Superstar Session: Breathing Life Into a New IP: A Lesson in Rethinking What You (Think You) Know

next up we've got outfits seven who are going to be doing our second superstar session of the morning morning here in the uk and europe um and they're going to be talking about breathing like breathing life into a new ip valuable lessons in rethinking what you think you know about your game wait for it we've got the video coming out now the reason i haven't said you know how do i pronounce your name i want to get it right your name your name well hi ernie how how are you today you well great just waiting to jump in i was just listening that the last part of the previous session it was like wow these guys are tough with the questions no it's really good and yeah and you you are our second superstar session so we're all here excited uh looking forward to this i think it's a really interesting topic about you know taking an ip and sort of revitalizing it and bringing it back so um yeah i'm really interested for

this um i will let you um i know we're five minutes late don't worry about that we'll we'll still have the time and um yeah i'll let you share your screen get yourself sorted and while you do that as you said we had a lot of questions in the last one please do keep those questions going we've got the q a function there so make use of that make use of the chat as well and uh yes we can see your talk uh it's just going full screen there we go um so yeah if you're ready i'll drift off into the background and uh we'll let you uh get on with this uh fascinating talk thanks sophia um so hi guys hi actually again this is how i i usually uh say hello at the beginning in our company um yeah i'm going to talk about breathing life into the new ip um but the first thing that i actually do today is um i will try to guide you back in the time i think that most of you has the driving lesson at least for the bike not

talking about motorbike or car but just uh try to imagine yourself at your first driving class where your instructor was there and what he was saying to you so this is the car this is your seat please adjust the seat here is the steering wheel now here is the engine so keep put it in you turn it on but oh sorry forget you first need to fix the mirror and then here you have the clutch you've got the throttle go on and when you are listening to this trying to combine all those data points together you are already all sweating but you didn't even start driving you are still there sitting in the car and saying okay no no no no but later on during the time what was happening you started to drive the first lesson the second lesson and you start forgetting about those things how to do it you didn't came to the car and say okay i need to do this i need to do that and that at the end you just jump into the car you hold grab your steering wheel the

most important thing that you are thinking about is which what kind of music i will put on and that's it and you start driving and you just go through it and this is actually what is happening in our minds as let's say distributors market ingers and also what is happening with the users we are constantly bombarded with different tools different approaches different channels different part of puzzle that we need to just combine together uh not just combine them together we actually need to combine them in the right order and execute them but what is the final result we are just driving we are just selling distributing the games users are just going there seeing there is a cool game they are installed they install it and they start to play and that's it and what happened with us uh now it's really easy to be a smart guess um as outfit seven and the owner of

talking tom and french franchise yes we are getting in great numbers we have more than 400 monthly active users and right now saying hey we have the brand we did it like this we we start compiling the things together we're focusing on different things reality and the fact is we're just simply at the right time at the right place with the right product and what we could do at that time it was just let's ride the whale tom is just flying up there is angela my talking angela flying out and this could be actually the end of our today's sessions you know how it could end and they were all living happy till the end of the time but that's not what the reality was um because with this it can be easily going into this effect of king of the hill so you are there you have the biggest market share there and you simply don't care you are just waiting saying hey we have a really good product and that's it maybe we'll

release another product which is actually going to be the same copy get it the first one and it's going to grow so at the end different gardens different products that you are releasing out of it a lot of kings of the hills but nothing will happen and again next question that comes here is and most probably many of you working in these fields you've heard it do you do we actually needs marketing in our company what is this with distribution hey what are those guys in 12 floor in our case are actually doing um i think that you find it out many times but reality is that we wanted to do something big and we find out that actually talking tom and his friends are working really well we have a strong game we have a huge amount of users in but what is the next thing that we want

to do there we actually want to grow and how to make growth something that is just a product we need to bring something into it so we we saw that if we want to grow if you want to keep users into our ecosystem we want to bring bring in the characters the ones we need to bring them in the personality and yeah it might sound like a retail store so when you have a users customers come in here you have the loyalty card um stay with us you will get this bonus you will get that bonus but really in reality it's like that if you want to create a brand it's not enough just that you release a best product out there you need to pack it wrap it in the right way and at that time we started to think actually do we have just my talking tom we have my talking angela or it's better to think about hey we have tom we have angela there is hank these are actually of guys

