8 ms·
Monument Valley, one of the most polished and loved premium mobile games ever, has made $15m in its lifetime. Meanwhile, there are multiple F2P games with over
by fasteddie 10y ago
Monument Valley, one of the most polished and loved premium mobile games ever, has made $15m in its lifetime. Meanwhile, there are multiple F2P games with over $1b in revenue.
Now, $15m is fantastic, especially for a small studio. But high-production value F2P games from bigger studios cost around $3-5m to make, not including marketing/UA, so its pretty clear to see why studios aren't investing in premium titles at all, unless they are ports of existing content.
- Steko 10y agoI love MV but I've gotten 100x the enjoyment from Boom Beach which was released around the same time and on which I've spent a grand total of $5 which could easily have been zero. The conventional wisdom around much of the internet about f2p is, while true for many titles, just incredibly myopic as a general pigeonhole. F2P games can be great. Clash Royale, on which I've spent nothing, is by far the best new mobile game I've played in over a year.
- voltagex_ 10y agoHow pushy is it in regards to buying consumables? I don't mind F2P with a $2-$5 "no ads" unlock or similar. (I'll get unreasonably angry if I see a single ad after that, though)
- Splines 10y agoAFAIK it doesn't have ads, you pay for in-game currency to spend on cards which can also be won in-game. It's entirely possible to play the game without spending any money, although grinding may or may not be fun. I played a bit when it launched and stopped after a week or two.
- moomin 10y agoI've played it for months, haven't spent a penny. The only thing you really get from spending money is tougher opponents anyway.
- forgetsusername 10y agoI love that you've received downvotes for expressing an opinion. I've also enjoyed playing Clash Royale, and have nothing against F2P as a model, generally.
- ricardobeat 10y agoCan you provide some examples?
- j2bax 10y agoCandy Crush, Clash of Clans.
- fasteddie 10y agoClash of Clans, Candy Crush, Game of War, Puzzle and Dragons, and I believe Monster Strike have all crossed the $1b mark.
- hkmurakami 10y agoI'd add Line/Disney's Tsumtsum to that list. Possibly Shironeko by Koropura.
- aaronbrethorst 10y agoMeanwhile, there are multiple F2P games with over $1b in revenue True, but at least the folks at ustwo games still have their souls.
- minimaxir 10y agoIt's really not fair to keep citing the "F2P is evil!" meme nowadays. If you haven't played a F2P game in 2016, I strongly recommend taking a look. Game like Clash Royale, Hearthstone, and Kingdom Hearts are fair and are not aggressive/condescending toward in the goal of generating revenue. Mostly because developers finally realized that making a good game is just as important as monetization.
- aaronbrethorst 10y agoSo Supercell, Blizzard, and Square Enix/Success are not awful. That's great, but what about all of the others? Kabam, Big Fish, Machine Zone, King, Playtika, EA, and the list goes on.
- 1123581321 10y agoHearthstone is a unique bird as its playerbase is used to Blizzard and Magic and so expects to pay something like a AAA game price for card unlocks. It's not really necessary for Blizzard to sell the idea of paying in Hearthstone. Clash Royale is very aggressive about getting money. It does appear passive because it's better for revenue if non-enthusiastic players progress slowly, but trying to do anything but play a few games a day without spending money is intentionally made difficult as you'll run into progress blocks faster that way. It's quite clever. It also benefits from increased sophistication of players in that it can signal when to make the premium purchases more subtly than was necessary a few years ago. I haven't played Assassin's Creed, but it makes sense to me that a AAA game franchise has a better chance standing out on mobile as a premium game, rather than associating with less prestigious IP. I certainly think Ubi has learned from its poor attempts to milk its lower-priority IP by farming it out to F2P developers, so a transition has been made in the company overall.
- 10y ago
- forrestthewoods 10y agoIt's even worse than that. ustwo isn't a small studio. They're a digital product studio with offices in London, Sydney, Malmö, and New York. They have a few hundred employees. Their games are basically marketing for their real business.
- ThomPete 10y agoHow is that worse? Most of their employeess are making other things than Monument Valley making money in many other ways. Not sure what the problem is.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoIt's worse for gamers, because it implies that making good-quality premium games is not sustainable as a primary revenue stream.
- tamana 10y agoWhy should making a game 2 years ago be a revenue stream today?
- minimaxir 10y agoInterestingly, there's game theory in play: some developers nowadays are switching to premium games (Assassin's Creed and Crashlands for recent examples) because there is too much competition in the F2P space. Even super polished games with premium licenses get left in the dust if they do not catch on immediately. (Star Wars: Uprising and Marvel's Avengers Alliance 2 for examples). Whether or not that's a good idea is hard to determine without hard numbers, though.
