Township Deconstructed: The Secrets to Its Multi-Billion Strategy

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to the second deconstructor of fun product deep dive podcast I'm your co-host Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at beta hat and Jaden Inferno and hi I am the other co-host Laura taranto senior director of product at Big Fish Games and Laura and I are teaming up again on these product deep dive podcasts in the deconstructor of fun podcast feed and also on YouTube our first YouTube video um ironically not that we're counting was two or 3x more than any other YouTube video in the channel just just you know just saying that we may have uh we may have struck gold here with the idea of bringing uh product deconstructions back to Constructor of

fun and back to the YouTube channel so uh for you audio folks we're going to do our best to describe everything that we're seeing but if you do want to see we do have a deck and we do have the game that we're going to pull up and show for the YouTube channel so we know that you guys love the idea of marketing versus design versus product banter goatee marketing so uh we're going to be covering games from the two most important sides uh Laura kind of reps both product and design and I rep marketing and we we we fight it out not really actually we get along really well but it should feel like you're stepping into a meeting with both of us together and seeing how we figure out and deconstruct games and make and Market really the the next great game by deconstructing the winners so we're going to get started and the first time I yelled at Laura for making me play white out survival which consumed everything and by the way you screwed me with two games you're like oh by the way Frozen city was the precursor you did it

again but I with Heyday so the game that we're doing this week is Township and Township feels like the most unsexiest farming game ever having I having worked on FarmVille back in the day and having had to play a lot of Heyday by the way my mom still plays Heyday 10 10 years later cuz I was she was my competitive review person on FarmVille so you're making me play another farm game Township why why am I playing this unsexy game I have to to disagree with you I think this is the sexiest farming Match 3 game you could possibly find in Market uh it is it we'll get we'll get down to it in a little bit later when we talk about how it's designed but I can't think of a more beautifully crafted casual puzzle massive game Loop that that is why we are deconstructing this because this I think it's actually a really special game um I'll go I can give should I start a little bit on the history of it yeah take me through the history

cuz I you still need to convince me okay fine so for about as long as your mom has been playing uh Farmville this game has been live so Township is 11 years old it was launched in uh 2011 it's been around a while and to be fair it's already been covered uh by deconstructor fund bugra and Mishka did a a a deep dive of not a deconstruction of it on the blog so you can check it out um however the what they did what they covered it has changed since then and I think what's super interesting about this very sexy farming game is the amount of of changes it's been through um Jenna has put together some screen uh basically some videos and we'll go through a little bit now of what this game is so it is a farming game yeah just just to give you a sense of with no audio um for those of you watching if you aren't familiar with Township um you know what it looks like

from a the typical kind of City Builder Harvest your crops by swiping your finger um all of those core mechanics are are very much in this one and um bright colors you know very approachable very casual feed your cows churn butter fill orders this is the kind of the essence of the original game that came out in 2011 um and then but what I think interesting and I know Candy crushes up here but I like to I like to call these a facelift so this game Township has had a facelift and and another example of a great facelift is actually Candy Crush and I pulled some old images from Candy Crush the OG to Candy Crush what it is today and you can see these games these games evolve over time and they have to so I think we can jump into takeaways so why why are you sitting listening to us today um and what does Township represent what do we want you to

remember watching or listening to this podcast and I think it's three three main things and one of them we kind of discussed a little bit which is around the facelift which is first one market trends never sleep if you're going to be working on a game doesn't matter how long it's been live you need to make sure you are iterating continuously I think we think about managing a live game is just throwing in live Ops and it's really it's not that you are constantly evaluating and adapting your strategy to make sure is matching the market um and I think you need to be okay with a high level of change um and this change can be as superficial as changing Graphics or as deep as changing the full the full game Loop uh part of it most of it comes down to you need to understand what risks you're taking and make sure you're you're evaluating and and making smart decisions because while you do want to constantly change the market you want to make sure you you are calculating your risk approp appropriately understanding the space

you're going into um understanding how the Market's changing so you're adapting to the changes that the players want to see and I think Township is a a prime example of this yeah you'll talk about it later but I I had no idea that they basically revamped the whole thing not that long ago and even from uh the 2020 deconstructor refund review the game has had massive changes that have led to just actually massive changes in revenue and so what's really interesting I think is as as companies like supercell finally are like you know what why don't we put life service people on our games that have been out for 10 years I feel like they're so late to the party and companies like playrix have been doing that with Township to Great benefits so we're giving that the number one takeaway because it's how you keep something around for that long so number two is the idea again and and we talked about this a little bit on white out survival is the product and marketing

alignment or the peanut butter and jelly that you have by really having both teams work together so this is a a compelling way where some of the UA assets have been exploring miname experiences that have made it actually inside of the game and we've talked about this many times right this happens in white out survival this happens even in eony the 4X strategy game where you had the pull the pin UA creative well I didn't realize this but in going and looking at some of the past creative Township may have been one of the the games on the Forefront of really exploring miname experiences in UA and then incorporating them inside the game to help players make sure that they they feel and they see those ads inside the game so and having the product team really work hand inand with the UA team and really know what's going on is is is crucial to doing that so it's that symbiotic relationship that we're really seeing there peanut butter and jelly