and those girls together they're living their own life they're living their own life into the garage so how to stack and sell this to the final users um how to do it we started creating the entire ecosystem the entire company was not talking about let's create a new game but how will these new products new thing that we are working on will fit into the ecosystem that where we are living in where our characters are living in so we start bringing awareness we start bombarding them from different channels so tom that was present in my talking tom was actually the same character that was also living his own life into the animated series out there on tv there were licensing products that were there and we saw actually brand started to grow but what was the next obstacle that we faced when things were moving really easily naturally straightforward and we were growing this ecosystem

when we realized it was like okay now let's find the say in all the ingredients let's find the the instructions how to make it even bigger and we start to overthink we start to analyzing dissecting things we wanted actually and i was explaining how we learned to drive we wanted to combine all those data points together what we are doing here is like let's dissect them let's put them pull them together and let's try to combine them back and you know what happens when putting all those pieces that were individually working really well so okay we need that channel we need this type of character in that and that things together when we release that app actually it feels like a frankenstein it didn't simply work into the ecosystem because it was it feels a little bit awkward what was solution for that let's go back to the drawing desk um and let's start asking our ourselves the

most important question at least in our case in our company which is why we are doing this and what do we want to achieve the next thing that we started to do is are the solutions that are out there on the markets are the solutions that competitors are using the right ones that we can use that we can implement in our system so we start killing the assumptions um most probably don't know what assumption is making s out of you and me what we are doing is actually let's have a proven track record that something is actually working for us so we started to focus back to the users what they are looking what are their needs and even more important what kind of problem we are solving for the users is this they cannot came across our apps are they stacked in one app and they are not aware that there is actually my talking tom that's complementary app

is then talking tom goldrum so we start again building the system and 10 years ago when actually no one was using that heavily youtube we saw actually this is a good channel where we can start bringing the awareness it's not going to be paid out but it's going to be paid out as an investment into entire ecosystem because we will get more users in and we will keep them into the system so we we didn't just put gameplay videos trailers cgi high poly uh videos that are representing the games but we are selling out let's create animated series where all characters are living together next thing what kind of personality is tom tom is like a gang leader and gang leaders are usually doing some crazy stuff and have some crazy ideas so let's create talking tom uh brain farts uh then the next thing moving out maybe it makes sense to create you know theme parks yeah it makes sense

let's try to find the good complementary products where we can put on our brand on yes it works together then going into the some really old-fashioned traditional marketing channels like classical tv ads no one was actually using them that heavily we said okay but we are broads we are creating games that are there for everyone for parents for grandmas for kids families together even the cool guys there in the high school they can use storm and make crazy things out of it so maybe they are not just aware of it let's try with tv ads we tried in a small scale we saw that it's actually working and then we adjusted that channel um in the last few years there is a lot of talking about the influencers should we use them or not yes it makes sense to use them but just in specific channels specific geos and we want to select them based on

let's say our culture what we want to represent we cannot we don't want to use the the ones that are really big but you want to use the ones that are really fitting into the our system and with that what i can say is that last year we had the feeling that we already achieved the perfection why i'm saying this because we have really three huge successful releases in a row first one was my talking tom too then talking tom hero dash the last one last year was talking tom friends what we did there is actually most probably you saw this game because it was most downloaded app in the second half of 2020 we combined all the knowledge from the previous apps together so the entire gank is actually living in one app and we are actually packing it like that but what is the cool thing there we were not talking about let's create the app and actually product came with that solution

but we are working with product since the beginning because we saw what are the requirements from the market what users are looking for what they actually want and pack it together with the product solution that we have we are also thinking how to keep the users into the ecosystem it's not enough that you are just buying them out there or trying to bring the awareness with the top of the final activities why don't use our internal cross promo system so when the user is let's say stacked with one app and he doesn't want to play it anymore or he doesn't see any progression okay there is another app that you can combine it together so i already mentioned my talking tom what is my talking tom doing when he wants to go crazy he went running what is the next thing next thing after collecting the gold bars yeah he wants to be a hero he wants to be he wants to play a hero dash thingy so we have three apps in a row when users user is just

migrating into the same ecosystem and as i said we thought that we achieved the perfection and what happened next so why don't replicate all the knowledge that we have from this docking tour and friends brand and bring something new on the market so let's start focusing on the creation of the new ip and our products senior vp of product came to me and said hey we have a crazy idea to create a new game and you know what the game is going to be so i have no idea and this is actually the final name that we have here but you know how he described uh the app to me and i wrote it down so he said it's going to be the adaptation of out of chess inspired battles to the mobile asynchronous multiplayer massive armies anxiety free game progression based

