Ivan Lugovoy

The influence of the free-to-play business model on visual development and art direction in mobile games

Bachelor’s thesis Bachelor’s degree in Game Design

2019

Author (authors) Degree Time

Ivan Lugovoy Bachelor of Culture November 2019 First name Surname and Arts Thesis title 41 pages The influence of free-to-play business model on visual 1 page of appendices development and art direction in mobile games Commissioned by

South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences Supervisor

Suvi Pylvänen Abstract

This paper is an exploration of the area between the art and business sides of mobile game development. The main goals are to attempt to discover the influence of the free-to-play business model on the art-direction, to allocate the tools for reasonable decision making during the visual development process and to build a solid understanding of the role the art plays in a success of a game.

As game development is a relatively new industry, this exploration required a composite approach, and this paper includes several research methods. First, an overview of the free- to-play business model and the role of the art in games through the study of academic papers, web-articles and available statistics. Second, the analysis of the modern practices in the game development conducted with the semi-structured interview method. Third, the case study of the Angry Birds Dream Blast, a mobile game by Rovio Entertainment.

The research partially confirmed the initial hypothesis of the influence of the free-to-play business model on the visual development process and art direction of a mobile game. The effect the business model has is indirect; the free-to-play approach makes demands to the design and marketing aspects of a game and through that affects the artistic decisions made throughout a project.

Keywords

Free-to-play, F2P, art-direction, visual development, business model, game art

CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 7

2 OVERVIEW OF THE FREE-TO-PLAY BUSINESS MODEL ...... 9

2.1 From Shareware to Free-to-play ...... 10

2.2 Free-to-play business model...... 12

2.3 User acquisition in F2P games ...... 15

2.4 Data acquisition, analysis and application in game development ...... 16

3 ART IN VIDEO GAMES ...... 18

3.1 Role of the art in video games ...... 20

3.2 Art in F2P mobile games ...... 23

4 CASE STUDY OF THE ANGRY BIRDS DREAM BLAST ...... 26

4.1 Introduction ...... 26

4.2 Art Direction approach in Angry Birds Dream Blast ...... 28

5 CONCLUSION ...... 31

REFERENCES ...... 35

APPENDICES

Appendix 1. List of questions for the semi-structured interviews

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Worldwide Consumer Spending on Games, 2014-2018 (App Annie 019) ...... 9 Figure 2. App Store Top Paid Apps in 2008 (Apple Inc. 2008) ...... 11 Figure 3. Clash Royale in-game shop (Supercell 2018) ...... 13 Figure 4. Fortnite Battle Pass purchase screen with description (Epic Games 2017) ...... 14 Figure 5. Close to identical UA material by Playrix and Firecraft Studios (2019) ...... 16 Figure 6. Infamous faceless bug in Assassin’s Creed: Unity (2014) ...... 17 Figure 7. Minecraft v 1.0 (2011) ...... 19 Figure 8. Overkill's The Walking Dead (2018)...... 19 Figure 9. Elemental Tetrad by Schell J. (2008) ...... 20 Figure 10. Top 5 influences for purchase (ESA, 2019) ...... 21 Figure 11. Realistic texture pack cow (Minecraft, 2019) ...... 22 Figure 12. Visual Target of AB Dream Blast. Lugovoy, I., Adams, J., Naas, J. (Rovio 2018) . 26 Figure 13. Various assets created for Angry Birds Dream Blast, Lugovoy, I. (Rovio 2018) .... 27 Figure 14. Garden Blast screenshots (Rovio 2018) ...... 28 Figure 15. Angry Birds Dream Blast screenshots (Rovio 2019) ...... 29 5

LIST OF TERMS

The game development and mobile applications business are exceptionally data driven. The metrics names are usually shortened to abbreviations, and it is essential to know what they stand for to comprehend the information in this paper or any other game development related article. For the sake of convenience, most of the used terms will be given a short description in the following list.

ARPU — Average Revenue Per User is overall revenue divided by a number of users overall.

ARPDAU, ARPMAU — Average Revenue Per Daily (Monthly) Active User is the revenue generated in the given period of time, divided by the number of active users in the corresponding period of time.

ARPPU — Average Revenue Per Paying User is overall revenue divided by a number of users that made a purchase inside an application.

CPI — Cost Per Install in UA is an average cost of one game.

Conversion Rate is the ratio between all the users and those who made at least one in-app purchase.

D1, D7, D30 Retention — Retention on Day One, Day Seven and Day Thirty is a ratio between the number of new users and the number of those who continued to engage with an application in a corresponding time period.

DAU, MAU — Daily/Monthly Active Users is a number of users engaged with a game (installed, opened, played) in a given period of time.

DNU, MNU — Daily/Monthly New Users is the number of users that have installed a game in the indicated time period.

