Interview with Game Garden: it costs at least $200-250 thousand to develop a good time manager.

Recently, the Russian Game Garden studio released the Farmdale time manager. We contacted Yuri Pomortsev, CEO and co-owner of the studio, and asked him about the time management market. 

Yuri Pomortsev

Hi! Let's start with an introductory question: please tell us about the history of the Game Garden (when and why did you decide to start playing games, organize a studio, how exactly did it all happen)?

It all started at the very beginning of the noughties. After graduating from Bauman Moscow State Technical University, in 2001-2005 I worked at Game Land Publishing House, where I was the publisher of a number of magazines about games. There I met my future business partner Maxim Bakanovich, with whom we became very close friends. At the very end of 2005, we went on a free voyage, opening our own company, Creatent. A year later, we already collaborated with MTV Russia and other channels, making TV shows about games ("Icon of video games", "Virtual Reality", "Terribly interesting", "From the screw!"). Then there was a crisis that we went through and drew certain conclusions. We decided that we need to make the business more sustainable by opening a new division. Max continued to run the TV part, and I took over the newly minted gaming division. 

We opened it in September 2009. At first, they simply used the power of the television business unit - office space, computers, furniture… At that time we didn't have a name yet and in a year we didn't really do anything worthwhile — except that we released the game "Doctor Chaos" for social networks. It was closed after about a couple of months. Back then, our understanding of the market was reduced to a simple paradigm: we need to quickly release a social game, and the money will flow like a river. The laurels of the "Happy Farmer", of course, did not give rest.

By the first anniversary of the company, we began to understand more or less soberly what was what. More precisely, it was still far from deep realizations, but at least we got to the point that it would not work "quickly". And anyway, everything is much more complicated than it seemed at first glance. The conclusion is obvious, but in order for it to take root in our heads, we had to make all possible mistakes, step on all the rakes and collect all the cranberries. Well, for the change, we had to painfully admit that we really don't know how to do anything. But there was plenty of desire, so we began to move on methodically. It's already much more meaningful. At the end of 2010, we released the "Fairy Farm", which became the hallmark of the company. And, yes, we finally came up with a name for ourselves - that's how the Game Garden appeared. 

Were there any third-party investments? How quickly did you get into the plus?

We provide for ourselves. At first, we were on the bottom feed — we were saving heavily on everything. It was a classic vicious circle: in order to have money, you need good games. And in order to have good games, you need money. We did not break out of this with a single impulse, but with methodical work. Step by step, often working hard on weekends and from vacations — but in the end, after a couple of years, we came out on top. This allows us to stay afloat, maintain working projects and release new ones.

Valley of Farms

Now the company has four owners and no investment funds. Maxim and I and two of our good friends: Ivan Petrov and Andrey Domaratsky. We met Vanya back in Game Land (he was the editor-in-chief of Hacker magazine). And Ivan has already introduced us to Andrey. Everything coincided very well here — good relations multiplied by a common interest in games, technology and marketing.

You have about 9 projects in your portfolio, ranging from games for children with autism to role-playing midcore games for Vkontakte. At the same time, the company's last three projects are cartoon farms. Why did you stop at them?

We have gone through a completely standard error cycle of any young studio. Hence such a panopticon of projects. For the first two years, we were rushing around quite chaotically, making games of various genres and stylistic performances — we even had tower defense. But over time, we came to the banal truth — we need to do what works best. And the best thing we did was farms and bodybuilders, and family-type ones at that. All the talk about innovative gameplay, all the plans for a revolution in the genre were postponed indefinitely. In the meantime, we will only strengthen our position in the niche where we feel very comfortable. Fortunately, this market segment is large and almost eternal. We are very pragmatic here. 

The only exception is projects to help with the rehabilitation of autistic children. We are very lucky that we met and became friends with one of the best specialists in the world in the field of rehabilitation of autism spectrum disorder — Igor Spitsberg. According to his methods, we will do new rehabilitation projects — this is important for us. 

The description for the latest game Garden game says that it is "from the authors of Cat Story". The last one was released by Game Insight about six months ago (by the way, we recognized it as one of the best farms of last year). Could you explain why the authors of Cat Story are now on the Game Garden team?

Thanks for the assessment, guys. Cat Story is a project of a very friendly studio Fly High Games, which is based in St. Petersburg. We helped the guys with advice and experience (hence the co-authorship), and subsequently took up publishing the project on two sites: the Amazon App Store and the Windows Store. Well, on the main platforms, Fly High Games publishes the project through Game Insight — and, as far as I know, everyone is quite happy with the cooperation. 

Listen, what is going on in the market of social and mobile farms (time managers for casual audiences) today? Are there any trends, how is the genre evolving today and where?

The genre is developing at the same pace as our industry as a whole is developing — rapidly, to put it mildly. I'll start with the first trend — the cost of the project. Even 4 years ago, it was possible to make a game for $ 30-35 thousand, which fully met the quality standard accepted on the market. Now to develop a good—class game (I'm talking about the usual A; AAA is a separate song with other numbers) is at least $ 200-250 thousand if there is an experienced team that has created at least a couple of fairly large projects. Four years and the difference is already an order of magnitude. The required quality of the game has changed in about the same way: from the very moment of launch, you need a lot of content, verified monetization and virality, very stylish graphics, an impeccable technological platform… 

Royal Fairy Tales

A lot of things are needed, in a word. I think that with increasing competition, the quality requirements (and with them the cost of projects) will only grow. Entering the current market without serious investments is utopia. Perhaps isolated budget indie breakthroughs will still happen, but the number of them will be minuscule.

