Zynga’s Yaron Leyvand On The Secret To Making A “Forever Franchise”

[Music] hello world welcome back to the pg. biz podcast I am your host Brian Belo and with me as always is the incredi the incisive the development Diva the the marketing Maven Miss pans Sals hello Peggy it's good to see you how are you well how can I possibly be bad now after such an intro Brian and thank you so much I'll have to think of something for you now as a development Diva you can't be mobile gaming Maestro how's that okay I would have settled for quite nice or you know tolerable in small doses but let's let's go with that happy to be here happy to be here regardless thank you very much indeed so um it's it's quite a Time Peggy it it's we're zooming towards the end of 2023 um but rather than slowing down we're already uh gearing up for the St start of 2024

so 10 years of PGC Peggy you know 10 years in some cases can be a long time but I don't think many people outside the mobile games world would realize just how much time that is when it comes to the mobile games market and you know Pocket Gamer connects has been there from the outset you know following the progress the highs the lows the constant change in evolution that we chart week on week out with this with this podcast uh so I think it is something to be celebrated the first of all it's a must attend event largest one we have we were 2700 I think last year probably gon to hit 3K easily this year I've been at a couple of these not all of them not not 10 years worth how about yourself what's your what's your track record how many of you attended I think I've only done five maybe six and I missed last year's but this year I'm determined that I'm going to be there because PGC London is something special you know it's almost like a little bit of a home a homecoming um and it really does pull people people

together you know it's not a mobile only event anymore you know we now have people across the board it's established such a reputation and it really is one of those places you know in the in the week that we have heard the E3 is no more and will never return you know some kind of event in the games world that pulls people together in one place is so valuable because you get that you know test the temperature of the market meet all the people that you want to do business with you meet friends you haven't seen for the last 12 months it's it's a wonderful place to be and it really does make a significant difference and there there's a reason that it's a a kind of a landmark event in the game's calendar that's exactly it the tracks I was looking at the speaker always looking at and of course we always do our show right after the event where we talk with the team so we'll be back with those highlights and another highlight is our guest because he has also marked a decade he's just wrapped

up his first decade at Singa many more to come we certainly hope yon leand as we said you're coming from Zinga you're at Zinga for a long time that is so rare great to have you thank you very much happy to be here so Jaron let let's start with a little bit about you so you're the Executive Vice President at mobile Studios at zingga and that put in charge of product and development for 10 plus Studios all over the world and titles ranging from of course Words With Friends which a lot of people are familiar with my mom's still beating me at Words With Friends too by the way but I'm not holding a grudge all the way through to the Blockbuster IP and franchises that you guys deal with like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones that's a big big portfolio and as we all know it's been quite a challenging year so what's tested your Marketing in product metal most what's really been your biggest challenge in the last 12 months so yeah so part of our strength is a a portfolio that we have have the ability

uh to really H play in different categories to cater to different audience it also brings some challenges as well H you always need to understand what is up in each category what is happening across the industry and I think our teams are doing a great job in this one in the last year specifically um as we know where challenges on the head side on getting users on the um uh in purchase in general but I think we are this kind of years like that can get you to the core you need to do a things that surprisingly like your players if you continue to deliver features event content that a make your existing players your fans happy and excited I think you're already halfway there we I think at Zinga um are really focusing on that I think it's something that we have done

in previous years quite well I thinking that while 23 was not as easy as maybe would like it to be we are well positioned for 24 it's very interesting to hear where you are focusing though Iran because it is about the live Ops the content we're hearing that a lot as well Brian cont strategy for games yeah so if we're thinking about you know Zinger throughout the last you know even 12 years how it changed with the industry I think one of the things that we have seen is since at least since frag has joined Zinga back in 2016 is really focusing on our franchises we kind of created this forever franchise s is it games that can be with us for years to come and the mindset is to entertain players for many years at scale from

there you try other things whether it's more the marketing obviously new games that we are ER really focusing as well on and kind of created a really strong slate and you can see some of the games that we have launched just recently starting to uh ramp but I I think that uh sometimes teams in studio really are trying to uh chase a new shiny object in instead of focusing on what matters and live games people already cherish is the one that we need to make sure that all of our studio and I think they're doing a great job on this whether it's Peak from in in turkey or small Giant in Helsinki or our North America team I think the focus is something that it's is very apparent I'm going to stay with Peak for a moment because they're tackling uh match 3D more traditional match Match 3 as well what are you

