How Monster Strike Became the Biggest Mobile Game in the World

[Music] hello everyone yeah it's a it's a very cozy room that we have today and I have a little bit more time which is great so I don't have to you know go that quickly on slides a live of introduction for myself my name is Lanza or David call me Langer it's completely fine I wanted to talk a little bit more about Mick see how many of you in a just show of hands how many of you are familiar with Mick C as a company fantastic because half the employees all there so but so Mick see you know a little bit more Mick see we started off as a social networking company so we were the largest social network in Japan and we've then pivoted

to do mobile games or entertainment and we're really successful in entertainment and today I'm here to share with you a little bit more about our journey on how we've got there and essentially what are some of the things that we have done to get us to where we are at right now so for those of you who are not very familiar with who we are as a company just sit back relax you know I have a little bit more time than expected apparently to go through about go through a company I do have a video at the end of the presentation as well so it was not gonna be just me talking to you you guys you guys have to see something cool as well okay so let's go of course it's not working there we go okay so today we'll cover a few key points but most importantly a little bit about the mixi group of companies we are about a thousand five hundred people right now in the company and of course we're still growing we have five key

businesses we started out as the media business which is something that I've been sharing if you just now then expound it into entertainment so that's the entertainment category the top category and a bomb category would be the media and wellness business so today I'm gonna talk a little bit more about the entertainment business I guess it's why we are here and it's more fun to talk about anyway right so for the digital entertainment we have different human sports and live experiences so I'll talk a little bit more about that later but as you can see we are branded by this brand called AK slag but before that I'll talk a little bit more about monsters strike right which is our flagship title no show of hands how many of you are familiar with monster strike great okay fantastic so at least now we have we have a common ground and I don't have to go through so much about monster strikes and monsters fright is a pinball action game that originated from Japan has been around for six years now and as actually was released the same time I

got to Japan so Ivan Japan for about six years as well so I'm actually Singaporean based in Japan right now and I seen the rise of monsters strike happen as I came into Japan so it's a pretty cool story that they had to tell her and I finally joined the company I was more than excited because you get to be part of it and you get to see there's so much energy with the teams and I also share that with you today so the key concept the strategic concept of this game is very simple right back then five six years ago mobile games are present but they were not inherently social and there was social in a way that you will not expect right so you know back then back in the day when they were social you have like Wi-Fi based connectivity right so for example you have to go onto the Wi-Fi connection and then you play with other people all around the world right we believe that social is best when it's face to face right that's when it's more intimate and the excitement is more real right as opposed to you just

interacting with your screen so the strategic concept for monster strike was really simple right we wanted a game that allow you to play up to four players co-op in real time face to face some of our metrics for monster strike we started off obviously in Japan we then released in Taiwan Hong Kong Macau some of colleagues are here together with us and of course we released in China as well on all the way about I think oh no we have more than 15 million players right now there's not really update it so we're more than 15 million players globally for monster strike so now just a quick guest from a shot up from the audience this is more interactive right so what number do you think this is this is I believe it's 18 billion if I'm not mistaken right so guys just shout out what number do you think is this come on sorry how much do

I earn I wish so you talk about revenue right so it's not actually revenue and is actually to be honest and no total number of multiplayer sessions right so on average this will mean that we have about 10 million multiplayer games daily right why do we track this metric right as I mentioned to you as a company we believe in this idea face-to-face game play or this idea of social our roots from mixi is really inherently grounded in social so we wanted to bring that concept into the gaming sphere and track all these metrics that are very close to social so for example the multiplayer da use and multiplayer sessions are very important for us to track now another one so what numbers do you think those could be 40% 30% 30% shout out from the audience

sorry okay so segmentation casual meant core that's it very good guest though I would've probably guess that as well it's actually the retention right so if we're talking about a number of years paper active uses essentially we have 30 percent of our user base they've been with monster strike for the past five to six years right so this would essentially be your core users and here in your definition so we have thirty percent well claim also talk about three years or more we have thirty percent we started monster strike within the year we have forty percent who have claimed also strike for one year or more so intention numbers we're talking about you know day three hundred and fifty six and above I guess and I think that's great numbers for any mobile app I mean if you have that amount of health I think that's fantastic for stickiness and retention of your game right one thing that is also very important that we kind of take note as well as that there's only a fixed number of users

