Not long ago, GameLook reported on "Solitaire Home Design" developed by Beijing Beta Games. This casual mobile game that combines card decryption and home decoration has set an eye-catching result of nearly 35 million monthly flows overseas. In fact, at a time when the match-3 track is becoming more and more crowded, more and more manufacturers are beginning to try to challenge the European and American leisure markets with mixed card play.
This is not difficult to understand, although from the perspective of user scale, solitaire is indeed not as high as the global recognition of the elimination of decryption categories. However, thanks to the early Promotion of Minesweeper, Solitaire and other gameplay in the Early Windows system, even Windows 10 has retained card games, and users who have been exposed to computers are almost all involved in solitaire play. Coupled with the offline types of card games, the popularity of this category is also not low.
Because of this, on the basis of traditional solitaire, the integration of casual play, it is easy to harvest a certain scale of overseas users, but also become the direction of innovation of many manufacturers. However, compared to the outstanding latecomers, the first place on the track is still Playtika's "Solitaire Grand Harvest".
According to GameLook, the game's turnover in February this year is expected to reach about 120 million yuan, and it is still the world's highest-revenue card mashup casual game. But in fact, this blockbuster card game was bought by Playtika from Austrian developer Supertreat in 2019.
Having "vision" and "icing on the cake" is the real publisher
It is not difficult to deduce from the "Solitaire" and "Harvest" in the name, the game contains cards and farm management elements. Among them, the core gameplay essence of Solitaire Grand Harvest is the TriPeaks-like gameplay, which is familiar to players who have experienced WindowXP or Window7.
Intuitively, the key parts of the game are mainly divided into the card stack and the card library, and the player needs to move the upper/lower position of the number in the upper stack of the card stack back to the card library according to the number of cards opened by the lower deck. For example, if the number in the deck is 4, the player needs to move 5 or 3 back to the deck, and so on.
In addition to this, huge levels, as well as light business simulation elements... The game continues to incorporate many elements commonly used in match-3 games. The above designs can be said to cover a larger number of users as much as possible under the premise of retaining the core of the card game, and also bring 120 million monthly revenue to Playtika.
In fact, not only "Solitaire Grand Harvest", in the earlier 2018, Playtika also acquired the detective puzzle game "Junes Journey" developed by the German game company Wooga, the core gameplay of the game includes construction and decryption, and currently achieves a bright performance of more than 100 million monthly flows.
On the surface, Playtika bought the "champions" of the two tracks of casual solitaire and decryption in one go, which really made many peers envious. But this success does not come from the simple word "lucky", but from the true strength of a publisher.
From the data point of view, before being included in Playtika, The monthly income of "Solitaire Grand Harvest" in mid-2019 was only more than 40 million yuan. In contrast, today, the product not only has a monthly turnover of more than 100 million, but also nearly tripled its revenue, and still maintains a strong growth momentum. Playtika's 2021 Q4 financial report shows that its casual games accounted for 51.8% of total revenue, an increase of 44.4% year-on-year. Among them, "Solitaire Grand Harvest" even increased its revenue by more than 60% year-on-year.
Admittedly, "Solitaire Grand Harvest" before being bought was only a mid-rise product, but it quickly became the TOP1 of the subdivision within three years. It intuitively shows the unique vision and ability of the publisher Playtika, that is, it attaches importance to the potential products with a certain user scale and differentiated gameplay, and lays out a new casual game track in this way.
From this point of view, the so-called real publishers do not have the ability to turn decay into magic, but the ability to "see" and "add icing on the cake".
The mobile game market is difficult to obtain, and the "technical house" Playtika has its own magic weapon
So it is curious how Playtika, which has successively bought potential stocks and created explosive models, considers the current mobile game market.
It should be known that with the advent of the stock era and the IDFA policy, it is becoming more and more difficult to obtain new users, and the cost of buying volume has risen sharply. In the past, a single product CPI may have cost as little as 50 cents, but now it takes $20, 25 or even $30 to attract high-quality players. Especially for small and medium-sized teams, if they do not master the relevant technologies of normal operation, they will not even be able to acquire users.
