Introduction

Intro: Welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook in association with Liftoff. Join us as we uncover the latest trends in user acquisition, monetization, and mobile game design.

Jon Jordan: Welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. This is a podcast all about what makes a great mobile game, what is and isn’t working for mobile game designers, and all of the latest trends. I’m your host, Jon Jordan. Generally, we are talking all about mobile games, GameRefinery, and the great tools that it provides for analyzing what’s going on in the mobile game space…

But in today’s episode, there’s a brand-new platform in town, AppRefinery. So what do you think we’re going to talk about today? Thankfully, we have two experts who will tell us what is going on. One needs no introduction: Kalle Heikkinen, Senior Chief Market Analyst at Liftoff. How’s it going?

Kalle Heikkinen: I’m ok. How about you, Jon?

Jon Jordan: Yeah. Not bad. And, first time on. So, very pleased to have Brendan Fraher, the General Manager at Liftoff Intelligence. How’s it going, Brendan?

Brendan Fraher: Great to be here, Jon.

Vision behind AppRefinery

Jon Jordan: Okay, so we’re gonna start with Brendan. So what’s the vision for AppRefinery?

Brendan Fraher: It’s no secret that the app space is evolving quickly, right?

Because the mobile audience is more sophisticated and some could say trained to expect more, and even if you look at gaming where it was three to four years ago, if you look at a Match 3 games, then to one now, this is where apps are headed. But of course, the timeline is different because games have already evolved.

The audiences are the same, right? You can’t just say there’s a gaming or app audience. It’s just people who use their phones. Like you just spend your time doing different things. And of course, that’s the battlefield, right? The engagement battlefield.

You know, am I spending 10 minutes on Candy Crush, or am I like on Tinder, or am I on let’s say DoorDash or am I on this or on that? As you can imagine, it’s not like you know, you’re just picking something up to use. Well, there are 10 Tinders or 20 booking dot coms and stuff like that, right?

So, with that, the competition is very, very tough. Innovation, as always, is expensive. Developers want to give the market what it wants at this point in time. Which we know, let’s say, is very much a moving target. Fashion moves very, very, very, very quickly.

As leaders in the gaming space for many years, we’ve seen those growth stages, right? It’s easy for us to bring that value to developers, as they say. We know the space. It’s been natural to bring our expertise and our insights to the consumer app space because that’s where the need is now.

Apps vs. Games: Overlapping behaviours

Jon Jordan: No, it’s an interesting, off-the-menu sort of thing. So an opportunity or tech opportunity comes along. Games are always one of the first things that quite quickly got into monetization, but maybe they’re not so bothered about monetization as some other apps.

But it obviously, as you say, makes sense. So games rush ahead, and then apps, you know, learn something from it, and maybe they learn from some of the mistakes that games have made. And, as you say, there’s a similarity in terms of usage, but using a banking app is quite different from a game.

Ok, Kalle, you’re currently straddling both of these fields. So as an overview, what sort of things are you seeing here, what insightful things are you seeing that are similar to games or, on consumer apps? What’s different?

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, definitely. I would echo what Brendan said about games doing these things for a longer time. And this is now the time for apps, too. One thing that we are seeing is the emergence of social features in the app space.

It’s not only social media apps that want to engage users with social features; we are seeing social getting all over different app verticals. And just to give one interesting example that can obviously be found on the Refinery platform, the number one iGaming Platform is DraftKings.

They do very interesting things when it comes to social media, and they’re really unique as well in that regard. For example, they have this social feed feature called Bet Feed, where users can see what other users are betting on. This definitely adds that visibility and social proof to betting.

Then, they also have betting groups. Users can join, create, and share their bigs in these betting groups, which really creates a community within the app.

The pools feature is all about these kinds of prediction pools, where users can join different types of contests and compete with friends or the broader community.

Because in the end, if you think about betting, it is like a solo experience by default. So you are, well, you can say that you’re competing against yourself, but still, it’s something you do often on your own.

Adding these different social layers just makes engaging with an iGaming platform that much more interesting.

Social features in non-gaming apps

Jon Jordan: And in terms of using apps, it’s a very broad term. I mean, obviously, I guess there’s this thing where you need them to be a tight enough category that it makes sense to analyze them as a category.

But you may want it wide enough as well, so you can have enough analysis. So, in a very broad sense, how many categories do you have? How do you look at the app space? Obviously, there are a lot of different sub-genres in the game space, and often, in the podcast, we get very locked down into different types of RPGs or something.

So even within games as a single category, there’s loads of differentiations. How do you handle that from the app point of view?

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, that’s a very good question. The app space has different kinds of genres or verticals; you have the finance apps, productivity apps, fitness apps, and so forth. But, in the app space, it’s not that rigid sense of what kind of features or experience you can expect in an app.
Generally speaking, the potential audience you can serve with apps in general is much broader than when it comes to game genres. If you think about certain core or midcore game genres, they’re definitely trying to, or most likely are, resonating with very specific player audiences. So it’s the app genres and verticals that we’re dealing with in the app space.

Jon Jordan: And I guess another way of looking at the whole app category here is not necessarily looking at the app, but looking at the motivation of how people use apps and the behavior of users in the app rather than what the app actually does.
Because that is another way of looking at these situations, is that a helpful way of looking at apps, or am I just coming up with something clever that is actually not very clever?

Kalle Heikkinen: Definitely, and that’s why we have developed our own motivations model for the non-gaming app space. Longtime GameRefinery fans remember that we do have motivational data for GameRefinery, so we wanted to bring that to AppRefinery as well. The goal is to help developers and marketers understand the why behind user behavior.

