Inside mobile hitmaker Lilith Games

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Chinese developer Lilith Games has done what few mobile studios have been able to do: it has created multiple, billion-dollar global hits. And it hasn’t just perfected one genre, it’s released blockbusters across multiple categories.

On the global stage, Lilith rose to prominence in 2018 with its 4X strategy game Rise of Kingdoms. It followed that up with another billion-dollar hit shortly after with idle RPG AFK Arena.

The company is waiting for its next hit on a similar scale, but it’s still released titles that have made hundreds of millions of dollars. That includes strategy titles Warpath, Art of Conquest: Airships and Call of Dragons. 

It’s not always hit the mark. Shooter Farlight 84 failed to hit the target, and RPG Dislyte, while by no means a failure, able to generate millions of dollars per month, has not been the next billion-dollar blockbuster it’s looking for.

This year it launched new Idle RPG AFK Journey, a highly polished title that’s off to a big start, but revenue is currently in monthly decline, according to estimates. But there’s a big caveat to that: it’s yet to launch in key Asia markets Japan, South Korea and China. Those were three of the four most lucrative markets for AFK Arena, which has also been a huge success in the US.

Even when Lilith isn’t hitting a billion dollars, it’s launching titles that most other studios would consider a flagship game. 

To find out how Lilith looks to build global blockbusters, we sat down with the developer’s head of strategy and investment, Vincent Ou, to guide us through its company culture, development process, live ops strategy, and more.

Culture crafting

Headquartered in China, Lilith employs around 2,300 staff across its offices in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Seoul and Singapore. More recently, it also opened a presence in North America.

It has the tools, but what is the culture it cultivates to try and launch hit games?

“First off, we adhere to long-termism,” says Ou. “Several of our founders were game developers, so we fully understand the importance of continuous accumulation of knowledge in a specific field. This includes things like team coordination, development tools, industrial pipelines, user cognition, and other comprehensive aspects of game development. 

“This accumulation can effectively improve development efficiency and product success rate. Taking our most successful RPG as an example; Soul Hunters was the first RPG we developed, and the core team of AFK Arena came from this project. After achieving success with AFK Arena, they collaborated to create our latest title, AFK Journey. In the future, they will continue to work together to create even better games.”

Secondly, Ou says that Lilith is “very generous” with incentives for its staff, which it calls the ‘Aladdin Plan’. It establishes a standalone subsidiary company for each game project, and the core members of the development teams collectively hold a 20% stake. Once a project goes live, profits are then calculated on an annual basis and distributed according to their share.

“As long as the employees stay in the firm, even if they were on another project, their shares will be maintained and they’ll receive their dividends,” explains Ou. “The goal of this system is to set a limitless dividend structure as a promise to the participants. Furthermore, every participant in the system will be formally registered as a shareholder at the Bureau of Industry and Commerce. Such a design stimulates the initiative and loyalty of the team quite well.”

Thirdly, like all companies will tell you, Ou says the firm treats workers with “dignity and equality”. He highlights current practices in China’s games industry where non-compete agreements are the norm, which Lilith has abandoned completely.

“We believe that our industry is powered by passion, and should not be shackled with competition concerns,” he states. “Reasonable talent movements and rotations should be driven by a free market, which is vital to the healthy development of the industry.”

As well as these three tenets, Ou says Lilith provides talent support in a variety of ways. This includes a core journal library containing best practices in various professional fields, knowledge repositories containing project design documents, publishing strategy documents, market and user analysis reports, and various lectures and sharing sessions hosted within the company.

Lilith also provides a building without any workstations for staff – which includes a music room, dance studio, gym, café, and various hobby clubs.

Building blockbusters

Some of the world’s biggest mobile games developers often stick with the genre they find the most success in: King is a heavyweight in the puzzle category, particularly in the match-three space with its evergreen franchise Candy Crush Saga. Playrix, meanwhile, has also found huge success in the puzzle space with its own specialism in puzzle and renovate mechanics, along with a strong narrative.

While Lilith has released a number of strategy titles, it’s also expanded into other categories. Ou says that’s because Lilith wants to “take our company to a higher level”.

“Some of our past products in the RPG or 4X genres have achieved good results in terms of revenue,” explains Ou. “However, our user base definitely has room to grow, when we look at the numbers some of our competitors have achieved.

“Our gameplay design is far from perfect, and the team highly values players’ critical feedback and suggestions. We hope to bring a better experience to more users worldwide through a broad spectrum of genres and products.

“Of course, we are not blindly expanding into multiple fields. The market may notice that we are trying some areas that we have never ventured into before. However, the development teams for these exploratory projects actually have a large number of experienced developers in that field.

“Some of them joined Lilith through team acquisitions, while many others are industry veterans who joined Lilith because they identify with the company culture and development philosophy.”

Lilith follows two methods to generate new game ideas: a top-down approach where the management committee identifies potential creative directions and then assembles a team to implement them.

The other is bottom-up, where the development team proposes game ideas and plans independently. These ideas are then presented at the internal project review meeting, and if they are approved by the management committee, they are greenlit for production.

