Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast feature and conversations with industry leaders about.
The business of media and entertainment.
I'm Jennifer Moz, Variety's senior business writer, TV and video games. Today, my guest is Eric Wood, senior vice president of publishing at mobile game giant scope Lee. Founding in twenty eleven, Scopeley has already proven itself to be a major player within the mobile gaming industry, but in May, the company drew more eyes than ever when its worldwide hit Monopoly Go became the fastest mobile game industry to surpass five million dollars in lifetime revenue, doing so in just twenty
four months. Additionally, scop Lee recently closed the Nantic deal, which brings another big hit into its full Pokemon Go, among other games. Here to speak about the success that Scopoly has experienced and where it's going in the future within the larger mobile gaming industry is Eric Wood, Senior vice president of publishing at scope Lay.
All right, well, thank you so much for joining me today, Eric, I really appreciate it.
You're welcome, thanks for having me.
Of course, Well, we're going to go into you specifically and all the inner workings at Scope Lay. But really I just like to start off with one huge congratulations on the five billion dollars in lifetime revenue that milestone from Monopoly Go. That's truly a staggering number in twenty four months. So I'd like to start there because that
was announced in May. That's a very recent milestone for you all, and I just like to get an idea first foremost what you think that means for scoply in general, but also for the larger a larger mobile gaming industry that hitting that milestone.
No thanks, I mean we've we're not only happy, but phil incredibly blessed and fortunate. You know, we have a to have a game that not only has reached that major milestone, which is fantastic. But for us, I think what's more important than the financial metric is it shows us and tells us that, you know, players and consumers are loving the game, right, they're loving it. They're they're not only giving it, they're not only sort of giving us there and in contributing their you know, their money
to the game, but more importantly, they're contributing their time. Right. I think that's the thing that's most important to us, Like we want to build experiences for consumers and for fans that completely resonate with them and for them. They
have so many considerations. I would say, you know, when you think about all the things that are coming at them day after day, moment of the moment, whether it be streaming to podcasts, what have you, which are all amazing, but they give us just a little slice of their time every day. And so with that we we are so appreciative and grateful for.
Those who might not be familiar, which probably isn't as because of that staggering five billion number. Can you give a little overview of exactly what Monopoly Go is and how you will have kind of incorporated partnerships and collaborations that keep people coming back to the game.
Yeah, I would say, so Monopoly Go has really been I would say a. I'll use the term labor of love right for the team, and so I'll speak Hopeles. It's okay, I'll speak on behalf of the team right now when I say that the development team, and that you know they were in development that project for many many years because they were trying to find you know, the fun. They were trying to find something that was
not just a game. There's lots of games that launch, you know, every day, and all kinds of different platforms, but it's like, what can resident really resonate, right, Like what can appeal to to consumers that know and love the Monopoly brand but also more importantly they feel like they can come back to on a daily basis. And so this game was in development for many, many years.
They had several design iterations within the game, but they ultimately said, on an experience that is not your traditional Monopoly experience, and kudos to Hasbro. Hasbro was very willing
to go on that journey with us. You know. You know, sometimes we understand as an owner of a brand, you know, especially a very large brand that's known around the world and has been around for as long as this man has excuse me, sometimes you know, you will have very specific and strict rules when it comes to that brand, right, and how consumers think about it and how they engage
with it. And of course has has that there are some you know, hard and steadfast rules that you you know, that mister Monopoly should never do or you know, things like that, which makes sense. But they were very open to go with us on the journey of figuring out, like what new experiences we could bring to a Monopoly game in the market. That sure leverages some of the things that fans know and love about the brand, but maybe you wouldn't expect when it comes to a mobile game.
So apologies, I think things like the fact that you know you can go and attack a friend in the game. From a digital acy perspective is it's not what you do in physical Monopoly, meaning you play against each other competitively. Sorry, apologies you, that's something coming through. You play against people competitively, for sure, but this concept of you actually attack someone and go after their actual landmarks, it creates this sort of like it's a different game pattern, but it still
leans into the things that people love about Monopoly. Meaning if I land on Park Avenue, you own Park Avenue, you know, you have to pay me rent and then I'm kind of upset about it because I have to pay you money. You get you know, you get agitated or irritating in the game. We just did it in a much different way, And I would say, like I said, Hasbro was fantastic to work for, and I think that's really what resonated with fans. So when we launched the game.
