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One Special Day
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Arecord 80 games industry partners large and small from around the world united on Friday 2 October for SpecialEffect’s fifth One Special Day fundraiser, donating game sales and running a wide range of other events including virtual staff challenges and livestreams.
A range of game studios pledged to donate some or all of their game sales on the Friday to the charity, with games ranging from Rovio’s Angry Birds 2, to Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky and Boneloaf’s Gang Beasts.
In addition, volunteers took part in One Special Challenge, raising money via physical exercise, such as runs, walking delays and cycling.
Money was also raised via a special One Special Day clothes line on Insert Coin, which included badges, face masks and hoodies.
The event saw a series of livestreams, featuring speakers such as Rovio’s Elise Lemaire, Space Ape Games’ Deborah Mensah-Bonsu, Rare’s Craig Duncan and Double Fine’s Tim Schafer.
The charity will use the funds to help physically disabled gamers across the world to play to the best of their abilities.
There’s still time to donate at www.onespecialday.org.uk or for more information contact Nick Streeter at nick@specialeffect.org.uk
Pictured: One Special Day was supported by numerous companies, such as EA Dice (community manager Adam Freeman, left), by livestream talks, socially-distanced runs and many other activities, as well as game sales.
Industry Voices
MCV/DEVELOP gives the industry a platform for its own views in its own words. Do you have a burning hot take for the world of games? Get in touch!
Microsoft x Bethesda - ramifications for the game discovery ecosystem.
Simon Carless, founder of GameDiscoverCo
You’ve all seen Microsoft’s announcement that it’s buying ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion. In cash. But as someone who thinks deeply about game discoverability – how people find and play your games – what are the ramifications? They’re both subtle and wide-reaching, in my view.
This multi-billion dollar investment is going directly into the ‘content wars.’ Specifically into the game subscription wars, where Microsoft is intent on being ahead of Google, Amazon, Apple and others (and particularly Sony!).
Should you need confirmation, the Microsoft PR notes an “intent to bring Bethesda’s future games into Xbox Game Pass the same day they launch on Xbox or PC.” This is a continuation of the play that has been increasingly obvious in recent months. Ultimately, the Game Pass subscription plan (software as a service) is the ‘center of the offering’ for Microsoft, not a piece of hardware. This is incredibly relevant for game discoverability, since it shifts the lens from an ‘evaluate and buy’ to a ‘subscribe and try’ mode. So all eyes should be on this as it continues to roll out.
Although Bethesda’s games won’t be removed from other devices, it seems unlikely that the biggest upcoming titles will also launch on PlayStation, unless already contracted. Bloomberg’s Dina Bass confirmed as much with Phil Spencer – Microsoft will deliver Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo as PlayStation timed exclusives as Bethesda agreed. After that, games will be on Xbox, PC, Game Pass and other consoles on a case by case basis.
This doesn’t mean new games won’t make it to Steam or Switch, but mainly as teasers for the Game Pass ecosystem, in my view. Selling a game for $60 on Steam, when you know you can get a $10 a month subscription that gets you access to it and hundreds of other games? That’s upsell in the long term, folks.
So let’s take a quick inventory on the subscription wars. Nintendo isn’t interested in fighting on that playing field, and possibly never will be. Same for Steam, besides hosting subscription services like EA Play on its platform. And PlayStation would prefer not to, but can probably feel itself getting dragged inexorably into the fray.
So maybe there’s all kinds of people out there, and maybe game subscriptions aren’t going to dominate in the future. And for Sony, I’ve got to believe that they’ve been internally quoting the movie War Games, where “the only winning move is not to play.” (I think ‘mutually assured destruction’ was involved too somewhere.)
Yet with Sony’s future success hinging on PlayStation being a profit center, not paying billions for devs and publishers, it’s difficult for them to compete with Microsoft. So.. maybe it’s looking like the classic ‘monopolist as disruptor’ situation – at the expense of Company X.
Here’s where the ‘wider-ranging’ discussion comes in. When large companies use lossleading tactics to get ahead in the subscription space, how is it going to distort the traditional premium game selling/discovery ecosystem?
Could there be some surprising upsides in here for devs or publishers who can get on the subscription train at the right station? Or could there be downsides, as good relationships with platform holders who acquire your games for subscription services end up creating large, complex new gatekeepers to making money, if you don’t make a F2P game.
Guess we’re going to find out. And the true ramification here is that Microsoft is making multi-billion dollar acquisitions because it wants to accelerate the subscription transformation in the game biz. And we’re all along for the ride.
Simon Carless is the founder of the GameDiscoverCo agency, and runs the popular GameDiscoverCo game discoverability newsletter, which looks at how people find your premium PC/console game in the 2020s. He was formerly Independent Games Festival chairperson, one of the folks running GDC, and a game developer at Atari and Eidos. https://gamediscoverability.substack.com
Time to write a new strategy guide for the business
Joost van Dreunen, startup advisor, lecturer at NYU Stern, co-founder of SuperData Research
Several years ago famed designer Raph Koster told a crowd of several hundred industry professionals and aspiring game makers: “Being creative is not necessarily a unique virtue.” You could hear a pin drop. The celebrity game maker dared to desecrate the sanctity of creativity by calling it unremarkable.
