On January 27, 2010, Jobs first showed off the first-generation iPad at the San Francisco Apple conference. This year is less than 18 months since the launch of the App Store, and the number of apps on the shelves has increased from the initial 500 to over 10,000, with 3 billion downloads. The emergence of the
application store is regarded as the beginning of the development of mobile games. The birth of the iPad has made many game practitioners notice a huge "touch screen" game market, and has spawned a series of popular casual mobile games, "Angry Little" "Bird" series, " Fruit Ninja ", " Little Crocodile Loves Bathing ", "Fishing Master" have almost become must-have games for iPad.
Budge Studios (hereinafter referred to as Budge) is very special among them. Open its official website, Barbie, Hello Kitty, Smurfs, Thomas the Engine, My Little Pony , all are animation toy characters familiar to children - this is a company specializing in the production of mobile games for children.
Today, parents still have a prejudice against games as "spiritual poison", and the public opinion environment was even worse a decade ago. Budge chose to develop games for children, like a player who lost track of casual games.
However, in the next ten years, Budge's performance has slapped people who underestimated the children's application market. The team has only a hundred people, and has produced products with a cumulative download of more than 1.2 billion times. The number of monthly active users Reached tens of millions and has more than 300,000 subscribers. According to the official website, more than 600 million children around the world are playing Budge games.
Three important choices
Looking back on Budge's development history of more than ten years, the founders Noémie Dupuy, Michael Elmon, and David Lipes made three very important choices.
The first was to choose a city with game soil as their foothold, which later proved to be the wisest decision of their careers.
It all started with a meeting in a coffee shop on Avenue Saint Laurent in Montreal. Three young gamers with working experience in major companies had a fierce collision of ideas during the negotiation process, and they readily decided to form a grassroots entrepreneurial team in Montreal .
Montreal is a world-renowned game city and the heart of the Canadian game industry. The preferential tax policy for games has attracted many industry giants, such as Ubisoft , EA, Sony , Warner Bros. , Edios, Take-Two, etc. There are countless.
gathered thousands of game practitioners at that time, most of them had 3A game development experience; at the same time, institutions of higher learning were still continuously sending game-related professionals.
Maybe you can just point at a map of Montreal, and there is a game company there; or maybe a young man you meet on the streets of Montreal is an employee of 3A studio.
Elman later mentioned in interviews more than once: "Montreal is a good place to start a game company." The
team originally produced audio for large game studios. With the launch of the iPhone and iPad one after another, the mobile game market is booming. They observed a phenomenon, "the games played by children are not designed for children." It is easy to miss the link; the advertisement content of some games is not suitable for children; there are even some games with their own internal chat rooms, which may mislead children.The three of
then made the second important decision. In 2010, they established Budge Studio to develop casual games for children.
A huge untapped game market means both challenges and opportunities. Fortunately, they quickly obtained venture capital. Almost on the first day of establishment of Budge, they successfully applied for a financing of over US$3 million from the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC). The latter is a financial institution dedicated to supporting small and medium-sized enterprises, especially innovative local enterprises.
Early Budge was more like a game provider, responsible for adapting popular IPs of big companies into mobile games for children. For example, a roller coaster application was developed for the Disney amusement park project "It's a Small World", and related applications were produced for the animations " Dora the Explorer " and " SpongeBob SquarePants " under Nickelodeon in the United States. The founder of
once revealed that this stage can be profitable every year. However, the real take-off of the children's entertainment industry will have to wait until the third important decision-the business model has transformed from pure R&D to integrated R&D and distribution, and self-developed games are released by themselves.
It is difficult to lose the resource tilt of a big company. For example, if the popularity is not high in the early stage, you need to spread the net to find top children’s IP. After finally negotiating the remaining licensing fees, you must invest 100% in your own products, and you can’t be sure whether the project is successful. . The benefits of
are also obvious. One is to have complete control over the product, which can truly realize the design concept of gamers. The other is that the overall income has increased significantly. At that time, in addition to the 30% cut from the Apple Store, publishers and licensees also had to share according to the game sales, and self-publishing could save a large share of the game after paying the licensing fee.
two-phase trade-off, after all, the advantages outweigh the risks. As it turns out, this decision drove Budge's revenue into a period of hypergrowth.Overseas business website Profitguide shows that Budge doubled its size in 2014, expanding from 30 to 60 employees, and its revenue has increased by 2336% in the past three years.
