Doing Good is Hard! - The Challenges of Making Games 4 Good PG Connects Digital #2

we also have um ilmari here from uh full uh good games uh and uh hopefully uh we'll be kicking off on how doing good in games is hard so um uh murray are you joining us there you go hey how are you doing good good good so uh you're going to tell us all about the challenges of making games for good yes i'm going to be talking about well for games our company about some of the challenges that we've encountered on the short journey that we've had so far great stuff i'll leave it thank you i'll just start by showing my screen [Music] there we go

yeah that's looking good okay so hello pocketgamerdigital uh my name is illumi i'm the founder and the ceo of forward games i'm super excited to be here this is my first time speaking in pocket gamer connect story or digital and also one of the first times i'm talking about this topic in general our company and um the the mission the social impact mission that we have so i'm gonna start by you know just telling you shortly about myself and uh what i've done before and then that will lead into into you know how we started for the games um what we're doing and and some of the challenges that that we've encountered so i've been in in mobile games for 15 years now i've always worked in the creative side of things i'm not a business guy just so you know i worked as a graphic artist as an animator as a compositor as a

sound designer and a musician i started first time at rovia mobile in 2005 the company was to set up i stayed there for for two years working as a graphic graphic designer joined another games company called red links known from their trial series of games that was half a year's cakes big i was working there as a compositor and then after that i started my own company called combo the company was not a games company it was a production company we did a lot of animating animated content for different kinds of of things mainly for finnish advertising agencies other production companies music videos company presentations all kinds of different things one of the clients we had was rovia because we had some common history with them and one of the the things we did for them was the launch trailer of angry birds

um i'm sorry someone is trying to message me on my phone [Music] sorry about that uh yeah we did the launch trailer for uh for the first angry birds yeah game it hasn't really you know gained traction that much i think it was already you know getting some traction but you know after that it started really to pick up and and you know it became the big phenomena that we know it no um i think one year two years after this robio started to think about expanding the the universe of the birds and they started to think about creating this animated series out of the of the characters um and they were actually looking for a production partner who could execute the production with them uh and actually they acquired our company and we became the in-house animation department of rovio and we took the simple game characters uh the simple stories that the the game

had at that point and then started to expand the universe in thinking you know where the places the birds live in and and you know what is the relationship between the characters and so on during that time i actually departed from from animation and started running the audio department of rovio doing sound design and music for the production that we had we worked on on a lot of different productions you know games and and animations we also worked on the movie so i worked there for six years and during this time um we saw you know we saw the the games industry transition from premium games into free-to-play games and i also think that we saw kind of a transforming ambition being in game design and you know coming up with new unique game concepts into the ambition moving towards the monetization design which meant that we started to follow what was you know working on the markets and after a while i had been working on quite a many matching games

um i think like four years ago maybe through the birth of my first kid maybe it was late for this crisis or you know because people start to think about these things in general at some point in their lives i started more and more uh to realize that the world is quite up you know we are destroying the ecosystem there's uh this uh you know huge slots in biodiversity on this planet and you know we're we're seeing the mass extinction of animals we are accelerating the climate change and the climate change has you know devastating consequences so knowing all this i started to feel quite absurd that you know i basically live in paradise called finland where you know we get so much we have free education free healthcare um we basically get to do whatever we

want to and then i'm working in you know mobile games i'm creating these simple mobile games where we're basically trying to you know invent different ways of of monetizing the players i felt that my work didn't have much purpose i felt it like it didn't have meaning so i i thought that i should be able to do more i thought that you know company should be able to do more and you know i have to decide that should i leave games completely join greenpeace or you know will help the refugees to the mediterranean ocean or is there something that i could do within games uh and then i came up with this this quite naive idea of why don't we make great games which make a lot of money which then could be used for saving the world um and then you know why don't we engage the players with this with this purpose developers are constantly seeking for