We break it down to several key motivations. I’m not gonna list all of them here, but they include things like achievement and sense of achievement, entertainment, social validation, and convenience.

With that, our clients, no matter if you are product-focused or marketing-focused, get to know what really motivates users. So, if you are on the product side of things, you get to build features that meet those specific needs.

If you’re doing a fitness app, it might be that our motivation data says that focusing on achievement and self-improvement can be something that could potentially work out for you.

It helps you create better features that are more aligned with your audience. On the marketing and UA side, you get to target the right users, which is, of course, very important. Understanding what motivations your ideal users are driven by is also very important.

We can help with that. So you get to target them with ads that speak to their needs. Let’s say again, like I mentioned, the fitness app might be that achievement showing content related to achievement could work, for example, or if you have a crypto app, it might be that competitive features could be something that could really resonate with your user base.

Brendan Fraher: And what’s really interesting about this is that all of these trends change. For example, as Kalle said, you’ve got the achievements, in fitness, because of course, you have those goals and stuff like that.

But then, if you marry it with a social system, you can’t just say social system. It has to be, well, how does it work? How do you interface? How are you doing? How are your tasks communicated? And stuff like that.

That can also provide a secondary or third motivator. We’ve heard it from some of the developers who say that one of our competitors has the same app, but the reviews weren’t strong. Why is it so good now?

Right. And they don’t understand. It’s because how they’re interfacing with that main motivator is what’s mainly interesting for the audience at this particular time. As we know, 12 months ago could have been different. 12 months in the future can be, and it’s definitely going to be different.

Jon Jordan: It’s interesting. You mentioned the social aspects a few times already, and it doesn’t work for every app, but, you know, actual searchability is more interesting than it seems to be. Coming from all sorts of fitness apps, it makes sense, and Strava, that sort of thing. And you say sort of gambling stuff, but also in banking now, where people are sending money and splitting bills.

That may not have predominantly come from gaming, but gaming has certainly shown a lot about it. I guess gaming had to go through a bit of its own phase of everything being a single-player game, and then realise that suddenly, your retention suddenly gets really good when it’s engaged and social.

And then, you know, when you’re doing that in a banking app, that’s even more powerful because you are not just moving points around; you’re doing real-world money things. So I guess those sorts of insights are also something that you’re looking to bring to the surface for people.

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah. In the non-gaming app space, I would add that this applies to many other feature categories, but also to social, in that it can be something surprisingly small that can be the first step. Take, for example, Airbnb. I don’t know if you’ve checked out the app recently, but nowadays, they have collaborative planning tools for your trips, which you can use to share the trip with your family members or friends and then make notes. You can like each other’s picks for the location to go to and stuff like that.

Jon Jordan: And maybe I’m going too far. I generally do, but you can see some aspects of lots of things not becoming everything apps, but there’s a sort of, I think we’re at the stage now, but lots of apps sort of wanna try more things.

As you say, like Airbnb sort of makes total sense for some of those aspects. You can sort of see how there’s, you know, there is interesting hooks for all these different apps and obviously not use all of them, but there is a sort of a movement to sort of have as much activity and as much sort of social aspects in your app as as possible.

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah. And it’s like you can nowadays find engagement features and even very game-like features in very surprising places. So if you think about the AliExpress app?

They have like complete mini game ecosystems built into the app so that people have just that much more things to interact with and engage with, in the app, in order to make that even more relevant for the users of the app. So yeah, certain apps are definitely expanding their kind of, engagement scope.

Gamification, engagement, and retention systems

Jon Jordan: I mean, obviously a key engagement thing we talk about is stuff like daily rewards and logins and streaks—that has some use, too. Although you probably don’t necessarily want streaks in a banking app. That doesn’t really make sense…

Kalle Heikkinen: I’m actually gonna disagree with that.

If we think about the very traditional banking apps that are very much utility-based, that you just use to pay your bills and stuff like that—you can make that argument that people just want to pay the bills there.

But, especially when it comes to this more like FinTech side and crypto apps, we see a lot of interesting engagement layers being put into place.

So just to throw in one example, Crypto.com, which is obviously one of the leading exchanges and platforms in this space. They have very elaborate engagement systems in place, including different kinds of task systems for daily tasks, for feature exploration, for onboarding.

The goal is to get people to log in daily to the crypto app, because many users are not going to make transactions every day.

So you have that another layer to incentivize you to come in and you have badges and achievements and yes, those streak systems that you mentioned as well actually nowadays.

So every day you log in, you get this in-game currency, diamonds, and then there is a specific store where you can use that currency to exchange it for various in-app rewards.

Brendan Fraher: But we have seen there are good ways and there are bad ways of doing it, right? I mean, it’s very easy to over-egg.

So I would say, Jon, you’re maybe showing your age now with the daily login bonus.

Like, maybe that’s like—we’re even thinking that’s maybe like a little bit in the past, right? Now there’s eight different engagement systems, right?

But there’s also, is there too much? And again, this is the reason, if we go back to AppRefinery, this is what good looks like, right?

And when we say, if there are top-performing apps, or if they’re coming up, the question is, why are they doing it right? Like, why are they engaging more? Are they—you know, it is like retention. And it’s like, what are they doing? So you can see what does good look like, which I think is the important thing here.

So I would say most people—the question is like, after “should we do it,” then it’s “how should we do it?” And then kind of understanding, because I know that Kalle and his team, when they’ve been analyzing things, they’ve seen some pretty bad ways of doing it, but then maybe other ways, which kind of like—you lose kind of the core, like in the soup and stuff.

