, we have battle passes”. Is that something that every game should be having now? We have had many games use it, but some games still don’t. Are battle passes now understood by the audience as something that should be in there? Because that’s an obvious way of monetizing in a big way.

[00:27:16] Sergey: Yes, but it’s not a problem for players to understand how battle passes work. It was a prerogative for mid-core games, but now you can see more and more of this stuff in casual games, and that’s fine. Other trends as well are coming to casual games. That’s interesting to see.

How to keep the right content balance for players just joining the game and elder players

[00:27:39] Jon: EverMerge has been around for a while now, over two years. You’re not a new game anymore. You’re getting to that middle level. You think it’s going to go for many more years. What do you think about that product now? It probably needs improvement; you don’t think of it as mature, but you still hope it will grow more in terms of users. How do you match that?

Because sometimes, you get to this stage with over two years in, and some people have played you since day one. They know how to do it. They want more complicated things, but many new people are still coming in. Some games get very complex for new players because they come in, and there’s a whole bunch of stuff going on there. They’re like, “Whoa, this is really complicated. I thought it was a simple merge game.” How do you work at that balance between existing players who love it and have been playing it every day for two years and new players who are like, “Let’s try this out”?

[00:28:25] Sergey: As I mentioned, keeping the right balance for players joining the game is crucial because we have plenty of them. We also must remember that elder players have their own needs and need to be entertained. Our company has a game design department, and they work hard on any additional feature that will appear in the game to ensure that it will maintain the two-year and first-timers’ experience. It will not negatively affect any part of our audience, but we need to feed the elder players as well.

[00:29:09] Jon: The good thing about free-to-play mobile games is you have all the data about, you can look at all the cohorts and see very clearly how the changes you make impact differently.

[00:29:21] Sergey: Yes. Even some features that we release work for some players and don’t for others. We have to decide, do we leave this in the game as it is, or we go to another iteration of AB tests and rebalance this feature. This is a part of our job as well. With every year, it’s more and more complicated because, as you mentioned, the product matures, and then you have to double-check every aspect of every feature and so on.

The market is full of new games and new titles. It’s a pleasure to be in this market. Of course, we saw many unsuccessful clones because they just tried to rip off the game without thinking, but some games look promising. I’m playing some clones of EverMerge and enjoy doing this because games like Merge County iterate fast on events. They were braver and more creative in this aspect of the game, which worked well. That’s one of the right approaches. So now we have to be fast, hence why we have this R&D department.

There is constant competition in other genres, but it’s a pleasure to see because when we entered this genre, there was no genre. There were just one or two games, a few hour games and nothing else, just silence, but now we see lots of games, and there is a promising future not only for EverMerge but for new products on the market as well.

The future looks bright for Merge genre

[00:31:08] Jon: Kalle, do you want to take that one on with your looking into your crystal ball? How do we see merge? Is merge already a very large subsection of casual? Is that going to grow linearly, or is that going to jump over and become a key gameplay option for almost every mobile game?

[00:31:31] Kalle: I agree with Sergey that the future looks bright for merge. As we already discussed, new entrants are constantly coming to the scene, some finding their way to the top charts and sustaining them there. There’s also a fair amount of innovation. For example, it was in Playtika’s build and battle merge game. That was quite interesting. There are some makeover merge games that I’ve seen in the scene that could be something that we will see more of in the future. As I said, we see merge also in non-merge games. That trend is going to continue. One thing that needs to be added to the market is an IP-based merge game. At least I haven’t seen any. It would be fascinating to see the merge gameplay combined with some exciting IP.

[00:32:30] Jon: There we go. Your prediction, will Kalle be right over the next six months? I’m sure somewhere someone is working frantically on some IP-based because, boy, wouldn’t they be. Good. Something to look out for. Lovely. Thank you very much to Kalle and Sergey as well for their expertise. Thanks, guys.

[00:32:49] Kalle: Thank you.

[00:32:49] Sergey: Thank you.

[00:32:51] Jon: Obviously, your homework is to immediately download EverMerge, check it out, and see how Sergey and his team have been getting on. If you still need to do your other homework, I’m sure you have already subscribed to the podcast. We’re available as an audio podcast and as a video podcast as well.

Every episode, we talk to people building out this mobile game sector, the largest single sector of the games industry, and still very vibrant and still new. We talk about the hybridization of what’s going on and these matters, gameplay elements being put together like little Lego blocks and these fantastic products being created. We hope you are enjoying the podcast. Come back next time, and thanks for watching. Goodbye.