AskGM #2: How to Compete Against Clash of Clans? | Sand Forge Games with CEO Khaled Alroumi

I just want to start off saying thank you very much for participating did take a quick look in terms of some of the YouTube videos of your first two games and it seems like you guys have put a ton of investment and a lot of effort into this so which i think is is is great and but I thought maybe we could just first start by having you talk a little bit about you know can you talk about yourself and Sanford's games the team like how every thing I kind of put put together just just give everyone a little bit of context in terms of you guys are yeah I shall just just first of all this I would thank you as well you know giving this opportunity you know I think as a team it's been a pleasure especially but you know I'm listening to your podcast like great thank you so yes like I I graduated you know the

accounting degree and worked in a typical job but then when suddenly I had an opportunity to work on the gaming industry my brother is actually like an entrepreneur you know and started like a few businesses so he said he thought you know maybe let's you know jump into the wagon of corrugate so we had like very long you know maybe six kids you know just riding along the learning curve yeah well it's been really tough you know especially that there is no industry here you know there is no expertise so it's been wake up we started you know run our games and then slowly we move to move like to meet core games and I tried to learn you know everything about free-to-play games to monetize how to retain and this is where we are now you know it's like that we decided to just focus into one genre okay yes yeah the team you know I wouldn't say that they have like a fast experience you know basically they were along you know with us in this off right so it's like whatever we have you know

we all learn Latino by a by multiple tries multiple attempts you know currently we have three people so it's it's me I had hunted the game design and the project management and then I have two programmers with us okay and everything else is like outsourced you know our voice acting native everything is out sourced i we're funded by the you know we have like a fun from the Kuwaiti government okay for so basically we took like a fund and we have enough funding you know to you know just push out one one one game okay and like in terms of the risk we decided to keep working on what we know best you know to as I think the best chances you know success you know like as I share with you the document you know you can see like all the things that we tried that believe me

I've tried that jungle you know right right right and just just to give the people listening some context it seems like and maybe you can tell me by just looking at your history so you guys first launched this game called war Landers and it kind of seems like clash of clans plus game of war put together right with kind of like a Kingdom rush Ironhide art style and then from there you guys then took that game and then you kind of pivoted it to this game called mini kingdoms where it's basically you guys took got rid of the March battle kind of for export and then kind of shifted the the troop building in the buildings to touch more of an energy system rather than your traditional clash of clans system right exactly exactly and then maybe we can share some video of that and we can show people you know sort of that evolution and then in terms of this third game which you're calling war

fronts what you're trying to do is you're trying to add a little bit more of just like system design and depth in terms of the gameplay and then also keeping that energy mechanic right is that a good characteristic the biggest thing I would say is like the production body okay you know we were really like actually putting some effects they don't like Minnie King Duvall and that there was no effects you know everything was like you know just let's make it understandable and that's what we don't know what looks good no no there's a narrative there is a lore you know there is no really putting some effort into the quality of the game entirely you know from programming okay and then um is there any gameplay that you can kind of share screen with us or I actually might have it as well so I could kind of share screen and maybe we'll come kind of walk through the first game in the second game no I actually like to the servers for the two games is not like maybe YouTube videos

or something yeah but I'm not sure if I have something ready right now you know let me let me try and share something then come on yes just like the videos I share and we can check them out I could like explain just a few others can you see my screen yep okay so here and so when you guys first started the battle mechanic here is more clash of plans right where you just drop and then the the army unit will just kind of Auto path and find what buildings to to attack all right exactly and also you can see like the units here they had like so you know physicality to them yeah oh they move and no basically I can really didn't know where to give the weights you know for certain elements and features yeah so we thought no the unit's moving you know in a good way it might be like amazing we had no clue that people you

know didn't get I told right in it and then you you had kind of showed that for expert and I can I also kind of show maybe this part here where yeah you actually did have like them the marching and the battle and that's right why no one have been to it you're talking to the guy you're talking to mr. game amor right now and with Paul and then you know are are seeing at fun plus on king of Babylon we had like you know our core team was like 60 someone people plus we had another tech team of 19 like three people going after that market is very so I commend you for your ambitiousness like nice don't do not lack in in sort of like the they go for it spirits that's great but yeah I like the pivot to something a little more tractable is is is definitely like