Jon Jordan: So I guess you’re looking at your competitors and seeing what they’re doing or why is this app suddenly doing really well, and AppRefinery gives you those tools to see what’s going on—some of the features that an app may have added recently—and then it’s a case of drilling down and seeing why is it working?

Brendan Fraher: And then another way of looking at it, and this is what we would always advise people, is that just don’t look in, let’s say, that lane—just don’t look in, let’s say, that category and so on.

Going to, let’s say what Kalle was saying earlier about the motivational drivers, right? If other categories share those similar ones, well what are they doing?

So even if we go back to gaming, it’s like even a couple of years ago, right, where you had Match 3 and then you had slot games, right?

But it’s the same audience, you know, it was like—what was it—35 and over women was the majority.

And then in Match 3, they love collections, right? Well, six months later, all of the main slot games had them because that’s what their audience wanted.

Two completely different, let’s say, gaming experiences, shared audience, and of course the ones that were giving the market what it is that they want.

And again, I would say when people say, “yeah, but that’s gaming,” it’s like, no—that’s giving the audience what it wants. Understand who the audience are first.

Kalle Heikkinen: Just to double down on that—we have, for example, one client, and we asked them that, okay, which competitor apps are you interested in us analyzing?

And none of the apps that they listed that they were interested in were in the vertical or the genre that they operated in. So they were very much interested in exploring ideas from other genres.

So I think that is a very anecdotal example of that.

Brendan Fraher: But it’s definitely some advice for, let’s say, for developers—especially in the consumer app space.

Don’t just look to your closest competitors. It’s like, best of breed is always best of breed.

AppRefinery for UA & targeting

Jon Jordan: I guess that’s sort of talking a little bit about the sort of product side and maybe adding features or maybe taking features out.

You sort of mentioned it a little bit in passing that, you know, another key reason why you might use this is user acquisition and stuff like that.

So, can you talk a little bit about how you think AppRefinery’s gonna help people deal with that key element of getting users?

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, I think the major component is motivations data and how you can leverage that to find the right kind of users by exploring what kind of app elements you could use in your ad creatives in order to resonate with the audience that you are targeting.

So the motivations data is very helpful in that regard. So that’s definitely the key aspect. And then that’s of course related to the product side as well.

So if you are noticing that your audience is motivated by certain aspects, then of course it begs the question of should we build more on the product side also, to answer this kind of demand for, let’s say that it’s social motivations. Should we have more social features or social content in our app for our users?

Brendan Fraher: And on the UA side—’cause of course, as you know, Liftoff Intelligence is part of Liftoff where we’ve got a pretty heavy user acquisition core.

And then I’m sure everyone’s heard the joke—you know, we waste 50% of our marketing budget, but we don’t know what 50%, right?

‘Cause we know it’s a lot of it. Like, if we just put money in, we get users. But if we have directionality on what motivates them, it’s not that we would say it, it’s like—just as Kalle was saying—we have motivational drivers based on what the features have, on the actual apps, and if this is what the audience says that they like, and then you build creatives that are informed by those major motivators already, you’re really narrowing it down to sort of less of the shotgun approach.

Jon Jordan: We’ve had a lot in games where people invented ads that would be nothing to do with the games, and then people liked that gameplay so much they ended up adding those mini games into their games and their games ended up becoming what the ads were in the first place.

You probably won’t deal with that in your banking app, but it’s sort of interesting, isn’t it? It goes back to what you’ve been saying about—there’s things like ads and features that maybe competitors are using, but that’s sort of giving you some behavioral guidance in what consumers want that maybe you didn’t think they wanted or maybe you didn’t wanna give it to them for some reason.

Brendan Fraher: Or that you didn’t realize that they were already exposed to this for many years. Or that, as Kalle was speaking about on crypto, they’ve already had this sort of interaction with it. It’s like, yeah, I know what it is to buy a currency pass.

I know what it is to do and so on, right? So you’re not inventing anything new because they’re already exposed to it.

Jon Jordan: That goes back to what you’re saying about looking wider than just your own single category. ‘Cause there may be some big, enormous sort of features dropped into a category that seems nothing at all to do with what you are up to, but that’s what everyone’s doing now.

And if you don’t have some awareness of what’s going on in the wider app space, then you are flying blind in terms of your own development.

Brendan Fraher: Yeah. And it goes back to, as I said, my first point, which is: innovation is expensive.

So, why not look to what the market says that they like? That doesn’t mean you need to copy or anything like that, but you can—it’s okay to be heavily influenced and sort of say, okay, this is the foundation, this is what they want, and then this part, we’re going to innovate and be like, you know, what our main, let’s say, USP is.

Roadmap, AI, and future insights

Jon Jordan: I dunno if there’s any sort of anecdotal feedback you got when people started using AppRefinery. Is there anything obvious that a lot of people have been saying about what it gives them?

Brendan Fraher: Yeah, so I guess we go back to the same point, which was understanding what the wider space is actually doing.

Understanding that, yes, gamification—I know everyone was rolling their eyes—no, it’s not a game and stuff like that, right?

But I guess the other word would be, it’s like, you know, better user engagement. Right?

And understanding that actual fact that, you know, we have, let’s say like a fitness app. You know, we’ve got lots of 20 to 30 males on it. It’s like, well, when they’re on their phones, this is what they enjoy doing.

We like being part of a guild. And we like to be in battle with this guild, right? But in fact, it’s just online.

