Greenlighting is a lottery: How Voodoo, SLG Giants, and Habby turn ‘luck’ into ‘math’
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Lemon Choi is CEO at Hyperjoy.
I recently caught up with an old developer friend, and we touched on a painful truth: The number of breakout hits from small and medium-sized teams seems to have plummeted this year.
Many products are killed immediately after the first round of testing, and entire teams are often disbanded shortly after. While the market downturn plays a role, it begs the question: How can we establish a systematic greenlighting process to ensure the team’s blood, sweat, and tears don’t go to waste?
In a “winner-takes-all” market where hits feel like luck, every new project feels like buying a lottery ticket; betting on an uncertain future. But this doesn’t mean we should leave our fate to chance.
While some are still praying for success before launch, top-tier players like Voodoo, major SLG (4X strategy) publishers, and Habby have long stopped being blind gamblers. They don’t rely on platform algorithms or luck; they have turned mysticism into mathematics.
They build precise gameplay filtering mechanisms to exchange controllable costs for maximum certainty. Today, let’s deconstruct these three “Lottery Philosophies“.
Strategy 1: The “Scratch-Card” Model (The Wide Net)
Representative companies: Voodoo, Homa, Rollic (Hypercasual Giants) Core Logic: Decentralised creativity, distributed outsourcing.
The Betting Data:
- Chip Cost: $5k to $10k per prototype
- Dev Cycle: 4 to 6 weeks
- Frequency: 2,000 to 3,000 titles per year
- Model: Low cost + High frequency + Global distributed outsourcing
For giants like Voodoo, they know their core barrier to entry isn’t “craftsmanship,” but rather the acute capture of marketable gameplay prototypes. In this model, greenlighting is reduced to a low-cost A/B test. They position themselves as a “Venture Capital firm for Gameplay”.
- Risk Transfer: By utilising a global network of developers, they outsource the production costs and trial-and-error risks.
- Data is the Referee: They strip away the producer’s emotional attachment. They look strictly at CPI and D1 Retention.
- Law of Large Numbers: If the hit rate is one in 1,000, and they test 3,000 games a year, probability dictates they will capture three to four massive hits.
Lemon’s Take: This model is essentially “crowdsourced creativity“. They aren’t buying expensive lottery tickets; they are buying thousands of cheap scratch-cards. One winning ticket covers the cost of all the losing ones.
However, as global UA costs soar, this pure probability model faces diminishing returns. This forces these giants to pivot toward hybrid monetisation and IAP models to raise the LTV ceiling of that single winning ticket.
Strategy 2: The “Arbitrage” Model (Just Add SLG)
Representative Companies: FunPlus, IGG, River Game (SLG Veterans) Core Logic: Business Model Arbitrage.
The Betting Data:
- Chip Cost: ~$150k to $300k / Testing onboarding gameplay
- Dev Cycle: 3 to 4 months
- Target: High-appeal onboarding gameplay (Minigames)
- Model: Validate Marketability + Reuse Back-end (Mature SLG Framework)
For major SLG firms, the pain point isn’t monetisation (their frameworks are incredibly mature); it is User Acquisition.
- Isolating Uncertainty: Traditional SLG UA costs are astronomical. Therefore, they invest in demos solely to validate one hypothesis: “Can this sub-gameplay (e.g., multiplier gates, tower defense) significantly lower CPI?”
- Retention Determines Life or Death: At this stage, they ignore monetisation. Once the retention curve meets the standard, they immediately graft it onto a ready-made 4X numerical backend (like Clash of Kings) for iteration.
- The Art of Stitching: This is high-level “traffic arbitrage“. Use the low CPI of Arcade/Casual games to acquire users, then harvest high LTV using a mature SLG framework.
Lemon’s Take: This is a “Targeted Lottery“. The onboarding gameplay is usually ported from trending Steam concepts or verified mechanics from publishers like SayGames.
They are willing to spend significantly more than Voodoo to polish this “entry ticket“. Global hits like Last War and Whiteout Survival are essentially victories of “High-Appeal Gameplay Shells + Mature Numerical Kernels“.
Strategy 3: The “Compound Interest” Model (Modular Iteration)
Representative Companies: Habby, Dream (The Roguelite Sector) Core Logic: Industrialised Premium Quality.
The Betting Data:
- Chip Cost: ~$150k to $300k / Prototype
- Dev Cycle: 6 to 9 months
- Target: Roguelite Core Combat + Template-based Progression Framework
- Model: Gameplay Micro-innovation + Standardised System Reuse
Habby chose a harder path with a higher barrier to entry. They don’t rely on luck or pure stitching; they pursue deterministic compound interest.
- Micro-Innovation in Core Gameplay: Habby’s “tickets” are expensive, so they must ensure a high win rate. They obsess over the core Roguelite combat experience because this naturally provides high replayability and retention.
- System Framework Reuse: Although the onboarding gameplay shifted from Archero to Survivor.io to Capybara Go!, the “meta-game progression” (equipment synthesis, talents) is highly standardised.
- Deterministic Commercialisation: Once the new Roguelite core passes data tests, they slot it into that verified commercial framework, instantly solving monetisation issues.
Lemon’s Take: Habby is engaging in the “Industrialised Packaging of Fun“. They aren’t buying lottery tickets; they are buying Blue Chip Stocks. By drilling deep into a single genre, they fix the hardest metric to quantify – “Fun” – through standardised peripheral systems. Every new project is an iteration on previous success, not a gamble from scratch.
From “Betting on Luck” to “Managing Uncertainty”
Re-evaluating the game of greenlighting, the division between industry players is clear:
- Junior Stage (Blind Gambling): Relying on producer intuition. “Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
- Industrial Stage (The Voodoo Flow): Using the Law of Large Numbers to fight probability. Winning through Volume.
- Arbitrage Stage (The SLG Flow): Using backend certainty to hedge against frontend risk. Winning through Value.
- Systematic Stage (The Habby Flow): Encapsulating “Fun” as modules and standardising “Business.” Winning through Quality.
In this game of giants, if you don’t have Voodoo’s capital to buy thousands of tickets, nor the SLG giants’ mature engines for arbitrage, remember this survival rule: Restrain your desire to innovate, and do not copy the top hits. And certainly, do not try to reinvent the wheel.
The Best Path? Select a verified commercial framework. Concentrate all your resources on finding a high-appeal theme and core gameplay to combine with it. This gameplay doesn’t need to be complex – it’s often best to port a verified global hit (time arbitrage) or micro-innovate on a mature mechanic.
Finally, the cruelest truth: After doing all this, secure a strategic partnership with a major publisher. In today’s saturated market, without strong publishing blood (funding) and UA support, even the most innovative gameplay is likely to die on the vine.