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GUI — Graphical User Interface is a set of graphic elements such as buttons, icons, pop-up windows and menus, which serves as a mean of interaction between a user and an application

IAP — In-app Purchase is any purchase of virtual goods and/or in-game currency made inside the application.

IP — The Intellectual Property stands for a result of mind labour such as visual art, literature, music et cetera. In this paper, IP refers to a set of narrative, character and environment designs united under one brand, for example, Angry Birds.

KPI — Key Performance Indicator. The term KPI usually refers to any of the following abbreviations.

LT — Lifetime or, more accurately, average Lifetime is the time from the moment the application was installed to the moment it was accessed for the last time.

LTV — Lifetime Value is the revenue generated by an average user during an average lifetime.

ROI — Return On Investment is the ratio between net income and investment. One of the simple ways to calculate it is to subtract the cost from the income and divide by the investment.

UA — User Acquisition often refers to Paid User Acquisition, a process of acquiring users through paid channels such as social media and in-game ads, based on user data.

UX — User Experience is a subjective feeling and attitude of a user during an engagement with an application.

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1 INTRODUCTION

Game development is a rather complicated process that involves many different disciplines. The final product is a confluence of the experience of all the specialists taking part in the game creation; a game is born in the intersection of mutual efforts. The value of in-depth abstract knowledge in each of the disciplines is undeniable. However, investing time and effort into the study of those disciplines in the context of a joint application is essential.

This paper is an exploration of the area between the art and business sides of mobile game development. The main goals were to attempt to discover the influence of the free-to-play business model on the art direction, to allocate the tools for reasonable decision making during the visual development process and to build a solid understanding of the role that art plays in the success of a game.

Not all games are created to generate income. Nonetheless, this paper takes into consideration business cases solely and mainly focuses on the correlation between the business model and the visual development process. The hypothesis is that the free-to-play business model has a direct or indirect influence on how visual development should be approached and that there are tools for reasonable decision making in the art direction process.

Video games in general and mobile games, in particular, are a swiftly developing cross-discipline industry. The industry is rapidly changing, which makes one research method only not enough to reach a certain level of relevance for this paper. For the extensive evaluation of the stated hypothesis, this thesis will combine several research methods.

First, the literature overview. An analysis of the academic sources and the Internet articles about the free-to-play business model and the role of art in games.

Second, the semi-structured interviews of six game-developers, who work on different projects in roles related to the visual development and game design: 8

• Avellar C., the game designer at Supercell; • Karroue N., art director at King, Berlin; • Lahdensuo L., the project lead on Angry Birds Dream Blast, Rovio Entertainment; • Marsch S., the art director at Ministry of Games; • Mu M., the art director at Rovio Entertainment, previously worked at PopCap Studio and Tencent in China; • Møller R., art director at Sybo Games.

Third, the case study of Angry Birds Dream Blast, the mobile game from Rovio Entertainment. The study is based on the author's personal experience acquired while working on this project, the interview of Lahdensuo L., the project lead on AB Dream Blast and statistics obtained from open sources.

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2 OVERVIEW OF THE FREE-TO-PLAY BUSINESS MODEL

Free-to-play (F2P), also known by the term suggested by Satoru Iwata, free-to- start games are available on all the gaming platforms (PC, mobile, consoles) and offer the consumer free access to the entire game functionality with the possibility to make in-app purchases (IAP). (Peckham 2015.) Monetisation (generation of the revenue) in F2P games is mainly built on IAP, subscription for premium access and advertising. Revenue sources in one game can be diversified with the most frequent combination being IAP with advertising. (GDC 2019.)

The mobile games market grows rapidly and just in four years from 2014 to 2018 almost tripled its share (Figure 1). According to some estimates, 45 to 60 per cent of the global game market in 2019 will be occupied by mobile devices, which makes smartphones and tablets the main gaming platform in 2019. (Wijman 2018; Sydon 2019.)

Figure 1. Worldwide Consumer Spending on Games, 2014-2018 (App Annie 019)

Games have a unique place in the mobile applications market. According to App Annie’s latest research, with 10 per cent of the time spent by users playing (in comparison with other apps usage), on Android platform games generates 74 per 10 cent of the cash flow (no data on Apple App Store was given). With 95 per cent of that flow being made by the in-app purchases, it is safe to say that the free-to- play business model is dominating on mobile games market. (Perez 2019.)

2.1 From Shareware to Free-to-play

Origin of the F2P business model can be traced to the beginning of the 80s to the pioneers of the Shareware Jim Knopf and Andrew Fluegelman, who were, most likely, first to distribute or, more accurately, share their programs for voluntary donations. The distribution was managed through the electronic bulletin board system (BBS) and simple floppy discs 5.25-in. The applications made by Knopf and Fluegelman had built-in messages encouraging users to send an insignificant sum of money (in comparison to regularly distributed software) and share the software with another potential user, hence the name of the model “Shareware”. (Vaughan-Nichols 2018.)