People are using their sports app, and this is what we’re doing and stuff. But all of those different systems—they’ve already been worked on by these billion-dollar companies.

They’ve really finessed them and so on, and then you can literally just take that.

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah. And we’re really in a unique position in the sense that we have the GameRefinery platform and we have all the data and the content that we’ve been putting there for the last 10 years.

So there’s a lot of inspiration that can be drawn from the other platforms and vice versa, as well.

So we’ve already had cases where our gaming clients have been very interested in knowing more about the non-gaming app space as well.

Brendan Fraher: Yeah. And for good reason, because that’s their audience’s time.

So, for example, it’s like just you were saying Jon, it’s like, you know, I’m using my banking app, I just go there, right? Yeah.

But now maybe, okay, I’m gonna buy, I’m gonna, you know, like, you know, do some crypto or whatever. But as Kalle said, yeah, I’m now spending 25 minutes, let’s say, on my train journey, ’cause it’s so engaging.

You know, that can be revenue loss and time loss for those games.

Jon Jordan: It’s funny where you say gamification, which is a term that sort of everyone always apologizes for using or sort of grimaces when they say, but I guess sort of what you’re saying here is it’s not even worth using that term.

‘Cause everything has been gamified—you know, games are now so wide that it’s sort of like, it’s like everything’s been unified.

It’s just that’s how you interact with mobile apps. The fact it’s sort of come from games is somewhat irrelevant, I suppose.

Okay, so that all sounds good. Obviously the final question is always when you’ve explained something that’s new and fantastic and everyone should look at and then the question’s always: so, what else are you doing?

So I dunno if that’s a very sort of impolite question, having you explain what all these new tools are. But have you got anything you can talk about sort of the roadmap for AppRefinery going forward and things you have planned?

Brendan Fraher: Yeah. Well, there’s definitely one thing, and I guess it kind of joins everything that we’ve been talking about earlier, right?

Which is gonna be the mobile audience web. So yes, we have the gaming motivators, we have the consumer app motivators—you know, there’s the apps, there’s the features and so on, right?

But maybe towards the end of this year, start of next year, it’s like, well, what could that mobile user be? Doesn’t mean gaming, doesn’t mean apps, because of course, as we’re saying, that’s the competition.

It’s the competition for the audience’s time. So that’s something which insights we will have in the future.

And of course, surfacing insights easier. Right? You know, it’s like, I always find it amusing that the number one interface that people like now is a GPT-style text box, right? That’s what people want at the moment.

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, if Jon, you would’ve asked us what are the current non-gaming app trends, I think different kinds of AI-related features would’ve been quite on top of my list.

But yeah, to Brendan, I would only add one thing, which is that a lot of folks are very interested in getting retention analysis

So like analysis on the notification side and email—retention emails, re-engagement email side.

So we’re definitely looking into having something on that on the platform as well.

Jon Jordan: Good. Everyone should go and check out AppRefinery and add it to your GameRefinery skills and put the two together and see what cool stuff you come up with. Thanks very much to Kalle, and thanks so much to Brendan for their expertise. Thank you.

And thanks to you for watching, listening, however you are consuming the podcast. Remember every episode we are talking about what’s going on in the world of mobile gaming and maybe, in future episodes, what’s going on in the world of mobile apps as well.

So we’re covering everything. Don’t miss out. Do subscribe, and we will see you next time!

Introduction

Jon Jordan (00:03.502)

Hello and welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. This is a podcast all about what makes a great mobile game, what is and isn’t working for mobile game designers and all of the latest trends. I’m your host, John Jordan and joining me today, we have two experts. So we have Teemu Palomäki, a senior games analyst at Game Refinery by Liftoff. How’s it going, Teemu?

Teemu Palomäki (00:23.732)

Doing great, great to be here.

Jon Jordan (00:27.309)

Good, good. Also joining us, we have Sonja Skoglund, who is a game analyst at Game Refunded by Liftoff. How’s it going, Sonja?

Sonja Skoglund (00:34.503)

Very excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jon Jordan (00:37.453)

Good good. The reason we have you two in particular is you are experts on the Japanese games market, which is useful because that’s exactly what we’re talking about today. So I guess Japanese mobile games often appear in podcasts. I don’t think we’ve done an episode on it for a while. I guess it’s interesting because it is one of the larger sort of games markets in terms of sort of economics and also, a lot of innovation has clearly happened there, it was actually one of the first sort of big mobile games markets. And also, culturally, it’s quite interesting because there are some things that really appeal to the Japanese market, which obviously appeal globally, and some things which appeal to the Japanese market, which don’t appeal anywhere else in the world. So quite interesting from various points of view, which we will discuss. Teemu, are you going to kick us off with a sort of high-level approach? What are the specific things that Japanese mobile gamers sort of really like? What characterizes that market?

