Interview

Building on the '11 million manager' success of Top Eleven, Nordeus looks to new games, including social sports betting

All based on unified gaming experiences

Building on the '11 million manager' success of Top Eleven, Nordeus looks to new games, including social sports betting
It's all go for Nordeus.

Last week, it announced that its cross-platform Facebook, iOS and Android game Top Eleven - Be a Football Manager now has over 11 million monthly active players.

The Belgrade-based company is also expanding geographically, opening offices in Dublin, Ireland, and Skopje, Macedonia.

A good opportunity then to find out more about what Nordeus is planning.

Pocket Gamer: Why do you think Top Eleven has been so successful?

Nordeus: We took the big risk of developing a technically-advanced platform that enables rich gameplay, great multiplayer experience and cross platform gaming.

Top Eleven is exactly the same on Facebook, iPhone and Android. That gave us the opportunity to offer challenging and exciting video game to play with your friends. Also, we've focused on the level of realism and tried to be as close to the real world of football management as possible.

The biggest problem with publishing companies these days is not knowing your audience and not listening to gamers' requests and needs.

We are constantly upgrading Top Eleven and introducing new features and options. That is the way in which Top Eleven has experienced a steady growth throughout the years, has 40 percent DAU/MAU ratio and is one of the top grossing games worldwide.

Are there any differences between mobile and Facebook players in terms of game sessions, play time, retention, ARPU etc?

Nordeus always had a strategy of delivering cross-platform games to our players, allowing them to enjoy our games with exactly the same game play experience regardless of the platform. Top Eleven was one of the pioneers of cross-platform games and owes a lot of its success to that.

With that in mind, it's really hard to differentiate mobile and Facebook players since those two groups overlap most of the time and one player is able to play the same game, with the same account, on different devices and platforms.

For example, start a game in the office on Facebook, continue 30 minutes later on mobile device in public transport, see the results on laptop back home etc.

You're based in Serbia, but now looking to expand in Dublin, Ireland and Skopje, Macedonia. How will these new offices operate and what sort of specialists are you looking for?

We will be building an experienced customer relations team in our Dublin business and marketing operations centre, which will focus on providing the best support for our projects and millions of players worldwide.

We are very excited and hope to attract some great local talent such as experienced game designers and native speakers of various major world languages.

Also, our business and marketing department in Dublin will work closely with our San Francisco, Skopje and Belgrade offices. As for Skopje, our game development centre there will work on a completely new project under the Nordeus brand.

So what should we expect next from Nordeus?

We cannot share much, but we are working full speed ahead on the next generation of games, which will introduce a lot of new concepts. We are already well known as a pioneers in using new technologies in our games and we intend to keep it that way.

Projects will, of course, continue to carry on our philosophy of unified gaming experience throughout devices but will also include completely new and ground breaking gameplay and target new markets. We are really excited about all of this and cannot wait to share more with the public.

Also, in September 2012, we formed a partnership with bwin.party, one of the market leaders in online sports betting. We recognised a huge opportunity for social sports betting games based on the feedback from millions of our customers, so that's something to also keep an eye on.
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.