While dubious at first glance, this new approach to business proved to be successful for the two pioneers and for many who followed due to low entry barrier and financial risk, virality and independence from the big publishers. This model survived for decades, e.g. one of the first FPS (first-person shooter) games, Wolfenstein 3D, was released under Shareware license and reached over 100 000 sold copies by the end of 1993, once again proving the viability of the described business model. (Antoniades 2009.)

The volatility in results and differentiation in financial agenda caused multiple variations of the Shareware approach such as crippleware1, trialware2 or even nagware3. Freemium business model became widely adopted by mobile game

1 Crippleware is an application with a vital feature disabled until the purchase. For example, a text editor where the possibility to save or print a file becomes available only after purchasing a license.

2 Trialware refers to an application in which all the features are available for a limited time. After a certain period, trialware application would restrict access to all the elements until the license is purchased.

3 Nagware is a type of software where the usage is continuously interrupted with a reminder to purchase the application. 11 developers. Products or services distributed with this approach offer to a consumer a full functionality with additional features being available for a price. (Marin de la Iglesia & Labra Gayo 2008.) As it was mentioned before, 95 per cent of the revenue on Android platform was generated by IAP, however, the era of mobile games did not start with this approach to the monetisation.

Figure 2. App Store Top Paid Apps in 2008 (Apple Inc. 2008)

Nowadays it is hard to imagine life without all the possibilities provided by smartphones, however, the cell phones became “smart” not that long ago, slightly over a decade. The summer of 2007 was marked by the release of the first of what would become the most sought-after device for years to come. By creating the iPhone, Apple Incorporated also created a whole new industry and, by launching the AppStore in 2008, a whole new market which provided application developers with an opportunity to reach millions of potential users in a convenient and relatively inexpensive way. However, out of 3000 applications available on the AppStore on the 9th of September 2009, only 600 were free, and first hits such as “Crash Bandicoot” (Figure 2) or “Angry Birds” were premium games (Apple Inc 2009; Beaumont 2008.) In order to play those games a consumer had to pay the full price before download, but would receive the product with full functionality and content.

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Two years after the launch of the AppStore and one year after Apple Inc. allowed In-App-Purchases for free applications the tendency is rather different. In 2010 already 84 per cent of the products were available for consumers free of charge. (Perez 2013.)

Besides new apps, some of the already existing games made a transition from the premium to the free-to-play model. For example, a famous endless runner “Temple Run” became a free game with in-app purchases shortly after it was launched as a paid application. This conversion made a positive impact on the game revenue, which increased drastically, up to 10 times, compared with the revenue the game generated while being a premium app. (Lefebvre 2012.)

2.2 Free-to-play business model

In the F2P business model, the monetisation can be built on one of the following methods or their combination.

In-App Purchases (IAP), as it was mentioned, generate the largest fraction of the revenue on the mobile game market. The name of the method is descriptive, monetisation happens through the sale of the in-game virtual goods and consumables: currencies and resources (Figure 3).

Products sold inside the game may vary from so-called "vanity" items, cosmetic assets that do not influence the gameplay, to "convenience" items that usually boost and ease up the progression of the player. (Noordzij 2015.) If progression in the game is not possible without making a purchase or products in the game shop give to a player an advantage against other players, the game is usually referred to as "pay-to-win" and such monetisation approach considered to be poorly designed. 13

Figure 3. Clash Royale in-game shop (Supercell 2018)

Pay-to-win is one extreme of the monetisation design, on the other end of the spectrum is the game construct that does not encourage a player to make a purchase or the act of purchase is inconvenient on a level that forces a player to discontinue in the middle of the process. (Seufert 2014.)

In-game advertising is another approach to monetisation and often used in a combination with IAP. However, recently, with the grow of interest to the hyper- casual game genre, developers are more kin to create games with simplistic gameplay monetizing purely on the advertising. (Hreninciuc 2018; Sydow 2019.)

The economy of the top-grossing cross-platform Battle Royale genre game Fortnite is built on "vanity" items. In addition to the usual IAP system, Epic Games (Fortnite developer) implemented Battle Passes (Figure 4) — a subscription- based premium mode, that increases drastically the rewards a player gets though gameplay. Similar premium subscription approach is used in games like World of Tanks and Dota2. (Telfer & Kim 2018.) 14

Figure 4. Fortnite Battle Pass purchase screen with description (Epic Games 2017)

There are several reasons why free-to-play business model for mobile games appeared to be so successful. According to GSMA, in 2018 3.6 billion unique users were registered accessing internet through mobile platforms. (GSMA 2019.) In contrast to this figure, total sales of the three most popular gaming consoles such as PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, did not go over 250 million units. (Gilbert 2019.) Smartphones and tablets are much more versatile devices than gaming consoles and are purchased for many other needs besides video games. However, the owner of such a device might use its ability to run games despite the initial motive of the acquisition.

