As the mobile game market enters the boutique stage, in many game fields, the most affected by the stock stage may be ultra-casual games.
Soaring costs, user privacy protection measures, and increased user requirements for game content have all made ultra-casual games known for their short and fast appearances a great challenge.
However, among the many hyper-casual game publishers, Voodoo is one of the most successful head companies, with its games having been downloaded more than 6 billion times. In the previous industry sharing, Alexander Shea, Voodoo's head of distribution, talked about the secret of the repeated blockbusters of the cooperative developers, and shared the way Voodoo helps developers find explosive ideas.
Here's the full content of GameLook transcription:
Alexander Shea：
I'm Alexander Shea, Voodoo's head of distribution, and today I'm mostly sharing some of the "secrets" of our success. To add, I'm not going to reveal very big "secrets" because you'll need to work with us to get this information, but I'll share some aspects that are very important in our success process and our thoughts on the future of hyper-casual games.
Behind 6 billion downloads, Voodoo has grown to 600 people
Simply sharing some data doesn't take too long, I try to talk less about CPI, retention, and more about the studio and the game, and I try to keep the content short so that I have time to answer questions that you care about more.
On the digital side, Voodoo's performance in terms of downloads is very successful, which is not what we focus on, I think we are more successful than other peers in the industry, and the biggest reason is that we can help the team add value in terms of products, and of course in the distribution area. These successful products have paid off handsomely, and one might think that the most important thing in the gaming industry is not capital, but if we don't have enough budget, how can we continue to run the company?
So, the 6 billion downloads that you see on the screen are like a sign of our success, and I can't say what the net profit associated with these downloads is, but I can say that the revenue is high enough to allow us to give developers a very high share over the years.
Our company is getting bigger and bigger, and I'll mention later what the 600-person team is doing.
This is a picture of the name of our subsidiary, and in fact we've been working with a lot of game developers four or five years ago, and these are some samples that we started working with very early on. One thing these studios have in common is that they've released more than one blockbuster, which is important for us to drive the studio community forward, and we want to make sure that these collaborative teams keep coming up with bigasma.
In the gaming industry, teams that succeed consecutively are very rare, and once you do, it means that you have a business that can be sustained for a long time, whether it's selling the company, raising capital, or continuing to grow, you need to be able to repeat the success, otherwise it is difficult to arouse the interest of investors. Many of the studios we work with have multiple blockbuster products, especially considering that when these companies first worked with us, there were not many of them.
How do we do it? We want to be the head company in terms of distribution experience, especially in the aspects of creativity, iteration and release, which means that we want to expand the coverage of our products.
For example, in the screen, some categories may become the source of ultra-casual game blockbuster products in the next few years, and some do not appear in the picture, such as real multiplayer games instead of io, we are also working hard. Other categories also exist and will continue to exist because they are very attractive categories, and we have accumulated experience in different categories because they are very different and you can't confuse them.
There are three ways to succeed in your creative: themes, mechanics, and player feel
But more importantly, they all have one thing in common, and one of the recipes for success that I want to share today, is that the way these studios think of game ideas consistently. Before CPI, retention, etc. became a problem, we believed that the most important thing for ultra-casual games was their core gameplay, not necessarily meta gameplay, progression and other systems. Whether you're doing ultra-casual, hybrid casual, or casual games, at Voodoo, we believe that the core gameplay is the most important part of your game.
So, the creative process of getting this core gameplay is critical. Whether you're doing a familiar game from experience, merging different genres, or iterating on an existing theme, the most important thing is that the core gameplay of the game is repeatable, and we think it's important that three creative approaches coexist, so you can start in many places.
You can start with a lot of themes, such as popular trends, and a lot of place arcade games start by catching the trend, and then use placement gameplay, resource collection, and progression systems that also belong to the mechanic category.
Every product has a different story, but it's often within that framework, at least for successful studios within our ecosystem.
The successful teams we work with have a large number of blockbusters and cover different categories, but what they all have in common is that they all have their own methods when it comes to finding ideas. Many studios may be more creative, but unless you can form a process of ideas that can be repeated, it's hard to succeed.
