What Fortnite and Apex Legends can teach you about product management
I’m a bit of a geek for conference talks and theory of craft around anything I am into. I used to be a regular on TED but more recently I replaced that with Mind the Product presentations. One of my favourite ever talks also combined my passionate interest for the gaming industry which I love for it’s genre bending approach to story telling, competition and believe it or not ingenious business models.
In John Earner’s talk at Mind the Product (What games can teach us about product development) he covers how developing games has a lot of parallels with developing products. One of his core concepts from the talk, borrowed from lean startup, has always stuck with me:
There are effectively two models for developing games; one where you Innovate and come up with a brand new concept and a second where you Increment and iterate on an existing game or platform concept.
He goes onto explain that the innovate approach is more artistic and has less science to it. It takes an incredible amount of energy and playing with ideas and often those who manage to innovate fail to commercialise or scale their ideas. Far more people fail than succeed in this path and a very small number of teams manage to find a hit. Smaller independant teams are normally found working in this way.
The increment approach is often the most viable startup play where you take an existing concept and apply it to a new platform or opportunity to create a new market. Often this is seen in games where the concepts are ported to new platforms. Increment also covers taking an existing concept and improving on it under a new brand or story which is often the path taken by large games publishers who have the finances/resources to bring a great idea to a mass market faster than smaller competitors.
The theory has always stuck with me and being an avid online gamer I have always been fascinated in the business side of gaming. In the last few years I have been conscious of being able to see business models in new games and actually noticing when the two things above are at play. Since 2012 I have seen the rise of a brand new innovative play in Battle Royale games and it seemed fun to put John’s theories to the test again with a bang up to date example of his talk taking in the two biggest games in the genre — 2018 game of the year Fortnite and 50m players registered in a month newcomer Apex Legends.
Battle Royale Genre
I’ve always been an avid FPS (first person shooter) fan. Back when I was in my 20s this involved Counterstrike and I’ve tried my hand at most of the popular types from Quake and Doom to Overwatch and Call of Duty. Around 2014 I started to see a new type of game pop up on Twitch — an early version of H1Z1 which itself was spun from an ARMA mod named DayZ. The idea was that players had to scavage for supplies vs an ever growing zombie apocolypse.
I wasn’t a big fan of zombie games but you couldn’t help but notice the popularity on Twitch. Alongside it was another popular game that looked similar — Battlegrounds (later known as PUBG PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds). It turned out that the original developer of the ARMA 2 mod, Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, had split off to make his own game based on the ideas of the 2000 japanese film Battle Royale, where quite simply players dropped into a map, found supplies and weapons and fought to the death to be the last player standing on a map that would increasingly get smaller. This itself was actually an iterative approach on an early Minecraft mod based on the same film.
Battle Royale games were in themselves a great addition to online gaming. Firstly all the intial games were free mods meaning they could build playerbase very quickly. Secondly many online games suffer from the fact you have to put hours into them to grind a character out to be good enough to compete vs others. This makes these games an investment of time. It also means gaming sessions can often take many hours. Battle Royale games are simply competition with an easy to understand core concept and some game mechanics to keep the action moving. You can log on have a single game of 10–20 mins and log off again having had quite a lot of fun or play all night with friends dropping into game after game.
While PUBG was the first Battle Royale game to get a lot of attention and registered players it was Fortnite that really took the genre to a whole new level.
Fortnite — the title holder
Fortnite was originally a base building survival game whereby players would defend their “forts” against waves of colourful zombies. Based on ideas like Minecraft and Left 4 Dead, Fortnite was an iteration on existing ideas combined in one game. Unlike other shooters, Fortnite was designed from the off to appeal to a larger and younger crowd with more cartoon like graphics which also allowed it to spread to more platforms including mobile due to less technical constraints. However Fortnite was born in the era of the emerging Battle Royale scene and so developers Epic Games decided to build in a Battle Royale mode with a difference — the addition of base building allowing players an extra element to their survival.
