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Celebrities need at least 100M followers to be worth their own game, says dev of ‘Kim Kardashian: Hollywood’
Despite being the butt of many jokes, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood has become an extremely successful mobile game, with tens of millions of downloads on the Google Play Store alone. According to research firm Newzoo BV, that makes the game worth somewhere around $30 billion in this year’s mobile market.
Developer Glu Mobile attributes a large portion of that success to celebrity name recognition alone, but CEO Niccolo De Masi says that not just any famous name can make a successful game.
“One of the reasons we like the celebrity partnerships is that we get, effectively, a permanent marketing asset,” De Masi explained at GamesBeat 2015 (via GamesIndustry.biz).
While Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is certainly one Glu Mobile’s most successful games, the studio has also produced movie tie-in mobile games like James Bond: World of Espionage, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, and Terminator Genysis: Revolution. Name recognition for major films certain helps boost a game’s profile, but De Masi believes that it does not come close to what developers can gain from a partnership with a celebrity, especially one with a huge following on social media.
“Unlike a movie IP, where there isn’t really much social following, if you partner with someone who has 100 million social followers you have effectively in-built promotion.”
According to De Masi, 100 million is the new magic number for the ultra-successful social media giants, and anything less than that is not as impressive as it used to be.
“I get emails daily from someone who has five million, ten million, 30 million followers, we’re not going to build a game for someone with ten million followers. 100 [million] is kind of the line now.”
De Masi pointed out that simply putting a famous name in the title is not enough for a game to enjoy the same level of success as Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, as the gameplay has to appeal to the celebrity’s existing fan base.
“Do you want to interact with the LeBron James who is dunking or who is in the locker room talking about how his shorts are too tight or whatever?” he joked.
Image courtesy of Glu Mobile | Google Play
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