Palworld's GENIUS Strategy to Success
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ค. 2024
- Read the extended story here: www.belindaercan.com
Amid intense controversy - that I’m sure you’ve heard enough about by now - Palworld has emerged out of nowhere to become one of the hottest new IPs on the market.
But that was no accident. Pocketpair, the studio behind Palworld, used a “not-so-secret” 3-part strategy to achieve this feat.
I’m Belinda, gamer and marketer in the gaming industry and I’ll unpack how Palworld’s strategy of delivering a simple promise made gamers absolutely fall in love with this new franchise.
0:00 Palworld's Metrics!
2:15 Marketing Funnel Time
3:21 The Awareness Stage
4:36 The Interest Stage
5:40 The Consideration Stage
6:43 The Conversion/Delight Stage
8:41 Launch/Post-Launch Stage
9:26 Timing, Baby
10:05 3-Key-Factors
11:50 Promise: OVERdelivered
12:14 And yet...
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Written & Produced by Belinda Ercan
Edited and Packaged by n8wealth.com - เกม
We saw tons of "Palworld is dead" and "Palworld is dying" already when it was at the height of its performance, we were swimming in disingenuous "Palworld has lost most of its playerbase" type articles, videos, comments, while it still had literally the highest player count on Steam.
True 😂
They be milking Palworld HARD! I understand their hustle though, gotta make that bread! XD
Its not dead half of player drop off is due to a bug that prevents the game from saving, most that i know of that got it didnt start a new game and are still waiting for it to be fixed, thats the only reason i havnt played the past 2 days, because i have this bug on 2 worlds
Honestly, Palworld has lost most of it's playerbase, but it still holds a very high spot on the charts, it will likely live on so long as the developers keep pushing updates until its proper full release, and as long as modders are able to get some sort of modding api running so that modding the game becomes very accessible and widespread
Yeah calling a single player 'dead' is ridiculous. The concept of a game being 'dead' only applies to live service games really. For a single player game, it's completely at a players' (the owner of the game) discretion when to play it or not.
I think you missed something important. The developer's stance towards their community isn't hostile or diminutive, but cooperative. They're embracing modding and offering official mod support, something that can keep the game alive for decades. See Skyrim and Minecraft as proof of that, but also games like Valheim benefit from it greatly. It's encouraging to see a developer essentially saying, "We made this for you, make this yours."
So was Multiversus.
I think it's just a marketing strategy, like how the behind-the-scenes of the Barbie movie was edited to make it look like there were more practical effects than there actually were because of the sentiment towards VFX in movies.
@@ashblossomandjoyoussprung.9917 it is a marketing strategy, but you cant deny the sheer amount of games that are held up by mods. People are still making stuff for the original doom. the only reason Minecraft held relevancy for so long was mods, Minecraft you tube used to be only mod reviews around 1.7 and on till like 1.13, in fact most people hated the 1.9 update and the game was held afloat by servers and mods for 1.8 for years. modding support is the key to long lasting games
The Binding of Isaac has such a wacky modding community, holy...
I don't think you can divorce price from the conversation. I know that marketers and companies don't like to talk about price but its massive part of the marketing engine. Toyota makes more money overall than Ferrari ... by a lot.
Being at that $30 sweet spot with no microtransactions resulted in their ROI and overall raw dollars eclipsing far more financially predatory games. Turns out mass sales at a low price point is a viable model.
I remember hearing once that Palworld's budget was low enough that with their sales, they could have sold each copy for a dollar and made a profit. The fact they got this much success despite being an Indie Game Studio should be a kick in the nads for AAA Companies like Nintendo and Bethesda.
With 19 million+ sales that would be true. The game's budget started at $10k and ballooned to about 6 million, but that's an estimate as they didn't track their development budget at the time.
@@JeffHikari So even half a dollar per copy would still have been a return on investment.
@@Arbaaltheundefeateddont forget server cost that dont stop
I was sold on the 0 micro transactions... once you see them u know where it's going. Never good
Even if Palwold "dies" in the end of the day, we still have a another good survival game that can be a single player and multiplayer game. No matter how you experience it, you still get to enjoy everything that game provides, and its still an early access game at that which is insane!
THIS is what gaming journalism should be! VERY informative and concise! Good luck to you Belinda! Subbed!
yep. i block so many channels anymore. cause they just want to spout drama.
this lady just threw facts.
Extremely rare
She’s really good at spinning things…
We need way more videos like this on youtube, aka videos that reverse engineer what companies do to become successful in a practical way, there's very little content on this on youtube and it's extremely valuable for people to know
Wow, never thought a gaming marketing video can be so entertaining. Hope you have long term success with this channel. I really like your infographics, delivery and overall presentation. Can't wait for the next one. Subscribed!
