Panel: A Decade of Farm Heroes Saga: Reflecting on the Evolution, Impact, & Future...

Game that story is sponsored by King. And I like to invite Sabrina Carmona from King to the stage and her fellow panelists. Okay. Well, hi. Good afternoon everyone. How you doing? You still here? Yeah. We're a little bit jet lagged. We we came from Europe. Um so I guess it will be fun. But I do want to welcome everyone to our panel to talk about Farm Heroes Saga. Uh

has anyone played that before? Good. You're you're my best friend since I got here, right? Love it. Thank you. If you haven't, please download the game. Every install counts. Thank you. Okay, but I'm Sabrina Carmona. I'm the VP of Farm Heroes Saga. My pronouns are she and her and I have black hair and a black top. And I'm here to talk a little bit with my team. I'm so proud to be able to sit with so many talented people, but to share a little bit about the journey that has been. But I'll let them introduce themselves. Why don't we start with you, Will? Uh yeah, I'm Will Goodwin. I am the business operations lead for Farm Heroes Saga. Uh I've been at King for about a year and a half now. Prior to King, uh I worked as an agile coach for about 10 years across a varying different sets of industries from government through to finance. Um obviously gaming is the highlight of my career. It's the most fun I've ever had. Um but I joined King a year and a half ago, as I said. I was predominantly

working with Pet Rescue Saga, if you've ever played that, and Bubble Witch Saga 3. Um but yeah, my pronouns are he/him, and I am got brown hair, and I've got a black overshirt with a white t-shirt. Yeah. Hi everyone. My name's Megan Wheeler. My pronouns are she/her. I have blonde hair, and I'm wearing a green jumper. Um I'm a game designer in the Farm events team. So, my primary focus is keeping players engaged through our seasonal event calendar, as well as working on new mechanics in order to delight our players. And I've been in the industry for about 7 years now. Um but that's me. Um uh hello uh everyone. Uh my name is uh Jota Serna. My pronouns are he/him. I'm wearing a green shirt, and I have black short hair. I'm technical director in a Farm Heroes Saga. Um uh at King, of course, uh and I'm a station in Malmö. Um

I'm I've been I think this is going to be my third year at King. And my 15th in the in the in the industry. Um I'm very happy to be here. Although my jet lag has a very different opinion about it. All all of us. Um okay, I'm going to jump right into it. I'll start with you, Megan. Why not? So, if you reflect on a decade of Farm, could you share a standout moment or a milestone that you believe it was a success? Yeah, of course. So, um actually the first project that I led when I joined Farm was a iteration of 1 2 3 Grow, which is one of Farm's most popular events, so no pressure. Um and what we did was we added a additional reward loop to the end of the event. So, during the event, players receive a super crop seed that they have to grow from a seed all the way up to a adult plant. And originally you at the end of the event you kind of just got some boosters and

it just ended, but we've got some really dedicated players. Um so an event that was designed to last 7 days, they were completing it in 1 to 2. So we really wanted to expand and amplify the event's value and we did this by adding a mechanic to the end of the event where if they continued to nurture their plant, they would receive gold bars, which is the premium currency in the game and who doesn't want free money. Um and this was one of our biggest bits of feedback that we got from our players was they wanted more ways to get gold bars. So it was great in that respect, but also for the team it was great because we saw a uplift in player engagement and player satisfaction. So um as a milestone I feel like it was really good cuz it shows our commitment to listening to our players. It's amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Why don't we change to Will? We'd love to hear your perspective. What are some defining moments that shape the Farm team's identity?

