The F2P brawl game to rule them all?
Deconstructing how Ubisoft’s mobile game Brawlhalla engages and monetizes its users — and what it could be doing better
Brawlhalla has made its way to Android and iOS after being released by Ubisoft’s Blue Mammoth studios in 2017 for console and PC. Often regarded as a free-to-play variant of Super Smash Bros., Brawlhalla is a 2D platform fighter that has grown a large following over the years and boasts over 40 million players. With the game continuing to gain steam with its eSports focus and the new release on mobile, this opens up the potential audience immensely.
In this deconstruction we will discuss Brawlhalla’s core loop, gameplay, engagement, monetization, and finally recommendations to improve the game on mobile. Brawlhalla looks simple from the outside, but it is deep and complex. The game has a roster of 50 characters, called legends, each having a unique combination of two weapons out of 13. Each legend has four stats that vary: strength, dexterity, defense, and speed. With all the different combinations for a brawl, it’s easy to get sucked into the depth of the game and, much like league of legends, each game feels different.
Core Gameplay Loop
Brawhalla has a unique core gameplay loop compared to most mobile games in that it’s extremely simple and doesn’t rely on energy or timer mechanics. Players brawl either in free for all 4-legend matches, “brawl of the week” matches which are custom made weekly games, ranked/unranked 1v1 and 2v2 matches, or custom games. Each of these brawls grant the player XP for both the legend they just played as well as XP for their overall account. When their account levels up they are rewarded with gold for which they can spend on purchasing more legends. Players then brawl more to learn about their new legends and grow their competitive knowledge base to find the right legend for them and understand how to brawl against other legends.
Gameplay
Players are hooked into the loop through the addicting game play, the depth of the game, and the fun players have trying to compete with others in the ranked ladders. Being a big platformer fan, when thinking about executing the complex movements on a mobile device I thought it would be near impossible to get the same fun and complexity on mobile that one gets on a console or PC, but I was proven wrong.
The game uses a simple and easy to understand two-thumb control system. At first, it’s difficult to get used to but after a few matches it becomes natural. For North America and Europe, where complex controls are typically not received well, I believe this control system with two thumbs will be embraced. The complexity in game play and skill required to rise in the ranks is an aspect of the game that has the potential to really succeed in Asian countries, where complex control systems are understood and difficult-to-play games like Arena of Valor and PUBG Mobile thrive.
The left thumb controls a d-pad where players can move the legend and point it in whichever direction and the right side is a grouping of buttons that allows the player to execute a quick attack, heavy attack, jump, item throw, dodge/dash, and emote.
In the settings, players can adjust and change the controls. I found that changing the d-pad into a joystick is the optimal control layout for me.
Aside from the controls, the game is easy to pick up and go. Once you download the game, there is no first-time user experience tutorial — you drop right into the main menu. This is the exact same menu as is on all other platforms of Brawlhalla so it’s not optimized for mobile, but it’s simple enough for the first iteration of the game on mobile. Brawlhalla on mobile is a port of the game through and through and nothing has been done, other than the controls, to make this game different for mobile. This is great for existing players that know and love the game but for new players learning about the game for the first time, this is not the best first-time user experience.
When a player lands on the main menu they can choose from a variety of game modes and jump right in. The queues for online play are extremely short and after playing hundreds of games I can’t say I’ve had to wait more than 10 seconds to be connected to an online game and start brawling. Across the most common game modes, the match length is anywhere from 3 to 6 minutes. This is a great match length for mobile games, especially in the west, because players are known to use mobile games to fill small time gaps.
For those that are familiar with the platform fighter genre, such as the Super Smash Bros. brand, this will be an extremely easy game to pick up and start playing. Brawlhalla has a lot going for it in the game design department with the shortness of games, the ease of play through the controls design, and the complexity and depth of the game-play.
Engagement
Legends
With 50 legends released thus far, Brawlhalla has slowed down the release of legends and has only released one legend this year compared to last year’s five new legends. The legends are a strong method of keeping players engaged. With a new legend comes changes in the meta of the game and new combinations of teams in 2v2 games. Just like in most other games, new characters bring players back to the game and hook them into the core loop. According to steamdb, when the latest legend was released on March 16th, the number of concurrent players on steam jumped by more than 68% compared to the prior month and leveled off at roughly 50% higher a few weeks later.
