Prediction Not checkable as stated
Patrick Moberg predicts Fortnite on mobile will spike and then fade
“Yeah, but it'll spike and then sort of maybe die off. It's really novel right now to play this on, like against other players on your mobile device.”
Insight
Mobile games require massive scale because player value barely exceeds install cost
“The LTV is almost like just a little bit higher than CPI. So like you're not making that much money on each acquisition. So like that's why you sort of need that big scale to like sort of Profit from that launch.”
Insight
Minimalist character design broadens a game's mainstream audience appeal
“I always felt like the less character a game had, the more like a wider audience could almost project whatever they wanted onto it. So it was like, maybe you won't find the most hardcore fan, but it's going to appeal to such a broader sort of audience.”
Insight
Clean, minimalist mobile games struggle to generate high lifetime player values
“I think it's like difficult to create high LTV games with that style.
Because I think you do want like passionate niche audiences, which can be large, but they want like to sort of gravitate around a sort of certain theme or something like that.
If they're goi…”
Insight
Playdots evaluates new game pitches by requiring a five-year team commitment
“Like big question we're asking with every new sort of pitch that comes now is like, would you, Be excited to work on this for like five years. Cause like you have to sort of think about them now as these sort of projects.”
Insight
Early-access pre-sales let small indie game studios profitably bug-test
“And that helps them sort of like bug test it for like a profit. And then just like also building that community that's gonna be their sort of champions when they do launch.”
Insight
Emergent gameplay like Minecraft drives steady, long-term game sales cycles
“I think games that have like emergent behavior, so like something like Minecraft where it's almost like the random chaos of things happening creates this narrative that's almost like fun to watch creates like a longer term sales cycle for a game. So it's a les…”
Assertion Supported
Puzzle game 2048 cloned Threes and became the ubiquitous version
“They basically got cloned, and 20 48 became the sort of ubiquitous version of their game, basically.”
Disclosure
Playdots accidentally blew its $10,000 Facebook marketing budget in one hour
“We had, like, a really small budget, and I think there was actually a mistake, and it all got, like, instantly, like, instantly bought a ton of players. But it was, like, 10,000 dollars, I think.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Facebook mobile game ad competition has intensified due to high LTV titles
“So because the sort of
game, mobile game industry has evolved so much.
There's like people with higher LTVs who are willing to pay much more.
So the competition on Facebook has gotten really steep.”
Insight
Casual, mid-core, and hardcore gamers differ by how they structure their time
“I think one helpful sort of way to describe the different casual, mid-core, and then there's hardcore, it's like casual, you kind of play whenever you have free time. Mid-core, you'll schedule time to play, and then hardcore, you schedule your life around play…”
Assertion Supported
Developing mobile game Dots took three months and Two Dots took six
“Dots took three months, but it was very simple. Two dots actually took about six months.”
Disclosure
Two Dots launched with 85 levels and players consumed them unexpectedly fast
“We launched two dots with 85, which is, like, seems like an okay amount, but we had such good, like, such a good sort of organic launch, like,
People telling their friends that we were sort of scrambling to add more levels because people were going through th…”
Insight
Overly difficult levels cause permanent player churn in mobile games
“Yeah, so then you'll get people churning out and just sort of, like, abandoning the game forever.
So we look at, like, really granular sort of win rates per level, and sort of see how, because you also want, you do want that sort of, like, nice difficulty cur…”
Insight
Mobile game features should be designed around concentric rings of timescale
“If you think of it, sort of, concentric rings, if that's the thing you're doing every second, then what are you doing every 10 seconds, or minute or week, or month? And then, sort of, like, creating features that accommodate for those different, sort of, time …”
Assertion Supported
Mobile game Dots began as an art project at Betaworks incubator
“Dots started as sort of this little art project that was born at Betaworks which is an incubator investor in New York City.”
