Multiscription's Teis Anker Mikkelsen On Scaling Subscription Models Across Gaming Platforms

[Music] hello world welcome to the Pocket Gamer podcast with your hosts me Brian Bago and the ever effervescent and strangely still at our desk Peggy an Sals hello Peggy it's lovely to see you yeah it's lovely to be here actually Brian still at my desk that that's that's a that's a description I hope to keep for a couple of weeks but uh looking as if uh it will uh there will be travels but um yeah here we are here we are not quite the first half of the Year be behind us and uh my bet is 2024 will be remembered as the year of Alternatives what do you think about that one Brian I think you're absolutely bang on Peggy um everything is changing the one constant as we hear pretty much every every single time we record the one constant in the games world is change and this year seeing more change than I think

anyone is comfortable with h so we've got consolidation we've got closures we've got redundancies we've got you know new devices new business models and we're going to touch on business models exact this morning it's kind of the quintessential uh games year or year in games I should say but but not necessarily a comfortable one to your point yes um alternative app stores we'll be touching upon that because I have some shows lined up some guests to talk about that alternative monetization models of course also big because it's all about maximizing Revenue potential for your studio and some are doing it by just sort of mixing it together so we'll hear a lot more about hybrid monetization but also a lot more about subscription right and that's where we're going to take it today we're going to talk about where do you get started how do you integrate it how do you make it part of the journey and when you've cleared those hurdles right how do you scale so luckily Our Guest has 20 years

of experience in the gaming and digital Industries and he's leveraging that as CEO and co-founder of mul description which is all about subscription so Ty mikkelson welcome to Pocket Gamer and I would say we're lucky to have you as well as I said you have street cred but speaking of luck I couldn't resist it you also boosting your good luck with hag Stones so tell us about that what is a hagstone what's all this about what what's the good luck here thank you so much for having me I've been looking so much forward to having this chat with you and yeah the heck Stones it's it's really just a stone with a hole in it to be honest unless you of course um you might believe that there's more to it than that I actually have one just to it's just a store with a hone in it and I guess it came about as I like to take walks on the beach and I also like to keep myself busy so you start looking at what you see around you and you see holes with the stones in it as you say they have always you know been seen to

have um magical or mystical elements to them and who know it might just be why we are in the good fortunes that we have here at M description and because of the heck Stones we're talking about good luck and having luck being fortunate with the subscription model in games and that seems to have really been taking the industry by surprise because I was checking seven of the top 10 gross in games if you want to say they have some level of subscription that's really the case because if you look even at battle pass right it's a lot like a subscription so there's a lot going on driving this Ty um seems to have taken us by storm though a bit a bit by surprise would you say so a battle pass is just a nonrenewable non Auto renewable subscription it has the same mechanics and you can also just make a non Auto renewable subscription so you're you're completely right and I think we've seen the same transition that we saw back in 2012 when we moved from premium to free to play where

everyone was eyeing it but no one really saw it take off as quickly as it did and I think we see it here the major difference we see is that subscription is a model that people are familiar with um as least at least as consumers and then they might have an idea that they sort of understand how it works as a business but it's it's quite different it's not just you know stable Revenue what as everyone talks about but how to design it how to use it how to price it how how to match it with the other monetization methods that you have um that's that's the real Challenge and I don't I think a lot of people are underestimating the kind of brain works that goes into that it's really interesting to get this very very um polarized opinion that you know subscription equals good or subscription equals oh dear God it's going to kill the games industry again the next thing that's going to kill the games industry like mobile and freet toop play um so I'm delighted to have you here tyon what

is it that you're seeing and and you know what is it that that your compan is doing to really help Studios understand and take advantage of this incredible new business model so we've essentially seen the rise of subscription even before Apple arade um was even announced and I remember when we were pitching to investors my co-founder Martin bis and I were often being you know told oh so you the Netflix for games and we kept saying no no because we're pretty sure that Netflix were going to include games so we didn't want to we didn't want to be that so we saw this coming as you say from outside of the industry and we just saw a real need for it we established company both Martin and I we come from games as you said Peggy thank you very much for the kind introduction by the way but my co-founder Martin he he founded massive entertainment 20 something years ago um and has since then been been in the industry so we saw all these great games we come from gaming that just didn't get the financial returns that I would say the great games deserved and we saw

