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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

Workedretentionfeature-development

What they did

The 'world tour': every three weeks the game's setting moves to a new part of the world, so players see their own hometown, a nearby town or a place they haven't traveled to. The core run stays the same; each city is a season. Partners sometimes contribute (e.g. a Foo Fighters keyboard player produced one city's soundtrack with the in-house audio designer).

What happened

Guest says it helped keep the game fresh; the game has stayed in the top-5 downloads every year.
Stage
scale

In their words

What Subscription Apps Can Learn About Monetization From Gaming — Mathias Gredal Nørvig, Subway Surfers

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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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Tags: live-ops, content-updates, seasons, world-tour