Games of Thrones: why modern games need popular titles
More and more good games are being created based on well-known franchises of movies, TV shows and literature. And sometimes the games themselves create new series in which they make films and produce souvenirs. In this article I will explain the growing popularity of titles in the gaming industry from the standpoint of mass culture, marketing and, of course, business.
Go!
The gaming industry, especially in the post-Soviet space, is very young. Everyone calls the same things differently. To be sure that we speak the same language, let's check the terminology.
I would like to share with you even a lot of clever words, but this article is about something else. So immediately to the point.
Every year the number of games released under license is growing. Especially in the western world. To understand this, I looked at the contents of the box office top in the US mobile market. Analyzing companies that use IP in their games, I realized that the use of IP is part of the strategy of individual developers. Look at GameLoft, Kabam, Glu Mobile. Every year they increase the share of games by popular titles in their product portfolio. From the perspective of the industry - this is a trend. That where the whole game devil is moving slowly or quickly. By the way, I talk about trends at a round table on the trends of the gaming industry - more about this can be found in another article on Habré .
So why do companies make games by title?
The answer lies in one of the key problems faced by all who wish to release the game to the market. Very high marketing prices . The cost of attracting 1 player to a mobile game comes to $ 2-5. In some games, it may be $ 10! This indicator is called CPI (Cost Per Install). At the same time, the retention of mobile projects rarely exceeds 2-5%, i.e. By the end of the first month of 100% of the players you will have a maximum of 5%. And if you consider that it pays an average of 1-2%, it is easy to calculate the cost of attracting one paying player.
Mobile games are a low-margin business. Those. for every dollar invested in marketing, you will return approximately the same dollar. More details about the numerical characteristics of game projects here . The formula for the success of any FTP game in a rough approximation is as follows:
LTV> CPI
')
That is, the lifetime income from the player is greater than the cost of attracting it. To make this true, developers are forced to either increase LTV or decrease CPI. The first is achieved by retaining the player (retention) and monetization (ARPU). To lower your CPI, you have the following tools:
What does it mean to have a franchise in the game in terms of marketing? Only one thing - to reduce the cost of traffic. Simply put, if your game is made in the Lord of the Rings setting, an army of fans will come to you just like that. And here it is important to understand that if the game itself is terrible, a cool title will not save it. Yes, it will attract a lot of players, but most of them will leave when they see the poor quality of the product. The share of those who play only for the title is much lower.
So the game "MARVEL: Battle of Champions" from the studio Kabam has gathered a huge audience in the first months after the release thanks to IP Marvel.
Another example is the advertising campaign of the Studio Machine Zone, using the image of a celebrity - Arnold Schwarzenegger . The authors of the game paid a total of $ 4.5 million for showing a 30 second video in an attempt to bring their Mobile Strike game to a highly competitive market. For Machine Zone, this is not the first use of celebrity: American actress Kate Upton was actively involved in advertising their previous hit Game of War.
Ok, I realized that titles are cool, what should I do, you ask. I answer.
For the sake of this block, the whole article was :-) The developer has a number of possibilities for using titles that can have a significant impact on the success of the project. Let's consider each separately:
1. Buy a license. If you are a corporation and have money, you simply take and buy IP Master of Orion for your new game. Base fans of the old game you provided. Here it is important to remember two things. The first is that the fact of having an IP is not a guarantee of success. Second, an unsuccessful product reduces the impact of IP. Every successful game only strengthens the Blizzard franchise, and every unsuccessful game undermines their credibility. Using licenses is like a reputation game. Any reckless step can damage it.
To buy a license, you must first find the copyright holder. His search and negotiation are usually engaged in bizdevy (business development managers). The license holder may ask you for two types of payments - up front (one-time admission for the fact of the transaction) and royalty (monthly payments from the project revenue).
And again I want to warn you. High up front - the risk not to recoup the investment. High royalty is a risk of low business margin. But even if you received good conditions (better than that of the greedy uncle Martin), do not be in a hurry to rejoice. The license for the Battle Toads title may cost a penny, if only because the number of fans in this series is not so large. Unfortunately, all licenses can be divided into cheap and useless, because the audience of their fans is not large enough, and expensive and useful, which can be too expensive. Like Game of Thrones.