that you can get in a market so we're very concerned about returning users right so a lot of all activations or a lot of all success comes from targeting uses who turns in the game and bring that back into this into the ecosystem right and thanks to that you know you have been very lucky to to have revenues from the game you know thanks to the game I'm able to travel I'm here to speak to speak with you guys and hopefully we can continue that level of success with the game so you know how can you recreate this right I mean if you are on the other side of the table and you want to see you want to see what are some the learning lessons that you can come take from X flag here's our story right and it's thoughts of a very strong brand purpose so X flag is which is the entertainment brand so mixi group is the holding company and it's the overall parent company the X Lac brand focuses primarily on entertainment and we like to say that everything that we

create it's all about high-adrenaline Entertainment Rio high-adrenaline battle entertainment that brings friends and family closer together I will spend more time looking at the unites friends and family line is because everything that we do within the company is very focused on making sure that you and your friends or your family can actually get together with our product or service right we call this the barbecue concept right and you see this logo and you see this in our name cards as well and it's very important to the company this is a reminder to all employees within a company that we need to create the same experience or the same feeling that you get we're in a barbecue with friends and family right so if you man if you just picture about became friends and families about high-fives cheers drinking beers together I've never been to a sad barbecue before right let's pair that way right so it's the same feeling that we want to give you well when you interact or touch base with any of our marketing activations or

extract products a little bit about how monster strike as a game has kind of evolved over the years we started off obviously with the Japan launch then we launched in Taiwan Hong Kong Macau launched we launched here soon after we then started to go a little bit more core towards the more uses by creating a eSports based competition app which is monster strike stadium we then expanded upon the universe by looking at animate by creating animation we did a 3ds console game we have a movie that we've signed together with Warner Brothers team in Japan we then launched new games to kind of test the market and see whether we can recreate it about success and of course a launch in China so if you don't ask you know what what makes X like so special I mean visibly all the other gaming companies in the market I would say that

but the cointegration is a very important phrase that we use within all divisions of the company right so what is vertical integration essentially means it's gotta go to the answer immediately that we create you know vertical slices across all categories with all wonky IP so when you have a core IP they were on a build you start expanding onto multiple categories and sure that you capture as many users as you can through all these vertical categories right so a traditional IP model would start off that if you look in the left a traditional IP model is not on a television right or like perhaps film right and from there you branch off into games into movies the animation merchandising and events more often than not these divisions don't talk to each other there's not much synergy with individual circles and left-right so to give you an example

perhaps the the games team will not be as familiar with the merchandising team right in the IP the traditional IP model for us we ensure that every single key business unit communicates of each other right so we keep all communications very small so all 1500 of us are based in Shibuya Tokyo visit across three buildings but they all within five minutes walk of each other so it's communication is key for us so if you're a communication based company we always obviously have to Beach make sure that we communicate effectively in the company too so all divisions actually talk to each other and there's a lot of synergy between each divisions I'll talk I'll give some examples of some synergy and a bit so we start off with the monster strike game right in the center so obviously you have core players or your your new players coming into the game they really

enjoy monsters strike but then also we realize that you know if you like playing the game you then also want to see contents that are related to the game so I'll movie efforts so we have two movies has really been released I'm planet together Warner Brothers one was three years ago the last one was I believe last year for the movie so what we did was really cool and I really like this a lot so we make sure that the movie teams talk very closely with the games team so their in-game events right you can play and select cinemas so cinemas when you go to or theaters when you go to and you want to watch others say the monster strike movie there is a lobby area when you're waiting for a movie to start so we drill fenced these theaters and make sure that you can actually play limited edition stages when you are in the cinema with friends and family right so before watching the movie you get to play some of them in stages and when the movie is over you get to play more games as well right the good part of this and this is

really this is a really funny story that the team is telling me is that this initiative is so successful that people were actually playing the game more than they were actually watching the movie so in the cinema you see a lot more cell phones actually playing the game instead of watching the movie so I think it's a very good problem to have and I really like how they kind of integrated the divisions together we also have a flagship event called X like Park so instead of having you know a booth right for BBC booth we decided to have our own BBC booth but there's not share with other companies so we call it X like pop so we just had one literally last weekend so July 13th 14th and it's eight halls in the same place but you have Tokyo Game Show and it's crazy fun right so you have like you know something silly coming in dressed up as a monster stripy you have a full hall dedicated for and beverages you have celebrities coming and perform you have extreme sport you have eSports it's a little bit

