The Smart Way to Extend Your Game's Lifecycle

[Music] so I love a new year that starts with energy and I met you last time and I said oh I'm gonna interview you at some point I thought oh we'll do it we'll do it online but no here we are we're in real life and then I can experience the full Dean day so first of all thanks so much for making the time Dean tell us about blacksmith Studios first yeah sure so uh blackm Studios is a a team of 36 we're based in the the north of Finland in in kayani um and we spent a a very long time um the last seven years now actually doing work for H so we we get to work on some really cool projects and that spans anywhere from you know one two people teams uh up until the 10 and 20s on a on a single project and we've worked on some really cool stuff in the past you know we''ve been uh 4 and a half years roughly now working on uh

stumble guys which was originally made in uh in kayani he was born in kayani um so we get to work on some really cool projects and we're just we're here uh this year trying to finalize conversations we had with uh clients leading up to Christmas last year to try and get the uh the new projects rolling for for this year and hopefully getting the industry back on track experience working on stumble guys I mean huge huge success and you're work for hire so you're sort of like well we think it's good but is it going to be really good so what was your experience what was your what did you think when it did what it did because that obviously is good for you now you say hey we're the studio that powered this man yeah so uh it was originally developed in in Kay where we are uh and we were hired by the studio that were making it at the time to do the uh the PC and the web ports uh and around that time when we were doing the work is when it really blew up um and then we we've managed to be involved in the project for a long long time since so you know it's a it's it's a great uh

project to have an off portfolio it's something to you know brag about it's something that's done very very well and I know that you know every service provider that's been involved in that project have have happily spoken about it you know we've got Photon down here they're the back end for that game they're the multiplayer for that game so and it's you know it's on their it's on their branding it's on every stand they have because it's an amazing game to have worked on and it's one that's still going strong now so you know we're rooting for more projects like that in the future and probably that's what's going to be happening more and more because everyone I speaking with is like couple years back you're on mobile that's Grand that's all you need now we're talking more and more about PC we're talking about web we're looking at different platforms where does that leave you at black smoke yes so we're we're fairly platform agnostic as well um so we were the opposite we were very PC and console focused um we dabbled in VR when that first came around but we we haven't done much of it since then um

but we're finding more and more of our projects are are mobile uh and we're leaning into that and we're finding a lot of games now are are doing the opposite you know mobile um went to PC console and now we're finding projects to go PC console into Mobile um so we're able to do all of that you know beginning to end which is great for us and it's something that we're we're continuing to do in support uh and again more and more we're seeing titles that are launching across all platforms at once rather than you know the like of Call of Duty that uh came out with war zone and two years later they did the mobile war zone games are just coming out on everything at all the same time which it's really interesting yeah another thing I'm hearing is a lot of interest in web shops and also alternative stores that means more builds that means more to do does that mean something good for you yeah so there's more work there for us obviously which is always a good thing um with the alternative stores the web shops I think the real grind there is that 30% that everyone is sheding out for you know whether you're on the mobile stores whether you're on steam or the console platform forms you're sing out 30% of

every in that purchase that ELO ever makes um we've got people that we're working with such as you know exola at the moment are really leading as an alternative web shop uh and they're taking 5% 6% and in comparison k a no brainer as long as you can make that um kind of confidence to the player so it looks good if it was part of the game they they don't recognize the store but they're comfortable putting their details into it then the developers are shifting because they they need the margins you know the cost of making games is going up and the budgets are going down so we need to do what we can do to make the games make more for us as well what are you doing internally I mean sometimes it is about Ai and harnessing AI I totally get that but I'm hearing much much more it's about doing it intelligently like being an an awesome prompt engineer and and supervising the AI so there might be a place where it's not you know you don't have problems because of AI because you will be the master of the AI in the build

yeah I think you would be silly not to embrace AI at this place you know it's taking over everywhere uh I think our our stand on AI is that it would never replace anyone or a job that as far as I'm concerned maybe it will in 10 years time I don't know but right now it's just another tool it helps people get their job done faster it helps us mood board and concept faster so that our artists have a better understanding of what's in our brains rather than us trying to put it on a piece of paper and I think as a to like that it's amazing you know we're using AI for NPCs uh machine learning so that people that are playing with NPCs or Bots online for example AR it's not as obvious they're they're their second guessing is that a bot is that a real player because they're getting that good and in that setting I think AI is great you know you can't pay someone to be a player online for you so that's a great uh issue that that fixes and as long as we use it carefully uh and in a sensible manner I think it's a great tool to have so when you're doing the build is

it becoming more and more that you're also being a bit of a consultant in it because we're hearing so much think about your live Ops early on build them in build everything into the build so it can't be that I just go to you necessarily and say build the game um you're bringing a lot of your experience in there as well aren't you yeah so we have a very experienced design team like some of these people are pushing 15 to 20 years in the industry um and you know the worst thing for us is to spend 2 years is building an awesome game for a client they launch it and it fouls no one wants a fouled game on their portfolio so for us it's really important that we are from the beginning like we say we're working with them to say like okay what's the vision of the game how are you monetizing the title what's your cost upon launch have you got multiplayer you immediately have server costs how are you countering those server costs to get monetizing of the game you know all of those elements they should be thought about the worst thing um for games and this happens a lot with developers they have an awesome idea you know they get three quarters of