2. Use barter. You enter into an agreement with the copyright owner of the still not popular title. For example, a film from an unknown series that has not yet been released. In this case, admission and royalties are minimal and available even for small companies. That's just the probability of success of your game begins to depend on the success of the film. “Cop disassembly 24” may not be the most successful film and the failure of the original works may pull the failure of your game. On the other hand, if the movie “ignites”, then its advertising budgets will perfectly work on the promotion of your game. This way of getting the title is always a lottery.
3. Use reference for someone else's title. For example, in the development of the game Dragon of Atlantis, Kabam studio used a picture of a young blonde girl with a dragon on her shoulder in the western market. Nothing like? And if we consider that the launch took place at the same time as the appearance of Daenerys Targaryen in the Game of Thrones, everything at once becomes obvious. Here I must draw your attention to the fact that the use of references to other people's products does not violate the license, if it is not a direct copy.
I do not urge to copy all popular titles, but sometimes references play a positive role. For example, the well-known MMORPG World of Warcraft has in itself references to hundreds of works of art: books, movies, TV shows and even other games. And this is a fan.
4. Create your own title. After all, from somewhere they come from :-) Very often, developers create successful series of games that actually become large game titles. This Mortal Combat, and StarCraft, and The Elder Scrolls and many others. A new gaming brand is born only from mass recognition. When Blizzard chose a strategy of focusing on quality in their products, they embarked on the path of becoming a brand from their own company. When King poured hundreds of millions of dollars into marketing Candy Crush Saga, she created a brand. And now every gamer has heard about the series of games Warcraft and Saga.
You can create a gaming title with your own hands. Playing with original gameplay, high quality, or large marketing budgets can create a new series. And this is awesome! Who does not like good games?
In conclusion, I will say that titles are a powerful tool. And whether it will be used to create the tenth game in low quality for the sake of brand exploitation, or will it lay a solid foundation for a new series - it's up to you.
Go!
Terminology
The gaming industry, especially in the post-Soviet space, is very young. Everyone calls the same things differently. To be sure that we speak the same language, let's check the terminology.
- Title (Title) - a product or a series of works of entertainment (entertainment), which has become popular. Game of thrones is a popular title :-)
- IP (Intellectual Property) - Intellectual Property. For example, the Harry Potter title is IP, but War and Peace is not. Simply put, IP is a title holder that has a copyright holder.
- Reference (reference) - referring to another product of entertainment. Those. you can tell, i'm making a game in a “school of magic” setting. My reference is the Harry Potter series.
- License - permission to use IP. Licensed game is a game whose developer is legally entitled to exploit IP as part of a licensing agreement.
I would like to share with you even a lot of clever words, but this article is about something else. So immediately to the point.
Why make games under licenses
Every year the number of games released under license is growing. Especially in the western world. To understand this, I looked at the contents of the box office top in the US mobile market. Analyzing companies that use IP in their games, I realized that the use of IP is part of the strategy of individual developers. Look at GameLoft, Kabam, Glu Mobile. Every year they increase the share of games by popular titles in their product portfolio. From the perspective of the industry - this is a trend. That where the whole game devil is moving slowly or quickly. By the way, I talk about trends at a round table on the trends of the gaming industry - more about this can be found in another article on Habré .
So why do companies make games by title?
The answer lies in one of the key problems faced by all who wish to release the game to the market. Very high marketing prices . The cost of attracting 1 player to a mobile game comes to $ 2-5. In some games, it may be $ 10! This indicator is called CPI (Cost Per Install). At the same time, the retention of mobile projects rarely exceeds 2-5%, i.e. By the end of the first month of 100% of the players you will have a maximum of 5%. And if you consider that it pays an average of 1-2%, it is easy to calculate the cost of attracting one paying player.
Mobile games are a low-margin business. Those. for every dollar invested in marketing, you will return approximately the same dollar. More details about the numerical characteristics of game projects here . The formula for the success of any FTP game in a rough approximation is as follows:
LTV> CPI
')
That is, the lifetime income from the player is greater than the cost of attracting it. To make this true, developers are forced to either increase LTV or decrease CPI. The first is achieved by retaining the player (retention) and monetization (ARPU). To lower your CPI, you have the following tools:
- Reduce the amount of purchased traffic , leaving only the most efficient channels. For large projects this is not an option.
- Launch cross-promo , driving traffic from your other games or from PR activities.
- Get featured . Here either you are a big corporation like SuperCell, or you have made a masterpiece and you are lucky.
- Use viral mechanisms . Word of mouth has not been canceled. One of the attempts to disperse it is sharing in social networks and game mechanics with friends.
