Introduction

Jon Jordan: Welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook in association with Liftoff. Join us as we uncover the latest trends in user acquisition, monetization, and mobile game design. Hello and welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook. 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, John Jordan. Joining me today is Kalle Heikkinen, Chief Game Analyst at Game Refinery by Liftoff. How’s it going, Kalle?

Kalle Heikkinen: Very good, how are you?

Jon Jordan: Yeah, not bad, not bad at all. And Erno, Chief Game Analyst at GameRefinery, a Liftoff Company. How’s it going, Erno?

Erno Kiiski: All good.

Jon Jordan: Good, good. So, we are over halfway through 2024. So time for some retrospective discussion on what’s been going on in the mobile game space, as well as plenty of trends and new games to discuss. So, who’s gonna kick us off? What are the big trends that you are seeing?

Supercell’s 2024 strategy shift

Erno Kiiski: Well, I was thinking maybe at first we could discuss a little bit about the games and, first of all, what are the trends in terms of genres and the new entries in the market? And what has been happening in the first six months before we go in any deeper on the game level feature level details or anything like that? But maybe let’s start off with mid-core stuff. To me, it’s definitely one of the biggest stories of 2024 so far. Supercell has never been out of the picture, of course, but they have made quite a big change of direction and have been scaling pretty much all of their games at the start of 2024. So now, naturally, they are pushing a lot with their live ops, adding a lot of live ops to their game.

Erno Kiiski: They used to be the whole kind of mentality of very tiny teams on these games and kind of like a light on live ops compared to many other competitors and markets, but still kicking ass, but now, especially, they have been ramping that up pretty much on all of their games. And that can also be seen in the performance, especially Brawl Stars, which is probably one game that has been covered most in the industry. So much talked about how they have turned the boat around and have been scaling like crazy, record numbers, record months, month after another.

Erno Kiiski: This game has been around for a while already. So why? Well, of course, I’m not going to tear down and go super deep into the game, but a lot of things are happening with its monetization, like how they overhauled their battle pass system and changed them. There was a lot of discussion when they removed the gacha system. Then there was a small, actual drop in late 2023, but now they figured out how to make that model work that they have. And, you know, how they overhaul their battle pass and, overall, how they are unlocking characters and the monetization. You could earn the currency back and buy the battle pass. But now I have to buy every season of the battle pass and so on. So, there are a lot of changes in terms of how the game works, how the game gets monetised, and especially then talk about the live-ops and how the whole live-ops and live-event framework is supporting the game.

Erno Kiiski: So, massive scaling. The same thing is true with Clash Royale. The game has been scaling, not as radically as Brawl Stars; we have to mention Squad Busters. I think Brawl Stars was Supercell’s last launch, so we finally have Squad Busters getting the game out there. And of course, I think, at least by their own quotes, it was like the biggest launch because it’s kind of like an effort for the launch of a game for Supercell than ever, massive marketing campaigns with all those Hollywood celebrities making the ads and pushing the game there.

Squad Busters: Launch and market reception

Erno Kiiski: Quite a solid start all the way to the top of the charts. But since the launch, I think they launched in May, end of May, it had declined a little bit around to kind of like a top 50 game or so on in the US charts. but now it seems to kind of stabilize around that area also with the download; it has, of course, gone down since the initial launch a little bit, but has stabilized. So now it’s an interesting part of the life cycle to see where the game goes. Are they able to do the same thing as Brawl Stars, add a lot of live events to the game, and support the game for the long run to sustain and stay at the top? That still remains to be a question.

Erno Kiiski: I remember one of our analysts who played that game very thoroughly saying that, at the moment, it’s a stable moment in the game, new content around the amount of live events is still quite light. So, where the game goes next will be a big topic in the latter half of 2024. My first highlight would definitely be the Supercell new game and all the game scaling.

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah. On Supercell, I have to say that, and when it comes to Squad Busters, specifically, like Erno said, this is the interesting phase where It’s still early to say anything definite yet. We definitely need more time to see how the game forms. But at the moment, I actually have more questions than answers. One of them has always been: How much is this game actually cannibalizing Brawl Stars? Even though it has that more PVE focus, there’s still quite a lot of overlap when it comes to the nature of the games. That’s always been in my mind.

Kalle Heikkinen: And then the other one, is that when it comes to this record-breaking pre-registrations, I think a lot of it was driven by players wanting to get the free skin that they could get out of by clicking that pre-registration button. So I’m just wondering how many of those players did that? Just because of getting that skin. so that showed up, of course, the downloads, but how are they gonna, you know, are they going to stay in the game or go back to the other Supercell portfolio games?

Supercell’s China strategy and Hay Day relaunch

Kalle Heikkinen: And then another thing that is more of a broad, Supercell, notion, which is actually not that much discussed, I feel is that in addition to all these, It’s like, for example, Brawl Stars breaking records with their performance and, and some other titles they’re doing extremely well. Supercell has also been active in releasing games in China. Just a couple of months back, they re-released Hay Day. Nowadays, if you want to do a China launch, you need to partner up with a local entity. Supercell has also had to take back its games and then relaunch them. They’ve been doing that gradually. The latest one is Hay Day, which has been able to sustain itself in China.

Jon Jordan: I guess one of the interesting things with Supercell is, or one of the arguments would be, the sort of the scale aspect. I’m sure they’ve done it in their own Supercell way, but to me, a lot of that is just them catching up to what the industry has been doing for the last three years. And they, they’ve always been, we’re gonna do it our way and have these, you know, super sales, very small teams and not have producers and all this sort, and to a degree, as I say, I’m sure they’ve done it with their own style, I think it’s them finally having to admit this is how the market is these days. And we can’t just be an exception. so they basically copy the best practices of a lot of these things that they haven’t been doing. So, I mean, it’s good to see. So it’s not a criticism, but I think the differentiation companies have now to sort of do their own thing and stand out is sort of now almost impossible. People know how the industry works and you sort of have to get with the industry. If you’re going To be successful. And it sort of shows actually, you know, that They make great products. So you’d almost expect them to use best practices of the industry. They’re going to get that extra sort of boost because they really know their games.

Jon Jordan: So it’s good to see. Is it a good point on Squad Busters? I guess there’s so much going on there that they’re not. It’s good to get the launch out, but they can now take a much sort of longer term perspective on these things and sort of run them as a portfolio. And there’s not so much pressure on one particular game now.

Supercell’s IP and interconnectedness

Erno Kiiski: It’ll be interesting to see because, like the whole Squad Busters, the idea of the game is this connection of the, all the Supercell IPs, will there be more actual interconnection, other than just, of course, the IPs Start to do more of this like portfolio interconnection, especially most likely there are a lot of overlap with the players of Specific games in like Supercell portfolio, but at the moment it’s been of course the IP same characters but will there be more actually like Even more interconnection between those games. Of course, they have the Supercell IP and all that stuff. So Very interesting to see if there will be something like that.