Of course people saw it's like, oh it's Monopoly, like people I love, let me, let me check it out. But I think what's kept them around is the fact that we really were creative and imaginative when it comes to what you experience when you actually play Monopoly in this form.
I'll say one thing, you know, Like as a family, Monopoly is a very tense game for my group. It normally needs to get put away before we even finish it. But Monopoly good. Yes, we love it and you forget and then you play. But Monopoly Go does have that quality where I feel like I can do it every day, and it doesn't. It's still that fury with would be.
But there's also so many promotions that you all do, so many in game events and partnerships like that, and I want to know, you know how those really come about. You talked about, you know, things mister Monopoly would never do. So thinking through what this brand is, who is a good fit to partner with, and what makes sense for you all.
Yeah, I think first and foremost when we think about brand, let's say collaborations, right, which is what this is, because this is not we already have a game in the market where there is a brand that, you know, in this case, Monopoly and mister Monopoly that's in it, and then we start to think about does it make sense to bring you know, a third party, let's just say it, you know, in that way into this experience it, I think, first and foremost it has to be authentic, right, like,
would it makes sense, Like sure you could. You could do lots of different mashups of like just some amazing brands you know in the marketplace, which people will be go like, oh that's interesting, it's recognizable, but when they show up, you want to make sure that it feels
authentic to both brands. And I think one of the unique things that we have when it comes to Monopoly is that mont Hasbro and Monopoly on the physical game board side has a long history, right working with their pretty brands many many different ones from Star Wars to Friends to too many of the name right where they actually have really sort of intermingled these sort of two
worlds together in a very authentic way. And so you know, when we were thinking about the game, it wasn't something that when we built the game, when we launched the game, where we're like, oh, we're going to do you know other through party ip collaborations. That was never the plan.
As the team was thinking about the roadmap for the game, we were thinking about a lot of different angles, and the marketing team was obviously thinking about things that we could do, and what came up was what's authentic to the brand? And that's when we're like, well, let's look at what people think of when they think of physical and they're like, what would make sense in our world?
And that's when sort of third party brands you know, came about and we're like and we talked to Hasro about it and they were like, yeah, actually we never thought about that. That actually is super cool. Once again, you're leaning into the fandom, right, the sort of history, the ethos of the brand itself, and so that was first and foremost we needed to make sure it felt authentic to the actual the brand right itself. And then the second thing is our marketing team, our community teams.
Be's a lot of time with the players and doing constant sort of or having constant conversations with them about where they like in the game, where they don't like in the game, whichould they change, lots of feedback, which we love feedback from our players, but specifically asking about what would you like and one of the things you because you gotta be careful about how you introduce or talk to community because you don't want to kind of
tip your hat. But we were talking about just sort of third party brands and what they resonate with and that kind of stuff, and it was clear that the fans of this game were excited about the idea of us potentially partnering with different brands, and so we did a lot of research, a lot of sort of consumer insights work, and that's sort of how we got to the place where we started to think about, okay, what would be the you know, sort of first brands that
we would actually work with, and for us, you know, we knew it would have to be globally recognizable brands, you know, brands that once again resonate with I think the Monopoly franchise right and have a history, and that's obviously how we we landed in places like the first collaboration last year was with with Marvel, which we actually executed, which was fantastic. The Marvel team was amazing to work with. I will say when we went to them and said,
what do you think about Monopoly Go. They were like really like they were like one of those like it never was obvious to them of us doing that, and kudos to them once again. They were very open and they're like, well, what would that even look like? And we're like, here's how we think about honoring both brands, and they're like, that's amazing. Uh, and you know, and
well we've done since then. The next one that we did is Star Wars, which is now live in the game, and I would say the fans have been responding so
positive to positively to that integration. They've done an amazing They've they've you know, when it comes to their actual engagement in the game, but also just what we hear in social and through community channels, like they're all kind of trying to anticipate what element or aspect of Star Wars is going to show up next in the game itself, which to us is that's rewarding because that means they're enjoying it. They're loving it.