High availability of the gaming platform in a combination with free access (disregarding the cost of the internet connection) removed the financial barrier for trying out a game and expanded drastically the number of the potential players. Giving away for free the result of the work of sometimes rather large teams of professionals would not be possible without an effective distribution channel. Apple App Store and Google Play store reduced the Cost per Install (CPI) of one digital copy of the game to figures close to zero in comparison with physical copy distribution.

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Although nowadays, with a high saturation of the market (a high supply of products of the same type), low visibility and discoverability of a game became an issue the developers must address. Paid User Acquisition became an effective solution which, however, influenced CPI in a negative way.

2.3 User acquisition in F2P games

In 2019 the game section of the App Store was represented by 903,489 gaming applications. (Clement 2019.) It is apparent that not all the apps get the same level of attention from the users. In general, user traffic is divided into two types: organic and paid. Paid users are engaged with a game through the advertisements in social networks, popular internet resources and other games. Organic users are acquired through the featuring by a distributor, viral effect, social interaction between players and non-players and simply by the search function of a store.

The main advantage of high organic traffic is the fact that a developer avoids additional expenses which would negatively affect the CPI. On the other hand, not all the players that come into the game are ready to invest their money into it. Only a small fraction of the users converts into the paying users returning a developer its investment, sometimes the conversion rate is below one per cent. (Li 2018.) Players that convert into paying users and spend in-game more than their CPI are referred to as ROI (return of investment) positive users. There is a gradation in that category of players which is defined by another metric — lifetime value of a user (LTV). (ironSource 2019.)

Paid user acquisition is an important part of the marketing strategy for most of the modern game-makers, both big companies and indie developers. Through the demonstration of the advertising materials in applications, social media and various internet resources UA companies are generating additional traffic of users for a game. Despite the fact that paid UA increases the CPI, it provides developers with a better control of the quality of the acquired users, giving a possibility to "purchase" users with a higher LTV. (ironSource 2019; GDC 2019.)

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Figure 5. Close to identical UA material by Playrix and Firecraft Studios (2019)

The ratio between CPI and LTV is one of the ways to assess the effectiveness of the UA campaign, which process is of high importance as actions of one company on the UA market might have a great impact on the whole industry. (Gottesdiener 2015.) Although paid user acquisition is a relatively new discipline in mobile business it already manipulates a significant amount of the cash flow. In some respects, the user market behaves similarly to a regular market — high demand causes a price increase. For example, the UA war (Figure 5) between two game developers Playrix and Firecraft Studios led to significant growth of the CPI for a particular target audience and made a strong impact on the user acquisition strategies for smaller market players. (Katkoff & Tuerlings 2019.)

2.4 Data acquisition, analysis and application in game development

There is a significant difference between producing and launching a AAA project and F2P mobile game. It is apparent that work on any game from, for example, Assassin's Creed (AC) franchise by Ubisoft requires a lot of time and resources investment. Moreover, on a stage when a triple-A game can be tested the ability to implement drastic changes is quite low due to the complexity of the project. Thus beta-testing is used mostly for fixing "bugs". Thereby the launch of a complex PC or console game is a point of no return — if the game is bad, it will perform badly on the market and that is how it is going to stay. If to continue to 17 use Assassin's Creed franchise as an example, the launch of AC Unity (Figure 6) demonstrates the described situation. (Byrd 2018.)

Figure 6. Infamous faceless bug in Assassin’s Creed: Unity (2014)

In contrast to AAA industry, F2P mobile games can be “fixed” after the launch. In his book "Free-to-Play, Making Money From Games You Give Away" Will Luton (2013) referred to the process of mobile game development as "Eternal Beta". There is no one-time purchase of the game in F2P, the revenue is generated through in-game purchases and it is logical to assume that the more time a player stays with the game the bigger is the chance of purchase. Retention is one of the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in the mobile game industry. To increase the retention and to encourage players to spend more on the virtual goods, instead of the classic product-oriented approach, developers adopted the "game-as-a- service" philosophy.

In a service-game, the performance is constantly monitored and analysed. The acquired information is used on the different stages of development — from testing the marketability of a game in the pre-production period, to improving different KPIs when a game is available globally. The viability of a game is constantly being confirmed or disproved on all the stages with the main test being the soft-launch — a release of a game with all the essential features (MVP, 18 minimum viable product) for a limited market. Moreover, even the global launch does not mean that there will be no changes. To keep the interest for a game on a profitable level and drive the long-term retention, developers are often using so- called Live Ops — game updates that would include events, promotions, new content, new features, community management and problem management. (Jowsey 2018.)