number three or chocolate or banana whatever your I guess if you're European it's not even peanut butter because yeah it would be Nutella and banana it'd be hazelnuts for the win um so the last one is and I keep thinking of the Green Day song you don't have to go home but you can't stay here and I feel like what what this point I want to make is counter to that it's it's that they don't want you to go home please stay here and I think that is a Trend we're seeing in games is is creating the space where you just never have to leave we saw it with the first product Deep dive in wi out survival and it is it is definitely in Township as well and the the point I want to make here is that if you're going to take this approach you have to be really careful because if you don't consider your game loops and you just kind of start throwing stuff in hoping for the best you you could end up end up with something called Franken game which is all of these modular pieces that don't go back to the main core Loop they they can lead to problems

like a you know an incohesive experience or inflation in places where you don't want inflation which is just you know which is destaing your economy and probably going to affect your Revenue in in Township Township's example they do a great job of adding a lot to the game considering how it it fits into the original essence of the game and then putting it together so it is it is not Franken game it is it is a beautiful sexy new game that they are they are bringing to players yeah I agree the first time I when I first started playing this game I was about ready to head out of the game I had completed all my orders I had spent all my I had done everything I could possibly do and then it was oh wait well what's this and then there's all these other things for you to do and then by the time I played a little bit of that oh wait some more of my things my crops were ready to harvest or my think and so um again having worked on FarmVille where it was a similar experience a little bit more

heavy on the decorative aspect than you have here although that is a important piece of of this game as well I was like ooh interesting they found a way to not let you leave they they kind of like ball and chain uh they they kind of put a a ball and chain around you and they like no no no you don't need to go just stay here we have things for you to do it's like you're getting married to this game yes don't don't let my wife hear that um so I think that for for Farming I think going back to what you were saying about you know you open this game and you think it's farming and I think the first question for me that comes to mind is is why farming if we if we look because the first place I normally look is okay tell me data AI you are you have everything why why would they look at farming and I mean we have to think back to 2011 again when Heyday was was um was quite popular and they were taking I believe the the the lead but I want take just have a picture of where farming is

now and what kind of opportunity space it presents so bro it down just looked at store Revenue worldwide of just general puzzle metas um and we can still see like is it interesting I mean if from this view not quite it's only it's only 7% of store revenue from the top games I mean Match 3 um and Match 3 meta is your your like your garden and homescapes um and then there's traditional match as well if you combine those two together they they make up majority of the they're the biggest biggest slice of the pie um and farming is not it for most they'd be like no this is too small but um if you kind of dig into well who who comprises that 7% um had a look you know this this chart is again uh looking over the last 52 weeks Township is just crushing it they are crushing it and it didn't always look like this I just I so

right now what is just under 40% Revenue share um and and Heyday did come out first um so we if we go to the next one the next slide I think I started looking at this is a little apologies a little hard to see but you can sort of see this is downloads over time um and initially Heyday was was dominating the market with with uh with farming games and Township came in a little bit later um but you can see now Township is now both a leader and in down loads and in Revenue I would like to point out that my game FarmVille 2 Country Escape back when I worked on it was uh didn't suck although it was losing dramatically to Heyday back in the day uh it was a very different world back then and the fact that the township was around I didn't even really wasn't even on my radar back then as a competitor and you can see it here in downloads but the fact that they have completely reversed the trend and found a way to become relev and FarmVille 2 Country Escape and

Farmville 3 by the way are completely irrelevant in today's world so so that really again it tells you something you know Township today to your point on your last slide was about 35% the next biggest competitor was family what is that family island island and then Heyday but I I do want to go back to one thing that you said about the category and the genres yes Match 3 is massive and it takes most of the pie but but the farming the simulation farming category right after sandbox which is basically Roblox right is the number is the number two category after um after the match games so of all of those other genres it is the biggest opportunity besides sandbox Roblox and besides match 3s so I usually don't tell stories I'm not I'm not the best Storyteller but leading up to GDC when I my first GDC was back in like 20 12 and I actually went to the FarmVille 2 uh I

think it was like the retrospective where they went through the game and something stuck with me one they talked about you know how they approached the game development but the amount of detail that went into FarmVille 2 if I remember it correctly they actually depending on what action you took in game they changed the tempo of the music in the background to match what you were doing so if you were correct me if I'm wrong but if you were doing something that was exciting compelling you it was action Ori ented it was much faster than if it was something that was a little bit more relaxing for some reason that stuck with me for 10 years that's super cool um it it may have been after my time listen I left in 2014 and end of end of 14 so it's been 10 years since I worked on that game so I'm not surprised if if they added something like that there is a really cool company called reactional music um the the CEO of that company is somebody I work with that EA named uh noxy David Knox they do a lot of this um how AI they use

