Farmville 3 by Zynga | Soft Launch Review

everyone welcome to game maker soft launch review today we're going to be covering Zynga's farmville 3 this is my level 1 farm and so as you can see I've got a little bit you know more levels to go before the farm gets a little better but what we'll get there anyway today with our group of experts we'll be talking about some of the strengths and weaknesses of the game including what we believe are the prospects for worldwide launch and we'll be talking about ways we think the game can be dramatically improved especially from a monetization perspective so stay tuned [Music] hey welcome everybody to to the next edition of soft launch review I am here

with Joel Jokinen from game refinery Jeff which from beyond games and also doing a video games consulting and Manu Kumar from Deconstructor of fun and also doing video games consulting as well so welcome guys today we're going to be covering farmville 3 and I thought we could first start by just getting a better idea of where a Zynga is in terms of the launch so as we can see just looking at some of the sensor tower data here that the game seems to be soft launched in basically about three countries I know what these like 34 and 2 installs an Australian these in New Zealand are but from from the look of it you know if you're launching in the Philippines and you know Thailand Malaysia it's probably a technical soft launch meaning they're just trying to you know look at performance look look at device you know device performance load times things of that nature and so you know I don't think we can be too

critical yet in terms of a lot of the systems whether they're fully baked out but you know we should expect that that those those things are there so I mean I think from there maybe we could just jump into like high-level thoughts and I can go in and kick it off and so in terms of you know the the high-level thoughts as far as the game from for me is I actually thought I actually think that farmville 3 is a pretty fun game it doesn't have a lot of innovation right so it's to me it's actually pretty light but I think it might just be enough to make the game interesting for its audience and from my perspective and please feel free to disagree with me it seems like there's there's really only two two key things right which is the the animal gotcha with the animal evolution progression and the second is this notion of farm hands that can be assigned different tasks and you know kind of maybe a smaller thing is I kind of like the land plot unlocking system that they have and I know that kind of

exists but the way that its kind of presented feels it feels a little bit better and it really reminds me of the old Facebook games on so like I forget what they were like CastleVille and some of the other bills back in the past that in terms of a look and feel and when I look at the other games like you know heyday Klondike Township those games actually feel a lot more dated and you know Klondike in particular doesn't even you know I mean I know it's doing well but does it doesn't seem like it's a game from this decade like what what is he so yeah so I I don't know maybe it's cuz I just don't understand this category well enough but I know from my perspective although I'm a little bit disappointing in terms of the level of innovation and what seems to be a little bit of a paint job over a heyday plus two mechanics I actually think so so for me the key

issue is you know how much of that farm sim audience has elapsed and then if seeing a you know and there's there's question marks about how good Zynga is at user acquisition you know that's kind of like a one of the key questions in the industry but you know one of the key ways that clash Royale was able to do so well from the beginning you know kind of the word on the street was that one of the big factors was they were able to take a lot of you know inactive clash of clans players and you know from a user acquisition marketing perspective they were able to reactivate and retarget a lot of those players upon launch and so if zing is able to do something similar and if there is like this large lapsed audience that kind of comes back and sees this you know in my opinion I would say that farmville 3 will be the from a product quality perspective in my opinion it will be the best in market at when it locked when it hard launches I actually think it's got a pretty good

chance so from my perspective I would expect a mild to moderate success from this game Joel what do you think yeah I kind of agree but I played the game for hours and hours now a little 20 or something I would say this like you said in the beginning there is not too much like good totally new new innovation but that isn't always always bad thing and of course they clearly wanted to go to FAC kind of maintain their all look and feel and I'm not chased into much there's clearly showing that merge dragons merge magic stuff showing in this game as well you mentioned the merging of merging of the of the animals and I've got seeing the path where the progression path you get the first house in the third house and then they start to produce more and more advanced ingredients that you use for more and more advanced output and and also the unlocking of the land