Big brands also approached Budge and proposed a licensing agreement to Budge. The phone in the founder's office kept ringing, and now it was their turn to decide which (brands) to cooperate with.
's impressive report card also attracted some venture capitalists (hereinafter referred to as VC), and some offered good prices, but the three founders were unmoved. If a VC came to Budge Studios with a $100 million check, they would politely say no, the founders said. Since the establishment of
, Budge has only received two rounds of financing from BDC, and the other three founders contributed. They are very happy that they have resisted the huge investment temptation of VCs. "It's not that doing business with VCs is bad. Looking back, we have created a healthy business and we are fortunate to have complete control."
Of course The idea is to keep pace with the times. On March 16, 2022, they sold the company. The acquirer, Tilting Point (hereinafter referred to as TP), is a well-known game publisher with at least 8 offices around the world, including New York, Boston, Seoul, Kiev, , etc., with more than 460 employees. Conquer, "Star Trek: Timeline" and other well-known products.
TP undoubtedly took a fancy to Budge's long-term hard work in the children's application market: 600 million child users, tens of millions of monthly active users, and this number will continue to grow. Founder Kevin Segalla said that Budge will help TP broaden the market and fill its gap in children's entertainment.
In addition, Budge had 129 employees at the time of acquisition, which is relatively small in Montreal, but it performed quite well in terms of revenue.According to sensortower's estimated data, in March 2022, the total revenue of Budge's mobile applications will exceed 3 million US dollars; the total downloads will exceed 16 million times.
Like TP's previous acquisitions, Budge's leadership team and its 129 employees can continue to operate independently. This may be the most important reason why Budge's founder agreed to the acquisition, and backed by TP, a stronger distribution platform, can To achieve the greatest degree of business complementarity.
Lipes is excited about this: "Through this acquisition, we will continue to operate independently, develop the most creative content, acquire more global popular IP, and bring our games to more children around the world." Undisclosed, but it can be seen from the words of both parties that this is a happy deal.
Shortcuts and challenges in making children's games
Regarding products, Budge adopts a "shortcut" method, and most of its over 100 products are IP-adapted games. Most of the authorized parties of the cooperation are internationally renowned children's brand companies, such as Mattel, (which owns Barbie, Thomas and other IPs) and Hasbro (which owns My Little Pony, Transformers , Star Wars and other IPs).
On the one hand, these popular IPs have a strong fan base, and some IP audiences are not even limited to children; at the same time, fans are highly loyal to the IP, and many adapted mobile games (classified as entertainment or children in the app store) ) series has remained popular over the years.
"Barbie Magical Fashion" and "Barbie Dreamhouse Adventure" are both house-playing and dressing-up games adapted from the best-selling doll IP "Barbie". The former has been released for more than 8 years, and now it can enter the list of iOS entertainment app downloads in 20 markets TOP100; the latter has been released for more than three years and has been updated frequently. It is currently stable in the TOP100 iOS entertainment application download list (TOP10 children’s application download list) in 135 markets. According to SensorTower’s estimation, the revenue last month was about 1 million US dollars. The volume is about 500,000.
"Barbie Dreamhouse Adventure" U.S. iOS entertainment application download ranking
IP adaptation games that can maintain more than 100,000 downloads, as well as simulation business game "Hello Kitty Lunchbox", coloring casual game "My Little Pony Color By Magic" (My Little Pony Color By Magic) IP), puzzle casual game "PAW Patrol Rescue World" (Paw Patrol Rescue World IP) and so on.
On the other hand, well-known brands have strong financial resources and have a strong legal department behind them. Cooperating with "Rights Defenders" means that they can get "anti-infringement and anti-piracy" services for free.
is an unavoidable problem in the field of children's applications. Developers must take care of two groups: parents and children. Budge often uses products to convey a concept: to promote the interaction between parents and children. Games play a role similar to early education products, allowing children to exercise observation, imagination, reaction and hands-on skills while enjoying the fun. ability.