Next is marketing. We were lucky — we jumped into the last car of the departing train, when it was possible to have 10-15 thousand installations per day without any marketing injections. However, now it is necessary to prepare at least $50 thousand (or better, $ 300 thousand) for one platform at the start. The figures are relevant for the here and now — spring 2014. I wouldn't be surprised if they double by the end of the year. 

The next point that is becoming more and more important (if not decisive) is support. The game needs to be updated regularly and significantly on each released platform — we do this every 2-3 weeks, at least. The team that worked on the creation of the game, in fact, remains fully committed to supporting the project. For some reason, when planning, this need is often overlooked, limited only to the cost of creating version 1.0. In fact, with the release in the store, life is just beginning — the most movement is ahead. Updates, improvements, fire fighting, marketing, support team responses to all user requests, working with the community — all this must be done throughout the life of the project. And the duration of this life is almost entirely determined by the quality of support. 

The team and proven technologies play a huge role. When I said that the budget of a decent game is $200-250 thousand, I added a caveat about an experienced team. Pioneers can eat up any budget and eventually leave behind only thousands of lines of unnecessary code and a pile of art. On paper, everything is smooth and simple — but in practice, without a well-played team and the baggage of tools, it's better not to meddle. Or be prepared for the fact that the project budget (due to the fact that the development time will double or triple) will inflate at times. At one time, we began to be very careful and conscientious about the unification and constant development of basic technological components — the statistics system, client-server interaction (although formally mobile games are client-side, in practice there are a lot of places where the client works with the server), the display of cross-banners and more.

And finally, the F2P (Free to Play) model, which is often bitten and gnawed, but which only strengthens the position and expands. Our experience says that it works wonderfully and, with a reasonable approach, gives excellent results. I am sure that it will remain dominant for many years to come and will spread to a wide variety of areas — not only gaming. 

All I was talking about was the experience gained within our niche. However, to one degree or another, this applies to the entire market. 

What advantages and disadvantages would you highlight when talking about the development of such projects?

I can't speak for other niche genres — we just don't have that kind of experience. We do what we do best. Otherwise, the pros and cons are fairly standard for any niche products. On the one hand, we have an almost guaranteed bottom line for any product. On the other hand, we know that there is an upper limit, which is almost impossible to break through. 

The Magic Farm

To reduce the risks and cost of the project, we try to make the most of the available developments. We have two client engines — one for Unity, the second for C++. There is a general system for collecting statistics. There is all the necessary server support (saving and issuing saves, referral codes, distribution of promotional content, dynamic updates, etc.). With all this, the development period of a more or less typical project can be reduced by 30-40%. This is very significant. 

Is it easy to merge the audience from one similar project to another?

Since we work in a niche genre, the audience overlap is quite high — about 30%. We use a comprehensive traffic distribution system between projects; a serious system is in development that will work on all our projects. If you have a new product, of course, you need to show it to your entire audience. In addition, it is very important that the user stays inside your ecosystem as much as possible — that is, if, for example, he does not like Fairy Farm, he must do everything possible so that he does not go to competitors, but to Farmdale or Fairy Kingdom. 

Answering the question, it's just not enough to display banners. You need an advanced system so that your pool of players rotates as much as possible without leaving the cage. 

What is their average life span?

We have released our first farm (Fairy Farm/"The Magic Farm") Three and a half years ago, and the old lady is still alive. Still alive, by the way. There is a certain amount of luck here, but there is also a determining factor — we update it twice a month, or even more often. In addition to ordinary pours with new content, it is necessary to add new functionality, it is necessary to support significant holidays (Christmas / NG, Valentine's Day, Halloween, etc.), it is necessary to respond regularly to users who face problems, it is necessary to create a movement in the community… There's a whole bunch of different "must-haves" here. And if the project is not stillborn, then with good support its life span can be several years. We're laying down about three. And this is not the limit — it all depends on the ratio of income to the cost of support. 

How willingly and how often do users spend in such games (what is the share of payers in such games, more than the market average / less)?

Everything here depends very much on the platform. I think we have fairly average figures for the market. On the App Store — about 1.5-2.0%, on Google Play — about 1.0-1.5%, on Amazon — about 3-5%, on the Windows Store — 1%. 

The art of monetization in the F2P model is really an art field. There are many techniques that have already been worked out, but they always need to be tuned for a specific project and constantly add something new. The ultimate goal is to make the user really happy to buy something in the game, so that it brings him pleasure and joy. 

The Nightmare

If we talk about trends in this area, then once it was enough just to rigidly put the user in front of the condition - pay to play on. Then the emphasis shifted to a slightly softer one — pay to continue playing comfortably. Well, now we need to offer the user something that he really wants and will pay completely voluntarily and without tightening the screws. 

Roughly speaking, we can say that with f2p you can earn money, either by focusing on a very narrow group of "whales" who are constantly ready to throw large sums into the project (a niche approach), or try to reach as large an audience as possible, so that then you can shake off at least a dollar from each. Are "Farms" a niche today or something designed for a wide audience?

I would not say "either-or" — we need to work with everyone. It's just that the approaches are slightly different. Of course, first of all, we work with the widest possible audience, but we pay special attention to those who became the "whale" (contributed more than $100 to the game). But even non—paying users need to be loved and respected - for example, giving them the opportunity to get crystals for free. Invited a friend? Wonderful— here's the reward. Did the community bark? Here are your crystals. Etc. 

If we talk about farms/bodybuilders as a genre, then this is a niche with a wide audience.

And the traditional question about plans. What to expect from Game Garden after the release of "Valley of Farms"?

In the near future, we will follow the paved fairway — work where we do it best. We will launch the new project in the fall; it is currently in pre-production, and will be released sometime in late spring 2015. We also want to make a relatively small project and release it right this year. Well, we will form and approve plans for 2015 in November-December.

Thanks for the interview!