AI of course cuz we wouldn't have a session if we didn't say AI but they um have music that reacts to exactly what you're saying the tempo of the game or um different ways that allow you to have music make sense for your game so a free plug for them because noxy is the best um you know if if that is of interest to you to have to set the mood I'm personally someone who plays with all of that off I don't play with any sound effects or any sound because I'm usually watching TV while I'm playing these games that's my personal Behavior but I know some people really do enjoy the the different things okay sorry back to the charts you have another chart here this is revenue so this just shows Revenue by uh same same kind of group Top farming games um but you know what I think is super so this this chart knocks my socks off which are is the the revenue of Township and why again goes back to why

it's compelling this basically shows its Revenue growth since its release which is this is what you want not a shark fin not any of the other shapes or like anything that suest decline this shows continual investment and then a return on that investment I think due to very very smart decisions that were made over its 11-year history yeah slow and steady up into the right for those listening uh and and kind of 50/50 plat form split right is that is that the stack I imagine is Android iOS usually that's the blue and the green yeah it looks slightly slightly higher to be expected yeah um but pretty pretty equal so um I wanted to do a little history Les lesson on um on playx they were founded in 2004 and they started with actually with Match 3 and HD an object they made their first mobile game was fish deep dive uh which was released

in 20 2008 oh way and then Laura wrote a joke for me this is so funny this game is still alive and swimming the fish puns never die uh uh if Crest were here he'd be yelling Boomer at us right now um which is probably not unfounded so uh of course looking at Daya AI I just pulled uh the chart here so they've had as a company you know the data only goes back to August of 2018 but since then two billion downloads um $9 to 10 billion dollar in store Revenue that's not even counting ads I I don't know if they have a web store or not but uh so this is only IAP driven just just massive and something that I thought was interesting about this chart as well is looking at some of their top games is I know we're talking about Township that has had that slow and steady increase but you know maybe

something we should have looked into as well is there's been a Resurgence in Garden Scapes uh coming around last year around last kind of December January uh Garden Scapes has was on the decline and and had a massive massive increase it's that purple line there that's coming up so I was like oo I should have forced you Laura to play Garden Scapes and when then I would have made you had the two for one I used to play that a little bit me too and uh it reminds me of goip sub Harbor meets you know it's that renovation you know story driven renovation that you're unlocking and then they had a lot of uh competitive aspects to the game that I thought were pretty interesting as I played that one so just to give you another game to dig into maybe we'll follow up on that one we could actually combine it with a fish tum if you so one thing that's come back is fish had a little bit of a Resurgence as well so this isn't unique this Township getting investment is is not a unique experience cuz if uh in

this chart between September 2019 and April 2020 you can see there's there's a material lift in revenue from uh from fishdom as well so this is this is not their first rodeo investing in live titles that's very true and something you know we should direct supercell to them so I showed this actually in the think games is tble in uh in the talk I gave but what I find what I and I kind of stumbled upon this but I broke down the using the data AI um Revenue data I actually broke it down by year just to see which year is they were contributing to their $2 billion Revenue stream and most most of their revenue actually came from the last let's say 4 years over 50% came from their last four years which is about the time they started experimenting and adding adding the many

changes they've made to the game now so this is I would say their investment kind of paid off for sure I think a lot of this coincided with the um with our Point number two which was hey what fake ads can we make that have many games that we need to add inside the game that allows a player to see something kind of hyper casual you know easy to pick up and play and then that actually exists inside the game and then you're trapped and you're held hostage inside of a farm simulation game you can never leave I know come back there's more to do merge these things um so let's go through we'll compare we're going to go through now like what they so what don't like what they Chang what did they what did they change that made the game have grow so much from a revenue perspective so this was the original Loop and credit to um Misha andg again for making this I I can't take credit for this but this was their original Loop and this is like a traditional farming game Loop you the

goal is to feed your cows get the milk make butter the butter is to fill orders and then you get XP and coins and and you rinse and repeat and then you slowly start to expand to chickens and pigs and granola and snacks and all of a sudden you have bacon well maybe not bacon I feel like maybe get bacon in Heyday if I remember yeah your more complex orders yeah so sorry go ahead and then that's that's traditionally the game Loop and um what they changed is they they they made it a lot more robust and I I put them side by side so I I actually crafted a game Loop and um you'll see it so the the original game Loop has four actions that repeat and then the new game Loop has at least seven and then there is what I call what I added as the coefficient of performance which is basic basically something that speed allows you to work more efficiently and work faster for less time so so they kept the the essence of the game is the