😊😊😊 such nice feedback keeps me going! Thank you 🙏
Looking at it this way, it shows that it's not just defiance, but that this defiance of the industry standard is both profitable and able to increase their profile. It's almost like people pay to feel better.
Palworld is just showing that any small game can be the same price as a game made by whole teams of devs! People say it copys of pokemon but really I think pokemon was just their inspiration and they took the idea of pokemon and developed it into their own. Keep in mind that the palworld team just learned how to use unreal engine. Infact they learnt it while they were making the game, incredible!
Ha, yes exactly…switching from Unity to Unreal mid-process is remarkable.
This was actually really informative, easy to follow, and well presented, how'd I miss this gem! Definitely subscribing for more essays like this.
Thank you so much ☺️
One nice thing is that while Palworld has lots of bugs as you would expect from an early release, most of them are silly/funny rather than frustrating.
Hell, players are turning some of them into features.
Like exploiting clipping to build bases on water/lava.
Or using the palball launch as a travel boost.
Yeah some bugs are just features by nature :)
The bugs that are truly frustrating, I've noticed the devs were on them straight away. Notably players losing their worlds, and the lifmunk effigy bug(fixed in 1.4.1).
This was enlightening. Thank you. I always thought that Palworld really just got lucky but after playing the game, they just did everything right(for an early access). My friends were pleasantly surprised too. I also agree that even if Palworld loses its playerbase in the coming months, nobody can change the fact that it's one of the most successful indie games ever released. Funny enough, the devs replied to the issue of losing its player base and said that it's just how it is and encouraged players to actually take a break from the game. Pocketpair has great entrepreneurs.
Even if the game truly dies and no more development is done on it having the huge modding community helps a lot to customize and add new features. So in the end the game won't die that easily.
Its nice to find a new channel with so much promise.
Please keep up the good work, the grind will be worth it
Thank you. I’ll keep grinding :)
The most important thing is they just created a fun game, no AAA bs which only engineered to extract money from you. When I saw the trailer I knew this is a great game.
Even if it "dies" this team made more than enough money to build its future successor 10 times over. I got my money's worth and then some. Ill be keeping an eye on it for future content because its awesome.
I can't believe this channel has only 905 subs, it already has very high production quality and is very entertaining good job!
As a gamer but also someone working in business, often 2 worlds that are very apart (even tho they really aren't) , this was a great video! thanks TH-cam recommendations.
This was refreshing, actual content, amid the slurry of copy-pasted, half-baked takes on Palworld in the media.
Will check out your other vids!
Its almost as if listening to your customers instead of ignoring them is a good financial descision?? Who could have known?!?
😂
They need to work on performance cuz playing on a community server is just laggy as hell and using your own server keeps crashing. I hope they'll fix it soon.
Quality on this channel is excellent. Subscribed
Good breakdown. Subscribed. Keep it going, glad you gave detailed info + financials
Thank you so much for the feedback and the sub! :)
@@BelindaErcan in your video you showed the tweet of j.k Rowling at 9:05 I'm not much of a person to partake in stupidity of sending death threats or harassing people so I didn't even look up the reason or tweet she made that made people mad cause I just didn't care but I thought it was something actually messed up she said from how people acted but that tweets just spitting facts cause you'll never find a group of women who don't periodically talk about there womanly parts problems or there once a month same with men you'll never find a group of guys that don't talk about the pain of hitting the jewels on something or when guys mess with each other by sometimes doing a fake try to hit another guys jewels just to stop before doing so a guy who identifies as a women who is in a group with real women non of that makes sense to them or is relevant same with women identifying as a man they won't be able to understand that feeling or humor and it just makes it awkward so I see no reason she should have got hate
Palworld has struck a chord with many former Poke-fans. Getting to do radical things like climb over that small rise instead of needing a pet with a special story locked skill to bypass it. The survival game coupled with a pet game and the use of forced labor mechanics all bring pet games into a more modern, adult oriented pet collector. That it's not just on one platform, and we can play offline, online with friends, or on official servers all is a bit surreal. I didn't think a game this good would exist after the past decade of live service games. Then they charged less for it than the last expansions for most other games I play.
