NaturalMotion: We are developing games for word of mouth

CSR and Clumsy Ninja publishers told what they focus on when developing and launching mobile projects.

The success of the two released racing titles and the Clumsy Ninja, aimed primarily at children, was explained by the executive director of NaturalMotion Torsten Reil in an interview with Re/code for two reasons.

Firstly, each of the mentioned projects was created in order to be talked about, so that users could share their impressions about the project with friends. 

Secondly, they were tested very, very carefully. 

“Today, everyone clones those game mechanics that work well. This is not the most viable strategy,” Rail also noted.

Cloning often comes to the ridiculous. So many projects identical to Clash of Clans were created that a whole genre appeared, which is now ironically called Clash of Clones. 

By the way, Clumsy Ninja itself is in some ways a clone of the extremely popular Talking Tom series of games. But you need to understand: the original series evolves very slowly and the NaturalMotion project turned out to be several times deeper and more interesting than the development of Out Fit 7.

At the moment, NaturalMotion only makes free-to-play games. Before the release of My Horse, the company also released paid projects, but, as Rail noted, despite the numerous mistakes made during the creation and monetization of My Horse, it brought the company more than all its paid games in total. So they are definitely not going to return to the paid model in NaturalMotion.

As for testing, NaturalMotion does it like this:

• The company has its own focus group of six people who come and look at the company’s projects three to four times a week.
• Always a “soft launch”. As a rule, small regions, such as Singapore, are selected.
• All new features are subject to A/B testing

The result of the introduction of such a practice is as follows: a five-fold increase in revenue. 

A source: http://recode.netNaturalMotion is a British company that started as a software manufacturer for creating realistic animation in games (its developments were used in the creation of Max Payne 3, GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption).

In the summer of 2012, she acquired Boss Alien studio, whose CSR Racing game at that time earned more than $12 million per month.