different ways of engaging the players making them play their games stay within their games you know this could be just inventing new gameplay mechanics adding social elements to their games and campaigns competitions so we thought that you know why don't we make the playstation meaningful adding purpose to these games like you know when the the players are playing a super simple game but they know that each minute they spin inside the game each in a purchase they do it you know each advertisement they watch that would contribute to the betterment of this planet you know there's there's always been serious games or games for impact or educational games charity games but what usually combines this is that they are not super inviting they are not super attractive for the masses you know they they might be really good games they they talk about definitely talk about super important topics but you know they they don't appeal to

the masses they might get 5000 or 10 000 players but if you really need to if you really want to make an impact you need to get like plus 100 million people playing against so this is what we took is our starting point you know we go great games first we want a great uh create great engaging fun casual games you know which are engaging for for wide audiences and then just add that charity layer or social impact layer on top of that you know to to make it even more engaging to make the play sessions feel meaningful so you know this is how we got started with with four good games and the the first thing we did was you know it was a little bit of a miss or concept we did it was when trump was selected you know as the president of the u.s we came up with this this stupid idea of an ip called the united states of amsterdam a

universe of alternative facts and you know it would be an idle clicker game and the player's uh mission would be to build build a wall around the around absurdia to prevent prevent brain leakage from the country you know all the scientists and the artists they're trying to leave the country and then you know the players compete by who creates the longest wall and then all the the profit that we'd make from this game we put into anti-trump action okay stupid idea fun idea you know you could do some sort of viral hit with this but then again you know politics is doesn't really fit casual games you put a lot of people off it's also very difficult to get involved partnerships with you know ngos or or companies uh because of the topic so we thought that you know we need to have a bit of a different approach uh and do something which is more appealing for you know for the big masses and it's you

know kind of obvious the information nature of course it's a great theme it's a great brand in itself uh you know everyone loves nature everyone loves animals so we start to think about an ip which would have an environmental theme and that's when we came up with plant petrol plant petrol is a diverse team of you know everyday superheroes whose mission is to save the planet through science uh the game itself is a physics-based puzzle match game where the player's mission is to clean the planet from waste the target audience we have for the game is you know plus 35 plus 30 year old women because they're the biggest group of of both puzzle gamers but also the biggest group of people who donate for charity uh and then in the game we'd have in-game events or campaigns which would be tied to real-world charity campaigns and then you know players would be

engaged through this so having this idea we went to see some investors we showed this for them and said that okay we're going to make this great game we're going to put 50 of profits away for charity um and they said that hmm you know probably it's not going to work i mean making great games is difficult in the first place and you're going to give half of the money away how are you going to get the users you know i'd rather give the money for the ngos directly because there's a lot bigger chance that the money would actually end up to the right place instead of risking it and giving it to you so you know we kind of understood that we really need to build a better business case out of this i mean we saw that this is the business case but we had to clarify it a bit so this is you know this is a user acquisition business case we believe that having a strong mission like this it helps us to lower the cpi in order for us to to build a

return of ad spend positive product you know the early tests that we did with the core was that we saw a significant difference you know in the cpi cost um you know having charity aspect uh put into the ua campaigns that we did there there was a there was a big difference and of course this is to be taken with a grain of salt because uh we're no ua experts this was basically just us messing around with facebook ads manager you know i know some animations so i was working on the charity campaigns and so on but still i mean it was truly promising for us we started to believe more in the concept than it also convinced uh some investors we also think that you know we're gonna have better organic growth just through word of mouth better media coverage we believe that we can get that we can get influencers on board of course this is just you know this is something you can't really predict but but we think that it's possible

and especially we are looking to use the acquisition through partnerships we were really inspired by you know what seriously did with best things and their race against slime campaign that was a campaign uh done in 2014 december it was campaign run over one week with ellen degeneres show and then five different youtube influencers who had you know lots of followers um and in the campaign players mission was to you know they could join one of the influences teams and then they had a goal of beating 100 million slugs inside the game um and then the winning team they get to decide uh where the winning the price money which was 100k uh put into the campaign by seriously and ellen degeneres show who kind of launched his campaign so they could decide where the money will be put and during this week the game got

