We continue to publish materials in our “Who’s Who” series (recall, instead of posting game announcements from young and not only studios, we invite them to tell about themselves). This time we talked to Superium Studio, which recently released the Expedition game on social networks.
To the questions App2Top.ru answered Edgar Strods, head of Superium.
Hi! Tell us about your studio. Where are you from and how were you formed?
Edgar StrodsHi !
We are from sunny Riga, on the Baltic Sea coast. We are part of a large and friendly 101HR family. We have been engaged in social networks for several years, I (Edgar Strods), for example, led the game direction in Odnoklassniki, the rest of the guys also have experience in creating and operating large and complex projects. At some point, they decided that they had exhausted their potential in OK, and since the games were very hooked, it was clear that there were not too many options. So we switched to the side of game development.
Why did you take up the development of social projects?
Games are not just “poking at the phone screen” or “single player on PC”: over the past 7 years, absolutely everyone has started playing them, from housewives spending time for “three-in-a-row” to plumbers who turn into tanks in the evenings. In all these games, player interaction is very important, so we decided that our first game would be social.
That‘s how we moved on to your debut, to the “Expedition”, which belongs to the “three-in-a-row” genre. What was the reason for choosing this particular genre?
Before starting development, we, of course, focused on the top gross of various markets. And we found that, despite the small ARPU in such games, games of this genre are on top grossing positions on almost all platforms, whether it’s FB, Russian social networks or mobile platforms. Plus, we didn’t have the experience and opportunity to do hardcore or midcore projects, but we had an understanding of how viral channels work, so we settled on match-3. We’ll see how it goes, we’re already looking at other genres on the sly.
Now there are somehow too many similar games on the market, don’t you think? When do you think the moment will come when the market will get fed up with them?
Good question. I hope we will have time to get our audience before that moment.
To be honest, I well remember that wave of criticism and skepticism about the launch of a social gaming platform in OK a few years ago, when all the experts predicted failure. As practice shows, there is always a market for a good product.
Looking at the “Expedition” you immediately understand where the “legs are growing from” – I’m talking about Jelly Splash. To be honest, apart from art, how close are the titles, what did they take, why did they refuse and why?
We really liked the mechanics in which it depends only on the user how he finishes the level, unlike Candy Crush, where the automatic collection of combinations, on the one hand, helps the player, and on the other hand, does not give full control over the field.
We took the basic mechanics, adding those things that we saw in other games, and also completely revised the paywall: after a certain number of levels, players can not only ask their friends for help, but also fill the necessary resources themselves to pass on. Now the game is in softlaunch, and we are carefully watching the reaction of users, how they perceive certain things in the game.
Are you going to make a mobile version?
Absolutely! Immediately after launching and rolling back the levels and balance in social networks, we are launching on mobile platforms. As already mentioned, after weighing their pros and cons, we realized that we should initially focus on where there is more experience and there is an understanding of how to recruit users. On a mobile platform, the cost of traffic is quite high, and for “three-in-a-row” it is critically important to gain a large audience.
My favorite question is: this is your debut project, it is clear that when developing, metaphorically speaking, they stepped on a rake. Which of them would you note?
The rake is our everything. For example, the story with an incorrectly designed disdock led to the fact that the effects and music did not match the game’s setting just because of one extra word in the documentation. At the moment when it was noticed, all the effects had already been rendered. I had to redo it after spending a month on it, although we could have clarified some things in advance.
Then there will only be more rakes — as I said, the game is now at the softlaunch stage and every day we find more and more new errors that urgently need to be corrected. In general, young studios often think that games are funny and very simple, and I would be glad if this were true at least by 10%. Development, no matter what anyone says, is not romance, but hard work – with blood, sweat and tears.
And the last question: how much time did it take to create the project?
The development took about 9 months by a team of 7 people. However, we are well aware that we have just started, and updates plus content are just musthave for F2P games. The work plans are already in place for at least 6 months, but everything will depend heavily on statistics and user feedback.