Developer Diaries: Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf

Kaliningrad studio HeroCraft told App2Top.ru , how it works with Games Workshop and its community when operating a freeplay strategy for mobile devices Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf.

The author of the material is Anastasia Skachko, PR manager of HeroCraft

Anastasia Skachko

Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf is one of the key projects of our company. In this article, we decided to share the experience we have gained during the development of the game over the past 2 years.

As a preface

When the editors of App2Top asked me to talk about the Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf project, at first it was even difficult to decide where to start? You can write a whole book about this project alone. Decades of the real history of the game setting, a major foreign copyright holder, years of development and millions of fans – not every project can boast of such a background. Not everything was always easy, but what I can say for sure – it was always interesting!

Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf is a turn–based strategy game with elements of a collectible card game, which was developed by the Kaliningrad company HeroCraft under license from Games Workshop. The game was first released in October 2014 on iOS, and was released on Android in July 2015.

Since the first release, several major updates have been released, including a PvP mode with one arena (later it was supplemented with two more arenas), a survival mode, a lot of balance edits, as well as the most important tools for working with the audience.

But about everything in order.

Copyright holders

We are working very closely with the copyright holder of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, the Games Workshop company. It is important to understand that during development there is a mandatory coordination of all content (new models, locations), so that everything is strictly according to the backup. But mandatory approval concerns not only development, but also working with the audience. We have agreed on all actions: the format and content of the posts is what we write.

It may seem that Games Workshop completely controls us, but this is not the case – we do not feel pressure either from development or from working with the audience – we just need to keep them informed about all global changes, plans, and coordinate ideas. As a rule, they do not interfere with our innovations, it is easy to work with them.

In turn, we try to support all events and memorable dates related to their company and the Warhammer 40,000 universe. For example, last year we celebrated the anniversary of the 7th edition of the Space Wolves Code, and on this occasion we distributed a promo code with random epic and legendary cards. And this year was a very significant event for all fans of the universe – 30 years since the release of the first miniature of the Space Marine. Games Workshop even released a limited miniature on this occasion, and we held a special promotion in our game.

Games Workshop also take the initiative on their part and willingly invite us to participate in various events. For example, last summer, the Humble Games Workshop Mobile Bundle was organized, where a bundle with various games in the Warhammer universe was sold using the pay what you want model. Despite the fact that our game is free, we also took part. It worked like this: players bought a bundle with games, a promo code came to their mail, they activated it in our game and received a pack of unique weapons, which became available only after buying the bundle itself. Many of our players bought the bundle several times in order to get as many packs with this weapon as possible (after all, it also needs to be pumped!).

And this spring, together with other Warhammer games, we participated in a big promotion from GW and Apple – Games Workshop Digital Assault (all paid participating games and all inaps were at a 50% discount).

Community

An active live community began to form shortly before the first release on iOS in 2014. We noticed how our then-future users were already willing to communicate and answer questions on the very young and fresh page of the game on Facebook. It was immediately clear that there was no way to lose such an adult, thinking and supportive audience – you can and should actively work with it, multiply its number and constantly listen to opinions and advice.

We work a lot with the audience. We have a Facebook group, a small VKontakte group (by the way, it was started by fans of the game at one time, so there is an open wall and democracy reigns; later we took it to ourselves, put it in order a little, now we are conducting and moderating), a branch of the game on Reddit (while the game did not have its own forum, English-speaking players started their own mini–forum and chatted there), and of course – a forum. By the way, if we take a percentage, then 80% of the Space Wolf audience plays with Android and only 20% – with iOS.

We understand that our players are divided into approximately two camps: fans of the universe and those who just like hardcore strategies. We have no goal to create “another” public on the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Therefore, we try to adhere to the policy of unique content that gets into our groups. First of all, this is news about the game (updates and changes), announcements, contests and giveaways of promo codes, as well as interesting information about the Warhammer universe.

Our players are very fond of distributing promo codes. Historically, we hold them on Fridays. The promo code usually works all weekend, until Monday. It is worth noting that during the history of the game and the community, we distributed not just standard, but also unique content that was available only and exclusively through the activation of the received promo code.

The first distribution of unique content was timed to coincide with the first winter of our game – it was a white wolf card, White Thunderwolf.

We gave out one promo code every day until, eventually, the players had a unique card of the maximum level. It is unique just because you can get it only through a promo code and you can’t forge it in a Forge (or even buy it). Of course, we met a flurry of questions and exclamations “What about us?” from Android players, the game for which was still in development at that time. We promised to repeat the action and fulfilled the promise by arranging the action again after the release on Google Play. Since then, all new players who come to the game consider it their duty to ask how to get White Thunderwolf: everyone wants it!

The second large distribution of unique weapons was organized somewhat differently. We added a window with news and a link to a Facebook post to the game, the text of which contained a promo code for the most upgraded weapons. Thus, people who probably did not know about the existence of our community before (despite the fact that there is a link to it in the Settings menu) found out about it. A pleasant surprise was the number of players who activated these three promo codes: it was 200% higher than with a similar distribution without such a news window!

And here is a graph showing how quickly and actively the number of likes of our official game page on Facebook has grown during the distribution of this unique weapon.