Breaking with a typical mantra over the last decade that building great mobile games requires developers to “kill their darlings” or “fail fast”, i.e. getting a working game and cancelling it if it doesn’t hit certain KPIs, Ou says Lilith’s project strategy is to “ensure that all game projects are planned for global release from the very beginning of the project”. 

The AFK Journey

Of course, no developer ever wants a project to get cancelled, though sometimes they are faced with that reality when the data doesn’t meet expectations. But Ou says Lilith does not shut down projects that have been given the greenlight easily.

“First, we select some sample markets for grayscale testing,” explains Ou. “Sample markets are the markets with similar habits and cultures as the larger ones, but with smaller populations. These markets are perfect targets for our testing grounds. We will soft launch in these sample markets and then keep tracking data and feedback from players to refine the game. When the game reaches an ideal state, we will start to promote it in major markets. 

“The key metric we focus on is user retention. We will not easily cancel a project just because this metric is not met in the short-term. We typically give the development team enough time to continuously test and optimise.”

Asked how this process came together for AFK Journey, Ou says that project was officially initiated in May 2021. Following 16 months of development, it conducted a limited closed beta test in the UK, Canada, Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It then conducted a further nine additional closed beta test sessions.

In April 2023, it began open beta testing in many of the same regions. One year later, in March 2024, it launched the game in European and American markets.

“The game performed beyond our expectations, and we’re continuing to iterate and plan for future updates,” says Ou. “Next, we plan to release the game in Japan, South Korea, and mainland China in August of this year.”

Live ops landscape

When it comes to Lilith’s post-launch strategy, Ou says its objectives differ from its production phase goals. 

“Before launch, our goal is to make the game enjoyable and maximise the potential for fun from a player’s perspective,” he explains. “To achieve this, we simplify and streamline many intermediate processes, such as feature reviews and cross-team communications. 

“At this stage, a major challenge we face is the emergence of numerous new ideas within the team. There might be discrepancies between the expected functionality of these ideas and their actual implementation, necessitating timely adjustments or even redesigns of key systems.”

These objectives shift during the live ops stage to meet player content demands, with the studio aiming to consistently introduce new content and activities to engage and retain players for the long-term.

“To accomplish these objectives, we introduce another set of intermediate processes into the development cycle to ensure that the content released reaches, and exceeds, our high quality bar,” says Ou.

“Version control becomes particularly crucial, which involves scheduling and planning development work well in advance, with any delays requiring risk assessment and early warnings. This phase also emphasises listening to player feedback and optimising each version to address pain points experienced by our players.”

Cross-platform potential

One of the key trends over the past few years in mobile has been a move to cross-platform – with some developers like Kabam and Gameloft even shifting to PC-only titles.

It’s an opportunity to expand audiences and reach players on any device – and also a chance to diversify from a flat mobile market that’s grown increasingly challenging for developers due to privacy changes.

For Lilith, Ou says expanding to new platforms is definitely part of its plans.

“We will have many new projects in the future that will be cross-platform, as well as some projects that are purely for PC development,” he says.

He explains that there are a few reasons for this strategic direction. Firstly, he says PC games, in the team’s opinion, are a “great place for exploring gameplay innovation”.

“On the one hand, the cost of exploring gameplay on PC is relatively lower compared to mobile, as there is less need to consider performance optimisation issues,” he states. “On the other hand, PC users make up a higher percentage of core users, and new gameplay innovations accepted by core users can often radiate to casual users.”

Secondly, he says users themselves want to play games across different platforms, and continue an experience on the same account, wherever they are.

Thirdly, Ou sys cross-platform games have a “big advantage” when it comes to promotional activities and spreading the word about a title.

“Today, a large part of the promotion of games is based on online distribution platforms, cooperation with KOLs (key opinion leaders) and content creators,” explains Ou. 

“Generally speaking, the PC platform offers better graphical fidelity and is more suitable for the operating habits of creators and KOLs. This helps amplify our promotional activities across the board, and makes it easier to build momentum and attract even more players.”

Lilith is already putting this strategy to the test with the newly announced life sim Project Party, which is set to be released on both PC and mobile. Another new genre for Lilith, the title also utilises user-generated content – a key trend seen across titles, including Eggy Party from rival China developer NetEase.

“Our art material library is also very robust, providing players with excellent raw materials for UGC creation to help them create content that is both good-looking and stylish,” says Ou.

He adds: “We aim to make the game editor as simple and easy to use as possible, in order to lower the threshold for players to create UGC content.”

As noted at the start, Lilith is one of the few developers in the world that’s been able to find success both in China and around the world. It may still be on the search for its next billion-dollar hit – in a sense, like Supercell, but with perhaps a willingness to take more shots on goal – but it’s still released surefire hits along the way.

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Lilith Games is a finalist for two categories at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2024 in association with Gamelight – including Best Developer and Game of the Year. Voting is open to anyone in the industry – and you can vote for who who think should win the awards in these and other categories right here. You can attend the ceremony, where the winners will be announced, in person in Cologne, Germany on August 20th.

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