of something for everyone right you also do good so we ecommerce business and we have retail spaces as well so we have three retail spaces today one in Shibuya Tokyo wanna shinsaibashi Osaka and the last one in Haneda Airport eSports business is also very interesting so we have eSports group that focuses on trying to create monster strike contents based on the combat competitive I'm on strike contents we actually hold eSports Grand Prix during our acts like park event right so last year's prize pool of six hundred thousand USD and is one of the largest prize pools to date in the Japanese market and last but not least the one that kind of kicks started this whole I would say media mix strategy is animation team so we are the first Japanese company and provide animation for free on YouTube so if you guys go on youtube right now and just search monster strike you get to see the Japanese versions the English versions

and subtitle English versions of the animation and three seasons of the animation right now and it all really really good quality and the best part about animation is that we wanted animation to be short form animation so you know the same amount of time that you take when you're traveling on the train right so public transport is huge in Japan and we kind understood that in terms of the user flow people want content to consume when they are on the train so instead of this playing the game on a train what they can do is they can actually watch this short film animation online yeah it's pretty pretty much it marketing right so we have some members of the marketing team here together with us today and they do amazing work so a little bit about some of the work they have done they really focus on this idea of user loyalty and high level marketing promotions that focus on not just the individual but group right so we have some activations where you know it's all about having I would say group base rewards that you

can actually clean instead of just having an individual claim but what if you were to do that say a it's an incentive based program right we also do some really out of out of this world marketing campaigns to regard to word-of-mouth virality so for us we understand that being topical is critical in a market which is very noisy like Japan so we make sure that we do crazy stuff and I think you know some of the team's really come up with really insane stuff so here is one example I wanna show you this a advertising campaign that we did few years back New Year's Day the first 12 animals that arrived will be designated as the zodiac the animals couldn't wait for New Year's morning however the cat had forgotten when the visit was supposed to be and the vet gave him a false date New Year's Day the Ox departed before sunrise and the wrath climbed on his back for a free ride as

the Ox approached the gods palace the rat jumped off running to come in first place the rest followed to complete the zodiac [Music] all 13 animals from the legends were cast and an actual race took place the proceedings were through and now the time has come [Music] [Music]

[Music] this was proposed by the applicant monster strike within the SAP those who correctly guessed the finishing order received in-game currency more than anything monster strikes had resurrected this legend in the modern age you guys like that yeah it's great stuff yeah kudos did a marketing team yeah like like really out of this world so I was actually in the office when they're live streaming this event on YouTube and just hear people screaming around me I was like what's happening and you know some of them like she's supporting the cat and the cat was actually going backwards so it's it's it's very typical of a cat to do that for you I guess yeah so you know just kind of sum up the marketing activations and what we do

it's all about trying to facilitate communication right so one of the metrics that you saw was all about like you know being topical right so trending on YouTube or Twitter that's very important to us why because we understand that water morality is key to making your game grow organically so whatever we do is all about trying to make sure that you can create that water morality right so the two types of two categories of marketing promotions that we do so one is where you log in and pick up and then you play so you log in for goodies and if you go in together with friends you can do it but one that's the one the one activation that I'm more excited about I think is really cool is the idea about playing together right and that you get to actually clean prizes together as a group of friends so to give an example be the one in the middle on the right is the baskin-robbins campaign everything so you know when you complete or play games and monsters try you can actually claim an actual ice cream right so this is kind of like online to offline activation for us but instead of doing it by yourself you can do it with friends as well right so you can actually claim together with friends in

order to get the ice cream together so I thought that's really cool and it kind of really gives you an incentive for friends they kind of hang out and talk right so yeah so Nick steps right so what we doing next is primarily trying to expand on economic scope of monster strike so we're gonna look into more categories we're gonna have more divisions that are looking into new initiatives that we're doing so to give you an example we all love merchandising team has a trading card game there's more than three million cars shipped we're gonna continue to extract Tom so there's X like top 2018-2019 was also more than 40,000 attendees as well we're just gonna continue to push down the lever or push down the panel on making sure that you can get as many exciting contents as we can for our excellent friends yeah and that's pretty much it yeah thank you so much for your time everyone yeah it