system i have no idea what he was actually meaning with these fancy crazy words but i played a joker and say yes great great idea and he said but yeah are you sure that you know how we are going to sell the game yeah man we did we talking tom and friends we will do it also here but in reality what was happening in my head was like i don't have any idea how we will do it especially because i don't even understand what the game is going to be about and the feeling that i had at that time and most probably you saw this kind of guys out there not just with motorbike he's maybe saw them on this ski slopes these are the guys that are sitting there with the best equipment that you can they can actually find out there on the market and they are just posing there i'm a cool guy i have all the tools i've had the old equipment but i have no idea how to use it and

this was exactly what was happening with us at that point and what was solution for that we actually admit that we don't know anything we light back and start thinking what to do [Music] it was like stop reflect reassemble focus on the right things and when we start focusing and questioning ourselves how to do it how to do the best approach we actually didn't focus just on this game the first question that we had was hey do we have actually um right now the good ground on the company level to start with the new ip and what we find out is that we don't have it because talking tom and friends has a such a strong brand is actually on one side a blast but on the other side also a curse because no one knows that outfit seven is the company behind talking tom and friends and if you want to release the game the first thing that we need to do

was like let's have a clean cut between talking torment friends outfit seven as another company and then the new ip in this case mythic legends so we needed to make clear distinction because those between those relations we wanted to create the house of brands then the second question was is the publishing account that we are using the right one or we should create the new one and the answer was after a few tests we need to have the new one you know why because the talking tom and friends they are so strong uh and if we will put mythic legends which is more niche more complex game with different audience um in the same package users that we want to install it they saw that okay but there is mythic legends and here you can find my talking angela my talking tom my talking pen but i don't want to be to play the game that is really correlated with those games so again we need to do the cut

the next thing i explain you how the product explain the game to us do the product actually knows what kind of players they want to get in and can we help them to actually get those users in because based on those core users they can optimize also the game so our focus was shifted from let's create the global release to the let's help the product to make the right game for the audience that you want to get in and the fourth thing that we thought about it and we said okay we need to focus that is we shouldn't forget what we learned with talking tom and friends but can we build on top of that and yes for sure we can build on top of that what were the main learning points is if we would go niche so focusing just on card battlers auto chess players competing with them at least for us it was like smashing with the head directly into the world we cannot compete against them

but what we know is actually how to attract huge amount of users in and this is really important if you can convert them really easily and on a huge scale i would rather have one million installs and out of them 10 percent of them score users instead of just getting 10 000 of core players into the game and this was like getting known what you are what you know and how to integrate implement those learnings into the new ip i will go back to the driving i'm really into the dirt bikes heart enduran that kind of things and i decided maybe this is the middle age crisis i want to try also try bikes so these are the bikes that when you are jumping on the rocks and going up really crazy and for me it was like hey i know how to drive it um so i know how to drive the bike i will just buy that bike

and i will go and when the bike came into my house was like oh man where's the seats what's with these wheels um where is the tank actually how to do it yeah there is uh there are wheels there is a clutch there is a throttle but this is everything that is similar to my previous bike and this is completely new stuff and i could say at that time i would just go riding the thing that i did was like okay yeah nay stop uh this is the bike you know how to ride it so those process that you need to learn so how to open it in another no need anymore but you wants to know how to jump so i will start in focusing on that and at the end i made it so what is my takeaway here is accept and admits that you don't know everything but be eager to learn and start building on the your previous knowledge you have a ground so think about that ground and start jumping on top of it and

what was working for us it's not a takeaway but it's like our solution and our approach um first question yourself why you are needed and what do you want to achieve next thing is always focus on the user um not just giving them hey here is the app and think about huge campaigns but actually what kind of problem you are solving for the user and try to translate those complex product words into the simple ones from those asynchronous play massive anxiety free game emersio armies our message to the user for the midi ledges is really simple are you ready to accept the challenge go and enter the arena and those words are saying actually everything and they are working really well um be part of the creation of the game from the scratch don't look at your job as a this is my garden i need to execute the distribution no you are

actually there in the idyllation phase so phase minus one um always accept the challenge and build on your strengths and one thing that i'm always carrying with me is this so i don't know if you see it but you see it also on the screen play a wildcard you can do a lot of tests you can do dissecting analyzing everything at the end you need to trust your instinct simply put your balls on the table and go and believe in what you are doing and you will do a crazy stuff and that's it balls on the table and playing cards thanks well thank you thank you yeah really really fascinating talk and we've got quite a lot of questions which is always lovely so i'm going to if it's okay with you uh dive in and start grabbing some of the questions