Um I think it's a good question. Uh I think one of the main things for me is the lesson over the last decade around building a diverse team. Um I joined Farm just over a year ago now uh and one of the first things I was asked to work on was kind of the onboarding experience for new farmers as we grew. Um obviously a decade's gone by, we've we've doubled in size. Um and for me, what was quite difficult is coming in and already seeing such an incredibly diverse team. Uh I think it's really important that we build that diverse team to represent that global audience that you have in a free-to-play game. Um and so trying to build on top of that was was incredibly difficult, but it was actually really good to get learning. It was really inspirational. I learned so much about the history of Farm and so from like that's my most defining moment of probably my nearly my career, to be honest. I learned so much from it. That's That's very cool. Thank you. Hotta. Yes. Mr. Tech Director. Yes. Tech plays a significant role, right? When we're building games and and how we

engage with our players, the platform that we use. So, um how has the tech team used player feedback to innovate or improve the game's technical aspects? Um it is a very interesting topic. Um I see shrewd uh for me as a technical director, that is. Yes. Um so, I think that traditionally the Farm Heroes Saga team has been very focused on uh providing content and experience for um the players that are at the last uh of the of the content, to to our most tenure players. Um I think that the team has shifted now to provide better better experiences and content for all players, uh regardless uh tenure uh or motivations that they might have to play the game. Um that means that we're effectively putting the players uh front and center of what we of what we do. Um so, for us, monitoring the game out in the wild is very is very important. We have like several dashboards and several

alerting systems that trigger when um anomalies are are detected, basically. Uh we have two two kind one one one of them is a business business health. Um uh for example, if revenues are going down and we also have a technical health. Um technical health we is we're usually monitoring crashes or um or application not responding and and things that could affect the the player experience. Um so, depending of the the severity of of those uh happenings, um we act either immediately uh or we decide to fix them uh later. Um So, that means that effectively our technical road map is guided by both player feedback through this active monitoring, but also by the product needs. And the product needs, of course, of course, it stems from player feedback and preferences.

Sure. And it's interesting, right? Cuz you're talking about data, you talk about insights. So, I'm going to throw a data question to the creators. Um, how much data or insights do you actually use to influence your decisions when you're creating something? Mhm. Um, data and insights are literally the backbone of the design decision-making process. Um, so whenever we're first approaching a new idea or concept, we always have a hypothesis at the core of it. And the hypothesis is curated from data that we get from our lovely data scientists. Um, this is things like game rounds, daily active users, how our event funnels are progressing. Um, and this lets us pinpoint any friction points that we have in the game and kind of focuses us in to work on those areas. Um, so that's pre-production. Post-production, um, we will go through with data again to update these numbers, um, but also we'll do vigorous AB testing. Um, and this

helps us actually validate our hypotheses and see if we're correct, but also sets us up for the foundations for our next hypotheses. Um. And then lastly, beyond the numbers, we also do several uh, player research questionnaires a year. Um, and this helps us get direct feedback from our players, um, qualitative data, because who better to tell us how to improve the game than the players themselves? Yeah. And it's like a common theme. Even though you're both wearing green, but you're everyone's like talking about player to the player to player. I'm going to go back to you, Huta, before I attack you with another question. But if we talk again from a technical perspective, right? It's a 10-year-old game. It is. So, which is great, of course. But there's got to be some challenges in building the mechanics and you know, scaling, etc. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how How is that done successfully? So, um not only is it 10-year-old game,

um also Farm Heroes Saga has a very loyal player base. Right. Um perhaps one of the most loyal in the in the in the industry. Um some of those players have been playing the game since uh the game was released in Facebook uh 13 years ago now. Uh that made me feel old for some reason, but let's let's not talk about that. Um that means that we also need to support a variety of of devices. Uh some are newer and of course some of them are older. Uh so for us for us it's very important that we do tech tests. Um by that I mean that we don't release fully any line of code uh without understanding what is the impact of the player experience. Um Uh so we monitor for as I was saying before, crashes, memory pressure, application responsiveness, battery uh consumption. Um but we also check how it's affecting

business KPIs. Um when I talk about business KPIs, I refer to revenues, engagement, and and and and as such. Um So as I said, we don't fully release anything that we believe that could be detrimental to player experience. Um right now, there's probably more than 70 experiments uh running at the at the moment. Um Not probably because I actually checked this morning. So, this is This is uh factual. Um So I'm I'm sure that everyone here has a Farm Heroes Saga installed on their on the phones. I mean Um or you should at least. So, if you were to open uh your games right now and please don't do it because then we will get an alert and someone in Sweden will probably wake up. Um so, you if you were to do that, you would probably find differences in your in your experiences. Um we also have a a policy of allowing our players to to play

