Hidden object titles have been round because the daybreak of cellular video games, and for one studio they’re extra well-liked than ever, fueling an growth of the corporate each throughout and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Wooga is the developer of the vastly profitable puzzle recreation June’s Journey. Combining hidden object puzzle video games, island and metropolis constructing and story-based content material, the sport has earned greater than half-a billion in income. Now, Wooga are set to seem at PGC Helsinki 2023 on a recruitment drive, because the studio continues to broaden.
We spoke to Wooga’s managing director, Nai Chang at Gamescom 2023 to realize some perception into the success of June’s Journey’s.
PocketGamer.biz: So how are issues going for Wooga?
Nai: We’ve been doing very effectively. During the last couple of years we’ve been rising very steadily and really sustainably. We’ve hit a few milestones. Final 12 months we handed greater than $500m in lifetime income for June’s Journey, and we’re on the right track to transcend that.
Product-wise, June’s Journey has over 60% market share within the hidden object area so we’re doing very effectively within the product and enterprise facet. Organisationally I feel we’re additionally doing very effectively. We’ve had a restructure to give attention to our reside video games in addition to our new video games and we’ve grown the corporate from 200 workers in 2020 to a bit over 300 prior to now three years.
When it comes to Wooga itself, what do you assume makes it stand out within the trade?
On the organisational facet I feel the principle factor that we delight ourselves on is the folks and the tradition. We have now a really robust sense of tradition, and what I imply by that’s isn’t speaking about what the tradition is – however simply the truth that everyone understands the significance of getting an aligned tradition, the identical worth programs, methods of working and methods of pondering that we have now in order that we all know easy methods to deal with one another equally within the office.
I feel that’s been a part of the important thing issues that’s made the corporate very steady as we went via a whole lot of adjustments globally over the previous few years. We’ve remained steady all through.
So clearly, your flagship title is June’s Journey, what do you assume has made that recreation so profitable?
So our product imaginative and prescient for the corporate is to be the participant’s alternative for puzzle and informal video games. For an informal viewers we all know from all of the research and participant suggestions that we’ve had, that the 2 most typical use circumstances for when folks play informal video games is, one, earlier than they go to mattress to calm down and the second is passing time on a commute. The widespread theme throughout each of these issues and what they did earlier than was story or narrative. Folks used to look at films or TV reveals, or they used to learn a e-book.
This sort of deeper participant immersion and participant fantasy is missing within the cellular market, so that is what we tried to do. June’s Journey is the primary instance of our huge success on this. We took a hidden object core – which is a confirmed recreation mechanic – and we added a deep stage of story when it comes to character growth and what’s occurring to the characters within the recreation, and we offered it as a part of the development.
So, what this creates is a need for folks getting connected to characters and desirous to know what’s occurring to them within the story. That helps construct engagement through the years. So that is a part of the important thing to success – giving our gamers the leisure and constructing curiosity for them to need to know what occurs subsequent.
And these are qualities that you simply imbue into all of your video games?
On the product facet we give attention to story-driven informal video games, and June’s journey is the primary very profitable model of this. Its prequel Pearl’s Peril can also be an instance of this, however June’s Journey took it to the subsequent stage, and that is what made us stand out on the product facet. After which that is additionally what contributes to this success is that we take the core that’s very robust after which we construct on high of it. So primarily based on the totally different participant varieties we have now, and their motivations and why they play, and what they need to get out of a gaming expertise, we construct up the options, and we construct extra content material that caters to their wants.
For instance, we constructed social programs as a result of we all know from analysis and speaking to our gamers that they need to have collaborative gameplay and options. We all know that they need to uncover extra in regards to the story, so we construct these facet occasions to assist them to be taught extra in regards to the characters and the world.
So I feel one of many key components of success is knowing the gamers, and constructing what issues to totally different segments of them, as a result of the playerbase isn’t uniform when it comes to what they most get pleasure from. So we attempt to cater in direction of all the important thing features for various teams in numerous methods.
Wooga can be at PGC Helsinki 2023 in a couple of weeks, what do you consider the occasion?
Helsinki is without doubt one of the gaming hotspots in Europe and we’re becoming a member of PGC Helsinki as a sponsor this 12 months. Such huge occasions are an important alternative for us to search for gifted folks to affix Wooga.
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