Why you should 'create the same game, over and over'?

Celý článek

[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]

Greetings, sweet Spring children - welcome to the sole GameDiscoverCo free newsletter for this week. (How will you ever manage your time, with 50% of our normal prescribed reading? You’ll struggle on regardless, we’re sure…)

Anyhow, we’re kicking off this bumper newsletter with a look at a new book about video game biz & discovery that we’re rather enamored with - before looking at the most streamed games of March, and a whole buncha relevant news. 3, 2, 1, let’s jam?

‘UP DOWN UP’ - a new game biz book with bite..

So, we recently had a chance to check out Kim Nordstrom’s new book UP DOWN UP, which is a rare bird - a wider-screen ‘video game biz book’. It’s about “why some game companies succeed while others fail”, using interviews with 100+ game biz notables.

We say rare, because? You see a lot of these ‘business philosophy’ books in tech as a whole, but not so much in games. And Nordstrom himself is a former VP at King and CSO at Paradox - so he draws on a lot of handy lessons from those companies.

The book divides your company’s life-cycle into four parts: the Startup, Growth, Mature, and Decline phases, and Nordstrom notes: “I think any founder or leader of a game company would do wisely to accept that the journey of their company is very likely to follow these four phases.” (Even if you can sometimes shift away from ‘Decline’!)

Anyhow, we very much appreciated it - in part because it talks about ‘soft values’ like culture as much as it does hard growth strategies, and quotes many real-life leaders at companies like Supercell, Iron Galaxy, Trailmix & Marvel. (And we even forgive it the occasional Ray Dalio quote, given that we just read The Fund, lol.)

So, two things: firstly, we’ve arranged with Nordstrom to make the eBook available to all GameDiscoverCo Plus subscribers - sign up here if you’re not one. Alternatively, if you want to buy a paperback or Kindle version, go to the UP DOWN UP website.

Secondly, we thought we’d run an extract from the book below. And the one we picked was one that piqued our interest, because it relates to discovery. Why don’t most game devs work in the same genre and iterate on their work? Here’s a view.

Book extract: 'create the same game over and over'?

“Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you’re comfortable with.”

- Jerry Seinfeld

In the mature phase [of your lifecycle], you constantly work in a headwind; nothing comes for free or easy. What previously worked so well isn't working anymore. The focus for the company is most likely on serving the existing loyal audience, rather than attracting a new one. In the management team, you spend a lot of time discussing what types of games to do next, if any, and what the best path forward is for the company.

One thing that is for sure - if you've made it this far, you most likely have a very deep understanding of the audience you are serving with your successful game(s), what makes them tick and what will make them open their wallets.

Lyndsay Pearson, VP and Creative Director for the Sims Franchise, has been working on every DLC and The Sims-sequel since she joined EA Maxis in 2004… Lyndsay and her teams have, over the past two decades, built a deep and robust relationship with the players. They use the DLC model to experiment and creatively challenge themselves and the players, but also to create value for Maxis. This gives them the data and the confidence to invest in new stand-alone versions of The Sims.

Maxis are masters of digging where they stand, with more than 50 larger DLCs released for The Sims since 2000. Lyndsay said: “Maxis has been through numerous different variations of sequels and spin-offs of both the Sims and as well in the early days with SimCity. We did the Sims Bustin' Out, we did the MySims franchise to reach a younger audience and we did a Wii specific version to reach the Asian market; we have done four new versions of the Sims and are currently working on the fifth version. And the mobile version as well. Then, we have all the DLCs where we can be more innovative within the boundaries of the base game, but with less risk. A failed DLC doesn't break the game, but the team learns a lot.”

Over the years, Maxis have used their knowledge from each DLC to build new stand-alone versions of the Sims, targeting different audiences through new platforms or markets. Not every version sells well, but for each DLC or each stand-alone game, the team becomes more and more knowledgeable about the game and its players.

Eventually, enough data has been gathered for a sequel, that typically sets a new standard for the franchise, with new technology and new opportunities to innovate with more variations in DLCs.

With little competition in the space, Maxis can keep the game fresh with a cadence of DLCs and free updates. The Sims is still, after more than 25 years, more or less unchallenged in its position in the Sim genre, and every sequel released by Maxis has been more successful, both in terms of player count and revenue, than the previous one.

Should you hate ‘repeating yourself’ as a game company?

Any company that finds success within a specific genre, or with unique features, should do what it can to replicate that success again. My most common advice to studios I work with is: “Make the same game again.”

And they often hate it.

With “the same game again,” I mean that if you have proven your ability to deliver a specific type of game - one that the players love and makes you lots of money - then for God’s sake hold on to that. It doesn’t mean do exactly the same thing again.

But it means acknowledging that you’ve managed you found success where thousands of other game companies failed. By definition, that makes you an expert at creating that specific type of game. It's just less risky, and the upside is so much bigger, to continue exploring that niche. You have become proven, and your job is now to capture as much of that value as you can.