Robert Antokol, CEO of Playtika, once lamented in an interview: "5 years ago, it was very easy to develop a mobile game with any small company, and even within two weeks it could be in the top 50 of the US mobile game revenue list, but today it is not possible." The current mobile market, like the PC and console game markets, is too expensive to buy. ”
However, this actually provides a greater opportunity for Playtika, after all, the company has invested heavily in AI technology and built the Playtika Boost platform, providing game operation tools including marketing, player communication, customer service, data modeling, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
In other words, the platform uses AI technology to help manufacturers accurately understand user behavior such as when players stop playing, when to pay, how many times to open games per day, and quickly find details that can improve user retention, which is also the biggest technical magic weapon in Playtika's hands. Even when acquiring other game makers, Playtika will use the platform as a big chip to attract each other.
Indeed, looking back at Playtika's acquisitions over the past few years, it can be seen that the company prefers products with good communities and high quality of its own. At the same time, it will introduce its own unique Playtika Boost platform to help the product more effectively drain and pull new at the moment when the traffic dividend is exhausted, which even makes many onlookers look red.
Similarly, Playtika also mentioned in the Q4 2021 earnings call that daily paid subscribers continued to increase to 330,000 in January this year. Given the stability of the DAU and the continuous increase in conversion rates, this is indeed a testament to the technology of the Boost platform and how teams across the company's studios are using Boost to drive monetization, convert features, and deeply engage players on a personalized basis.
The left hand builds a player community, and the right hand holds high cross promotion
Interestingly, since Playtika always grows its business by acquiring new companies and its quality products, it is not like most game manufacturers need to relocate people to new projects. In their own words, "Focusing on the current game is playtika's DNA, and we're proud to work in our current game." ”
Therefore, in the long-term operation, Playtika's way of expanding the game user base and revenue scale is not the traditional blind huge amount of money, but the real focus of the business core on how to retain users for a long time, that is, to create a player community and cross-promotion links.
Unlike most game companies, if you don't make a profit through players after a day, week, or two, you'll quickly move on to the next goal. Playtika does not prioritize monetization when launching new products, in its view, profitability is not the first condition, the player itself is the greatest value, and building a community around the game to make players comfortable is the real asset.
In the same vein, Playtika even sees players as a community that can move from one platform to another, and uses its games as a platform that can work with any other platform. Since the community can move to any platform, it doesn't matter which platform the player is playing on at the moment, and they can better invest in the current project. "That's why our game has been so great in long-term operations over the last 10 years, and we've done a lot of innovation and developed a lot of technology around that capability."
But if you want to move to a new platform, it is especially critical to establish and operate effective cross-promotion. Yuval Yosefi, head of media at Playtika, believes that cross-promotion is important because it can drive the growth of new games while keeping users within their own product lines and maximizing user value.
However, no matter which form of advertising, it will face the risk of user churn. That said, not all users are eligible for a cross-promotion strategy. Publishers need to first find out who the users who are at greater risk of cross-promotion and which users are more open to cross-promotion.
Yuval Yosefi further explained that it is inappropriate for paid users with high LTV value, as well as new user displays, the former has a large loss caused by the loss, while the latter has not been deeply involved in the game and is very easy to leave. In contrast, the main target user groups of cross-promotion are actually non-paying users and dormant paying users.
On the one hand, the loss of non-paying users does not have much impact on the overall DAU. The latter, on the other hand, requires publishers to analyze carefully and push new products to them at the optimal time point, i.e. "when they are unlikely to continue to pay for the game they continue to play, at which point cross-promotion may make them pay again." ”
Specifically, in addition to the choice of native advertising slots, Playtika is also accustomed to combining two products that are cross-promoted to do advertising creative.
For example, the company cross-promoted Solitaire Grand Harvest in Best Fiends. The gameplay of Solitaire Grand Harvest was used, along with the gameplay of Best Fiends. According to Yoseffi, this hybrid approach to creativity is effective, and IPM has doubled.
epilogue
For a long time, the continuous "match-3 + X" of explosive models has made peers too focused on eliminating the track. But in fact, the European and American leisure market is not only hot for match-three products. In this case, the unique playtika has taken a different path, tapping the blue ocean market by exploring and optimizing the potential products of other categories, and also allowing peers to see more new possibilities.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
Global vision / depth is material
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