The iteration on the genre wasn’t limited just to base building. Unlike the competitor, PUBG, Fortnite also thought of new ways to monetise the game they were essentially giving away for free. They took the concept of Microtransactions and Seasons of content from TV series to drop different skins (character models) and cosmetic items like dances, gun skins and emotes that could be earnt by playing a lot or shortcut by direct purchase. This concept was already huge in mobile gaming where “Freemium” models allowed you to spend money to get where you wanted to a little faster.
Not stopping there the game developers also used their cartoon-like graphics to their advantage quickly porting the game to as many game platforms as possible and enabling cross play where you could play vs or with your friends on any platform from Mac to windows to Xbox, Switch and Mobile phones. Sony unfortunately are still in dispute with the devs not allowing cross play to exist on their platform. The genious in this approach allowed families with multiple children to set them up on different devices but able to play together. Not only could everyone play together but each account worked the same on every device allowing cosmetic items earnt or bought in game to port with your character wherever you logged in.
Fortnite became huge attracting celebrities including Drake to play with it’s made celebrities like the streamer Ninja. The Fort base building element added a whole new dynamic to the genre and helped differenciate it from PUBG alongside the distinctive style.
Apex Legends — The newcomer
Apex legends is a new title on the market, this week marked a month since launch with 50m players registered to play already. To put that into perspective after a year Fortnite announced in 2018 it had passed the 200m registered users mark. To do a quarter of that number in a month Apex Legends have to be doing something right.
It’s a classic iterate on a genre play, something all product managers can learn from. Apex Legends is set in the Titanfall universe using Respawn’s (the developer) Titanfall engine — Titanfall was an FPS game launched a few years ago with EA as the publisher. Titanfall was well loved as an FPS with a great weapon and movement system. In many ways it was also an iteration with the original team made of people who spun out from developers who’d worked on the Call of Duty franchise. It was loved by FPS fans for the interesting ideas around combat whereby at points during a match titan robots would drop into the field which you could climb aboard and control like a tank. The movement system was so well loved that Call of Duty copied it the following year into their titles — it mimcked parkour style wall jumps and movements.
Apex legends is a Battle Royale game made in the same engine with the same great movement mechanics and weapon systems seen in Titanfall. For the company it represents a way to beta test their game engine for an expected future Titanfall game while making money from a free to play game based on microtransactions. Like Call of Duty and Battlefield releases doing another Battle Royale genre game wasn’t anything new by now but this is where the iteration has come into play.
Where Apex Legends is succeeding is in areas other Battle Royale games fall down. They centre around improvements in the game experience the other games have problems, by focusing on replicating what works from both Titanfall and the genre but improving the areas that don’t Respawn have a sure fire phenomenom on their hands.
The PING system
All online team based games suffer from one core problem, in game communication. One of the strongest attractions of online games is the social element of playing with others. But it’s not always easy to coordinate friends to play with. Battle Royale games are most fun when you team up with friends and most games in the genre will happily match you up with 2–3 other willing strangers to go up against other teams. The main problem however is communicating with your new buddies. Sure there is in-game mics and voice channels, but some people are shy and it’s not always easy or conveinient to chat.
The innovation Respawn worked on was a smart Ping system in game. Using a single button you can either look at points on the map and tap or hold and select a specific command. If you tap the game decides what your intention is and communicates it to your friends. Flying in at the start of the match, ping a location to tell the jumpmaster where to land your team, want to support what your comrade just pinged, ping the same spot and your character will confirm you like that idea. See enemies on the map, look at them and ping to mark them in red for your team mates and call out the danger.
This smart communication system is genuis in it’s automation but also in how simple it is to use and it adds a ton to the game that all others in the genre struggle with. It’s so good in fact that Epic has already added it into their Fortnite game in an arms race to keep ground with the newcomer.
