"We managed to achieve the support of the App Store and MTS": Nekki about the launch of the 11x11 New Season

On June 7, the world release of the new game Nekki — football manager 11×11 New Season took place. The high-profile launch of the project in Russia took place a little earlier. About the new game, the unique three-way cooperation with Apple and MTS, as well as its first results App2Top.ru asked Nikita Korzhavin, Business Development Director of Nekki.

Alexander Semenov, Senior Editor App2Top.ru Questioner: Today we are going to talk primarily not about the project, but about its high-profile launch in Russia. But still, let’s put the dots on i at the beginning. What is the 11×11 project?

Nikita Korzhavin, Nekki Business Development Director: I know that you are not very interested in the whole game cycle, and you will probably kill half if I start telling everything, so in short: the new 11×11 received the New Season prefix — although in fact it is not just a new season, it is a new game, a new application. For technical reasons, we could not roll a new game on the old application, so we decided to create a new one. At the same time, the old ones were removed from the stores altogether, but the servers were not turned off, since there, despite the lack of updates, there is life and quite stormy.

Nikita Korzhavin

In the 11×11 New Season, you become a football manager-coach again. You build a city, buy and develop players, watch matches, win trophies, move through the leagues. I can, of course, add loud epithets, but I don’t see the point — at the start, the game doesn’t look like something striking in its originality yet, except maybe the graphics – we really messed with it. And this is not the final quality, by the way. A nice picture and the main game activities of football managers are already more than enough to attract new players.

In the old game, we were very limited in the “wishlist” — not all ideas could be easily implemented, that’s why we decided to completely create a new game, correcting the errors of the old version in it and giving us the opportunity to wind up new features on it that would not cause physical pain during development. So we can say that now we have a basic version of a football manager with a strong name, whose task is to go beyond its genre in popularity and revenue.

How far has the novelty gone from the original mobile product? Is this something completely new, since you decided to redo everything from scratch?

Nikita: I can’t say that this is a completely new product. New Season can be considered a continuation of our first mobile version 11×11. That game scored about 2 million installs and was successful in terms of revenue. Nevertheless, we have changed the principles of team formation quite a lot and in the future we will work more deeply on metagame. Now the players don’t get tired after the matches, which means you can approach every game in the strongest squad. We have introduced the concept of a “football player’s contract” — due to them you can get rare players, including legendary ones, for free. They introduced sponsors that you earn for winning the league and that give you resources and rare contracts.

In 11×11 New Season, the design has been completely redesigned, a less hardcore interface, photorealistic images of players and a really cool city map, which was appreciated by many participants of our playtests.

New city map

In addition, we have always dreamed of making a full-fledged 3D match, but we did not have time to achieve the desired quality for release, and it will take several more months to finalize. But there will definitely be a 3D match!

During the summer, we plan to roll out an update with foot unions, add new modes, and more often hold various events with new content, the first of which we will launch already for the World Cup.

You know, I usually skip all sports topics in the gaming industry. This is a separate specific niche. But I couldn’t get past the new 11×11. I just don’t remember Apple doing a mailing list with such a large feature. Tell me how and thanks to what it was possible to achieve this?

Nikita: For the release of 11×11 New Season in Russia, we managed to get the support of the App Store and MTS. Actually, it was colleagues from the App Store who brought us together with MTS, together with whom we developed an exclusive offer for MTS subscribers with iOS devices. The App Store supported our cooperation with MTS and sent a newsletter to its subscribers. To be honest, I didn’t think this was such an effective activity for the brand: on the day of the mailing list, which was also on Saturday, several people from the industry and just friends wrote at once that they had received a letter about us from Apple.

Such a letter was received from Apple users in connection with the Russian release of 11×11 New Season

In this case, the wishes of all three parties coincided. We have been showing our intentions for such collaborations for a long time. MTS was interested in a partner who could make a quality product and successfully integrate their brand. Well, colleagues from Apple went to make such a brand story for the first time in the history of the Russian App Store, which works both for the publisher of the game and for the operator.