- Falcon9 10y agoI can't speak to Assasin's Creed, but in the case of Crashlands we can see that it was a very good idea: they've made enough money that for the first time they're paying themselves salary and even expanding their studio with two new hires. There's no way their original F2P plans for that game would have succeeded at that level - I bought the game because it was premium and because I had a good experience with the premium game Punch Club that same week and wanted more "real gaming." (I've since become a gigantic fan of Butterscotch Shenanigans, the developer, and have a lot of insight into their operations. Their Game Dev comedy podcast, Coffee with Butterscotch, is the highlight of my week.) Of course that works for them because they're a small studio with small budgets aren't looking for Clash of Clans levels of success. The ceiling is so much lower on a premium game, but it's plenty high for their current situation, and the competition is so much less severe (so the risk is way lower for such a quality game, which again fits their situation).
- ThomPete 10y agoThey have also invested many many many times what UsTwo have in marketing budgets and development of the game.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- AJRF 10y agoRead a wired article that SuperCell spends $5m a day on advertising.
- ThomPete 10y agoYeah exactly. Revenue is big but what is profit?
- hullo 10y ago"With just 3 games, Supercell made $924M in profits on $2.3B in revenue in 2015" http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/09/with-just-3-games-supercell-made-924m-in-profits-on-2-3b-in-revenue-in-2015/ http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/09/with-just-3-games-supercel...
- ambicapter 10y agoThose F2P games are in a whole different league of replayability compared to Monument Valley. I played through MV once. The F2P games you refer to are endless competitions.
- Splines 10y agoTheoretically, yes. But I've played plenty of F2P games without dumping a single cent in, eventually hit the paywall and delete the game. (I think the minute you pay a single penny into the game, sunk cost fallacy sets in, so I avoid starting that in the first place).
- sleepychu 10y agoIs that "I already spent Xk$ for that to have been worthwhile I really should buy this other thing for y$?"
- Splines 10y agoPretty much. I wouldn't be surprised if F2P games price their offerings to get people "on the treadmill". As they progress through the game it starts requiring more and more money to sustain your current pace.
- sleepychu 10y agoThis task is supposed to take you 1 day but we'll let you skip to playing the game for 0.10$!
- hueving 10y agoTrue, from a gamer's perspective those games are trash, but unfortunately studios discovered it's much easier to make money selling cocaine rather than a fine cuisine.
- vacri 10y agoThe same is true of movies. The regurgative crap pulls in the bux, so that's what's made. It makes more sense when you think of the industry as a business rather than a charity.
- vonklaus 10y ago> has made $15m in its lifetime Is that true? I thought (even though it says 2015) that the ~5m ish was total revenue for the project? This seemed pretty good, and clearly I was happy for the devs as over a 3 year period if you back out the costs and divide by 3 it was ~$1.4M profit a year, a nice bottom line. $15m would be better, but again not the mega block buster. Where did that $15 number come from btw? less office/backoffice/distribution ect...so not really a bottom line.
- dav- 10y agoCheck the infographic[1] again, it states $14.3m all-time revenue. [1] https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1600/1*OnCkdwQnNOOQNGMszDJqGQ.png https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1600/1*OnCkdwQnNOO...
- vonklaus 10y agoahh thanks. I was looking at just the year 2 stats[0]. Good for them. Not only is the disclosure/information super cool and forthcoming and a good way to help out the community, but just a cool take on an industry that is typically secretive and cutththroat. [0]http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2015/1/15/monument-valley-in-numbers http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2015/1/15/monument-v...
- archagon 10y agoI see them as entirely different products. Casinos will always make more money than museums.
- dspillett 10y ago> Meanwhile, there are multiple F2P games with over $1b in revenue. But how many make near to nothing? I'm told that some, small-to-medium players particularly, are moving back towards premium because the initial effort of generating sufficient content (or tweaking and testing the algorithms that generate content programatically, or fine-tuning the balance of PvP/co-op segments) is quite a risk. The bigger players can afford to invest in a number of such projects on the risk/value analysis of one or two being successful will more than cover the cost of the ones that aren't, and very small players (individuals, small indie groups) do it by sinking time not money (i.e. products that start out as an experiment or side project), but in between it becomes harder to justify.
- ericcholis 10y agoAmazing Indie films pale in box office numbers compared to summer blockbusters. Both have their place and will attract different type of creative individuals.
- radiorental 10y agoAnd from another perspective, each will attract different types of developers. MV is less about making money than it is about challenging oneself, delivering a creative vision and being outside the mainstream.