Deconstructing Epic Seven
On September 2018, I saw a pre-registration campaign for an upcoming mobile game titled “Epic Seven”. At first glance, it looks pretty nice with all the Anime style RPG, and my first impression was “they are trying to use the keyword “Seven” from “Seven Knights”, other popular RPG game that I also have been playing.
Fast forward to July 2019, I’m still playing Epic Seven, amazed by their content quality, and not just the product, but the game itself have been hugely successful in the western market, generating well over 3M USD gross revenue on June 2019. As a game designer, I always find it exciting when a new game enters top-grossing since that means there is a lot of things they have done right and we can learn from it.
So, what is this game about?
Epic Seven is a 2D turn-based JRPG Game developed by “SuperCreative” and published by “Smilegate Megaport”. Smilegate is the developer behind one of the top FPS game “Cross Fire”, and as far as I know, Super Creative only had release 1 game so far — Epic seven. The game was launched globally on November 2018. Since then, the game has found tremendous success, even among Western Market, generating well over 3M USD gross revenue per month on the US market.
Among RPG genre with Anime art style, Epic Seven is one of the top 5. This is an impressive achievement, as the competitions are veterans or games with IP that already have a strong community. Summoners Wars, a 5 years old mobile game, comes on top, (kudos to the team for maintaining the game this long), and the other 3 games — Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle, Fire Emblem Heroes, Fate Grand/Order — are IP based.
Having played the game since release, I can say the did well on every front — core gameplay, balancing, monetization, live ops, and community. On this post, I will focus on what makes the game unique, and how they monetize it. I will start with the Core Gameplay & Core Loop.
Core Gameplay & Core Loop
The core gameplay is a standard and proven turn-based RPG, players can bring a squad of up to 4 units to battle against enemies. A unit has stats that are affected by levels, rarity, equipment, and artifact. Units also have an element that works like rock-paper-scissor.
I will not go into details here, but I can say the battle is very tactical with players setting up their squad before the battle, and deciding each unit’s action during the battle.
There are many contents available, both for PVE and PVP. Beating each content will require different units, equipment, and strategies. Even just seeing the number of currencies available are staggering. It can feel overwhelming, but Epic Seven did a good job in setting up the pace for the players early in the game.
However, to be honest, I felt there is nothing new here, it’s the same formula as other mid-core RPG game. It has the main story, hunt to get better equipment, raid for late players, Arena, and Guilds. Super Creative did the Core Gameplay and Coreloop right, but the actual innovation comes from the quality of the animation.
Playable Animation
As you probably have noticed, the one-liner for Epic Seven is “playable animation”. And they deliver. The quality itself on the portrait, background, assets, everything, is detailed and enjoyable to see. Adding to that, Smilegat put extra effort to put skill animation during the battle!
And it runs very seamlessly and smoothly within battle! It feels like watching an anime where the hero launched the ultimate attack and in the heat of battle, I could feel my self wanting to scream “DIEEE!!!”
Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating, but I hope you get the point how awesome the animation is.
To achieve this, the Super Creative team develop their engine, “Yuna Engine” to make sure the game can play smooth high-quality animations on mobile devices. It’s an interesting story about how they focus their prototype on the capability of the engine to deliver the quality they desire. You can read an interview with their director here.
And it paid off. The game has amazing animation quality and runs smoothly on my mobile device. I always feel excited whenever a new unit is released. What their skill animation will look like?
Monetization
Content quality by itself will not generate revenue. Smilegate has to have a monetization strategy to make revenue. Since they earn 3M USD on the US market, the fact is they are also successful in the monetization front. So, how do they monetize?
Surprise! It’s gacha!
There is no hidden mechanic here. The rate is quite low (though not as low as Fate G/O, please correct me if I’m wrong), but apart from that, players just need to spend hard currency, then pray RNG god to get the unit they want. Let’s break it down and do some calculation.
The main gacha is the “Covenant Summon” where players must spend 5 “Covenant Bookmark” to do 1 summon. (There are other types of summoning, such as mystic summon and friendship summon, but that will be for another time)
From time to time, they have rate up for a unit. Let’s take a look at the chance. Normally, to get a 5* hero, the chance is 1.25%. To get a specific unit, the 1.25% chance is divided equally among 5* heroes that are available currently in the game. During “rate up”, the chance to get that specific unit is 0.8%.
Let’s do quick math. To do 1 summon, players need 5 Covenant Bookmark. If we take the 0.8%, we will need around ~125 summon to get the unit, which converts to 625 covenant bookmark.
I know this is not an accurate way to calculate it, but this is just to give a simple picture of the numbers.
Now, how much does a covenant bookmark “cost”? To purchase 5 Covenant Bookmark, players need to spend 100 skystones. Skystone is another hard currency that can be used for various things, such as expanding inventory, buy energy, and including buying covenant bookmark.