The pocket games got tired and repetitive. Being locked to a handheld device from one company was also annoying. I dislike the potential for repetitive stress injuries and craning my neck to stare at a tiny screen, and from a company that still isn't really making a modern product. 8-bit games had their place, and it was in the 90s. Legends was a decent improvement, but they still had holes in the world building - the game felt rather empty. The subsequent games were bad, ran poorly on the company's proprietary handheld, and physical media meant having to stick with a badly performing launch of the game. The franchise died from neglect and a lack of innovation, then shoddy craftsmanship and performance.
They gave water to the thirsty and the rest of the industry (that had been adamant about not giving them any) is surprised to find that the thirsty aren't willing to buy their overpriced sludge
You know even if palworld is “dying” I see it as a singleplayer/coop game in this stage. So technically if a big update happens most likely, the old players would come back and play it again. Can’t wait for 50 pal update and the Yggdrasil island update (ima guess you have to fight the 5 boss to get parts of a key so you can finally enter the Yggdrasil, and there you can travel throughout different realms like the mythology)
Great delivery and structure. Subscribed!
It makes me SO. SO happy to watch all the haters and nentoddlers cry their eyes out over the success of this game. While somehow not realizing they are contributing more to it's success then half of the casual player base who just enjoy the game without saying anything. It is satisfying and hilarious, they are literally helping the product they hate.
One of the things surprised me in lauch i how cna actually equip missiles on my pals and even turn use then as ammo missiles
Wow very informative video.. and well put together,, cant believe you only have 528 subs
Why the hell is this youtuber not at 1k and not getting paid, so damn underrated. How much did it cost to even make this video?? Love the accuracy and real information and not bs like most news informers with over 100k subs give
🥹😭 I’m moved to tears by your feedback, and so happy you see what I see on TH-cam: mostly opinions and rants…
Appreciate your comment and your sub. 🙏❤️
2:13 Can we talk about LAUNCH at this point? I mean, it's early access, it's more like a beta testing. HONEST beta testing.
10:08 Basically what every publisher is doing wrong in the west, and failing. An Indie studio does right and those are the results.
Here's how it happened for me: finally got a current-gen console, re-subscribed to game pass for the games I could now play which I couldn't before, and Palworld was in the recently added section. That's it, that's all. It was on game pass and ended up being fun to play
This is an AMAZING gaming journalism vid! Subscribed ^w^
thank you so much ^^
It's simple, focus on making a good game/focus on making your players happy.
when you grow up, to make gaming more interesting. you can learn the business and marketing strategy within the industry. I like this channel approach on how I can mirror my retail business strategy in baking.
Great Summary
This video has such high quality!
i love watching case studies like this rather than just noises from all over medias
They literally took 3 things I wanted from a game and put them together:
Base building, pokemon, pew pew.
If it were made of voxels and given full terrain manipulation then we'd be perfect
Very informative!
Wow Pippa and Lia are in Hololive now! Someone needs to tell Sakana.
this channel finna hit a million subs by the end of this year and im proud to be here at 6k subs
Was a very interesting breakdown! Very informative, digestible, and entertaining, three strong points to a successful youtube video. :)
I bought on day 4.
Over the next 2 weeks, I caused 4 people to buy on steam and another 5 on game pass.
Word of mouth is undervalued.
Private servers and world settings were the main selling point for my friend groups.
Live service games are worthless if theres no guarantee that I can keep playing after they shut down. With private servers, that was guaranteed.
Well said this is game is too awesome and so much fun. Pokemon is yesterday doing my time as a kid, Pal world is the future for the newer Generation to enjoy.
Its not dead or dying, its no longer trending
The game only dies if it cannot being played by anyone anymore (aka close its server like angry birds fight)
Great video!
Pal World Devs have impressed me to a point of insanity. I kind of remember seeing stuff on the game years ago but originally thought it was going to be a cash grab then I saw some people playing the game online and I instantly wanted to play it. Now there is so much that I have not done in the game but dam I am addicted to the game. The game has done everything right. It does not require insane storage memory. The game has the single greatest controls that actually do what I want then to do out of any game ever made. The game allows me to do something I love to do which is explore the map. I got banned from a game decades ago because there was no sign of staying away from that area but I explored an area of a map that should not have been explorable and I got banned for it but this game allows me full ability to explore everywhere. The game allows for everything. This game is not just a game but a god send. This game has better NPC movement than all other games and the developers are like we need to fix the tiny insignificant problems. This is in early access and its far superior to all other fucking games with how blatantly 0 game crashing errors. The glitches in the game many of them I hope stay in the game because they are not game breaking but funny. One glitch that is the single worst glitch is if you catch a pal and climb onto the pal sphere it flings you into the air really high. That is not a glitch but a feature in my opinion but its still classified as a glitch. Seriously if that is the worst glitch then dear god the game has no game breaking problems. Breath of the Wild had 50,000 to 60,000 programmers make the game and it was released busted as fuck to the point it was physically unplayable. Pokemon Sword and Shield had around 200,000 programmers and that game was released with a bug that blocked you from being able to leave your bed room and crashed your console killing your console and your game because of the massive game crashing errors and that error still exists in the game but Nintendo had to put a sort of patch over the issue but could not remove the console destroying failures but had to hid those errors by putting them behind a different level added to the game and also put a pay wall into the game to literally force people to pay for the update in order to play the game.
