Datcroft: "We aim for Pixel Wars' ARPPU to be $50"

Voronezh studio Datcroft Games is preparing to release a new mobile MMO action game with MOBA elements. In an interview App2Top.ru managing partner of the company Konstantin Sakhnov told about the specifics of the development of such a project.

Konstantin Sakhnov

About the studio

Alexander Semenov, Senior Editor App2Top.ru : Not everyone knows about Datcroft. Let’s start with a story about the team.

Konstantin Sakhnov, Managing Partner of Datcroft Games: Easily. The main backbone of the team is located in Voronezh. There are also offices in Belgrade, Barnaul and New York. There are about 60 people in the gaming direction of the company. The same amount in the software.

The most famous game of our studio is “Fragoria”, an isometric MMORPG in the spirit of Ultima Online. It was first launched back in 2007, then published by Akella, then Mail.Ru Group. The project is still afloat and brings money to the studio.

At the moment, the studio is focusing on the development of the Pixel Wars game. This is a new project, an action game with MOBA and RPG elements. All other projects are supported by content.

How many projects does the company have today?

Konstantin: There are few active ones. Those that consistently make a profit — two or three. The amounts are small, but they allow you to pay for the work of the studio and the development of a new project.

A significant part of the money still comes from Fragoria. However, during the entire operation, Datcroft managed to accumulate enough funds to create new ambitious games.

“Fragoria”

Did you mention that Datcroft has an office in New York? What is he doing?

Konstantin: We have non-gaming projects there.

In addition to games, our holding includes products related to charity and software development. I will be able to announce more detailed information a little later, when one of these products will be released in softlonch.

But games remain the main focus?

Konstantin: Yes, we now want to earn primarily from the gaming business. Accordingly, Pixel Wars is number one on our list of priorities.

Pixel Wars Development History

The team used to specialize in MMORPGs. Now makes a MOBA. Why did you change your specialization, why didn’t you start a project closer to your experience?

Konstantin: The story of Pixel Wars has a difficult beginning, but a happy ending. The development of the game started in 2017. It really was originally conceived as a mobile MMORPG. And this decision was made then due to the fact that the studio had a lot of experience in creating such games. We wanted to adapt this experience for mobile.

But we are faced with the fact that there may not be enough experience and resources to create a full-fledged mobile MMORPG. After all, today such a game for mobile devices is quite a big application. And there are no prerequisites that it will be in demand by a wide audience.

You said that the project has been developed since 2017. Can you break down the creation history by stages?

Konstantin: The project as an MMORPG was developed for about a year. A certain MVP build was assembled, which was shown to partners, passed internal testing in the studio.

When I joined the company, we completely rebuilt the game in two months. Together with me, some of my friends moved to Datcroft, in particular, the game design manager of the studio Nikolay Livanov, the producer of the operation Vyacheslav Utochkin and other people who traditionally work with me on my projects. They helped me, together with the Datcroft team, to bring the game to a normal state of MMO action.

In two months?

Konstantin: Yes, in two months we have rebuilt the game on those assets, mechanics and code that Datcroft already had. We actually got another game. However, it originally had a great action game, so we left the changes in the main gameplay (core parts) for the future. We also deliberately turned a blind eye to some bugs and balance problems, to everything that we considered irrelevant for a vertical slice.

And what was the original team? And how many people are currently working on the game?

Konstantin: Initially, the team was quite small, about 10 people. But during the year it was actively growing, employees switched from other projects of the company to Pixel Wars. Now more than 40 people are working on the game in total.

Are these two thirds of Datcroft Games?

Konstantin: Yes.

Pixel Wars

Tell us about the reasons for choosing a visual style. It is clear that he is very popular with the children’s audience, but they are not the ones who pay in such games.

Yes, we are aware that a significant part of the target audience may be quite young. Preparing for the softlonch, we identified four types of target audience. And only the real launch showed which of them became the main driver of retention, and which provides monetization.

When I came to Datcroft, the art style and setting had already been chosen. This imposed certain restrictions on the positioning of the product. However, the decision to keep the same appearance was the only right one. Redrawing the finished content would be a gigantic task.

