In this episode of the Mobile GameDev Playbook, we take a look into the challenges faced by game developers when working with licensed IP. With a specific focus on design and feature consideration, we also discuss how licenses have affected mobile game sales in different countries, such as the US and China. Host Jon Jordan is joined by GameRefinery’s VP of Games Joel Julkunen along with special guests Rosemarie Sarno and Stephen Wark, Community specialist and Lead Game Designer at mobile developer Ludia. Ludia has published several titles around well-known IP including Jurassic Park, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Dungeons & Dragons. Thanks for listening!
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Topics we will cover in this episode:
1. Licensed IP Trends
2. Ludia, licensed IPs and building games for fans and players
3. The importance of IP, genre and feature fit
4. What it’s like working with licensed IPs and licensers
5. Western IP appeal in the East and vice versa
6. Guest picks for favorite mobile IP games
Licensed IP trends
Jon: So to kick us off, it’s going to set the scene. Joel is going to give us a kind of broad overview, particularly looking at the types of top games in different global marketplaces and how important IPs are to those and the kind of variations they’re in. So Joel, take it away.
Joel: IPs are a big thing in mobile. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the US or in Japan or China. It seems that the share of games utilizing third party IPs is on the rise. In the US at the moment, if you look at top grossing 200 or even 100 games, it’s roughly one quarter of all of those games, no matter the genre are utilizing third-party IPs – TV. , movie brands, sports brands, consumer brands, you name it, the US and other Western markets have it. And then if you go to China and Japan, the number of games utilizing IPS actually rises. So it’s about half of the games in 200 grossing. If you go to Japan, you will be most likely run into games based on certain anime/manga series. And in China it’s mostly about PC IPs which is quite interesting. So it seems that the mobile game market is really loving those brands and the trend is upwards as we speak.
“IPs are a big thing in mobile, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the US or Japan or China the share of games utilizing third party IPs are on the rise”
Jon: I guess Rosemary and Stephen you know running these big brands, I guess they’re Western brands. Do you see any difference in the global kind of uptake or interest?
Stephen: It’s been really interesting, working on Dungeons and dragons and seeing how the different territories are surprisingly active in it. I would have thought, initially when I started this project a few years ago that it would have been focused mostly on, you know, the English speaking world, but it really does have branches all the way across the globe. So that’s been really interesting too. That’s been really interesting to see. People love dragons.
Rosemarie: The thing about dragons, yes. So for our game as well, I work mostly on How to Train your Dragons IPs with Dreamworks. So we do see that it’s really, it’s a worldwide thing considering that these are big blockbuster movies as well. People are super passionate about just the characters themselves. So when it comes to the game, it’s kind of a no brainer for them. It also means we have a lot on our shoulders to do a good job at making the game, but you know, a game like Rise of Burke that’s been around for so many years and is still doing well, and players are just so passionate about it. I see that firsthand on our social pages, and I just love hearing from them, taking part in the Reddits and stuff. So it really helps in keeping it alive and for sure the brand is a big part of that.
“People are super passionate about the game characters themselves, so when it comes to the game it’s kind of a no brainer for them, so we have a lot on our shoulders to do a good job”
Jon: Joel, another kind of trend we should probably consider before we go deep into this. Some genres seem to work better, in some kinds of mobile games and genres. Do you want to kind of unpick that at a high level for us as well, just to give us an overview of how you see that kind of playing out across different genres?
Joel: We, at GameRefinery, study a lot of games of course, and we also study the features and the genres of the games. And as we track IPs and different types of brand categories, we’ve noticed that certain genres are much more well aligned with utilizing third-party IPs. Just to give you an example, many of the top RPG games, location-based games or any games, genres that rely on meta layers of collecting characters or that kind of stuff, those usually are much more synergetic with IPs. Than, for instance, mastery games, which are much more about the core games, swiping tiles and blasting balloons. So it’s very clear that if you are thinking about utilizing an IP and thinking about the costs or spending benefits, there are certain genres that are much, much more synergetic.
