Mattel is repositioning its gaming arm to find its answer to Hasbro and Scopely’s hit mobile game, Monopoly Go.
The toy giant and owner of Uno, Barbie and many more bought out NetEase’s stake in joint venture Mattel163 in February this year, and rebranded as Mattel Game Studios in August.
Devin Nambiar joined what was then called Mattel163 around a year ago as COO, having spent the previous decade at EA. He’s now helping oversee its team of around 300 staff, which are spread across LA and Hangzhou, China.
Mattel Game Studios will continue to run its existing live titles including several Uno games, Phase 10, Skip-Bo and licensed fare like Budge’s Barbie Dreamhouse and Rollic’s Barbie Merge Mystery. But now the stage is set for something more ambitious.
In the first few years of Mattel163, its joint venture with NetEase, the operation “was not at a scale where Mattel really took notice,” said Nambiar. But all that has changed now – “the scale has really hit escape velocity,” he added.
Buying out NatEase’s stake in Mattel163 was a win-win for both, he continued. It reflects Mattel’s growing investment in games but also NetEase’s slow retraction from the western games business, said Nambiar. “The investment was small for NetEase, but that did jive with their strategy at the time…Mattel had expressed interest to own 163, and I think for NetEase, because it’s not their strategic priority anymore…it was a pretty easy discussion.”
This summer, Mattel Game Studios released Masters of the Universe: Until Next Time, an internally-developed runner that arrived alongside the brand’s return to movie theatres this summer. And so the next natural step is for Mattel to have a mobile game synced with the launch of every major new Mattel film, TV show and toy line, said Nambiar.
“That’s definitely the ambition, to create that ecosystem around toys, movie and drama experiences and to leverage those moments to maximize the impressions around those launches,” he told us.
Mattel is far from the first toy giant to turn its attentions to games. Hasbro’s roaring success licensing Monopoly to Scopely is the obvious example here, and just last week Lego snapped up a mobile game team. With IP like Barbie, Hot Wheels and Thomas and Friends in its armoury, Mattel wants to make a similar impact.
“Monopoly Go is such a such a unicorn in terms of how it’s benefited both Scopely and and Hasbro,” says Nambiar. “When we think about the big brands that we’ve worked with right now, Uno is probably the biggest title that we have in terms of both traffic revenue and engagement, and it’s something that we’re continuing to invest heavily in across broader Mattel.”
“With our current Uno mobile game, we have seen so much organic download heat on that title…that could be our Monopoly Go – if we can have something of that scale that would be a huge moment for Mattel and would impact the the entire company business in terms of how we operate.”
A bigger, more ambitious plan for Barbie games is also pretty high up the to-do list for Nambiar. “Barbie is something we need to take more shots on goal with in terms of different games…there was so much success around the movie, and that’s three years ago now, right?”
“We still think there are different genres of games, the Merge Mansions, the match three with Rollic, other types of experiences – simulation games, dress up. Covet Fashion comes to mind, right? This is something that I personally am really excited about, and something that we’re continuing to explore.”
And like Hasbro (and Lego) before it, leadership at the top of Mattel seems to have suddenly started thinking about games in a much more serious way. “In my discussions with Mattel’s executive leadership, this is something that is a high priority – Mattel going from just a toy company to more of an IP and brand management company with toys as one component of that,” said Nambiar.
That includes more games in other places like PC and console, too, in particular more of the Hot Wheels games it has licensed out to capture a slice of the arcade racing market on those formats.
“Those things will continue, but mobile really feels like the platform where those brands can live and can really express themselves in the most authentic way,” added Nambiar.
“We don’t want to rush it. So this is not something where we’re trying to get, you know, three games out per year starting next year or something like that. We’re really looking at the the digital transformation of Mattel as sort of a five to 10 year initiative, and this is the first salvo.”