seeing as the most Innovative change shift in the puzzle space right now so it's an interesting question because as as you can think casual by itself is a very casual gameplay so it's you quickly can jump into a puzzle game and understand the expectations of what the game is asking you to do ER but the things that is really interesting if you kind of take few years back you see the a ability for a casual player to can understand more complex systems to understand how to engage with others to understand what are the different systems that you introduce and to do that in a kind of more rapid way is something that is now much more available to you as a developer compared to a few years ago that every small system that you wanted to introduce you had had to explain a

lot the combination of the mix of getting the right system in or the right features in your game is something that is happening already and will continue to happen I think for really long time from now including in casual games and puzzle is probably the one of the most casual categories there so you can see you can expect more depth in features more tailor experience for your audience now and I think P done with tune a great job now with some of the features that they just released and I think the results you can see that in that and then with our launch of match Factory it is another take on a puzzle game just a different experience it's a something that create or cater to different kind of players is kind of what we are seeing so far which makes it even more thrilling that

the Casual as a category has a lot of growth in front of it maybe you could just briefly describe what is interesting and Innovative in the titles you just mentioned we have a our disco feature now in tune which is a very very exciting it's like creating a streak something that uh players really enjoy but also create a right way of engagement which from what we have seen at Zinga is if you need to choose one kpi usually you can choose just one but if you need to choose one it will be engagement because once you crack that formula will mean that your players are excited and want to play your game a bit more than yesterday then you have a lot of opportunity whether you want to move more on the retention mization you can do other things but it starts with engagement and if I will have a a a tip

for others I think watch uh your engagement very kpis very closely match Factory like all new games when we have games that are La launching into a categories that already existed to some extent you always cannot be on parity with features and systems or content to be even more but it's okay you need to be have enough content and features and events for your players so they will be excited and surprised oh I have something more to do and next week I have something that I haven't seen again and this is going to feel minute by minute but ER so those kind of new Fe new H new games launches we always place to some extent some ketchup it takes between a year to two to get all of the vast majority of the things that you want to

get out uh to your audience that are kind of more on the proven bucket uh and then start to innovate much more and I think uh the level of er polish the tuning of this game is part of big part of the secet SAU here as we touched on at the beginning um Zinga has a huge portfolio of titles incorporating both you know worldly successful original Ip and then some of the biggest brands out there in the world and how do you how do you start to look at this what what's the secret of zinga's success is there is there some approach that differentiates what Zinga does and could you you kind of distill it down into something that you can you can share with the audience what's unique about your approach I think think of source means that you have a formula that you can deploy and you you will always guaranteed something I think it's more about knoow and expertise and things that are you refine it every time and you will refine it that your next time that you do use the same thing will

be a bit better and we are in a a very Dynamic we are operating in a very Dynamic ecosystem so things that were right five years ago might not be right today but having said that I do think that we have looked at what is a maybe I call it a Playbook what are things that works what is a do and not do on a live game and what you need to do for a you're approaching a new game development and they're kind of different so when you think about live many games have players that have been extremely engaged for many years like you mentioned about H your mother was World his friends H they are playing a lot of er games for years sometimes almost every day it's part of their routine they know every single thing that has changed sometimes better than the Developers on the on the game because they are so close to it so the

ability to have the right balance which is keep your core game play the reason that people are there similar because this is why they came to the game and then add enhancements that can be or different experience with optin experience or things that will enhance your existing core uh core gameplay and now uh every game is trying to create like a big feature a big system that we introduce sometimes a couple of times a year sometimes a bit more than that but I think it's part of this Rhythm that it need to be in addition to the ever evolving content chase that we always kind of trying to to get more and more content to the game and lastly some more a what we call like snacks that are kind of events there's always that kind of balance in life and I think it's a good it's a good things that every game need to understand where they are in the

