Recently, the world launch of the game “Evolution: Heroes of Utopia“, a clicker in the universe of the role-playing strategy “Evolution”, took place. Head of the mobile direction My.com Alexander Enin told us about the tasks of the project.
Hi! Before proceeding to the discussion of the project, it is interesting to find out what prompted the team My.com to make a minimalistic product in terms of mechanics in the universe of hardcore strategy?
Hi! This is a well-calculated and verified step. It solves three strategic tasks:
- With this project, we are strengthening the Evolution franchise and forming a new wave of interest in it before the release of Evolution 2.
- We are gaining a foothold in the mobile market in a new genre, the popularity of which is only gaining momentum.
- And, of course, we are entering a new Apple Watch market
A follow-up question. How do you feel about the idea of “support games”? The release of small viral projects that fuel the company’s cash flagship with their popularity. And is it possible to say that the “Battle for Utopia” and “Heroes of Utopia” will work in such a bundle?
It’s not that simple. Before answering this question, we need to determine our tasks. There may be two of them. Are we “milking” the franchise or creating it?
In our case, we are engaged in the creation of a franchise. I have long come to the conclusion that those who have the strength and capabilities should create not just games, but media franchises. The fact is that their presence will soon become a strategic necessity for all companies that are going to make money on the mobile market. If you don’t have your own, you will have to buy, and they are not very cheap.
Therefore, if we create a franchise, it will be right to make products, each of which will strengthen and develop it. “Battle for Utopia” and “Heroes of Utopia” are made within the same franchise, but for different audiences. They are not strong support for each other, but at the same time, both of these games are fundamental support for the Evolution franchise itself. They introduce completely different types of players to the world of Utopia.
“Heroes of Utopia” is very close to Tap Titans from Game Hive. In this regard, the question is – why did you decide to take up the reinterpretation of Tap Titans, which can boast neither record downloads nor a cash register?
Tap Titans is a great game, and it has good ideas, but there are also very serious mistakes. Therefore, we set ourselves the task not to rethink the existing clicker, but to create a commercially successful product within this genre.
Therefore, we started working on this project from scratch. We understood the audience of the genre, its motivation, expectations, key problems, existing mechanics, etc. And the fact that in this genre we have not yet been able to come up with an effective monetization system is a temporary phenomenon, and then just someone has to be the first. This does not frighten me at all, I have been monetizing F2P games for 10 years and I understand it perfectly. I was able to perfectly monetize the single “Evolution” and I don’t expect any problems with the clicker genre. In games, the main thing is retention, this property is tied to a complex of emotionally complex human states. This is really difficult to do, it needs a lot of talent and luck. And monetizing a person playing is a matter of technique.
At first glance, the games are similar, but there is also a significant difference. For example, as far as I understand, the main character is reduced to the ordinary level of party members. That is, there are no, for example, inventory, artifacts, less abilities. Why did you take such a step?
Not really. The main character is very different from the party members: he has the opportunity to improve his weapons and armor. At the same time, not only their power changes, but also the hero’s model itself. Now the game has 11 unique armor and 9 machine guns for the main character.
One of the central features of Tap Titans was prestige – zeroing game progress. It made sense to do this only when the dynamics of the game were falling heavily, and I didn’t want to pay in the game. For zeroing, the player received relics that gave an increase in characteristics that allowed not only to quickly get to the stage where the player was zeroed, but also the area that caused difficulty. In fact, this moment in the Game Hive project allowed us to maintain high dynamics of progress throughout the game. How was this moment resolved in Heroes of Utopia?
We use teleportation for this. The main character returns to the beginning of the mission and at the same time converts his game progress into data disks necessary for studying the technologies found.
The social component is very important for modern games. In Heroes of Utopia, as far as I understand, it is implemented using three tools, not one, as it was in Tap Titans. These are tournaments (how, by the way, do you have them, also with progress reset?), this is the support of friends and the demonstration of friends’ progress. Please tell us in detail how they work and why they are needed?
The social component is one of those aspects that has been unfairly ignored in all existing clickers. And it has a huge potential! In addition to the standard functionality, ratings and resource sharing, which are already implemented in the game, we plan to introduce competitive elements for tap speed into the game. We see that the players are interested in this, they like to follow how their physical skills develop in the tap speed during the game. Clickers are a unique and probably the only genre that allows you to influence the game progress with your physical abilities – the more developed your hand motor skills are, the more effective you are in the game. We have players who came into the game and were at the level of 9 taps / sec, and a month later the game has already reached the mark of 65 taps / sec. At the same time, there are several effective tap mechanics in the game: there are mechanics of playing with one hand, and there are two. I’ve even seen some play four-handed with the help of friends. This is a very cool thing that is only possible in a clicker!
And due to this unique feature of the genre, we plan to introduce a breakthrough social mechanics that allows you to compete through the game in your physical abilities with other players around the world.
The most significant changes, as far as I could understand from the first hours of playing Heroes of Utopia, concerned monetization. Tell me what and why is bought in the game for money?
As I said, no one has really been engaged in monetization in clickers before. We will be the first to make a commercial product from a clicker that can compete with most established genres. At the moment, we have implemented 60% of the monetization mechanics and already feel quite confident on these indicators. The game now has a good percentage of payers and an average check, and due to the fact that we are working in a new, not yet worn-out genre with a very high-quality product, we have excellent retentions. At the same time, we also have monetization through video advertising, which brings us another +30% to the main income of the game. All this combined gives good figures and excellent prospects for development.
The next question brings us back to the world of the game, to the Evolution franchise. “The Battle for Utopia” was distinguished by such, say, a realistic approach to the depiction of characters and locations. But the “Heroes of Utopia”, on the contrary, are cartoon. Why?
This style is called cartoon realism. We decided that the clicker, as a very simple game, should be supported by this artistic style of performance. It allows you to use the “Evolution” setting perfectly without overloading it and creating the feeling that even a child can play.
Looking back, I see that it was absolutely the right decision. At the exit, we got a great picture that allows us to preserve the whole flavor of the characters of “Evolution” and from which you do not get tired even after a month of active play.
And the last question: tell us about the “clock” version of the game.
As for the watch version, our task was to enter the Apple Watch market with one of the best products. We have completed this task 100%. We have made one of the most high-quality and functional games that exist under the Apple Watch. To implement this, we used deep optimization of the product and all the hardware capacities of the device. Now we are collecting statistics and analyzing further prospects for the development of this version of the game.
The work we did was appreciated by Apple, as at the time of its release, the game received a powerful feature in the watch store.
Thanks for the interview!
You can download the iOS version of the game here.
You can download the Android version of the game here.
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