The Hunger Games for User Generated Content: Case Fall Guys
Written by Tiffany Keller, who is a Director of Product and investor with a decade of experience in mobile games across Scopely, Activision Blizzard, Miniclip, and Zynga.
These are the views of the contributor, and not those of any current/former employers.
Fall Guys, a knockout party game by Epic Games’ Mediatonic studio, is following the heels of Fortnite’s blockbuster “Creative Mode” circa 2018 with their own “Creative Construction” mode.
Epic’s magnum opus of creator economy investment was unveiled in March with the new Unreal Editor for Fortnite, scripting language “Verse”, and an announcement to pay up to 40% of net revenue to creators at the State of Unreal. Epic’s user-generated content (UGC) domination has required thousands of employees and 5 years of development but pays off with 40% of player game time and and $350M generated from creator worlds.
Mediatonic’s “slow and steady” go-to-market (GTM) launch plan for Fall Guys Creative lets players construct rounds (playable obstacle race course levels) and share with friends in private lobbies via share codes. Mediatonic must cherry-pick UGC rounds to appear on the main menu, although the team reports working on discoverability throughout 2023. Can slow-rolling UGC pack the punch Mediatonic needs to defend the knockout genre on the console before mobile competitors eat their lunch?
Mobile knockout games are springing up everywhere - such as Stumble Guys or Netease’s Eggy Party, which launched with a UGC creator mode last May. While largely available in just China, Eggy Party was the most downloaded Chinese game with 13.6 million downloads and $81.2 million in revenue in the last two months. Eggy Go, Netease’s global SKU that’s been in soft launch in the UK and Netherlands since February, was announced for impending global release at Netease Connect 2023 last week. While the knockout genre struggles to turn a profit on console (see Knockout City’s impending closure), mobile F2P SKUs have found recent success with organic reach growing a large audience, and augmenting app purchases with ad monetization. It’s only a matter of time before mobile competitors go cross-platform and via cross-promoting their top mobile players threaten Fall Guys’ console dominance.
Why haven’t more mobile games added UGC since Fortnite showed what’s possible 5 years ago? UGC is difficult to integrate into a pre-existing game economy and power progression, so games created with UGC from the outset have a big advantage. Gamemakers should watch closely for how this new mode impacts Fall Guys’ performance as a distinct add-on feature. Fortnite and Roblox allow a wide range of experiences with entirely different worlds or mini-games to tour, however, UGC in Fall Guys is more contained. Players are only creating one kind of obstacle round that hasn’t been integrated into the game’s progression yet, so the projected impact on player engagement in Fall Guys should be at a much smaller scale.
Netease’s Eggy Party custom creator “workshop mode” has been out since launch May ‘22
Mediatonic’s progressive rollout of Creative belies the trepidation of a flight crew forced to rebuild the plane mid-flight. Fall Guys never intended to be a live service game and thus all the expensive infrastructure underpinning UGC has to be shoehorned in years later. Features such as asset bundling, content delivery over the air, and toolsets enabling creators and studio review of that content are UGC table stakes - not to mention the sharing, sorting, and surfacing of this dynamic content is an endeavor akin to building games as a social media platform.
This is not for the faint of heart, especially with the existential uncertainty of designing for a cross-platform-first future shifting tech stack decisions across the gaming industry. If Fall Guys plans to launch a mobile SKU one day, they would need to design the tech stack underpinning their current content delivery network with this in mind or incur vast tech debt later. This likely sets them behind their mobile competitors who would have fewer challenges crossing over onto consoles.
How did Fall Guys add User Generated Content mid-flight?