probably good move and then but JJ cave if you just said let me do this - say ones one thing is like the reason for that is that we thought you know we needed to see where areas you know in clash of clans that they loved yes where we can tell you one thing was the social you know yeah it was like when you attack someone when you get attacked you basically like getting attacked by someone who you know you don't know who he is or what happened by directly we wanted something where it is more social so but not you might see you know people next to you people moving so we thought that you know this would really add value right and just to be clear so I I think that line of thinking it is the right way to think right so you like what can you guys do on top of flash of plans to kind of make make it more appealing better these type of sort of March battle for X Games do have a strong social component where you know that encourages cooperation that encourages

that's like it makes the game feel alive when you've got so much chatter happening you've got different battles going on and it feels like a live world to that part I definitely think that like thinking in terms of how do we make this better and how do we add art you know whatever you're plus one game design element is that's fantastic I think the only thing I was saying is that you then also have to think about in terms of like the practical execution like what is it what kind of team do we have and what is it going to take to be successful against that vision because who knows maybe that vision could could work you know I mean who knows but but then you you guys would have to actually execute that which would require a pretty pretty robust team and budget and things things like that so anyway so yeah maybe you guys shift it to two more of the straight-up clash clash of clans design although I did notice that in terms of the building and troops you

guys change that a little bit can you speak to kind of your thinking in terms of switching to an energy mechanic yeah yeah so so basically like what we learned from the month is that the infrastructure is too much for us to handle you know my invest you know like a lot of time just to optimize the matchmaking only which was like a disaster you know we had like areas teleport it was a disaster so we thought you know okay what else can we improve competitiveness said okay let's make it simpler faster you know and more meaningful like in strategic depth in the background right so like one of the things you guys added was this notion of like padding or building attack priority which is which is a little bit different [Music] that's right that yeah that one was like you know we want the decision to be more informed you know most the time when you play these games like you put your army and you're not sure you might blame the AI or something like that so here we put like more control with the player yeah that way that the decision might be like

more strategic compared to you know just like random is out front of us you know and the energy mechanic was to make it you know faster so there is no training there is no way time you know you you get in you play like two or three games which whatever like we thought was optimal you know and then and then you just build that the session is up right yeah although I think depends like I mean but that's kind of part of you know part of classic plans or you know a game like in war is building out all your units and then depleting those units and then building them back up again and depleting them so you know there there are certainly going to be like system design effects of potentially monetization effects by by having that sort of a decision that that's more there would be like an extreme nothing was changing you know right all of that being really frustrating these impacts make actually come more mid to late game as your you know and you're getting like

more more resources but but that was also an interesting point that you made so you see you had initial set of KPIs around d1 7:30 retention for that first design you kind of stripped out the the March battle stuff and then you shifted more focused on clash of clans with change in terms of the energy system and then you actually didn't see much of a difference in your KPIs were they like almost exactly the same or what was the what was it Delta I would say that the initial like three days we are just at this was so like war lenders for example the one with the much of battle had like thirty percent or twenty seven percent they want yeah the new the new version got like maybe 35 okay there was a slight increase right and I think you could kind of expect something like that where you've got a game with like a lot of complexity and then you kind stripped out some of that complexity so then it's like the core loop and the

funnel gameplay people are like okay this is kind of like clash of clans or whatever so you would expect a little bit of an increase which it seems like you saw so that's good and then assume so now it sounds like what you're saying is this third game and I haven't seen video of this third game but this game hope you're calling war fronts is basically going to be this game with higher production value primarily that's a primary differentiator yeah primary and there's some other other adjustments you know there is also some problems with like deploying units as a group said I feel individual units yeah so you know there was some you know less amount of strategies and an option to do so but fixing like small things like that right so you know I guess one of the one of the recommendations I would make it and start sorry Polly should have you kind of come in as well but no is this enough in the sense that okay so you've got you know we've got this clash of clans like game you've

kind of shifted the monetization to be more energy based which potentially will impact your mid to gain one cessation like it might actually drop it down and then you know you've got to actually like create something that's compelling enough to get players in where like like how are you gonna get clash of clans players into your game relative to clash of clans or new players to come in when they've got clash and they've got other kind of you know clash like games out there and so I think that like the building attacks stuff and and some of the more subtle things I think you know whether they're improvements or not and you know I it that's gonna be a harder for players to kind of see and to experience without getting really deep into it so I would actually recommend like more on the the your front end metrics or like when players first come in is there some differentiation that you can kind of show off you know almost

immediately to the players so they're like okay this is clash but it's got these different things and that's one of the great things that the guys that made dominations in is like when you come into domination that's like immediately okay there's like these little weird bears and crap on the sides and then there's like this high-level concept around okay we're doing civilizations we're gonna build up and go and progress through different ages and things like that and so from a high level concept perspective it's like okay there's an interesting fiction there's an interesting sort of objective in terms of civilizations and then when they go in from the gameplay perspective even though the core gameplay is the same you know people are able to see these like slight differences and nuances with respect to life you know how the game actually looks and feels to them even though they're kind of minor right but they're surfaced in a very strong way does that make sense yeah makes perfect sense you know I think like what what we did was that initially so once the user comes in we wanted the