development cycle to understand what is the right balance for them and but it's it has to be all three the content the events and the kind of the bigger systems yes you don't have a formula but you do have a proven Playbook and you're applying that these three principles that's sort of the Common Thread and then you're applying it as you see it works it's a playbook for great and successful games it's also a little little bit of a Playbook perhaps for your m&a activity because again your focus has been on acquiring companies in the casual and puzzle space that have you know they bring something to the whole that's what sing is is your focus still in these areas I'm wondering yeah I I think obviously there is an a way to go organically by developing new games and investing in your live games but we have definitely been participating in the m&a ER space and we have been quite

active I want to see that it was kind of one of our successful successful pillars is kind of finding those teams a talent that operate in an interesting space and that we think can scale and then maybe we can H help them scale a bit and maybe they can help us in some other areas and there are different approaches of m&a and I think Zing had different approaches as well throughout the years but at least since 2016 when Franken joined the view of where trying to find the right team to join Zinga obviously there's one of whether it will be culture fit whether it will be a good syy between the team but also not to make them Zinger Peak is successful because they are Peak small giant is successful because that's small Giant and Graham is is is the same thing so all of them have their own unique DNA

and what we are trying to do is to capture this but having this kind of a maybe shared ER knowhow best practices and things that we walk to kind of have that dialogue between the different game developers and in addition to it there are a lot of other systems and infrastructures that we can leverage it's more about you know an optin that the team wants to join than you know I want to see it in the next two quarters in your old map it's not it doesn't work like that we have tried different approaches this is much better it's also keeping the team that you know join join excited and they do want [Music] to continue with their culture and I think it's a good thing so they kind of it's a mindset it's harder to manage it's much harder to manage because they are different and they have different processes and they look at how to even to develop a new game or how to say life in a different perspective but

I think it's a strength and not a weakness I I think that makes a great deal of sense because as Peggy was alluding to you know it seemed as though a few years ago Zinga was taking the portfolio approach which was we want to lead in particular genres and we want to make sure that we are we're here in puzzle we're here in you know match three and so on and so forth um but all within the sort of the the the Zinga approach and what you're seeing now is it seems to be far more of a a Col itive uh bottom up approach which is supporting enabling and helping each of your Studios to achieve its its full potential and kind of give them the benefit of the the Zinger machine without necessarily having them take a particular box for a a genre title or as you've said so eloquently an approach is that is that along the right lines yeah this is 100% right and in fact this was part of our experience now as part of

take two as we are now a label under take two they have the similar approach St with car and team there has similar approach on how the labels are not the same there is no this is a take to way of doing but there is a very different oh here is um a 2K or Rockstar and here is zingga and they have different things obviously they're trying to go after different opportunities so this is why it was a quite a good match between take kind of being part of take two and Zinga culture already because this kind of how we operate for for some years here and now we are just more than a year P acquisition and I think ER we know that Acquisitions are hard it's it's really hard to integrate with larger team larger groups and I think already was Lar Vis before at scale and now kind of part of take two even more

so but it's extremely successful I think that the way that we have been partnering with all the different aspect of take two is very exciting I thought it will take us much longer to get to where we are at we are in a good position for for that for the future but you can already see you can already see value and there's a lot of examples of where the combined efforts of take two and what they are really strong at at and Zinga with our expertise is Affordable zinga's approach obviously is a mobile first company uh at the point of the acquisition how has that fitted in with the sort of the more traditional AAA approach that take to 2K Rockstar have had has there been a lot that you could take to them in terms of their learning um how has that kind of come together because as we know the the mobile market can be perplexing for for companies that are used to premium

product you know retail model Etc yeah I I I think uh te to want to be we want to be kind of the largest entertainment company and entertainment has should be platform agnostic I want to be all of them and if there are people that are really good on one platform and you really good at a different one then it might make sense H to combine forces and and in fact when we started this journey with take two and they ask us to kind of help on social point and social point is now part of The Zing the mobile platform as well as nus with top 11 and we kind of added to our portfolio more forever franchises more games and our launch ER of top troops not that long ago like this summer was part of this collaboration we have part of his social

point and we have kind of tried to help that game launch and they obviously have helped us kind of taking their view on launching the game um regards to the kind of the Border take two in the labels I think this is kind of part of the strength here that yes we share when we see ER other other um studios here kind of looking into a mobile development we can say okay here is how we look at kpi here is what a soft launch scorecard should look like here is a phases that we would have done and now whether they would like to do it or not this is going to their call but we'll provide our feedback and when we are asking them about you know oh there is some opportunity in some GEOS that we have not been as strong and you have been extremely strong there then we can take and say oh you know what it's a different uh perspective on how to go about you know go to market in this GEOS