Now I've taken a step back here. You know, obviously Monopoly Go is a huge one ferial, It's probably what you're best known for at the moment, but looking at Scopoly as a whole if you can, you kind of give an over here what you guys do when you came on the scene and what else do you have to offer?
Yeah, specifically you're asking about IP collaborations.
No scope, Lee just in general as a company.
Oh, got it. Yes, I would say there's really a couple of things that are really important to us, right as a company. Obviously, we're the number one mobile game company in the world today.
Right.
You talked about some of the actual major milestones that we've had over the last couple of years, which is fantastic. But I think the thing that for us is incredibly important is that we want to make sure that we're designing games that are blending narrative, you know, social mechanics that make sense for different games, and then at the end of the day, doing that for bloff print or fan bases, right, and whether that's in working with other
IP partners. We have a long history right of working with IP partners, right, everything from Hasro Mattel to Disney to WWE to it feels kind of like you name it, we've kind of have worked with them. And it doesn't mean that we work with everyone, but we really kind of try to figure out like, where are there extremely passionate fans and consumers that love right in IP And we figure out, like, Okay, how do we actually bring
what's important to us in great game making? Right has great creative and then really bring those two things together and marry them. I say that's one, and that's that's you know, of utmost important to us. And then the other thing is, you know, how do we actually do that in a forever franchise sort of like manner, meaning we're not looking to just build games and to build games that like have a lifespan of three years or
four years. Our goal is like we want this game to be around and not just around, but in consumers lives for ten plus years. That is like the utmost important to us. And we take a lot of pride in that and and we were really committed to actually doing that for fans on a daily basis.
I'd love to know about your background specifically, and then if you can speak to you know what your role as seen your vice president publishing at Scope looks like on a day to day basis, what is your purview?
Sure exactly, I have no problem. So I have been in the digital entertainment space, I would say for the last twenty plus years. Started early in my career at EA and worked at EA. I had the pleasure of working at Disney for a period of time, and then moved into the free to play gaming space with Zinga back when Zinga was early days on Facebook. Think of games like Farmville and Cityville, which was amazing when you
think about the move to free to play. I then had a short departure where I left and went to Nikate working in the digital and direct consumer space, and then saw my way back the games that was missing it and have spent now the last five and a half years split between Activision Blizzard. In the last two and a half years here at Scopoly.
Oh yeah, sorry, go ahead, you know.
From and then as far as my role and what I'm responsible responsible for here at Scope Lee one, my team works with all of our distribution relationships on a day to day basis, so from everyone from Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, you name it when it comes to distribution or contents. I also lead our director consumer sort of operations for the company, but also I'm responsible for everything we do from a business development perspective, so obviously working with IP
partners on a day to day basis. Is one of the main priorities that I am my team focus on.
As we've already mentioned a couple of times here, scope ly is a giant in the mobile gaming industry, but you all got even bigger with the Pokemon Go and Nantech acquisition here, So I'd like to talk about that and you know how you will see that in positioning yourselves even further as a leader within the mobile gaming industry and what you plan to do with that brand moving forward.
Yeah, I look weird so excited about the being part of the team. Obviously that brings part of that acquisition. It brings a global, you know phenomenon when you think about Pokemon Go. When think about when that game watched in twenty sixteen, like it was everywhere and it still is. It's a massive game. But it brings that game as well as other great games to our portfolio, which is fantastic.