As we can see, learning new legends and playing with them is great for the continued engagement of the game. However, I don’t think that Brawlhalla should accelerate this pace and release many more legends a year. As we saw in League of legends, the number of characters can quickly balloon to a point where it is overwhelming for new players to start. I believe the current pace that Ubisoft has set for the release schedule is great and should be continued. For new players, 50 legends are more than enough to dig their teeth into and continue playing for a long time to come. Players can select from a changing weekly rotation of 9 free legends, a great mechanic for new players to try out legends and find the one’s they love to play with the most.
Ranked
Brawlhalla stays fresh and competitive by keeping ranked seasons short at 13 weeks. Ranked is played exclusively as a 3-stock (character lives) 1v1 or 2v2 match on a map randomly selected from a reduced set of maps. Players have an ELO — a number that represents the players’ current overall skill level compared to other players. Your ELO rises and falls depending on if you win or lose a match against an opponent and the amount of the gain or loss depends on your opponent’s ELO. The ease of finding a match and the short queue time leads to an engagement tool that is extremely addicting as you want to continue playing short matches and raise your ELO with each win.
Clans
Clans have not been released on mobile but exist on Brawlhalla’s other platforms. However, the lack of clans on mobile is not a big loss for the game because the existing clan feature on other platforms is subpar. The clans system in its current iteration offers nothing more than a feature to create groups of players and chat with the players in that group. You can have officer ranks within the clan which offer you more control over the players within the clan but nothing else is offered by being a part of a clan. This feature is under-developed for having been released in 2016 and when it is brought to mobile it should be expanded upon dramatically to make it a better retention and engagement tool like so many other mobile games have done with their clan/guild systems.
Partnerships
Blue Mammoth studios has partnered with major brands like Tomb Raider, WWE, Hellboy, Ben10, Adventure Time, Rayman, Steven Universe, and Shovel Knight to bring unique legends and unique skins to existing legends. These partnerships help market the game to a new fan base and excites the existing players. One can assume that based on these partnerships, Brawlhalla’s fanbase skews towards the younger side and partnering with really strong brands that the younger audience is familiar with is a great way to engage players and bring them content they love. Within the store there’s an entire section dedicated to these partnerships called “Crossovers”
eSports and Community
eSports and engaging the community is where Brawlhalla truly shines and can give a masterclass to other game developers *cough* Nintendo *cough*. Brawlhalla has a passionate community thanks to the continued support and communication from Blue Mammoth Games. The developer has been sponsoring and promoting Brawlhalla eSports for the past 5 years (even before the official launch of the game) and has spent millions of dollars in prize pools, not including the large amount of money spent putting together and hosting the events. Just this year Brawlhalla has hosted a series of large events leading up to the World Championship in November.
Brawlhalla has excelled in engaging players by offering cosmetic rewards for time spent watching tournament streams and promoting large tournaments within the game. The passion and resources being thrown at Brawlhalla’s eSports scene is in direct contrast to Nintendo’s handling of the Super Smash Bros. eSports scene, where they have refused to participate and help. Even without Nintendo’s help, Super Smash Bros. has celebrated two decades of dedicated fans putting together community organized tournaments. Just this past year the annual flagship event Genesis 7 enjoyed high Twitch numbers nearing 100,000 for the Super Smash Bros. tournament.
The 2019 Brawlhalla World Championship had a large live event and the video for the Grand Final currently has 700,000+ views on Youtube. If Brawlhalla can continue to convert fans of Super Smash Bros. eSports and bring in new fans, it has the potential to be a flagship eSports game.
Apart from eSports, the developer holds weekly streams via Twitch which is where the real connection with the community started. This has been a tradition since the game’s alpha launch in 2014 and is where developers talk about varying topics, answer players’ questions to the best of their abilities, and explain what they are working on and what has been challenging for them. Players feel like they are a part of the game team when they interact with the developers in this manner and a strong connection is made that keeps players invested in the success of the game.
Creating meaningful connections with the community by being open and honest about the work that is going into the game has been a key tool in Blue Mammoth’s success thus far.
Monetization
Brawlhalla is not a pay-to-win game and thus it leverages the legends, a deep pool of cosmetics, and most recently a battle pass to monetize the game. It stays far away from traditional mobile F2P mechanics like offering an endless number of bundles or having a pop-up of a sale when the game initially opens.