reminds me of merge records merge merge magic and the farm farm hands also they of course were also the particle to I think that they can become something of a really really great innovation if they are build a bit more at the moment they are a kind of superficial stuff and the RPG mechanics of developing them is quite quite light let's see what they come up with that I really like the look and feels I got a visual visual look of the game and as you pointed out it compares with the heyday and I'd like to indict a Township it really really looks really good I also also enjoyed the game so I think in a high level we can we can discuss on more details later but the high level I see that there's clear clear chance of having actually actually gonna find

genre later if everything goes goes well in the future Jeff what do you think so it from a monetization perspective it's kind of hard to evaluate games and tentacle soft-launched just because you know that's not the primary focus but um I think they set themselves up for and there's a lot of potential with the game you know the farmhand system depending on where they take it can be pretty deep and you know there's good ways to monetize off of that Joseph like you said I'd really do like how the farm unlocked over time I it gets too they don't or great story enough in unlocking those plots I know they have the story tasks but almost everything seems level gated and just I wish that they would utilize story more like a lot of other casual games Manya and yeah actually I think I

think what thing guys time to do with fumbles fee you know why they have gone with this more safe approach of things with a major visual upgrades and minor innovations I started playing fumble to country escape yesterday just to see okay where was that game compared to you know the experience in heyday of a day and Township and if you play farmville to country escape versus heyday and Township you really see the dated systems in that I mean even from even from a perspective of you know Sigma just wanting to have a game out there that is up to the level of a day and Township family is probably that attempt also so you know yeah so basically a fumble to country escape and play tropic escape but country escape which is also the leading revenue generator in the

humble games it's a pretty is really really so it it from that perspective also it makes sense you know like maybe they've gone to the safe would approach right now with innovations do not like the new of the few months but yeah things that I really like one was this whole animal loop that they have and the second is the balancing that they've been able to maintain between the order board the animals the farmhands and the land expansions all like all these four systems so I haven't like really gotten into the numbers behind it but all of them feel really well-balanced and the spacing of you know getting new animals having enough space and enough of these shops or whatever to keep the animals and have enough land to keep the shops you know it all balances really well the one I don't have too many negatives

because this is a technical soft launch so I would rather call them opportunities but when one clear negative I'm seeing is you know the gotcha monetization aspect of the whole game so because of this like really good balancing between the order board and the animals and you know just keeping the animals and they evolving and leaving the farm they need to really buy new animals from gotcha isn't ready there so if gotcha is going to be a primary monetization arm for this game it I don't feel the pinch to actually go and buy the gotcha right now but yeah in terms of opportunity areas I see like three really big ones you know like Jeff mentioned the native aspect of the game so at least when I was working on fumble two narratives I mean there was a full team of narrative designers on in that you know hundred twenty five percent team and the rative is something

that really ties well with this farmville audience and you know that probably unfurling through all the different formats and all these different characters and they happy relationships between themselves etcetera etcetera it could be a very very big attention opportunity over there the next big one is definitely events and this is also and I think yeah the CEO friend would he commented on the Army's call saying that this game has a lot of in its in its backing system there are a lot of event works already planned so they're definitely like planning for having heavy event driven system and the final one and something that has really driven a lot of you in the previous humble games is the whole social aspect of things and that can be divided into three parts so this competition cooperation and then there's coopertition also and you know all these three things have been pretty strong

deafening generator for some of the previous ARMA games and yeah since this is a technical software that I'm sure this is going to be coming up later but but yeah these would be like the three really big opportunity areas for growth for this game and then just looking in terms of revenue analysis I thought one of the things we could first start start by looking at what is the potential for farmville 3 relative to the competition in the market and so when we look at some of the other key titles that are in their category we see games like Township heyday Klondike adventures and then obviously the the two other farmville games farmville to country escape and farmville to tropic is escape and we can see that there's a pretty big gap between you know the number one title in in the category Township and then the farmville games so from my perspective I do think that there is room for

potential growth if farmville 3 actually you know is a good product and is able to perform well and then from a revenue per download perspective we see also that clearly Klondike adventurous has the highest revenue per download and that you know I do think it does seem like there's room for improvement and it's kind of funny that Township which has the the most overall revenue has one of the lowest RPGs revenue per download so that was kind of interesting and again all the these revenue numbers the revenue per download numbers are on a worldwide blended basis okay money do you want to speak to the Zynga portfolio revenues yeah so you know one of the first questions that popped up for all the first was okay why fumble three and a second question was you know why is it likely why is it taking so long