So “the same game again” actually means: do it again, and better. Don’t throw everything away by thinking you could easily find success with another type of game. You probably can’t. Almost all successful game companies, in some way or another, replicate their first success and find a way to iterate on and extend it.

The ideal scenario is when everyone on the team starts saying: “That game would be somewhat easy and straightforward to make, and we know that our audience would love to play it.” That's the sweet spot.

Karl Magnus “KM” Troedsson, previous VP & GM at DICE, creators of Battlefield, said: “This is how you become really good at anything, by doing it over and over again. The better you become at something, the more valuable it also becomes, and over time when you have invested so much, you really should want to capture that value. The more valuable it is, the more you can sell.”

Practice ‘relentless advocacy’ for a particular game genre!

Like anything else in life, if you want to be good at anything, you need to do it repeatedly. When you are good at something, it comes more straightforward, but you will continue to find challenges and creativity in whatever it is.

“The key for me has been relentless advocacy for a particular kind of game. Our types of games, immersive simulations as we call them, empower players to experiment, to show off their creativity to create unique narrative experiences through their choices during play.

In a sense, I've been making the same game, over and over again, from a philosophical standpoint. But in terms of gameplay, each new game has to have one new thing, maybe two, that no one has done before, some innovation or unique system”, said Warren Spector, the creative force behind games like Deus Ex and Disney Epic Mickey.

King did this extensively on mobile, where Candy Crush Saga and Farm Heroes Saga are essentially the same game. Paradox Interactive did it on PC, where every GSG [grand strategy game] is based on a map structure and the same on/off mechanics of a real-time game.

For a person working at King, the games from Paradox all look the same. Whereas for a person working at Paradox, all games from King look the same. Each game is hugely different for both sides, but from an outside perspective, it's the same game done repeatedly.

They both did this by perfecting their formula over time. Every person, every principle, and every process in these companies has been aimed to increase the quality, creativity, and precision in delivering new content into their games, over many years.

What’s the most-streamed games in March 2024?

Moving on, we’re again collab-ing with livestream analytics platform Stream Hatchet - which grabs data from lots of (non-China) game streaming platforms: “Twitch, YouTube Live Gaming, Facebook Live, AfreecaTV, Kick, Steam, NaverTV, Trovo, Rooter, Nonolive, Openrec, Loco, Mildom, DLive, VK, KakaoTV, Garena LIVE, Booyah.”

The Stream Hatchet folks wrote about the Top 20 most-streamed games of March 2024, and gave us a much bigger list of the Top 100 games(Google Drive doc), which we’ve marked up. Here’s what we spotted:

• Mobile titles roam higher up the Top 10: powered by Asian interest, Moonton’s mobile League Of Legends-esque MOBA Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (+171% to 57.7 million hours played), and battle royale Garena Free Fire (+18% to 44m hours) both hit the Top 10 in March.

• Dragon’s Dogma 2 & Supermarket Simulator topped 20m hours viewed: Capcom’s open-world ARPG Dragon’s Dogma 2 hit 21.5m hours and #20, despite only being released in March 22nd. And breakout sim hit Supermarket Simulator did 5.8x its February hours watched (20m, #21) - surprising longer-term reach?

• Other notable debuts (or near-debuts) abounded: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (14.4m hours, #29) hit 4.5x its February viewer numbers, and the Getting Over It-esque A Difficult Game About Climbing(9.4m, #41) was a serious masocore viral hit. Backpack Battles(8m, #45) also did well, and high-end PC/mobile blockchain economy MMO Night Crows(2.5m, #88) also sneaked into the Top 100.

Of course, Grand Theft Auto V, League Of Legends, Counter-Strike, Valorant and Fortnite still make up the Top 5 on these ‘most watched’ charts - four of these with >100 million hours watched. That’s some giant numbers, folks.

What’s also interesting is that three of these games (GTA, LoL, Fortnite) overlap with the Top 5 most-played in 2023, according to our last newsletter. That Newzoo research got much interest - but also some skepticism, with Kyle Kukshtel noting: “I do wonder what the playtime stuff hides though when you break it down by demographics.”

Her Story & Immortality’s Sam Barlow added: “That report about people only playing old games seems to be wildly distorted by the time investment in live service games? Like saying that people only watch Soap Operas?”

As it happens, Bloomberg & Nielsen just put out U.S. TV streaming numbers since 2021, and the top titles by total hours watched are: NCIS, Cocomelon, Grey’s Anatomy, Bluey, Criminal Minds, Suits, and Stranger Things. Some similar trends here, then: kids & soap opera-adjacent content (and Stranger Things!)