comes the hard part right the question yeah that was super cool thank you very much come on we've grabbed some questions on this this is the biggest game in the world are you right at the back here we go I'm coming it's all right I'm coming to you gain a sweat on just by moving just make it easier to you thanks for a great talk I like to ask more about the game and the concept you had in the beginning like friends and family cooperative competitive game when you test at the game inside the company you intended it to be cooperative but usually when a player downloads it from the store he doesn't know about that is their way where when you somehow help them to understand this or it just goes so I think the the simple answer to your question is really all about timing right so back then you know it was very easy for us to kind of figure to give it a bit of context and six years ago right so six years ago the app store is not as

flooded as it is right now in today's day and age and contents back then were not as social right so it was very hard to figure out you know how exactly I connect with friends or play your friends so when we tested it internally we loved the game right and we knew very well that is gonna be huge successes because of how well it was how well it was received within the internal play test that we had but one thing that we actually did to facilitate communication was and I don't think is replicable today but one thing that we did was we intentionally not added a tutorial right so there was no tutorial in the game when we first thought it out or we made it intentionally difficult to play so that users can actually communicate with friends 250 teach them like how to play so you have a few evangelists who really enjoy the game and then it started off a word-of-mouth virality right on how did you how to play this game and because everyone is playing the game you don't to be left on you want to play it too right so as you can see from growth Metro growth profits now on a user graph you know it's very very small

in the beginning right and I'll curve actually goes in this and in a exponential curve so essentially it starts very slow and with the k-factor it kind of doubles up very quickly so at the end of one year two years we were experiencing massive organic growth but before that we all saw it on water morality so I'm not too sure it's the same you can do that again but for us what we did was we ensure that everything that we did all the features that we put into the game or intentionally made to create communication right between you and three other friends right and that was the key thing that we did yeah the question do we have any other final questions we do over here I mean more and more overseas mobile games coming to Japan games so my question is what are

the most important themes when you publish a mobile games in China right now I mean sorry let's to make sure that clarify a question for China to come into Japan so Chinese games to come in Japan or is it the other way right who want to go into Japan yes got it okay I do have some advice just and this is my advice excellent advice okay but I would say that these are some general water I mean general rules of thumb I mean there's no right or wrong answer to this right I think even as a big company like us as mixi we're still figuring things along the way about the Japanese market so I may not have the hundred percent of the answers for you but based on what I'm seeing so far I do notice that Chinese developers that tend to do better in Japan the ones that really focus on hyper localization so what that means is instead of just changing the text from Chinese the

Japanese they literally make sure that it's topical that using context or dialogue which is extremely topical to the Japanese small so you know and this sounds very cliche I know but I actually have a Japanese person look at your text someone who really understands Japanese look at your Chinese sex before you translate it and also do not use the default the default I will say there's a default form that a lot of Chinese publishers like to use in Japan which is not the actual font so you might want to actually be a little bit more specific with the phone and make sure that you use a phone that Japanese people actually use so I don't have the name the name of the font can really come to mind right now but the phone is something that I know this as well as a huge issue another thing as well is about contents right so in your content it's a very correctly driven business in Japan so as you can tell the history of Japan has primarily been driven all the IP contents of market in Japan its primary driven by characters right so if you know the youth of Japan started

growing up by reading manga and they're all driven heavily around like story I mean story lines driven primarily around the character as opposed to telling the full plot of I mean I'd want to go too much into detail for this but I would say that make sure that you focus a lot more on your characters rather than anything else right so the gameplay can be fun but look deeper into creating a worldview for your characters right in Japanese you call this sake icon right and this is literally translated as worldview and I think that something is very important that a lot of foreign developers try to get in Japan already understand because they tried this bringing gameplay right and then you forget about telling a strong character story so a games that do very well tell very good character stories so that people want to collect so you you know as a gamer I want to collect these characters more right so these are perhaps some rules of thumb time seeing I can go a little bit longer but I would say it if you stick to the ease you be pretty much quite safe I hope dance is a question yeah

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