Kalle Heikkinen: Will they go deeper to the characters and to the lore of the Supercell IPs because I feel that, like, Okay, I’m not the biggest Supercell player out there, but I do feel that it’s not the most, I wouldn’t describe the characters or the background lore of these games being the deepest when it comes to different IPs and stuff like that. So interesting to see if they’re gonna, dig deeper into that, part and expand the lore and background of the characters.

Jon Jordan: You mentioned Kalle there about cannibalization and how they place everything within their portfolio if you want to think of it that way, and I guess over time now, we’re just looking at, not many companies had the experience of running successful games over 10 years. And you realize how you run games and how you push things in certain ways. There is a sort of rhythm to that, and how you place games within those rhythms is probably pretty complicated. But equally, yeah, that inter-sort of connectedness, almost like a, not quite a meta-layer, that’s probably putting it to a complex point, but having games that fit into where other games are moving away from will be fascinating over the next few years to see how they play that out.

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, I guess in a way this is like a test to the Supercell IP, that how strong is it I’m not gonna say that, let’s say if Squad Busters is not gonna perform as well as everyone is predicting. I’m not saying that means that the Supercell IPs or the IPs of the different games are failing or anything like that.

Jon Jordan: It’s interesting as a company that their IPs, maybe with the exception of Hay Day, do feel like a very connected sort of selection of, Games and characters, and you know, I think that’s slightly accidental. They have tried other things in the past, but they have ended up with a game world, a Nintendo-type game world, where everything fits together. And not many companies in the world have that because it’s quite hard to do. So that’s another thing to look at on the IP side. Okay. But the mobile game industry is not just Supercell. So, should we break out of that and move on?

Asian publishers’ growing RPG presence in Western markets

Erno Kiiski: All right. maybe next, if we stick with the more, like, mid-core-ish titles, one thing that we have noticed, which is kind of interesting, knowing where the market is and how hard it is to scale, especially like this mid-core, hardcore type of games, is that if we look at like especially the U.S. market or the Western markets and look at the games that have been able to enter that top, top rankings for example, top 200 in the U. S. games that have been launching this year. So new games. So on, in 2024, there’s actually. many RPGs out there, considering the market situation at the moment. So, of course, AFK journey has a spin-off slash sequel to the highly successful AFK arena, an idle RPG with even higher production values, a bit of a different twist. They launched at the end of March. It has had a strong launch but has been going down a little bit, also not being able to sustain on the top, but still out there on the top 50 rankings. So doing okay, but maybe not as explosive a launch as somebody could have expected from AFK arena, especially what it was back in the day. So a little bit on a downward trend, let’s see, are they able to turn that one around. Then, there are other RPGs from Netmarble, who are pushing out so many turn-based RPGs, and especially with this kind of anime feel.

Erno Kiiski: If I understand correctly, there was this game called Solo Leveling: Arise, which is apparently an IP from a Korean webtoon. And that launched, I think, in May. Very strong launch, very kind of like a classic, what we see in the Western markets with this type of action RPG that has that huge spike. And then usually after the launch spike of this kind of like a niche audience they get that everybody’s all this is a game in the market, but it usually declines very quickly. But with this game, what is exceptional, at least at this point, is that it hasn’t gone down so radically, it is still able to sustain okay rankings, it has gone down. Yes, definitely. But it’s still able to sustain itself there. I’m in the top 50 and top 80 among the top-grossing games. So, it’s very interesting to see. Is it able to sustain itself for any longer term? It’s only been a month, but often, in these games, the initial launch spike has gone much more radically down in terms of performance. It remains to be seen, but at least so far, it has been able to sustain a bit better than your average similar type of anime-based action RPG in the West.

Erno Kiiski: And then there is the third one in the same category, Wuthering Waves, which is this kind of a cross-platform from PC mobile type of action RPG, again, anime-themed, pretty much a straight-up competitor against Genshin Impact. So open world, character collector, RPG, the differences in the combat, if I understood correctly, I haven’t played the game myself, this type of action RPG where you’re collecting characters, super high production values in Genshin Impact style, open world and all that stuff. Again, it had a quite strong launch, all the way to the top 10 and very top, but it had declined a little bit. But now again, when they brought the first, bigger content batch, at the end of June, a couple of days ago, if you look at Genshin Impact’s revenue graph, there is always a massive spike again when they bring new characters, back to the top, the same with Wuthering Waves. So, at least at the moment, let’s see where the baseline will find itself, but we’re doing quite well. We’re doing quite well, especially considering, again, it’s a game that’s cross-play. A lot of the players will be moving or will possibly play on a PC. PC with a bit of a better control for that kind of a game, but still doing quite solidly, after about a month, over a month of launch, in mobile. Overall, interesting to see that there are quite a few of these RPGs that have been able to sustain at least, over a month, in the market; a month is a short time. So what’s the long-term sustainability, but at least, some fresh blood on that section?

Kalle Heikkinen: And we have the, what? Zenless zone zero is coming, I guess. Yes.

Erno Kiiski: Yeah, Thursday, I think it’s 4th of July, a new game from miHoYo, so most likely will be on the very, very top again, like, you know, same as with Genshin, same as with Honkai, so definitely probably one of the biggest mobile launches of the year coming like in a couple of days.

Kalle Heikkinen: So, listening to what you just said, I feel like one of the trends of this year is most likely the anime-themed games, or at least anime-themed RPGs. Looks like we’ve had quite many of those. And I think one thing that links all these is also the fact that these all come from Asian publishers, right? So, I guess we can throw that out there as an example. I’m not saying that it’s been a trend for the last six months, but let’s maybe label it as an ongoing trend that the Asian publishers are just growing their presence in the Western markets.

Call of Duty Warzone Mobile: Cross-progression challenges

Erno Kiiski: Then if we move on from the RPGs, maybe the last that I would like to highlight in 2024 on the mid-core side, I would highlight Call of Duty Warzone, One of the biggest games on the PC and console side that there is, and the mobile version launched with cross-progression, which is also an interesting trend. We have been talking about cross-platform, and it’s, one of the trends that a lot of people talk about, actually cross-platform games and having the mobile version of the same game, But the difference with Warzone was that it wasn’t actually the same game in that way that you were not able to play against PC players or mobile players couldn’t play against the PC players and so on, but they had cross-progression. So there, you know, your progress vectors in the game that you’re collecting the weapons and progressing in the shared battle pass. So if you play on a mobile, and then hop onto the PC, that’s the same progression. So you are sharing that progression and, you know, can do the grinding on either platform.

Erno Kiiski: But then, if we hop onto the performance of the game, it’s not been very good. It’s struggling quite a bit. Of course, when it launched, it spiked there, but then it got down quite heavily. And nowadays, it’s not even among the top 200, like crossing games in the US. Compared to when Tencent published or developed Call of Duty mobile, it is still in the top 10,, still struggling. How are they able to get it? Players out of that mobile SKU that, you know, they have their players, they have their tons of skins already, haven’t been able to really pull off players from there. Not different enough. And also, if you compare it to like live ops machine, Tencent is able to kind of like push out on a weekly basis compared to what the Warsaw mobile is doing with the live event. It’s much slower, much more, and less content than Call of Duty mobile. So we’ll be interested to see what Activision is actually gonna, you know, keep the game alive, for a long term, because, at least in terms of performance, it’s not really, really doing it. But of course, there are the kind of like, might be, I don’t know how it has affected, for example, the PC side or like, are some of the PC players like, yeah, playing there, but all the monetization is happening on the chest of the PC client, for example, what’s that? So there’s that. It’s not visible on mobile performance, but yeah, to be honest, there’s no competition against Call of Duty Mobile.

