How Among Us Became #1 Mobile Game

What is up app nation? It is Steve P Young, founder appmasters.com. In this video, you're going to get a snippet from one of my favorite interviews from our previous virtual summit, which you can access for free by going to appmasters.com/summit. You'll get all the interviews instantly. So go sign up there appmasters.com/summit. But in this video, we talked to Javier barns and we talk all about. The success of among us and fall guys and how that relates to the success of fortnight.

I think it's great insight into the mobile gaming space and how timing plays a big part along with some of the features that you have within your apps, but timing plays a big part in that success of your mobile game. Stay to what is up that nation? It is Steve P young founder of administers.com. The place you go when you want action packed content related to growing your app downloads and your revenues, and welcome to the app.

Manor, masters virtual summit are six one. And I want to say six because we've been doing it. Before this whole shutdown before it became really cool for everybody else to do it. And today we're going to talk all about how do you really launch an early prototype? What do you measure? How do you get that engagement early on so that it becomes there's. You can build a game that becomes successful. Later on and today I've got phenomenal guests.

He is a game designer with over 10 years of experience in top grossing mobile games. He was the lead designer at monster legends of your, I used to love that game and I'll tell you why we stopped playing it. Systems designer at despicable mean Minnie mini rush and asphalt eight. And he's now got some indie games that he developed as well. What do you feel about this whole among us craze? Any thoughts on that? I think, um, it's the same spot of the market that four guys had.

Um, in my opinion, uh, the case of four guys and among us is similar to Fortnite and, um, battlegrounds. Um, I think that both full guys and among us came at a moment of the market just after the lockdown and during the, during the lockdown. The entire gaming gaming sphere was extremely morphed into the very hardcore games. Um, I monitor a lot of, uh, Reddit groups and so on with gamers and during the lockdown they were playing Ballarat.

They were playing first on. They were playing more than ever games that are pretty hardcore and pretty demanding. I think what happened was that after a few months of being in the hardcore yes, over the hardcore stuff. They needed, they needed, they needed the rest and they needed something that would allow them to rest in a way that they could interact with other people. Um, and I think that both full guys and, and among us were super, super good at bringing something that does not, does not need you.

You don't need to be good at eight to get fun and to perform even, uh, they're very plug and play games. Uh, so you don't have to practice for a thousand hours. They are not stressful. And at the same time, they both incorporate a strong, really, really strong social component, which, uh, makes you, especially among us, makes you interact with the people that you know, but that you don't cannot meet in person anymore.

Uh, so I think they hit the market at the very, very good moment now. The difference is a difference in price and distribution, uh, among us is free and mobile, and it's super cheap. I think it's below five bucks in steam while, um, for guys is more of a premium experience. They got a huge distribution on the, on the play store. Uh, but, but in the end it's a premium game. And I think overall, I mean, Eventually this, this will make a mountain guys be more distributed and have more potential to become the Fortnite of that specific generation of kind of, uh, you know, light headed, um, social game.

I love doing this. I mean, you nailed it on the head because I didn't even match fall guys with Amongus. I've never played fall guys, but I know my son plays it and he, you know, he's the one talked about among us, but what was crazy about mung us as, as looking through, back on the launch, they like they'd been around for a couple of years, right. And it was just during 2020 that it just went zoom and you can look at the, the daily charts.

It was somewhere around August of 2020 that it just. Just like spiked up and you, I think you nailed it on the head. I mean, it was partly because people wanted that social element. Yeah. I heard that people on Twitch and YouTube, the streaming platforms really brought it to life and it just, you know, it got, no, this is two years. This is something that actually is similar to fortnight because Fortnite was running for quite a while before they'd actually made it big.

Um, so I think. I mean fortnight, as far as I know, I just follow with it a little bit at the beginning. And then when it, when it became massive, but back at the beginning was it was unimpressive when it comes to the. When it came to the performance in the market and so on, and it wasn't until they kind of wrote the, the, they became, um, a battle Royal and they kind of surfed on the, on the wave of butter rail that they, they made big.