But those games attract today over one hundred million unique players, right, That's that's an incredible privilege for us to bring that into the portfolio and how we actually help serve them on a daily basis. They have today over thirty million in AU When you think about scale, and even just looking at their business last year, it's been over a billion dollars in revenue. Like so like when we talk about some of the you know, success, I would say
that Scope Plays had recently, which is amazing. Then we're pairing that the opportunity to pair that with another amazing company that has some amazing franchises. It's like like, in some ways it kind of pinch ourselves and say, I can't believe that we actually get to partner together. The other thing I would say is that's I think it's why it's a great such a great fit is that
we focus on as a company. One of the things we focus on as a company is player engagement, meaning like how much how often do players play in the game, and how often do they come back? Like not sure, we're a business, and so revenue is obviously things that have that keeps the lights on, but really if players are giving us their time, right, that's the most important thing. And when we look at Pokemon Go, I mean they spend on average forty minutes in the game on a
daily basis. That is pretty phenomenal. And so once again the idea of them coming into the into the mix and being part of our portfolio is amazing and our hope is that we we're going to be here to support them, you know, help give them all the resource or all the help that they can actually ever need to hope they continue to notly you know, you know, make fans appreciate the game, but hopefully grow that game even more. So we're credibly excited about that.
We'll be backed more from Scopely after this break. When you look at, you know, the the overall gaming industry at the moment, you know, there's a lot that it's gone through just in the past couple of years. There was a pandemic boom, then there were changes, there was a lot of stuff, and no one's really been immune to that. But one thing I want to focus on here is just the mobile gaming industry and the amount of growth and the amount that that really takes up
within overall gaming. And I feel like that goes unnoticed every now and then because we look at Splashy, Triple A, we look at big titles, we look at big players, and forget how much of the overall gaming is made
up by mobile. So I want to get kind of your take, especially on a potential stigma there for what mobile gaming is, because I know I'll talk to like my parents when they're like, I'm talking about games with them and they're like, oh, I don't game, and I'm like, okay, the games you're playing on your phone those are games, guys. And they're like, oh, okay, well then in that case, yes, I'm a gamer. So I'd like to get your take on that.
Look, I have similar story with my mom. I remember years ago where she was we were talking about the industry and she did she was like, I don't really understand. She goes, I'm not a gamer, and I lily said, well, open up your phone. What do you have on your phone? And it was one of those and I can't remember what she had, but she had a casual game on her phone. I'm like, you are a Gamer's like, no, i'm not. And I'm like, you are a gamer. I'm like,
why do you think that? She goes and she has the stigma and that sort of like idea of like a gamer looks like this and plays in this way. You know, plays in front of a big screen, right, plays on a console, plays on a PC, which, look, those are amazing mediums to deliver amazing stories and franchises. Like I there are some amazing games that I personally
my kids play on a on a constant basis. When it comes to like Triple A, I would say, the thing that makes mobile so unique, and specifically from a gaming perspective is thinks are obvious, but it's on a device that's in your pocket all day every day. It's accessible.
Everyone has it. Like while console on a PC is amazing because it's amazing piece of hardware that can deliver some fantastic experiences, it does have, you know, a barrier, right when not everyone can actually afford it from a pricing perspective, or just maybe they don't have like the space or what have you. A phone is everyone has one. It's democratized, right, And the fact that we can actually leverage that piece of hardware and that device to actually
bring amazing experiences to consumers is it's amazing. Right. So that sort of solves like the distribution scale problem when you think about mobile. And then another thing that I think makes mobile very unique is that you know, we
are focused on building amazing experiences. I would say sometimes Triple A, they're amazing games, but they're very much focused on the visual quality, right, which is great, I think what mobile and we deliver great visual quality, but we over index on I think is really are we making sure that we engage the player? Like, what do the behavior patterns that we see? Do players like this experience? Does that actually motivate them to come back and give
us more time and play you know tomorrow? Well? And so we have this, We're constantly iterating and testing different concepts and ideas, and the goal for us is just like, how are once again going to my twitarlier point, how are consumers showing us that they love something with their time? And I think that's the unique thing that mobile provides us that maybe Triple A just does not. It's scale
right in democratization of actually access to the consumer. And two, I would say that the patterns of play patterns for consumers on mobile, or if it's my mom, your mom, they're not expecting a Triple A sort of like experience it needs to look and feel this way. They're much more open to, you know, sort of what a game
will look like. And I think mobile game developers have really leaned into that in a way and said, Okay, a game doesn't have to look just like this, which I think has allowed us to really sort of open up play patterns.
