Hidden object titles have been round because the daybreak of cellular video games, and for one studio they’re extra standard than ever, fueling an growth of the corporate each throughout and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Wooga is the developer of the massively profitable puzzle sport June’s Journey. Combining hidden object puzzle video games, island and metropolis constructing and story-based content material, the sport has earned greater than half-a billion in income. Now, Wooga are set to seem at PGC Helsinki 2023 on a recruitment drive, because the studio continues to broaden.
We spoke to Wooga’s managing director, Nai Chang at Gamescom 2023 to realize some perception into the success of June’s Journey’s.
PocketGamer.biz: So how are issues going for Wooga?
Nai: We’ve been doing very properly. During the last couple of years we’ve been rising very steadily and really sustainably. We’ve hit a few milestones. Final yr we handed greater than $500m in lifetime income for June’s Journey, and we’re on the right track to transcend that.
Product-wise, June’s Journey has over 60% market share within the hidden object house so we’re doing very properly within the product and enterprise aspect. Organisationally I feel we’re additionally doing very properly. We’ve had a restructure to concentrate on our dwell video games in addition to our new video games and we’ve grown the corporate from 200 staff in 2020 to a bit over 300 up to now three years.
By way of Wooga itself, what do you suppose makes it stand out within the business?
On the organisational aspect I feel the primary factor that we pleasure ourselves on is the folks and the tradition. We have now a really robust sense of tradition, and what I imply by that’s will not be speaking about what the tradition is – however simply the truth that everyone understands the significance of getting an aligned tradition, the identical worth programs, methods of working and methods of considering that we have now in order that we all know deal with one another equally within the office.
I feel that’s been a part of the important thing issues that’s made the corporate very steady as we went by means of a variety of modifications globally over the previous few years. We’ve remained steady all through.
So clearly, your flagship title is June’s Journey, what do you suppose has made that sport so profitable?
So our product imaginative and prescient for the corporate is to be the participant’s alternative for puzzle and informal video games. For an off-the-cuff viewers we all know from all of the research and participant suggestions that we’ve had, that the 2 commonest use instances for when folks play informal video games is, one, earlier than they go to mattress to loosen up and the second is passing time on a commute. The frequent theme throughout each of these issues and what they did earlier than was story or narrative. Folks used to look at motion pictures or TV exhibits, or they used to learn a e book.
This sort of deeper participant immersion and participant fantasy is missing within the cellular market, so that is what we tried to do. June’s Journey is the primary instance of our massive success on this. We took a hidden object core – which is a confirmed sport mechanic – and we added a deep stage of story when it comes to character improvement and what’s taking place to the characters within the sport, and we introduced it as a part of the development.
So, what this creates is a want for folks getting connected to characters and desirous to know what’s taking place to them within the story. That helps construct engagement through the years. So that is a part of the important thing to success – giving our gamers the leisure and constructing curiosity for them to need to know what occurs subsequent.
And these are qualities that you just imbue into all of your video games?
On the product aspect we concentrate on story-driven informal video games, and June’s journey is the primary very profitable model of this. Its prequel Pearl’s Peril can be an instance of this, however June’s Journey took it to the following stage, and that is what made us stand out on the product aspect. After which that is additionally what contributes to this success is that we take the core that’s very robust after which we construct on high of it. So based mostly on the totally different participant sorts we have now, and their motivations and why they play, and what they need to get out of a gaming expertise, we construct up the options, and we construct extra content material that caters to their wants.
For instance, we constructed social programs as a result of we all know from analysis and speaking to our gamers that they need to have collaborative gameplay and options. We all know that they need to uncover extra concerning the story, so we construct these aspect occasions to assist them to study extra concerning the characters and the world.
So I feel one of many key elements of success is knowing the gamers, and constructing what issues to totally different segments of them, as a result of the playerbase will not be uniform when it comes to what they most get pleasure from. So we attempt to cater in direction of all the important thing points for various teams in numerous methods.
Wooga might be at PGC Helsinki 2023 in just a few weeks, what do you consider the occasion?
Helsinki is likely one of the gaming hotspots in Europe and we’re becoming a member of PGC Helsinki as a sponsor this yr. Such massive occasions are an excellent alternative for us to search for proficient folks to affix Wooga.
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