Kalle Heikkinen: The only sensible thesis behind that is that they want to have the kind of mobile extension of the game so that people can also use it. Something related to Warzone, even when they’re not on their PCs. But other than that, as you said, it doesn’t look too good. But Erno, you forgot to talk about Love and Deepspace. So I want to mention this, of course, not maybe the biggest explosion when it came to long-term success. Nevertheless, this was one of the most interesting titles to hit the market, in my opinion. This is a hybrid dating simulator for anyone who doesn’t know what Love and Deepspace is. There are a lot of interactive story elements in the game, but interestingly enough, it also has an action RPG layer where you upgrade characters, and that’s a big part of the gameplay as well. In terms of performance, it is interesting that this was a successful game in multiple markets. So, in Japan, in China, and when it also launched in the U.S., I just looked at the data, and now it’s only peaking to inside the top 200 grossing, so it’s not sustaining there anymore. This was an interesting case and super high production values, by the way. The game looks absolutely phenomenal. So that was interesting and obviously comes from, I believe from China. So the publisher’s info Infold, I would assume that it’s from China, Hong Kong, or something like that.

Erno Kiiski: Yeah, when the game launched, it was at least, I don’t know how much of these types of games have been buried in Asian markets, but a game that was able to do okay in terms of launch of this type of. Pretty much an interactive story game, but with kind of like a depth of an RPG meta-system, which was very, very, usually you don’t see these games do anything in the West, but now it’s for a month or two, it was doing surprisingly well. So yeah, good highlight. All right. Should we hop on to the casual side?

Hybrid casual trends

Erno Kiiski: Maybe first we could talk a little bit about hybrid casual. And that’s also one of the trends, of course, hybrid casual, companies struggling with the hybrid casual model, moving to hybrid casual. And then also, these different types of, hybrid monetization models of different genres, adding ad monetization into the play and trying to get that Low CPIs in terms of gameplay to be very easily digestible, easy to get into, but then actually building it. So of course, it’s not like a new thing in 2024, but we have seen even more new games, different types of games in this, that could be categorized as hybrid as well. So, I would put these in two buckets. Are these real simple hybrid casuals, which have been mostly like puzzle games recently? If you look at IAP charts, as these are hybrid casuals, the whole point is that it’s hybrid monetization—there are ads, and they are IAPs. But even with just the IAP revenue, there have been multiple, different kinds of Hybrid monetized, hybrid casual puzzle games entering also the top charts with IAPs. And what is very interesting there is that there are a lot of different types of core gameplay involved. So there are games like Screw Jam, which is the game where you’re Screwing, screwing these jams and, you know, trying to figure out which screws you need to remove to remove this like block wooden blocks type of a puzzle game. Then there is another very similar game called Wood and Nuts, very well compared to those two games in that kind of core gameplay. Then there is a Twisted Tangle from Rollick Games, so from Zynga. Basically, these, like, you have these different ropes, tangled between each other and you need to solve that puzzle. A game called Hexasword, I think it was from Lion Studios if I’m correct, Basically this type of, different blocks of, piles of blocks that you need to move around and then figure out the same colors and stuff like that, but anyways, different types of core gameplay is like, if you think about the puzzle market or the traditional casual puzzle market, it’s very. There are specific types of core gameplay. It’s max three there. It’s merge or so on and so on, or like hidden objects and so on. And it’s always almost the same type of core gameplay. So what is interesting with this trend that we have seen with the hybrid monetization models and these types of games, there is a lot of, Variety in terms of like core gameplay, but what is common between these is, of course, a lot of them have like similar type of a monetization things for the IAP. So, you know, the usual puzzle things like a puzzle, like the boosters and the extra time or move or depending a little bit on what the core is like. Also, if you look at, you know, what makes them this hybrid casual, not hyper casual puzzle game is that they are adding more content, so more levels, on a specific cadence. And also, of course, it’s the live events and kind of like the live event framework that supports that core gameplay. So if you look at any of these types of games, the events that they are pushing on top of the game to give that kind of like more incentives to, for players to, you know, purchase things and play the game, engage players more into the playing the game. It is actually very similar to any type of puzzle game. So, that is very common, no matter what the core gameplay is or the event types and so on that support it. Across any type of puzzle game, whether it’s Royal Match, Match Three, Garden Scapes, or these hybrid casual puzzle games, many similar event types and event frameworks are used to push players for the core gameplay. So this is definitely one kind of a clear genre, these hybrid casual puzzle games with different types of core gameplay. How do you actually play those puzzles and solve those puzzles?

Erno Kiiski: And then the second bucket that I wanted to mention is this. What people still call hybrid casual, which is this Survivor IO type of game or Archer type of game. Both of these genres are commonly called hybrid casual in the industry, but they are very, very different in that way. If you play Survivor IO, for example, yes, it starts simple. The whole idea is that you can make very appealing, easy-to-understand games. ads and so on. But then when you play for it for a week, for example, then the game actually has the depth of any mid-core RPG in terms of features, in terms of different ways that they are monetizing those meta-features and so on. So this is like a different bucket of a hybrid casual. So yes, they are also monetizing hybrids. Insane amount of depth, in terms of its features, once you get deeper and deeper into the game, and there have been a couple of games, for example, this quite recent game, has been scaling goals. Some zombie.io, which has been, it’s basically a survivor IO type of a game, but it has a lot of innovative features. You put even more effort into a character collection and build a team, and then that affects the core gameplay. They have tons of depth into the game. It has 10 different progression vectors. So different ways that you can get stronger. And then, when you start the game, it’s like, ah, this is nice and easy to get into, but it is like a crazy amount of depth. And then of course, everything is almost monetized, both with ads, both with, you know, IAP. So there’s also a crazy amount of spend depth over there. So, one game in that category has been scaling and doing some innovative stuff. Over there, to follow.

Kalle Heikkinen: Okay, I have to say, you kind of stole my thunder when it comes to the hybrid casual stuff, that was really thorough, going through all the highlights of what is going on there. But I’m just trying to think of what I could add to that. And I guess I’ve always struggled with the definition of hybrid casual. Sometimes, it feels like if you have a game that monetizes both on IAA and IAP, that’s a hybrid casual. And if that’s the case, then you can. That’s a pretty vague definition. And then on the other hand, some people defined it as being like a combination of. mid-core, even hardcore elements in game mechanics-wise, but then combining that with a very casual, let’s say, art style or something like that. And there are other ways to think about it as well. So, I always struggle a bit with the definition, but nevertheless, I think the last six months have really proven that these hybrid casual games are able to not only break into the top 200 grossing but also sustain themselves there. So, for example, some of the games that Erno mentioned, like Twisted Dangle, that was released last December, and It’s still in the top 200 grossing, so, the formula has been kind of proven now. It’s not only about Archero anymore. a couple of years back when people asked, for example, for us, more analysis on hybrid casual games. We were like, well, there’s Archero and what else is out there? But now the market has definitely expanded.