same you're still making orders you're getting XP and coins and building materials so you can expand your your farm um they added and not only can you they kind of build up your farm they've added something called a zoo and it's basically an extension of the order system so you now you have even more orders and then there's kind of a direct um a collection and um there's like a card Rarity so you're your it's it goes back to the collection system system where you're you need these cards to put animals in your zoo and then get more orders um they have various factories again that hasn't changed I'd say what they did add is this if in the screen I have to the upper um upper right hand side they added basically a match 3 engine with a second meta wrapped around it as their seasonal events Loop so you have match three where you the standard match three Loop where you play a level get stuff play another level but where it getss interesting is that

they've tied it all back together so you play a level and then you get energy which then goes into your second meta which is either grid merge or Expedition a grid merge game is similar to Jen's favorite gossip Harbor or uh what Trav Town Travel Town U Moon Acton's travel town or metac cord's merge Mansion um and for the Expedition it's it's slightly different if you've played Fiona Farm by Ace games I would call that an expedition where you expend energy to explore a space so there's a secondary Loop within seasonal events that resets every about every monthly month yeah yeah that that you basically can now play in so when you've when you're waiting for your orders to fulfill you can go and play their seasonal event um and then you have your energy system to play in your secondary meta which is either the merge of the Expedition um and you have lives to to allow you to play basically the match 3

so now you have like three different I guess time energy resources that you can manage but what's clever about this I think well there's a lot of things that are clever um first is that they've integrated a number of of season passes so the first season pass I put here you get items for your match game you get far and you get Farm resources and you get items for efficiency so they've been very smart to put in the kind of the overarching season pass everything you would need and we'll we'll pull that up now so you can see it hey game devs are you tired of dealing with complicated payment processes all over the world well exol's got your back with exola pay station it has a simple user-friendly interface that makes it easy for players to pay for your games and in-game content however they want and because the exola paystation user interface is adaptive and accessible on smartphones tablets and PCs your players will have a seamless experience no matter they preferred device players can save their favorite payment methods for future

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whatsoever I'm the same way I I could not care less about the decorative aspect although having worked on FarmVille again there are this is a this is a game where it's important to know the segments of your audience because so many people kind of like um Animal Crossing it's what my wife does in Animal Crossing she only cares about decoration she only plays the game to unlock the decorations to constantly customize and upgrade her City and so this is one of those areas where Laura you and I are all about like how do we play through and progress but there's this whole segment of players who want to play this differently so sorry go ahead back to you yeah so I'm Jen and I are lined on this point and I've seen some beautiful beautiful Farms that is not mine so we were talking about the game Loop why it's amazing um two things I will add and there's a couple things I want to show first is that we estimate the changes probably came around it started around 2019 most of the changes came out

2020 um and why the game Loop is completely beautiful it's very well thought out it's put together and what we are explaining is here so you saw my farm this is an example of the grid merge game again the uh merge Mansion reference you can see it connects to the match three I won't play a level just to pull it up just to show you um I've played these quite a bit um and what what I was talking about previously is how these are connected and there's a couple ways one is the actual puzzle pass um this is the seasonal event which is connected both to the um grid merge part as well as the match 3 part and the Expedition bit when it's active it's not active right now and you can see the rewards absolutely span all parts of the game so it is heavy incentivization to they're giving you rewards to go play all the parts they're not trying to focus you anywhere they're trying to focus you everywhere which which is smart otherwise if you're not

incentivized to do one part of the game because it's not integrated into any NE the reward system or your features you're going to ignore it um and that is not what this is they want you to play all bits of it and the second bit um that I want to say this is why I think this game is so sexy they make cash king here so you have these three parts of the game with your three energ with your three types of energy systems and what you need to do in game is progress you are gaining you're expanding your farm you're getting higher in the in the match three you're going through the grid merge whoops um and what I think they do very well is all parts of the game syn cash so if you want to speed up your everything anything you're building I'm not building anything now but I am let me see what is oh god I've I've actually tried to put all of this together but if I want to make sugar to fill an order it cost me cash if I want to speed it up or I wait 19 minutes if I go into if I go

back into my match three game or even actually the grid merge game if I want to buy something Cash Cash yeah cash is King and as and as we know in puzzle games for match three when you need more moves again it is cash it is every cash is related to basically progressing faster um and the it kind of gives the player the decision of where do you where do you want to progress more um and then they have to decide and one thing that I think this is why it's wonderful is if there was cannibalization between these sections of the game they would have pulled this out but they're all still there so I imagine it is a pretty even split that led to an incremental like no sorry not incremental a permanent uplift um on their Baseline Revenue putting all these features in game so that is why I think this game is is wonderful no I get it and I think you know super

astute observation on the the hard currency being applicable across all three of these units in fact let me see if I can chat GPT summarize everything that you just said it would be something like Township is an is three interconnected games in one across all of the best casual genres and never let you leave it's kind of like being married it's it's or like casual games house arrest right like it's one of these two things but but the interconnected piece right like it is inconnect but it has an overarching IT The overarching Game Pass and then there are passes within the each individual um kind of versions or modes of the game and so I think they've done what a lot of people strive to do which is is to have a very ELO you know eloquent metagame system that allows you and gives you a reason why you keep