And that of course then relates to the features. So when you decide to go with an IP, you want to make sure that your game’s feature set, supports that IP. I can again, for example, use the same example for using like a meta heavy RPG game combined together with let’s say a Marvel or Star Wars IP, for example. It makes a really good, good combination. But then on the other hand, like I said certain games and feature sets are not as well adjusted to get most out of the IP. So for example, if you’re doing, let’s say, a casual Star Wars Match 3 game, it doesn’t mean that the Star Wars IP will hurt your game per se. But as the game is more focused on the feature set, more focused on the core game experience, and not let’s say character collection or that kind of stuff that needs a backstory, so rich lore. Then the benefits might not be as big. So that’s kind of it on a higher level. And of course, then you still have to think about the player demographics and all that. But that’s really interesting, and that’s what we noticed that you might want to think about those elements as well when playing around with IPs.
“When you go with an IP you want to make sure your game’s feature set supports that IP”
Jon: I guess the other thing, IP over the years has become much broader. So as opposed to, you know, we were, maybe 10 years ago talking much more about a kind of licensing, external properties from the game space, bringing in films and other kinds of properties. As whereas now we have this thing which is bringing console games to mobile, which isn’t, I guess, just IP in that sense that it is a game already, but there’s an interesting kind of reimagining. The whole IP space has in fact gotten much deeper, I think. Much more sophisticated in how you chop it up.
Joel: Exactly. And as I mentioned before, it’s really kind of diverse. You have your TV, movie, branch, have your console products, dance brands, sports brands, novel brands, celebrity brands. And of course, like you mentioned, some PC and console games. And I think the PC console IPs are coming over to mobile even stronger in upcoming years. And, of course, in China for example, as I mentioned before, PC brands are the biggest IPs used in mobile. Almost half of all the IPs, used in top mobile games in China are from PC, like for example, a perfect world, crossfire and so on and so forth.
Ludia, licensed IPs and building games for fans and players
Jon: So Rosemary and Steven, so from the Ludia point of view, I mean, you guys, as far as I know the company has always been involved with IP. That’s kind of been your kind of DNA, is that correct? Is that what has been the way you’ve approached the games market?
Stephen: Oh, absolutely. I’ve been at Ludia for 10 years and, we’ve always worked on IPs like that. I mean, we started off with the television game shows, like The Price is Right, and adapting those into PC games, and then variations as the other platforms came up and now working with big IP brands.
Jon: And when mobile started out you know, got big and app stores got launched. So that was seen as quite odd. Maybe odd’s just the wrong word, but there was a lot of creativity going on with these developers coming up with this kind of crazy stuff. We could do this, they do these things on mobile devices for the first time and, and for, you know, a Canadian company to come out and do these kind of big, you know, TV IP to begin with. And then moving up. I think it was seen as, as a little bit at least different. Obviously it’s been successful for you because you’ve grown to a fairly substantial company.
But it’s kinda interesting that not so many people have taken that route. I mean, people will traditionally kind of have a go. We probably won’t mention them, but there are a few big games coming out at the moment, which involve IP but the company is not set up around that. So do you think the way the company is set up is different because of the type of games you make and how you think about new projects and how you think about operating in live ops? That sorta stuff.
Stephen: I think that’s an interesting way of looking at it from a design perspective. I mean we’re looking at what are the familiar things that people really enjoy in terms of media and in terms of gameplay to terms of familiarity to try to find ways for them to bring that experience with them on the go, no matter what that is. If they really like, you know, Battlestar Galactica, we had the Battlestar Galactica game for a while. If you really like teenage mutant Ninja turtles, here’s a way that you can play in that world. Same thing for Dungeons and Dragons or if you really like The Price is Right. That was how we got started. We looked at things that people already liked and, you know, honestly given their longevity, loved, and found ways to surprise the players with those twists that mobile makes possible.
Jon: And I guess kind of Rosemary from a community standpoint, that kind of balance between the kind of rich kind of lore and characters you have available in an IP and what the community want you to do with them and what the licenser allow you to do them. It’s an interesting creative tension, let’s put it that way.
Rosemarie: Oh yeah. Cause we see it a lot on the pages as well. Like players will chime in and they will correct you if something is wrong. Absolutely. So we do try to take it to heart and we are all people working on those games, whether it’s Jurassic or how to train your dragon, really get into the world to learn to then produce these games. It’s something that takes a lot of time and dedication and you get really tied to the games you work on. Like you walk through our office and you really feel like these are people who enjoy what they’re doing and are passionate about it just as much as the players. On the front line, I get to actually see that and I get to feel the tension when, you know, certain things are not accurate. But it rarely ever happens.