Negative public opinion caused by the recharge issue of minors emerges endlessly.Budge is particularly cautious at this point: each app will clearly indicate free content and paid content when it is launched; at the same time, a certain payment threshold is set. The problem that cannot be solved at the moment is "how much is 9 multiplied by 8"; what's more, the early Budge would limit the amount of free content provided by the game, and later there were more and more high-quality free content in a game.
In addition, Budge also created a user experience platform Budge Playground, inviting parents to participate in product testing , and provide direct feedback. Some parents even shyly admit they enjoy playing Budge's games, too. The effect of
is immediate, not only gaining the trust of parents, but also greatly improving the user's first experience, and when children are really interested in an app, parents will be more willing to pay.
Some people may think that children's games are so simple to play, so it must be easy to make. In fact, children's games also need to be tested. The child users of
Budge participated in the testing of almost every process of product development, including Alpha, Beta, trial and other different development stages. The early tests of
can obtain some basic information, such as the size and coordination of children's palms, to understand their control over the device and their ability to complete certain game actions. The
test also facilitates adjustments for specific feedback.
The original design of the hairdressing mobile game "Strawberry Shortcake Holiday Hair" was to use audio to prompt players to operate. During the test process, the production team found that the voice-over played little guiding role, so they added a visual clue, which greatly improved the user experience.
Left: before adjustment | Right: after adjustment
The dress-up games "Strawberry Shortcake Dreams" and "Dress Up Dreams" became one of the apps with the highest paid conversion rate of Budge after the game gave away the most popular character "Strawberry Girl" for free .
For example, the puzzle game "Crayola Colorful Creatures" has a rich gameplay, including coloring, puzzles, feeding, learning about biology and geography, but only 25% of first-time users can complete the game process during the test. Analysis The data found that most users got stuck on the last activity—requiring the child to use the device microphone—too challenging for young children. After the adjustment, the data of users who can fully experience the game has increased by 74%, almost three times.
In Budge's view, children are a user group worthy of attention. In-team meetings are also skewed by some political correctness, and only kids will tell you honestly and directly what they don't like.
Dupuy even bluntly said that children's feedback is very important, "it has completely changed our company"-the Budge team is undoubtedly the best in the industry, but as adults, they often like to put great pressure on themselves in order to think about it. They come up with better ideas, but this kind of creativity is greatly weakened due to the restrictions of the surrounding environment; children put forward many unconstrained opinions without hesitation, "sometimes the best solution is the simplest solution."
As users grow older, Budge has made corresponding adjustments in product direction. In addition to looking for more popular IPs that are suitable for all ages, he has also established an action game department "Budge Games", which has grown to 25 members in 2019.The first game launched by this department is called "Transformers: Bumblebee", which is adapted from the famous sci-fi IP "Transformers".
is mainly designed for older children, but it unexpectedly attracts many younger players.
is not the only one out there. wait.
Toca Boca, a Swedish children's app developer, almost dominates the paid list of iOS children's apps in the United States.
Indian game maker Nazara also performed well. According to SensorTower's estimates, its preschool educational entertainment application "Kiddopia" had a revenue of approximately US$3 million in March. Among Chinese manufacturers of
, it seems that only BabyBus and have made achievements. It also went overseas very early. In 2020, it ranked ninth on the App Annie global game app download list and third on the overseas download list of Chinese manufacturers. According to the official website, the monthly active users of the interactive app exceeded 100 million, and all channels (including games) on the YouTube platform have a total of subscriptions. The number of users is 136 million.
Game News has previously reported that it submitted a prospectus to GEM in July 2021. Affected by the "double reduction" policy, revenue has declined. Recently, the IPO review was suspended due to expired financial information. Under the double attack , Going overseas to expand the market may be a way out.
Conclusion
Budge has achieved good results in a track that was not blessed by the public at first, and it seems to have verified that the relationship between parents and games has never been antagonistic.