and so as you wanna like talk about you know what could we look at from a data perspective to kind of get a picture of why fumble three and why now and to really telling data points for the first question Utley the first one is this is taken from Zynga is q2 2019 earnings presentation where they split out their avenues by game and genre and you can see over here that simulation doesn't really figure anywhere and ends I'm gonna go on to the market perspective when you look at from a market share perspective in the simulation category both the farmville two games are at around a five percent of the total market share and that's definitely not even I don't think it's even top ten so say I so from both these from both these perspectives for a game then used to be the face of the company

at one point it's you know it's coming out of the final three with you know a more up-to-date look and the more up-to-date feel in terms of UX and probably more up-to-date gameplay systems it's kind of the obvious decision to me so yeah so this was it kind of like starts to make sense you know once you get where we're seeing de-escalation in the market and how its current formal games are performing in terms of its portfolio and then it goes into the second question if you could go to the next slide taken yeah so you know then the next question was why is it taking so long for the farmville then you know found all three to come out fumble - so you know as you can see with the orange the

orange section of the graph over here fumble - and this is country escape launched somewhere yeah probably mid mid 2000 or early 2014 and I think I just kind of like roughly wrote a timeline and this 2014 launch and I think the transition to the India team happened around like 2016 somewhere then we're you know into like ops side of things and and during that time obviously Zynga is like clearly tried to squeeze the lemon with this game but again from a portfolio perspectives and with the 2018 acquisitions of moisture aliens and empires and puzzles if the orange line just you know completely disappears if I be an infant so say I so even from this perspective I feel you it's kind of it feels like the right timing to come out with the new game and

the right timing to get a new foothold or a solid foothold in this simulation market so right money we didn't go over people's backgrounds this time but but just just for you you actually worked on farmville in the past right yeah actually I booked when I was looking and sing go in in day I worked on the fumble to bat game and by looking at this game there's a lot of one can see like a lot of the learnings that we had and that team can also be like translated over here and I guess once you get into the gameplay portion of things okay so just kind of proceeding forward I just wanted to go over some of the audience analysis just to see at least from a competitive perspective the type of users that some of the other games have and so just starting with farmville 1 & 2 I a grenade the audience there and we can

see that you know to me this is a little surprising in that when looking at the demographic information that that it's only skewing a little bit female I I would have expected to skew a little bit more strongly female and I actually would have expected the game to skew older but it does seem like you know the bulk of the audience that if we trust the Facebook audience insights data is you know is a little bit younger in the sort of 18 to 35 category so to me which was a little bit surprising and then from page likes perspective you know this is not super surprising that but you know one you know a couple of interesting things is you know Reba McIntire kind of shows up like what why why would the formula audience like Reba McEntire but you know that was kind of interesting and that's B but McEntire uh-oh

okay every singer doesn't it does make sense right like if you're you probably like country music so yeah yeah exactly yeah makes it and then heyday the surprising thing about heyday was that Hades had a stronger younger skew and uh you know was weighted more male than female which to me was a little bit surprising you know and again for me yeah and I'm not an expert in this category but I would have expected a stronger you know more than the 35 to 44 range for across you know games in the entire genre and I would have expected all of the games to ski more female and then when we look at audience insights in terms of the page lights we see a lot of Tai Chi based you know lights and

it's like wow that's kind of weird and so just digging a little bit deeper white wire where are so many why do so much of the the heyday audience why did they like tie sort of you know sort of pages Facebook pages and when we look at it it's because actually you know when we look at the audience the the book the audience that plays Haiti is actually from Thailand and it it's heavily you know have it's heavily slanted towards the Thai audience for whatever reason and then finally looking at Township here we see a little bit more of the type of distribution that I would expect more female slant a little older as well and interestingly you know that same musician Reba McEntire okay and I know we typically