subscription is a good way to help that because it really works nicely with how we are intrinsically motivated as people to engaged with a product we actually like to be attached closely to a product and a subscription does bring us closer to the product than a single a single purchase I think to the point about you know the the discussions that happen around subcription they they they tend to be very binary uh and polarized as you say and and I think also they are sometimes s influenced by some people who might have tried it themselves and and not made it work for various reasons and then that becomes the then the conclusion for everyone because then it's not just about them I guess so that could be another another Factor so Ty with that rapid integration of subscriptions into some of the the top gross in games out there how should gaming companies be approaching this model you know is it is it all part of this hybrid mix or how do they maximize their revenue without I guess maybe

overwhelming the users so the good thing about subscription is that it's actually very flexible I think that's the main misunder understanding about a subscription people have this idea that a subscription is a Walled Garden with an all you can eat model where everything is unlocked and this is the typical Apple arade setup where it's a wall Garden you have to pay to be able to play and everything is unlocked that is sort of been how applicators traditionally worked but that's not how subscription works at all subscription is just a another tool in the toolbox you can add to complement your IAP your ads or whatever other methods you have um in the game and the good thing about it is you can actually use it to boost the other methods you have for monetization but I think it's it has to start with a realization that you need to approach it from a um the angle that you need to learn it first just again going back to I mean we probably had the same conferences back in 2011 201 12

when everyone was learning and about freeto play and going to the talks and how can I make money if I give away my game for free this makes no sense and then we had to learn about the mechanics and and then everything took off back then I think it's it's the same sort of beginner's mind that you have to apply to subscription as well um that's where again this is where we come in we actually help a lot of companies with their subscription e them we've actually helped some just with their own internal subscription or they' have been added to our subscription offer which essentially links all the games into one subscription so by being subscribed to one game you get uh you're now a subscriber and all the 24 other games we currently have uh on the service I like that approach because what it is is it's almost like a bit of a it becomes a destination particularly if the games have a lot in common and we've had that on here Brian we had a while back we had someone who was doing this only with learning games for children it was like okay if you want to have learning games for children this is your destination

it's a subscription it's a bundle it's the power again of that bundle and we've seen that that works you you bring like things together and it's more than the sum of the parts is that what you're doing you said you have 24 plus titles I believe T is that the idea to bring them together so it's a destination not just a platform first of all we actually approach it where we bring in a a very diverse group of games um because we see that working I mean we Netflix was mentioned earlier and the benefit of that is that it has something for everyone in the family so everyone can sort of understand why we need to get the subscription for us it's a it's primarily a value ad for the games that they can be bigger than they are by themselves I think that's that's a challenge um I mean Brian you mentioned Spotify and if you subscribe to Spotify you have essentially old music in the world more or less um I know the efficient Aros will say no but I mean for for 99% of people that it is all the

music in the world you could want even old uh music so if you want to sell a subscription for games it can be hard if it's just your game that you're asking for a subscription for so being able to bondle it with with other titles um it's just a nice it's a nice thing for consumers we all have losser version which is why we might not subscribe um because we think we might not continue to play the game but if there are other games in the service then the losser version goes away because in your mind you're thinking hey I can always just play one of the other games if I stop playing this game so that that I think that's that's that's really the strength of of putting in into a bigger Network the value proposition for the player is that the you know the barriers to to trying new games moving on to new games are enormous we've heard from so many um people across the podcast in the last year that um retention and engagement are just such key metric tricks for everybody but once you have that