Paltopia was amazing years ago, then we got Palworld!
Amazing video!
I bought palworld a few days ago and I have this to say: the game is damn good and entertaining and does what we've been wanting from a certain monster game and palworld delivered.
Love the pippa clips
And nice editing, as well as pasing
Subbed
10:55 "On paper, it shouldn't have worked."
...why wouldn't it have worked? It literally took the best aspects of the most popular games and merged them together.
It means “it sounds too absurd on paper. Pokémon with guns and slavery…who would want to play this..”
according to the CEOs letter it did sound a bit crazy to publishers.
7:05 - 7:30 this. was. scary.
The funny thing for me. A TH-camr that I liked to watch mentioned and showed a little clip of Palworld, and after that it was just compulsive buy apparently on the same day it launched. I had no knowledge prior to it. I never saw the trailers, never knew they existed, tbh. XD It was all just a compulsive buy, which is something I don't typically do. I'm glad I bought it. Even if it doesn't receive many more updates, I think I've gotten me moneys worth out of the experience. XD 300+ hours in and I've got an addiction problem.
This is well made informative and entertaining. You should be in journalism seriously
That 30$ price should also explain why it’s beating triple a games you can buy your closest friends it for the price of one nowadays
Yes. Forgot to mention the price point…
I haven't heard anyone mention that it's an economy simulator
Awesome joirnalism and vídeo production. Subscribed
Thanks Pedro :)
It's simple. Come up with the game idea that you want to make. Be really passionate about it to everything you can to realize your dream and release it. And if people see the time and effort you put into it and they enjoy the game they will buy it and they won't feel bad afterwards
Don't know how we got to this point where they're all trying to work out some kind of formula for the perfect game which in the long run and just ends up pushing more people away
An adult who played pokemon bought palworld. It's a fun game.
Yoooo, I need that background! Gen 3 is my favorite!
Palworld topic aside, holy the quality and editing on the video is like the best i have seen on less than 1k channel
Thank you so much :)
I hope this game continues to succeed, its so addicting and a lot of fun with friends
Great video! Also I love palworld 😅
This video perfectly captures the essence and success of Pal world
pocket pair dodged a huge pengullet by choosing hololive vtubers instead of niji
My favorite game I’ve EVER played ❤
I wonder if the CEO is actually like Eminence of Shadow's Cid Kagenou... he didn't plan for all this success, he just wanted to create a game that he himself wanted to play, but the world had a better plan for him. That would be funny lol 🤣
I love Palworld and look forward to what they do in the future ❤❤❤🎉🎉🎉
I saw Palworld on Steam a long while ago, looked at it and laughed "It’s a Pokémon ripoff with guns lmao", called it a day and went to bed... Then, the next day, I saw some TH-cam videos of the game and said "Ok, I might as well take a look at what the game is like..." and watched 2-4 videos... My interest was poked... Then, near the end of the day, I said "Ok, you know what? I have money on my account, I can afford the game; I'll try it out and see if I like it... I can refund it if I don't anyways..." I bought the game, booted it up, blacked out, and woke up 8 hours later at 2:00 in the morning with a fully built up level 8 base and most of the starter tech tree filled out... Needless to say, I am still enjoying the game.
Hahah nice! You became a “delighted” consumer :)
Im eager to see, what kind of video you will do about Helldivers : )
I would say that the devs actually enjoy the game and it shows
Who would thought than sticking to a business plan instead of relying in false advertising was the best business strategy?
Great video and breakdown!
Btw, you have similarities with Victoria Justice.
I have one word for anyone still considering the game: Lovander 💓
The most important part: It's actually a lot of fun.
Some of the most politically incorrect video games changed gaming the most Like GTA 3, and the witcher 3. People don't want to be told how to play a game, they want have fun.
I love your voice and hand gestures lol grabbed attention ❤
This is basically the story of The Great Giana Sisters, but with a very explosive success.
Back then, If you wanted to play a platformer like SMB1, you NEEDED a Nintendo console because everything else lacks a good platformer.