offline and architecting architecting around that uh is very interesting, but it can be also very challenging. And we also take the privacy the privacy of our uh players. I think that that is paramount for for for us. Uh so, keeping up with the latest trends has been also very interesting journey. That's that's very interesting. And talking about latest trends, cuz I think that's uh it's very topical right now. It's Well, it's a much more competitive market, right? It's 10 years 10 years ago, there weren't that many games. Um and you know, everyone played on their phones and now look where we are, right? So, Will the mobile gaming industry is highly competitive, as you are aware. Can you discuss some challenges that we faced in this environment or innovations that help us stay ahead? Like how do we cope? Um so, firstly, I think competition is healthy to begin with. Uh I'm kind of going to cheat a little bit.

I'm not going to talk about the challenges so much, but more how we go about it. So, I think now more than ever and Hooter knows this cuz I I tell him all the time. Um yep. Outcome is much more important than output. Um so, what does that mean? Um obviously, it's a lovely saying. But ultimately, what do you care about? What do your players care about? It can't just be about throwing 100 features because our competitors are throwing 100 features at the player. It's got to be more about do you want them to play the game for longer? Do you want them to have more fun in the levels? What is the outcome that you're actually trying to achieve? What feeling are you trying to get your players to feel? And that's what you're striving to achieve and that's kind of where hypothesis come into play. All these different experiments we're running, it's all about trying to hit the outcome. Alongside that, the second prong is effectiveness and efficiency. Also spoke a lot to Hoddle about this one. You can be as efficient as you like, but you might be heading in the completely wrong direction. You could be a headless chicken running backwards away from what your players want. When in reality what

I tell the team constantly is our chance Well, this is our chance to be effective. This is our chance to be more effective than our competition. Effective has direction, similar to velocity. We need to be heading in the right direction at the right pace. It's much better to be going at a medium pace towards what our players want than going at a really quick pace not to what our players want. That was beautiful. I got good goosebumps. Yeah, that's very nice. I don't know if we any of you have the pleasure to like sit with your team on a panel. And sorry, I'm going off script. Sorry to interrupt. It's just It makes my heart really full and warm. Anyways, okay. Megan, another one for you. Hello. So, 10 years, over the years there's a lot of changes, right? And we talk about what players want and etc. But I I feel like I want to give examples, like tangible, measurable examples. So, is there any feature anything released that you can tell me that you can share that like has been primarily driven by the players?

Well, actually myself, Will and Hoddle here, we've only been here for max 2 years. So, maybe you're better equipped to answer that question yourself. Aren't you clever? Okay, let me think. Okay. Can you share an example? So, when I started working in farm back in 2019 yes, 2019. Um we really wanted to revamp the art. Has anyone ever like said, "Oh, we need to revamp the art?" Thank you. You're like, "Yes, absolutely." Had that idea. And I thought I was like, "Oh my god, I'm such a good leader, revolutionary, going to revamp the art. It's going to work. It's going to be great. Going to make it look fresh." And like all of those um words that I tell the artists and they're like, "Oh, the stakeholder." Of course, completely understand. But we did um AB test a new art kind of style. They're very proud. We put some 3D. We got It looks so cool. Um and then we did

a couple things. We measured qualitative. So, we got some players in house and and asked them, "What do you think?" And we also released it and managed like performance of the title, right? It happens that they hated it. They did not like it. I was absolutely wrong. Uh and we learned a really nice lesson of we'll go back quickly, please. Um but it's That's it. That's the beauty of like working with live games. How do you make something that's already great even better? That's a really big challenge, to be quite honest, because it doesn't really end, right? There you continue to keep dropping content, continue to make the game bigger, make the game better. And this was such a nice learning. You do have to trust your gut. But you got to trust your players and you got to talk to them. Like that's such a big lesson for us. And uh yeah, new art doesn't always mean that it's going to have more engagement. So, that was a something quite interesting and fresh. But thank you for giving me the