subscription once you've got people invested not just financially but with their their time as well it must have quite an impact on on your retention are you seeing any kind of um data on that that that would let you know this is a model that that not only works but that we you know we can try in different ways I mean subscription increases retention this is a a universal truth that uh that not just we see but but everyone sees because I just think about it where do you go on a Saturday night if you want to watch a movie well you don't go to where you haven't paid right you go to one of the services you're already paying for um you might be lured on to a new service if there's a new show coming uh we all remember how Disney plus used a Mandalorian to do that but I mean that that's how it works so subscription improves retention but why I always talk about is seeing subscription in a game as building a relationship with a player so you have to think about as a player

when you commit to a subscription you pay up front for the next let's say a month you base that on faith on what the game is going to deliver so you have to deliver that as a game and not only that you then overd deliver build on the faith that the player will not cancel their subscription so that way a subscription is lot like building a relationship the the more you put in the more you get out so you sort of stag in onp top and you build your relationship with the player stronger and stronger over time by treating them as if they are essentially members of your game you could say using using that kind of metaphor that kind of thinking and that separates a subcription a lot from just a oneof purchase where you get just the thing you need or the the sack of coins whatever whatever you need I think that's that's the that's the key to really unlocking um the the understanding of how you go from a single transaction in premium to a

series of transaction in in freeto play with microtransactions and then into a relationship when you go into uh subscription the relationships that work are friction free frustration minimum and there are hurdles when you're purchasing through off-platform payments there are challenges there are also benefits what were some challenges and some advice for creating a userfriendly a player friendly payment experience that's a really really good point you bring up there Peg and I think it's one that's being kind of overlooked a lot in the discussions there are currently about of platform payments um because every time you ask a player to to take a step there's not just a risk but there it's just a fact that not everyone will take that step and for every step especially if you go off platform the journey becomes longer and not everyone will complete the journey and you'll be surprised how how few that actually do for whatever reason so what you need to do is of course you

need to remove all the friction you can in that journey to make it as smooth as possible it's still going to be a journey but as as a user Journey but um you make it as smooth as possible and then you make the reward high for going through those steps you make the pot of gold big and I want to say remember that the pot of gold should be big for the player who goes through the Journey not for the developer and I think when we talk about these off platform payments from develop ERS I often read you know people talking about how much more money they could make if they didn't have to pay so much money to others I say that's this that saving goes to the player as a reward for taking that Journey at least the majority of it or it could also be that you perh have some uniqueness to taking that Journey a reason for doing it I would say that's the that's the that's the major step so making EAS to possible give them a big reward for doing it and even some uniqueness if you want to offer that for for taking that

extra step it's it's it's really not for us at least only a lot of people don't know this but Apple and Google they only charge 15% of subscriptions not 30% um and um I I educate a lot of people know that especially you know the sales guys who want to sell me the off platform payments they they are actually not aware um so for us it's not really about the the the the sort of little savings we could have and I also think it speaks volumes to how sticky the model is that Google and apple who are very strongly fighting for the right to take the 30% they are forgoing 50% of that if you sell them a subscription these guys they know how strong subscription is if they want to a go they probably still make more money by only taking 15 than taking 30 on an inet purchase so I think that's that's some of the things that people it's been years since they changed this um but people still don't realize it actually let's focus on multis scription so so how do you you look at the the issues

around things like subscription fatigue amongst players and consumers um especially in a market that you know is kind of not necessarily saturated but there's a lot of people out there trying to get you to subscribe so how are you addressing that t first of all we recognize it we I totally agree that there is subscription fatigue I mean my mom she's 73 years old she's been subscribed to the same physical newspaper for 50 years actually more than than that 53 years now every day of the week except Sunday without any pause without missing one payment Anin would never buy it on a Sunday right it's just Monday through through Saturday for 53 years we would never see this again um I mean this this is not what we expect what we do expect is that people are of course looking at the offer first of all this is why we are consolidating essentially a lot of games that could have their own single games subscription into a bigger subscription just to get