However, the work with the audience does not end with the distribution of promo codes. Both on Facebook and VKontakte, we have top players who are our ambassadors. What does it mean? An ambassador is a player who is well versed in the game, actively helps other players with tips on passing, and sometimes even suggests how to solve a known technical problem. We never offend these guys, we respect them very much and actively communicate with them, often give them extra buns for their activity, and also invite them to test something before the release.

An interesting example: before the release of the new game mode, the team made a firm decision to run the balance on a group of top players. And you know what? The test lasted 10 days, and during this time the balance was sawn 4 times.

Game tools

The topic of our game tools has already been touched upon above, now we will tell you more:

1. The most interesting and important tool we work with is the promo code mechanism.

A promo code is a unique set of characters, by entering which in the game, you can get certain in–game content linked to this promo code. We have two types of promo codes: public (when the code can be entered by an unlimited number of players; as a rule, such codes work for a limited amount of time) and individual (the code is entered only by one player, once, and is known only to him).

You can put any consumables in the game into the promo code: cards of various rarity, gears and runes, credits (in-game currency).

We use promo codes for a variety of purposes:

• prizes for the winners of contests and various activities that we conduct in the game groups;
• weekly giveaways;
• we give out to the victims of our bugs who write to support or to personal messages of groups;
• with their help, it is sometimes easier to compensate for lost purchases.

Thanks to the presence of this functionality in the game, working with the audience is greatly simplified. After all, collecting the community of your game is an important and not an easy task. The player knows that in this group he will sooner or later receive a free bun, which means that he has an incentive to hang out in the group and communicate with other players. Thus, we motivate players to stay and communicate in the game group.

2. Discount mechanism. It so happened that a couple of times we held a sale of inaps without having any discount functionality in the game. By it we mean:

• an exclamation mark or any other sign near the Shop button so that the player can see that there is something there for him;
• crossed out prices for inaps, preferably with an indication of how many percent of the discount and the new price;
• a news window in the game that additionally notifies the player that a sale has begun, and the Shop button leads to the Store.

Discounts

Antiskidki

Any visual component during the sale is necessary! The data speaks for itself. We took the total income and the number of inap purchases 5 days before the sale and compared it with the total income and the number of inap purchases during the sale:

• without the discount mechanism, the profit for 5 days before and 5 days of the sale turned out to be the same, despite the fact that the number of purchases increased slightly, by 8%;
• in the presence of a discount mechanism, the picture is completely different: the profit for 5 days of the sale is 276% higher, and the number of purchases and purchases is 327% more.

The conclusion is very simple: the user always needs to see what has changed in the Game Store. Without this, holding a sale, even the most generous, does not make any sense.

Development

The game did not immediately become what it is now. Since the launch, the project has always grown and developed. Errors and weaknesses were eliminated, interesting innovations and improvements were added with each update.

Weaknesses in balance and gameplay are identified using various analytical services, and these weaknesses immediately begin to be corrected. A living example – in the next technical (not too significant by the standards of the project) update, the player’s deck editor will be significantly changed and optimized – it’s never too late to improve the UI.

Change

Let’s tell you a little more about interesting changes in the game that affected the behavior of players.

For quite a long time in PvP there was only one arena to play in. Despite this, PvP was in demand, and people were willing to play it. But when we released two more locations, the activity of PvP players increased by an average of 1 match per player. And those players who played more than 10 matches also began to play more (during the period under consideration).

The introduction of a new game mode – survival mode. The first two weeks after the release of the new survival mode, PvP was almost drained of blood.

Firstly, this is due to the fact that the new content was created a little longer than planned, and the players have long managed to eat all the existing content. Moreover, the mode itself required a large number of improvements throughout the game, despite the fact that it was done on everything ready (which is why fundamentally new modes and mechanics in games appear quite rarely).

Secondly, when the survival mode was released, its cooldown was only 4 hours. Later, the cooldown was increased to 12 hours, but the cost of its reset was retained. As a result, we noticed that people began to spend more time in the game and extract resources in PvP and campaigns, preparing for the game in survival mode. And of course, the fact that only in this survival mode you can get a pack of unique cards, greatly spurred players to play more.

Advertisement

We have a very curious experience with rewarded videos in Space Wolf. Initially, 3 views were set up 4 times a day, with a random reward of up to 75 credits. We were not impressed with the results, and we decided to do something that no one has done before (at least we have not met this): we have introduced a random increased reward (up to 2000 credits) and increased the number of views to 5-4 times a day. The result turned out to be interesting: the number of video views per player increased by 41%, and revenue per player increased by 26%.

Platform support

The game can be regularly seen in various collections in the App Store and on Google Play. The store teams show interest in the game, ask to be informed about updates, communicate closely with us according to the update schedule.

The game is quite hardcore, so it’s not surprising that it doesn’t shine in the usual top downloads. But at the same time, it has its own permanent audience.

Branded page of the game in the App Store:

About the plans

The team has a lot of ambitious plans concerning the future of the project. Unfortunately, we can’t talk about everything, but we can share something. Very soon we are expecting the release of a large content supplement to the game – the long-awaited “Saga of the Great Awakening”, and also a PC version on Steam.

Thank you for reading to the end.

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