talk about you know gameplay analysis separately from meta but just given the fact that you know in in terms of this type of a game and yeah it's largely a graphical menu based game right so it's kind of highly tied to the to the system's I thought maybe we could just just talk about both in a little bit more detail and enjoying maybe like starting with you actually yeah yeah the power score that we have the game yeah yeah the KPI I'm measuring the kind of that feature sets commercial potential and in the market kind of Pam inform will three treats in the high 70s low 80s region which is really really nice for like like would be it is mentioned many times the technical soft launch there's still other features to be kind of be introduced to the game so it's looking pretty good or really good actually taking that into account when

you actually touch many of the and missing missing things also based on our data so the biggest missing links in order to kind of increase the KPI or the or the potential further would be deeper social elements like money measured corpse fields competitions and those can be of course then tied to different events permanently has really light light events at the moment some some some solo invested you just gather gather the resources but it's it's it's clear that they are going and invest on already to increase the potential should go to a deeper social social events and and the more kind of well-constructed even event loops so actually I just checked it 70 78 out of 100 which is which is really really good good score but and then again one thing I also want to mention we talked about the demographics Facebook demographics earlier and we also have our own

Democratic kind of estimates based on the features that you know Gabriel funrun when I looking at the a formula tree in our our system it seems to skew a bit more - worse - female like it's 61 female 39 male and also the age group like 25:44 is the vast majority 52% so you're looking at those those speakers or the form formula tree at least based on our our kind of metrics and the features seems to be more do you guys pull the demo information on your side good question so we've done a lot of year and a half worth of service and research in us know this is the US demographic data that I'm talking about here we did it for hundreds of games of course using using a full thorough set of questions you also captured penetration penetration of market penetration of the games once we had that data and because we have those over

200 features tracked from all of the games that we surveyed we were able to model using statistical methods to model the kind of feature sets demographic features demographic appeal and then when we have analyzed game and we get the few hundreds of features we also get the kind of demographic appeal of the feature set of that game and of course we tested that a lot with with our clients and that it's pretty pretty look looks pretty and it's pretty good and as I said it's based on the feet so it's it's interesting interesting to see see that kind of data as well um just me do you want to talk about your thoughts both from you know and again you like combining your thoughts in terms of gameplay and systems and I know you've got some slides so we you know feel feel free to jump into those whenever you'd like as well yeah so one thing that I kind of was taken aback by it was just

like all the different sort of progression systems that farm bill three was throwing at us you first have the farm orders that you know you've seen hay day and stuff like that you then you up you know player level which is the mainstay of fun games and then you have this sort of story tasks and it just it makes it hard to know where to focus on especially since player level the experience you get mainly comes from animal acquisition and you get animals unless you buy animals you what mostly get them either from animal you know breeding as you collect animals or by completing enough farm orders to unlock the next crate and not all crates from farm orders will give you animals it it just makes it hard to like if you want to progress if you want to like continue that knows the story and unlock that next plot like it makes it really sort of have nowhere to focus and especially

if you're spender what how do you spend to sort of get to the next level and it's a story yeah you can keep buying animals but then you may run out of space I do like their animal sort of breeding system in this very source self containing which is nice but I honestly wish that they would just put less emphasis on player level and put more emphasis on story and story tests it seems to be what a lot more games are doing and it and if you get more things by story versus by level then you may have more monetization opportunities to get players to pay to sort of progress through the story more versus having it trying to be locked by animal collection which is the main source of exp and in my experience you know playing it

especially as I progressed from you know early game to mid game I find myself just trying to level up that's my sole focus and that's mainly complaining orders since I can't spend it in the game you know the the story like oftentimes I will just I will see the next part of the story and I just can't do anything with it until I level up and that may take sometimes I could move within a day but sometimes it takes many days and just it's not a satisfying progression as say like a game like garden escapes or home escapes where you that next thing is really you're very close to it just playing a few more games might get you to that next thing or if you want to like spend like make sure you win those games you can do that as well I think there's just a missed opportunity for them to monetize off of their story because they're utilizing outdated like player level gating right I just have like a question on the