opportunity to speak as well. I love it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um I do want to give I know we like I do want to give chance to people to ask questions. But before, I'll ask the same question to the three of you. Want to see what the difference is. So, we can go one at a time. Starting with Will, cuz you made like a face that you're nervous. 10 years. What does the next 10 years like what kind of opportunity do you see for the next 10 years of farm? Good luck. Good luck. I mean I could I could be really cheeky and just be like I'm looking forward to the next 10 years. Um I I think it's really difficult because I I want to say so many different things and I for context I'm a I'm a super excitable person. I I go all over the place. I like I really really want to be able to say so many different things. Um but the lovely comms team are down here and they would they would tell me off. Um but like Hotta will give a much better answer. Same for Megan. I think they're much closer to the players and for me it's all about what the next 10 years looks like for the for the

business. Um and I some of you might be like here we go. Um but the team's doubled and that gives us the opportunity to do so much more for our players, so many more outcomes, being so much more effective. Um and that's genuinely what I'm looking forward to. Um in terms of what we might do on a lower level in the weeds and that are really exciting, I'll I'll kind of let Megan and Hotta answer that question. Thank you. Um so yeah, so our road map which obviously I can't go into any details about. Um it teases some really cool uh features that I think our players are going to really love. Um we're focused on rewarding our loyal players, but also fostering a new budding community. Um so expect to see the farm universe expand um with lovely innovations and yeah, it's just I'm hoping it's going to be an amazing 10 years. What about you, Hotta? Um

I mean no surprises here, but the thing that I'm most excited about is to take the technical challenges that lay in our future, of of Um because I I that those are the ones that make you grow as a professional, but also as a human being. Um, and how we're going to have to adopt the latest tech innovations in order to, I don't know, for example, keep our time to market as competitive as as as possible. Um, look, I cannot say that we have the best code base in the industry. An experience experience tells me that no one can say that. Yeah. Um, but Keen has approximately 200 million monthly active users. Uh, that is 52 times the population of LA. Um, from Yes, so let that sink in. Um, from here Saga has more than 4

million lines of code, which probably doesn't mean anything to any of you. But, I I just got goosebumps myself. So, I can confidently say that we can provide some of the best technical challenges of the industry. I think that that is that is true. And I think that as we grow, we will continue to do so. And ultimately, that is what I live and breathe for. Um, so if that tickles someone's fancy in the in the in the in the in the audience, uh, just find me later and let's connect in LinkedIn. That's amazing. We're not done. I would love to get questions from the audience. Anyone wants to ask us anything? We're really nice. We are. Yes. Yes, we have a question. Yes. Looking forward, how do you see the application of AI technology in software development processes

Great question. I can I can take that one, yeah. Yeah, go for it. So, Um I mean, the potential uh is undeniable. That's uh that's uh that's for sure, not only on AI, but also on machine learning. Um we are already exploring um ways to for example, make gameplay and design um more compelling, um more adaptive, more responsive. Um there's actually um perhaps I shouldn't be uh publicizing uh another conference, but there is a very interesting talk by someone uh from King uh in the GDC. That's on Thursday at 10:00 a.m. And they give a lot of details uh on uh on how we're using AI to uh improve what we do in terms of level design. Um so, the talk is is called leveling up.

