With studio #2 I wanted to step off the content treadmill 🏃🏽😓 My first studio, JuiceBox Games, was focused on an RPG-style game that required a massive team to keep up with the voracious appetite of players 😋 Our complex features were time-intensive to build and upkeep … and that investment didn’t always pay off. Our team was also heavy with developers at the expense of the necessary user acquisition (UA) talent we needed to grow 🤦🏽 Keeping up with the content treadmill was not only costly - it was risky. By channeling so much of our energy and resources into a single game, we bet the company on its success. With FunCraft, Jason McGuirk and I wanted to take a new approach: ✨Build and operate more games faster and more efficiently ✨ We decided to lean into classic gameplay, dressed in midcore features and systems. Our games are fresh and engaging, but players are coming to play classic word games - not to consume an endless stream of new content. Our games aren’t stagnant. We DO invest in quality content, but we update in a way that is systemized and staggered. Here’s an example: we update our leaderboards seasonally - a content feature we can calendar, automate, and repeat. Building simpler games focused on classic gameplay took us off the content treadmill and preserved our energy and resources for the things that elevate our business: 🎯 Investing in UA and ad monetization 🎯 Building new games 🎯 Operating our existing games as efficiently as possible Don’t get me wrong - content-heavy games are great…if you’re a player or a massive studio. But as a newer studio operating in this competitive, saturated market, we didn’t want to play the content game. We want to play the game that best positions us to win 🚀
Andrew Chambers
3mo
Content treadmill is exhausting.
Kevin Scheepers
3mo
Focusing on classic gameplay and efficient updates sounds like a smart move to keep things fresh without burning out.
Anshul Gupta
3mo
Make a box. Fold it carefully. Ship.
Alan Barasch
3mo
Smart moves.
Founder & CEO at 3Developers Game Studio
3moThanks for sharing this! Our team is developing a narrative-driven game, but we’re also leaning to placing more emphasis on the combat mechanics. We’re utilizing artificial intelligence to generate large portions of the game content—not as an autopilot, but with humans guiding and editing the input- output. We’re far enough into the project to see it through, but we’re still exploring the best approach to publish the game. Do you have any advice on that?