If we take a look at the cheapest price, 90 skystone cost 3 USD. Higher IAP tier brings higher conversion, so let’s assume 3 USD = 100 skystone.
So if we take both (one 5* unit = 625 Covenant Bookmark and 5 Covenant Bookmark = 3 USD), we can say that one 5* unit cost…. 375$! That’s pricey just for one unit.
Of course, there are other parts of the calculation, like “freebies”, IAP bundles, and “pity system”, but I hope you get the picture how expensive a 5* unit is.
Having said that a 5* unit is expensive… there is still something more…. moonlight summon!
Moonlight summon are gacha that can only yield light / dark unit. The Light / Dark unit are “alternate” version of normal heroes and are mostly designed for PVP.
They have a different drop rate from normal rate, and players are100% guaranteed to get a light or dark unit on Moonlight summon.
Let’s break it down, same thought process. To get a 5* light / dark unit, players need to spend 5 galaxy bookmark, and the chance is 2.5% ~ that is roughly 40 summon to get a 5* unit, equal to 200 galaxy bookmark.
To get 5 galaxy bookmark, players need to spend 6 gold Transmit Stone — another hard currency — so to get 200 galaxy bookmark, players need 240 gold transmit stone.
How does player get gold Transmit Stone? Remember this bar in the summon menu above?
Can you guess what the number and bar are?
Well, to get a gold transmit stone, players need to do… 20 normal summon! That means players need to have 20 normal summon x 5 covenant bookmark x 40 moonlight summon = 4,000 covenant bookmark!
Remember that 5 covenant bookmark = 3 USD? That roughly translates to 3,600 USD to get a 5* moonlight unit! You can rent a Ferrari for that price!
(Un)surprisingly, it does sell. Competition is a big motivation in mobile games, especially for mid-core games, and Epic Seven is no exception. The top-ranked in Arena constantly own 5* moonlight units the day it was released.
However, this does not mean Epic Seven is “Pay to Win” game. There are plenty of freebies, and players can compete even without the Moonlight unit, although their strategy will be limited.
Summary
Overall, Epic Seven has been a massive financial success. The game has generated millions of $$ every month in the US market. Their formula is a simple yet powerful one. They use a proven core loop and innovate on the animation quality.
On this post, I’m just talking about the monetization. There are a lot of whole other things that Epic Seven did good, such a the liveops, abundant PVE, and PVP content, stories, and balancing among others that make Epic Seven successful. But those will be for a different topic.
Their key to success is the content quality and the price tag that comes with it. They know what they are selling, and they sell it for “appropriate price”. If you produce a Ferrari-quality car, then you have to sell at a Ferrari price. If you are creating an AAA game on PC, you will sell it for an AAA price.
What they did right :
- Use proven core loop
- Innovation on animation quality
- Sell at an appropriate price
I know it’s oversimplified, it’s simple in theory but very hard to execute. Making a game is hard. Making a financially successful F2P mobile game is very hard, especially in this era where marketing war drives player acquisition cost over the top. Instead of creating a game from scratch and reinvent the wheel, Smilegate focus on one innovation — animation quality.
The Future
In the recent “Epic Seven Fiesta” event, Smile Gate reveal their plan to update the game with a new chapter every year and has 10 chapters planned. Will the game survive that long? I believe the game will continue to find success for years, let’s see if they can keep their success for 10 years as their plan.
Having said all the good thing about the game, a few weeks ago, Epic Seven is actually “under fire” from their players, especially from Korea, their home turf.
As part of their community building, Epic Seven launched “Epic Fiesta” in Korea a few months ago. However, some miss communication made Korean players angry. Plus, the recent new 5* moonlight heroes was soo powerful that if you don’t have them, it’s very hard to compete in PVP. And it’s not just once, but several units in a row (*cough*, ML Aramintha, ML Baal&Seezan, *cough*).
We may have to look from business side perspective though — releasing a powerfull 5* moonlight heroes will bring in revenues, especially from hardcore players who love competition. But Super Creative have to manage expectation, if players felt the game is going the “Pay-to-Win” route, it will discourage the casual players and hurt the community overall.
This turn the whole Reddit community into a drama, some support the developer, some outright called the publisher greedy. The situation spiraled so much that Epic Seven team holds a press conference to communicate directly with the community and promise to bring changes and communicate more with the player in the future. It’s a brave move by the Super Creative and Smilegate.
The impact is so significant that the Super Creative CEO mentioned they plan to let players get Moonlight Heroes from normal summon. This has just been, so I can’t comment further. Will this be a good decision? Will the revenue decline to make the community happy? Or the community will find something else to be angry anyway? We shall see.