Uh how AI's transformative role in level automation uh production at business value in Candy Crush Saga. Uh so, um that is a very interesting one. I've seen the slides. Uh they're really good. Um but I want to make clear that the approach that King is taking is that AI is going to be an assistant. Uh so, we want to remove uh the more mundane tasks of our daily life so we can focus on the creative process of making games. That's uh that's the approach that we're taking at the at the moment. Thank you. Who else? Yes. Cannot see you, by the way. Is that the light at the end of the the light at the end of the tunnel? Okay, great. Thank you. Hi. Hi. Thanks so much for the talk. Uh my question is regarding the KPIs for the product. When you run the product for so long, how those KPI evolves? And for the product manager, how he how he or she

evaluates if we are going in the right direction or not. Number one question, second thing is about AB testing. We heard a lot about AB testing. Why this solution is only available to developers like King and everyone? Why not it's available these solutions are not available for small studios? Why don't we have any one AB solution that can fit everyone needs? So, I'm pretty sure that you guys will have your own custom AB solution. Yeah. So, what is your recommendation for a like considering this this industry saturated? So, what is your recommendation for running AB test? Hey, we recommend these tools they're good enough to work around. So, these are the two questions I have. I'll take it. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. Uh I'll answer the second one first cuz I remember better than the first question. So, hold the mic, please. But, in terms of AB test, look, it depends a lot on what type of game you work on and and what you want to learn, right? So, it's a little bit what Will said in terms of outcome. The way we view AB test is value.

What am I going to learn about the behavior of my players, about the content that we're we're releasing that is going to make the game better? At the end of the day and now I'm going to link to your KPIs, look at that. Um it depends what you want to achieve and what you're interested in. Um I would say for us in Farm, we make a game that is is match three, is casual, is to engage the whole world, right? Um I mean, we do want to make the world more playful. We want to provide people those moments of fun. So, we are very keen on increasing game rounds, we're very keen on reach, we're very keen on many different things that show us that the creative effort or the technical effort that we put in um makes the game better. And then everything else is just a consequence of players enjoying the product. So, going back to the AB test, I I don't think there is a a tool or a recipe. I think you're going to have to try and experiment with what do you want to

learn? What do you want to achieve? And also the maturity of your product. It's very early, so do you want to like more reach? Do you want more players? Do you want to invest? Do you have a lot of players at the mid to end of your content? So, you want to foster that. Is it retention? Like I think it depends a lot. But obviously, I don't want to like I can go for hours as you can tell. But we can catch up more if you want like a bit more into farm later, but I think that would be kind of my advice. And then regarding the funnel, so the day one of farm here's how it goes. Yeah. Data looks like this. X. Now it looks different. So, how would you see this 2D funnel evolving? So, what you said is you cannot change it because the product is good is big enough for not allowing you to change at this current moment. So, if you want to hear I want to change the the top funnel, you cannot change it. I believe, right? Is it product So, I'm just saying how the KPIs uh changes for a for product that has been run for so long. Are those KPIs exact exactly same

or they have to change after every quarter? You you you revisit hey guys, now we have the these goals to hit for this product. Is it all revenue driven or is it also engagement stats you guys also review? I think it evolves with the with the with the time. It evolves with the game. Uh yeah. Sorry, do you want to No, no. Okay, yeah. It evolves. Definitely evolves. Again, it depends what your ultimate goal is, right? And how you want to measure your success. But for us, it's also about applying learnings. And I think Megan talked about the 1 2 3 growth feature that's quite successful. Um we wanted it to be a retention feature, but we iterated on it and now it's definitely something that helps with reach. It's definitely something that helps with the core gameplay. So, again, because the product evolves, it also helps us when we set our goals and our direction to look at which KPIs translate success. Yes. Yes. Hi. Hello. Um So, 10 years a lot of time. Have you seen like very specific

um insights about the behavior that have have changed during this time? That's one question and the other one is about the difference between retention-focus and acquisition-focus. Right now, are you focusing in acquiring more using users or you're focusing on maintaining the ones that you already have? We love all players equally. We're focused from Thank you for whoever did that. Yes, you. The That is actually It sounds, but it's true. Um that's actually quite a nice learning. There's another talk by someone a tomorrow about farm. You can You can listen. Um but the reality is that it really matters. You should nurture all your players, right? Because one of the biggest lessons I've At least I've learned I was I'm sorry. I'm answering all questions. I'm going to let you answer as well. I just get very passionate about farm. But one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that you cannot focus on one