away from there well I have so many subscriptions true and now we are we are consolidating them into one which also just gives us a lot of things to to play around with in terms of rewarding the players and you know keeping them in in that network of games um secondly it also uh gives um gives you an an opportunity to when you when you do recognize that there is subscription fatigue acknowledge it and don't make it difficult for people to leave actually there's there's studies showing that the easier it is to leave the more likely you are to be retained because you don't feel trapped you don't feel that you have to remember to sign out I mean everyone can try canceling the Adobe membership that's that's the most difficult thing ever this is why everyone wants to get out of adobe but if you have a we have the unsubscribe button it's right there on our app you can't even actually unsubscribe from the

app you have to do it from from the from the store but we link you to the store I mean it's just to make it as easy as possible we make it very you know bright and you can see it another thing is make it easy for people to come back don't don't punish them keep their profiles keep their progress know that now they are playing your game for let's say a couple months and then they're off to the new thing now everyone's probably playing Fallout again so let them play Fallout for a few months and then they're going to come back uh to to your game and to make it easy for them to come back reactivate the subscription keep the progress all these things and I can say the I have some data about this from others as well I've talked to other subscriptions and I know in streaming I talked to a very big TV streaming platform and they told me that they were signing up hundreds of thousands of viewers in the nordics each month and I was thinking hundreds of thousands each month there's only like 20 million

people here like how do how do you do that and that's of course because they leave again very quickly so they just see it as you know they're there for let's say a season of something or let's say to watch their Champions League playoffs or whatever they are they're there for then they leave and then they come back so so don't don't slam the door after them uh you know don't be all passive aggressive in your communication to them when they leave you know I guess you weren't happy with what we had or something like that uh just you know make it they're going to come back they're going to come back and and you know people fall on high times sometimes they just they would want to pay but they just can't afford those even the $ five dollar right it's I mean I mean starting a game company in Europe and I say I'm in Copenhagen here you kind of forget your privilege that not everyone can just have a lot of subscription $5 subscription running and it's no it's no problem so so so treat people with with respect I would say so Ty we can agree that subscriptions are huge we can see the Giants like Netflix and apple

modifying their subscription models to introduce more monetization elements you know so inapp purchases alongside the subscriptions itself so as more gaming companies consider moving to that subscription model what considerations should they keep in mind to ensure that smooth transition profitable growth but just as importantly that relationship with their players I think we touched upon a few of the points already about thinking about it as a relationship usep lishing with a player you should also think about that you are offering players another way to pay for your product you're not trying to milk them for more money that's that's the wrong approach um you should also understand that as I said before you know you're just adding another tool and you have to make sure that works alongside ads and in purchases one of the surprising things um is that typically if you have rewarded video ads you you would have diminishing returns for the player by

watching ads so we have a couple things when we work with the games um if you if you integrate our subscription model which by the way is called Unleashed so the company is M subscription the model is called Unleashed then you are you're not allowed to have any interstitials or banners or blocking ads but you're still allowed to have rewarded video ads if they are uh voluntary and player initiated okay so they has to be voluntary and they has to be initiated by the player so this could be like going to a menu get some more coins by watching an ad and because what we see the reason why we have this I would actually that's something I learned when we started out the company we said no ads at all but then we were talking to Publishers we were reading tons of reviews of games and people were complaining about Publishers taking away rewarded video ads there was one and I and I screenshot it because one person was complaining saying you took away my free stuff like they didn't see it as paying with the eyeballs they saw it as

here's some free stuff for me that I could get by watching an ad again if it's voluntary and player initiated so anyway so we we say keep those because players actually like them if they're done in that way also um because you're a subscriber give them a bonus give them 20% more rewards for watching this ad and so that's already okay now I have the reward that's also for subscribers and I'm giving them an extra reward for watching it so you're already treating them better um another way you can go about that is you can just say okay you still have to click it you again don't get the you don't have to get the watch the ad you just get the benefit but you still have to go and click it that's another way of doing it but I think you can still justify the ad but the last point on that going back to the relationship is that where you normally have diminishing returns as I said on watching a rewarded video ad it should be the other way around because we're building in the relationship right so the more you put in the more you get out so you actually turn it around so