Uh, so yeah, but both things are very interesting in my opinion. Uh, sometimes some, some companies skill games too early, uh, because a lot of games have the ability to pivot into, into something that is different and kind of find their market later on. Um, and sometimes whenever I'm looking at. The history of some companies. I see games that I think, Hey, this game, if he was released just today, it could work. So yeah, companies out there, if you have games that you think could be awesome and you canceled for whatever reason, try relaunching them.

Just, just to see what happens. Uh, you never know. Well, I mean, I guess what's the takeaway. Obviously you have so much experience, so much knowledge in this. Like sometimes as developers, you know, a lot of the themes that we're talking about is launch early prototype early. And then we have these stories of Fortnite among us that have launched for a couple of years and took them too long years, which is ages in the mobile space to finally hit it big.

Like what's the, what's the theme or what's the, what's the key takeaway here? Do we. Kill game. What do we do here? I mean, of course, what you don't want to do is kind of embarrassed for a thousand years, money in the game over and over, like just throw money to the game until it makes it, uh, and what is particularly interesting in both these two cases is the fact that none of them were linear increments. They were not growing little by little, and then they made it, um, It was some sort of overnight.

And in the case of fortnight, it was kind of, they switched something. They did like a massive change within the game and that snapped. Um, so what I would advise companies is before you kill games, try to do like radical changes in your games and build games in a way that you can with them a lot. Um, That's why I say that if you kill one project, probably the next project you start should be kind of, it has to be kind of related to the stuff you previously killed.

Cause at that point after canceling one project, your bursary than ever to succeed at the next attempt at the gender, or add that audience. Um, what I've seen is that a lot of companies, when they fail at something, they get motivated. And they go for something completely different. And that's why I mentioned these cases where companies would release a, an open world. And then they would rather later on release a car racing game and then a match three and so on.

Because every time they fail, they get them motivated. They think, Oh, I'm not going to make it. And they go for another plan to get rich fast. And sometimes it's about, okay, you fail at doing a match three, try to make. Ma a different match three. Then if you fail, try to make a different thing that can reuse the learnings that you have extracted, uh, on top of the technology and assets and everything. Um, you can reuse the learnings that you have extracted from your previous experience.

Um, that would be my, my advice. Um, this also one thing that I've never tried it, but I think it could work, uh, which is okay. If you're about to cancel one game and the team, a lot of companies to do this thing right now, like kind of trying to emulate Supercell where it's the team that decides, uh, when it's the right time to cancel a prototype, which is great. It gives a lot of ownership, but here's my take. If the team decides that is the time to kill the game, try to ask two other teams in your company.

If they think that the game should be canceled. And if any of the teams that are out there in the company, doesn't want to cancel the team of the game of another gave, gave them the, the game because I've, you know, in business, um, there's this thing where we say that the team that. Makes you start, uh, start to climb the mountain. It's not necessarily the team that is going to bring you to the top. I've never seen that too.

I never seen apply that learning or that, that concept to gaming. Usually when, when the team, uh, says the game is over, they gave me solver. And I think a lot of, uh, a lot of companies could have a second chance if. They found, uh, another team within their company that could, that will be interested in saving that game and maybe apply ideas, radical ideas that may not necessarily be visible at that point by the team that discord really is running the game.

All right, guys. I hope you enjoyed just that little preview of the interview. Now, if you want the full interview, which I highly recommend you check out along with some of the experts in the mobile gaming space. We have five videos in total. We decided to do five instead of our usual 10. We've got. Five in total great guests, where we talk about indie success stories with Ryan McCloud. We've got, how do you really scale your game so much?

Great content retention, monetization growth, the pillars of a successful app business. All that. Is in the app, masters virtual summit, our latest one that you can access for free, and it's going to be free until we decided to do our next one. So frankly, it'll be free for a while. Long time at masters.com/summit to get your free access to our latest one that happened in November, 2020, once again at masters.com/summit.

All right guys, until next time, I'll see you on the next video.