Japanese mobile gaming preferences

Teemu Palomäki (01:35.668)

Well, if we look at genres, for example, one thing that we’ve recently talked a lot about is how there is the location-based trend, which is on a totally different level than in Western markets, especially compared to the U.S. So, like in Japan, we have more variety in location-based gaming. There is obviously Pokemon Go, which is the, sort of ultimate brand there. But they also have Dragon Quest Walk for those who like turn-based RPGs or older legacy RPG brands. Pikmin Bloom for casual audiences actually made its first appearance in the top 50 this month as we’re recording it. So that’s also going up there. They even have like 4X location-based game with Nobunaga’s Ambition and Monster Hunter Now that we have here, an action RPG. And there’s also like Eki Memo, you can collect those girls who are also like based on train designs. So there’s a lot of variety, and I think there’s innovation coming up with Kingdom Hearts Missing Link coming there. I think it’s going to have some sort of location-based gaming, but they are hinting that you could also move around the world from the comfort of your home. It’s so interesting to see how that turns out. So that’s one that is massively different from the U.S., but also, like RPGs, the popularity of RPGs. It’s like almost half of the top games in the market are RPGs. And you see sort of they have a lot of anime-based or game-based RPGs there. And if not the like brand actually being from an anime, they have a lot of collaborations with different brands to buff off the RPGs. But then we see also sports. Much more of those sports titles popping up in top 200 compared to the West. Sports based on animes or like cartoony approach, sort of this arcade approach. They can go really crazy. If you’ve ever seen Captain Tsubasa, the way they play soccer is really over-the-top moves. Same with sort of Prince of Tennis or Haikyuu!! for volleyball. So we’ve probably mentioned a couple of times Uma Musume, a game where girls are racing horses and they’re competing, running around the track. So it’s really… Those genres, for example, are really popular. And I think Sonja can maybe elaborate more about like idols and rhythm games as well.

Rhythm and idol games in Japan

Sonja Skoglund (04:58.087)

Yeah, those are, you mentioned, rhythm games and idol games, so-called. Those are two other genres that really do a lot better or exist in a much larger space in the Japanese market than in the Western markets. And well, I think it’s quite common knowledge that rhythm games are on a very different level, the popularity in East Asia in general, but especially in Japan, there’s a long history of rhythm games in the game arcades. And there’s also, they’ve come a long way from just those Dance Dance Revolution, small arrows, and there’s a lot of innovation in the core gameplay there. And then there’s these so-called idol games. There are actually sort of two types, and one is this idol management sort of game where you collect a group of, well, idols, which are like celebrities who are very purposefully produced for business purposes, and people create huge fan bases for these idol groups. So there are idol management games where you collect these idols and then train them in these training programs inside the game. And then there are usually some interactive story elements embedded also. So that’s one type. Then, the other one is actually rhythm games and idol games combined, where you get to enjoy being a fan of these idol groups while actually playing a rhythm game. That’s where the music is taken from the idols’ real-life produced music. And then there are some games that have a whole group of idols, which are completely fictional and not based on any real-life celebrities. So, just for the game series, they created these completely fictional idols and produced music just for the game, and then you can play it inside the game. And this actually interestingly ties back to the sports category a little bit with Uma Musume. And I know we’ve talked about Uma Musume, but it’s a very interesting, very Japanese combination of a lot of things because it is an idol game in a sense, where you manage these girls that are horses but are basically idols. And then there’s the sports aspect. And they also have these concerts. So it also ties back to music games. So that’s a really interesting game to highlight.

Cultural influences in Japanese games and Japanese mobile gaming culture

Jon Jordan (08:12.237)

Yeah, I’m not sure how to unpick all that stuff there. One thing I will say is is something’s getting confusing when you’re saying idol games. It’s that’s I D O L as in an idol game, something of a character you worship rather than rather than often we talk about idle games. I D L E, which are games where you just let the game happen, which are quite popular in the West. But I guess you could have an idle game about idol characters. That would maybe be much too much. But yeah, good. So it’s a good introduction. And I guess what you said there shows, you know, on multiple levels just how different, even in terms of genres, the Japanese sort of market is and so many things to unpick. It’s really interesting that location-based games, so many location-based games have been tried with the biggest brands in the West, Harry Potter [Wizards Unite], I guess being a good example. They just haven’t worked. Whereas in Japan, for various reasons that we can sort of discuss, you have already mentioned half a dozen thereof I guess they’re not Pokemon Go success stories, but they are, you know, they are successful sort of games. Did you think that the fact that, you know, Japanese society is so based on sort of manga and anime, and it’s, and the majority, so the majority of the games will sort of be viewed through that lens. I mean, are there any games, successful games that sort of come to mind that aren’t sort of an anime type game? I mean, are there, do they have the Call of Duty’s or, you know, those sorts of things? Or does that just really not appeal to the Japanese audience?

Teemu Palomäki (09:45.428)

I think there’s room for those games as well. We see games that are popular in the West also be popular in Japan. But I think it’s quite safe to say that if people are making a game with the Japanese market in mind, it’s going to be manga, anime, at least sort of influenced by it heavily. So sort of having that cartoony approach and even like, you know, when you watch an anime you can tell those character archetypes that are there. There are massive fans for specific types of characters, so you want to have those archetypes even though they seem like a cliche. People are really looking forward to specific types of characters. Some people are really into these tsundere characters who sort of look like they don’t like you at all, they hate you, but then kind of like when you get to know them, they might be a little bit shy about it and kind of like you. And so you have these different types of characters and archetypes that people really love, and it shows.

Jon Jordan (11:15.245)

And I guess it’s sort of hard for… I mean, I’m not an expert at all on Japanese culture, but obviously, I haven’t been in games for a while. But I think it’s probably hard to over-emphasize just how the whole of Japanese culture is driven by manga and anime as fundamental to the whole society, no matter whether you’re a kid or an adult in Japan. Even if you’d probably… I’m sure there are lots of people in Japan who don’t like… who don’t read anime books. But it’s just part of the culture in a way that we just don’t have in the West, whereas it’s much more, you watch cartoons when you’re a kid, and then you grow up to watch, you know, Marvel films or something. It’s just really not like that in Japan, in a way. It’s almost like, yeah, there’s a whole, it’s not a subculture. It’s pretty much culture is viewed in that respect. So that’s sort of something to try and get your head around.