Jon Jordan: So it sounds like it is interesting where you have the very casual starting experience to sort of encourage many people. And then you’re sort of filtering through that. And I guess at an original point, we would think when people play those games, some are going to monetize through adverts, and some are going to go through in-app purchases, but maybe as they get more complicated, the split between the monetization changes as people get further into the game. So you want to have those deep retention mechanics, you know, towards the end, simple at the start. And then, that’s sort of how that genre is expanding. But maybe some homework, come up with a new definition while you’re, Do a stamp on the industry.

Jon Jordan: I’ll make a note. There is lots of stuff going on there. It is funny how much of it comes back to thinking about LiveOps. That always springs out to me as you’re talking about these games, and the whole industry is always getting more and more deeply into live ops and even into what we might call casual experiences. And anything else that we have to add to this?

Microfun and merge games

Erno Kiiski: I think Kalle knows the company better, but I would if we talk about the more mid-core. I’ve talked about Supercell, but maybe you could talk a little bit about Microfun.

Kalle Heikkinen: Yes. So, Merge Two is definitely one of the genres that has been doing extremely well this year. It is mostly driven by games like Travel Town. Then we have Gossip Harbor and Seaside Escape from Microfun. That company’s interest comes from China, and they clearly have this portfolio strategy. They do in-game cross-promotion, so you have these events going on where they advertise the other games in the portfolio so that if you download those games and engage with them, you get rewards in the app where you downloaded those games. That’s obviously a very clever way to move players around. Some studies have shown that People often have more than one merge game on their phones when it comes to the merge genre. So it makes total sense to advertise that they have, for example, merge three games also in their portfolio. So I have kind of a couple of different Takes on the merge and advertising them, pushing them to certain players can be very effective and for Seaside Escape and Gossip Harbor, that has been very beneficial. And also, on the product side, they’ve been constantly updating these titles; for example, Gossip Harbor, they added a race event just a couple of months back, which was, of course, interesting. We haven’t seen those much in the. Merge to side and, in general, in non-level-based games, not so much. For example, this was, I think, already from last year, but they have this, like a relationship, progression mechanic there where you can build your relationship with some of the in-game characters and, Have a progression vector attached to that not only Someone could say that Gossip Harper is very much inspired by Love and Pies but you could also make the argument that they have been trying to innovate and Add, new things to the game and also to the merge to genre in general.

Erno Kiiski: It’s kind of interesting in that way. I feel that it’s a company that hasn’t been talked about that much yet because, but, like, if you look at any of these games, like Gossip Harbor, it’s basically been doing bigger month, bigger month, bigger month in terms of revenue one after another. It’s a game that has been scaling constantly. And then, you know, nowadays it’s like among the travel town, which are advertised like moon active, I guess, nowadays owns the game and they’re advertising the game like crazy. But Gossip Harbor is a game that’s basically clear number two now in the merge two category; there’s Travel Down there’s Gossip Harbor. The second release, Seaside Escape, is another game from the same genre and company. It’s now also been scaling a lot. So, they are becoming a very interesting company in that genre. Gossip Harbor was, very much like Love and Pies, but they have been, again, Gossip Harbor has been pushing so much LiveOps into the game compared to maybe their competitors like Love and Pies, So a lot of, different types of events, not all of them, have been super innovative in that way that, you know, there are proven mechanics seen in the other genres, you know, like, for example, I think they just added this kind of like a Potion event that, I think Royal Match brought the end of last year or so and now Gossip Harbour brought it. But that was the first time in the Merge Two genre. So they are scaling a lot with the live events and a very interesting company that, yeah, is not talked about a lot, and it’s not very out there. I think it’s China-based, right, Kalle? So there is not a lot of information about the company out there, but in that genre, it is very much a scaling one.

Jon Jordan: LiveOps again. We keep coming back to it, but that’s sort of what it is, isn’t it? I mean, it’s always been that thing with mobile games. People have it on their phones. It’s always there. They always want something new. It’s hard to move people from one game to another. So you want to keep them in your game. If even Supercell doubles down on LiveOps, that’s the thing. Cool. Good. Well, that was a very good overview. Thank you, very much to Erno and Kele for their expertise.

Kalle Heikkinen and Erno Kiiski: Thank you.

Jon Jordan: Plenty of games to be checking out there. I haven’t heard of a few, so maybe the homework for everyone is to check out some new games and see how you get on with them. But thanks for listening to the podcast. Every episode, we discuss what’s going on in the world of mobile games. So don’t miss out, do subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.

Introduction

[00:00:00] Jon Jordan: Hello and welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. This is the 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 no less than three experts from GameRefinery. So welcome to Kalle Heikkinen, Erno Kiiski, and Jiri Saarinen. And I think Jiri, first time on the podcast, so a particular welcome to you.

[00:00:28] Jiri Saarinen: Yes. Yes, it’s a hard name; it’s Jiri. It’s alright, it’s alright. It is a hard Finnish name.

Exploring LiveOps in mobile games

[00:00:32] Jon Jordan: Yes, sorry, yes, Jiri, I’ll try. Okay, correction’s out of the way. Right, so in terms of today’s episode, we are going to be looking broadly at LiveOps, but we are going to be looking at them in the context of the mobile game dev awards from Liftoff. Now, in their third year, they are looking at the power of LiveOps, obviously in terms of things boosting revenue. So we’re going to be breaking down the LiveOps ecosystem in terms of some of those categories. So we have collaboration, competition, immersive narrative, seasonal events and mini-games. So we’re going to be looking at those in that context. But maybe to kick us off, Erno, can you talk broadly about some of the stuff we’ve been seeing in LiveOps just to contextualise what we’re going to be going into?

[00:01:25] Erno Kiiski: Yeah, yeah, sure. Maybe just to start,  first of all,  why we decided to move in with our awards,  you say, this third time we’re doing it. And now we reiterate a little bit to focus just on the live events because, well, to be honest, there are all kinds of awards and different types of awards. And we were thinking about, how could maybe we, differentiate from the.. rest of the best game of the year type of things and stuff like that. And as we know where the market is,  where the focus is, a lot of the focus in the market is what we have been doing in GameRefinery.

A lot of our recent additions and tools and focus have been on live events. So how about we specify, be a bit more specific, and just look at the live events? side of things and what is happening there and who is innovating and who is doing interesting stuff because, to be honest, most of the innovation nowadays in the mobile game markets Or a lot of the innovation happens in the event space There are a lot of the same old games still in the market, but in the event space the innovation and new stuff is happening much more often than maybe new games appearing Which of course once in a while, still come not that much but once in a while.

