Gambit recently had the opportunity to talk with the owner, founder and CEO of Webgamic, Teus Louwerens, who discussed Torpia’s development and shared his thoughts on the difficulties of viral growth in Holland, the need for aesthetics in online payment systems and how user value in the Netherlands is overlooked.

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How many monthly active users does Torpia have right now?

At the moment, we have about 55,000 internationally: 45,000 in the Netherlands, and then 5,000 in Romania and Argentina because they just started.

How did you choose to launch in Romania?

We just happened to have a reliable partner there who was easy to launch the game with. Besides that, the eastern Europe countries are very interesting for us because there’s not such a big [offering of games in that country] yet, but there’s a big market.

How are you growing your user base for Torpia? Is there a typical growth model?

At first, you have to buy them, you have to get the game on the market. We also get a lot of what we call “mouth-to-mouth advertising”, where people just tell their friends, hey, this is a cool game to play. And we see that that kind of advertising is growing, but besides that, we are still using traditional advertising that we have to pay for in order to get our players.

Have you ever thought about offering something within the game that would encourage users to invite friends to join and play?

We have, but there are some problems to that, because in Holland, and also in several other countries, it’s forbidden because of spam regulations. It’s not allowed to tell users anything like, we’ll give you 10 credits when you invite a friend of yours.

It’s not allowed? How do they expect you to grow?

Well, they mostly look out for the customer, for the normal person that is totally fed up with all the spam they get, and that’s why this regulation comes about. But I guess they just think, you can get your users through regular advertising or through free will without having to push them.

What percent are you able to convert to paying users within the actual experience of the game?

Around 10%.

Is that pretty standard for these kinds of strategy games?

As far as I know, for a game where it’s optional, you’re not obliged as a player to buy credits, it’s a pretty common percentage.

In the process of building Torpia, did you focus first on getting the game right and then figure out how to monetize it, or did you have an idea of how you wanted to monetize the game from the very start?

We had the idea of how we generally wanted to monetize the game– with the option of credits, that’s something we wanted from the start because we feel that’s the best way to go, to offer a free game and leave the choice to pay to the people who actually play it; but we didn’t have any idea about how we actually wanted to do it, which premium features we wanted to implement. So we first focused on the game itself and we are now working on implementing the features that we need to monetize

When you talk about improving the game or changing features or adding new things, how do you take that into consideration? Do you look at user feedback, or do you take surveys, or do you look at certain metrics to determine where you take the game next?

All of the above, actually. We try to look a lot to our players; in the forums, we look at what players like. We also do surveys, mostly specific surveys– if we have a thing that we think needs improvement, we do a survey on that and with the results, we try to get the best feature out of it. And we think of things that could be better, and we ask the community how they’d feel about it, our new idea or feature.

We have several team members here who just work on communication and management of the communities, and besides that we work with a lot of volunteers who are just excited to play and manage the forums or the IRC channels. So we have a lot of people looking into the community.

What kind of people play these games? Do you still play Torpia?

Not for fun, because it’s the game I built myself and I know everything about it so that makes it not so much fun anymore. But we have a broad range of players. Ages 11 to 40, male and female– really broad– but the major part would be the younger players, maybe 14 to 24.

Does Torpia have anything to do with Travian at all, or is a completely different experience for your users?

Well, it has something to do with Travian in the sense that it is a strategy game as well, so you are building villages, you are attacking other players, but there are some major differences– you have to choose between Good and Evil sides, not three tribes like in Travian, and with that choice comes totally different gameplay. Good focuses on building, producing and trading, and Evil focuses on training of troops and attacking and conquering other players.

The idea is that the Good and Evil players work together to get to the higher goal, and that is winning the world. And that makes the game totally different than Travian, where all players have all the same features, and just the tribes are a bit different in their abilities and the configuration of the troops and buildings.

Does Travian mind that you’re starting your own game?

No, we have a really good relationship with Travian. We just talked about it with them and it’s not a problem.

How do people pay in countries like the Netherlands and Belgium for online games and in general– what are the biggest forms?

60% is iDeal. It’s just available in the Netherlands, and it’s direct bank-to-bank transfer. It’s really easy for customers to use, it’s a system where, when you choose to pay, you select your own bank and you pay through the normal bank interface. So it’s really easy and comfortable and safe.