the way from developing the game or it's an early access and they haven't even thought about how they're going to monetize yet so it's a second fa and you can tell that because the monetization they put in no one cares about or it doesn't feel right in the game it doesn't fit well because they've had to plaster it in somewhere at the wrong time so yeah we we push that we helped with monetization strategies we helped design beginning to end how the game will be how the experience for the user will be and you the biggest thing you got to do is prevent those friction points and prevent those like pay walls so if feels good it feels natural so players are happy to spend money and that you're not taking advantage of them so what's the challenge in the monetization strategy because we've gone from IAP to a lot of IAA then we've got hybrid mixes of them all and I'm still hearing a lot about subscription as well at the show um so that's do back maybe this time around for real that presents a lot of challenges if you want to do all of the above and I hear people say they'll try them all and see what works

works yeah a nightmare for you right yeah so so from a a monetization strategy yeah that that makes things very hard especially on mobile when you've got you know some games that have got a constant Banner uh across the top of the screen and then they've got incentivized rewarded ad and then they've got in that purchase and then they've got a monthly subscription and how do you make all of that tie in so that it kind of feels natural you know and and they they go well together and that can be really hard but a lot of that also comes down to the design of the game the core elements of the game if you can make those beats work well with adverts in between perfect you know if I'm playing a game and every 30 seconds 6 seconds I'm getting an ad in between my session that's friction that's going to be infuriating for the player um it gets tricky it really I think it really comes down to the type of game you know we're seeing more games like obviously Marvel Rivals lately as a freeo playay title it's got in and purchases purely Cosmetics I've spent money in the game I don't really spend money in games but I spent money in that game it works very well because it's something I want there's no ads in that

game it doesn't need any ads there's um there is a season pass in now and I'm tempted to buy that because it sucked me in and they've done a very good job of monetization you know the game play is good the U the retention is good and they're the Beats you need to hit first before you dive too heavy into monetization uh so I think that's a good example if anyone want's doing any like research or wants to use case study Marvel rals is doing light monetization on a free-to-play title very well um so they're the kind of the projects you need to design for but again it needs to be done right at the begin it doesn't matter what you're using they can all work together they can work individually they can work without inet purchases you're just pushing ads to players you can make a lot a lot of money either way I know back in the day people used to be like oh half of our money is ADS half of our money is in our purchases I don't think we see that anymore I think it seems to be consistently 90% of one 10% of the other and it really depends on the type of game and the drama that you've got on which one is more successful between in a purchase and the ads some subscriptions what about when you have a game and there are a lot of them that say okay we've reached a certain level

of maturity now we have to take it to another level we either have to sort of refresh or think of some way to build on it and it's not just fresh content it's not always just throwing something new out do you have cases like that where you're sort of like Reviving a game rather than rebuilding it yeah we've done some of this in the past um normally for these games you know that they're quite old already it normally means they're on a single platform and allow to then open up to other platforms does the job naturally you know new content uh new new um features or new like game modes they're always a bonus but the new platform is something that always opens it up um one example for us is that we have or two actually I could give you we have one game that's a premium title that's been out for like four or five years and it's it's sloping off and they know it's coming to an end so what we're doing is now we're going to taking it from premium to freeo play and we're re we're reshaping all the games Eon economy ready new content

we're rewarding people that already have the game and it's bringing those players back that haven't played for years so that's a really good way uh of doing it um and it's again it's a tricky one because it comes down to the type of the game and the genre but there's always bits and Bobs you can do adjust or add to to improve the titles um another one that we've got has has been out for 15 years it's been out for a long time still generating some Revenue it's on every platform going and we're just about to add multiplayer to the game so it's like a couch Co-op title four players playing locally when we have multiplayer to it what it means for us is that you can now play online with your friends but now four of you are buying the game instead of one of you so for us we can potentially push more sales but we haven't really done much to the game so you know if you're tactical with with what you're doing um you know there's a there's um an advantage for the players playing the game or existing players playing the game but then there's an advantage for you from sales then it's perfect I like that you could sort of come in there almost like the doctor and prescribe the way to make something

out of it and sometimes it's just another platform and really smart if you have multiplayer you've got them all buying into it so that is hugely intelligent um I knew I wanted to catch up with you Dean there's a lot to learn from your learnings I mean you have a very interesting Playbook I mean that alone could be what your part of your product is in the future your services is your playbook what you've learned yeah potentially you know uh I myself haven't been in the industry for too long I've been in industry for about 13 years now um our team the people that we've got in our team that most of our staff they've been in the industry longer than me you know they like I say they're pushing 20 years some of them are pushing 20 years just working in unity so they're they're so good at what they do they are senior um hopefully that's what we end up doing you know we've uh been through the entire cycle we've been through development been through work for higher uh we've been through publishing we do all platforms um we're even doing custom backend SE now as well we're doing a lot of um

development outside of games so we're doing a lot of health and fitness uh we're also doing some eye gaming with gambling games stuff like that so yeah we we really do almost everything apart from like I say the VR and AR so long term I'm hoping that we do move into more consultant moves where we we are helping these people design their games from the beginning before they're engaging a development team because it should be really done on paper before we get to that stage chatting with you Dean I can totally see that first of all I'm getting it and you're making it very accessible for me and there are a lot of Concepts that carry over I mean gamification all of the verticals so it is an area for you I would hope that that would be one of your places where you can expand and overall just by chatting with you go out there I know you took your time off go out do your deals get that in and uh have a fantastic year Jean thank you so much thank you so much baby oh thank you so much

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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 until then I'm Brian Bago I'm Peggy and salts and that's a wrap until next week