Rumble Entertainment: Free-to-play is a game within a game, for both developers and players
About the main problems in the development of KingsRoad and the distribution of income from it between platforms, as well as about the monetization of Fallout Shelter, in our short interview with Rumble Interactive.
The editors thank 101XP for their help in working on the interview.Hi!
I want to start with the question of why you initially took up the development of an action rpg for Facebook? At the same time, there was almost nothing in this market except farms. And, as it seemed, it should not have been.
We started Rumble in order to make high-quality cross-platform games for Facebook, the web and mobile devices. When we first started everything, there were no games on these platforms that we liked to play. We wanted to build a beautiful world that users could test together.
I remember well the moment when the game was launched on Facebook: the link to it immediately began to be reposted. Two years ago, it was a discovery for many that a diable-like game with excellent graphics could be launched directly in the browser. In fact, you have become one of the pioneers. What technical and marketing problems did you encounter during development then?
Creating and supporting a three-dimensional, cross-platform game with synchronous multiplayer is another test.
We release new content every day, so it took us some time to set up coordination of all versions of the game (web, Facebook, iOS and Android). However. over time, the process went smoothly.
The biggest marketing problem we have faced is the increase in the cost of acquiring users in mobile.
If you could go back in time and start developing KingsRoad from scratch, what would you do differently in the project and what things would you not do, and what, on the contrary, would you focus your attention on?
If we were all starting from scratch, we would immediately introduce a clearer, more visual PvP element into the game. The players are constantly asking us about it, and by the way, we are working on it.
KingsRoad is a hardcore project by the standards of social and mobile games. And, most likely, at a certain stage, he attracted the attention of the relevant audience, usually playing paid projects like Torchlight and Titan Quest. How did she perceive free-to-play monetization?
Here we must understand that free-to-play is a very common model in hardcore today. And for us, for the team, the implementation of the project turned out to be an interesting task, because we understood that hardcore players are very economical in terms of spending their money. We had to offer them something that they would appreciate. It’s something like a game within a game, for both developers and players. And if players don’t enjoy spending money in the game, they won’t do it.
KingsRoad has a pretty tough monetization. Already in the first hour, the project pushes to make purchases (for example, to expand inventory). At the same time, the idea of soft monetization is finding an increasing response among developers today, one of the clearest examples of which is Fallout Shelter. What do you think about this approach, how viable is it in the future?
You can play KingsRoad for years without spending any money at all. But spending them can speed up [your progress] and increase the fun of the game. I agree that Fallout Shelter has a simpler, streamlined monetization system, but I don’t think it’s soft. It is very difficult to get rare items and characters in the game without spending money. So in the end there is no such difference between buying a lunchbox in Fallout Shelter and a lockbox in KingsRoad.
Today KingsRoad is represented on a large number of platforms. It can be found in the Chrome store, on Facebook, in VK and on mobile. And how are the revenues distributed between the platforms?
KingsRoad’s revenues are equally divided between the browser and the mobile, but the mobile share is growing every month along with an increase in the number of players joining the game.
Thanks for the interview!
