๐ Stumble Guys Adds LTV via Progression: ๐ฐ Emote Abilities ๐ฐ
๐ Stumble Guys Adds LTV via Progression: ๐ฐ Emote Abilities ๐ฐ
Stumble Guys overhauled their emotes as upgradable abilities adding deep progression to an otherwise lightly monetized game
Hey Folks,
At Liquid & Gritโs monthly Product Roundtable event this morning, we discussed the new emote abilities feature in Stumble Guys. This feature is worth studying and, IMHO was well considered by the Stumble Guys team in its design.
Check below for more details.
In this newsletter:
Top Revenue: Oh damn! Last War: Survival was the #1 game worldwide last week. Howโd they do it? Seems like our newsletter from last week is pretty timely: The Crowning of a New Mobile Heavyweight: First Fun
Top Downloads: There was a big shakeup in the worldwide download charts last week. New #1 is Satisroom: Perfectly Organize, a 2-star rated game with virtually all its growth coming from Android. No, this isnโt fishy at all!
Top Steam Revenue: Congrats to EA Sports FC 25 for achieving #1 Steam revenue.
HighlightโStumble Guysโ Emotes Ability System: Read about the new feature that introduces a significant new progression mechanic to Stumble Guys. Does this represent a shift in how Scopely views the role of Stumble Guys from portfolio feeder to profit center?
Top 10 Mobile Revenue (Worldwide, US, and China)
New #1 Worldwide: Oh damn! Last War: Survival was the #1 game worldwide last week. Howโd they do it? Our newsletter from last week seems timely: The Crowning of a New Mobile Heavyweight: First Fun
#9 Worldwide: Nice to see Genshin Impact back in the top 10.
Top 10 Mobile Downloads (Worldwide, US, and China)
#1 Worldwide: There was a big shakeup in the worldwide download charts last week. New #1 is Satisroom: Perfectly Organize, a 2-star rated game with virtually all its growth coming from Android. No, this isnโt fishy at all!
#8 and #10 Worldwide:ย Huge gains by Count Masters and The Superhero League 2, jumping +275 and +979, respectively, to crack the top 10 worldwide.
#1 USA: Block PuzzleโSecret Garden is a casual puzzle game in which players drag and drop blocks into a grid similar to Tetris.
#1 China: Airplane Chefs takes the #1 spot in China downloads.
#10 China: ้้ญ่ก๏ผ็ ดๆ-ๅฝๆผซๆญฃ็IPๆๆ is an ARPG based on the popular Chinese anime and manga series Zhunhun Street.
Top 10 Steam Charts by Revenue
Congrats to EA Sports FC 25 for achieving #1 Steam revenue.
Frostpunk 2 launched on Sept 20, almost one week ago.
Cyberpunk 2077 had the biggest revenue gain, at +53, to hit #10 on Top Steam Revenue last week. This was most likely in anticipation of the Phantom Liberty expansion releasing on September 26 (today).
๐กWhat can we learn from Stumble Guysโ New Abilities System?
Liquid & Grit hosted a Product Roundtable today to discuss Stumble Guys' new emotes abilities system.
The discussion focused on the risks and benefits of adding these abilities and debated how this change, which modifies core gameplay, may affect monetization and the player experience and whether such innovations risk disrupting a successful gameโs core mechanics.
Key points from the discussion:
How to maintain the balance between innovation and maintaining core gameplay.
Whether adding permanent abilities enhances engagement or creates challenges (such as "pay-to-win" concerns or player base fragmentation), emphasizing the role of product managers in balancing risk and reward in game development.
The potential long-term impacts on monetization and the overall sustainability of a game like Stumble Guys.
The importance of testing, limited-time events, and player feedback in integrating new features.
How Stumble Guysโ new Ranked mode, launched alongside Abilities, complements the new feature to drive engagement.
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Speakers:
Joseph Kim. CEO at Lila Games.
David Nelson. Co-founder at Magnetic.
Brett Nowak. CEO at Liquid & Grit.
Talia Shmuel. Product and Game Design Lead at Bring It On.
STUMBLE GUYSโ EMOTES ABILITY SYSTEM
Some of the slides and some commentary from me are below.
Strategic Trends: We have seen an industry shift from hyper-casual to hybrid-casual. Further, we have seen the hybridization of mechanics between games. Here, we see that Stumble Guys takes what I consider an โRPG mechanicโ to a casual game to add a significant progression vector and potentially a way to increase monetization/player ARPU dramatically.
Complexity: For casual games, designers should always watch the overall complexity introduced to players. Especially for mobile + casual, complexity can be a killer. Hence, reusing an existing feature and building on top of it reduces an introduction and explanation of a completely new system and leverages off of an existing system.
Portfolio Strategy:ย This is speculation on my part, but I believe that introducing such a deep upgrade system may be a bit of a risky attempt to take a game that may have been more of a portfolio feeder game (high organic downloads, low monetization) intended to feed higher LTV games in the portfolio and shift the game to be more of a profit center.
Potential Risk: Abilities that impact core gameplay may be a bit of a risk. The main risks include: 1. Potential backlash from the player community, which may view the game as more pay-to-win focused, and 2. Potential for power gap imbalances, gameplay imbalance, and the potential to hose matchmaking by distributing players who can be matched.
Supply and Demand: Developers' introduction of a ranked progression player chase simultaneously is smart. Supplying abilities by itself isnโt as good without the ranked progression, which provides the demand for players to seek abilities to better progress in ranked mode.