wanting to progress across these different areas or the different modes of the game it's like if I was when I was at Riot we were trying to think about um you know what would a battle pass be like in League of Legends a battle pass in TFT there were some times that some of the things that you earned could be used across both of those games and that was nice and rewarding to the people who played both of those games and they've done that very very well here so um I think that I'm just reading through the rest of what I had to say of all of your amazing stuff that you pulled in there I wish people could um if you're listening I wish you could see this cuz we're actually kind of going through and showing it and the core loopy we're showing uh needs to be seen because it is a it is a work of art with all of these different drawings but I have you ever seen another game with this many kind of interconnected core game experiences that that does it so well yes a Forex

game of all the things I didn't expect Laura to say it would have been comparing Township to a 4X game but I think you're kind of right in the especially having us come off of white out survival and how we talked about how they inserted you know even that Monopoly go little mini game right like it was a short limited time event I feel like they did it in smaller chunks um maybe than than I've seen here cuz these are like the match 3 and the farming are are pervasive right they never go away and then there's one mode that kind of flips every month it flips from what I'll call the shittiest merge game ever cuz I love other merge games to the stupid e exploration like the the the rotating mode is not for me personally um it it's it's not what I uh love but I do love match 3 and I do love the farming and so even again for me as a player right and and I'm speaking to

this as a player as a as a marketer I'm like o that is super smart because you hit all three different motivations you hit uh various types of play patterns various incentives various motivations when you have each of those and just like for me when you know if you fail on one of the of the three you still have something else to go to so that's where I think a lot of the genius comes in do you want to flip back to the deck or do you want to show anything else I was only two more I think two more things I want to show and okay cool um the first is the city market so I actually disregarded this when I first started playing and then I realized how good of a design it is so you can see here I have 28,000 coins this is down from about 60,000 and I realized many of the Casual games tend to have two types of currency a hard currency that kind of drives again the main monetization what drives the main revenue and then they have this soft currency to be able to get away stuff and then what tends to happen you see this in Grid merge games

all the time is that your soft currency ends up completely overinflated because there's not enough to spend it on now in this game you spend it on buildings and decorations which as you've seen Jen and I do not use um and you have to use it use it for factories use it for increasing your population which is one of the limiting factors of how how fast you can expand so you're building you have to build buildings um to build you to build buildings to allow for bigger populations to get more farming to produce things faster now what they did add is this to me is they were like we need a valuable coin sync and this is exactly what it is if you remember from the core Loop you were trying to fulfill orders your orders are timed you're limited by how many orders you can do at once you're basically waiting anywhere from you know minutes to hours to days until things complete this is a shortcut and it is expensive but your or some of your best orders are timed so you have you have kind of your your very relaxed orders which are down here in your

helicopter and your train which you need to you need to do these if you want to continue to upgrade your storage and upgrade parts of your game but what they've added is timed orders which you have 11 hours to fulfill this now this puts pressure on how fast you can produce and they've added an amazing coin sink that is a great shortcut and it drains faster than you are able to build factories or any sort of buildings if you are not a decorator and again I can't think of I feel like they I would love to see the designers give a talk because I think the soft Currency coin sync or the soft currency sync is one of the hardest things to do right and I actually think they did a very good job here yeah agree the slide that we're showing is the Expedition so this this is what's not live right now so we showed you what's live in the current game which is the grid merge secondary meta around the Match 3 game this is an example of of what the uh Expedition version looks

like and you can see two completely different different engines absolutely yeah just very different play experience really crappy story uh I'm you know and this this from the person who thinks that the gossip Harbor story is good so it must be crappy so let's talk a little bit about Graphics in UI because it has undergone a very dramatic update over the life of the game and and so one of the things was just how did they decide where to go with it um let me just show you an image this is what it used to be it was much more muted colors a little bit more realistic colors um much more like the Grays and and in the greens that you would see in real life and once they started to do more UA testing which is here you you start to see colors of where they ended up so much much brighter colors more vibrant colors actually a little bit more like Heyday a little bit more in

the vein of where Heyday got Heyday went and so this slide actually shows the comparison of old Township to Heyday to um where it ended up in 2023 and how differentiated it is and so one of the things that you can use UA for is to kind of Almost Do a style test now listen you can do this in many other ways you can do traditional consumer insights surveys but um some something that can help you are either you know using things like geek lab or you know which is you know what a friend of the Pod or uh doing your own kind of testing so you know that's just one aspect that has been really interesting to see it let's see the other thing that um I want to talk about with the UI is it makes me a little bit sad is is you know we talk about fake ads all the time and so this slide I took a couple of um on on the left side of the screen you're going to see some of the best

