Superstar Session: Hypercasual Ideation - How #1 Hit Games Are Born

now we have a superstar session dun dun dun dun dun dun there should be music for that i'm just making it myself um uh and this is this is fascinating this is this the the talk of this is hyper the title of this is hyper casual ideation how uh how number one games hit games are born i think if you're number one you've gotta be a hit game i'm presuming the two together um it's to talk about uh about that i'm hopefully yes we have i'm delighted to welcome uh uh maura goldstein of uh track sponsors i've no doubt got part of that wrong of our track sponsors uh crazy labs uh uh to uh to discuss this issue are you there yes i am hi i i i said maura but it's mariah isn't it i do apologize i i i assumed it was a token you're not scottish where are you are you where are you based i'm based in tel aviv tel aviv is it beautifully sunny in tel aviv

oh it's amazing yeah it's always sunny television that's my experience television every time i go there it doesn't matter you have to visit you have to visit this amazing i've been i should be back again do they still have those scooters causing absolute mayhem in the city yeah you've got these like lime scooters everyone's got an electric scooter and they sweeping weaving in and out of traffic i was terrified when i was there but it was uh it is yeah anyway um enough enough talking about toby beautiful place do visit if you get a chance um yeah so we're going to talk to you and talk today about ideation and uh where great hit games come from i guess is that right yes yes are you uh are you are you feeling ready you've got your yeah let's start i'm you can start i'm here in the background if you if you all right let me show you on my screen now you know sometimes i think that my brain is a mess everywhere i go and everywhere i look i'm trying to think whether i can turn it into a game and i wish if i could see you are nodding your head now

because as hyper casual game developers you already know that everyday experience can become the new hit good morning everyone it's great to be here again my name is maria and i'm vp of creative and product design at crazylabs my journey at crazylab started back in 2014 when i joined the company as a studio manager in the last three years i built and led the hyper-casual publishing group recently i started a new role in the company which i'm grateful for which will allow me to go really crazy with my idea i'm building a new team and our goal is to push the hyper-casual boundaries to the next level in 2020 crazylabs were the top three mobile game publisher and our games just recently crossed 4 billion download that's a respectful milestone

we have 110 monthly active users and our publishing group is actively working with over 350 studios to create amazing games for our players among our games you can find tie-dye asmr slicing phone case diy and even run sausage run that was released in 2017 and still kicking who said that hyper casual games can live for only few months but that's for a separate talk we're here to talk about hyper-casual ideation in my talk today i will share with you my personal ideation process what my inspiration resources are how i deduct a trend and what's important to pay attention when gamifying it i will also show you how one idea can become three different games as game developer and publisher we are fighting for our players attention

that's why when we are hitting the road with a new idea for our games our initial thought should be how to stand out beneath the thousands of games out there how do we compete with the boobs and the pranks first thing we want to do is to make them stop scrolling to pick us then we need to make them choose us okay i feel that um we need to do more drastic stuff lately in order to fight on their attention then they need to actually love the game and come back the day after our players they've seen it all don't you think as game publisher we need to be even bolder than we were and to stand on the edge and be super innovative same goes for a game for game developers that need to reinvent the wheel

every time it's either in the game itself or in the ua videos as a woman i have great advantage when it comes to hyper casual over 50 percent of all gamers and non-gamers on mobile are females and close to 60 of hyper casual players are females and i think that by the time facebook will release their next report these numbers will increase since hyper-casual games are made for non-gamers i'm lucky enough to create and design games for myself another advantage is by being part of the target audience it's easier for me to challenge myself and to check um what made me stop scrolling and identify what does it for me so higher women in your teams where do i start it's super basic and trivial actually it's the social networks i'm being on

facebook instagram tick tock and more i basically scroll all the time then i stare at my daughters and friends playing games or watching youtube videos i learn so much by just watching them i see what gets them excited and especially what they made them stop and watch a certain video i also show them sets of game icons to see what they uh like me to download for them and they what makes them want to play i talk to my teenage nephew and his friends and get their insights as well and it's k in case it's not obvious i play all the game in the top charts all hit mobile games and any other game that i can put my hands on um i also use app any sorry another intelligence tool and it may seem creepy to you but sometimes i can ask complete stranger when i see them