By staying away from these typical mechanics, Brawlhalla takes the road well worn by Riot Games and Fortnite in that it focuses purely on cosmetics and builds a strong sense of trust with its community. Blue Mammoth is definitely missing out on opportunities to monetize better but it’s hoping the lack of in-your-face monetization tactics will pay off in the long-term with a larger player base and a thriving eSports scene, and so far, that strategy is working.
There are three types of currencies in game: Gold, Glory, and Mammoth coins. Gold can only be acquired by leveling up your account, completing missions, and through daily login bonuses. Glory coins, which are used to purchase special weapon skins, can only be acquired through end of season ranked rewards. Finally, Mammoth coins are the currency that can be bought with real world money.
Legends Bundle
Players are advertised a pack that unlocks all the current and future legends. This is the most basic and valuable purchase one can make in Brawlhalla as you get all 50 legends for $19.99 (they don’t make you purchase mammoth coins first). For players that want to be competitive and move up the ranked ladder, owning all the legends is critical to understanding the game and moving up.
Cosmetics
Cosmetics are the main source of revenue for the game and consist of a deep pool of items and actions the player can customize in and out of the game.
Skins are a typical, tried and true way to monetize but Brawlhalla dives deeper than just skins in their cosmetics and explores specific parts of the game play experience where the player can make it their own, for example the podiums after the game can be customized with cool and interactive animations that make your 1st place win in the brawl just that much better. One unique set of items that are purchasable are the sidekicks that return a player to the main platform after they lose a stock. This type of deep customization provides a breadth of opportunities for players to make the in-game and out-of-game experience better. It is also a great way to monetize the game since players know that the actual game play itself is not affected by these cosmetics.
Chests
Like countless other games, Brawlhalla leverages loot boxes called chests. But Brawlhalla does this in a very unique way that favors the players. There are 18 skins available in a chest (three of them are exclusive items not available elsewhere) so you know what you will get. On top of that, each skin in the chest has the same probability of being in the chest and there are no duplicate rewards. Many games allow for duplicate rewards from loot boxes to incentivize players to continue buying boxes (think Counter Strike with players opening hundreds of boxes when trying to get a knife and getting the same item over and over), but Brawlhalla does not do this. Decisions made by the studio to not monetize in these ways continue to build trust and a strong connection between the developers and the players, even though they are losing out on potentially much higher revenue.
Battle Pass
Brawlhalla recently launched its first ever battle pass on May 20th 2020. The battle pass consisted of 85 reward tiers, lasted 12 weeks, included over 100 rewards, and cost $9.99. The battle pass included daily, weekly, and general missions. Battle gems measured the progress towards the next battle pass reward tier and you could gain battle gems by completing battle pass missions.
For the announcement of the battle pass, Blue Mammoth included many of the top streamers and personalities in the eSports scene and had them reveal the rewards. This was a great way to connect with the player base on a meta level and create excitement around the first battle pass.
As we know, the battle pass is not just a monetization tool but an incredible engagement tool, and based on the Steam numbers since May 20th, the number of average concurrent players has maintained at roughly 50% higher when compared to the beginning of the year.
Brawlhalla is the perfect game for a battle pass because it is cosmetics based (a content producing machine is necessary for a battle pass to be successful) and because it relies on players getting hooked into the addictive gameplay. They waited a long time to implement this feature and they got it right. The challenge will now be to continue to produce the cosmetics needed to fuel the battle pass system and this might be the reason why they have not announced a season 2 for the battle pass yet.
Recommendations
#1 Focus on expanding in Asia:
According to an early 2019 info graphic released by Ubisoft, only 9% of players come from Asia and Australia. There’s a huge opportunity for Brawlhalla to expand its player base in Asia given the new mobile release and Asia’s focus on mobile. At the time of its release, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was one of the fastest selling games in Japan, selling 1.24 million copies in three days. Obviously, Japan has a special love for Nintendo but it cannot be ignored that the platform fighter genre has been very successful in Japan and the rest of Asia.
With the mobile release of Brawlhalla and its exceptional gameplay, there is a major opportunity for Ubisoft to dedicate more resources to expanding the game in Asia and really exploding in popularity. Given that the Asia-Pacific region outspends North and South America in in-app purchases and the lack of stigma towards spending money on mobile games in Asia, expanding in Asia should be a top priority and Ubisoft should be dedicating resources to localizing and marketing the game better. Ubisoft should be working with local partners in Japan, China (if possible), and other countries to expand its eSports presence and market Brawlhalla more effectively by creating further cross-overs with big brands in Asia like it has done in North America.