2.6 million downloads the daily active users rose by 600 000 players it was a record revenue a month for them so you know of course it was a huge effort to put this campaign up but we thought that you know it would be nice to do something like this but on a continuous basis um so this is basically the idea you know we can do campaigns there are hundreds or thousands different different you know ngos who are doing important things um and then you we can hook them up with different celebrities even you know politicians or writers or you know different people and you know create monthly campaigns where where we can put even like have the influencers have charity of their choice and then you know tie the in-game content that we do to these campaigns and then offer something really unique each month for the players and like i said like only these okay these are one of the biggest but you know these influences and these

ngos combined they have over over 1 billion subscribers so i think there there's there's a lot of possibilities here um okay so now that we have these campaigns uh actually just like few things about the the the challenges regarding the partnerships i mean of course it's super difficult for us to approach you know the the big players the big influences and like world wildlife fund at this stage where we actually don't really have a game we just have a test launch uh we don't have a user base we don't have a lot of revenue so you know we have quite a little to offer for them at this point uh but there are a lot of you know smaller ngos who are doing important things and they're a lot easier to you know start this thing with they would probably really happy to do a pilot project with us where we can see that can we really engage players through this what are the different ways of implementing the charities uh the

campaigns to a game in a way that it feels like it's in kind of an integral part of the game and is really engaging and then you know when we can prove this and we get some really good results then we can go to the bigger players to the influence to see that you know this is what we can do this is how we can engage users you know create new donators for you this is how we can build profit for you and you know then we can go for the bigger uh for the bigger partnerships so you know our we need to get some money for this to get rolling the problem is that our promise of you know putting 50 of our you know purchases and ad revenue for these campaigns it really equals to nothing if there's no profit and it's very probable that you know during the first one to three years we're not going to make much profit so you know how to get going we thought about doing direct donations that

players would have a bottom inside the game where you know they could donate money we even thought about including like in a purchases where there would be some sort of slider was where the players could increase the amount of money that you know they want the charity but of course i mean this is really difficult apple takes a cut unless we get a deal with apple that they don't take a cut from these donations their taxes i mean donations for charity at least in finland they're not tax-free so if we put like 50 of our profit to the charity that would still be taxable income uh based off like the operation expenses so it's really difficult to communicate for the players that okay you didn't donate one euro for this cost but actually 20 cents will be put to the cost uh it feels quite shady so we thought that we'd actually approach this by you know not telling the players that they would be actually donating anything that they would just you know play a good game have fun with

the game and then we would donate the money for them but we still need the money uh so you know what are the possibilities that we have we have two ideas one is that we establish this like for good fund which basically would be us giving away equity i don't know five percent ten percent uh from an investor who would invest one million to the company and that would be kind of the charity fund it would kind of be a marketing thing for us to get this going and you know the investor would know that that money would be used for good um other thing we will look into or are looking into is company sponsors so you know in addition to having a charity partner and ngo in our game an influencer we can also have company sponsors who get visibility through the campaigns and through the game and then you know they would put the 10k or 20k for it for this charity inside the campaign uh in the long run

of course it would be amazing that we'd see some sort of charity ecosystem inside applications where you know apple or google they would make it possible for for the developers to place you know donation you know purchases inside their games and i don't see why you know why this is not possible because you know facebook is doing this all the time there's a lot of like charity campaigns that users are setting up and they they just created an ecosystem for that the biggest problem we have at the moment is that you know apple has this policy of of no charity is allowed in their games you know we can't tell the players that you know anything from what they've they paid to the game would be food for charity we can't mention that on our website and i totally get this because you know there's so much scans and shady things done in the name

of charity and apple has no way of controlling of you know what the companies would then do with this with this money um also facebook has a policy with their advertisements that can't really talk about social issues you can't talk about environmental issues so it makes it really difficult for us to create any ad campaigns where we would mention this um so you know how do we communicate our mission that's something we we haven't really solved i think it's partly you know just like creating a brand which is known at the moment which is the small company that no one knows we have some really good backers you know the investors there they you know they have a good name uh but of course you know making a great game getting a big user base being really transparent on how we communicate how we you know use money uh doing smaller partnerships with with believable partners i think those are all like