[00:02:45] Jon Jordan: No, it’s true. It’s a very good point.

[00:02:46] Erno Kiiski: Well, Monopoly Go is one of the biggest launches ever, so no, of course, there are still those, but anyway. So, when we think about live events, how would I categorize live events? How do we think about live events, and how did we make these award categories, for example? So, of course, when you are adding live events, it all comes down to what is your goal. What are your aims for the event? So it can be so varied.

So it can be that you’re aiming to increase the retention, are you’re aiming to increase long-term retention? Are you trying to create a month-long event that may be connected to other events? Or are you trying to use your data to have a weekly loop, and then on Mondays, it’s always people are dropping off and are not very engaged, so you’ve asked yourself, what could we do in order to increase retention or engagement for those days for  short term, as an example. Or if it’s just you trying to increase daily playtime. So you see that, okay, our session lengths could be longer.

You are creating events that have then maybe more sense of urgency if we are thinking about the top dogs’. Royal Match, for example, has these events that you activate and then are active for one hour. It’s a very engaging short-term event with a true sense of urgency.

Alternatively, is your event about monetization? Are you trying to directly monetize and have some different bundles or then, of course, battle pass tying the engagement into monetization? Or are you thinking about that, okay, I’m gonna actually indirectly need to wanna increase the monetization, so through the retention, through the engagement and then exposing to players your usual monetization hooks. For example, a lot of the match-three games, that’s all of their events. They are not necessarily directly monetized, but they very, very cleverly engage the users in order to buy those extra moves and buy those boosters and stuff. Or if it’s you catering, you’re looking at your user base, and you’re seeing that, okay, we’re not catering to specific motivations enough. So if we think about social motivation as an example, let’s say we have a great game, but we could increase our motivation; how it induces different motivational drivers is we need a little bit more social in our game. We would need maybe competition in our game for the more competitive players in our game or incentivize them through that or maybe cooperation, something that is happening in some of those games. So, this is motivational thinking. Or even UA-driven thinking.

We have been talking a lot about mini-games, and mini-games are one of the topics that have been talked about a lot. And if you look at the top, especially strategy games, mid-core, hardcore games, a lot of them are pushing events also, not just to engage and monetize the users, but they are working together with the marketing department and creating these mini-games and that stuff and events and stuff that they can tie into their UA efforts. We’re gonna talk about mini-games more in the section discussing the different categories, but that’s just a couple of examples.

So there are so many ways that you can think about live events, but ultimately, it comes down to ‘what is your goal?’ I guess. That’s the key thing, and then even on top of that, when you decide, ‘Okay, this is what we are trying to do, ‘this is what we try to achieve with the events’, but then also how that event interconnects with your whole game and your whole gameplay loop. So it’s such an important thing to not just slap-slap an event. Then you see an event in a top game, and oh, that’s cool, but then it’s a totally different game.

The most important thing in your game is how it interconnects with all the other events and how it fits into your whole event framework I think a couple of examples great are Royal Match again, how they have a quite strict weekly framework, but how everything is so interconnected and gives these extra pushes to play another event and then play this another event. For example, they released their latest new event type called Archery Arena a week ago or maybe a week and a half ago. And it’s a leaderboard event, but then it has this win streak implemented into it. And it’s a one-day event.

So again, if you think about those things, what…it tries to achieve. Okay, so it’s a one-day event, so there’s a much more sense of urgency. It always happens during the week, and it gives that every single day of the week an extra push. Then there’s the win streak, and a loss aversion is tied into it. So there’s another there are multiple of these, I guess five to six different things that you lose if you lose a level or if you keep the win streak going, you get extra benefit status tied to it. So it taps into that, and then it ties again into the monetization. So you wanna compete, you wanna complete the levels, you don’t wanna lose the win streak, so you get the score. So then it ties into the monetization. So this type of a thing, how it interconnects with the rest of the events that you have and the whole game you have.

[00:08:38] Jon Jordan: Yes. So definitely enough there for an award, and I think it’s a good point you do say there, where certainly from the outside looking in at not a very deep level to some of these games, then sometimes they can seem very much, oh, ‘they’ve gone down the catalogue of LiveOps’, and they’ll have one of those and two of those and slap that in. And it is, I think, without telling everyone to use your tools unless you really have a very deep understanding of how these games are being played. It just seems a little bit chaotic, and you can’t really see the gearing of how all these things, when they work in a flywheel, really work well.

[00:09:14] Erno Kiiski: Yeah, it’s definitely, and it’s especially more midcore or hardcore you go; you’ve got more stuff there that has started to happen, for example, I’ve been just recently studying probably the highest scaling 4X game in the past year, Whiteout Survival and their live event framework. At first, at least for a couple of weeks, it feels like there’s so much going on and stuff happening all the time. But when you follow it for a longer pattern and over a longer time, you start to see those patterns that, ah, okay, this is why they have these on the same time. And you start to see that, okay, this event actually reiterates every two weeks or every three weeks, and this one is every week. You see these patterns and try to actually deconstruct why their event framework works and why it actually works, as well as why they work together. So that’s a very interesting part about deconstructing and analyzing these top games.

The power of collaboration in LiveOps

[00:10:13] Jon Jordan: Yeah, cool. Okay, so we’ll be doing that as we go through. So we’re gonna take these categories and go through them in a bit more depth. So, the first one we’re looking at is collaboration. So, Kalle, do you wanna take us through that?

[00:10:25] Kalle Heikkinen: Yes, so just adding to the great list that Erno just explained on the different kinds of objectives that developers might have when building these events. Virality is another and is definitely one of them related to what Erno just talked about regarding marketing efforts. So, how many social shares do you get for your events, and how much is it shared in social media these collaboration events are definitely something that, if successful, do get a lot of attention from your player base.

So IP collaborations obviously have two major potential benefits for your game. You get to re-engage your existing player base, but then at the same time, it’s possible to acquire totally new audiences as well. As a developer, you want to achieve both, of course, but depending on the game and the crossover IPs type, the focus then might be more, for example, on the re-engagement side, as opposed to user acquisition, or then it’s the other way around.

But anyway, in general, I would say that games shouldn’t be too conservative when considering these different IP crossover brands. I think we’ve seen some pretty wild combinations that have been greatly successful just recently.

Lords Mobile is collaborating with the car brand Pagani, for example, and we’ve seen Gucci in Tennis Clash and so on. But I guess it’s safe to say that we do see a bit more gaming and, for example, anime-related collaboration events on the mid-core side. And then it’s more common to see, let’s say, celebrities or consumer brands and popular movies, for example, collaborating in the casual space.

And of course, on the casual side, if we now go to the winners that we have in the GameRefinery Awards, there the winner for the best IP collaboration events was actually StumbleGuys. We didn’t choose that just for one specific event, but I think it’s safe to say that nowadays, if we think about Stumble Guys, the IP collaboration events that they have, they’re pretty much one of their key cornerstones when we think about their live up strategy overall.