performing ads um I just went into dat AI you can look at creatives and obviously if anything's been running I think these ads were running for like 88 days or more and that's always a great indicator to me and plus they're running in like between nine and 16 countries so they're actively on UA right now they're actively uh pushing uh all of this and you'll see that they are using you know in many cases again the really super bright colors and very simplistic hyper casual looking play patterns so um I know it it you know as game makers we're always like kind of breaks my heart a little bit when you see ads that have nothing to do with the actual gameplay in the game but it does show you what players are interested in and what kind of catches their eye and a lot of it is very simplistic action it is the you know the character either in a backpack back are carrying like huge stacks of

eggs or milk or wheat or huge you know uh tractors plowing through um you know acres of corn that that look and feel doesn't actually exist in Township at all but it is something uh that resonates so the other one is this really interesting ad that had you like building a bridge by kind of uh almost like an erector set I don't know if that translates everywhere around the world but you know using uh or linoln logs also probably doesn't translate around the world but using construction materials to kind of almost like build a bridge to help a truck with a load of milk get across the bridge and obviously it fails because as we know in all of the UA ads um you have to fail that is the what motivates players to click on the ad is h no no no you're so stupid I can do it better and so almost every ad has a fail State these days and so um again I think you can just see how that

translates still visually into the game even if the play pattern isn't exactly the same in fact even in the ASO um the the screen on the screenshot on the top right like you never actually have sheep in front of the train and the player being like Oh No it never happens but that's the ASO image is presenting the player with some sort of like problem or situation that isn't just come and decorate my farm so if if I were them though I wish they would would make it a little bit more one to one they if they're using marketing assets like this that really seem to convert and Trigger I wonder why they don't continue to add more of these type of minigame experiences in since they're doing so well so I will shut up Laura that was a lot for me do you want to um talk about the match 3 engine and then oh and then I want to yell about this too I feel like Crest in this I'm just going to like yell at them and complain every once in a while so I'm going to make a very B old statement which is I I actually think this might be one of the

it's definitely hands down one of the best match three andrin live on the market and I say that being a fan girl of dream like dream games for Royal match um I think that you know if you I went back and played some of their older games this is this is a significant Improvement on homescapes this is not a copy of the homescapes engine this is vast vastly improved it has a lot more so many more modes different different styles of of play they do a lot more with multi boards and gravity um I think there's two ways they could take the crown and say they are the best match three puzzle on the market it and the two areas are the first has to do with propeller Logic for those that are not as familiar with Match 3 games when you make a square match you make a little thing that flies this was started with candy crusta buy with their fish believe that was the first game that had it and that was back in like 2015 and then it's kind of adapted since then and then what made Royal match so interesting is they made

they made them smarter so it's like every time a new game came out they would make the propellers a little bit smarter every time now it's critical when you're designing for Match 3 that you're you're always optimizing for how many moves the player gets versus how close they are to passing and this this is the thing where I think they could level up they could level up their game for sure but it would require a lot of rebalancing and I've made this image here so the propeller logic if I if the propeller is trying to Target an obstacle for me and I've circled an example obstacle which is the acorn hidden under the leaf patch what it'll tend to do is instead if it's going to Target this bottom one it will just go it'll go a little the propeller will take a bomb and it'll go drop it where this green bit is and you can see in red that is the area it'll cover which is instead of like a n like a basically a 3X3 which is a nine blast it would just cover six because in this example if the acorn's at the bottom of the board then

you're only getting you're not getting your full value of the propeller plus bomb and this has to do with targeting what it should do and if please quot take this playrix I would love your game even more if it's targeting the green which is fine it should optimize to also Target the the greatest area of of of impact for the bomb that's attached to the propeller so that it always clears the maximum amount of tiles including the original Target so that is not something it does that I would love for it to do um and then there's always something that that I the other thing that I wish they wouldn't do is they have um basically a hit point cool down on obstacles and where you see this I don't have an image for this but let we we can imagine if you have two two arrows on the board that are next to each other facing the same direction what you would expect going Hitting off one Arrow or one of the um Line clears rather it's better Line clears is that if your obstacle has hit point of three so three states you would expect it

would reduce to reduce by two down to one what tends to happen is there's a cool down on obstacle there's a cool down on obstacle so if you have backtack blasts or Line clears it does not discount for all of the times it's hit if it's hit too if it's if it's hit too close together in timing that also drives me crazy now most players are not going to see this um but see I've you know playing this from my perspective I notice it um and but what where players will the only place where players will feel it is it makes it a little bit harder to pass the level so you then have to rebalance the difficulty and so Jen tell me tell me why this isn't your favorite besides those two reasons tell me why this isn't your favorite Match 3 so I am a bit of a match 3 Nerd so outside of merge I I love Royal match um I love blast I haven't been playing to blast as much and then back in the day I was an OG Candy Crush Saga Candy Crush