and what we can could have done differently and obviously there is now merging on some platforms so there's all kind of opportunity there so we're not there yet but there the discussions are happening and it's what is even more encouraging is that it's they are happening organically now not just from top to top but more more broader than that it's so encouraging to hear that you know these conversations are happening organically and that there's a lot of interest kind of on both sides of Defense but moving forward do you think there's there's any interest in seeing more exchange of ips across uh across the board from you know the consoles and Triple A's through to mobile and maybe vice versa Let Let Me Maybe take it back kind of one step back and say okay if if I try to look at the zingga life cycle to dat we had like the Zinga 1.0 it was all about Facebook was a startup kind of going about that with the mafia Awards the Farmville all of the things that we

have heard early on and then we had a a struggles some transition to mobile and we had some of that a platform change ER Frank in 2016 maybe is a good time to to maybe to kind of a time point in time to call it a Zinga 2.0 and of focusing back on our ER for franchise focus on our live really focus on Mobile H understanding how we do live but start to to grow a new whether it's a new that we develop internally or doing acquisition and kind of transition us to now to Zing 3.0 where the collaboration will take two and I think when two large companies start to work together first of all is how ER the culture walks how what are the

expectations how you kind of walk through the different situation in the market as I mentioned I'm extremely excited about where we're at and later on we started okay what we can do where is the 1 plus one equal three where are those opportunities and we are starting H to have those discussions now H it will take some time I don't think it's right to rush them ER as we are talking about you know big U big opportunities I think uh letting letting that uh let time take its course is probably the right approach here right that's think of 4.0 I don't think many companies have got maybe at some point I think we are very excited on thing of 3.0 we'll see how you know how it take us but it's it's a very you know the the market as we all know is extremely Dynamic things change drastically maybe on the top of the funnel on the on the consolidation with different companies on what players can expect and what they're asking you to to

do so all of that is happening all the time now and I think that this kind of part of the things that is exciting in kind of developing in games and entertainment as a whole now you have the ability you launch great titles on your own and launch new games but you also license IP and I'm just wondering since you're sharing a little bit candidly what goes on in your mind when you're thinking about how to the teams how to manage the companies how to bring this all together how do you consider licensing say for example an IP versus developing your own the good thing on our side is that we do have a portfolio so if you have one game to make it's different than if we are looking at a portfolio of I want to look at it front of oh I need to find the right groups to make the right game in the right category and then you can see whether I EX s IP can help and make the experience

better and it start in this order and not is in the order of oh I want a I have a brand and then let's find a game for it it's much harder to do it that way around it's more about okay I have a concept and there's a team there's multiple teams at Zing are working on New Concept on every Studio there is a couple and and I'm trying to do traffic control that we are not all Heating the same nail so there are you know groups that are targeting different things but then they're asking okay is it better to create our own IP and new IP maybe it's level something that we already have in the portfolio or should we work with a a partner and add an a an IP to it and adding IP has in today two different ways you can have a full game of this IP like report a p spell we just got a game of

throne Legend in soft in in soft launch and Tech launch so we have a a game partner with HBO or you want an event in a game that is much more short live and you can see them as well that is kind of right for the next month for players to be excited but after that you do something else so you have different degrees of partnership that we can do I think that if it's for me it's more about the balance if I see that our portfolio is all h on external IP I think it's going to be a Miss but I also think that if it would be zero I think we're not taking opportunity what we we can do and the great relationship with we have with all of the different entertainment uh Brands out there something new in the market is always going to be a bigger challenge than something that already has an audience so talk to us about the new games approach how how do you guys approach this if you're talking about the development side of it is I think I

kind of split to three you need to start with something that I call it find the fun let I need to feel that I want to play it again tomorrow I want to play the game again it's very specific questions and and it's you know all of the different events and after one systems won't help it if I if the core game if I don't want to play the game more then you should go back and people can change change against go and kind of ref find it but once you found the fund and you got something that is interesting now you can say ER is there audience for it will I be the only one that think it's fun or there will be a lot of players that will think it's fun so like an understanding how scalable and then the last component is is it going to be a business so you know that there's an interest to play it for some time so the C interesting then you can know that there's some people that