Nevertheless, we hope that Pixel Wars, due to its interesting world, setting and a number of complex mechanics, will also be interesting to an adult paying audience. We have launched a smooth parallel process of updating content in a new art style. This will not be a voxel, but a cube-styled graphics, more familiar to an older audience.

About money and marketing

How much do you rate the development of a full-fledged mobile MMORPG?

Konstantin: It depends very much on the studio. But if we are talking, for example, about a distributed team that works remotely from the regions, then this is about $ 5-10 million. We will be able to meet this amount. If you need more accurate figures, then you need to count based on a specific project. It is not so difficult to estimate the order of costs for a product or studio.

Is this just a development?

Konstantin: Yes, excluding marketing. From prototyping to basic launch in softlonch.

Do you think it’s cheaper to make MOBA?

Konstantin: Of course, a mobile shooter or MOBA in development costs much less. You can keep within $2-3 million. But I would lay down $3-5 million with risks. For an indie studio, the numbers may seem huge, but for a large company they are small compared to the costs, for example, for the purchase of traffic.

Why is there such a big spread?

Konstantin: The cost of development directly depends on the complexity of the mechanics and the amount of content in it. If there are a lot of mechanics, hire expensive programmers, UI/UX designers and game designers. If there is a lot of content, be prepared to contain a significant staff of artists.

In a shooter, for example, there are a lot of subtleties, non-obvious mechanics, but there is little content regarding the role-playing game. The whole set of weapons, characters, cards is enough to draw once before launching in order to start playing fully.

In MOBA, everything is already more complicated. There are a lot of unique heroes, each with their own abilities, spells, animations. And it also needs to be balanced for a long time. But against the background of creating a full—fledged MMORPG – and this is not much.

When I joined the Datcroft team in 2018, I shared with the company’s founder Sergey Sholom an opinion that boiled down to two theses:

• a) we won’t be able to pull out a really cool MMORPG;
• b) the current market is not ready to accept the game in the form conceived by the authors.

I offered to remake the project for an MMO action, and the team really wanted a MOBA. As a result, we settled on a compromise option: we do action with MOBA elements.

To be honest, the decision seems controversial. Role-playing MMOs, especially if you do not take into account Asian projects, are frankly few. On the other hand, there are enough variations on the MOBA theme. Can you share what you argued that a full–fledged MMORPG is not what the market needs?

Konstantin: MMORPG is generally a riskier product.

If we are making an MMORPG, then most likely we want to publish it in Asian markets. We do not have publishing in this region. This means we need a publisher in Asia. We are not ready for this yet, because a serious Asian partner always means additional deadlines and risks.

A more convenient scenario is to take the available Pixel Wars mechanics and content, and then adapt them to action. It’s faster, there are fewer risks. There are examples of successful products in this genre in the Western market.

Plus, we wanted to have time to enter the softlonch before the end of last year, which, by the way, we managed. When we estimated how much it would take to prepare the minimum working version of the MMORPG, it turned out from six to eight months of additional work.

Accordingly, the more time is spent on the project, the higher its cost. Attracting an additional Asian partner puts additional requirements, possibly leads to additional costs. As a result, the risks are growing.

Perhaps MMORPG will be one of the future projects of the studio, but now it is in our interests to bring the flagship project to the market as soon as possible, which we hope will be successful.

We went in the direction where we confidently see our audience, where we will definitely be in demand, where there is an opportunity to minimize risks.

Plus, speaking of MOBA, it is important to understand: we borrowed some mechanics and approaches from the genre, but did not go completely in this direction. He has his own layer of problems, including difficulties with payback.

Pixel Wars

What do you associate this with?

Konstantin: One of the obvious problems is the inability to monetize the MOBA game quite harshly. Pay-to-win is unacceptable there, as in many other MMO projects. This genre is aimed at competitive gameplay and esports. They are loyal here exclusively to the sale of access to heroes, skins and other soft methods.

And if the game is not guaranteed to have a large audience, then it will be much more difficult to make money on it.

