Pivots & Resurgence

The Game:

If you’ve been following Twitch/YouTube streamers or generally parse through content on social media. You’d have probably stumbled upon a clip of “Fall Guys”. Set in a colorful world where players control an adorable abomination (more on this later) who compete against others through a series of interesting mini-games to be crowned #1. For those uninitiated, here’s a compilation of some moments from the game. Imagine Teletubbies meets Takeshi’s Castle.

In 2020, Fall Guys became one of the biggest hits of the pandemic era. Mediatonic Games ’s title was more than just a “right game at the right time”. The game offered a lighthearted, accessible and spectable form of gameplay, learning curve that could rival hardcore shooters & a mix of fast-paced sessions with diverse gameplay.

The highly watchable nature of the game and a concentrated marketing campaign that leveraged Twitch streamers & their community allowed the game to grow organically. The campaign was a success and during the darker times of our history, Fall Guys became a popular distraction.

It’s hard to deny ‘Fall Guys’ impact, the game on-boarded casual users to video games, streams & events raised money for charities, it also provided a much needed distraction from worldy woes & brought more games into mainstream culture.

The games numbers were promising, it seemed to have hit the right growth curve & engagement numbers were interesting. The game also enjoyed the title of being the “most downloaded PS+ game”. However, as with all games. You never stay at the top.

The Problem:

Despite being a massive success, Fall Guys seemed to have hit a curve and was on a fast-track to lose its players, its spot in mainstream culture & relevance. There are of course, a myriad of issues at play that contributed to this decline.

• Entry barrier: Paying a premium to acquire the game meant sooner or later you’d hit a growth curve, not everyone wants to pay-before-trying
• Skill-gap: the highly accessible gameplay allowed more users to play the game, but this also meant that casual gamers would be deterred from improving their play due its difficult learning curve.
• Network issues: the overnight success meant the game servers didn’t scale as easily, devs did their best in the initial months but players reported network issues and this impacted the overall gameplay experience & retention
• Lack of Social: despite being a watchable & social experience, the game didn’t really have many social elements that would improve the user experience and allow them to have shared experiences with their friends.
• Mainstream: the popularity of the game also brought in a set of users who aren’t necessarily gamers or adept at Fall Guys, this impacted matchmaking quality and “active” users would soon find the game less-challenging.

The Pivot:

2021, however was not as welcoming as 2020. The game fell off the radar, had a few successful copy-cats in the market and generally started to lose its charm, along with its massive player-base. The situation seemed bleak, however after the purchase by Epic Games. Mediatonic announced that the game will move away from its premium model and pivot to a Free-To-Play model.

Epic Games had done a similar move with Psyonix, maker of the car x football game Rocket League. Apart from the pivot in the business model, they also announced new releases on different platforms & offer cross-platform compatability + improved game performance for the players (apart from being delisted on Steam)

I’ll be exploring and breaking down different models in subsequent posts (premium, free-to-play, play-to-earn, play-to-own and subscriptions). For now, here’s a quick primer:

The move wasn’t surprising. Historically, publishers have opted to pivot their premium AAA titles to an F2P model and have seen great results (Team Fortress, Fortnite, PUBG etc)

I won’t dive into the ethics of F2P model in this post, but I’m highly appreciative of publishers who take pro-active measures to revitalize their titles. It makes great sense from a business and player perspective.

Business Perspective:

• Increase games life-cycle
• Generate additional revenue opportunities
• Showcase the brand and IP to a wider audience
• Improve metrics & unlock strategic partnerships

Player Perspective:

• Reduce barrier of entry
• Free access = more players trying out = lower wait-times for matches
• Community growth = unlocking social experiences
• Improved experience

The Resurgence:

As a result of its pivot, Fall Guys received tons of media exposure. The publisher was able to positively charge the player-base, activate a media campaign that brought in more visibility and announce bold-new features which would further incentivize players to engage with the game.

The new business model & its implementation has had a net-positive impact on the install numbers for Fall Guys. While a lot of the data is hard to centralize across platforms and parse through, a few dashboards are showing promising signs for the game.

There’s a clear resurgence in the minds of the community and the game as a whole has started to positively build upon this pivot. The results so far are promising and it remains to be seen if Fall Guys is able to capitalize on this growth-spurt.

After the F2P release, it took two-weeks for Fall Guys to surpass the 50 Million players milestone. This is an incredible achievement for any studio and speaks volumes about their journey through tumultuous waters and uncertain times through the release. It’s never a guarantee that a game would be well received if it pivots.

A change in the model or direction would often leave a lingering impact on the community. Your community would start to question every move and it would take a lot of transparency, accountability and finese to make these changes a net-positive in the minds of your most-loyal followers.

Fall Guys and its pivot showcases the power of leveraging your IP and unlocking newer frontiers. The resurgence of install numbers and activity will have a positive effect throughout its ecosystem.

Both the business and players would thrive through this move and I can’t seem to wonder if some other AAA titles would have benefited from a similar approach. Whether its through experimentation or conscious building blocks. It’s important for developers and publishers to understand how to best leverage their IPs and continously grow their user-base.

While it remains to be seen how “sticky” the title remains for the newer audiences. As long as the team has learned from the past, the future seems bright.

Thanks for reading, if you like my work, please subscribe or share your feedback on how I can improve!

If you prefer, you can also subscribe to 0xPlay on Substack