will want to engage with that is something that can justify the investment that we are U going to put before you do all of that but the good thing in Mobile unlike some other development is that you can measure and you can understand where you stand each one of those phases before you put a lot of capital to work you can understand whether you found the fund and you can understand whether there's audience for it and then you can understand whether there yeah you know during soft launch and CI test whether there's a business behind it or not and may you can make it a the forever franchise that we are aiming for so I think this kind of the but you need to be very disciplined the main thing is you need to be very disciplined because if not er every second third and fourth attempts that you give that in each phase is kind of what I look at this is kind of the opportunity cost you could have probably have done another game at the same time another pivot it again and get something else in front of users and if you're

doing it throughout the entire portfolio for enough time you'll get some what we believe we'll get some new exciting product for players and we are just started there's a lot of games that are going to launch in the next several quarters so um whether we you know they they heat all the CR we see but I think we're encouraged by that everyone's more than a title we started out with what you do at Zinga but we didn't talk about what you do in games you know you are very interested in um experiences competing I understand you have an ongoing competition against your brother playing Heroes of Might and Magic and get this Brian for almost 30 years oh yes and and the second time Heroes of Might and Magic has been name checked in this series alone Peggy so you know if the movers and shakers of the mobile world are still playing it there must be something there so it says a lot about your love of games takes it tell tells us also a lot

about how you like to take things straight on so as I said the question you personally or professionally what's next for yon yeah thank you for the question yeah so I I you know he was and M magic definitely found it fun like if I'm playing for 30 years for many people and they have like a great balance a lot of you know strategy and and lack component in in in it kind of you know investing in short investing in long term and kind of trying to balance it it's a it's a great game if people haven't tried it they should things that excite me is working with so many amazing talent in globally we have studio in I lost track of how many how many count we have so many groups Studios that approaching they're trying to do the same thing they're trying to do the three things you talked about whether it's for live or or for new and they have different ways to to go about

it and to be in that position of seeing all of this game creation and to know that if we have created something like that millions of millions of players are going to enjoy them similar to how I enjoy her much magic it's gonna bring a smile to my face and kind of I I like to kind of see that that in the next few years we will even father partner with take two and the rest of the groups in in in the T umbrella and I'm sure that you know they the next year will keep us on our toes this kind how it goes but with the right groups in the right tallent here I'm quite excited and to see how it unfold we're going to let you go because we know that you have uh many many other things and Studios you know so many that we can't count them um

to look after but nobody leaves without telling us two very simple questions the first is what's the game that you're playing the most right now what's obsessing you mobile or not and then the second one and I think we can guess the answer of this one is your favorite game of all time so first of all what are you playing right now so now I'm A deepy M factory we just launched it the one that it be just next to it is top troops I love the trying to understand how you kind of write balancing it is like it's it's part of the kind of magic I think in that kind of game it's just you know understand what is the right strategy and because I like strategy game it's kind of my heroes and my magic 3 by the way is a favorite game excellent excellent It's I love it when when the guest answers their own question before you even come to come to it but that that's been fantastic it's been a genuinely fascinating conversation and if at all possible we'd love to have have you back and find out about Zinger 4.0 5.0 9.0 you know you

guys move kind of fast so who knows where we'll be by the end of 2024 absolutely and maybe a couple of words about the talent you're looking for because I think that some people in our audience would really like to understand that as well because you're still looking to tap in a great talent what is that what does that look like but we'll sa that for another time you're on we've had a wonderful time with you today so thanks again thank you very much for having me here thank you this show is all about how to do your job better how to make an amazing game how to Market it and you have a say so if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on then we would love to hear from you we want to hear from you we want to reflect the reality of the mobile games Market in all its wonderful complexity and strangeness so if you have any suggestions for us if you have any feedback for us you you can always get in touch you can email us at podcast

pocketgamer.biz you can find us on Twitter at PG Biz and you can reach out to us through the pocketgamer.biz website if you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts you can find them at pocketgamer.biz SLP podcast and we would love to hear your thoughts on future shows and we've got you covered on all the major platforms so subscribe to the audio podcast as Brian said look for us on YouTube if you want to read it hey you can do that too 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 peggyanne saltz and that's a wrap until next [Music] week