#2 New monetization
There are many opportunities for Brawlhalla to maintain users’ trust but still leverage F2P monetization tools that are standard in the industry. For example, Brawlhalla can explore sales similar to what Riot Games does on League of legends where players are presented with their own person shop containing a targeted selection of six skins that are discounted. Riot knows what champions the player likes to play and presents them with skins at a discount from some of those champions based on data recently pulled about the player.
Brawlhalla can explore bundled offerings which it currently does not offer, such as a pack of all of the skins for one legend for a discount or similar bundled offerings. Other avenues worth pursuing are paying for week long trials for a certain legend or groups of legends, or adding the ability to gift items to friends.
One unique way to increase engagement and monetization could be a new game mode similar to Hearthstone’s Arena mode where players pay an entrance fee, either with real money or a certain amount of gold, and play through matches until they hit a predetermined number of losses. Depending on the number of matches won, they are rewarded with a random cosmetic or some other form of currency. Introducing innovative features like this can build further trust with the player base, create more value for both the developer and the player, and create further challenging and fun experiences for the players.
#3 Focus on feature improvements
Blue Mammoth studios is a small indie developer that was acquired by Ubisoft, but the acquisition did not result in a jump in hiring. The studio stayed small and grew slowly. As a result, they have not added many major features to the game because for the past three years they have been focused on building ports for the game based on the original PC game. In 2017 they launched the PS4 port, in 2018 they launched the Xbox One and Nintendo Switch port, and finally in August of 2020 they launched the iOS and Android port. They have said in developer streams that they are excited about having finished all the ports they wanted to do and are now going to switch focus and work on core game features. The following are some core features I think the studio should focus on to improve the game.
Account linking: Consumers expect that a cross platform game can be played on any platform with the same account. This is considered the standard now that games like Fortnite have reached popular density and include single account access on all platforms. Brawlhalla not having this feature is a major disadvantage and discourages customers from spending on cosmetics because they know they can’t use them across all the platforms they play on (unless they buy the skins multiple times). Account linking would also encourage more players to invest in the battle pass knowing that they can complete missions on their phones during their breaks in the day.
Clans: The clan feature needs an entire revamp and it needs it ASAP. The clan feature as it stands is simply a way to group players together and be able to chat with them. Clans aren’t even available on mobile. Clans have become a major engagement and retention mechanic in most mobile games and the lack of clans in a competitive game like Brawlhalla is a huge missed opportunity. Introducing clans to mobile along with features such as clan missions, clan exclusive rewards, and even clan battles would be a major benefit to the game and provide more resources for the community to becomes stronger and more invested in the game.
First time user experience/tutorial: When I first downloaded the game on iOS I was not presented with any sort of tutorial and was simply dropped into the main menu. After digging into the menu, I found a tutorial and found it to be OK but lacking in many of the intricacies of the game that I had to find on my own through YouTube tutorials. There is an opportunity to add advanced tutorials to help teach players the more advanced movements and combinations that you find when playing online against veteran players. Updating this and asking the player if they would like to play through the tutorial when first opening the game will lead to a smoother first-time user experience. This should obviously be tested to see if the retention rate changes when having the user play through the tutorial when first opening the game.
There are many other features that Blue Mammoth studios can work on but I believe the ones mentioned above are the most pressing for the game’s continued health.
Final thoughts
Brawlhalla is an incredible game and Ubisoft should be ecstatic with Blue Mammoth studios and what they’ve been able to accomplish over the past several years. The core game play is incredible and much smoother on mobile than I expected it to be. Brawlhalla is a fun and addicting game that has the opportunity to become much bigger in Asia now that it is available on mobile. With the game just having been released less than a month ago on mobile, there’s a lot to improve on and a lot of opportunity. Will Ubisoft and Blue Mammoth studios put in the resources needed to take Brawlhalla to the next level and become the next eSports sensation? Will Brawlhalla be able to more effectively monetize their growing player base while maintaining the strong and trusted relationship with the community that has brought them this far? I look forward to seeing Blue Mammoth studios take on these challenges and continue to grow.
You can get in touch with Pedro on Linkedin or by emailing himon plbravo29@gmail.com— he’s currently looking for a job in Product Management/Producer roles in gaming.
