Subway Surfers · B2C · endless runner mobile game
Move the game to a new city every three weeks
Guest credits it with keeping the game fresh for 13 years; no numbers
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- scale
In their words
What Subscription Apps Can Learn About Monetization From Gaming — Mathias Gredal Nørvig, Subway Surfers
David BarnardAnd I think in recent years you can't hardly get on TikTok without seeing Subway Surfers be part of these viral TikToks. How has that played into and what other strategies have you worked on over the years to keep it fresh and relevant?
Mathias Gredal NørvigI think early on the guys came up with the world tour, which was a way of every three weeks going to a new part of the world and inspiring people either to see their own hometown, or a nearby town, or a part of the world they had hadn't traveled to. So I think that helped us keep fresh. And then I think the intuitive gameplay means that new players coming in because you have to imagine that in 2012, this was a game from adults to adults. But then everyone that have started playing since also play Subway Surfers. So now we know that also a lot of kids are playing the game, but it was never designed for them and it is just a product of a really good and intuitive game that can also be played by everybody. It starts capping off at 45, 50, then people think it gets a bit too twitchy and a bit too hard to move the fingers, not judging. But I think overall we've been able to stay evergreen first and foremost.
Mathias Gredal NørvigI think we are in that bracket of Angry Bird, Subway Surfers, Candy Crush, all from the Nordics, funnily enough. And then I think the founders very early on said, it's about longevity. We want to be a truly free-to-play app where you can play the co-run as much as you want. We will never pinch you, we will never guard you from content. Anything is achievable through playing. And then I think that, as you say with TikTok, we've become a cultural …
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More from this episode
- Keep the core game free and unlimited, and never lock content behind paymentTop-5 downloaded game every year since 2012; 1M installs a day
- Have a small in-house team post 5-10 videos a day riding pop culture trendsViral hits of 75M-100M views on salaries only; guest says it lifts app store featuring
- Let anyone use the game in their videos, and repost the cool onesCreators, including a K-pop star, make unpaid content; the game became a meme format
- Put a few hundred dollars behind posts already going viralTens of thousands of dollars total; helps hits spread to other platforms
- Let players watch an ad for a reward instead of payingAds bring in 80-85% of revenue; still the top game in tier-2 and tier-3 countries
- Ask players' age, show kids only child-safe ads, and block gambling and gun adsVery few complaints across a billion ad impressions a month
- Swap characters with other hit games, with no money changing handsBrings back lapsed players and boosts both games; Crossy Road got the bigger bump
- Sell day and season passes next to the subscription for occasional usersHost cites it as working; no numbers
Tags: live-ops, content-updates, seasons, world-tour