Isn’t that like the major payment method for Germany?

In Germany, the major method of payment is direct debit. You give permission for the company to deduct the amount of money from your bank account, but the problem for companies is, users can also cancel it. Especially for banks, it’s really annoying because what often happens is there’s a lot of fraud with it. So people give permission to deduct the amount  of money from their accounts to get the credits they’re paying for, but then just two days later after they’ve spent all their credits, they tell the bank that they never wanted to buy this, and they get their money back from the company– you have to pay it back, and you end up with nothing.

With iDeal on the other hand, users actually pay. They don’t give permission, but they do a direct bank transfer, so it’s different. There’s no possibility for any refunds. iDeal has no chargebacks.

On your payments page, you have something called e-Remittal. What is that?

e-Remittal is the system we built ourselves. It combines all the payment solutions we are using. We did it because at that time– because this is three or four years ago we built this– we didn’t feel there were any good payment solutions online that stood up to our standards: easy to pay, looks good for the player, and offers the payment methods we wanted. That’s why we built it ourselves, and from there we just expanded the system.

What was it about other payments that you didn’t like?

A lot of companies, I think, have a really bad payment interface, where even I, when I get to those payment interfaces– I don’t want to pay anymore because it just looks terrible. And also the way they present the possibilities, the payment solutions, to the customer, is just not user-friendly at all. They just put all the things on the [sidebar] and that’s it. So we were looking for a user-friendly, good-looking solution and that’s what we tried to build, and our users are really comfortable with the system.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Travian took over their own payments again because they took on a strategy which involved getting the payments back to the company itself, so they went back to another payments system, and we got a lot of feedback from the players saying, “Too bad we don’t have your payments system anymore because it was so clear for us.”

Oh, so you’d been using the system you built for Travian?

We built everything that came though the management of Travian, so everything from payments to community management to support to advertising, everything that had to do with the Netherlands and Belgium.

This is more of a side question, but for some reason– we (as Kickflip, Inc.) were actually building a lot of games in America, and it seemed like internationally, Germany and the Netherlands are the two major European game-makers. How did that end up happening?

I’d guess that one of the biggest advantages that countries like Germany and the Netherlands mostly have is the widespread broadband Internet in our countries. We have some of the biggest and best-spread broadband in the world and I’d guess that helps a lot with the development of these browser-based games which are played over the Internet.

One of the most surprising things for us in this business is the Nordic region– Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark– and the Netherlands, where people are spending a lot of money. Is it because you’re just indoors all day?

Because of the bad weather, you mean? [laughs] Especially small countries like the Netherlands and the [Nordic] countries, they’re really underestimated because everybody thinks it’s just like Holland, that it’s just 16 million people who live there. But again, I think the broad range of Internet here– basically, everyone has their own connection in Holland– and I guess the ease for the Dutch people to pay over Internet, and they’re very comfortable, so it just makes it a lot easier to pay, and it makes the decision to pay a lot easier.

Thanks for talking with us, Teus!

Did you do a lot of research on already existing social games before you built “School Vandals” or was a lot of your development trial-and-error?

Absolutely. We took all the lessons we’ve learned from other games we’ve developed. What their strengths and weaknesses were. We also did a lot of research on other games. What was working? What wasn’t working? It’s a lot of analytics. There are great tools and services out there that can give you deep insight if you just look.

There are too many clones of certain other games saturating the market right now though. We don’t want to be just another one of those. We want our games to be creative, to offer a unique experience players aren’t getting elsewhere. So there’s a lot of trial-and-error in taking the models we know work and applying them to something different. It’s a lot of iteration. We try to release early and involve the players [and] incorporate their feedback.

Did you design your game first and then figure out a way to monetize it, or did you start with an idea for a system for virtual goods and currency and build the game around that?

We started with both. We took the idea, this camaraderie concept, from our pool of game ideas and paired it with a virtual goods and currency system from a pool of monetization models. There’s a lot of mix-and-matching you can do. There are a lot of models people are trying right now. It’s a very interesting time to be a game designer. The important thing is that you pair them well from the beginning. If you start with the wrong model and try to build that on top later, it’s never going to perform as well. You have to build it into your story. Keep the player engaged and immersed in that story, in that world, on that emotional high that you worked so hard to build up to. Make it fun. Games and shopping are supposed to be fun. Remember that.