One thing that you were mentioning before about bringing the lore into the game and trying to choose proper features that are still representing the world that we’re giving to players in our mobile games – for one is something that’s challenging in a way, because we’re trying to stay true what let’s say for How to Train your Dragon too the book that then got turned into a movie. Trying to represent all the dragons while creating new ones. In our newest game, Dragon Tighten Uprising, we have hybrids. So this is a whole process of approvals that we go through with Dreamworks and our artists who create these dragons. And, yeah, it’s just cool work for the people working on the project and just the passionate players and people who follow these movies for 10 years. Just love to see it.
Jon: That’s a really interesting point because particularly if you have, you know, games based around specific movies rather than a kind of, I guess deeper universes, but specific movies you need to be close enough to what was going on in the movie. Cause people who watched the movie, you kind of, they want some of that. But equally if you’re going to run something for, for many years, then I mean the game in a sense becomes the living embodiment of that IP rather than it being like a third party IP.
“The game in a sense becomes the living embodiment of that IP”
I mean the game, it has much more going on in it. Cause it has to. Cause the films only last two hours and there’s only so much they can put in it. Even if there’s backstory, a game again going on for years and years and years, you almost become the creative holders of that kind of vision to some degree. I mean, honestly, you’re not the licenser, but you’re kind of doing the work that, you know, thousands, maybe millions of people are playing year on year.
Rosemarie: Yeah. I think Stephen, you had quite a challenge with that in D and D such as like an expanded universe. So like taking, trying to figure out what should we bring into the game. I don’t work on D and D, but Stephen, hats off to you.
Stephen: It was a huge challenge to figure out what kind of characters, for example, to put into the world. We had huge brainstorming sessions at the start of the warriors of water deep project to figure out what were the iconic monsters of Dungeons and Dragons. What were the elements that we really needed to have in the game, for it to be considered an authentic game. Something that, you know, matches all the other different ways that people experience, you know, the brand of Dungeons and Dragons. And so where did we, where did we fit in with that? And that was not only just about content, but also about, gameplay mechanics themselves. What would you expect to see? You’d expect to cast a lot of fireballs and have a lot of exploration, and even roll a lot of dice, even though it’s on a mobile game.
We had to find those familiar elements that people might’ve been reminded of when they watched other people play or saw you know, those Stranger Things references and went, ‘Oh yeah’, that’s what D and D is like. What elements from the, I don’t know, the popular culture could we put in to have an authentic gameplay and brand experience that was still fun you know, in and of itself that’s not entirely nostalgia dependent, but could get somebody interested in the brand in that sense that we were talking about the game being a big proponent of the brand. But also have them have fun just for the quality of the game itself. So there were a lot of discussions, and there was a lot of listening that had to happen with the community to figure out what kinds of things people were looking for.
“What elements of popular culture could we put in to have an authentic gameplay and brand experience that was still fun in and of itself”
Jon: Cause I guess the other thing with using a brand is, you want, I guess when you choose brands, maybe this will be a future question, but yeah how do you choose brands? You want to choose brand obviously that have broad appeal. But equally the broader the appeal, then say someone like me who, I did play one of your train your dragon games, although I’m totally the wrong target audience and never saw the films. So for me the lore didn’t matter because I didn’t know the game, but you know, it’s just something that I’ll download that and then see what it’s like. So you have this kind of actually quite a broad spectrum of audience. Then if you choose the right brand. You have a very kind of newbie audience who don’t know it apart from maybe the name. And then you have people who are like really into it. And that’s again, another difficult balance in this, I guess. I don’t know if that’s where some IP games based on might kind of go wrong. They go to too newbie and then the fans don’t like it, or they go too fat too hardcore and then it’s a great game for the 20 people who play it.
Rosemarie: Yeah. Well one thing that Ludia does really well is try to manage expectations. And so a lot of games, we’ll see how it works and then add features as we go on. We’ll listen to the audience, get the feedback and see, okay, guilds, we should add guilds to this. And it works with the IP. It works with the game and structure and how it is. So like now JWA, which is a geo-location game, has guilds, so does D and D, and so does Dragon Tighten Uprising. It just really helps bring the community together. It’s a lot of discussions around creating clans, getting groups of people playing. It helps with keeping people engaged as well. And it fits with the IPs, with the dinosaurs, with the dragons and with D and D.