previous slide actually I was wondering you know is it actually bad to have too many of these attentions attention-seeking points in the game for this kind of game because I mean at the end of the day it is a timer based game and at least right now in you know in my early sessions I'm like level I'm level 10 or 11 right now and I do run out of things to do by you know things are taking and and whatnot so actually I was gonna be one of the another opportunity area that I was gonna call out is just having like deep content and in the time of base key I'm having these multiple multiple sources of tasks actually probably like help works out a little bit in a way because then you just has

while something is cooking over there you could like focus on something else over here and of a thing so what do you think about that I'm not host having too many things it's just too many progression systems that's the problem right like if you took out the whole story part and it was just the you know farm orders and player level unlocking all that that at least for me for my Anisa player it gives me more direction I you just focus on farm orders collect the animals stuff like that level up I get to unlock this stuff but yeah I'm being presented with the story that I wanted you know to me at least as a player the story tasks were a lot more interesting so it really was telling me specifically okay do this do this this and I find myself often gated because I can't even do that I need to wait to level up and so having a game tell me that I should be doing this but I can't beat some level gated and especially if I can't it's hard to spend to get around that level gate I

just think that that slows me down and makes the game a little less fun but um yeah and I've no qualms with like having a lot of stuff to do I think that that's what we've come to expect from front games I just wish that a level did not determine so much in how like I could progress on the story side right I mean Jeff do you think that I mean one of the things I haven't seen in games like this is a very clear sort of daily progression objective right so like you look at a game like clash Royale it's like okay I want to complete these you know I want to get ten ten stars for the day and then you know you get a chest but like for a game like this you know in money you're saying a timer based game if there was like a you know a like a daily quest with a bar that fills up that says you know you need to complete ten orders for the day and then just really be highly aligned and focused in

terms of like what your objectives are for the day with that do you think that would help or would for this kind of game does that not make sense I think you can do something like that in this game I mean obviously with games like clash morale and other games I mean there's a gameplay associated with those dollars yeah I mean we didn't have games like here necessary I mean it's resource management at the debate but imagine you know for the farm orders instead of giving you points on that progress bar you got a star for every farm order that you completed or two stars with three stars depending on the difficulty of the farm order and then yeah getting that chest getting those ten stars means completing you know five to ten farm orders I could see and you know they kind of do that with the point system but I think it can be broken down more simply into stars and then right I mean I meant something on a daily daily key nuts basically but sorry

though that you know utilizing this then the rate of side of the game to drive a very strong quest system which like further unlocks their overarching story of the game I think that's really going to define the backbone of the game in the future I feel it's definitely going to come and probably coming through farmhands and I just feel guy right now I guess we're not seeing it because of you know just lead times associated with you know writing up a meter for these things but that's definitely you know as Jeff or saying that's definitely the way to go right yeah I yeah I think it'd be interesting if there was a game that tried to more highly surface like a daily objectives like a class rail or like a team glass but to your point Jeff that is highly tied with gameplay I mean I don't know so okay at least what was being done was you know using this is to

bring that weekly or you know once in twice and when we kind of cadence to think so yeah this it wasn't a daily thing but probably this you know slipping a week into big chunks and then getting stuff done within those chunks or for a timer based game probably also then gives you enough time yeah and I think the other challenge is because you know this is like a farm game and you're seeing your forearm and stuff you don't want to put me in like a tomb last or whether you get like 50 50 HUD icons on your home screen right so that covers up the stuff so I understand the challenge there but ya know I thought it might be interesting right money did you have any other any other thoughts in terms of gameplay or meta no I like I said in the start you know for me the biggest thing is the balancing side or the biggest positives is the balancing and I just

feel like even if for a technical software instead being able to like maintain a really good synchronization between these four elements of the order port animals are hands in the lots and yeah really testing to see where they take it once the narrative aspect comes into the whole thing then how do they build you know more how did they build like this life of cadence on a week two weeks monthly basis kind of a thing attached to narrator but but yeah this for me these are like the one positive and one big opportunity right maybe before we jump into our scoring some of the other kind of open questions and thoughts in terms of the game that I thought were interesting was one you know so farmville - there's two SKUs of farm bill T right and so I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on why they did that I mean you know sometimes you

