How This Small Game Studio 10x Their Revenue in an Industry Downturn

[Music] I love a great show but even better I love great news that's what I have with Paul West CEO fum games we've been passing like ships in the night but now we have an even better reason to chat because you have 10x revenues in a down market so first of all I have to say congrat ulations on that one Paul share a little bit about what you did to do that because that was the topic here as well as your talk yeah exactly thanks Peggy great to see you and meet properly um so we 10x in 2024 our revenues which was uh our biggest growth year by far super exciting for us and um we plan to do even more in 2025 but I just did a talk on that actually in a uh a couple of hours ago which was about all the little Ines we did to kind of make that happen no real secret Source over then

like focusing on what worked which sounds really obvious but we did really just B really uh kind of bolt down on the the biggest game that we had live ops monetization new revenue streams uh subscriptions there was kind of a thousand things we did Tiny things we did that helped the growth but it really really was a transformative year for the company now you've really piqued my interest because it isn't the one thing I think the one thing was choosing the game and sticking to that one that's a really hard decision you know it's like oh we've got a portfolio of games like no choose one so you did choose one at fum games what what was the game then so the game was Bitcoin miner so that's a game where you you dig down into the Earth and you actually mine Bitcoin and we reward players with Bitcoin as they play so it's kind of an intive unique thing um now just a sense check that you will not become a millionaire playing this game small amounts of money you can earn it's like $10 a month but it's quite nice for players to have that reward they buy coffees just from playing a game they

enjoy and and and that's really interesting so uh yeah that's been our our biggest hit to date and also I mean I speak with so many Publishers in the industry and I remember when we were chatting about crypto last year it was like well you know you have to make it part of the game just educate get people interested and start you know getting the feel of what it is I mean you're not giving like the Bitcoins not the way they're doing this right that wouldn't that would be one hell of a game but no but you're getting them interested and you're doing it sort of in in steps what are some learnings about keeping the player there's one about obviously acquiring them but then keeping them coming back because that's going to get them deep into the game into the game playay what did you learn there or what did you share during your talk sure thing so the main thing was um being honest uh obviously a lot of our growth from user acquisition so we run a lot of video ads and we were just truthful with the players you see a lot of ads these days in rewarded type games where they say download now casat out five $500 instantly and you know that's

just not true they don't work they're they're they're not we didn't want to be associated with that so we're very honest in what we do we say like the maximum you can earn play in this game is $10 a month it's a real fun game it's Bitcoin who knows what could happen it might go up might go down so um you know it's meant to be more fun points and loyalty points but we find it does help with retention quite a lot um and we've just actually launched a second game at the end of last year which also worked really well it's called Idol mine similar concept you earn Bitcoin but you're actually mining it with with uh little men holding well people uh hitting pickaxes into the Rocks so it's like a symbolism of Mining and that game worked really well worked really well as well so I think from it did a million dollars in Revenue within 60 days by my prototype so there's definitely positive things that we can find and grow games in the industry and uh yeah hope to see more of that from us in 2025 because we're really uh really focusing on it

and the and the monetization model itself has that evolved with the company because I've known you for a while uh watched this for a bit and I have the feeling that this all these learnings go back in and you're also innovating in the monetization model of the game as well the admon is super super core here yes exactly the admon is super core so it's about 70% of our revenue is AD monetization and we're quite experimental and in Innovative in what we do with ad monetization so I think we were one of the first who popped up a little like ad coming soon like 54 32 1 countdown in the game so we could prepare users and intertial ad was coming that's really effective because it warns the user and ads coming so it's polite to do um they're familiar with it because it's like a Netflix type countdown something's about to happen with the countdown and also it gives a cancel button so people can hit cancel and they can if they like to purchase remove ads so it's an option to do it in I AP which of course are also very valuable for us as as well so we like to

try and innovate as much as we can in the ad space I mean my background is AD colony and adtech so I'm very interested in that space naturally but yeah there's new partners new um like play gap for example is a new partner we've started using which monetizes offline ad sessions that's a really interesting company we we test a lot on the ad side we uh we kind of over index on tests there to be honest I I knew about the admon I knew that that was big but I love hearing about the twists and the Innovations because makes a lot of sense to sort of say Ad is coming so that preps me for it so it's not going to be interruptive and I'm going to make money on it I mean well you're going to make money on it because I can say oh I'd rather I'd rather skip that and you did subscriptions where did that fit in yeah subscriptions were pretty interesting because they they intimidated us quite a lot you know they they're quite hard to measure to track on the back end side because you can pause them you can cancel them they obviously repeat um but what we found

was we just tried something and it worked and I'm not going to say it's going to work for everyone but don't be afraid to try them and when they work they really do work and one of the things I shared in my talk was I have a theory that in at purchase subscriptions revenue is really important to the platforms to Apples and Googles they like that dollar it's kind of almost worth more to them so I think it helps the algorithm get you discovered more that's my theory not proven but um yeah it's another reason to try it I think that makes sense I've spoken with a number of Publishers who say you know it is a volume game so it's like the more you bring them the more they will promote you so it does makes sense you brought it all together in your admon model you had rewards you have inout purchases and I also have a subscription have you seen that the mix I mean without cannibalizing one or the other that that's quite a balancing act do you have any learnings about that because yes you did it you said we'll test it