instead of getting 500 coins 400 coins 300 coins whatever you you build it the other way that you get more and more and more the more time you engage with um with the product it's sort of having that kind of switch mentally in how you how you engage with people is critical and then do your calculations and understand that you have to that it's not a quick fix just like making your game free and putting in some golden sword is going to make you you know a millionaire then um I think that's the that's the kind of um yeah that that's the kind of considerations you need to have um going into it when I'm in events and I'm talking about this with developers with marketers they like oh yeah this is great we'll just do it like you just said you know you don't just do it and I think we need to have some tough love here right it's not a model for everyone is there something like a list a checklist what Studios should be asking themselves you know am I subscription ready am am I ready to engage with multis description am I

ready to be uh using Unleashed because it's it's not a decision that you just make I don't know if it's like the other monetization models where you have to design it in and build it in ahead of time as well so so why don't you uh share your learnings ti you've seen it uh as a games company and also as the CEO of your company yeah I can actually start by addressing the last point about you have to build it in from the beginning because that's almost like like a checklist of things you don't need to and actually with subscription you don't need to build it in from the beginning because a lot of the things you've already built in uh you can just reuse in a subscription and it's kind of easy to to add on even if you made a premium game I can come back to that later on when we go through the through the checklist um also just another point that you don't need to think about is actually your um a lot of people we talk to say ah we're not really sure about subcription because we only have like 2 3% day 30 retention so it's not a lot

but I I'm saying well you can still sell to 100% of those players potentially if you can provide them real value because these guys are really into your game so you don't have to look at the you don't have to look at the retention numbers to think about if you can have a subscription it doesn't have to be that and as you were saying Brian people are shopping anyway so you don't have to ask them to stay around for 12 months um what you also shouldn't do is you shouldn't uh do an um the typical average revenue per paying user calculation or LTV you say how much do we make and then we price the subscription at that that's going to fail uh if you say so LTV is $15 let's make a $15 subscription and we'll we'll we'll be fine um that's that's what we've seen so a lot of people do so don't do that but to your question about an actually checklist the first thing you need to have is you need to have things in the game for the players that

they can buy that provides persistent value so something that is not just a oneoff thing that doesn't give you any value going forward so let's say a a bag of coins or a bag of diamonds whatever that's a typical quick consumable with no persistent value but let's say the obvious one is is the battle pass or the season pass that's something that gives you value for as long as you have it so that's a good cand it but you could also think about let's say subscribers get 20% extra XP uh they get better drops they get better rewards uh they get access to Features access to levels these are all things that you have a that gives you a benefit while you are subscribed and very importantly goes away again when you don't subscribe um which brings me to don't choose like a unique item to give a subscriber you can give a small one as a welcome bonus but that shouldn't be the subcription because what happens when

they do cancel because again to your point Brian they will do you take away the sort again or the special boots or do you let them keep them what how does that work so another thing you could put just under the persistent value checklist um is for example removing ads like I talked about um do that that's a persistent value not having to watch ads I mean if you if any of you you know if you watch cable TV you would love to love to have that option um and then I would also say put on the checklist that you have in a purchase so you can upsell this is a strong strong strong driver for subscription we haven't really touched upon it so I'll just quickly elaborate on it here is that subscription also drives upsell and actually people start spending more after they become subscribers if you think about Amazon Prime they have seen this people start spending more on Amazon after they become Prime members to get the free shipping it's not the other way around people think that the big Spenders on Amazon they become Prime members no no

once you get your Prime Membership you want to spend something so you get your free shipping you sort of you're saving money every time you buy right that's kind of logic I think it's Ubisoft have spoken about seeing this as well I think it's Ubisoft um that theyve spoken about it and if you think about it psychologically it makes sense if you have a $5 subscription like our subscription and you get discounts on in a purchase you're going to be spending on in a purchases until you saved $5 because then your subscription was essentially free that's the logic that we have as people and um so so have that because I think if you put in in most of the games where again I would say we talked to so many different types game from kids games hyper casual games strategy games match three games so it's it's it's it's very different from game to game right but for any game is if you if you don't have anything of value to sell if you don't have anything that means they should come in every day you you can't have a subscription model uh