first the first thing you notice is you know difference to the you know this is it's much easier to understand much easier to to grasp you know and then we have like the narrative of it yeah it's a factions and I didn't share it you know so I can pick it up with what we really invested all the time in the narrative that the factions and the story the campaign and how you even talk to the campaigns and dialogue do things like this so you would really get you know like a different speed initially from it and then let's say something after it which is just similar units so basically if you have like your basic footmen you would be able to select from two perks you know whether you want footmen to you know have like a last time the ability with instead of dying he would have like a brief time where he would do extra damage or you can get the extra damage upfront whether he would you know like have extra damage on the play so for all the units or all stairs all over here's we have like this this the system which I think would they know

like a lot of customization you know and this is something I think players would notice initially because I first think you would go and these type of game is the barracks let me see the unit's let me see what do I have you know so I think these would be the initial things the last thing I would say is so this is something that would really need lected to focus on yeah which is like instead of you press the button that you have the UI you know you would ever would not give it would put like you know a lot of events a lot of small things that you would interact with you know which which would would hopefully don't give us like different things and is the game that you're building now would it have a battle mechanic like how I'm seeing on Joseph's screen right now would it have sometimes when I work with people on games that they don't feel

have strategy like a game that has like a math equation to the battle or a marsh battle for example they'll say like it's not strategic and it's not fun because it's just a math equation and I think we're I think where they get lost is like the strategy in a in a game where there's an instant math equation in the battle is in the preparing of the battle history strategy right like the hitting of the battle isn't necessarily the strategy when it's lining up the shot like getting shot in your head isn't very strategic but the guy who pulled the trigger was the one who strategic so when we think of like March battles I've always tried to explain it like like this long I'm saying this long crawl of like a slow moving bullet and I'm not sure how this I'm not sure I don't really try to play it but like I would think about a few things when I looked at these games I think about like the

transformation of time moving through a map one of the Marches that I saw in the video looked fairly fast and I think about the I think about the the way in which we deplete like our games like for example if you sell like fit of popsicle and he has to lick it for like two months to for it to get to the stick it's not a really good experience right so when we take a long time to get rid of troops let me take a long time after we sell some somebody something for a dollar and then it could take slights and we eight for them to spend it we have a problem with like reoccurring visits reoccurring purchases and in free-to-play it's so difficult to like wait create it and create a world for everyone right like where my nephew's been playing clash Royale for a year and he's never spent a dime and but clash Royale is still top grossing app right it's very complicated piece of art to be able to therefore the guy who doesn't spend and it's there for the guy he does and and everyone in between so like when

I see a game working really well I generally look at it in kind of like this I guess he would call it like the weird sense of how kind of times being used and then then how it's how it's going away so when I when I hear about the the concept of trying to use world map plus this the sense of like also dropping troops in it I don't think it's I don't think it's I don't think it's crazy I I agree with Joseph that I think trying new things is great and I actually believe that changing your mind fast and working slow is like the long way to go I think the game a good game designer comes to it comes to a decision quickly and changes his mind very slowly because my personal thing in the organisation just everywhere right like you have to really stick with your vision and go for it of course you should seek advice you're doing that that's great I do that but most the time I treat the idea like it's really really

solid and I say hey look we're gonna frickin figure this out but when we have March battles I don't know how fast you guys are moving these things or if they're speed ups behind it and then you also have like that at the end point where it's we have to throw these things down the first thing that I would say is that I believe the point in which they have been build troops and then send troops and then do this it could be a little high friction or it could be super fun depending on what it's like to actually maneuver Marsh battles on the map because that and if any of it that in it of itself is actually a part of the whole game right and you know that on being on a map and being located in teleporting around super fun so then mixing that with clash of clans it could be a really good experience but like the philosophy behind both of both of those combined it did it did and it did and we'll create a new challenge for you but it really just depends on how I think the battles are within these

cities because like for example the philosophy behind the clash Royale system is you press battle and then boom the clouds clear and you're freaking you're ready to go that's a very very fast way to get the popsicle to the stick in other words right you just go blam you know it's free-to-play it's kind of like eating a burrito or if you get a burrito and it's over you buy a soda and it's over a lot of things in this world are like that right you wash your clothes and given Buzzard buzzes right and then you put in the dryer and then the dryer is over so when we look at like the time in which it usually takes us to consume movies and things like that and then we look at some of the most successful games like I was just playing afk arena and don't get me wrong there's some slower paced games but when you press in clash Royale it's like boom pop into the battle and then in games like a market battle game you you send that amount out and that little thing moving is the strategy right within it holds all of your stuff and