I want to talk today about something beyond hyper-casual games and set aside time to answer some questions from other areas. Because we think hyper-casual games will always exist and continue to grow, we're also excited to explore this space with more and more studios, and we're still doing a lot of things to grow the number of in-house studios and help studios grow through minority investments and differentiated contracts.
But we also want to move beyond the hyper-casual gaming space, and we're already starting to explore, like mixed casual that a lot of people have heard about, multiplayer games that I just said, casual games, and we've even invested a lot in the Play & Earn space.
But at the end of the day, what matters is how do you find the core gameplay, how do you find the creative for success? We want to bring our experience in the ultra-leisure field to other different areas.
In fact, we recently released a hybrid game that performs really well, in the same way we make hyper-casual games creatively and creatively prototyped.
You can work with us regardless of which area you're interested in, such as hybrid casual, multiplayer, and casual games, and we're also interested in Play & Earn, but it's more about gameplay than business models. We want them to target a large user base because that's what we're good at, we don't want technical barriers to people from experiencing the game, and any team that wants to work with us can go to Voodoo.
We're actually very flexible about anything we do, we don't have a fixed standard for game release data, we have an analysis and systematic process to make the best decisions in the process of studio collaboration, but we don't specify numerical criteria for releases and iterations.
We are also very flexible in terms of business collaborations, so we can work with a large number of studios around the world. No matter what category you do, what project you do, whether you hand it over to us, seek funding for the project, or distribute it yourself, every studio has a different contract.
We're proud of that, and it means we have the ability to work differently with studios of all sizes.
Q&A Session:
How does Voodoo get involved in the creative process when working with third parties? Do you brainstorm with these studios, or do they bring you early creative prototypes to discuss?
Shea: That's a good question, usually when working with Voodoo, you start by contacting the release manager, and occasionally the team learns about the collaboration process from our website, but then you also connect with the release manager.
No matter how many frameworks we have, it's hard to execute properly, so our collaboration is more like guidance than simple distribution, we often provide inspiration and guidance to the team, not as good as categories, gameplay types, we help them in terms of mindset, strategy, etc., and then there is the communication between ideas.
Six of the seven of our creative prototypes that enter the release phase are because the studio chooses to release, which is the result of discussions with the release manager, such as whether the idea makes sense and have we tested similar ideas before? These are all important for studios because you can save weeks or even months, you can avoid investing too much in ideas that don't have potential, and you can adjust and refine your ideas through the guidelines we've set.
If the studios you work with find very successful mechanics, if they want to make games for different users, can they explore the idea on their own, can they publish independently, or are they tied to Voodoo after signing a contract?
Shea: Simply put, we don't limit the studio (we have to work with us) because it doesn't work, and if a game doesn't work for us, we still want the studio to succeed with it. Unfortunately, however, the games we choose not to release tend to perform poorly, and we don't want the team to waste their time and money, you can find another way to work with Voodoo and move on.
Quick ideas are one of the hardest things to do, especially when CPI costs are rising. But as long as one product is successful, it can keep the team going for years. The different user groups you mentioned are actually very likely to be the ones we already cover, because we've released games with a wide range of games, and in addition to hyper-casual games, we've also released casual games, and soon there will be multi-player games as well as hybrid casual game products, and even Play-to-earn games. For different areas, we have different growth teams.
How do you work with digital platforms like Facebook, etc., and which frameworks are useful to you? What do you like and dislike about the media platforms today?
Shea: What I didn't mention is that we're also doing new areas in the mobile game industry, like HTML5 games, Facebook games, Snapchat games, and we're working with a lot of platforms to make sure that once a game finds us, we can find the maximum distribution channel, such as we did HTML versions for some games, and we also released games on Snapchat and quickly got into the head.
That's the advantage that Voodoo and our studio bring, because the more coverage your game is, the higher the revenue.
····· End ·····
GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
Global vision / depth is material