So they are out there with, for example, Fortnite always having some interesting collaboration events going on with IPs such as collaborations with MrBeast, Monopoly and BarBeech, just to name a few.

And then, on the mid-core side, our winner was PUBG Mobile. There, we were especially thinking about the Dragon Ball event that they had, which was really cool, especially how they implemented the limited-time mode there. It did not just have some Dragon Ball skins for players to purchase, but actually, the entire mode was revamped to be a real Dragon Ball experience,  starting from the graphics and aesthetics to all the other content that was in the mode. So that was a really, really special moment for the game.

[00:13:50] Erno Kiiski: Yeah, maybe on my two cents on these two winners. Especially for the PUBG, it’s a game, and overall, shooters have been on the Western markets. Of course, in the Asian markets, we have seen many more collaborations even back in the day. But I think in the Western markets, shooters were one of the first ones to really kick it to the next level, with Fortnite, of course, and all that stuff, and PUBG has also been there, especially the mobile side, collaborating with tons and tons of brands over the years already. But with the Dragon Ball one, what I saw, looked into that specific event, the production levels were off the roof type of a thing, so, their whole game had a proper Dragon Ball makeover, and they were proper, skills and change the whole how you played the game for the short period. This is not just an event mode type of thing, but this is a whole movement of the game. Everything has changed, almost a big, a big event happening.

[00:15:06] Jiri Saarinen: Yeah, if I could add maybe a few thoughts.

[00:15:10] Kalle Heikkinen: Please go ahead.

[00:15:12] Jiri Saarinen: I feel the developers are understanding that players appreciate understanding the IP. It’s not just a random, just a skin, but adding more of the IP components into it; you have in the PUBG that you could do classic Kamehameha and whatnot, so it feels more like you’re actually understanding the collab IPs, and those are I think are pretty important and maybe in the party games maybe IPs start to feel they’re part of the core gameplay of the core game. So players are always waiting for the new IP that’s going to come into the party games.

[00:15:58] Erno Kiiski: Yeah, that is true and especially with the Stumble guys, it’s been so interesting to see ever since it got acquired by Scopely, how they have gone to the next gear, and they went to the next gear in terms of the live ops and how it transformed. When Stumble Guys came from Finland, it was a couple-person team, and now it’s this massive live ops machine where they have such big IP collaborations going basically all the time if you follow it, there’s always some collaboration going on. So it has become this, as Jiri mentioned, this game is almost a platform of IPs like we have seen in Fortnite or Roblox or stuff like that. It’s a crucial part of the whole experience.

[00:16:41] Jon Jordan: And I guess that particularly works where the game itself is very simple.  This was the way that the game was successful. Obviously, it was bringing something to mobile that was on PC. But you would think after a certain period of time, people would start to churn out if the game is that simple. And you saw, yeah, it’s got. Obviously, you’re playing co-op, and you’ve got your friends in there, and so there is that level as well. But then it’s really the, what you’re saying is that level, the collaboration is providing the long term engagement because if you just really love this game and the exciting things are going to happen next week, next month. You want to stay there to see what the IP engagement is.

[00:17:20] Erno Kiiski: Yeah, definitely. And that, I would see through the events, especially the IPs and then the UGC stuff that has now also been slowly added into Stumble Guys. Now, the EGGY Party, Stumble Guys‘ main competitor from NetEase, has just released, and the UGC is even on the next level. It’s had a very slow start at the moment for the West, at least. But, will be very interesting to see where that competition goes in the future.

Social and competitive elements in LiveOps

[00:17:47] Jon Jordan: Yes. Cool. Good. OK, so let’s move on to the next category, which is Social and Competitive.

[00:17:53] Erno Kiiski: All right, so Social and Competitive overall, of course, this is a huge category because you can look at it from many, many angles. So, well, first of all, social is one of the strongest retention drivers and glues that keep players in the game. If they get a community, if they get a sense of competition going on, it can be one of the most engaging motivational drivers that there can be, to be honest. So it can be looked at either on the competitive side where you are competing or then actually on the collaboration side. So, for the winners of this category, we will look a little bit across the board. So, on the casual side, we focus more on collaboration. Here, we chose the winner to be Monopoly Go with the partner events.

So if you’re unfamiliar with the partner events, basically in those events, you are teaming up with other individual players, and then you are progressing with them, on with the one-on-one, so two-player teams, you’re progressing through the event, reaching point thresholds and getting rewards, and so on and so on. And then there’s an extra incentive if you can complete the event with all of the four people you are teaming. So you are making these two people teams with four, four other people, I think it was. So if you’re able to complete the event with all of those, then you actually get even an extra reward. So you wanna, especially if you’re a hardcore and engaged player, you wanna team up also with the other players who are very engaged.

But why did we choose this one? To be honest, we have been talking a lot about increasing competition in casual games for years already because of this type of collaboration, even in this podcast. And it’s been a trend for a while. But this type of collaboration, especially outside of the guild. So you are teaming up at the start of the event and having done that with just a friend. The event is for just individual friends. So it feels a bit more personal than just having a joint goal with the 40-people guild or so on. So these types of events haven’t been really that common yet. And now, when Monopoly Go implemented the first iteration of this event, I think it was, was it in the summer of last year? And then they have had it once a month, every single month. about five to six-day events, something like that.

Very often, those days when this partner event has been active have been the best-performing days of the month for the game. That’s, of course, one example we are seeing in terms of the correlations between the performance with this social event. However, we have seen this exact event type so often with casual game events; when somebody comes up with a specific type of format, it starts to pop up all over the casual market. So now Monopoly Go brought this, and the same idea has been brought to Royal Match, Phase 10, and Clockmaker, just to name a few, so it has all a different core gameplay. It’s not just casual casinos but also puzzle games and stuff like that. But the same fundamental idea of this social collaboration event that they did worked really well for them. And now it’s been spreading, and it’s a trend already,  one of the trending event types in the casual. So, it’s definitely worthy of the winner spot over here.

And then on the mid-core side, we have League of Legends: Wild Rift implementing an event called Arena. So Arena was a new PvP mode. And why we especially wanted to highlight this one for this category was that it’s a good example of a developer trying something out, and getting really good feedback. They probably see good numbers in terms of engagement, at least, and then actually develop it further and implement it as a proper permanent mode in the game. So, this PvP mode they released called Arena first came as a test. It was a limited-time event that was around for a while, but it was so well received that Riot has actually developed it into a proper permanent part of the game that is over there. It has its own ranked mode and everything else. So, a great example of this is testing out something, then seeing the results and then moving on to a proper feature implementation.

[00:23:22] Kalle Heikkinen: I think that’s really a testament to how… Yeah, I was just to add that it’s a testament to the powerfulness of events in general that you can test out your ideas, your concepts, see how they perform, how players react, do they engage with the event, and in the best possible scenario if it makes sense, then you can do things in Wild Rift, you can make that temporary mode, a permanent feature in the game.