The importance of IP, genre and feature fit
Jon: Joel, coming back to a more kind of trend level, I guess we see IP licensing kind of go in cycles. So I guess a few years ago when we had this kind of Star Wars reboot, we had just tons and tons of Star Wars games. And I guess, you know, we’ve had a lot of Game of Thrones games. What’s your view on that when you see multiple kinds of games all launching roughly at the same time, and maybe having an RPG and maybe a match 3, and a strategy game, all based on the same IP. And I guess at the moment we have it with Marvel. I mean the whole Marvel universe is, that’s the point of it. So, do you think that that that’s a good thing. Do you think developers get a bit sucked into like, Oh, I’m doing a Marvel game and they kind of forget that there’s like another 25 mobile games also out there at the same time? Probably only one’s going to be successful.
Joel: Yeah, I think that’s a really valid point. Of course when I take the data and look at the games utilizing IPs. I always say that even with the best IP, it doesn’t replace any mistakes you make in the game design. So, even if you had the hottest brand, let’s say after Infinity War you had the Marvel rights on your hands and your making a game, the keys to of course, as I said before, you understand how the IP fits your genre, how the IP feature feature sets and how the IP feature play demographics. So, even with the most powerful brand, if you don’t understand the features that you should have in your genre, or the features that your core audience is going to love or, or expect from the game. Then there is a big chance of not kinda unleashing the full potential of your package. But then, when it comes to the oversaturation of certain brands, we haven’t yet seen any kind of statistical data, killing that direction. But what we have seen is that people or designers take brands that they think are, let’s say, kind of medium, or even very hot at the moment. And then, kind of lose the potential because they fail to understand the IP and genre and feature fit. So it’s not too much about players getting bored of a certain brand, but, but more about people and players being let down when they play the game, and it doesn’t fit their expectations – maybe the IP for the hardcore fans, or then the other game mechanics players expect. So that kind of thing.
“Designers taking brands that they think are medium or hot at the moment and losing the potential as they fail to understand the IP and genre feature field”
Jon: Yeah, you do kind of end up, I mean, I’m sure it’s just just to kind of the journalist in me kind of, but we do kind of seem to go for these phases of having like cursed IPS. I mean, particularly the Star Wars one a few years ago, but there were a lot of Star Wars games that came out and only really, Galaxy of Heroes was the one that made it. And I guess we’ve had a few attempts at different sorts of Harry Potter games. I think all of which have been kind of interesting, and you could say well designed games. But certainly, not all found – maybe the Harry audience had kind of moved on potentially or I don’t know, I guess it’s something else to mention.
Rosemarie: So I was really looking forward to the geolocation game. So you know, I played it for a bit and I kind of dropped off.
Geo-locations games are very, not time consuming, but you know, It takes dedication. So even a game like Pokemon Go, you’re relying on the nostalgia factor, but you’re also taking into account like, okay, every time I’m walking around I need to open my phone cause I need to be catching certain things. So how do you gain someone’s dedication? Right. And honestly, I haven’t looked at the stats after the first month of it launching. I’m not too sure how it’s doing, our JWA is still going strong. So I still playing and collect my dinosaurs as for what it is, but I have kind of dropped off on the Harry Potter one. It didn’t really run well on my phone as well. So there’s a whole issue with devices and GPS and there’s a lot to take into account. They’re big games, you know?
What it’s like working with licensed IPs and licensers
Jon: And I guess, you know something, I was kind of, I mean I don’t know how much you can say on this sort of stuff. Or do you want to say, but you know, the kind of power in this kind of scenario is in talking about sort of any kind of big kind of movie, or that sort of external IP, is the licenser has the power, cause they’re risking their IP a little bit. But obviously they’re getting a cut of the revenue all the time. And the business model for IP games, games based around IP can be quite difficult because you’re giving up, you know, your app store share and then you’re potentially giving up another, you know, however many percent of the gross for on to the licenser.
So very sensible for Disney to decide. It’s not making games anymore and license everything out. Cause they’re obviously doing very well off that. But, how does that kind of play into your thinking that, you know, you’re getting a license, you’re getting kind of access to someone else’s fan base, but you are going to have to in a sense, yeah go – these games have to be quite big and you know, you do have to have all the, I guess the process of dealing with the licenser, and you can’t just go, we’re going to put in a new character and next week you have it. Cause you do have those turnaround times, I mean, maybe some licensers are quicker than others, but maybe some have a big whole process that he has to go to another licenser, and then you can’t, you know, it may take a couple of months to put new characters in.