it's moving towards I'm definite in and then it could cost to return it or eat them saying because now you lose time someone else is coming at your city so it's like oh boy right here my big boom so you have this weird thing where it's like you're sending this massive amount of troops out and I'm not sure if that's leaving your city undefended and then now it's moving towards somebody else and then they have to do that all this movement which keeps their city very vulnerable and I'm saying because they lose troops I don't know if there's a defending mechanic or if those troops actually help defend the city I'd have to check it out more but just to give you like just an overview some of my thoughts on that real quickly because I know we have limited time and we can of course do further follow-up calls and stuff like that because I could talk about game design too long so the way that I'm actually thinking about your game is pretty simple so one you know I'm thinking about it in terms of three ways one is like that the high end concept secondly the game play and thirdly the the meta that the systems design right

from my perspective in terms of the high level like concept I'm not sure if there's enough you know uh you know what's called a strange attractor enough like as you're marketing this game to the public when they see okay I kind of see these like you know Kingdom rush iron high graphics and also very similar to clash of clans kind like a mix but I'm wondering if there's like a stronger hook that you can use on the on the high end right in terms of if there's something you can convey whether it's through art style or fiction or something to be a stronger draw for players as you're marketing the game from a gameplay perspective I do think that it's we still are pretty close to clash of clans and some of the nuances that that you're building into the game you know I again maybe players will notice that quickly or maybe it'll be

too late even even if it's better but I'm not sure if it's enough to be you know super compelling or differentiated enough where people are getting like ah I want to play you know this game instead of clash of clans and from the meta systems design perspective you know I think it is interesting what you're doing trying to do in terms of the world map but yeah again I'm not sure if that's enough or whether you know kind of the shift from the the troop system to an energy system is getting a long term be like a better monetization or choice so you know kind of like my recommendation would be one like you know all of us have you know limited time limited resources you guys are kind of going down a path right now and you know you're kind of increasing the production value you're about to launch I would say like let's let's check the metrics right like go down that path but if what you launched it if there needs

to be a change I would really try to kind of step back and think very fundamentally very deeply about ok here are these three axes of potential improvement for the game whether it's the you know the high-level concept whether it's a game play whether it's a systems design and then really think about you know because we might be at a sort of you know local Maxima in terms of how well the game can do but if we make it a really big change we could potentially find an even bigger Maxima in terms of like the performance and the ability of the game to do well right and so yeah so yeah I would I would start to think and you know we can like between Poland and myself like Paul is uh you know I think I gotta say like if you want like crazy whoop-ass ideas pop Paul's the right guy so we could like you know depending on on how things go we could try and brainstorm some stuff to try and introduce some of those bigger changes that might actually you

know make it make a bigger difference but you know I as of right now at least you're d1 for like a Mick core game is probably around target about 35% d1 so I think that's fine and then you we can always add a bunch of tricks to get that 35 up to like a you know 30 like we can we can get 2 or 2 2 to 5 more points on that for you but yeah then it'll be about you know trying to figure out which of those things that we change so that we have a longer-term more sustainable more successful game if that makes it so so you're saying like it's like the initial you know kick or whatever you would call it it's like it's still not there yet so we need something you know that would really you know make the user feel like this is something fresh right my suspicion is that what we have right now is is not enough is my suspicion I know I could be wrong

but you know so I would say that you guys are going down this path but what what like and when I think very simply about what do we have we have clash of clans with like the you know sort of Kingdom rush stuff of art style and then we've got like the energy system instead of troop building and then we've got some you know interesting mechanics in terms of the gameplay in terms of life attack priority and things like that and and powers and stuff and is that enough I'm not you know so I'm not quite sure about that so what what I would say is let's find out and then and then the other stuff that you you that you talked about adding like narrative production value you know we'll find out like narrative in these kinds of games typically people will kind of skip through but you know let's find out you guys are already working on it you know and I would say like you know the the data will tell us whether those things actually move the needle or not but generally like in my experience to make like really big