play on their mobile device what they are playing or why or i would just sneak a peek into their mobile device i try to challenge my social media algorithm from time to time with new keywords or cool searches otherwise i'll be still be watching 95 of the time uh acrylic nails or tie-dye videos i try to follow new content creator i download games that i see in ads and i check what others are following and watching i'm trying to dance between the ai and my eye when i see a video that i like i always ask myself why did i stop why am i sending it to my team it's important that we will do this self analysis and notice why did we stop so then we will be able to translate it into the video ad and to the game it's either something extremely unique maybe something from different cultures

it will be something disgusting or super funny extreme things that i can only imagine myself doing in games we can make the impossible to possible and that's what's so nice about it when i'm on my ideation process it helps me to categorize source of inspiration and help me cover all ground sports hobbies occupations animals or and of course mechanics controls so i can then mix and match now let's say i suspect a certain video as a good game a game candidate what should i do how can i tell whether this is a trend if i start seeing certain this video again and again coming from different sources appearing on different social media accounts or maybe a tick tock challenge is related then that would be a good place to start i'll check it all out i'll also check the amount of likes and

share that each relevant video has all this will usually point in a direction of a trend but what really turns on the trend all arts in my head if i see it not just online but offline in real life and this is exactly what happened to me in tie-dye which later become one of our top success stories just cross 100 million downloads when i watched the first diy tie-dye video i felt it looked super satisfying and it also reminded me of my childhood by the second video i thought to myself oh that's so cool but when i walked down the street and i saw a tie-dye t-shirt in the store window i knew it's the hottest trend out there i had to do something now by the way the same thing happened to me with acrylic nails so we have our inspiration and then we brainstorm on what should be the high-level design

documents which control the mechanic fits the best um and and then we should see if we have clear and intuitive narrative for the game the next step is always the same we go back to the mother of all questions do people want to play my game the three seconds rule remember players will most likely decide if they are going to download your game within the first three seconds of your video ad so this rule should always guide you through your whole ideation and creation process your video ad should scream i want to play this game and i know i keep saying it over and over but please challenge yourself show it to your friends and colleagues ask them if they understand check their reaction their their response and i'm not saying you should use cheap tricks your game should stand out and shine

bright like a diamond on its own the control the mechanic should be crystal clear the goal and narrative should be intuitive and simple to understand that's what's hyper casual is all about you also need to find the very pure moment of fun the things that makes the magic happen we always talk about gamified trend but we also need to gemify it find the real gem because that moment of pure fun this is the diamond in the rough and and this can make or break your game for example in tie dye it's the outcome that came out so nicely no matter what style or color you choose in acrylic nails it was that moment when the acrylic paste turned the acrylic powder turned into paste this is gold from that point you'll keep playing because it's simple to follow through and super creative in hyper casual uh games those short

small and sometimes even trivial moments are just what your players are hungry for a pure fun to play moment don't you love example i have more i love diy videos i can watch all types of diy videos all day this is how i came up with the idea for diy makeup the game we recently launched i love the fact that you are mixing elements and creating your own makeup products by the way never tried it at home naturally same goes for physical tie-dye or acrylic nails i'm leaving the mess out by the time that the game was launched the trend slowed down a little bit and the cpi struggled but then i started to notice that there's a new related online trend homemade face mask made out of fresh fruit when i talked to a beauty specialist about it she explained that makeup sales dropped 30 percent

during covet while skin care increased by the same percentage i suddenly understood what happened to our game and i also knew what i need to do next the first thing we did was to replicate it into the the fruit mask into the video ad for diy makeup and boom a 200 percent increase in downloads then we change the icon and only then we added it into the game this goes to show you that videos and trend are not only good for creating new game ideas it can and should be part of your everyday work on existing games as well let's talk about your pitches when my team and i are working on a game we always pitch it even it's for it's for the internal teams working on your game's pitch will serve you in many ways

it will help you gather your thoughts if you'll need to make sure that you have clear definition of the game you will need to make you need to decide if this is the right mechanic and control and making mock-ups or short flow of the game will help you see if you have it all tied up once again challenge yourself this is the place to challenge your ideas and don't forget when you're sending your pitch to your publisher it should really stand out publishing manager gets a lot of pictures every day so your idea as good as good as it may be should be clear simple and fun to read let's have good example and bad example for good peaches and bed um on the good example you'll see a very short and presentative pitch of tie-dye you immediately get the idea