One thing that I know can be a little bit of a barrier to people who want to get into mobile gaming is saying, like there's a million micro transactions. I feel like I'm going to spend a lot of money playing this game in order to enjoy the game
or to beat the game or whatever. So I'd like to know how you all, let scopely look at handling that what you give for free versus what's paywalled, and then also kind of a sub question about how you handle that when it comes to like younger players as well, because I know there's people who are like, I can't let me hip play this game. I don't know what they're going to.
Spend on it. So yeah, yeah, I would say when it comes to your first question, I would say, we have a philosophy that anything you can pay for in the game, you should also be able to earn it, meaning you know, I mean, we're not going to block you from progress only through payments, right, Like that's that's a choice that a consumer makes, Like it's almost like a you know, a value for money or time for money, sort of like exchange right, Like, our view is that
it shouldn't be the sort of pay to win sort of model. It's to be one that's really should be enjoyable to everyone. If you decide that, you're like, listen, I want to I want to be the best. I want to top the leader boards, and I want to be there first. I got want to do that first. Like, that's my that's my goal. You're a maximizer, Fine, then we'll give them the mechanisms to do that. That's their choice. But if for someone who is like to your point,
like I will never pay. I mean, my mom's that way. She's like, I will never pay. I think she actually has, but she will tell me that, but I will never pay. Fine, you should still have a great pleasurable experience. So I think that's how we think about it. One is not better than the other. It's choice, right from a consumer perspective. And then apologies. Your second question was well again, oh.
Talking about younger players and how you have to handle that.
Yeah, yeah, I would say first or foremost, if there's a game that we think, uh and or we see that is potentially resonating with kids, we take that very serious. And so typically we're always implementing some type of age game, right. I'll be honest, Like, if you think of my Monopoly Go, we didn't think the target audience at all was going to be kids. And not that we have a lot
of kids playing a game. I'm not saying we do, but when you look at the data early on, we saw that there was actually some younger, you know, kids that were playing and we're like, oh geez, wow, And we responded to it very quickly, said, okay, we need to implement an age game right to make sure that we are not surfacing certain features in the game that would not be appropriate to someone of a certain age.
So we take it very serious. We want to make sure that we are, you know, doing what's right by the player based upon their age.
Going back to partnerships, talking about a different title from Monopolygo. This episode of the podcast will come out just around the Jurassic World release, and I know you guys have a big partnership coming up with Stumble guys, so i'd like to, you know, go into that a little bit, how that came about and another reason why you feel like that partnership is a good fit for the Scope Lee brand.
Yeah, So excited to announce that we're collaborating with Universal Products and Experiences and part of their digital team on a Drastic World experience that's going to be coming to stumble Guys next month. That's awesome, super excited about it. We've been working with that team for for quite some time now. The cool thing about it is it's going to be timed with the release of the new film that's in the franchise, which is going to be Drastic
World Rebirth. Super excited about that film film. I've been seeing a lot of the trailers. I definitely will go see with my kids, and that collaboration is going to basically be aligned with the launch of the movie, and we're going to The idea is that how we bring that experience to life for players and for consumers within the world of Stumble Guys. So we think it's going to be amazing. It's obviously going to give us ability to night a global audience that exists in Stumble Guys.
You bring the iconic sort of Drastic World cinematic storytelling adventure, you know, drama. Like the idea that how we bring that all to life. We're super excited. We think we think the team is done on our side in partnership with the Universal team, an amazing job of doing. I mean that in a way that once again it's going to feel authentic and of the time when you think about the universe or the Jurassic Park franchise.
Asking just in general the mobile gaming space, you know what scopely looks at in terms of continuing to own that area when there are constantly others getting into that game. Netflix is making a big push for that right now. They have a lot of really strong IP but there's only so much time that people have in a day, and there's already so many titles. So I want to know how you keep coming at people coming back to
Monopoly Go, keep coming people coming. And then also when you look at developing new games, the ROI in that are you really looking at you know, we already have this good slate, let's invest in this, let's invest in Pokemon Go that we now have, or do you look to create new titles?