Soda the heroes I mean I did all of these right and so I am really into the speed and the just the dopamine Rush that you get from Royal match uh I love how smart they are the propellers and the different aspects I love the types of boosters that you have and so in this in this version I do agree with you about the gravity and how the board changes a little bit I've seen that in other games so I I didn't feel like that was particularly unique but um it's it's a little bit more difficult like the puzzles tend to be more difficult and it tends to be a little bit more frustrating because I can't booster my way out of it because you're so limited in I'm going to use the Jackhammer to take out one spot or the fire hydrant is like a it's like a cross like a line up and down and then the the one player the one piece swap tool so you don't have the same kind of boosters that you would have in a typical Match Game and so it's a little bit frustrating and it's frustrating because I need the energy I need to clear levels to get

energy to progress in the other modes of the game and so then it just frustrates me and I end up wanting to leave the game because I'm frustrated because then I not only do I lose energy and lives in the match game I lose it in my secondary game and I'm waiting for my farm to go so therefore I leave the game so I think there's a there's a touch of balance that I would want from them as a player and that as the marketer I would say should we have different types of boosters that you can you can monetize to allow people to continue going so they can hit their goals I I don't know is that a crazy ask so if okay if they make the changes I've suggested it will make it easier but I will tell you why they why these levels are hard because they are hard they they they the way they've done the the Cadence of difficulty across the game in my opinion is very they've done it very well they they've intentionally made it difficult and why is this important it's in I would say it's

important because it puts pressure on the Wind streak so the way they've structured the levels is you'll have a hard level or a super hard level that will be this difficult level that causes Jen to throw her phone against the wall and me too I'm like spending boosters I probably have they average for me about 20 attempts that's that's very high oh um and and I'm a pretty good I'm a pretty good match player yeah I'm pretty good um but what it ends up doing is the way they set the structures before you hit that hard level you have a slew of easy levels and guess what you're doing in those easy levels you are building up your win streak now you have something you don't want to lose and it also they expect you to hit that hard level with three extra moves and boosters so you're already buffed and what they want to do is they want you and this is for not just this is not just this game all the match themes they they want you to incentivize buying that extra getting super close and buying those extra moves at the end of the level that is that is what they want and in those easy Lev

levels where you're building up the wi streak I mean it's it's blasty and buttery smooth and you're so excited cuz you just spent 20 attempts on one level and now you're just like flying through and you're like woohoo everything's like flashing yay fireworks and it's it's I mean I think it it's well done I mean yes it would be nice if they were a little bit easier or the boosters are a little bit more effective but that is that is like a level design art where they have to make sure how the levels are designed with a combination of obstacles the the boosters that are available can actually um address them and you feel like that they will help and maybe that's an area they could improve as well got it okay yeah all right do you want to do a little bit on on social so I think that you know the social it's subtle and it feels like many of the other games I don't know I didn't actually ironically in this game I didn't engage as much with the co-op as I have in other games so you may need

to give a little bit more of your experience with it but it does feel like this is I think where your 4X analogy comes into play because of just how your your Co-op helps you move forward I wanted to talk to you about heroic Labs building a successful game is hard enough without worrying about building your own game Tech as well heroic Labs provides a comprehensive game stack to help you get your game into Market faster and scale beyond the competition with their unity game framework hero you can cut development and prototyping time in half and quickly add social economy and reward system to grow your game Satori the liveops platform built specifically for the games industry lets you run Live Events AB tests deliver Dynamic content to players and always keep your game growing Naka the industry's leading open-source game server lets you develop locally providing all social and competitive features for your game and then seeing LLY transition to their heroic Cloud hosted service and easily scale to meet the largest of audience

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break records and create gaming experience that leave a lasting impact get in touch with abser for games today and Unleash Your game's true potential appsflyer for games supercharging the gaming landscape I love supercell don't want to rag on them but um how what I want to show works really well with this social and I'm going to compare it to Heyday um so they're social they have what you expect they have your guilds I'm in a guild hopefully I wasn't I wasn't kicked out of my guild so you can see here you have all the things you would expect you can send and request lives to the match 3 you can also request crops you need or Goods to fulfill your orders so they've expanded this system you can basically request almost anything that you would serve an order for visiting friends I don't do this as much there's not there's not too much there besides helping your friends um submit orders where I think they lean into social quite a bit is I think it was I can't remember exactly which level what was it might have been 20 it might have been 19 I think it was 19 where I've unlocked

something called the race so they have a lot of Cooperative events and these are actually quite fun I was participating in these you can pick you can pick an area of the game you like best so for me it would be match three maybe Jen the match three frustrates you you want to pick something either the mine or the orders and you have a timed amount you basically have a given amount of time you need to complete a certain amount of actions to complete in a Cooperative race and then you basically get more rewards that incentivize you traversing the full game Loop and and progressing faster filling orders faster doing all of that faster now if I was going to give um now advice to to uh Heyday what I would say is one of the the main things that's different in the social is has to do with the fundamentals of the farming so in Heyday and I won't pull that up here when you when you um when you want to plant like crops and grow crops for orders oops my barn is very full you basically you you when you put

them down you have a certain amount of inventory so to plant a corn you have to spend a corn so it's corn for corn that makes sense you can and the thing though is that when you have orders you are using the same corn that is the basis for your planting as your order fulfillment so there is a place that you can run out of crops so there is an additional crop Management in Heyday to get more crops you then are reliant on social and friends to buy the crops what township does differently is it is coin based so as you can see here it is entirely it's it it leans into the um the soft currency economy so if I want to plant all it is is draining my coins and it is a very very small amount of coins oh my God I don't think I even knew that I think it's so small that I never knew really you spend coins to plant yeah so the most expensive I think is caca and that's nine like in the scheme of things in the relative pricing