How does that impinge on your kind of flexibility to do the things you would otherwise want to do in a mobile game?
Stephen: It’s really hard to, you know, turn those corners really quickly. Right. It requires a lot of planning. You know, internally it requires a lot of communication with the licenser to discuss the different ways the next steps, the next updates can go because you’re right there are all kinds of all kinds of approval processes and every relationship is different. Some IP holders, hold ’em keep a much tighter oversight over things. Other ones are a little bit looser. Once, you know, trust has been established you don’t need quite so many intermediate reviews of like say a character creation process or an environment creation process. So that can make the workday, you know, more or less stressful as it comes. Because working in games, you know, from my perspective as a designer, I’m very player focused. I want the fans of the brand to be happy and pleasantly surprised all the time by what the implementation of their favorite brand is inside the game. I also wanna, you know, turn new players on to this cool brand. I think this is the part of the virtuous cycle of licensed IP. I think that’s pretty cool. And then I want to make sure that all the business objectives are met at the same time. This is the other bit of tension, make sure that everything, we hit the deadlines, everything is nicely approved and we’re building up, that great community that is always possible with fans of a brand.
“I want the fans of the brand to be happy and pleasantly surprised all the time by what the implementation of their favorite brand is inside the game“
Jon: Are you kind of always on the lookout for new games that you’d want to make? But you know, how does that process go, do you come up with a game idea that and think what brand would that appeal to, or do you go we’re a couple of people, we really love this brand and we’re in the company and we pitched a game. I guess it’s, you know, put a bit of both. But cause it’s kind of interesting that, you know, when we talk about brands, we maybe talk about the big Harry Potters and the Star Wars and the Game of Thrones, which are obviously massive in their original form. And obviously expensive for that as well.
But you guys are working with, you know, I mean Jurassic Park was massive. But then some of the other ones that, you know, Dungeons and Dragons is bigger but doesn’t have that kind of similar appeal I suppose. And Train your Dragon was, I guess I don’t know how you measure the size of an IP, but I guess we could say it’s like a mid ranking IP. And maybe mid ranking IP’s are better cause you have a bit more flexibility, they’re not so expensive? That was a very prolonged question.
Stephen: We have an outstanding business development department. They answer a lot of those questions for us. I don’t know, sometimes I’m just presented with a project: “We’re looking into making card games and we have these IPs available, which ones would you think would be the best fit?” And I’m like, Oh, well, this is a really interesting list. Let’s go through and let’s see what’s possible. I as a designer, in so far as, you know, I’m writing the pitch what would I like to do with the game genre that’s different, knowing what’s in the market and what bits I think might be missing or could be done differently. And then find it where they match up to the key experiences of the IP. What are the key experiences of this brand?
I worked on a card game based on the underworld franchise of movies, the last two specifically. And that was a fun match to see, you know, there’s a vampire versus werewolf war going on. Great. I have a foundation now, how can I turn this into a card game with the team? And that in itself is a fun game of game design, so to speak.
Western IP appeal in the East and vice versa
Jon: Joel, you’ve been talking, you kicked us off talking about the global, kind of view, and it seemed to be particularly the West versus some of the big Asian markets that there’s a kind of a globalness also a localness. Do you think that as, you know, more US kind of films get launched in China and these kinds of IPs that we could be using are they becoming more global?
We still haven’t seen an awful lot of say these really big Japanese kind of anime or manga brands. I mean they appeal to the kind of hardcore, you know, guys in the West, but they haven’t really, and Pokémon is the obvious one. But do we think that we’re going to get more global, that these brands are going to get more global over the next kind of, you know, five to 10 years? So we’ll be seeing IP become a more and more important part of mobile games.
Joel: Well my bet is that at least in the upcoming couple of years, each region – let’s say these major regions like the US and Western markets, and Japan and China will, will have their own kind of unique IPS and brands to work in those specific regions. Like for example, certain anime and manga IPs will still be hot in Japan and rather unknown in the West. But there is, of course, some exchanged cross borders. Just from top of my head, the newest big anime brand, Seven Deadly Sins is an RPG game that’s actually doing really well in the US charts. Based on a Japanese anime, you can actually watch from Netflix. It’s a really, really well made turn based RPG game. I strongly suggest you check it out.