know there there's there's a perspective that you want to try and cover as many genres as possible and kind of trying to defend your genre by launching multiple skis with different different fiction but yeah you know um you know but then there's always like the thought will this cannibalize or other games blah blah blah from my experience I've never seen a lot of cannibalization even if you launch the same skew you know from my experience it you know Sega's Sonic - Sonic - - I mean you know there's a much cannibalization if at all but yeah you guys have any thoughts on multiple skis for for farmville - at least from my side I feel it's more on that line of you know doing a different theme so that they can probably incrementally expand the audience that they're getting with the same kind of gameplay and then keeping this this whole audience in that ecosystem yeah I don't I don't know if

there is an inside story and if there is I don't know what it is I feel it's it's more of this kind of a portfolio put fully expansion audience incremental expansion kind of play but yeah right and the one other issue I want to discuss it's like sort of the word on the street the the rumor was that farmville 3 was you know sort of six years in development for different dev teams I know the latest team which is the Helsinki team XE a SimCity build-it team there's a lot of great you know like people will say really great things about that that studio and that team and Joel the right in your backyard you know those guys like can you provide some additional color in terms of who they are and kind of what you know about those guys the you know publicly safe information yeah yeah yeah I know I know those guys

of course living near the same living in same city not too not too far from our office really talented a bunch of people actually actually pointed out they have had some good stuff in the in the past that have been their hand stone so that's that's that's basically then that I can disclose this close here but I said mmm I think that's that's mainly 1 part 2 part of the reasons why I gonna see the farm will create also having a possibly really bright future ahead because I I think the team working on it it knows it's not what to do and they're gonna have the track record to prove it so that's that's pretty basically basically it all right cool so maybe we can wrap this up with our with our scoring Joel 1 to 10 what would we think what's what's your what's your score between 7 & 8 I want to give this a just

because taking in account the genre you think about genre I I think but here is the Parvati has the potential to kind of turn leader if assess pointed out before they after this technical picnic um softball day they bring bring in the perfect diverse comprehensively not even looked alive up stand and then of course be resourceful and then we'll speak with coops and then and they're gonna pretend engagement layer to the game as well so let's give it a give it an 8 and and I I hope the answer from self I also will give it an 8 and the reason why I'm giving you an 8 is like one from from like a product innovation perspective not an 8 for sure but I think from fitting what the market is looking for actually I think it might be an 8 because you know sometimes you can do too much sometimes you can innovate too much and then also if I were to evaluate the game right now I

think Jeff's absolutely right like the systems need to be worked out the monetization needs to be worked out but if I'm saying at this phase like if they were in a further stage of soft launch I would give it a 7 but because they're in tech soft launch right now I would probably say an 8 for me right now Manu yeah I think I would give it an 8 purely based on the opportunity that I see out there and also met this team a little bit in the past and they're brilliant bunch of guys and I think the I think is like really big things for this game I would also say that I think from a pure dream and of the IP perspective the demand itself is a real big opportunity for Zynga compared to what Zynga has on the market right now for simulation so that in itself is

quite huge on top of that they have you know they have two minor innovations going on so it's a little bit of a you know yeah probably a little bit of a hot sauce on on this category and and then beyond that they have the big IP to like blow bin into there you a sales and finally they have these big opportunities of having the narrators in the game social aspects and immense so it's very very for diagram yeah for now I'm gonna give it a 6 um I think they set themselves up to actually have a pretty good game with pretty decent monetization with both the farmhand system and story narrative possibilities but because it is technical soft-launched and they have focus on things those things that I just I want to wait and

see what their ultimate ly gonna do with those he hasn't sense now I would give it a 6 though because I think it has some real possibilities for sure yeah well if anyone from Xing is listening I would I would give it a 9 if they hired you yes but anyway all right cool well I think that basically wraps it up there you have it farmville 3 looking you know I guess generally promising and still early in technical soft launch but you know could could do pretty well all right thanks everybody [Applause] [Music] [Music]