Hidden object titles have been round because the daybreak of cell video games, and for one studio they’re extra common than ever, fueling an growth of the corporate each throughout and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Wooga is the developer of the massively profitable puzzle recreation June’s Journey. Combining hidden object puzzle video games, island and metropolis constructing and story-based content material, the sport has earned greater than half-a billion in income. Now, Wooga are set to look at PGC Helsinki 2023 on a recruitment drive, because the studio continues to broaden.
We spoke to Wooga’s managing director, Nai Chang at Gamescom 2023 to realize some perception into the success of June’s Journey’s.
PocketGamer.biz: So how are issues going for Wooga?
Nai: We’ve been doing very properly. Over the past couple of years we’ve been rising very steadily and really sustainably. We’ve hit a few milestones. Final 12 months we handed greater than $500m in lifetime income for June’s Journey, and we’re on target to transcend that.
Product-wise, June’s Journey has over 60% market share within the hidden object house so we’re doing very properly within the product and enterprise facet. Organisationally I feel we’re additionally doing very properly. We’ve had a restructure to concentrate on our dwell video games in addition to our new video games and we’ve grown the corporate from 200 staff in 2020 to slightly over 300 up to now three years.
When it comes to Wooga itself, what do you suppose makes it stand out within the business?
On the organisational facet I feel the principle factor that we pleasure ourselves on is the individuals and the tradition. Now we have a really robust sense of tradition, and what I imply by that’s shouldn’t be speaking about what the tradition is – however simply the truth that all people understands the significance of getting an aligned tradition, the identical worth methods, methods of working and methods of pondering that we now have in order that we all know methods to deal with one another equally within the office.
I feel that’s been a part of the important thing issues that’s made the corporate very steady as we went by a whole lot of modifications globally over the previous few years. We’ve remained steady all through.
So clearly, your flagship title is June’s Journey, what do you suppose has made that recreation so profitable?
So our product imaginative and prescient for the corporate is to be the participant’s selection for puzzle and informal video games. For an informal viewers we all know from all of the research and participant suggestions that we’ve had, that the 2 commonest use circumstances for when individuals play informal video games is, one, earlier than they go to mattress to chill out and the second is passing time on a commute. The widespread theme throughout each of these issues and what they did earlier than was story or narrative. Individuals used to look at films or TV exhibits, or they used to learn a e-book.
This type of deeper participant immersion and participant fantasy is missing within the cell market, so that is what we tried to do. June’s Journey is the primary instance of our large success on this. We took a hidden object core – which is a confirmed recreation mechanic – and we added a deep stage of story when it comes to character growth and what’s taking place to the characters within the recreation, and we introduced it as a part of the development.
So, what this creates is a need for individuals getting hooked up to characters and desirous to know what’s taking place to them within the story. That helps construct engagement through the years. So that is a part of the important thing to success – giving our gamers the leisure and constructing curiosity for them to wish to know what occurs subsequent.
And these are qualities that you simply imbue into all of your video games?
On the product facet we concentrate on story-driven informal video games, and June’s journey is the primary very profitable model of this. Its prequel Pearl’s Peril can also be an instance of this, however June’s Journey took it to the subsequent stage, and that is what made us stand out on the product facet. After which that is additionally what contributes to this success is that we take the core that’s very robust after which we construct on prime of it. So primarily based on the completely different participant sorts we now have, and their motivations and why they play, and what they wish to get out of a gaming expertise, we construct up the options, and we construct extra content material that caters to their wants.
For instance, we constructed social methods as a result of we all know from analysis and speaking to our gamers that they wish to have collaborative gameplay and options. We all know that they wish to uncover extra in regards to the story, so we construct these facet occasions to assist them to be taught extra in regards to the characters and the world.
So I feel one of many key components of success is knowing the gamers, and constructing what issues to completely different segments of them, as a result of the playerbase shouldn’t be uniform when it comes to what they most take pleasure in. So we attempt to cater in the direction of all the important thing facets for various teams in numerous methods.
Wooga will probably be at PGC Helsinki 2023 in a couple of weeks, what do you consider the occasion?
Helsinki is among the gaming hotspots in Europe and we’re becoming a member of PGC Helsinki as a sponsor this 12 months. Such large occasions are an amazing alternative for us to search for gifted individuals to affix Wooga.
Need to know extra about Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2023?
Take a look at the occasion’s web site right here to get your tickets and discover out what’s on, what’s the place, the place to remain and every part you want to know.
See you on the present!
window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
// init the FB JS SDK FB.init({ appId : 250161755076617, // App ID //channelUrl : '//'+window.location.hostname+'/channel.php', // Path to your Channel File status : true, // check login status cookie : true, // enable cookies to allow the server to access the session xfbml : true // parse XFBML });
FB._PG = { url: "/useractions/loginfb/", response: "allowed",
// Common handler to fetch FB details and reload the page process: function(me){ $.post( FB._PG.url, { username: me.username, uname: me.name, uid: me.id, uimg: 'https://graph.facebook.com/' + me.id + '/picture?type=large' }) .done(function(xml){ if ( $("status", xml).text() == FB._PG.response ) window.location.reload(); else alert('Error: Something bad just happened. Our tech department has been notified. Please try again later.');
}) .fail(function(xml){
alert("Error: something wasn't right there, please try again.");
}); },
// Used by event subscriptions to handle the response handleResponse: function(response){ if (response.authResponse) { FB.api('/me', function(me){ if (me.name) FB._PG.process(me); }); } },
post: function(text, image){ image = image || $("#fb-image").attr("src"); FB.ui({ method: 'feed', display: 'popup', link: 'https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/82317/nai-chang-of-wooga-one-of-the-key-parts-of-success-is-understanding-your-players/', description: text, picture: image }); } };
FB.Event.subscribe('auth.statusChange', FB._PG.handleResponse);
FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(response) { $.post('/ajax/social-links/', { site: 'facebook' }); }); };
(function(d, s, id){ var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));