Sonja Skoglund (12:03.847)

Yeah, that’s a good point. Like you said, it’s not only kids’ cartoons; there’s a lot of anime and manga specifically written and filmed for adults. And it penetrates through the whole culture. And obviously, we also see that in the gaming market. Even if it’s not based on an existing anime or manga series, the art style of anime or manga is very prevalent.

Jon Jordan (12:42.573)

And I guess, as you say, even some games that aren’t based around that, if they are successful, they do end up then having anime made about them because that’s how people consume that. Any successful culture will be consumed in that way. So it becomes self-fulfilling.

Teemu Palomäki (12:56.724)

Yeah, they even have like, I remember there was also a movie about a mobile game. So there was this, I think it was when in the West was called The Alchemist Goat. I remember that mobile game, they advertised that they had like a movie theatre run of like a film made of the world of that game. So, even mobile games can turn into like these big-screen anime movies.

Jon Jordan (13:29.741)

It’s interesting that I hadn’t really thought about the sports stuff you were talking about before. So, was it right that you said there was Haikyuu!! for volleyball?

Teemu Palomäki (13:40.532)

Yeah, Haikyuu!! is the name of the anime series. So it’s a volleyball anime brand, and they’ve released a really successful mobile game for that brand.

Jon Jordan (13:58.157)

And even in that small stuff, would you see? I guess there will be, say, realistic soccer games and baseball games as well, but there would still be quite a big proportion that would be cartoon, anime sort of stuff.

Teemu Palomäki (14:12.372)

Yeah, yeah, and when it’s realistic, it’s sort of, well, aimed at a more mature audience, maybe. And, you know, I think the realistic sports that we see are mainly soccer and baseball, which are the big ones in Japan. Of course, those are also popular on the cartoony side.

Jon Jordan (14:38.189)

Good. Okay, so we have… Go ahead.

Sonja Skoglund (14:39.943)

And then this… Yeah, sorry. It’s also interesting in this one cartoony, like an arcade sports game about baseball that I played. They have collaborated with real-life baseball players. So also this overlap or mixing of these anime and imaginary worlds with the real world is also something in what we see more in collaborations, I think, in Japan than in the West.

Jon Jordan (15:22.509)

So again, sort of collaborations are something that we, when we’ve spoken in previous podcasts about sort of live ops and that sort of stuff. Obviously, collaborations are a massive thing generally for any mobile game. But again, correct my limited knowledge, I suppose, but the anime scene often has lots of, you have collaborative, you know, the worlds between these anime things are sort of mashed up together in lots of, you know, in every sort of situation. And none of these things are sort of, you know, walled gardens that sort of here’s my anime characters, and they never interact. I mean, it seems like there are loads of them; basically, the whole thing is it’s like a mashup.

Teemu Palomäki (15:55.732)

Yeah, you can go crazy with the collaborations. It’s like the games can have so many different characters just interacting there. But I think it’s always like one collaboration at a time. So, it’s not necessarily like multiple brands clashing at once or anything. But of course, the collaboration stuff stays in the game and is available. So, I’ve built a lot of my RPG teams around collaboration characters. So no original mobile game characters, but all collaboration stuff. Because those can be really strong for a while, of course. When they sort of fall out, they fall out fast. You don’t necessarily release new upgrades for those characters. So that they’re really powerful for a while.

Jon Jordan (16:57.453)

So that’s sort of some idea of the culture and the genres. And I guess the other important thing that underpins this is that the Japanese market is one of the sort of most highly monetized from an ARPU basis. So for individual players, the average that they’re going to spend is going to be, if not the highest, one of the highest sort of territories in the world. And I guess that the combination of those things, having its own culture and having people that are going to spend hundreds, thousands of dollars a year playing these games sort of combines the fact that you can have these sort of what to us might seem weird niches because you don’t need so many players to make them profitable because you have this sort of quite high monetization. So, do you want to talk a bit about monetization and how the Japanese market ends up at these very high levels?

Monetization strategies in Japan

Teemu Palomäki (17:47.924)

Well, it comes with the gacha mechanics. They are more varied in there. And I think it’s also not just the monetization mechanics but overall game design. So, to make the gachas appealing, you need to have something interesting to pull. So I think the way that the Japanese market is so character-centric also plays into that. And the characters themselves, one thing that is interesting to note is that in the West, the characters talk about the world of the game, whereas in Japanese mobile games, the characters often speak to you, the player. They’re sort of interacting with you, so you are forming this relationship with the characters. They also have the systems to support that. But characters are everywhere when you have that kind of relationship with the characters. They’re relatable content. Then, when you go to the gacha and pull for them, you are more eager to get them, and you build that relationship. And, you know, gacha animations. If I finish my thought with this, gacha animations are a form of art in Japan. So my favorite one is from Fullmetal Alchemist Mobile, where you have this sort of rotary phone that is ringing or rotary phone that you spin a three-digit number on. And that’s the way you pull the gacha. So you put the digits in, it calls, and then a train arrives, and from the train come the characters that you obtained through that gacha. So it’s more interactive, creative, and memorable, and it feels a little bit like you can affect the rates. To this day, I think it doesn’t affect the rates at all, but it sort of adds that element. Like if you’re going to a slot machine, you might put that coin to your hands and blow a kiss or something like I’m gonna do this now and you place it, you put that, you have sort of belief that you, this is improving your odds. So if you put your lucky number in that rotary phone, it feels like you can get better props or something. So it’s a form of art, whereas in the West, it can just press the button, and then you pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, you get the couple of shards that you obtain from the gacha. So, the excitement levels are totally different.