in the game so that's the persistent value and the other thing you need to check is actually on your process and organization side do you have a setup to have ongoing communication and dialogue with the players and react on it I know everyone's talking about liveops but here we you I think a lot of people mostly think about just looking at graphs going up and down in data and then twigging the bit you know 0.2% and then see the graph go up that's not what it is because again you entering into a relationship think about it your relationship with something you're subscribed to compared to something that you just buy from Once is completely different and you should expect that people will contact you you should make it easy for them to contact you we have several ways for people to contact us and I can tell you if you don't give them a simple way they will just contact you through the reviews section on the App Store and you don't want that you want you want them to write to you right and do you have a process for dealing with it do you have a process for taking action on the things they say do you

have a way of treating them uh nicely I mean we are I can say we have a we have a principle in the company where we are overcompensating people like if they ride in with an issue we always answer immediately and we overcompensating even if the issue is really on their side um we're always helping them you should always automatically give people their money back if they claim that whoever it wasn't them it was the child buying it don't argue money back all that kind of stuff uh just just do that even even if you feel like well this is the second time you're telling this this you know maybe maybe a password would be good don't argue um just give it back so have that kind of are you interested in having that kind of relationship with your player are you are you actually interested in that otherwise I don't think subscription is is for you if you just want to have like a oneoff um payment like and now I'm also talking about an integrated subscription you can also if you have a traditional premium game go to Apple go to Netflix go to

Google um get them to include the game in their great service I mean I have nothing bad to say about these Services they are they have wonderful games um all of them so you can take your game there I I keep calling it a bit bit of a teasing way I keep calling app aade the the life boat for for premium games um it's it's not exactly true but it was at some point and I think it's great I mean I I'm an AB subscribing myself so I I really enjoy the games there so so as you mentioned Pig it's not for everyone it's not for everyone I mean I can tell you one group it's very difficult for and that's hyper casual it's very difficult for hyper casual to have a single game subscription they can make it very short which would fit the time you play the game but it's still challenging just because they don't have much to offer I think hyperd casual is where you now you're adding in a purchase for things you can buy but if you just have the no ads it's it can be

a hot sell what you could do is you can bundle like we're offering with Hyper Casal and the way our system works actually we haven't really talked about the free trials but what we are doing is we have a free trial that's set not on the subscription in centrally but per game and it's down you can set the trial to be just one minute so just so you can try to play one level in a hyper casual game without a without an ad um and you can set it as low as one minute as a developer you can set it up to a month um so depending on what your game is and we have some ways in you know the whole how we share the revenue that's linked to that but just that's another consideration um and we help with this when you contact us we help um we help with this so I said you need you need to talk to an expert uh there there's not many experts out there because our competitors Apple Google Netflix when was the last time you heard them share their knowledge at a conference right so

um so I'm I'm always happy to share so happy to be here to share with you guys actually I'm really enjoying the conversation here I knew it when I brought you in T I was like this is going to be good I said tough love we've got tough love we've got great advice there's a lot to dig digust there but also a lot of common sense I mean it makes a ton of sense that we just want to get our money's worth out of our subscription so actually cross sell upsell all of those opportunities are there if you build it in right so that's actually very good news it's about not necessarily thinking about how's the game going to fit but how do I architect it and how do I support it I mean as a followup I just have to ask and maybe just a quick question but that's just it you need to be able to have the processes in place to say I'm going to be listening to my players I'm going to be responding to them I'm just thinking out loud is that the community manager is this just having some chat bot I mean