uh it's inviting it's fun to read you can already imagine how the game will be and on the bad example you'll see a pitch that has that speaks on the same idea but with so much text and so it's so hard to dive into it no one wants to actually read um so invest in mocha and save these words for later a good mock-up will do all the work for you in the creation part one of the things that i love the most is that you can take a single idea and gamified in so many different ways if that was an offline event and i could see you and talk to you i would just ask someone from the audience to suggest a trend or an idea and we can brainstorm together and see if we can find different ways uh to gamified but since we can't uh unfortunately i brought my own example forgive me for bringing an old trend i can burn my ideas now

so uh let's take the spinner fidget toy clearly was a hot trend back then everybody talked about it play with it everywhere you walked you see someone spinning it so now let's see how we can find different ways to to gamified it can be an io game spin arroyo with regular joystick control you're fighting your opponents trying to win each round it can be a simulation game where you are creating your own spinner uh you choose the shape the color you'll be selling it making money upgrading your spinner store or maybe it can be a draw runner uh you are drawing your path and you need to avoid obstacles um and and win this level so it's always fascinating me to see how each developer and game creators can take an idea and give their own definition and and

touch to it i also like to learn from our developers and to hear what inspired them our friend from qrikey told us that they saw a youtube video of diy phone cases but when they really decided to start working on this game was when they understood how strong it was uh in asia for example and our friends from shoal fish um they were inspired by a facebook game that they did in the past that the original inspiration for that was uh an amazing uh motion graphic of of birds and not even fish but that's what made them come up with the idea for shallow fish and um and that the guys from uh scope people's mcdonald's production uh they uh saw a cute uh online store that sells these uh awesome sculptures and then they found

uh this clay artist doing these super satisfying videos uh that made them come up with the idea for the simulation game that later become a hit so everything that we discussed today is just part of our training program in crazy hubs we are now opening our fifth hyper casual hub so you are more than welcome to apply and join us this is a three-month hyper-casual boot camp in israel india turkey serbia and poland so come to learn from our mentors how to kick ass in hyper casual so we covered a lot of materials today and i know that each of you has their own style for ideation but there are three things that i want you to take from today's talk challenge yourself always ask yourself

why are you watching this video what made you stop scrolling what made you download the game find multiple ways to gamify a trend remember that a single idea can turn to many types of hyper-casual games find the pure fun moment pinpoint that exact moment that kick you because that's the exact moment you need to gamify and you know what you should stop gamifying and start gemifying thank you so much you can go and hear your questions fantastic that was really great um really great uh can we uh if you maybe unsure there you go perfect brilliant we can we can see you clearly that was that was fantastic maria that really uh really great energy enthusiasm that comes through it's clear how uh how passionate you you you are and i know i know that's something that has come on to crazy labs as a whole and they use uh

a lot of young people i i feel i thought i've been industry a long time i was a young person you know we're actually not that not that young people are the average uh ages is not that young actually i think you and i might have different ideas about what we are young in our spirit you're going to spread that's fair enough um so i've got a load of questions i'm trying to try trying to to get through um what one of the questions i'm gonna so many here i'm i'm just gonna try and pick through so one of the things i wanted to ask about which i kind of touched a bit on with the previous speaker but it's an interesting kind of general topic especially in hypercasual is how do you you know obviously you get inspiration from everywhere and that'll include other games so how do you avoid being you know just kind of copying another idea even if you've kind of just internalized are there any kind of processes yeah how to or what do you think about copying and cleaning is it okay i don't know there's a lot of different attitudes about it in hypercasual space i know some people really oh this is terrible i think the only thing that is cool

is to mix and match yeah and i saw awesome examples of mix and matte that made me jealous how great it was because you know taking two mechanics or a theme and mechanic and mix them together creates an entire uh different games so i can't call it copying uh when you are just taking a mechanic that plays a game and and you put an awesome theme on it uh or mix it with another mechanic to create mechanics so you've evolved it yeah no it's evolutionary fair enough i i think that's absolutely true i think you can always even if you look at something and get that's brilliant you can always find a unique spin on it right it's it's uh so i like that um you mentioned i was i was really fascinated i was i'm my eyes my head is buzzing i wish i could make games i'd be out there making straight away um you mentioned a couple of times things like uh social media and tick tock do you do you think that the future of hyper casual games has a strong