Sonja Skoglund (20:46.279)

And also going back to monetization and this character-centric game worldview. One thing that came to mind is this, especially in games where you collect these beautiful, sexy ladies as your characters, like Teemu mentioned, from all of these different character archetypes like tsundere or cute or innocent or whatever. Especially in those games, we see these player polls where the game organizes a poll for the players where they can vote for their favorite character. Then they promise that in the next big event, they’re going to bring content related to the character that’s most popular. So obviously, that’s a great way of securing your gains in advance and really catering to the audience.

Jon Jordan (21:54.605)

And I guess for, just to explain, I guess most people know what it’s all gacha system is but it’s but it’s basically a sort of random drop system, which is actually, as far as I know, the Japanese game companies invented it would have been like sort of 20 years ago in the first mobile games came out it was a sort of random and it was sort of I guess inspired by Pachinko machines, I think that was the sort of original idea at least and when you’re saying that it’s very character based, would it be then that most gachas would be then creating, you’d be getting a character out of that rather than like in the West you might get sort of gear or sort of costumes or say shards or something like that. But would it be the case in general that most Japanese games would actually be about characters rather than sort of accessories around characters?

Teemu Palomäki (22:45.556)

Yeah, I think that’s the safest way to go because people form the best bonds with characters. The people I think next were some animal mascots, those kinds. And the more inanimate the thing becomes, the less attracted you are to it, the less interested you are generally in it. So characters are the safest way to go.

Jon Jordan (23:18.445)

Hmm. And I guess that’s sort of, I guess, we’ll go on to localization or culturalization. You know, that’s sort of quite fundamental to how those Japanese games are. Whereas in the West, just the game designer would see things in that’s, yeah, you would have characters as part of your gacha maybe, but you’d have a whole bunch of other stuff. You could think, I think all these other cool things I can put in my gacha system, which you think would be much more appealing, but it’s a very deep level. It’s just what people are attracted to, you know, but it’s just very different.

Teemu Palomäki (23:45.94)

Mm—mm. Yeah, and then also the way you advertise the gacha. Sonja had a good example of this, like how the gachas can be different in the West and Japan, with Legend of Mushroom, I think.

Sonja Skoglund (24:05.415)

Yeah, that’s an interesting case. So, actually, Legend of Mushroom was first released in Japan and then a little bit later in the U.S. And I’ve been playing both of those versions. It’s interesting to see the differences and clear localizations between them. One is that the whole game, a big part of the whole game, is constantly pulling this gacha, which is a magic lamp that appears in the main UI, and you keep constantly pulling it. In this case, it’s an equipment gacha, and the focus is more on the constant small dopamine hit that you get from the gacha pulling. The gear is also quirky and a little bit funny, mixing fantasy and modern elements. So maybe that’s like an Asian take on it. I’m not sure. But the interesting part was that when it comes to differences between the two versions, in the Japanese version, again, characters, it’s not just the lamp, but there’s this goddess of the lamp that’s always standing beside the lamp, and she’s very sexy and beautiful and she talks to the player. And then, in the Western version, there’s only a very minor tutorial character who only appears when they introduce new features to the player. But in the Japanese version, the lady is always there. And it was just such a clear way to implement characters yet again. And when they were advertising for the game, they actually hired this actress to cosplay as the lady of the lamp. And she was singing and dancing or at least playing the game. And she was a very attractive lady. And so that’s also like one thing, like cosplaying as the characters is of course, originally a Japanese thing from the conventions and although we have a lot of it in the West now and all kinds of anime conventions and stuff but…

Jon Jordan (26:39.245)

Hmm. It is interesting that you’re having this breaking of the fourth wall. So the characters talking to the player, which again would be, I can’t even think. I’m sure it has happened, but I can’t really think of that as something that I see a lot in mobile games. Whereas, as you say, that could be something that is sort of how players, you know, it’s a very subtle, but very significant change in how a player would interact with the game world where, you know, I’m in charge of the game, and I’m getting. I’m just telling people what to do in the game or getting my characters to do these things, whereas the characters talking back to you, it seems subtle, but equally, if you expect that, then games that didn’t have that, you’d feel sort of like you weren’t very engaged with them because the characters weren’t doing what you were expecting them to do, which is sort of, in any cold way, talk back to you.

Teemu Palomäki (27:35.06)

Yeah.

Jon Jordan (27:38.509)

So, there have clearly been some Japanese games that have been massively successful in the West, and some Western games have been successful in Japan. Are there any trends we’re seeing there? Is there more or less of that sort of stuff happening? There are now lots of good localization, culturalization, and outsourcing companies that handle these sorts of things, so we’re much more technically aware of what we need to do. But is there anything you can talk about there in terms of stuff you’ve seen recently of games doing either well or badly?

Content and events in Japanese Games

Teemu Palomäki (28:17.268)

I believe localization is always important. So, no matter what kind of game you’re making, if you want it to succeed in Japan, you need to localize it well. The way that you translate this stuff, these days it’s popular to just throw stuff through Google Translate or ChatGPT or whatever. But having actual people translate it, check it, that it works. We’ve seen some localization examples where words are broken in the middle. And it can look very cheap. So doing the localization properly, of course, we mentioned the way you can help the appeal is through the characters, bringing characters to the front. Also, like recognizing Japanese cultural events, seasonal events. We have Golden Week starting very soon. So that is something that is often recognized in Japan. So it’s like a week of vacations in Japan where everyone is off and it’s at the change of April to May. So not much is happening during that time. I notice it mostly in the mangas that I follow weekly. Those are on breaks during that time.