Is the present version of “School Vandals” your first iteration of the game?

The general concept, yes. We put a lot of thought into it when designing the game. We’ve learned a lot from previous games we’ve done using other models. We’ve made a lot of iterations since launch, but most of those have been copy or design changes to improve conversion rates. To deliver a better value message. What does the player get out of buying this currency or item? What’s the value to them? That’s an important question you have to answer.

How does your game engage its players?

“School Vandals” is a game of camaraderie. It’s the classic story of school rivalry building a social bond between classmates who are united by their common enemy. We designed the game around that concept. That social bond is what keeps players engaged. Our job is to provide the game mechanics to encourage that and the tools to facilitate it. It’s really about creating or strengthening friendships between your teammates. Everyone has their own skin in the game so you have to learn to work together.

What keeps your players coming back?

It’s the social contract between teammates that keeps them coming back. When you’ve made that connection and you know the rest of your team is counting on you, you can’t let them down.

How do you get your userbase to grow?

The game is built around camaraderie. You really need a team to help carry you to the end goal. That sort of inherently grows itself as players are always looking to strengthen and grow their teams. It’s not like a lot of the other social RPGs where you just add friends to a roster to unlock new jobs. In School Vandals your roster doesn’t help you, your classmates do. You’re part of a real team and can only be on one team at a time.

What is your virtual currency? What is it used for and how is it integrated into the game so as to make the players need/want it?

We have a dual currency system of coins and extra credit. This helps us keep the checks and balances of inflation in place since we can control and adjust the exchange rates as necessary. Users can earn extra credit and redeem it for more coins. The main objective of the game is to tag (graffiti) rival schools. To do that you need to buy art supplies like crayons, permanent markers, and spray paint with coins. The longer a tag lasts the more school spirit you earn. So there’s an incentive for your rivals to remove it to prevent you from earning more points. For that the need to buy cleaning supplies like erasers, sponges, and bleach.

Some of your direct payments packages are pricey– approximately $100-$200. Do your users really buy those?

We have a wide range of packages to suit different types of players. That’s sort of the beauty of the virtual goods and currency model. That you can accommodate different customers with different needs and means. Some players have more time than money and vice versus. You don’t have to set a fixed price point that caps your revenue potential at either end. Those with more time on their hands contribute valuable social context to your game. That’s important. The economically endowed provide your profits. Just as equally important. It’s a naturally balancing eco-system.

Given the state of the economy and national unemployment rates, why do you think people are willing to spend so much money on a game?

People are looking for more value. They want more entertainment for their dollar. Games offer that. You can spend the same amount of money on a game and get a week’s or a month’s worth of entertainment out of it as you would on a single night at the movies.

I think there’s also a sense of reflection in down economies. People look towards the things that really matter. Their core values. Things like friends and family. Social games offer them a way to engage with their friends and family. To spend time together doing something fun. They provide social context and help take your mind off the troubling economy.

In your game, the incentive to buy (or do offers for) virtual currency is pretty strong for new players because it enables them to level up faster (more cleaning supplies and tags = more school spirit faster). How do you keep that incentive going for the players after they’ve started to level up?

As students and schools level up in the game they unlock new items with greater rewards at greater costs. With the higher status comes stronger rivals. You’re sort of forced onto this level playing field where you can’t rely on cheap items anymore because your rivals are going to use the good ones. You’re not going to be a good match if you don’t learn to save and spend wisely. When your rivals come at your strong you have to put up a good defense. If you’re ill-prepared there’s a strong incentive to buy because your reputation, your school’s reputation is at stake. You want to defend it.

What’s the ultimate goal of your game, if there is one? (is the game ever “completed” for a user? if so, is it possible or is there incentive for that user to come back and start a brand new game?)

Our game has both personal and team progress. Each has its own milestones which players and schools progress through. As you level up you unlock new items and rooms in your school. You could say there is an end game, but we’ve seen a lot of players switch teams mid game. You can always go back and enroll in a Pre-school and start again with a different team which offers a very different experience.