connection with that those social media both in ideas and and kind of promotion because you're spotting trends and memes and i think i think it will still it will remain part of of the things but not the main because everybody has their own style my my uh initial inspiration always and my best ideas come from social media but i see so many brilliant games that comes from different sources so i i don't think it's will go only to this direction it has room for everybody yeah no no i i i i'm not saying necessarily only but it's it's fascinating isn't it people are following you know somebody falling over with a cake uh or something you know and or a funky dance and then you can straight away go and play a gamified version of that it kind of feels like it's an amazing market on my weekends i'm like a crazy person keep sending emails to myself i need to

do this don't forget this yeah um another thing i i'd share with this this i i really love the the kind of the um there's the straight the point you made about uh your advantages as a as a female kind of developer or female in this space and and i'm i'm tightly on board that we you know that there should be a lot more as you said it's it's more 50 50 or more even in many especially mobile and we should we need more women in the space do you think broadening from that it's important to have a really kind of diverse idea team ideation team like different ages and genders social groups races whatever definitely yeah and is that something you can actively i notice these hubs are a really great idea you're kind of going you're getting that global perspective i think uh here in crazy labs we are i think 50 50 or even more females than males in the the company uh so uh we are definitely trying to have diverse teams and i think

uh each uh studio should have at least uh 30 to 40 percent females in in their uh team so they will have end ages by the way to have the range of ages as well so we will you know get what the younger uh audience uh likes and what the old audience likes we need the uh you know i i i i i feel old sometimes yeah sometimes you know i bring cool and fresh ideas but then then you know people look at me and say oh you're such a boomer i mean okay boomer that's a great episode um yeah so talking a little bit about this hub concept you know are you finding you're getting very remarkably different ideas from these different countries i mean it's a very sorry i lost you for a second can you repeat sorry the hub the kind of crazy hubs concept are you finding you're getting quite different ideas from these different hubs i mean it's a great idea to to get you know you know obviously it's

great ideas from games for games from the hubs they're getting different you're getting different very different types of ideas so if you've got a hub in israel i don't feel this way i feel no no i feel that the the hyper casual is pretty much the same when i'm working with people from india or from serbia it's most likely to be on the same range of ideas because hyper casual speaks the same language everywhere fair enough well one final point of the crazy i've got a few skeptical one crazy hubs i've got like four or five questions here uh who should i contact to get crazy up in my country would you be interested in launching in crazy hub in pakistan i want to have a crazy hub here in sun's valve speed and how can i make it happen so what do people want to want i think that the best the best thing to do is to get into our website there is a tab with all the hubs that we

have so you can apply no matter which uh hub you will try to apply someone will get back to you you can use my email you can send me on linkedin you're more than welcome we will be happy to address all of the questions and try to open more hubs of course yeah no it's no it's great i i believe we do believe in physical hubs because and not just online uh programs because this mutual work together with the mentors and and and within these creative environments just puts everything in different perspective and it kicks it all up i think it's you know when you can really show someone on his monitor what's wrong or what or to see someone really play your prototype on a mobile device makes all the difference so i know it was this is a covered

situation and everything but working in the same workspace is yeah 100 agree we definitely need to get back together obviously uh you know uh sort of israel as tel aviv is very much leading the charge there i think you're the most most vaccinated country in the in the world at the moment which is great um but yeah that will come i i agree with that um you've talked about a lot of different getting loads of different ideas and you've you know from that talk alone you have had like 100 game ideas so what's the kind of process or a little bit of from going from ideas to pitch to so i guess to kind of mock up to you know to to then launch i mean how many how many kind of mock-ups or how many kind of demo tests what sort are you working on at any one time would you say across across crazy lab is it like hundreds of game ideas have been worked on at any one time you get down to ten that get launched or something like that or how does that work i'm trying to calculate