Teemu Palomäki (30:10.612)

so forth. So recognizing these events that are significant in there.

Sonja Skoglund (30:20.487)

And also actually Golden Week is sort of the opposite. Like Teemu mentioned that the mangas go on break, but looking at games, that’s when people are on holiday, so they have a lot of time to play. So that’s a really good opportunity to engage players. And actually, there’s another example of Legend of Mushroom and differences between the localizations, because right now there is exactly a Golden Week event in the Japanese version, but obviously not in the Western version.

Teemu Palomäki (30:58.836)

Yeah, but you don’t need to limit it. I think Supercell with Pearl Stars, they had sort of Golden Week event going on in the global version as well. It doesn’t really matter. Like it’s cool skins and there are Japan fans outside Japan who enjoy anything Japanese-y. So seeing these Golden Week skins with like these Japanese cats, I think it appeals to certain audiences and cool skin is a cool skin, doesn’t matter what it’s inspired from.

Jon Jordan (31:37.133)

Yeah. And then, have there been any sort of Japanese games that you think have done a good job of being very Japanese and appealing to that local market, but also sort of doing well globally? Because I guess it is a bit dated now, but sort of historically stuff like sort of Puzzles and Dragons massively successful game, one of the most successful games ever, just in Japan. You know, Monster Strike again, another enormously successful game managed and didn’t really work outside of Japan, even though it’s made a billion dollars. Do you think the Japanese developers are getting better now, sort of appealing to both sort of audiences?

The global appeal of Japanese games

Teemu Palomäki (32:16.276)

Hmm. Well, I’d say, well, first, the first one that comes to mind, Pokemon, but that’s, that’s Pokemon Go, it’s, it’s developed by Niantic. So it’s sort of Western in that sense, but it’s, it’s a Japanese brand. And, and thinking of more, more Pokemon games, I think the, the Pokemon Masters X that, that is, a game that is having decent spikes. And if the IPs are popular enough, I think Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis did okay for a while out there. But I think mostly if it’s these anime style games that are doing well in the West, it often comes from China, you know, Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail. So those are sort of devouring the space from like the games of anime fans. But…

Sonja Skoglund (33:29.415)

Well, there are also the Dragon Ball games, which are… Well, Dragon Ball obviously is a huge IP, also in the West, like one of the few animes that everybody knows, and they are very old games, so that probably has an effect in the equation.

Jon Jordan (33:53.197)

And just to go back to Pokemon Go, obviously, you know, it’s a Japanese-originated IP developed by an American company. In Japan, was that, you know, would there have been any obvious sort of a Japanese person playing that, realise a Japanese company, that particular game, didn’t develop it? Or does that actually sort of show that, you know, for the best games it doesn’t really matter where you are in the world there’s enough knowledge now that these things can be sort of global even though Japan is a somewhat separate market for something.

Teemu Palomäki (34:31.06)

Yeah, I think they probably noticed that it’s not like a Japanese game because they have certain sort of habits when making UI and I could see there being maybe a little bit more gacha elements or stuff there. But like, you know, mobile games they have these Western games as well. So I think it’s also very, very good for them. Obviously, they have enjoyed it very much.

Jon Jordan (35:12.877)

Yeah, yeah. Cool. Lovely. Let’s give everyone listening a bit of homework. So I guess Legend of Mushroom is one. But if you were going to encourage someone to download one sort of characteristic Japanese mobile game to take a taste of what we’ve sort of been talking about. Sonia, what game would you suggest people download?

Sonja Skoglund (35:38.343)

I have to say this is my personal favorite but it’s Heaven Burns Red and it’s something that I would not expect to see in the West. It’s anime style and it’s from Right Flyers Studios and they are known for a very elegant and sleek design and very deep focus in the story elements. So I really enjoy the story and there’s a lot of dialogue and a lot of choices and you get to play as a female character interacting with other females and creating these meaningful relationships and of course enjoy a turn-based RPG.

Jon Jordan (36:34.029)

Good. Teemu, what would you recommend?

Teemu Palomäki (36:37.78)

Well, one thing that comes to mind is Memento Mori. I think that was really beautifully experienced. It’s more successful in Japan, not doing so well in the West, even though there is localized version. But it has this really beautiful watercolor art style. Like really it shows that you can make really these beautiful experiences and this is an idle RPG, this time I D L E. So that kind of idle RPG, but really beautiful music, really like sort of it’s a great experience and it’s showing that these different types of games can be really popular. It has beautiful soundtrack, each character has their own song. So that’s something to check out if you want to see something more interesting from Japan.

Jon Jordan (37:45.005)

Mm -hmm. Cool. Lovely. Well, thank you very much for your recommendations, and thank you very much for your expertise in the podcast. Thank you, Sonja and Timo.

Teemu Palomäki (37:56.244)

Thank you very much.

Sonja Skoglund (37:56.455)

Thank you.

Jon Jordan (37:57.997)

And thanks to you for watching or listening to the podcast, whoever you are consuming it. Every episode, we are talking about what’s going on in mobile games, which is now an enormously variation of gaming around the world and lots of different cultural cultures, lots of different trends going on there. So I hope you are enjoying our episodes. Please do subscribe and we’ll see you next time. Bye bye.