It is blatantly a slightly altered ripoff of SMB1, but it was made as a roundabout way to play SMB1 on consoles that it's not available on, and players of these other consoles could have a similar experience without having to by a Nintendo Console for sole purpose playing mario.
TLDW: Pocketpair Made a good game and let it grow naturally.
Who is the v tuber at 7:08
I did a reverse image search. It came up with "Lia ch. Phase Connect"
It’s from Lia Ch. this video th-cam.com/users/liveBOC_BBvUQYo?si=oTCTPnNOLBOyQiNg
When they start selling toys-its only a matter of time.
I’m in love
I've forgotten about PalWorld already 😂
🫠😂
You know, I realized something, Palworld actually keeps their promises and Pokémon is salty about they're success.
Palworld also had some very successful marketing strategies? Its little wonder how it was so successful...
Palworld? thats old. Helldivers 2 time now ;)
I get survival/base building, guns, and monsters/pets; it just hit all my likes.
And then there's me who did none of this, saw someone playing it, thought it looked fun, and bought it lol
I mean yeah. The surest thing to a game's success is having a good gameplay loop with all the features of the game actually freaking work.
Pal world is a bug ridden mess. But not enough bugs to render it unplayable. All the key features definitely work, especially the ones where the player has direct interaction with.
All the marketing can hit the nail on the head. But if the game sucks (like plenty of pokemon games recently). People are gonna flock to a product that delivers. Its as simple as that.
Pokemon company has been recently really blatant with its exploitation of its playerbase so lots of people have turned sour on the IP. With Palworld, it can be seen as a form of protest. Literal votes with the wallet. Like the biggest flex Palworld has done is do the bare minimum and release a fairly stable and functional game. And they didn't charge up the butt for it. While pokemon expects you to essentially buy two games worth (and their dlc-like ffs they sell digital bundle packs) and several tertiary services to play their bug ridden mess of a game that hasn't evolved in a DECADE. That doesn't reflect value for money.
$10,000 is a tiny budget; even with the reduced price of the game, Pocket Pair made one hell of a profit off the game
No wonder I wasn't aware of palworld until release. They used VTubers, and VTubers scare me like clowns scare other people.
I have a black and white wolf i ride on like a police dog. I pulled up to 2 black pals in the back alley of a mountain and I took a screen shot. It was at night and it looks like a Palice officer pulling up to a drug deal. This game can be memed to hell.
Wish you could post this screenshot here someone. Would love to see
@@BelindaErcan Same. Its funny as hell. I was just exploring too and just stumbled upon it. The dire wolf is by far the best mount in the game for speed, ease of use, and the fact you can get him by level 6 and get the mount at level 6. He is a beginner level pal that hell I still use him over jet dragon while inside of dungeons do to the ability to move and his legit speed and the other reason is his lunch attack respawns so fast you can spam that shit and its movement skill that can easily be used when you have too much stuff in your inventory. His lunch attack takes 1.3 seconds to fully use but his lunch attack respawns in 0.8 seconds. Also if you slide while on him and you do a running slide jump he can fly almost as fast like 99.9998% as fast as jet dragon. Sure Jet Dragon is faster but for the fact that Jet Dragon is basically end game pal yea dire wolf far superior. Also for meme ability dire wolf is black white and looks like a palice dog.
A true gem! And it looks beautiful!
Hololive mentioned!
The success of Palworld in China is a huge wake up call to Chinese gaming industry. In the past, Chinese game market is flooded with predatory gacha games and no one is willing to invest in single player PC/console game. Sometimes you even see players defending for gacha gamers saying that single player games are not profitable due to rampant piracy. But the amount of sales number from China proves the argument wrong.
The main cause of piracy is price, AAA games selling for 50~70 dollars is flat out unattractive to people that’s not interested in the genre, and even people with some interest will hesitate to buy it.
Palworld sold for 15 dollars where I live and even people that haven’t played the genre can be easily talked into trying it out
What is so good about this game is that you can play it single player or with yet another person
You better start taking notes, triple A game devs
In conclusion: this is THE game that wants your money. And for once, greed doesn't mean that the game is terrible
I sorry but I can't,
7:30 Vtubers belong to Hololive -> Have outsider Vtubers
7:40 Gacha like Genshin/Honkai Starrail -> I'm sorry on this, maybe they play in the background (some evidently do), but Hololive especially can't stream Hoyoverse ganes
In the product industry you're only as good as your last product so if this is Pocket Pair's one hit wonder then so be it.
FOMO, the key word to the whole internet.