So there are these instances that you can see a couple of titles based on regional IPs making it in other regions as well. But then of course, as said like in China many of the IPs are based on their own PC, IPs or even their own folklore, like a journey to the West or Romance in the Three Kingdoms. So it will probably increase cross cultural IP exchange. But I still bet that even in the upcoming let’s say five to 10 years, we will still have our own Western IPS be really successful and hot here and then of course the Korean market will have their own and China, Japan will have their own as well. At least in the broad spectrum, I would say.
Jon: I’m gonna guess. It was interesting just thinking about the film thing with the parasite film winning the Oscar. And I guess in general its kind of thing say the same, but if you pick the right example, obviously it’d be pretty hard to make a mobile game based on parasite. I mean obviously I’m sure somebody will have an idea of how you do that, but yeah that’s not the first one that kind of appeals. But you can kind of see how I think stuff does break through different cultures. So you can imagine.
Joel: Yeah, that’s true. Let’s say you have K-Pop bands for example, there’s the BTS game, like a kind of visual Novel game in the US, pretty successful here in the West as well, based on a really hot Korean pop band. Don’t ask me about it, I don’t know anything about it, but I just noticed that there was this kind of a game. Or then you have, I remember that Warcraft movies, they were a big thing in China commercially. But then if you look at the Star Wars movies, they are not that big in China. And then as I said, you have the Seven Deadly Sins anime doing pretty well in the West as well, and the game is based on that. Or the Dragonball Z anime series that’s pretty familair. So there will always be these couple of big hot brands from Japan and China probably going to be making it here in the West as well, especially with their kind of hardcore target audience that also might have a lot of purchasing power when it comes to IAPs. So, so kind of boosting them in charts. So it’s an interesting phenomenon. And I’m really looking forward to seeing how it evolves.
Guest picks for favorite mobile IP games
Jon: Just to kind of finish up. I kind of thought it might be a nice thing for us to kind of go through what our favorite mobile IP games were and, and why we like them. I can kick off. So I am not a big Star Wars fan by any means, although I’m the right kind of demographic. But I’ve really liked Galaxy Heroes, actually played it for over three years. And it was interesting becauseI didn’t really care, I didn’t really care about the characters very much. That almost in a weird way, made it more enjoyable for me. And it was just enough so I wasn’t like desperate to unlock the special Darth Vader, you know, character. But it was just familiar enough that it kind of just, just kind of kept me going.
And there were other reasons why I played for a long time. I was in a kind of good Guild and that kind of stuff. So it was just kind of enough that without that kind of familiarity I think I probably would have dropped out much earlier and that game has been been, you know, very very successful.
So Stephen, I guess you can choose one of the games you worked on, that would not give you any bonus marks. But any IP mobile game that you’ve really enjoyed and why?
Stephen: I really enjoyed, I can’t remember the full title, but there was a WWE, a world wrestling game that was a sort of a tap Titans style idle game, where you had four wrestlers in the ring battling, you know, a recurring series of bosses. And it was just, I’m not a huge wrestling fan, although like you said, for Star Wars, I kind of fit the demographic, but I recognized quite a few names. They had a big classic repertoire of heroes. And mechanically it was more than just tapping on the screen while I was watching a different show on Netflix. And I played that one for relentlessly for almost a year. So anything that had characters that were just familiar enough and a gameplay that held my attention to something that I latch on to.
Joel: I have to go with the same genre that you Jon picked, but their biggest rivals, so Marvel Strike Force. I think it’s for me the best turn-based RPG, I like the IP, and the game I have to say is really well polished, offers excellent quality, and a lot of things to do. And if you are in a good guild, you kind of just have to come back and keep grinding, I enjoyed the grind. So that if I have to pick just one and Hearthstone would be a close second.
Jon: Yeah. I have to say, I was playing with Strikeforce as well at the same time. And had a Guild over there as well, but it became impossible to play both those games at the same time. It just took up hours and hours of time. I had to choose one. But I guess it’s kind of an interesting conclusion cause I guess, you know, none of us have gone for, one where we were massive fans the IP. It was just kind of like, you know, well put Stephen, it was kind of familiar enough and maybe when we talk about IP, we started viewing the fan base in the wrong way. It was just, one extra thing, maybe not the main reason we played that game. It was enough to get us in there. And then we found thatnother things that kind of kept us going. So maybe that’s a good sort of point to conclude.
Did you like the episode? If you haven’t listened our previous one yet, you can find it here: Mobile GameDev Playbook Episode 2: Perfect World Talks Chinese Games
