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.
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“I 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.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Subway Surfers: Keep the core game free and unlimited, and never lock content behind paymentTop-5 downloaded game every year since 2012; 1M installs a day
- Subway Surfers: 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
- Subway Surfers: 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
- Subway Surfers: Put a few hundred dollars behind posts already going viralTens of thousands of dollars total; helps hits spread to other platforms
- Subway Surfers: 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
- Subway Surfers: Ask players' age, show kids only child-safe ads, and block gambling and gun adsVery few complaints across a billion ad impressions a month
- Subway Surfers: Swap characters with other hit games, with no money changing handsBrings back lapsed players and boosts both games; Crossy Road got the bigger bump
- Slopes: Sell day and season passes next to the subscription for occasional usersHost cites it as working; no numbers