STEP #1 Tech Foundation - the February Update
Before making updates obvious to players, a safe strategy is to release technical changes first that can be tested for performance gains before enabling the UGC experience to players. UGC content and live ops require a shift from content delivery via store download to streaming content over the air in both directions between the client and server, especially large file sizes like entire UGC rounds. February release notes for the last seasonal update show a host of technical performance changes laying the groundwork for a more robust backend and thinner client (less processing done on the device), such as:
“Vaulting” rounds dramatically reduce rounds held on the client
Reducing lobby sizes from 60 to 40 alongside matchmaking improvements to decrease backend demand and latency
Longer seasons laid the groundwork for the May season update’s shorter “Fame Passes” to exist inside the season; increasing battle pass purchases per season
STEP #2 UGC Tools and Private Sharing - the May Update
This release added a level editor for players to construct rounds- only requiring a start and finish line for the Race mode, with any obstacles costing variable points up to a 1,000-point maximum. Mediatonic supplied 20 rounds created in-house using this same editor to seed ideas amongst creators, although no frameworks or presets are currently available. Top creative rounds handpicked by Mediatonic can be featured on the home screen on a Creator Playlist, but there is currently no algorithmic discovery.
What could be better
Creators can only share their rounds through private lobbies with a code- meaning distribution of codes, virality, and players engaging with social hooks are large barriers to engagement with the new Creative mode. This is not the ideal way to debut creator mode, as it is missing the vital creator economy: creators can’t get paid yet. Not only is the supply of rounds that could drive organic virality and engagement boosts hidden behind private lobbies, but the demand to create these rounds is cut off by a lack of incentives. Releasing this simple version of creator mode is a notable first step but won’t win Fall Guys meaningful engagement improvements on its own.
STEP #3 Organic Discoverability and Engagement - Second half of 2023
Mediatonic stated that Creative Rounds will be in the “Show Selector” for all players to discover in the future after they work out the kinks in the initial debut of their tools and content. Show selector rounds could be algorithm prioritized by engagement factors such as frequency of plays and minutes spent in that round.
For a team whose feature parity has been playing catch up to other battle royale competitors, this largely delays the revenue and engagement impact this bold beat will accrue - however, it can also avoid potential blunders and tech issues harming player sentiment.
The main menu highlights Creator rounds that are curated and often made by employees
The Verdict: Incremental progress only wins in the absence of disruptive innovation.
Why this execution strategy?
Given the team’s speed relative to competitors and their starting infrastructure, a strategy that minimizes risk is the best GTM plan Mediatonic has. Pivoting from building technology that just serves content to algorithmically collecting, packaging, parsing, and selecting content is no small feat and is rife with potential dark engagement patterns. Acqui-hiring for UGC tooling and outsourcing content development could speed up the process, but ultimately most layers of the existing tech stack would need augmentation from engineers already familiar with it. Pragmatism and an honest assessment of team execution risk are key inputs for whether this “slow and steady” launch of Creative Construction is the best choice. Fall Guys also needs to keep their live ops cadence intact during this year-long launch, or they jeopardize existing revenue before unlocking effective UGC to defray live ops content cost.
Why staged launches make life easier for mature games:
Bring forward incremental revenue and engagement gains from initial stages that would have been delayed until one large release otherwise
Enable impact assessment of each stage; roll iterations and improvements into the following stages
Derisk each launch with faster feedback loops and clearer bug triage
Gain time to seed curated creator content and define standards for algorithmic discovery
The risks of a Slow & Steady strategy
It’s easy to say a team should be faster without questioning who sets the speed limit. Fall Guys maintains knockout party dominance on the console and thus sets the speed limit for progress on new modes, however, a competitor from mobile could easily disrupt their dominance with a faster release cadence. Focusing resources on UGC could also lock Fall Guys out of the mobile market completely while their mobile competitors get even more entrenched with a larger audience and eventually cross over.
The main risk of their “slow and steady” approach is the double-edged sword of choosing to ignore mobile, while also taking a long time to release UGC and measure performance uplift to validate the opportunity cost. If Mediatonic made the wrong resource allocation, their time horizon to pivot to mobile development is roughly 18 months.
How can Fall Guys’ next move keep them out of the Blunderdome?
