How Square Enix Montreal is making the leap to free-to-play mobile games

GamesBeat: You have the good fortune of having these brands available to you.

Naud: The brands help. It’s a strong accelerator. Not only are people fans of these IPs, but you get automatic recognition. Even if you’re not a fan of Hitman, you know about Hitman. It’s part of gaming culture. People know that and support us a little more. It’s the circle of awesomeness, is what we call it. The better we do with a game, the more people support it, the more Apple and Google support it.

GamesBeat: Every now and then we still see examples of companies that don’t quite get free-to-play right, what fans will accept. EA had their loot boxes. Harry Potter had a pretty harsh paywall in the first 10 minutes of gameplay. In some ways it still surprises me, but in other ways it reminds me just how hard it is to pull off something in free-to-play that satisfies your fans.

Naud: And on the other end, it’s also part of our DNA, and the wider Square Enix DNA – not only us in Montreal, but others around the group – how can we make great games first? Before we make games that monetize, how can we just make something that people are passionate about, that brings them to the game on a regular basis, that they want to talk to their friends about? They’re more likely to monetize because of this, rather than being hit with a paywall. A paywall is short-term revenue. We’re focused on making amazing experiences.

When we take on a new genre, the way we did with the Go series, or a new treatment of an old genre, we want to make sure that it becomes the reference. We believe that by doing that, by making amazing games, we’ll monetize in the long run. That’s not the approach that every publisher is behind, but we feel like this is what we’re good at, so we’ll focus on that aspect of development.

Above: Deus Ex Go is a puzzle game on mobile devices.

Image Credit: Square Enix

GamesBeat: Is there a clear distinction for you in that area? Like pay-to-win is not okay but cosmetics are?

Naud: Just call it respecting our players. Square Enix is a beloved company for a reason. Catering to what our players want, what they feel, that’s more important. It’s long-term thinking. That will help us win in the long term, rather than trying to go with the more evil approach. [laughs]

GamesBeat: There’s a lot of evil out there.

Naud: Yeah. We don’t need to be a part of that.

GamesBeat: In some ways, the thinking used to be that you’d just re-create a console experience on mobile, because mobile was getting more powerful, more able to handle the visuals.

Naud: That’s not the approach. Sadly, it still works in some ways. There are some games that are cloned or ported, let’s say, like Fortnite. But the mobile version doesn’t match up to the original version. People are getting used to subpar experiences on mobile. As a developer and as a player I can’t understand why you’d do this. There might some money in it, but that’s all.

That’s why, in the Go series, the question was, “What are the pillars of these brands? How can we craft an experience that caters to the mobile device, to the mobile player, to the mobile experience?” It has a mobile gameplay loop. You don’t play for half an hour at a time. You play 12 times a day for six or seven minutes. The game needs to reflect that behavior. I feel like this is the best approach for a quality mobile game.

Ideally, we’ll have as little porting the game with thumbsticks as we can. The mobile port never compares to the original. We think our mobile players deserve better.

Above: Patrick Naud’s job is to take Square Enix properties into mobile — or come up with new mobile IP.

GamesBeat: It almost seems like Fortnite is more of a tech statement, that Unreal can do the same game across all platforms.

Naud: Yeah, but you can still see it performing well on the business side. Even if you have PC players that are a lot more agile playing against mobile players—again, I’d like to understand who is playing Fortnite on mobile and how they’re playing it. My theory is that they’re already fans of Fortnite, that they’re already playing on PC. They’re just happy to be able to play in between their classes or on the bus going home. That’s a testament to the fact that our mobile players are looking for great experience, and that’s why we need to cater to them.

GamesBeat: It still seems like a very small team that you have compared to some others that are out there. Do you operate in very small groups?

Naud: Yes, but it’s also a very different approach. Because we’re focused on creating that experience first, we start—up until soft launch, we never have more than five or 10 people. Once a game starts performing, it’s easier to add people. You can scale production. You can’t really scale conception. It’s not as if conception will go any faster because you added twice as many people. That’s not how it works.

