![]() ![]() So, after players familiarize themselves with the characters and their synergies, the gameplay could feel stale (and there’s currently no LiveOps in sight to refresh the experience, besides from new sets of characters - which, as shown above, didn’t drive viewership) ![]() While the gameplay feels complex at first, its depth is actually shallower than Hearthstone or League (e.g., fewer characters). The reasons for the decline in interest after launch is likely due to at least one of these reasons: The monetization issues are evident in the chart below with the net daily revenues on mobile of two games from the group discussed above (note that TFT is not available on mobile yet, and Battlegrounds is embedded within Hearthstone). As a result, the main remaining lever to drive monetization is vanity, but it is not clear that a vanity-based economy could make Auto Chess a commercial success - more on this later. More specifically, the current gameplay doesn’t offer any power progression, and therefore players cannot spend prior to playing also, there are no opportunities to monetize during the gameplay to improve the odds of winning. The crux of the issue is that the gameplay doesn’t lend itself well to monetize, mainly because of the “even playing field” mentioned above. Riot’s Teamfight Tactics players can buy select vanity items (e.g., skins for the arena and the “little legends”)īlizzard’s Battlegrounds gives players (limited) benefits if they buy Hearthstone card packs, such as access to gameplay stats, visual emotes, and a third hero to choose from initially) Currently, AutoChess games offer little to nothing for players to spend on, e.g.: Monetization is by far the most serious challenge. However, the path to becoming a commercial success is all but certain, as Auto Chess faces two massive challenges: monetization and long-term retention. Also, the fact that these games were created within the universe of Dota, League of Legends, and Hearthstone may bring in players from their respective eco-systems. building the same team over and overĪ nostalgia element, as the shared pool of characters may remind of Magic: The Gathering’s “draft mode”, the different feel of each run may remind of D&D, and the sheer difficulty of the gameplay (and the process of learning by losing time and again.) may remind of old school games from the 90’s.Īs a result, the potential audience for Auto Chess is large and may even reach beyond the Card Battlers’ player base (which is large, considering also physical card games). The fun factor here is not just winning, but includes also the dream of creating the perfect team and the thrill of chasing itĪn even playing field, as players are not required to spend anything to compete (e.g., purchasing card packs, like in Hearthstone)Ī replayable experience, as each run provides players different sets of characters to choose from, and winning requires working with what you have vs. Looking at Twitch data, Riot’s Teamfight Tactics (perhaps the strongest of these games) broke into the top 10 of most viewed games in the last 6 months.Ī highly strategic gameplay forcing players to make hard choices, given the limited number of characters to choose from in each round. Given the rush to release their own version of Auto Chess, these developers must have seen something special in this new genre… and so did the audience, given the very positive initial response. And just like that, this new concept initially created for PC quickly became a new genre and expanded to mobile, as most of these games are also on mobile (or are going to be soon). Later, in November ’19 Blizzard released “ Battlegrounds” as a game mode within Hearthstone. Based on this initial success, in June/ July ’19 there was literally an explosion of new Auto Chess game releases: “ Dota Underlords” from Valve, “ Teamfight Tactics” from Riot, “ Auto Chess: Origin” from Drodo (standalone version of the original game), and “ Chess Rush”from Tencent. It all started with “ Dota Auto Chess”, developed in January ’19 by Drodo Studio as a mod for Dota 2. Teamfight Tactics is Riot’s take on Auto ChessĪuto Chess is a relatively new phenomenon, as all the Auto Chess games were released in 2019 in the span of a few months. ![]()
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