Yeah, when it comes to your first question about how we bring them back daily, Look, I think this is a combination and really a tight combination of partship between both the game team constantly thinking about what's important to the game that we think is going to be interesting and fun and exciting, unique, right, inspiring for players. But couple that with the marketing team and the community team
constantly talking to the actual player base. Now, it doesn't mean we do everything the players tell us, because obviously not everything makes sense, but I would say there's a great marriage between the two of how we bring those insights in from the consumers and from the players into the product team. The product team's constantly thinking about, you know, different inspiration that they get, not only from other games.
I think that's something that games have done many many years, Like how do I take inspiration from either a game that's in the market now or a game that's it was in the market ten years ago that I loved as a child? Right? Are there elements of those games or mechanics in those games that I can bring forward in this game, but maybe reimagine in a new way.
And then how do you couple that once again with insights Like that's that's something that's constantly going on, and we're I would say, always testing a b testing new features and functionality for players to see what resonates. I think that's also one of the things that is very unique to mobile games versus Triple A is that we have this ability to constantly and it's in our DNA to kind of test and iterate versus like say, this is what it is and that's what we're bringing the market.
You know, if we think something's great and we go test it with like you know, basic consumers are like, eh, it's not really resonating. It's like, okay, we go back to the drawing board, right, and we get their feedback. So that's definitely I would say a big priority for us. And then on the second question again, what was it that again? Sorry?
Yeah, it's looking at the ROI for existing franchises versus developing a new game. You know, if I go explore a new game created by Scope Play, that's the less time I'm playing on Monopoly Go kind of thing.
Yeah, I think we look we continue to build forever franchises. That's our big priority, right And that's why obviously the the Niantic acquisition with Pokemon Go and there are other franchise like Monster Hunter makes such a makes such made so much sense. We are always thinking about new opportunities. Now, it's not about we need to launch X number of games per year. That's definitely not the priority for us.
It's more about, do we think there's a unique idea and opportunity that a creative team on our side is excited about that we think fills a need a void right from a consumer perspective, from a genre perspective. And do we have the right team, the studio team, the right development team that actually we feel like do an amazing job and bringing that to market. And so those two things are incredibly important for us, even if it's in a space that you could say is like maybe crowded, right,
because there's other gains in the space. If we have a conviction around it, because we think we've come up a really unique sort of angle and an idea that a creative team is excited about, that we've sort of validated with consumers. And then we have a team that not just can build a game, but let's say I'm making it up, it's like an RPG, right, Let's say genre, what does that team have credibility? Do they have a
history of building great RPG games that fans love. When we sort of bring those two things together, that's when we know, like, okay, that makes sense for us to invest in that project moving forward. Like I said, it's not about having a specific slate where we have a specific number of titles that we were launching every year, because once again, our job is to really grow the
existing franchises we have. So for us, when we think about any new project, it's really an opportunity cost right, So we need to have really strong conviction that we think that that project has a big opportunity to actually really resonate with fans.
Well, those are all my questions for you today, Eric, I just didn't know if there's anything else. Maybe you feel like our listeners would want to know about you all at this time, or something in particular we didn't get to.
Yeah, look, I think I think we want our fans and consumers to know that we appreciate everything that they do when it comes to giving us their time and attention. We think it's fantastic, and you know, we just can't wait to deliver some amazing new experiences to consumers. We have some new things in the works, and obviously stuff that we can talk about now we'll see when it's written.
But you know, we have more stuff that's coming and we're super excited about what that's gonna what that's gonna look like, and so look, obviously for anyone that's interested, just follow along, you know, follow us on LinkedIn, follow us on scopey dot com, and you'll you'll get more updates on everything that's coming.
All right, we'll talk when you can talk about that. We'll talk when Monopoly gocrosses ten billion in revenue. So thank you for your time today, Eric sounds good, Take.
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