It’s about fostering that creative mindset. The idea is to craft something different, something unique, something that will become that reference. If we were to make a match-three game, it would feel different. You’d see other games based on the approach we came to.

GamesBeat: You guys are part of a triple-A game company. Do you think of this as applying triple-A to mobile, or something else?

Naud: No, no. I think we’re unique. We do have that triple-A production quality mindset and the big IP, but at the same time we operate more like indie developers. We have smaller team. Everyone contributes in a lot of different ways. Everyone wears a lot of hats. But because of that, everyone is very engaged in the product. I think it’s the best of both worlds.

When you add in the economic and monetization experts that have joined our team—I have a French word in mind, but it’s not quite right. [laughs] We have the creative mindset around crafting something different, and we’re working hand-in-hand with the monetization people to see how we can make it a profitable experience. So far it’s been very interesting. I’m pretty sure that we’re among very few in the industry taking this route.

GamesBeat: The NBC Universal people are doing this contest now with their lesser brands like Jaws. They’re offering a $250,000 prize to indie games. Their theory is that normally, Hollywood companies would turn to sort of double-A developers to get these kinds of games out, but they felt like there wasn’t enough creativity there anymore. They wanted to harness the creativity of indies with these big brands that anybody knows. It’s interesting that you also mentioned having that kind of indie attitude.

Naud: I don’t want to generalize, but when you start to work on bigger and bigger projects – teams of 50, 70, 100, 200 people – it becomes a production. How do you manage the work for all these people? It’s no longer just working on a game. Instead of everyone coming to work every morning to work on a task, our people are working on a game. It’s a completely different approach. Sometimes I feel like an alien saying this, but that’s why I decided to make games in the first place, and why I’m still making games today.

GamesBeat: Have you find this approach to be a hard sell or an easy one inside the company?

Naud: That’s the great thing about Square Enix. They encourage us to try things, to take risks. They were very supportive. “We’re going to make a Hitman game, but it’s going to be turn-based, like a board game with figurines.” The initial pitch for Hitman Go—people might have said, “That’s a Hitman game?” But they were encouraging. They pushed us to go further and be bold about it. All the projects we’ve done have been projects we believed would work. Everything we’re working on in the future is what we believe will work.

Right now Square Enix believes very much in mobile. Phil Rogers is stating officially that we want to grow mobile in the U.S. We want to see if there are potential partnerships we can make or find opportunities for new studios. There’s a lot of confidence at Square Enix in the mobile ecosystem.

GamesBeat: As you grow, are you adding more triple-A developers, or finding mobile people?

Naud: It’s not really about triple-A or mobile people. It’s people who want to work in mobile. When we talk about small teams and motivated, mobilized people, they need to believe in the product they’re making. Sometimes it’s triple-A console people who need to do something different.

That was my mindset, where I needed to try something different. I got into mobile and was impressed by everything I needed to learn, but also by the challenge. How can we take the triple-A mindset and apply it to mobile? There were opportunities there because there weren’t that many people doing it. It’s been an interesting adventure.

I feel like this is only the beginning. We’ve had massive critical success, and now, with the whole mindset of the group changing and embracing free-to-play, designing games that will be live forever, we have great potential to make revenues at the same level as that critical acclaim. Even for a company like Square Enix—we’re a major player in the mobile space worldwide because of our strong performance in Japan. Right now there’s more revenue out of mobile than in console. That benefits a company like Square Enix.

GamesBeat: How do you balance games made externally versus games made internally as far as mobile?

Naud: We have two different tracks. Montreal, internally, this is what we’re going to do. This is what we’re good at. The London studio will work with external partners. The idea is, how can we find external partners that have the proper approach for our IP? We’re finding the right partners to work on our IP, not just designing a game and then looking for the cheapest developer to execute it. I feel that’s how you should engage with the developer, the company that takes on that challenge. They work on your IP and they feel like they can make a difference.

Disclosure: Casual Connect paid our way to London. Our coverage remains objective.