Organic discovery of creative rounds builds the engagement flywheel and a new class of Fall Guys influencers
Creating and sharing rounds among friends is fun, but nearly all of the engagement boost stems from the best rounds (obstacle race levels) rising to the surface for the entire audience. Building the right north star metrics into a decision algorithm showcases not only the best rounds but also blends a diverse mix of rounds into a playlist showcasing recognizable creators.
While the team hand-selects quality creative rounds displayed in the Show Selector now, algorithmic surfacing means each decision parameter needs a lot of testing to determine the exact criteria. The longest rounds could be more frustrating than fun, even if the release notes state Mediatonic would optimize for game time minutes. This discoverability optimization is table stakes for UGC, and only the first step towards a true personalization that leverages player behavior in surfacing particular rounds.
Mediatonic plans to tackle creator round surfacing next update, but many potential iterations lay in their path to personalisation
Organic discoverability doesn’t just increase engagement for your non-creator players but boosts your audience share of highly engaged creators too. You can build a new class of influencers if UGC hooks back into the game economy or dispenses cold hard cash. Playing a creative round bestows fame points toward their battle pass just like any other “show”, but until these are included in daily and weekly challenges that give the bulk of fame point progression there isn’t much reason for players to seek out creator content.
While profit sharing like Fortnite’s breakout Creator Economy 2.0 this past March will be a long time coming, shifting focus from just highlighting the right rounds to using creator fan followings to boost attach rates of UGC game modes creates a flywheel for this new mode. The flywheel needs to fit the content consumption model: tipping creators or using promo codes to direct a percent of in-app purchases to creators works for games like Fortnite that have progression inside creator content.
This compensation is a poor fit for short-form content like Fall Guys rounds that must be completed in 30 seconds however; creators should instead be paid for engagement time similar to Youtube or TikTok. Showcasing creators with channels on the main screen or capitalizing on virality across discovery platforms like Twitch could even bring more installs into Fall Guys itself.
Enabling creators of all kinds with a creative editor on rails
Fall Guys has taken the first step in their parent company’s footsteps but many improvements to the creative editor are likely to come later. This toolset allows for a lot of creativity, but popular games like Farmville and Homescapes showed us that presets teach our players good design elements. Instead of following the Fishdom decorate model of allowing players to choose from a vast variety of obstacles, Mediatonic could follow the Gardenscapes model and supply creative frameworks for rounds that players tweak or choose from limited menus. Supporting multiple creative editor modes that run the gamut from freehand design, building off presets, boosting creator round offshoots, or secondary preset markets all empower different segments of the creator economy. Once Mediatonic has its editor toolset fleshed out, it will be much easier to expand Creative Rounds across other game modes such as last-man-standing or squads.
Are Games as a Platform the new Games as a Service?
Games as a Service became endemic when studios realized live-operating their flagship games with content was less risky than launching new games every few years with sparse updates. Live-operated content is less costly to build than new features and capitalizes on the existing installs you paid for. These higher margin benefits are magnified when a game can successfully integrate user-generated content into their live operations, as users supplement live ops content for free.
UGC only comes “free” after the initial investment is recouped, however, because the upfront cost to build out the editor toolset and discoverability in-game is steep. Games need to evaluate audience size if a small percentage of creators can hit critical mass to make a meaningful amount of quality content. For game teams planning to launch with UGC like Eggy Party, they must make a convincing argument to execs that user acquisition can still scale ROI in a post-identifier market if development costs grow 30%. If games can add UGC several years into their tenure successfully, they would reap the benefits of supplemental free content from users and a lower cost structure in their operations. While more headcount needs to curate and review UGC, content management can be cheaply outsourced so in-house talent can focus on feature systems.
Will Creative Construction keep Fall Guys ahead of contenders already available on mobile? Once the industry finds a repeatable formula for bolting on “UGC as a service” to some of the oldest and largest audience games among us, then we’ll see the rise of Live Ops 3.0.