Still, some of these live service games are played or watched a lot by specific audience subsets - and some are also all-round popular. And as we noted before, ‘time played’ or ‘time watched’ should not be your only success indicator. But it’s also not NOT something to pay attention to…

The game platform & discovery news round-up…

Before we do a ‘fade out’ of regular newsletters this week, let’s take a look around the top platform and discovery news we spotted. It looks something like this:

• Twitter commentator John Welfare made these handy charts of U.S. game console (& handheld) unit sales since 2009. The console-only one is above - you can see the Wii-impelled boom in the late 2000s, and then a bulge through the COVID years. But things are now slowing down again…

• Did you spot the first trailer for ‘modern warfare x medieval era’ standout Kingmakers recently? Co-creator Ian Fisch now has a LinkedIn piece discussing its meteoric interest rise. One key: “We spent a long time prototyping game ideas to make sure we had one that can be marketed well with even just a single image.”

• March 2024’s UK PC/console charts (physical & much digital) saw a 26% YoY game unit increase, and GI’s Chris Dring adds: “Helldivers 2 is the reason. After eight weeks, Helldivers 2 sales are now trending ahead of Spider-Man 2… Dragon's Dogma 2 outsells Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth in their debut month, although it was close.”

• Fortnite Creative’s finally seeing some different styles of game break through, with PvE title Lumberjack Heroes, described as“a lumberjack themed incremental game infused with RPG gameplay elements”, hitting 13,000 CCU last week. (Recent UEFN tech improvements helped make this possible...)

• There’s some corporate changes at Xbox, and WindowsCentral details it: “‘Legendary’ Xbox CVP Kareem Choudhry is [amicably] leaving Microsoft as of today…. [which] triggered a wider Xbox leadership re-org.” They also got an internal Sarah Bond email revealing “we have formed a new team dedicated to game preservation… we are building on our strong history of delivering backwards compatibility.”

• Roblox Studio head Stefano Corazza inserted foot in mouth when discussing younger creators with Eurogamer: “So, I can be like 15 years old, in Indonesia, living in a slum, and… with just a laptop, I can create something, make money and then sustain my life.” (Cue a crisis communications update from Roblox asserting “the overwhelming majority [of Roblox DevEx payees] are over the age of 18.”)

• Console hardware stats: Amazon & Walmart’s combined U.S. console sales online for March 2024 show PlayStation 5 at 128k units, Switch at 57k, and Xbox at 53k; in Japan, year-on-year sales for Q1 2024 show Switch at: 722k units (-18%), PS5 at 495k units* (-40%), and Xbox at 29k units (-19%). (*Many probably off to China!)

• There’s been an interesting iOS App Store permission shift: “Apps may offer certain software that is not embedded in the binary… retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games.” Ars Technica does note possible limits: “companies that own the intellectual property could launch emulator apps for downloading ROMs of their (and only their) games.”

• In an interesting op-ed, Blizzard veteran Chris Kaleiki says ‘The AAA Video Game Studio Is Dead’, listing a litany of changes, including ‘production values won’t be king’: “Next-gen studios will focus on art direction but not harp on art fidelity, reducing their budgets, speeding up dev time and maximizing creative options in design.”

• The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau looked into“the growth of financial transactions in online video games and virtual worlds”, and they don’t seem 100% happy: “Gaming products and services resemble conventional financial products… provide little customer support when consumers experience financial harm… [and] are assembling gamers’ personal and behavioral data.” The report also mentions Roblox had $110 million worth of credit card chargebacks in 2023? Blimey…

• Also re: Xbox, The Verge’s Tom Warren adds: "As the Xbox strategy continues to evolve… Microsoft is in the middle of planning for its big summer Xbox showcase. I understand this is set to take place on Sunday, June 9th, and Microsoft is currently planning to announce a new Gears of War game at the show." Long live not-E3!

• March 2023’s top-grossing mobile games are headed by (inevitably!) Honor Of Kings, Monopoly Go!, and PUBG Mobile, with the top mobile game downloads topped by Call Of Duty: Warzone Mobile (in its first month of availability), Roblox, 8 Ball Pool and Ojol: The Game (huge in Indonesia, apparently?)

• Microlinks: Amazon Prime Gaming’s April free titles include Fallout 76 on PC & Xbox - in honor of the Fallout TV show’s debut; both Bully and L.A. Noire are coming to Rockstar’s GTA+ sub later this year; BAFTA’s survey results on ‘the most iconic video game character of all time’ has cued all kinds of ‘filter bubble’ conversations. (Look, people in the UK really like Sackboy, OK?)

Finally, we couldn’t be more excited to talk about Square Enix’s new SQEX Pets brand, including “a dome-shaped house of the Dragon Quest slime… a miniature toy of the Buster sword.. [and] dog attire based on Sora.” Spokesdog is particularly cute, too:

[We’re GameDiscoverCo, an agency based around one simple issue: how do players find, buy and enjoy your PC or console game? We run the newsletter you’re reading, and provide consulting services for devs, publishers, funds, and other smart game industry folks.]