The acquired data would not be useful, and Live Ops would not be possible without the ability to quickly implement changes into a game. Therefore, flexibility is the requirement for all the processes involved in the development, production and support of a game, including visual development and the making of the in- game art. Flexibility, however, is not the only requirement for the art in video games.

3 ART IN VIDEO GAMES

Being the most apparent part of the final product, art likely plays a significant role in the financial success of the game. However, the correlation between success and the art quality is not direct: not all the top-grossing games have stunning graphics, and not all the “good-looking” games return the investments to their developers.

Over a decade the game in which a world is made of cubes with pixelated textures was steadily growing its player base. According to Business Insider at the beginning of September 2019, Minecraft (Figure 7) reached 112 million monthly active players which fact makes it one of the biggest games in the world. (Gilbert 2019.)

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Figure 7. Minecraft v 1.0 (2011)

In contrast to the apparently rudimentary graphics of Minecraft, the game released by Starbreeze Publishing “Overkill's The Walking Dead” (2018) has a high production value.

Figure 8. Overkill's The Walking Dead (2018)

Despite the visual quality (Figure 8), the game did not perform well on the market which led to financial complications for the publisher and resulted in the stepping down of the CEO of the company, the withdrawal of the game from retail services like Steam and the license revocation by Skybound (license holder). (Valentine 2019.) 20

3.1 Role of the art in video games

In 2008 in his book The Art of Game Design. A Book of Lenses Jesse Schell introduced a so-called Elemental Tetrad (Figure 9) — the analysis of the relationship between different components of a video game.

Figure 9. Elemental Tetrad by Schell J. (2008)

It is apparent from the figure that the author did not perceive the importance of any of the elements as a subject for assessment. On the contrary, all the components are interrelated in a similar manner and differentiate only in their visibility to a player. The final product consumed by the user is not a picture on the wall or a piece of code, or game mechanics laid out in Lego bricks4. The final product is the result of the interaction, mutual support of all the components. A high-quality game should be a seamless experience that does not motivate to argue about the relative importance of different aspects of that experience. (Murnane 2018.)

4 Lego bricks is one of the many ways game designers use to visualise the game logic during development. Colour differentiation and clearly defined units make Lego a versatile tool for representing abstract ideas in the physical form. (Ergomania UX 2017.) 21

The Elemental Tetrad has another detail that requires to be elaborated. The four elements introduced in the graph are technology, mechanics, aesthetics and story. Art or game graphics are not presented as separate components. Even though 63 per cent of the US players in May 2019 named graphics quality as one of the most significant influences of their purchases (Figure 10), often what they actually refer to is game visual aesthetics. (ESA 2019; Extra Credits 2012.) In their video presentation “Graphics vs. Aesthetics - Why High-Resolution Graphics Aren't Enough” authors of the game-development related YouTube channel “Extra Credits” urge the industry, developers and media alike, to be more careful with terms usage as it may results in time and resources being invested into areas that do not necessarily make the final product better or even make it less positively perceived by players. (Extra Credits 2012.) Aesthetics perception plays an important role in the response of a player to a game and rooted deeply in how the human brain operates data.

Figure 10. Top 5 influences for purchase (ESA, 2019)

Human brain perception is a complex phenomenon that was developing for thousands of years. Every second this organ processes an immense amount of information and in order to optimize the resources, it uses certain tools, one of which is stereotypes. (Hinton 2017.) For example, based on the appearance of a 22 person, a device, a robot or a game environment, with the help of our experience, cultural background and education we build expectations on the person's behaviour, device or robot functionality or a game narrative.

In the beginning of the millennium Jenifer Goetz, Aaron Powers and Sara Kiesler released a paper that described their research on the human reaction on different robots’ appearance and their functionality. One of the tendencies authors discovered is a better response to the robots whose appearance was considered as consistent with their function. A similar logic of perception can be observed in human interaction with characters in a virtual environment, and possibly can be extrapolated on all aspects of game aesthetics. (Vinayagamoorthy et al. 2005; Tractinsky et al. 2000.)

Game aesthetics is the aggregate of many aspects such as music and sound effects, colour palette, animation, visual effects, shapes etc. (Niedenthal 2009.) Those are the tools to connect a player with a game, to immerse the player into it no matter how separated from reality the game rules are. A high visual fidelity, which the game graphics are responsible for, may result in better immersion. However, it can also lead to rejection of the game world if the context (the mechanics, the setting or story) is not corresponding well with the high level of realism.

Figure 11. Realistic texture pack cow (Minecraft, 2019) 23

In other words, the degree of realism in graphics must match the degree of realism in all the other aspects of a game. With this consideration, it becomes apparent that the realistic execution of the visuals would not be a perfect solution for games like Minecraft or any other game in which the world rules are somewhat abstract from reality (Figure 11).