changes you you do need like bigger you know like there were games I've worked on where where there's just like a fundamental issue right and so all these features and all these things that we added and it's like okay no change no change no change no change but then when you make it change where it like the the basic foundation is solid then every change you put in there's like oh plus 10% o + 5 % o plus 15% right everything you do adds on because the foundation is very solid and so that I think that's the point where we'd love to try and help you get to is the point where you know there is enough whether it's you know front-end differentiation and being very compelling or gameplay is really cool you mean the system's design is like solid like to get to that sort of point you know we'd be happy to try and help help get you there I hope you're there now so so don't don't get me wrong you know I think we should like launch

and see what the data is but if it's not quite there if if the sort of the other changes that we're kind of putting in aren't getting us there then I think we could try and help you think about okay what's a bigger change to make a bigger impact because you know we we want we want the game to like be very successful right so ya know and it's definitely like helps from you know and outside their point of view might be like you know we might inflate everything you know because we worked on it so we think the narrative is amazing because we put into like as you said players maybe they don't care and the same with the other features you know so I I think I think you have you have a good point it's like thinking about it really I think it's not enough you know enough kick right sure yeah like in terms of like follow up one of the things that I would recommend are so we could try and

and I can send you a set of metrics that'd be good to get some you know data telemetry and instrumentation on and in terms of just trying to help us understand like what what features are what things should help improve the game and so I think what we could do is Paul and I can like offline talk about some ideas and things like that and then I will send you a list of like KPIs that would be useful for us to track so that when we launched the this newer version of the game that we can get those get that data and kind of look at it and then hopefully that will help inform us you know what what are the key areas that we need to push is it because it monetization is a d7 retention what are the things or is it even though the front end as you're kind of like advertising the game and if the IPM is low you know IPM install right whatever is low then maybe we need a stronger concept for example and so so I'll go ahead and send you like a set of metrics to sort of capture but then you know it

seems like maybe the best next step would be what when is when is the new version of the game launching launching its to maybe like if you want this I think we're we will need like two to three months okay I'd like the user testing for the first session okay then you know so it's sort of up to you in terms of in terms of what you want to do with the game I think that if you're kind of like deep into the current path I would say let's just finish the current path and see where we are and then you know we can kind of come up with some contingency plans if that path doesn't work like how we would like you know some optimizations in terms of how we can improve stuff or big bigger changes try to move the needle against some of those metrics that I talked to talk about but you know I mean you could tell us but my recommendation then would be you know I'll sit I'll send you that list of KPIs

if we can just kind of finish up the current path and then and then collect the data and then from there you know you know Paul and I can try and help you in terms of trying to determine the appropriate way to like help optimize or have the game perform better yeah it sounds good and I think what I could do is also I could like you know document you know my vision more so you might think connect the dots that's it okay I think there are some things that you have the full vision maybe you can you know I think okay so what maybe as a next step we could do that like maybe the next week or two if you want to document that and we can kind of go over that and then I can also go over some of their KPIs that we want to we want to track so maybe as a next call we can we can go over that stuff do that that yeah okay it sounds good but if you don't mind can you just help me like what what would be like what should I do should i

document what i have learned from the events how am I going to do the organization as deep as you can you know deep yeah you know that would that would be great and then even if you have like a you know like a feature of roadmap plan yeah and then I think the other thing to do is like if you guys are pressed for time you know we can we can try to sort of try to help you think through how you how you would do like feature prioritization and things like that and and to like build a framework in terms of like expected outcomes or you know an ice framer or something to help structure your you're sort of future development plan yeah it sounds good okay basically I'm going to summarize like the entire game awesome and then hopefully you would get a better vision

okay so all right so then we'll schedule another call for the next week or two and then go over that and but yeah you know again thank you very much I thank you developers love you know these interesting challenges and so yeah I look forward to taking a look at some of these dogs I grew just when we started saying like some of the road maps and potentially checking out you know in deeper philosophies and ears cuz I can't help to think of the games and I was on and if there is a consulting position like opportunity sometimes we're like ninety percent through with the big features that someone's like I don't know this is gonna work you know and that's like really is it's really hard so knowing where you're at and development process is really useful because 3d play is about working with the features we have you know like I was just check out ampere readout or dosing was asked me check it out the game reuses is technology so well and it just keeps going and it's just so it's such a

win like it's such a winning creates a video in technology so I was just like you know what this is really good for the play and you're talking and then after doing that all day yesterday which I made a video on I'll be posting it today I hear you talking about building more and more and more and we get trapped in that sometimes the technology we have is just enough so I'm gonna be looking at that too so yeah just on this list and thank you for calling us it's been really interesting Paul and portrait so Jake a you going to schedule like a cold you know maybe the next week since next week is III but yeah if we can if we can do that that would be awesome [Music] [Music]

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