um there are hundreds of ball in the air all the time i mean it's it can be an idea can be just one liner yeah it can be just a video and then we are processing it starting to mock up it and and of course working with our developers uh with the publishing team together and see what catches so we're trying you know to to work on as much as possible in every so you're putting a lot of games out there and and and to get that data i guess um i mean that's that's that's that's amazing it's always data day-to-day talk about it in my talk today but i always have to listen to the numbers that guides me i don't fall in love with any of my ideas sometimes i'm being a little bit crazy when i when i want to find a studio now for this game yeah yeah but uh yeah and what's just as a

there's going to be a couple of questions but it's my interest as well what what's the sort of length of time you've got a great idea you've gone wow this is amazing you know everyone's juggling sheep now we need to do a game on this this is the new trend like from from an idea to prototype to getting a game out what's the kind of what's a typical length of time is that is that you know weeks months you know how how long how long would you use great that's that is the this is the one million dollar question the fastest you'll be the the success uh rate will increase in my opinion i mean if we can have if we have a good pitch and we can test it the the idea within one or two weeks and then we see it has potential it has good cpi i'll try to launch it not more than four weeks after we saw a good cpi this is my this

is my uh like less than two months for yeah yeah but of course this is like the ultimate but sometimes it can take three months but i'm trying we're trying to minimize the their production time because competition in the market is on fire yeah yeah i know it's a very very competitive space i've got related to that uh there's a question here from uh from psy uh who says is there still scope for new hyper casual games after so many are released i mean obviously you know people have been predicting the end of hyper casual for about three years now and it's just gone on and got bigger and bigger every year you know i i i presume you know you you guys are pretty bullish about the future you're expanding with hubs and everything everywhere so you know is it is it still is there still time to end to this space

definitely yeah be crazy to say no it's over we got but yeah yeah yeah hyper is here hyper is here no and and obviously again it's evolving as well right so you have you know certainly evolving yeah yeah yeah definitely but i but you know there was a time that everybody talked about the hybrid casual and you can still see that there is room for all types of genres but the level of production value is increasing the game are becoming better and better and this is amazing in my opinion yeah yeah okay i've got i'll try and get one two more questions i'll have to prove so do you have any tools um to help with ideation do you do you have like i mean either your own tools or third party we saw recently at uh one of our events or there's a thing i think called ludo or something something like that which is a aia tool for game ideation i don't know if it's i saw something i'm not using it uh yet

to be honest um i don't you know i don't work for them but i i i don't know there seems to be a few starting to emerge we do support our developers with their ideation because sometimes you know you bring awesome idea but it's not it's not tied up it's not fully you know uh clear so we have why and weeks experts to uh help them you know make it whole and uh so but it's a personal um um service that we give to our developers actually yeah oh wow that's part that's part of the it's part of the stuff of the the support that we give yeah yeah okay i thought so much stuff in here i'm gonna have to probably uh i'll ask one last question i'm gonna pull out okay i'm gonna have to go if you do want to talk to maria please stick seeker seeker seek her out afterwards uh in the discord or or or her or the crazy labs team um so question is do you run a lot of game

jams um i guess i it's a very simple question yes i mean it's games jams seem ideal way to to get ideas i know there's there's a hybrid casual company that seems we're doing it in the hubs in the hubs we're doing game gems we sometimes take a theme or uh we decide on a amount of time that we give for this game jam and uh and then all the teams in the in the hub are focused on that um but we didn't have a global uh hyper game jam uh yet yet okay and if you had to leave one passing bit of advice or inspiration i think you're a very inspiring character by the way but if you could for anybody that's a game developer that's in this space getting into this space what would it be what would be your one thing you say to someone tough one isn't it open-minded send you all your ideas to your mobile device so you

will not forget about a good idea and find the pure moment of fun this because this is this is what we need in casual the gem at the gem of it the gemini yeah it's the jam jennifer gemify i like gemma fights good it's a good this is a good time let's catch up okay well i think that's all we have time for that was brilliant absolutely uh loved that really i say i'm i'm kind of now thinking i should be making games this is much much more fun than running come join us oh why not i um we're hiring you need some more old white men right so um so uh a pleasure to talk to you maria have a have a go thank you so much it's great to be here as always fantastic thank you as well also for your support you