The term Affordance that would describe the correlation between the object appearance and its functionality was suggested by two researchers James J. Gibson and Donald Norman. (Soegaard) Even though their perspective on Affordance differ, both Norman and Gibson describe one phenomenon which needs to be taken into consideration while developing an artistic approach for a game. Not only it should be included in visual solutions for specific mechanics of a particular game feature, but also applied to a whole game as one entity. A game should look how it plays and vice versa.

3.2 Art in F2P mobile games

Smartphones and tablets are a particular platform with its limitations and requirements. The following chapter is a result of the semi-structured interviews of developers which were performed to understand the specific role art plays in mobile games and how this platform influences the visual approach. The list of respondents includes:

• Avellar Camilla, game designer at SuperCell; • Karroue Nadia, art director at King; • Marsch Sami, art director at Ministry of Games; • Møller Rasnus, art director at Sybo Games; • Mu Mike, art director at Rovio, previously — art director at EA PopCap China.

All the talks were audio-recorded with the permission of the respondents. The interviews are based on a list of questions regarding the decision-making and visual development processes (see Appendix 1). Each interview also included a free discussion about art in mobile games and its relation to the business model. 24

The respondents were consistent in their description of the role of the art in mobile games. For example, Karroue N. (2019) refers to visuals as the face of the game, and Avellar C. (2019) emphasises the importance of visuals in the first encounter a player has with the product. In F2P, when trying a new game, a player does not make any investments right after the installation. Thus, nothing prevents them from deleting an application except a positive first impression. Art defines the audience and vice versa. Targeting a particular group of potential players is an essential first step in the visual development process. (Karroue 2019.)

The first impression a game makes and its conformity to the TA is active even before a game installation through the marketing and user acquisition materials. At that stage already, the visual approach can help a user to build expectations about the game, to communicate its pace and type. (Karroue 2019.) By assessing the advertisement on social network or a screenshot on the application page in a store, a potential player tries to understand whether the gameplay is enjoyable, is it a hard game or a casual one and will they succeed in it? The consistency of the visuals and the gameplay has an essential role in the UA process: extremely casual style will attract the audience that looks for the casual game experience, and if it is hardcore, they will quit. At the same time, those who might appreciate hardcore gameplay might not be attracted by a casual visual approach. (Marsch 2019.)

Audience and the market dictate certain tendencies; for example, colourful and cartoony art tend to sell better. (Marsch 2019.) Nonetheless, the saturated market demands uniqueness, an art approach or gameplay that would help the final product to stand out. (Karroue 2019.) On the other hand, when working on an already established IP, preserving an original product appeal becomes a priority. (Avellar 2019; Mu 2019.)

The target audience can define the theme of the game, and in combination with the gameplay itself, it builds a robust framework for visual development. (Marsch 25

2019.) "The [core] game dictates [..] the amount of detail that you want to put in, the relationship between the colours, shape language." (Karroue 2019.) Art should effectively deliver the game's functionality and provide with clear feedback. Avellar C. (2019) emphasises the role of the perceived affordance "People won't read. [...] It needs to be in the art, it needs to be in the [G]UI."

Scaling up the player base is not possible with UA alone. Retention is one of the most critical factors in the effective building of a substantial audience. Art can address this need by helping a player to build an emotional attachment to certain aspects of a game. For example, in some games, characters seem to be purely decorative. Nonetheless, they are someone a player can relate to and become more motivated to come back. (Karroue 2019.) Relatability can be achieved not only through characters, but also familiar places or places a player wants to visit. With limited storytelling capabilities in F2P games, character, environment and props design are an opportunity to implement a narrative, improving user's engagement with the game and strengthening the emotional connection. (Møller 2019.)

The content updates are one more tool to augment the retention along with monetisation. To drive the replayability factor developers in F2P business are in a constant loop of implementing new assets, levels, themes and events in their products. (Møller 2019.) The art pipeline needs to support update creation and implementation; the team skill set has to correspond to the pipeline and vice versa (Marsch 2019). Monetisation is also directly influenced by the art approach; the perceived value of any IAP depends on the visual solution for this particular virtual good and can be improved by making the asset to look special. (Avellar 2019.)

As it follows from the interviews, the role of the art in F2P mobile games is not abstract. Art has clearly defined functions on all the stages of the game development and support. It acts as an efficient tool to acquire, engage, retain and monetisse.

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4 CASE STUDY OF THE ANGRY BIRDS DREAM BLAST

4.1 Introduction

The author of this paper had a game artist position in the team that developed the Angry Birds Dream Blast (Dream Blast) (Figure 12; Figure 13). The experience acquired on this project served as a motivation in choosing the topic for this research and will be used in the following case study. In order for the study to be more objective, the author also interviewed Lauri Lahdensuo, the project lead on Dream Blast.