Konstantin: Exactly. I see in this genre (as in many others) problems with the unit economy, which prevents the purchase of traffic at market prices.

In general, the situation there is not the most prosperous. The cost of purchasing traffic for MOBA games is high, and ARPPU is low.

Without a cool publisher with a very large amount of traffic, it’s hard to recoup MOBA. And the competition for the quality of the product with well-known titles, including Asian ones, is quite high.

How much does traffic cost for a mobile MOBA today?

Konstantin: I can only give estimated figures. At the softlonch stage, one download can cost $2-3 in the UK. We have brought the price tag for the purchase of a gaming audience in our product in the CIS market to $ 0.5.

Is it just an installation?

Konstantin: Yes, but optimized for the maximum retention of the 7th day. To test hypotheses on this softphone, we needed traffic optimized for retention, not monetization. If the purchase goes on long enough and in large volumes, then this figure will already be higher.

What do you mean by “long”?

Konstantin: If we buy large volumes of traffic for several months.

For example, if we purchase 300,000 installations every month, then, most likely, we have already exhausted the cheapest channels with relevant traffic. Therefore, we have to spend more money per player to reach a new audience, and more time to find new channels. Accordingly, the CPI is growing.

Can you share the average ARPPU for MOBA?

Konstantin: It varies greatly depending on the mechanics and monetization used. I’d rather share the ARPPU we’re aiming for in Pixel Wars: $50. The bar is high, but why not set yourself such a goal?

According to the results of the softlonch, we saw ARPPU in the region of $ 5 and the percentage of paying 0.5%. And this despite the fact that we did nothing to monetize the product. Just a few simple shares for consumables and a currency store.

As for $50, that’s the goal. At the start, at best, you could buy something for $10 from us. But we want to create a mobile MMO action that will generate large checks, live on large payments, on “whales”.

Pixel Wars

About mechanics

A little earlier you said that in MOBA games it is very difficult to monetize. And you decided to make a project that will have MOBA mechanics. How exactly will the project differ from games of this genre?

Konstantin: Core in Pixel Wars is a short variety of combat sessions for 4-10 minutes. The meta-gameplay of the project is based on the development of the hero, and its goal is retention and monetization.

We have five battle modes at the start. There are PvE, PvP, and fighting waves of creeps. Each mode has several cards that are randomly selected before the mission.

And is this an isometric project that takes control of other gameplay things from MOBA?

Konstantin: Yes, from the point of view of control, camera location, we are very close to the mobile MOBA presented on the market today.

In addition, we have a role component in the meta. The player builds a lobby for himself, which becomes a passive bonus for the user’s characters.

The player’s characters are not full-fledged heroes, as in MOBA. Rather, we are talking about classes, each of which can be upgraded in several ways.

The parameters of the characters are affected:

• selected abilities;
• talents;
• loot and its pumping.

Before each fight, all this can be redistributed. It will be possible to choose different sets of things for different parameters. You can choose which skills you take into battle, and distribute talents in such a way that they support these skills.

It turns out that you give up competitive ambitions, because you have a very custom pumping.

Konstantin: We are also looking at esports, but this is still a separate stage. We clearly draw the line between a product for a mass audience and a product for esports players.

The mass game is the story I described just above about monetization on items, pumping.

When we are able to reach the payback of the product, we will see its success, then we will take up the esports component. And it will be implemented separately. However, we have provided in advance for the possibility of entering the esports market, we try to take into account such developments in game design.

And do you understand how such a version of the game will be implemented?

Konstantin: Sure. Players will be given a hero of the maximum level and a full set of items for this level. After that, they will distribute their talents, abilities and go into battle.

The players will have equal chances at the start. One level. One loot. But the victory will also depend on their ability to think tactically: which abilities to choose for the regime, which talents, which objects to strengthen all this.

But after all, there will be a problem of balancing a large number of user assemblies. How are you going to solve it?

Konstantin: Now we have at our disposal a large number of calculation calculators, models that create a kind of perfectly balanced picture.

At the same time, we are well aware that in practice there will not be an ideal balance. Therefore, we cover all fights, battles, and talent selection with analytics. We will see which builds are more effective, how the skills are practiced in battle.