what is that because that is so Central that I think our audience before they even consider this has to have that process in place I think getting again the relationship that there's a human that understands you that listens to your needs and to be honest you don't get that many complaints or requests and I mean you can it's it's manageable right um so so rather um rather do that um and and have have that conversation or find someone who wants to have that that's I think we all know know we love game developers obviously but they're not always the type of people who wants to have a you know face tof face dialogue or on the phone dialogue with the players so so work with someone who who who enjoys that um it could be a community manager I think Community Management sometimes again from company to company becomes more of a sort of um managing expectations with the community and dealing with you know the complaints and I'm not sure that's the the right approach um I think think of it more as someone who works in a reception at a hotel you know you call

you have a problem and they fix your problem that that's more the kind of the mentality you you would need um with with this you again you've hit the nail in the head it has to be an informed decision this isn't for everyone it's not something that every developer is going to want to do and that long-term relationship the whole live Ops Community Management and building that um engagement over you know months hopefully years you know we we've seen it with some games that are out there now that have been on the app stores for literally decades um which is incredible but but again it has to be part of your design and development decision so not just something that you fall into and not something that as you said earlier that is necessarily built in from the ground up but it's it's something that as a business as a studio you can make a decision going okay we want to get into this but we're going to have to build all of those resources and capabilities to allow us to take advantage of that

it's not just you know sales are starting to Peak um let's slap a subscription on and hope for the best and and I will say that I think a lot of the the push back sometimes comes in the media because I'm I'm obviously reading reading your news as well so it's I I think a lot of people are waking up especially those if you have a publisher who was traditionally publishing premium mobile games that now go to Apple or or Netflix you start asking yourself hey why do people need me like if they can just if Apple can go and talk to them directly um also I'm I'm also teasing always the these Publishers that who have their games on on Apple and complain about the revenue share there is that well now you just know what it is to have a publisher you know you're on you're on the other end of the deal now that's how it feels right so that's I mean I'm saying this this bit teasingly but I think there is some truth to that and I think again these Publishers they um they're

probably they're very good at game scouting they're very good at use acquisition doing the pr getting the pre-rendered videos done but are they good at having an ongoing dialogue with with with players are they good at upsell I I think Publishers are really bad at upsell in general um I mean very little crossover between the games all these things I just think they're not equipped for that and that's why they sometimes come out with a with a worse deal than than they normally have and then they sort of get it's blamed on on the business model and not on their their setup so I think a lot of them will will change change over time to start uh thinking about they're not just you know putting the games on stores anymore they also take another responsibility in in this setup I think there's an awful lot across this whole conversation for for Studios out there to unpack and kind of look at in a in a different light but so looking at the gaming companies and genres you've worked with can you eyes to the possibilities how far can Studios

stretch this model or is there a an example of a game that that made this model work that surprised even you there's again when we work with companies we are not their bosses uh we don't decide what to do and we can see that the reward is very much linked to how much work they put in and how much they promote the offer that's that's very very clear um I think another thing that is is a is critical in this is not just promoting the offer but promoting the benefits I think people again come from a world of of of single sales or a series of sales you don't have to remind people of the bag of coins they bought two weeks ago but you have to remind people of the benefits they get in the ongoing subscription and I've even worked in a company where that we had benefits for subscribers that we didn't sell them it was just hidden in the back end and actually we had the VIP support So when they would contact us they would get a top all these things we didn't tell them and it's just like now now you're not giving them the value so I think that's the first in terms of the

specifics um I would I I can't share it here because it's it would essentially be sharing our our partners data which I'm very clear not doing but if someone is interested they can definitely contact us and we have a specific talk about the game and talk about that but there is actually one thing that surprised me because we're talking about ingame subscriptions here and when Martin and I started the company way back we were only focused on free play because that's where an in-game obviously works you download the game and you have an in-game subscription that you access and you get promote presented to present it with when you're in the game and we were leaving as I said um the the premium games to Apple and um and Netflix and those guys but I that's one thing that's surprised me how well premium games can adapt to an in-game subscription and not many people think of this then very easy way to do this is to in order to not split your downloads take your premium game that's currently on the store make it free to