or the other if you want sustainable growth. If you want your game to actually have a legacy, right? And that's basically how I see like we have the privilege of working in a game that's turning 10 and it's still there and it's still fun and have millions of players. But at the same time, if we only focus on the first-time user experience or we only focus on the end of content, then it would not have the the harmony in the life cycle. So, that's important to have both sides of it. And I think your other question was about retention, right? It kind of is connected in a way. Behavior. Uh okay, the player behavior change. I mean Does Does anyone want to answer cuz I feel I don't want to dominate the microphone. They're all looking at me. I'm doing great. Okay. Um I would say it's the other way around. We look at player motivation when we build something. So, we want to make sure that there's always something for you to do in Farm. Whether you want to compete, you want to

collaborate, you want to collect, you just want to feel that sense of achievement. So, then the player behavior, because it's such a casual game with a broad appeal, it depends on the type of player that you are. But, we as a team want to ensure that there's always something for whatever type of hero you are, basically, right? So, I think that's that's the answer. We want to ensure that we touch upon the main motivations of our players um more than just we would like this life cycle, this journey. I don't think there's one way of playing the game. We have Oh, yes, over there. Hello. Hi. So, hi guys. Um congratulations on 10 years of Thank you. So, my question is um you know, when designing uh your core game loop, how when did you get to that point where you realized that you struck gold with that game loop to keep those players um you know, entertained and keep retaining them? And how can other developers get to that point?

Such a good question. Do you want to throw tough question for me, but I wasn't there when the first original core loop was made. Um I wasn't there either when we struck gold, right? Like, a fun fact. And I'm going to make I'm going to share cuz I love that fun fact, but Farm was the first UK developed mobile game to hit $1 billion in lifetime revenue back in 2017. So, that's quite an achievement. I feel like they understood there that they struck gold. But, I'm going to go back into fun, which is subjective, right? But, when you build something snappy, something that interacts, and I think Farm has almost like a secret sauce. The board, the switcher that you match, or fruits and vegetables that are alive and they react to you. And like there is this connection, so I think one of the reasons, there are many, but one of my favorite reasons maybe is because there's this sense of nurturing. You as the hero, you're there to save,

nurture those very cute protagonists. And I think that kind of touches upon something different. And I mean, we're very lucky to be part of King. There's another game that I feel like some people have played. Won't name that here. But I feel that's that's it. We can also learn, right? From each other, learn from our competitors. That's what we always say, the competition is great. But we continue to improve the core gameplay. It's not that we like we don't stop. We have areas dedicated just to continue to make that experience whatever this word in English is. Just to add to that as well, I think one of the most important things that we focused on is providing a variety of ways to earn the rewards. But not only that is how when we've seen the most success in that is how we've linked it back to the core gameplay. The players come, they want to play the core gameplay, but then they want to be able to use go back to a different variety of ways to earn rewards with their different motivations

to go back to the player behavior. Ultimately, they all come for the core gameplay. So, improving that is incredibly important, but there are different motivations they have to keep them around. That's great. I want to add I want to add something to to to this. I think that one of our superpowers, and correct me if I'm if I'm wrong, but it is data. So, um I I think that that is because of the skills that our team has. So, it might be that you have a different team with other skills and superpowers, and that's why we provide you will have to find your recipe so to so to say but I think that our recipe like a big part of our recipe is data. So, we're also very outcome oriented as Will said. So, we set outcomes. We measure and then identify if we struck gold is about just

checking if the line goes to the to the point that we that we expected basically. Um at least that's how we're operating right now and I think that probably 10 years ago King was also very data data oriented. So, yeah. I wanted to add to what was already a beautiful answer. Congrats. Um do we have time Does any anyone else We have 1 minute. Any other questions? Beautiful. We were so clear. Wow. I want to thank everyone for hanging out with us at this time. Also, thank you team for being so incredible. Amazing. Congrats to us. 10 years. Thank you everyone. Thank you so much All right. King team.