The League Porofessor | Overwolf Case Study
At Overwolf, we love working with passionate developers, helping them build great apps and turn their love of the game into a well paying business. We take pride in seeing more and more developers making a living off of their apps, and today we’d like to dive deep into the story of Porofessor.
Porofessor is one of the most beloved apps on the store, and its creation process was highly educational for the entire company. To us at Overwolf, Porofessor’s journey was a humbling one, but it strengthened our resolve to listen and act on developer feedback — which in this case resulted in a fantastic product.
Do you have an awesome idea for how a game you love can be made even better? Read other dev stories on the Overwolf blog, visit our developers’ website, or apply for budget from our fund to begin your own journey building a great app!
A Decade of Creation
Creators come in many different flavors and hail from varied backgrounds, but almost all of them describe a burning urge to create that has been driving them since ever.
Jean-Nicolas Mastin, creator of Porofessor, is no different. At age 11 he started coding as a hobby and a way to make his ideas a reality, starting out with tiny games made exclusively for his friends and family.
With time and experience, the scope of his work grew, and around 2009 the passion to create merged with his love for World of Warcraft when he built his first info website. “I wanted to have more information about what other players are playing, and there wasn’t a single good website to find that information on”, JN shared. He immediately set out to build for himself the website he wanted to find.
After three years of building and maintaining websites around World of Warcraft and gaining plenty of professional web experience, Jean-Nicolas moved his attention to League of Legends. This worked out well seeing as his friends also swapped WoW for League at the time.
Back then there was still no Riot Games API or a simple way to integrate with League, but JN waited. On December 2013, the League of Legends API was released, and he was there to capitalize and build his vision — League of Graphs. LoG was a high quality stats website which became one of the most successful websites for League players and where millions of summoners get their information to this day.
With time, new types of League helpers appeared, and Jean-Nicolas was inspired by the likes of LoLNexus to build something new and more complex, a way for League players to really understand their match statistics, champion performance and other key aspects of gameplay.
It was around 2017 that Porofessor was born — initially as a part of League of Graphs and then separately as it’s own domain and website. In just mere months, Porofessor.gg became a top League of Legends hub and the choice of plenty of high-profile gamers.
The Transition from Web to In-Game
It was less than two years since Porofessor.gg had launched that Jean-Nicolas came across the concept of in-game apps providing recommendations and basic information to LoL players: “I was inspired by the attempt to bring useful information in-game, building a desktop app opens up new possibilities for player experience improvement. However, I didn’t really like the way others implemented or the data they focused on”. Jean-Nicolas loved the idea of connecting to players in-game, but saw things Porofessor could do better than the competition.
When considering his in-game project, Jean-Nicolas came across Overwolf, and immediately saw the value he can get by leveraging in-game events. Perhaps most importantly, JN would only develop an app which is legitimate: “Unlike other solutions, Overwolf is compliant and safe with Riot — I wouldn’t have worked on in-game apps without Overwolfs status with game developers.”
At the time, the Overwolf platform was focused on generating revenues for creators, but less developed when it came to documentation and guidance for newcomers. “Monetization was never a high priority for me, and that was most of what Overwolf offered at the time. When I needed other types of support I had a hard time getting it at first”. And so, in Jean-Nicolas’ first attempt at creating Porofessor as an in-game app, he found the conversion difficult and development support lacking, so the project was put on hold for a little while.
This interaction helped the Overwolf team better understand what JN and other developers really need. Within a few months the platform implemented a long list of changes that made things more accessible, especially for new projects. Jean-Nicolas saw the changes, and hopped back into the drivers seat of the project, this time with the right tools and support at his back — “I came back once I saw the changes and realized Overwolf followed up and improved to fit my vision”.
At that point in time, the Porofessor.gg website already had all of the data needed to provide greater value than other solutions available. Therefore, the next big challenge was designing a relevant user experience which makes that information easily available in-game.
On the technical front, implementing game events was challenging at first. Back then JN’s skillset was mostly focused on web development, and the code involved in linking data with in-game triggers was a new territory for him to explore. However, with some hard work and dedication he was able to bridge the gap and integrate his data with in-game events in a way that adds value to gamers — showing the information they need exactly when they need it.
The final challenge is one that persists to this day, years after launch, and it has to do with the variety of machines and screens used by gamers — “The hardest thing is responsive design, it’s a pain to fit an app to all resolutions, aspect ratios and user preferences — on web this was not an issue, and switching to desktop it took a while to make sure everyone has a good visual experience. By now it’s mostly solved, but every couple of weeks I get a user ticket with a new special resolution to fit Porofessor for.”
Success Has Many Shapes
Millions of users have been using Porofessor on web or in-game since it launched, but Jean-Nicolas only truly felt his app’s success when gamers from across the globe started contacting him.
“I got tons of user emails with technical reports, suggestions and feedback. However, the ones that impacted me the most were gamers sharing how Porofessor and League of Graphs changed their lives. I specifically remember a dad using Porofessor to track and communicate with his son playing League from far away. I wasn’t expecting that at all, and it felt amazing to positively affect their lives just by building my project.”
A few months after Porofessors release, the app truly took off. Just this past January the app’s user base has more than tripled, and Jean-Nicolas started understanding the scope of what he has managed to create. “There were great numbers beforehand, but it all didn’t feel ‘real’ until a big-shot spoke to me about it. It was when I met Laure Valée (LEC interviewer) and heard she uses Porofessor on web that I finally understood how big a deal this is. In the months following, other top players started using Porofessor and it felt absolutely amazing.”
As with any success, Porofessor’s meteoric rise started getting attention from the industry, and the offers to sell started rolling in: “I always have acquisition offers, but until now never had a good enough one. You don’t want to sell just for money, it has to be a game changer that enables you to do what you couldn’t before.”
This decision not to sell was supported by the fact that by then, Jean-Nicolas was making a solid living off of the app, needing no external support to keep doing what he loves best. To this day, Porofessor gets frequent updates and new features, boosting the love League players have for it and keeping Jean-Nicolas’ hands full.
Lessons Learned
When trying to capture the essence of what makes an app successful and how other developers can follow in his tracks, Jean-Nicolas keeps it simple: “Wake up each morning and ask yourself — What do my users want or need right now? As soon as you have an answer, chase it down quickly”.
To do that, though, a creator has to be a part of the game’s community. “It’s important to play the game a lot, and also watch others play to spot pain points and opportunities”, JN states, and jokingly added “A friend once asked me why do I spend so much time watching analytics and the app and doing nothing (in his eyes), but in my mind it was research. I was optimizing Porofessor by watching”.
As for the future, the same mentality holds “Everything is great right now, and I believe in short term solutions for immediate needs, so I have no idea what I’ll be doing in the future. I like to wake up each morning and chase creativity where it leads, understand what my users needs are, and get things done as fast as I can.”
Sharing a final word of advice for creators starting out on their apps, Jean-Nicolas emphasizes “Do not try to make money fast at a risk of burning down your brand or product forever. Find your audience niche and make that audience happy. The more useful your app, the more they use it, the more successful the app and you will be”.
A Bright Future
Now that it has a place in the hearts of many League players, Porofessor’s future is stable — and Jean-Nicolas’s success will grow with every new feature and each round of optimization. For the Overwolf team, we’re just looking forward to seeing the next amazing product coming out of JN’s workshop.
If you are a developer considering an app, we invite you to talk to us and begin your journey! We will be there to support your efforts, provide the necessary tools and help make your concept into the best app it can become.
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