Figure 12. Visual Target of AB Dream Blast. Lugovoy, I., Adams, J., Naas, J. (Rovio 2018)

Angry Birds Dream Blast is a Match-35 genre mobile game released globally by Rovio Entertainment in January 2019. The Match-3 market is quite saturated with one to three games of that genre often being in the top ten best grossing games worldwide. In Finland alone, there are at least two big titles with Match-3 core - Empires and Puzzles and Best Fiends. Moreover, Rovio Entertainment has two puzzles of that type in its portfolio. High density on the market of games of similar

5 *Match-3 is a sub-genre of puzzle games with the core mechanics built around matching a minimum of three adjacent figures of the same colour, for example, Candy Crush Saga by King is one of the most famous Match-3 games. 27 genre leads to intense competition, which on first glance, does not seem to be ideal for a business case.

Figure 13. Various assets created for Angry Birds Dream Blast, Lugovoy, I. (Rovio 2018)

In 2018 the puzzle category generated approximately $3,8 billion revenue which is 60 per cent of the Casual Games market section - the second most significant section of the whole mobile game market. Furthermore, the match and blast types of games were responsible for $3,035 billion of the generated revenue. The main idea displayed by those figures is the scale of the market. In the year 2017, the Match-3 demonstrated an intense growth which was slightly more modest in 2018, although the positive dynamics is still a tendency in this category of games which encourages a significant number of developers. (Katkoff 2019.)

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4.2 Art Direction approach in Angry Birds Dream Blast

This chapter is based on the information provided by Lahdensuo, all the quotes and statements are taken from the interview performed by the author in October 2019. Intensive market growth and attractive distribution of the revenue in this sector were a promising setting. However, the main reason for Dream Blast production was the creation of unique core gameplay. Dream Blast was made on a base of the Garden Blast (Figure 14), the physics-based tap-to-clear game with a promising retention profile it demonstrated during the soft-launch.

Figure 14. Garden Blast screenshots (Rovio 2018)

The art direction had to support unique gameplay. Perceived affordance and readability were the central reference point during the work on the Dream Blast visuals. To effectively deliver the game mechanics, the team decided to work with a simplistic cutout style (Figure 15), which augments the contrast between interactive gameplay elements and the background. Besides the apparent advantage it provides for the playability, an easy-to-read visual solution for the core gameplay positively influence the efficiency of the marketing and UA material.

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Another aspect that positively influenced the marketability of the game was thematic inclusivity. The “Dream” theme was generic enough to appeal to a large audience and specific enough for the art team to generate a significant number of visuals. Moreover, the "Dream" framework provided the artists with creative flexibility, allowing them to implement new sub-themes with minimum friction, reducing the production time.

Figure 15. Angry Birds Dream Blast screenshots (Rovio 2019)

The decision to make the Dream Blast as a part of the Angry Birds brand was based on the assumption that the brand has "wide appeal". "We get quite a bit more organic traffic for the brand, so it is cheaper for us to get new users to our game." And even though it did not attract the targeted audience on the expected level, this choice helped to scale the game well enough for it to become the second-best in Rovio's portfolio in terms of revenue.

The Angry Birds brand organically fit the gameplay with three recognisable characters in the main "flock" — Red, Chuck and Bomb. Using "cute" animated birds in the core gameplay helped with stronger emotional feedback as “activating” them in a playthrough was rewarding by itself. Moreover, the unique 30 style of the characters' execution helped to differentiate it from the other games in Rovio's Portfolio, preventing the internal cannibalization. (Lahdensuo 2019.)

Angry Birds Dream Blast is one of the most successful recent additions to the company's portfolio. This achievement is a result of careful market analysis, unique gameplay supported by the unique art style, solid marketability due to the high brand awareness, thematic inclusivity and clear gameplay. Additionally, appealing and interactive characters improved the emotional connection and helped with the game differentiation within the company portfolio. 31

5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The purpose of this thesis was to explore the area between business and art sides of the mobile game development. The topic of the study proved to be rather broad, and initial idea to combine different research methods appeared to be correct. Literature study, case study and semi-structured interviews — all helped to acquire enough of various data for the analysis and resulted in the following conclusion.

F2P business model in mobile games does not have a straight influence on the art direction. Many findings of this research are applicable to the visual development of premium games as well. Nonetheless, this model has specific requirements for the design and technological base of the game itself through that influencing the decision-making process in visual development. This influence usually manifests in the form of codependencies described below.

Large player base — mass appeal

Marketability has the most substantial influence on artistic decisions. In Premium or pay-to-play games, the conversion rate (the ratio of players that spend money in a game) is close to 100 per cent, since one has to purchase a game before playing it. The F2P model conversion rate is sometimes lower than 1 per cent. Thus, to increase the revenue, the developers are pushed to monetise aggressively (which is rarely positively perceived by players) or to scale the number of players to a degree when 1 per cent becomes a towering figure. The need to engage with a massive audience makes a mass appeal, or high marketability a critical requirement for a F2P game.