stepping stones to to you know making this making this possible um so yeah something about the next steps that you know we're gonna do which is closed our seat round which is great we get to hire some some people and we can actually start working on the game so far it's been mainly me and my co-founder a programmer then we used some friends and freelancers to to do the test launch of the game so yeah we're scaling team up we are currently working on the metagame uh you know trying to create different ways of implementing the campaigns to the game so that you know it feels engaging and fun we start to develop new games for new audiences we hope to we will soft launch planet patrol or you know it might become something else that might not be the name but we will soft launch the game this year

um and then just you know my mission statement in the end we all know these things of course they are they've been talked in this this conference as well that you know just about what companies you know companies have they have huge effect to our lives you know through the marketing through the brand branding that they have they really guide our values and desires and you know they define how we consume and what we want to consume money is control sorry companies they control most of the wealth most of the monies in the world most of the money flows through companies uh through their policies they will define how the human natural resources of this planet are used the tax policies that they have of course have huge impact on societies you know how much money there will be for keeping up the societies currently there's over seven trillion dollars hidden in tax havens you know what could be done with that money so you know it said that the

change becomes from or starts from individuals that there's so many different sectors that you know need to do their part and i think companies really need to need to change and of course we we've seen a lot of good development in companies especially in gaming companies but really the the starting point for for or purpose for companies can be you know just adding value for for shareholders i think the ultimate like uh purpose for any company should be and then creating value you know for the world for the planet that's it i kind of started my my clock a bit late so i don't know how much time there is but but i'm no it's all good it's all good um and we've got a couple of minutes left for questions if people want to raise them i mean to my mind the kind of the key issue here is i i think you highlight it there's a lot of things that make make it difficult for us to actually

act in a proper proper way in terms of doing good i think some of those are understandable for example i kind of get why apple aren't keen on having people mention charities because imagine trying to police uh the kind of um the the the promises games companies make there are so many people who would potentially whether deliberately or or unintentionally make promises about what they were going to share and apple obviously couldn't realistically manage that it was too unless they would have some sort of ecosystem for that where yeah yeah exactly i mean i i know they do uh the red uh event yeah right my understanding though is it doesn't prevent you from doing something it just determines how you communicate it yeah and i think you know you've got to be very careful i mean we we're looking at number of options around this um for a particular game and in particular the idea of you know if you say of your profits as a different thing than if you say of the revenue you take or if you say you're going to donate a

certain amount each month i think that's allowable provided it's coming from you and it's not drawing into question or highlighting the problem of the revenue share model i think that's okay um it's more challenging though isn't it sorry what is the facebook uh restrictions i think are a little bit more challenging yeah it could be more challenging it might be related to the election which is going on we're not sure if it's that but in general like facebook ads it's kind of hidden miss i mean some people know what words to use and you know how much text you can use in that so it might be that it's just because we're not that familiar with that platform in general but i think again you can make personal messages you can use community experiences and i think you know having that authenticity is key and you talked about using influence i mean is that really the way to sort of um to raise awareness not necessarily relying on the the platform themselves but relying on the environment the community around the game

what kind of i'm just saying is is it that you know we're often thinking too much about in-game we're not thinking enough about out of game uh so all of the communication channels so through influencers on youtube on twitch on facebook and whatever else discord groups is that is it not the case that we should be thinking about that aspect of communication yeah absolutely yeah yeah absolutely you're totally right that it's not just you know what we said but of course it's about the campaigns and and how how the ngos and how the influences communicate about this but yeah yeah you're definitely right that you know that there's so many different channels that we can put this this message in now so and i think it's about empowering people to feel capable to feel uh that that they're open you know again this is comes back to some of the work we did with uh internet of elephants um with the the the game world verse um you know was trying to think about how we put you in the shoes

of the people who are doing something so that you could feel empowered and understand what's going on for those people and giving give it context hope almost yeah cool well i think that was great thank you very much for doing that um i think it's a really important area we're going to move on to our next panel now so uh thank you murray for thank you so much uh so i would hopefully you know what we've talked about today with this section is you know just how important the visions values uh you know is to the industry in general and also you know what we as indies can do by thinking about that