The Respawn system
Battle Royale games can be funny. You can launch in, land in a high traffic area and come face to face with someone who found a gun 10 seconds before you and have the shortest game of your life. Equally you can spend 19 minutes finding the best gear to die in your first fight vs others. In many FPS the idea of respawning back into the game is common. However in Battle Royale once you are dead you simply watch your team mates either win the game or quit out. Apex Legends is different. For a limited time of 90 seconds you can be saved to a mobile device on character in game and returned to a respawn point where you will be dropped back into the game without any guns or gear. It’s an extra tactical advantage that gets around one of the biggest problems with the genre — the feeling of not getting another chance and the lack of effort team mates make to keep you alive. In this game your team is incentivised to carry on the fight and regain your soul to respawn you into the fight to be at full compliment come game end.
It’s also adds another layer of interest and tactics to the genre not seen elsewhere. On the surface however it’s simply a concept borrowed from other FPS titles and brought into this genre. Again it’s rumoured currently that Epic are looking to add a similar respawn mechanic into Fortnite in a coming release.
The Character system
Battle Royale games have followed a simple premise — all characters are the same and you only get to tailor them based on the gear you find in the map during that round. They might look different due to skins earned or bought but essentially all characters are equal bar your skill and loadout. Tactics in Fortnite focus on building and use of ramps and towers to outsmart your opponents using barriers and high ground. In PUBG the armour system allows you to tailor how long you can survive. In Apex Legends as well as an armour system there is also character abilities.
Again this is borrowed from other games such as League of Legends, Destiny, Anthem, Overwatch, Call of Duty and the like. There are currently 8 classes of characters in Apex (2 which have to be purchased and more to be announced). Each character type has different abilities and an ultimate ability that recharges through the game and gives you certain advantages if deployed right. These abilities range from offensive to defensive and include options like healing, smoke screens, bombardments from mortars, gas that damages over time and clones to confuse opponents. Some of the best uses of the system is how you combine your individual characters to use their abilities together. For example Bloodhound ability allows him to see enemies highlighted in red through buildings or occlusions like smoke. Another character, Bangalore, can deploy smoke to hide an area.
By deploying the smoke Bloodhound can sneak through and take out enemies before they even know you are there or ping them for team mates to help take them out while confused and hidden.
These abilities add extra team tactics into the mix which also incentivise keeping teammates alive via healing or respawns and make for more interesting matches. In many ways all these differences feel small but they add up to a more compelling game.
Taking the Lessons Through to Product Development
There are so many other quality of life improvements in Apex vs others in the genre and the lack of complex building mechanics like Fortnite make it easier to pick up and play. Add to this small things like the sound and visual in game design helping you understand when enemies armour has gone and therefore to continue pursuing or how the map has rotating high loot areas that reward high risk with high rewards it’s easy to see how this Iteration play is simply adding more shine to an already successful concept.
There are many lessons here that apply to product management. Whether trying to innovate like those early developers of the Battle Royale format or iterate like the large triple AAA game publishers since there are things to focus on when seeking success.
The iterative play seems particulary relevant to product management. Within this approach you can borrow inspiration from related fields or concepts and bring them to your product space. You can mash two product concepts together to do a unique twist and an accepted market space. You can also replicate ideas that already exist on one platform and make them work in a new paradigm (VR/TV/Mobile/Web/Non-digital). By focusing on how competitors get it wrong and simply getting it right you can easily steal their market and grow large very quickly. In the gaming industry making the best user experience is paramount to success and often beyond the intial market gap this is the only differentiator we have. Many products look to be a completely unique idea when in fact it’s far more common to make a best in market play of an existing concept.
I find it fun to also find these patterns in every industry out there. Look at types of films — whenever something truely new hits the market another 10 will follow the next year. In music trends develop and a bunch of me-too artist fill the airwaves before you know it. Originality is increasingly feeling secondary to best in class experiences. So maybe try and apply more iterative techniques to your next product task and aim to be a bit T.S. Eliot than a Steve Jobs.
If you’d like to see what all the fuss is about I encourage you to check out Twitch and look at the popular categories.