User Acquisition — unique look, virality, unique established IP, coherence and perceived affordance

Several aspects are affecting the productiveness of the process of building the player base. First, the modern mobile game market is very saturated, which makes it challenging to stand out. In addition to high competition, a significant supply of games of a similar look and style increases the CPI, negatively affecting the capability of paid user acquisition. A unique, or better, innovative approach to a visual part of a game can improve the ability of a game to stand out on the 32 market and lower the CPI. Second, Pop-culture references, modern trends or high awareness brand usage may improve the virality factor of the game, which will increase the organic user traffic and lower the amount of investment required to scale the player base to a certain level. Third, while assessing an advertisement for a game, a potential player builds expectations about the experience it provides. Gameplay readability and affordance are effective already at that stage, convincing a user that the game is enjoyable and can be succeeded at. The impression from advertisement coherent to the experience the game provides results in a positive short-term retention tendency.

Data-driven industry and content dependency — flexibility and feasibility

A strong monetisation driver in F2P model is content updates. The developers are continually releasing new events to pass, characters to unlock and items to purchase. To be able to produce many game assets consistently, the art direction has to be based on a feasible pipeline, which has to take into consideration the technical complexity of the production and the team skills limitations and velocity. Another feature of the F2P model that requires a flexible and feasible approach to art production is the data-driven aspect of the business. Sometimes players may reject specific visuals in the game, and when data analysis reveals the flaw art team must be able to change the assets quickly.

Gameplay — affordance and visual language consistency

The positive influence of shorter play sessions on the long-term retention pushes developers to create designs based on short game loops. Mobile core loops are the gameplay concentrated, which results in higher requirements for the perceived affordance and consistency of the visual language. A player learns to play the game, and the very reason for "fun" is "mastering" its logic, observing an increasing rate of successful decisions. An abrupt change of this logic or design language would nullify newly acquired skills and may be perceived as an "unfair" behaviour of the game.

Monetisation— UX and GUI, Monetisation — value delivery

The game UX flow has to be free of obstacles, and the user’s purchase experience has to be fluent. The in-game store requires visibility and 33 accessibility. UI graphics can augment the UX design or render it completely ineffective. One more aspect influencing the monetisation is the perceived value of the IAP. Virtual goods do not have worth outside a game which creates the challenge to support an idea of the value in general and comparative value between in-game currencies and resources.

Platform limitation — feasibility and readability

With platform limitations such as small screen size and lower computing power, the requirements to readability, design clarity, level of details become stricter. Effective art direction has aesthetics as a reference point, aiming for high perceived production value, and at the same time, it takes into consideration the technical feasibility of the project.

Some difficulties occurred during the work on this paper. The first complication was a result of an incorrect assessment of the necessary scale of the research. This thesis explores a rather broad area and as a consequence, only touches some aspects that require a deeper study. The significant challenge during the work on this paper was data acquisition from aggregators like App Annie, Sensor Tower, NewZoo et cetera. Even though there is a number of reports available on their public sections of websites, getting data that would help to analyse a specific tendency is not possible outside of the paid services those aggregators provide to different companies. It would be beneficial both for the educational institutions in Finland and the Finnish game industry if those services were somehow available for academic researches.

Nonetheless, the information and findings laid out in this work might serve as a good overview of the art position in the mobile game business. It can provide with an initial understanding of the topic and suggest directions for further researches. As mentioned, some of the aspects of the topic in question were explored superficially. Thus, there are many opportunities for further studies. For example, It would be quite educative to perform a large-scale qualitative study similar to the research delivered by Jenifer Goetz, Aaron Powers and Sara Kiesler. However, instead of robots, the subject of the potential survey would be games with different look and mechanics. It would be interesting to learn how strongly the user response relies on their cultural and educational background, how the 34 previous exposure to games influences their perception of a game visual execution. The modern game business approach relies on innovations, but the increments of the changes are rather small. A more robust way to assess the potential commercial success of a new game mechanics in combination with a visual approach might result in more original games on the market. 35

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Appendix 1/1 LIST OF QUESTIONS FOR THE SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS

1. Introduction (position, company, projects, experience) 2. What is the genre of your latest project? 3. On which basis the decision-making process in your company is built? How do you conclude that a certain game has to go into development? 4. As an art director or a lead on a project, what was the main task or brief you’ve set up for yourself why working on a project? 5. What is your primary in-app product/source of monetisation in that game? 6. How big is the role of paid UA in this project, and how big is your organic traffic? 7. Which aspect of game development had the most substantial influence on the art direction? 8. What your art decisions were based on? 9. If the project you are working on would be a premium game, would you do something differently? 10. Does F2P with IAP model influence visual development?