Seasonal events in mobile games

[00:24:03] Jon Jordan: Good, good. Okay, so now moving on, I guess to what we see as the first thing we had with LiveOps was seasonal events. So, it’s still going strong. Kalle, what do you want to tell us about the winners of seasonal events?

[00:24:19] Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, I mean, I think when people think about live events in general, seasonal events, Halloween or Christmas, probably come to your mind straight away. It’s a low-hanging fruit out there. Oh, ‘we need a summer event or a Halloween event for our game’ and so on. And you can make any event a seasonal event. If an event is a Halloween event, it doesn’t tell anything about the nature of the event, just that it’s themed around Halloween.

And I think that’s one of the reasons why we feel, why I feel we see a lot of reskins of existing events, which with just seasonal wrapping. So, you change the name of the event to a Halloween event. And let’s say if it’s a match-three game, you match pumpkins instead of regular pieces. And nothing wrong with that, of course. And if you’ve had your game running for a longer period already, then you can start recycling some of the ideas, the mechanics and the assets you’ve used in previous years. So, just as an example of that, Merch Mansion, one of the most popular Merch 2 games out there, actually had a limited-time store open during Christmas time, where they sold their catalogue cosmetics from previous year’s Christmas events. So, players could then purchase some of the cosmetics they probably have, which they might have missed in previous years.

But yes, the winner of this year’s awards for the best seasonal event on the casual side was Phase 10, which was already mentioned in this podcast. They had a versatile package for their holiday event. So it had a bunch of something for everyone. So there was a mini-game going on. They had a renovation event, a competitive event, a social co-op event, and even some slot elements incorporated into the event. So, it’s really a nice package for Christmas. And I guess just in, yeah, please go ahead.

[00:26:37] Erno Kiiski: So yeah, for Phase 10, I just want to say that overall, it’s a very interesting game to… If you’re working in a casual space, it’s definitely a game to look into about LiveOps because, as Kalle mentioned, a lot of the especially casual live ops, there are a lot of these patterns that, maybe, the only seasonal thing is that, okay, your battle pass is now, Christmas battle pass and, and it’s a UI reskin of an existing event. And a lot of that is happening. And I said, nothing wrong with that. And it, of course, makes all the sense if you have a strong event framework. But Phase 10 is a very exceptional game in that sense that they innovate a lot and brought different gameplay mechanics and event mechanics and stuff that may be more than any other this top-performing casual game, so definitely a game to peek into if you’re interested in the variety of live events.

[00:27:48] Kalle Heikkinen: Yes. And I guess one thing that I would add about seasonal events is that if I had to give one tip, that would be to think about which seasonal events to address in your game. So, I would definitely look at which geos are most relevant to your game. And then not only that but also if there are any sizable ethnic minorities in some of the played in the game. And so then, obviously, how do we implement those, let’s say, Dragon Boat Festival events and Diwali events? Then, we definitely chill here. But definitely, I would look for GameRefinery’s implementation database and look for examples. We have all the relevant seasonal events covered over there. So, it’s definitely a good source of inspiration.

[00:28:53] Jon Jordan:

Cool, have we finished Seasonal? Do you want to talk about the mid-core winner?

[00:28:59] Kalle Heikkinen: I think we’re done.. Let’s finish this up. We can go to the minigames already.

The role of minigames in LiveOps

[00:29:06] Jon Jordan: Okay, cool, so there we go. Minigames.

[00:29:12] Erno Kiiski: Yes, minigames, minigames. As I already mentioned, it’s an interesting trend. So, this is something that we have been talking about in the industry quite a bit and for a good reason. So if we talked about a little bit what we mean by minigame and how, for example, I think about minigames, again, there’s such a variety of minigame implementations, and also coming back to the motivations of implementation. So with minigames, especially, we have seen the approaches for the UA-driven minigames and UA-driven minigame modes and minigame events  I talked about pretty much all the currently in the current market landscape scaling hardcore, midcore, 4x strategy type of a game is pretty much all of them, if you look at the recent hits, has been doing something in this space so some more casually appealing.

One very good example of a very interesting example is a game called Happy Match Cafe; it’s part of this trending subgenre of 3D match, which I mean by that is the game triple match 3D or match factory that came from Zynga. just recently. So these games, these puzzle games where you have a pile of items where you need to find similar items from the pile of 3D items and then clear the board type of a thing or find specific items to complete the levels and so on and so on. So there is this game called Happy Match Cafe, which is on top. I think it’s a top-grossing 50 game in the US, doing very well and originates from China.

But one very interesting thing in terms of minigames is what they do is that they have actually minigames as a permanent part of the game when you complete those  3d match levels, then on the side, you also have a progression for the minigame levels and what is even more interesting about that is that minigame that you have in your game is dictated by when you downloaded the app and what was the UA campaign active at the time. For example, we did an analysis of this game a while ago. So when I downloaded the game, there was this very beautiful pimple-popping type of mini-game which they, probably everybody, has seen some of those ads, but they were using that. And that was a mini-game in the game for me. But now, if you go, for example, to HappyMatchCafe‘s app store page, they actually are advertising with this drawing without lifting your finger or solving the puzzle without lifting your finger type of a minigame. And now, if you download the app, that is actually the minigame that you get. And I still have that old minigame. So, they are trying to change the minigame based on the UA campaign, which they changed. They see that, okay, this is probably testing it out, seeing that this is a campaign that seems to be working, then they are creating the minigame, then it’s part of the game permanently, and doing this evolving, changing minigames in the game and so on. So, very interesting tactics that they have.

But then, if we talk about on the other side of the spectrum, so if that is, to be honest, the main goal is UA driven. We have minigame events that are aimed at retention and engagement. And that is also more important than ever when user acquisition is harder than ever. So if we look at the top games, especially the top of the chart games, the mega games, and so on, They are, of course, getting bigger and bigger, and they are slowly turning, to be honest, into this almost platform offering a variety of experiences. If you think about Playrix, they have a different; it’s not just a match-three game anymore; they have Merge, and they have exploration and all that stuff implemented in there. But also, on a smaller scale, if you think about another type of game such as Royal Match, they have had these digging mini-games that you are digging treasures out of the board or stuff that. This type is a bit smaller scale, but they’re mini-games, after all.