all and you put it all in there it's a great question we're probably not Savvy enough to know how much we cannibalized there's definitely an element of it because if you pay to remove ads you never get an ad again in the game but you can keep earning from the game so there's probably users who are you know who have made lots more off us than we've made off them but overall the net even is kind of a good share a good margin and revenue share for the players and for us so yeah that's that's a really interesting one what we I think what we have seen is that because we've been testing new ad monetization methodologies that slice of the pie hasn't necessarily uh increased when we added subscriptions because they've been competing with each other so they're just constantly fighting but the overall p is getting bigger and that's the really promising thing that we've been doing and that's why we like to run those tests and test these new partners so um yeah we we'll keep doing that so where are you going with the um the loyalty and that aspect of it because you have valuable players youve Ender IFI through the data and through

the behavior who they are and now you want to get more of them I mean it's now it's going to be digging for those mining for the cohorts let's put it that way how are you approaching that I think there's um there's quite a bit of room left to grow Bitcoin minor and Idol Min on new game is looking better than Bitcoin miner so we think we have a big ceiling there but we're also I bit of hypocrite we also have another game that we're working on which would open up to a much more casual audience so outside of idol outside of Bitcoin and more of a it's still a rewarded game but something much more accessible to the average uh citizen I should say because um what we find is when we reward the player there's an instant trust that's been built straight away because you know for a free app they've got something back instantly that is so strong so we've been trying to find a way to open that up to make it so you don't have to have like a Bitcoin wallet to play our game you could have maybe an Amazon account or or something else um that's coming this year and I really hope that's going to work but but we'll we'll test it

what about when you introduced them because it was first the whole idea you let someone come into the game get very accustomed to it sort of get the feel for what they are as a player type and what resonates with them but I'm hearing so much more about no just go in there and start immediately I don't know if it's because we all saw the phenomenal success of white out survival where it just comes in starts to monetize before you knew what hit you really yeah that's an interesting one I I I agree with you I think like what we've seen over the years is just kind of be upfront be direct because you need the eybl you need the Impressions on the offers on the opport on the ads and the earlier the better on average works better from an LTV from a business Revenue perspective it may not be the best player experience for individuals but overall I think it does Drive Better Business kpis to be honest but then there is a Tipping Point right so we can't you can't bombard use instantly um

and I think the the app stores are do pay quite attention to that you know if there's an ad in the first few seconds for example I think you can be penalized for that from our test so yeah I think it's a it's a balancing act that should be tested and that's the best thing about mobile games especially is you can ab test very easily I mean you've tried a lot Paul you've tested a lot that's why you have from 1 million to 10 million in a time when it's a downtime what was your your biggest surprise in that because you don't aim for this I mean you hope for it but you sometimes things work and you're like wow I didn't think that was going to work what was one of those moments for you that's a great question I think there's a couple um the first one probably with Bitcoin miner was that the user acquisition would work on more and more channels as we tested and it just it required us we're a small company very small like we bootstrapped um and one of the things that happened was

leaning in and taking a risk that we could push our payback window back and every day we push the payback window back we saw the UA payback and it would actually keep coming so like that that was the thing that was a bit of a as a Founder who wants to pay 20 people's mortgages every every month a bit scary but we took that risk and and it did work carefully but it did work I think the second one was our our our new game Idol mine um when we dropped that prototype into the App Store and we saw like 50 c CPI in the US 45% day one retention almost better kpis than Bitcoin miner which we've worked on for about 4 years we were um quite Blown Away by that um and that is one of the biggest needle drivers in the last quarter for our growth so that's why we're in a really exciting position for 2025 because we have that game in the locker we have Bitcoin miner and hopefully another coming soon as well was there any level of seasonality to that campaign because I mean those are cpis that are that are impressive

impressive not what I was expecting because when you talk with everyone in the industry as I do it it it sounded as if we were pricing ourselves out you know it was between competition with the e-commerce apps and because they have games right everyone has a game so we and and and we were going back to things like just ordinary entertainment so that's very surprising yeah no it really is and I think um you know we didn't expect those results from the Prototype we've built a hundred games in the last two years like you know we prototypes I should say and and so we know when there's something um because we've seen a lot of not something we've SE a lot of bad so that was um that was really exciting to see that come in and obviously the retention stick and the players Tim around and join discords and proactively suggest how ways we can improve the game so yeah it's um there's definitely opportunities to innovate still I Think and Grow Mobile gaming sector which is obviously what what is working at the moment so yeah um we'll see yeah well I'm going to

end with that because you talk about Innovation and I wouldn't be doing my job if we didn't talk about AI right AI where does it fit in at fum games is it about creative is it about creating process because everyone is talking about it what are you doing with it so AI for us touches um quite a few departments actually so the the programmers love it to help them fix their code like that's a no-brainer I think um I think it's a great addition for that um you know we subscribe to to one of them CH GPT Etc to uh to help the devs with that we use it uh slightly on the art to really quickly spit up mocks so we can find like like for example if I wanted to pitch idea into the company I can really quickly get a visualization of what I want the rough idea to look like before the artists get it so they kind of see what's in my head um CU I can't draw so that helps um app icons definitely we've we've seen that work in the past we started to test um AI influencers for creatives that one's

very interesting where you can write a script and they will an influencer will speak the script um that's very powerful we've SE we've used that this year so I think it's like for me it's like a marginal gain uplift or maybe slightly more than a marginal gain uplift across every Department some more than others it's not going to replace a department for us but it's going to enhance it well you know sometimes timing is good we didn't catch up at the last Pocket Gamer connect but we did this time and I could have the opportunity to congratulate you which I wasn't going to do last year we didn't know this was coming um you were a bit more sober I mean literally now I'm just kidding um literally but uh I'm so pleased to see you know that test that learn that that spirit and that not giving up I mean look at it now you can only go further thank you so much Paul and wishing you all the best thanks

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