Then we will follow the classic scenario: we have made a good theoretical basis, and then — constant tuning and rebalancing based on statistics.

But will the players see the balance?

Konstantin: Considering that we are going to constantly introduce new content (new classes, talents and skills), then it will not even be necessary to demonstrate the perfect balance.

We have a great example before our eyes — World of Warcraft. Its developers, when entering classes, often make them a little unbalanced, thereby drawing attention to new content.

The perfect balance in our case is needed only for esports. Here we simply consider a certain parameter of the power of each character, supply it with items so that the total characteristics of all items, all classes and all characters are always the same. Then we just tune the skills.

Pixel Wars

Publication

In winter, you carried out a softlonch in the UK. Why exactly there?

Konstantin: When we were looking for a territory for a “soft launch”, we were based on two main criteria.

Firstly, it had to be a market where you can normally buy an English-speaking audience, so as not to make additional localizations.

Secondly, according to the mentality, this market should have been very close to our target region. For us, such a region is the United States.

We settled on three countries: Canada, Great Britain and Australia. We saw that at the end of the year there will be quite a large number of large gaming softlonches in Canada and Australia, which means that the CPI in them may be overheated.

In the UK, we saw that within our niche, the cost of downloading will range from $ 0.5 to $2.3 per installation after optimizing the purchase and $2-3 before it. So the country was chosen.

In addition, we held a second softlonch in May. The main volume of traffic was from Russia and Ukraine. And it showed more acceptable indicators than the first one. In particular, we set ourselves the task of getting the retention of the first day (day-1-retention) in the region of 35%, weekly — 20-25%, monthly — 10%. And we got about these figures. Now the retention of the first day is 32.5% on the target purchase of traffic. For other days, the difference is about the same. However, it is worth considering that 2.5% of 35 and 10 are different deviations. Therefore, so far we consider the monthly retention insufficient and are working on its correction.

It is still not entirely clear why December was chosen for the softlonch, and not the quieter January-February?

Konstantin: Speed. Our main goal is to make the game as soon as possible. And we could, of course, postpone the softlonch for another couple of months, but it was more important for us to find out the first metrics, fill in test traffic, understand in which direction to work further, rather than sit and wait for a calmer situation in the market.

Until the game is launched in softlonch, it is impossible to look at analytics, so there is no way to understand which of our hypotheses were correct, and which ones need at least revision.

This applies to both retention and monetization. We have mechanics related to different modes. Which mode will be more popular is unknown. We have different ways of monetization in the game. Where we will get the main income from, we can only predict.

Accordingly, while we do not know how the product will be monetized, we cannot focus on it from the point of view of content development. For example, if it turns out that we are best selling new content in the form of heroes and skills, this is one scenario of action. If it turns out that skins come in best, then it’s completely different.

Therefore, in order to plan the development of the studio for a longer period, we want to get the first monetization metrics as soon as possible.

We have formulated a set of questions for ourselves. The launch helps us to answer them. And one of these questions is what criteria in the selection of a publisher we set ourselves for release.

And you don’t consider going out on your own?

Konstantin: Yes, we are considering the possibility of going out on our own, but there are a number of regions where we will not be able to do this.

Now we are doing a test purchase of traffic in order to work out the optimization of its cost.

Last question. Let’s focus on the audience again. How exactly do you see it in the project?

Konstantin: Our target audience is a part of the audience of products like Brawl Stars, Pixel Gun, Guns of Boom and mobile MOBA. These are products that combine fast gameplay.

Initially, we were looking to see if our audience could overlap with games like Minecraft and Roblox. But, due to the departure from the role-playing MMO sandbox into action, we believe that this is not our story.

By age — men 16-25 years old. There will, of course, be men 26-35 years old, but it seemed to us that their share in the general cross-section of the audience would be less. However, softlonch made adjustments to our guesses. Men aged 26-35 became the main playing group.

We would also like our product to be interesting not only to a male audience, but also to a female one. But we understand that, most likely, our female maximum will be 10-20% of the entire audience.

Thanks for the interview!