And these are there to offer a little bit of variety for the game. And here, I also discussed at the start of this podcast that the important thing is thinking about how the mini-game fits in your game loop. So what is the goal? So do you want to just add a fun mini-game that keeps players engaged for  one day, and then they create a mini-game event that becomes a part of your whole event loop and reoccurs, and it’s actually interconnected into your gameplay loop, so there are actually reasons for players to engage after the initial ‘Oh this is cool something other mini-game’  fades out, so this also super important

And then if we go into the winners who I think tap into this aspect. So for the winner of the casual, we have Royal Match. We have already talked about it, and they have been adding these  I mentioned the Digital mini-game called Hidden Temple. They added it already at the start of the year, and that event type, again, is a bit similar to what I talked about with Monopoly Go, and it has been a trend. So this Digi mini-game that Royal Match implemented also has been popping up in tons of different casual games from Chrome Valley Customs, and even actually Monopoly Go added this digging mini-game, so they are going back and forth ideating and then taking the idea from the other and these top games with the mini-games. But the one we chose for a winner we haven’t really yet seen in many of the other games was…

Royal Match’s event called Magic Cauldron was added, I think, in September or October, somewhere over there for the first time, and it’s been happening ever since then once a week. So it’s part of the weekly framework, and how that event works is that you are actually solving these formula puzzles. You have potions of different colors and there’s only one right solution on which order you need to put those puzzles. And then if you put those, sorry, the potions. So if you put those potions in a specific order, then the game says that, okay, these ones were in the right spot, and these were in the wrong spot. So, what does this remind anyone of? So, of course, it reminds me of the viral hit, Wordle. So with that game, of course, it was all about figuring out the letters in the right spots. But here, it’s different coloured potions, and you have this a Wordle-like mini-game, and then how that is interconnected to the whole gameplay experience, that you get those potions by playing the core gameplay. So you are earning those potions, and then you need to play more levels to get those potions, and give that engagement loop, and then again, fits the whole match- three games, and creates those extra engagement incentives, and so on and so on. It so great, has great implementation and is very engaging; in my opinion, this is a mini-game to incentivize a match- three players as an example. Then, on the mid-core side, we chose Garena Free Fire for the event called Pet Smash. Maybe Jiri can talk a little bit more on this one, but maybe the one thing that I want to highlight over here again is the interconnection.

[00:37:44] Jiri Saarinen: Garena Free Fire is a shooter game, and they have all different cosmetics, and they have had these pets in the game for a long time already. You can get your pets that follow you, and so on. So now they brought an event that utilizes those pets. So you can give more reasons for you to have cool pets, and you actually engage with the pets more, giving more value for cosmetics and so on. Yeah, in the mode you play, there were three pets that you could choose from, and it was a Brawl Stars copy; typically, you just had two sides and three players on both sides, and you tried to kill each other’s pets kinda using different abilities and whatnot each pet had their own. But the reason why we chose this one is because in Free Fire, the whole live ops thing almost always has event calendars that are themed to certain seasons or some other things, and this event was a part of this team calendar.

So, playing the minigame event, you could also there was a couple of task missions that would link with this minigame. So, more reason to play the minigame.

[00:39:10] Erno Kiiski: Yeah, again,  in terms of interconnecting it with not just a mini-game that is slapped on top, but it’s very thought out on, okay, we’re gonna bring a mini-game. It might be engaging and refreshing, but then how it fits in the grand scheme of things where in Garena are. There are so many different kinds of events, and then how do you connect those and make everything engaging so that they work as an ecosystem, so to speak?

[00:39:38] Jon Jordan: And interesting having, yeah, literally having a shooter and having pets in there, I mean, that really seems a jarring thing, but now pets are in everything. So it’s, I guess, as the industry has moved, as what players expect to have in games, it’s broken out from the genres. It’s suddenly pets in the shooter game; just, yes, why not? So it shows how these things are becoming, I mean, in other ways or platforms for narrow.

[00:40:06] Erno Kiiski: Definitely.

Narrative-driven LiveOps events

[00:40:09] Jon Jordan: And that can bring us to the final category. So, the final category is going to be narrative, and Kalle, you’re going to take us through that one.

[00:40:19] Kalle Heikkinen: So the winner for the best narrative event this year in the mid-course section was the Cookie Run Kingdom with their Holiday Express event. So, the Cookie Run Kingdom celebrated the latest holiday period with an interactive story event, which was heavily inspired by AgatChristie novels. In the event, players followed this storyline and collected objects from different rooms so that they could present the right evidence, to say, in this murder case for the character of Jolly. And what we would say in general about Cookie Kingdom is that they’re just excellent at using narrative elements to help players build bonds with the characters in the game. But amongst all the events that they’ve had in the last year, this particular event, the Holiday Express event, really stood out for us.

And on the casual side, the winner we chose was June’s Journey with their story of the first battle pass. So June’s Journey finally jumped on to the season pass battle pass wagon last year with the travel pass event that happened last November, and it stood out for us as the best narrative event in casual, mostly due to its innovative approach to emphasize storytelling in the season pass format. So, narrative aspects were really at the forefront of this travel pass feature. And you could say that getting rewards from the pass was, you could pretty much almost consider that as the side benefit. The main beef was really to engage with the storyline. What also made this pass very unique was the player’s ability to influence specific narrative segments by making choices in the Battle Passes narrative storyline. This added a layer of interactivity and connection for the players to the event.

[00:44:30] Erno Kiiski: Yeah, that is very interesting, especially the June Journey one, I guess. Wooga’s thing has always been narrative. They’ve always been known for creating narrative things. And, especially with June’s Journey, it’s one of the things that did stand out from the market was the emphasis on the narrative. Now, they have had different kinds of events, and they have added narrative more than maybe other casual games into their events. But they’re very interesting now with the Battle Pass. Previous iterations we have seen usually don’t include them as they are not narrative features, so to speak, but now, with their implementation, they are at the forefront. You are, I think it’s called Travels. So it’s always when a new season comes, it’s a new story that you go and progress. And then you can, Kalle said, you can have an impact even on the story by making the dialogue choices and stuff like that. Something a little bit similar we have seen earlier on, Kalle mentioned earlier, the merge game, Gossip Harbor, has had a Battle Pass and small nuggets of dialogue, but not into that scale; I think that Wooga does. But they also had that, okay, if you wanna get the kinda a juiciest part of the story, that’s on the premier layer of the Battle Pass. So that was one of the. things that they try to sell to buy the premier layer of the battle pass. You are progressing similarly and getting rewards, but the narrative is a reward for a battle pass. So that’s an interesting new type of implementation happening in that space.

[00:47:49] Jon Jordan: Absolutely. Now, I guess over the whole, over everything we’ve spoken about, we’ve gone into a lot of detail on some of these games, but it shows on the whole how much innovation there is. And some of it’s, I guess, just good best practice, really well implemented, and not innovative in terms of coming up with something new. It’s using the tools that everyone has available in a really good way for the audience and the game. And it’s still fascinating to see people coming up with these innovative ways of using a battle pass. We thought we’d seen everything in a battle pass over the last five years, and now, suddenly, a very specific implementation for that very specific game, as you said, is really fascinating to see.

So thank you, everyone. We’ve covered a lot of ground there. I hope people are enjoying that. I hope you’re gonna download these games and check them out. You’ve had a lot of pointers there, so that’s a really fascinating course to action. So thank you to Erno, Kalle and Yuri, finally, for your expertise. And thank you for watching and listening to the podcast. Every episode, we are doing deep dives into the into the mobile games industry, which remains as fascinating as ever, whatever we are now. 12 years, 12 years into the free-to-play mobile gaming.

[00:51:44] Jiri Saarinen: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right.

[00:51:52] Jon Jordan: Industry is still expanding and really fascinating. So I hope you are subscribed, and I hope you’ll come back next time. Thank you very much for listening to this one. See you then. Bye. Bye