In general, this story became possible thanks to the World Cup in Russia. A trending topic, a new product from a well—known publisher and generally ideological guys, a powerful brand of partners – why not work together?

What is the promotion?

Nikita: All MTS subscribers who have installed the game from the App Store receive a promotion for the purchase of a player of exclusive rarity — red. We have only 4 rarities — ordinary (gray), rare (gold), unique (purple) and legendary (blue). The rarer the player, the cooler his additional parameters. And here is a red rarity for MTS at a price cheaper than a unique one, but in terms of game characteristics closer to the legendary ones. Firstly, it is already quite profitable, but what is even cooler is to have a red team that only MTS subscribers can assemble. This sense of exclusivity is captivating, and we received a lot of appeals to support and the community with the question “Where to get such red players?”.

MTS promotion in the game

In addition, we have made a new uniform for MTS, which is received only by those who have bought at least one red player, put an MTS billboard on the stadium during the match. Plus, we have football “chests” — sponsors, and MTS became one of such sponsors.

How long will the promotion last?

Nikita: We started it on May 21, and it will last until June 14 inclusive — until the first game day of the World Cup. After that, the billboards, the type of sponsor and the promotion will disappear from the game. But the purchased football players and uniforms remain forever. In the meantime, during these three weeks, the color of our mood is red!

I understand why Nekki needs it. But what is the benefit here for the operator and the app store?

Nikita: In addition to integrating the brand into the game and an exclusive offer for iOS players, one of the main features of the promotion is the payment method. Not everyone knows that in-game purchases can be paid from your mobile phone account. Therefore, through the promotion, we reminded the players about this and made instructions for connecting operator billing. We hope it helped someone to make their life a little more comfortable.

Some more MTS in the game

I have a lot of respect for Nekki. You are one of the ten most successful domestic teams. You have cool viral projects. But for a store to bet on a young project, and not, for example, on an old proven Top Eleven, this is a big risk. How did you manage to convince them that it is necessary to cooperate with you?

Nikita: Well, you know that we have several other projects in our portfolio, which in total have received about 400 million installations worldwide. I’m talking about the Shadow Fight and Vector series of games. So we didn’t have to prove our worthiness, the partners knew that we would make a quality product, even if it was new. Well, I’m pretty sure that the 11×11 brand is better known in the Russian market than Top Eleven.

If I understand correctly, the feature in the App Store went on May 21. Can you share how many downloads such a collaboration has yielded?

Nikita: Probably, the whole interview was started because of this question. But, unfortunately, no, I can’t share the numbers. Some figures are known only to MTS, and some I can’t share because of agreements with partners. I will only say that we entered the top 3 of the Russian App Store by downloads and were top 1 in the “Sports” category. And from the brand’s point of view, of course, we are very happy with this story. 11×11 was well represented in the App Store, received marketing support from MTS (website, social networks, My MTS application), and the project team gained very cool experience working on such promotions. And this is just the beginning! On June 7, we went out to the whole world, there is a month of football from everywhere ahead — so we look to the future with great optimism.

11×11 New Season

What advice would you give to teams who have a desire to launch a similar campaign? What kind of rake can you step on here, but it’s better not to?

Nikita: If I knew the magic tips, then this would not be our first action. Therefore, I can only say that if you want to launch, then at least convey your desire to those partners who can influence this decision and consider ideas. The next step is that everyone is ready, and you start planning the action. Here it is already necessary to find a balance between what all interested parties want to get. It is important to listen and hear each other.

And yet, this is already a tip to colleagues in business development, do not forget about your development teams. They do not think a month before the release of the game that you will please them with an opportunity that cannot be missed, and they urgently need to start implementing it, and it is impossible to roll out and postpone the release date. Prepare the right words for motivation and be ready to sing, dance or at least pat colleagues on the shoulder in a difficult moment.