For years we’ve clung to the idea that the only path to success was that of a single brilliant person working tirelessly on a creative vision. Consider, for instance, Eric Barone, the designer behind indie darling Stardew Valley, who stated: “I really truly believe that if you create the right game, and it’s a really good game, it’ll hype itself. It’ll market itself.” As if by magic, a marketplace will naturally become efficient, players will have no trouble finding content they enjoy, and artists find critical acclaim purely on the merits of their work. Because that is how billion-dollar industries function, right?
In the case of Stardew Valley, its creator was, of course, correct. Barone’s game sold over ten million copies and generated millions in revenues. But this narrative conveniently overlooks the fact that Barone’s girlfriend subsidized Stardew Valley’s development for years despite being in school. It effectively shielded him from any financial accountability while working on his game. Behind every successful independent game designer stands a parent, friend, spouse, or sibling who helped out. No one makes games in a vacuum.
We’ve come a long way. After teetering on the fringes for decades, video games have finally become a mainstream form of entertainment. It took a few decades and a global pandemic but now all signs point toward interactive entertainment finally having its day in the sun.
Game company valuations are skyhigh, investors continue to pour money into the market, and quite literally all of the biggest firms in the world are spending billions to claim their stake. It’s not that we needed the validation of others to know that this is an exciting industry. But it sure is nice to have outgrown our awkward teenage years and become a fullygrown cultural form of expression.
This recent ascension also comes with important new affordances. For one, the industry’s “ internal logic” is in desperate need of a revision. Specifically, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves – the industry’s shared narrative on how it works – is in need of an update.
The myth of the lone genius is just one of the many unexamined clichés that has long guided our decision making. As if to say that what truly matters in the games industry does not require the input of any of its other participants. Perhaps because of its incredible growth, a large disparity continues to exist between the games industry’s conventional wisdom and an economically grounded approach to how it functions and innovates. What got us here won’t carry us much further.
Now that we have the attention of the world, we owe it to ourselves, our craft, and our audiences to think as creatively about the business as we do about content. To do that we’ll have to broaden our understanding to include the wider intercourse between game designers, producers, industry analysts, financiers, marketing specialists, and other decision-makers. They all earn a living by busying themselves with the creation of interactive entertainment and accordingly shape the industry at large. Talent will always be a critical component. But it is not the only thing that matters. Time for a new strategy guide.
Joost van Dreunen teaches at the NYU Stern School of Business and is the author of One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games. Previously Joost was co-founder and CEO of SuperData Research, a games market research firm, which was acquired by Nielsen in 2018. He currently serves as an advisor to Parsec Gaming, and publishes a newsletter on gaming, tech, and entertainment called SuperJoost Playlist. More details at www.superjoost.net.
Breaking down the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on mobile games
Tech companies are some of the few businesses that have been able to continue to grow in a world changed by the global COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns; the mobile games industry included.
In my previous column, I noted that Q1 2020 was by far the best quarter ever for mobile game downloads, with 13.4 billion downloads from the App Store and Google Play, up 21 per cent quarter-on-quarter and 39 per cent yearover-year. In Q2 2020, downloads rose again to 15 million, while in Q3 2020 installs dipped slightly to 14.3 billion – still much higher than previous years.
Player spending, meanwhile, has been on the up. In Q1 2020, it hit $17.5 billion, up 6.6% Q/Q and 16% Y/Y. By Q2, revenue grew sharply to $20.1 billion, with growth slowing but still continuing in Q3 to $20.9 billion.
TOP GENRES
Games that have proven particularly successful are the usual top grossers: PUBG Mobile, Honor of Kings, Candy Crush Saga, and even the location-based title Pokemon GO. Titles that connect people have also found success, including the likes of Roblox, Words With Friends 2, Scrabble Go, and Fortnite, prior to the latter’s removal from the app stores.
Using Sensor Tower Game Taxonomy to drill further down into which genres have seen the biggest gains this year, we took a look at the growth in downloads in the U.S. for the top 100 grossing games in each category.
We found that U.S. mobile games revenue in H1 2020 for Simulation games grew 63.2 per cent Y/Y to more than $851 million, powered by sales from titles such as Roblox and Township. The second fastest-growing genre was Racing, with player spending rising by 51.9 per cent Y/Y to $110.3 million, while Casino rounded out the top three risers, with revenue up 46.4 per cent to $2.1 billion.
Casino also saw big gains for downloads, with U.S downloads for the top 100 games up 39.1 per cent Y/Y in H1 2020 to 89.4 million, led by the likes of Coin Master and Slotomania. Racing was the No. 2 top riser, with installs up 33.3 per cent Y/Y to 75.6 million, while the Shooter genre ranked No. 3 for growth, with downloads rising 33 per cent to 85.5 million.
LONG-TERM CHANGES?
Mobile games industry growth has headed into overdrive this year, though this in itself is nothing new. Prior to the pandemic, major IP holders have had enormous mobile launches, with Niantic’s Pokemon GO, Nintendo’s Mario Kart Tour, and Activision’s Call of Duty: Mobile generating well over 100 million worldwide downloads each in their first month. Right now, it looks like the impact of the lockdown on consumer habits will be long-term, resulting in more people playing games on their mobile devices than ever.
But headwinds lie ahead, including the delayed changes to the IDFA on iOS, restricting the ways in which publishers can target users, which could have a material impact on revenue and game downloads. User acquisition will unquestionaly become more challenging, and this industry has been built on it.
Craig Chapple is Mobile Insights Strategist, EMEA at mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower and was previously Senior Editor at PocketGamer.biz. www.sensortower.com