- Become a social phenomenon . This is where word of mouth will attract you to millions of players. One minus: this option is available in the main corporations, because it requires not only high quality, but also multi-billion marketing budgets. You should not hope for the miracle of World of Warcraft, Angry Birds and Clash of Clans.
- Make a game by title . Consider this item in more detail.
What does it mean to have a franchise in the game in terms of marketing? Only one thing - to reduce the cost of traffic. Simply put, if your game is made in the Lord of the Rings setting, an army of fans will come to you just like that. And here it is important to understand that if the game itself is terrible, a cool title will not save it. Yes, it will attract a lot of players, but most of them will leave when they see the poor quality of the product. The share of those who play only for the title is much lower.
So the game "MARVEL: Battle of Champions" from the studio Kabam has gathered a huge audience in the first months after the release thanks to IP Marvel.
Another example is the advertising campaign of the Studio Machine Zone, using the image of a celebrity - Arnold Schwarzenegger . The authors of the game paid a total of $ 4.5 million for showing a 30 second video in an attempt to bring their Mobile Strike game to a highly competitive market. For Machine Zone, this is not the first use of celebrity: American actress Kate Upton was actively involved in advertising their previous hit Game of War.
Ok, I realized that titles are cool, what should I do, you ask. I answer.
How can I increase the efficiency of my game using title?
For the sake of this block, the whole article was :-) The developer has a number of possibilities for using titles that can have a significant impact on the success of the project. Let's consider each separately:
1. Buy a license. If you are a corporation and have money, you simply take and buy IP Master of Orion for your new game. Base fans of the old game you provided. Here it is important to remember two things. The first is that the fact of having an IP is not a guarantee of success. Second, an unsuccessful product reduces the impact of IP. Every successful game only strengthens the Blizzard franchise, and every unsuccessful game undermines their credibility. Using licenses is like a reputation game. Any reckless step can damage it.
To buy a license, you must first find the copyright holder. His search and negotiation are usually engaged in bizdevy (business development managers). The license holder may ask you for two types of payments - up front (one-time admission for the fact of the transaction) and royalty (monthly payments from the project revenue).
And again I want to warn you. High up front - the risk not to recoup the investment. High royalty is a risk of low business margin. But even if you received good conditions (better than that of the greedy uncle Martin), do not be in a hurry to rejoice. The license for the Battle Toads title may cost a penny, if only because the number of fans in this series is not so large. Unfortunately, all licenses can be divided into cheap and useless, because the audience of their fans is not large enough, and expensive and useful, which can be too expensive. Like Game of Thrones.
2. Use barter. You enter into an agreement with the copyright owner of the still not popular title. For example, a film from an unknown series that has not yet been released. In this case, admission and royalties are minimal and available even for small companies. That's just the probability of success of your game begins to depend on the success of the film. “Cop disassembly 24” may not be the most successful film and the failure of the original works may pull the failure of your game. On the other hand, if the movie “ignites”, then its advertising budgets will perfectly work on the promotion of your game. This way of getting the title is always a lottery.
3. Use reference for someone else's title. For example, in the development of the game Dragon of Atlantis, Kabam studio used a picture of a young blonde girl with a dragon on her shoulder in the western market. Nothing like? And if we consider that the launch took place at the same time as the appearance of Daenerys Targaryen in the Game of Thrones, everything at once becomes obvious. Here I must draw your attention to the fact that the use of references to other people's products does not violate the license, if it is not a direct copy.
I do not urge to copy all popular titles, but sometimes references play a positive role. For example, the well-known MMORPG World of Warcraft has in itself references to hundreds of works of art: books, movies, TV shows and even other games. And this is a fan.
4. Create your own title. After all, from somewhere they come from :-) Very often, developers create successful series of games that actually become large game titles. This Mortal Combat, and StarCraft, and The Elder Scrolls and many others. A new gaming brand is born only from mass recognition. When Blizzard chose a strategy of focusing on quality in their products, they embarked on the path of becoming a brand from their own company. When King poured hundreds of millions of dollars into marketing Candy Crush Saga, she created a brand. And now every gamer has heard about the series of games Warcraft and Saga.
You can create a gaming title with your own hands. Playing with original gameplay, high quality, or large marketing budgets can create a new series. And this is awesome! Who does not like good games?
In conclusion, I will say that titles are a powerful tool. And whether it will be used to create the tenth game in low quality for the sake of brand exploitation, or will it lay a solid foundation for a new series - it's up to you.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/280448/
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