I mean some buildings are 5,000 coins to build the market the the items here these are not super expensive but they're I can't buy anything I'm out of space you're right yeah wheat wheat is free but the other ones are oh at me you do not really I have not run out of coins in this game it is it would be very difficult to run out of coins in this game so it is it is not meant that you are not meant to stop farming let me put it this way you are not meant to stop farming which is why I think Township is a casualized Forex game you just have all the things to do you never have to leave you're expanding your farm you're reliant on social you're you're doing the only thing I don't think you're doing is Exterminating because there's no bacon there's a hamburger I don't know where you get the meat from but uh yeah this is not a vegan game Sorry Beyond Burger that's what it is there's butter yeah this is this is not vegan friendly although it is a no Kill

Zone oh cool okay uh oh the one thing I think you wanted to talk about was which is interesting having you know I've worked on games especially at scopely where we went from um you know like yatsi with buddies to yatsi With Buddies too right we we we twed games and mainly you make a two or a sequel of a game when you have like just a ton of tech honestly is the real reason when you have so many new features to add that you just you really just can't add it in so how do you think they were able to do that in this case where they didn't they made such huge changes but they kept it the same game oh I you know how they did it I think they they they took they made they weighed out the pros and cons they one if you look at the landscape you I mean you know how hard it is to get players in they already had an established game they had players already it was a calculated risk do you upset your current player base or do you

invest in your current bundle ID keep the keep the uway go and expand and and see what happens I mean they absolutely took a bit of a gamble but I think it paid off and it was the I think it's the right move sequels are tough um a lot of times I think I talked about this on twig I was pin looking at some of them it's it's not often that the sequel outperforms the original and I think that that trend is only getting worse so I I think it was a smart move yeah yeah yeah when we did uh thinking back to Farmville 2 Country Escape we were trying to come up with the franchise plan and back then a lot of it was also and again it's this is 10 years ago it was very dependent on the size of your app you couldn't exceed a certain size because of the good old days you know remember like down like your phone couldn't handle it or the phone couldn't run it and and so after I left they did a um they basically did a reskin of Country Escape with like it's called tropical Island Dolphin escaped I don't remember what it's called now and so

basically it was the same game it was reskinned and it never did as well to your point as the first one but it was likely incremental um and so there are ways to think about you know how do you extend the franchise with other versions maybe that take you in a little bit of a different direction uh Farmville 3 was um well I was working on it it did the one that ended up launching 2 years ago I think um I don't think it fulfilled it zinga's expectations on what that could be it was very difficult for them to find the right kind of evolution and get back to the core of what it was cuz FarmVille 2 Country Escape wasn't actually what OG Farmville was which is ironically a little bit of what township is the idea of carrying a nurturing for your animals decorating your farm and it was all about decoration when you there there's an aspect of the players where it is the the farming isn't nearly as important as having the assets to like create your space and Escape into that world with u was that kind of a motivation so I think we wanted to recap

and go over the three key things one was market trends never sleep you got to stay on top of that and you got to continue to iterate to to stay ahead of the curve and you can still do that with an existing product and find a way to grow it because Township did it um there needs to be kind of that product and marketing alignment uh working together testing in the UA environment and see if you can include them into the games to make sure that conversion happens and you're able to keep the player and the final one is right incentives and strong economy what is this one Laura you can't go home but please stay here this is the this is the get married to your to your game one yes this is the Green Day song that will not get out of my head it's they want you just to stay so it's like they're not kicking you out of the bar they're like here you you like to kill you want another Margarita H have have this the doors always open you have lots you want to go play play Pinball please please go play Pinball we got we got ski ball too we got all the things you could

possibly want you you over there you don't drink we got some great mocktails so that is that is and that's a trend that I think most most games the big games are are leaning into now Mass go as mass Market as possible something for everyone oh that's amazing all right I think we're going to wrap up number two deep product Deep dive hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did Laura is always fun to talk games with you we will come back uh did you pick our next one yet should we tease our next one I I I'd like to run them by you first before committing you to something you may not want to play we'll figure it out all right everybody thank you and take care till next time you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if you subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor of fund slack group if you have 5 years or more of games industry

experience go to deconstructor of fund.com slack and apply to join join the games industry's best professional Community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fund content creators thanks for [Music] listening