um so first up we've got are most of the success stories um out there based on being in the right place at the right time or is there a recipe we can follow i believe that at the end a huge part of the success is this so being at the right place at the right time but fact is also uh because this is giving you a good starting point um why we are so successful and if you check who are the biggest companies out there they were the one the first ones out there on the market but everything was growing because you grab the biggest market share and you start building it out there are really successful stories also out there right now happening actually right now so you need to find something that is really unique and present it present this uniqueness to the users don't just follow others as i said it uh the solution that someone else is using um can give you a

good insight but cannot be simply like copy pasted and just labeled on top of your product so i believe that there is still room for it and we are also right now in this red ocean searching for that solution and i believe that we will find it in our own way that's fantastic um i'm just gonna pick some in different orders but um yeah that's a good question when defining the right choices for ip and brand how do you deal with mistakes how to deal with mistakes we learn from mistakes and we did many mistakes in the past that's that's the facts we we are admitting all the time as i said it having a strong ip is actually a blessing of course bless is because you whatever you will do again is giving you a good start but you can do completely wrong things if you don't understand the audience in our case we are actually

thinking really simply we have quite a huge amount of female users in our ecosystem so in angela it's also a female character so let's combine the match free games because it's more in a purchase oriented game and let's put angela on top of it and that's not enough users are searching for something clue so let's create a completely new mechanics for the match free and we wanted to glue it together the result was nothing was working but um what is the good point when you see those things at least in our case kill them don't leave them there to be part of your ecosystem because it's going to secure your entire environments that you are building as a branch yeah um the next question is um which i think is interesting because obviously it'd be different for different companies but especially for you at what point does the marketing team really start to get engaged with the game do you feedback

any decisions into the game's design or features um from the early start from the idealization phase marketing is a part of r d team especially because and actually the two things we don't have proper marketing we are calling it distribution because we don't want that guys are looking at a marketing those are those cool guys sitting in that floor this is usually the correlation when it comes tech people versus marketing so we are talking distribution distribution is really correlated with the product um product uh marketing or distribution is actually defining for whom we are doing this game and what are the trends out there on the market what are the things that we need to tackle and it happened actually last week because we are working also on another new ip game um when there was a complete not complete but there was mismatch between what users for example gen z is looking at so what kind of tone of voice and what is the game that is what the

game will bring and the solution of from product site was completely working technically but the message that we are sending through was completely vanilla so again reassemble refocus and we actually marketing distribution fix the direction of the product yeah and uh yeah i'll sneak in one or two more but uh this one's one that obviously is someone asking for the thoughts and i think it's something we all face in all walks of life so it'd be interesting to get your thoughts um would you define uh so um they're talking about something you discussed earlier is would you define the feeling you described as impostor syndrome as in how did you deal with the feeling of not knowing what to do at times and when to do it you know and this person's asking because they feel like that all the time but still need to sell their idea to publishers and investors so how do you deal with that basically like the unknown element um with testing and testing on small

scales i would say that we are data supported company that's a fact so whatever we are doing even paid user acquisition we are actually avoiding it as much as possible and we started with it in 2050 with release with stockington goldrum and we created our own model how we are doing it but we first needed to prove it actually to the owners to the stakeholders because it was paid user acquisition we don't need it we have such a strong brand but when we prove it in a really small scale uh on the previous talk it was home it depends how much money you have and you can invest in our case was here you have 40k prove it that it makes sense but not prove it in slovenia or prove it in cyprus prove it in u.s markets and we actually prove it and then the pipe was opened same goes for tv ads same goes for influencers we need to we want to track it and have the proven track record that something

is working for us yeah and i'll i'll sneak in one last question here um obviously for everyone else you can continue the conversation going on areas like discord um yeah there we go in the chat um but i think this is i know this sounds might sound like a simple question but i think it's a nice question maybe even to end on to give a lot of people you know belief in themselves it's like do i need deep pockets to be able to strengthen my brand no yeah i mean you know there's i'm guessing you know like you said there's so many things you can do in order to strengthen your brand but it's not just about money and i think we've seen that like you know with things like among us or you know stuff like that if you think just about money then this is already the limitation that you put yourself into two hats if my case if i want to jump on the table and if i think that i'm going to fall for sure i will fall many times but at the end i want to be on the top of that rock uh and it should be the same with you uh

you if you believe in your product things will escape for sure i think i think that's a really great great quote there's been quite a few good quotes in in this talk but like i think that's a really great one as well as if you if you limit yourself just by the money then you've already put a limit on what you can achieve and so yeah i think that's great well yeah thank you so much for a really fascinating talk and for staying with us with the questions it was obviously a super popular talk we've had so many questions that we just can't get through all of them but that's always a good sign um but yeah thank you so much thanks and have a nice day ciao you