Ep.4 Games and Names: How Merge Is The New Match-3 (with Arseny Lebedev)

Описание: Hey there! Welcome to Games & Names podcast, a place where we casually chat about the gaming industry with a hint of magic. In the fourth episode, we talk with CEO and founder of Original Games, Arseny Lebedev, about merge games and their rise. What are merge games? How did they appear? Why Merge Mansion ended up so successful? And how Original Games perfected hybrid monetization? Tune in to know more!

Episode's crew: ⁠Stan Minasov, Jesse Kroon, Arseny Lebedev

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In this episode, we talk about:

what it takes to make a merge game and why company size doesn’t really matter;
how Merge Inn was made in 2 weeks and why animal characters were a risky bet;
3 approaches to launching a new game in casual (and merge!) market;
why Merge Mansion ended up so successful (UA team and data) and how economy PhDs can always find a job in gamedev;
how to treat live-ops mini-games as hyper casual from market perspective;
what is the main problem of merge games right now and how social features help to solve it
how Original Games succeeded a hybrid monetization and came to 50/50 split

We also share a bunch of game recommendations that we loved recently, including a peculiar mod for Doom II! Stay tuned for the next episodes. Good luck and have fun :)

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00:00 Intro
00:42 Guests & hosts intro
03:16 What are merge games?
06:36 Decisions behind Merge Inn
09:33 How Merge Inn was born
13:23 Cooking meta in merge games
14:35 3 scenarios of creating a casual game
19:25 The success of Merge Mansion
22:33 Difficulties of core gameplay in merge genre
27:48 Role & approach to live ops
35:52 Misleads and all about them
40:31 The story of Original Games
42:40 On cross promotion
44:51 The main problem of merge games
50:11 Best monetization practices
55:56 The future of Merge
57:18 Games we recommend