download that's that's a two-minute change so that takes no time and then you build a pay wall and that pay wall should have at least two doors it should have a door that says unlock rest of the game for x amount whatever it is could be $5 $10 could be two doesn't matter it should have that door and that you keep it the price it was before and then the other door is or play for free as long as you have a subscription okay you play as much as you want as long as you have a subscription so now players can choose between still buying the game which Some people prefer or have a subscription that some people prefer and actually some people for when it comes to premium games they don't mind overpaying games a bit because they like to support their creators so they're not that price sensitive um so those two doors you can have and then we have seen uh games in our service that have a third door which is watch an ad to continue and this can come up every let's say every in-game day or it could be a every every level

you have this pay wall pay to unlock game and never get the popup again watch an ad to continue for a level or an in-game day or whatever or be a subscriber and get all these benefits um as well typically they don't have in a purchase but they just have the access and that in-game subscription for premium games was actually something that's surprised me and something that we've we've we've only come to realize now that it's opening up um a whole new world for us that doesn't just have to be free to play we have to explore that we have to just explore the models themselves and also because we're running out of time we can't do it all but also you know how to adapt the model to the different player segments their demographics I mean it's all about people talk about personalizing the pay wall tyes what is exciting here is you're talking about almost building the model to be nearly as individual as the

as the player as well which is which is even cooler actually than just putting in some personalization it is super interesting and I would say you don't need a lot of data you can start by just talking to your players and that's a good start if you want to have a subscription anyways not being afraid reaching out setting up a chat they are happy to provide their ideas and feedback understand what it is they want and understand as someone who's been working in games has worked with even within the games people actually want to pay for your game monetization is not a bad thing it's not something you are you're not tricking people into giving you money people think about it of all the things you enjoy in your life you get pleasure out of buying them paying for them and you are happy to do so and and think about it that way and that will happen when you provide real value to your players they would be super happy very excited I see my son at 11 every time there a new battle pass in fortnite he's excited about spending his

money there because they give him something that he's super excited about I'm paying you know heating bills that's not exciting I'm not happy but I like you know buying battle passes in games I like buying in a purchase I like I like buying premium games right so so think about it monetization is not a bad thing people like to give you their money because they like your product when we get into the The Depths and the business models and you know all the ways games are changing let's bring it back to the actual fun part of this so we have two questions for every guest one is what game are you playing right now what's kind of obsessing you what's taking up your time and the second one is what's your favorite game of all time the one I'm playing right now is a game called MMA manager by Swedish um company called prey Studios very Overlook title it's a manager SIM for M MMA fighters you have your little gym I love that game and I would say my my all my alltime greatest that was a tough one I've been thinking so much but I think thinking back I think actually I'm going to pick XCOM apocalypse one of the games from the XCOM genre a few years old but I just

think that game what it had with the sort of fake 3D the base building I mean and you were scared of these you know the the the face the face huggers and that you you were genely scared about was and you cared for your guys never saw that in the game before and obviously the XCOM series now is it's brilliant I think it's the most obvious game for for a tablet I'm so happy they brought XCOM to to tablets love playing it then you know on on my iPad so I think that that game is just one that I think really stood out to me as um as as probably probably my favorite but then again ask me again in a few days it might be something else I said we were lucky at the start I'll end it I'll say we were lucky to have you T thanks so much thank you so much for having me this show is all about how to do your job better how to make an amazing game how to Market it and you have a say so if you have have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on then we

would love to hear from you we want to hear from you we want to reflect the reality of the mobile games market and all its wonderful complexity and strangeness so if you have any suggestions for us if you have any feedback for us you can always get in touch you can email us at podcast pocketgamer.biz you can find us on Twitter atpg Biz and you can reach out to us through the pocketgamer.biz website if you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts you can find them at pocketgamer.biz SLP podcast and we would love to hear your thoughts on future shows and we've got you covered on all the major platforms so subscribe to the audio podcast as Brian said look for us on YouTube if you want to read it hey you can do that too because we have a companion post for you as well on the pocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the pocketgamer.biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future